Jordan Walker is no. 8 on our Top 100 thanks largely to his bat. As our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen wrote in July, the 6-foot-5, 220-pound St. Louis Cardinals outfield prospect “is one of the most exciting young hitters in the minors, with elite power potential and superlative on-paper performance at Double-A while he’s still not old enough to have a beer.” At season’s end, the 20-year-old Stone Mountain, Georgia native boasted a .306/.388/.510 slash line, with 19 home runs and a 128 wRC+.

His tool set also includes a plus arm, which this writer witnessed firsthand during an Arizona Fall League game. Fielding a ball deep in the right field corner, Walker gunned a strike to second base that had me harkening back to the days of Dwight Evans and Dave Parker. A throw I wasn’t on hand to see was arguably even more impressive. As MLB.com’s Jesse Borek reported in mid-October, Walker “cut the ball loose at 99.5 mph, a throw harder than any by a St. Louis Cardinals outfielder since Statcast began to keep track in 2015.”

Shortly after talking to Walker’s close friend and AZL teammate Masyn Winn — featured here at FanGraphs on Tuesday — I approached the organization’s top-rated prospect to talk about his two most eye-catching assets: his bat and his arm. Read the rest of this entry »

Will Warren has quietly, and quickly, emerged as one of the top pitching prospects in the New York Yankees organization. An eighth-round pick in the 2020 draft out of Southwestern Louisiana University, the 22-year-old right-hander made his professional debut this year, and by June he was pitching with Double-A Somerset. On the season, he had a 3.91 ERA and a 3.74 FIP with 125 strikeouts and 119 hits allowed in 129 innings.

His best two pitches have been added to his arsenal since college. Warren’s sweeper, which spins as high as 3,000 rpm, replaced the pedestrian slider he’d thrown as an amateur; his low-to-mid 90s sinker, which helped produce a 53% ground ball rate, was developed just this past season. His physique has transformed, as well. The 6-foot-2 hurler now packs close to 200 pounds on his once-lean frame, giving him a more-projectable starter’s build.

Warren discussed his developmental strides late in the 2022 season.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with your M.O. on the mound. How do you get guys out?

Will Warren: “Basically attacking the zone, knowing that the guys behind me are going to make plays. As a sinkerball guy, I’m probably going to get a lot more ground balls than strikeouts, so I rely a lot on my defense to get people out.”

Laurila: I understand that you also have a pretty good slider.

Warren: “Yes. Analytics makes it easier to look at a pitch and say, ‘Oh, I can do this, I can manipulate it this way.’ When I got drafted by the Yankees, we [developed] the slider. We tinkered with some grips, and it ended up being what it is now.”

Laurila: Is it the Yankees whirly?

Warren: “It’s the sweeper, yes. Off the top of my head, I’m going say I get like 16–18 inches of sweep. I can get it bigger, but I think that’s what it is on average. The velocity is 84–87 [mph].” Read the rest of this entry »

Masyn Winn has a high ceiling as a position player. Rated the best athlete in the St. Louis system by Baseball America, the 20-year-old shortstop is No. 2 in our Cardinals prospects rankings and No. 55 in our Top 100. Drafted 54th overall in 2020 out of Kingwood (Tex.) High School, Winn is coming off of a season where he slashed .283/.364/.468 with 12 home runs and 43 stolen bases between High-A Peoria and Double-A Springfield. His summer included an appearance in the 2022 All-Star Futures Game.

He could very well be a pitcher… or a two-way player. As our lead prospect evaluator Eric Longenhagen explained back in July, Winn “was a two-way amateur with huge arm strength,” and while no one was projecting him as the next Shohei Ohtani — a unicorn, he’s not — there is no denying his unique skillset. Winn had a throw from shortstop clocked at 100.5 mph during the Futures Game.

Winn discussed his pitching background and the possibility of him one day returning to the mound during his October/November stint in the Arizona Fall League.

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David Laurila: I’m especially interested in your positional background. Why are you an infielder now, and not a pitcher?

Masyn Winn: “I’m not a pitcher because the Cardinals and I decided that’s the easier route to go. Hitting… I mean, it’s a lot easier to pick the glove back up and go back on the mound than it is to pick a bat back up. In our thought process, if I make it as a hitter, that’s fantastic. If not, I’ll just fall back to pitching. I think that’s a good plan because of how hard hitting is. Taking a couple years off and then trying to go back to it would be a little tough.”

Laurila: When was the decision made?

Winn: “I ended up throwing one inning at the end of last year. We were going to do a throwing program the last six weeks or so, but I ended up tweaking my arm a little bit, so during the offseason we decided to shut it down and just focus on hitting.” Read the rest of this entry »

Gabe Kapler was asked about next season’s more-balanced schedule when he met with the media during the Winter Meetings. More specifically, he was asked about not having to play as many games against powerhouse division rivals like the Dodgers and Padres. His response began with an unexpected nod to the team that finished in fourth place with a record of 74-88.

“The Diamondbacks were really tough on us this year,” said the Giants manager, whose club went 9-10 versus Arizona. “They’re a really challenging team. I think about the Diamondbacks a lot, because they’re so gifted and athletic, and they’re all so young. Torey [Lovullo] does a great job, and Mike Hazen… their whole front office is a good group.”

Arizona’s young talent on the position player side includes Corbin Carroll, Alek Thomas, Jake McCarthy, and Geraldo Perdomo, with more reinforcements on the way. Carroll, who debuted at the end of August, is No. 4 on our Top 100 — a list that includes five D-Backs — and the farm system that Hazen oversees as Arizona’s GM ranks sixth-best among the 30 organizations.

How does this group compare to the young talent Lovullo worked with as Boston’s bench coach from 2013-2016, and before that as the team’s Triple-A manager? Read the rest of this entry »

Free agents are getting paid handsomely this offseason, and that includes Taijuan Walker. On Tuesday night, it was reported that the 30-year-old right-hander had agreed to a four-year, $72 million contract with the Phillies — not exactly Aaron Judge or Trea Turner money, yet further evidence that this is anything but a bear market for players, particularly starting pitchers.

The Dave Dombrowski-led team has good reason to be bullish on its latest acquisition. Back to full health after shoulder and elbow woes cost him all but 14 innings in 2018 and ’19 (he threw 53.1 frames in the truncated 2020 campaign), Walker has tossed 316.1 innings over the past two seasons. Moreover, he’s coming off of a year where he logged a 3.49 ERA, a 3.65 FIP, and a 21.5% strikeout rate with the Mets.

The Phillies are coming off of a World Series appearance, and while that presumably appealed to Walker — who wouldn’t want to play for a team aggressively chasing rings? — so too would the progressive pitching environment he’ll be joining. When Walker was interviewed here at FanGraphs in January 2021, roughly one month before signing as a free agent with the Mets, he spoke of how he’d previously worked out at Driveline, and how, as a pitcher, “you’d clearly prefer that your next team is one that places a high value on technology and data.”

Jeremy Hefner, the Mets’ pitching coach for each of the past three seasons, is analytically-inclined. Philadelphia’s pitching coach is Driveline-educated Caleb Cotham. Read the rest of this entry »

The Colorado Rockies have received their fair share of criticism since winning 91 games and earning a Wild Card berth in 2018. Four losing seasons have played a part in that, but so too have some questionable decisions, financial and otherwise. Four months ago — and he’s no lone wolf in having offered such a critique — my colleague Dan Szymborski called Colorado “The worst-run organization in baseball.”

My own coverage of the club, which has focused primarily on players, prospects, and coaches, has included neither criticism nor compliment. Which isn’t to say I’m not intrigued by brickbats thrown. I am, which led me to approach Colorado GM Bill Schmidt to get his perspective on some of what has been said about the team he’s been with for two-plus decades.

The first thing I asked Schmidt about was the October decision to fire hitting coach Dave Magadan and replace him with Hensley “Bam Bam” Meulens, who’d previously worked with the San Francisco Giants and, this past season, the New York Yankees.

“They’re different people with different experiences.” said Schmidt, a longtime scout who replaced Jeff Bridich (initially on an interim basis) as Colorado’s GM in May 2021. “Hensley had a lot of success with the Giants. There are certain things… I’ll let him talk about the certain things he believes in, but he and Bags were different types of players who have different ideas of what they consider important.”

Bringing “Bam Bam” on board is notable in part because he’s an outsider; the Rockies have often been called an insular organization. Schmidt bristled when asked about that claim. as well as about accusations that the team he leads lacks direction. Read the rest of this entry »

The Kansas City Royals have made forward-thinking changes in recent months, most notably in the managerial chair and at the highest level of their front office. The latter preceded the former, with J.J. Picollo taking over from Dayton Moore as the team’s top decision-maker in late September. Six weeks later, Picollo hired Matt Quatraro, who had been the bench coach for the Tampa Bay Rays, to replace Mike Matheny as manager.

Another impactful decision was announced this week. In want of a more-analytically-minded pitching coach, Picollo brought on board Brian Sweeney to fill the role that had been held by Cal Eldred. Previously the bullpen coach for the Cleveland Guardians, a team with a well-earned reputation as a pitcher development machine, Sweeney is seemingly a perfect fit for a Kansas City club looking to move away from a reputation of its own. Long seen as an old school organization, the Royals are, by all appearances, becoming more progressive.

Picollo, who now holds the title Executive Vice President and General Manager, talked about the team’s new direction during last month’s GM Meetings.

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David Laurila: You’ve addressed this previously, but it’s nonetheless the best way for us to start: Given that you worked alongside Dayton Moore for many years, what will differ philosophically with you in charge?

J.J. Picollo: “Culturally and fundamentally, there will be a lot of similarities, because it’s just baseball and how you run an organization. That said, we want to be a little more open-minded to different ways of improving our roster, and utilizing our roster. Player acquisition… a lot has been made about being transactional, but I think that can be overstated. When you’re transactional, you’re just trying to make your team better. If it makes our team better, then we’ll be transactional.

“More than anything, hiring Matt Quatraro, with the way he thinks… he’ll be creative. I think that will be developmentally healthy, especially for our younger players.”

Laurila: How does he think? Actually, let me phrase the question this way: What did he say during the interview process that sold you on hiring him?

Picollo: “A lot, but more than anything, he was able to communicate what his thoughts were. You could just see, in some of the exercises we went through… for instance, how he would put lineups together. Obviously, a lot of that is based on matchups and how you want to use matchups. Also, the idea of using our bench was very clear; it’s something he’s not going to be afraid to do. Another was putting pitchers in situations where they can succeed yet develop at the same time. He was able to explain his processes really well.” Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Wacha is, in many ways, the same pitcher who broke into the big leagues with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2013. The changeup is still his best weapon, and his fastball velocity has remained in the 93–95-mph range throughout. The 31-year-old right-hander has changed teams a few times, but he’s largely kept the same identity.

There have been tweaks to his repertoire and pitch usage. That’s inevitable over the course of what has been a 10-year career, one that will continue will a team yet to be determined. Following seven years as a Cardinal and subsequent one-year stints with the New York Mets, Tampa Bay Rays, and Boston Red Sox, Wacha is now a free agent. He’s hitting the open market on a high note; in 23 starts comprising 127.1 innings last season, the Texas A&M product went 11–2 with a 3.32 ERA.

Wacha discussed his evolution as a pitcher on the final day of the 2022 regular season.

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David Laurila: To varying degrees, all pitchers evolve. How many times would you say you’ve changed over the years?

Michael Wacha: “From my rookie year, I’d probably say… a couple of times? But I don’t know. I mean, each year I’m trying to work on something different to help out my repertoire, to bolster it or make it better. So it’s kind of hard to say, but there have been a couple of changes.”

Laurila: Can you give any examples? Read the rest of this entry »

Financial implications aside, how the Oakland Athletics fared in the August 1 trade-deadline deal that sent Frankie Montas and Lou Trivino to the New York Yankees in exchange for Cooper Bowman, Luis Medina, JP Sears, and Ken Waldichuk won’t be known for at least a few more years. Two of the players who headed west made their big-league debuts last summer, while the others finished their respective seasons in Double-A and High-A. The extent to which the foursome goes on to thrive — or flop — can’t be predicted with any degree of certainty.

David Forst is understandably bullish on the quartet. Three-plus months after he pulled the trigger on the trade, I asked Oakland’s GM what he found appealing about each acquisition.

“We think Waldichuk has a chance to be a top-of-the rotation arm, and we certainly saw glimpses of that in the big leagues,” Forst said of the 24-year-old left-hander, who is No. 69 our Top 100 Prospects list. “With him, it’s the physicality, the fastball command, and the swing-and-miss he gets with three different pitches. I think Ken has a huge upside.

“Upside is the whole conversation with Medina,” continued Forst. “Huge arm, huge fastball. Whether he remains a starter or not, we’ll see. He’s pitching really well in the Dominican [Winter League] right now. I know that he wants to remain as a starter, but he has to improve his command.” Read the rest of this entry »

Blake Sabol has versatility, Pittsburgh ties, and a bat that could be providing thump to the Pirates’ lineup in the not-too-distant future. A left-handed-hitting catcher who also plays the outfield and first base, Sabol, 24, is coming off a season where he slashed .284/.363/.497 with 19 home runs between Double-A Altoona and Triple-A Indianapolis. The seventh-round selection in the 2019 draft has other notable qualities, as well. Along with being a stat nerd, the former University of Southern California Trojan has an engaging personality that promises to make him a fan favorite if he reaches the majors.

Sabol, who is Rule 5 eligible, talked about his multi-faceted game and his connections to the city he hopes to soon play in during his recent stint with the Arizona Fall League’s Surprise Saguaros.

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David Laurila: I understand that you play multiple positions and have put up some good offensive numbers. How do you see yourself?

Blake Sabol: “Defensively, I kind of consider myself a Swiss Army Knife. I’m primarily a catcher, but I can be in the outfield and have also been taking some ground balls at first base. I’m hoping to be like a three-level player.

“With the bat, I’ve had a couple of good seasons under my belt — I’ve been able to hit for power and have a good OPS — so I feel I can impact the game that way. I think I can help a big league team. Instead of having a guy who is only a catcher, maybe just a backup catcher, I can be playing multiple spots, or even be in the lineup as a DH.”

Laurila: Your goal isn’t to be a starting catcher in the big leagues?

Sabol: “My goal is ultimately to be in the big leagues, anyway, anyhow. I mean, I would love to be a catcher. There’s a lot of value there, and I think I could do it. But ideally, and I’ve talked with Henry Davis about this, even if we’re splitting games behind the plate, I can go in the outfield or be a first baseman. I just want to be in the lineup as much as possible.” Read the rest of this entry »