Owen White opened a lot of eyes last year, and he did so by consistently shutting down the opposition. Pitching primarily with the Low-A Down East Wood Ducks, the 22-year-old right-hander punched out 56 batters in 35.1 innings and posted a 3.06 ERA. He then put the finishing touches on a stellar first professional season by dominating the Arizona Fall League, winning all five of his decisions, logging a 1.91 ERA, and again fanning over a batter per inning. Buoyed by those performances, the 2018 second-round pick — Tommy John surgery and the pandemic delayed the start of his career — came into the current campaign No.84 on our 2022 Top 100 Prospects list.

His second professional season has been more of the up-and-down variety. In nine starts with the High-A Hickory Crawdads, the hard-throwing China Grove, North Carolina native has a middling 4.73 ERA, albeit with 61 strikeouts in 45.2 innings. Displaying plus stuff as he develops, White continues to miss bats.

White, who was ranked No. 5 on our newly released Texas Rangers Top Prospects list, discussed his repertoire and approach to pitching at the tail end of the Arizona Fall League season.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with who you are as a pitcher. Give me a self scouting report.

Owen White: “I think what separates me right now is the difference between my four- and my two-seam. I’ve gotten a lot more ground balls here in the Fall League. I’m able to elevate the four-seam, then follow that with a two-seam to produce ground balls and double plays. In the long run, that saves me pitches. Those two pitches have definitely benefited me the most.”

Laurila: How long have you been throwing both a two- and a four-seam?

White: “When I got drafted, I was mainly two-seam. After I had TJ [in 2019], I started throwing only four-seams. Then this year I started working on a sinker. It really kicked in this summer.”

Laurila: Your sinker is a two-seam. Read the rest of this entry »

Ryan Fuller taught high school English in Higganum, Connecticut for four years before becoming the hitting coach of the Baltimore Orioles. An infielder at the University of Connecticut before spending a year in the Arizona Diamondbacks system, the 32-year-old Fuller went on to earn a Master’s degree in Education from the University of New Haven. Books, and the lessons they provide, remain a big part of his life.

Asked about his favorites to teach, Fuller began with Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

“That was a big one for me in 10th-grade honors,” said Fuller, who has tutored hitters at different levels for over a decade. “From a morality standpoint, there are so many things that I connect with. Kids love reading the book and being able to tie it in with what it means to be a good person. They think about other people — about walking in their shoes, as Atticus put it —and the values and morals are still the same today.”

Fuller cited Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” and Stephen Crane’s “The Red Badge of Courage” as other books he’s seen impact specific age groups in particular ways. The lessons are analogous to his current job.

“It’s kind of the same thing we’re doing with our hitters,” explained Fuller, who is well-schooled in hitting analytics. “We’re taking sometimes complex, abstract things that maybe the hitters aren’t really grasping, and turning them into something tangible. They’ll say, ‘Oh, man, that makes sense.” That’s what I enjoy most about being a teacher.” Read the rest of this entry »

Broadcasters see a lot of games, and as a result, they see a lot of great pitching performances. Which of them would qualify as “the best” is, of course, subjective. For instance, a no-hitter is always going to stand out, but a two-hitter with a huge strikeout total is arguably even more impressive. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. With that in mind, I recently posed this question to a cross section of big league broadcasters: What is the best pitching performance you’ve seen?

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Robert Ford, Houston Astros

“It would have to be Gerrit Cole throwing a one-hit shutout in 2018 with 16 strikeouts. I’ve been fortunate to call three no-hitters. Two of them were individual no-hitters. There was Justin Verlander’s last one, and the other was Mike Fiers. The Verlander one would be second on my list. The Cole performance was even more impressive.

“Cole was just dominant. He had everything working. I can’t remember who got the hit off of him, but looking back, it’s amazing that anybody did. Honestly, if he were to have that same performance, nine times out of 10 it would have been a no-hitter. This was the exception — the one that wasn’t. I think he had a perfect game-score.” Read the rest of this entry »

Eric Hosmer’s numbers have declined since Jay Jaffe wrote about him in early May. That was inevitable. At the time, the San Diego Padres first baseman was slashing a stupendous and wholly unsustainable .382/.447/.579. As my colleague pointed out, the question at hand was whether Hosmer “can still help a team that was close to unloading him just a month ago.”

His overall numbers remain solid. Even with the inevitable downturn, the 32-year-old Hosmer is slashing .312/.378/.435 on the season, with his .354 wOBA and 132 wRC+ both ranking second-best on the club behind Manny Machado. The Padres would be more than satisfied if Hosmer were to finish the season with those types of numbers.

Hosmer, a career .278/.337/.431 hitter who has incurred more than his fair share of peaks and valleys since breaking into the big leagues with the Kansas City Royals in 2011, talked hitting prior to a May 1 game at PNC Park.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with your formative years. How did you grow up learning to hit?

Eric Hosmer: “I grew up basically wanting to stay inside the ball. You’re kind of taught that approach when you’re a kid, and as you advance, particularly in pro ball, you get the timing involved. You want to be in a ready position while you’re reading the pitch and then pull off a good swing from there.”

Laurila: How many times have you tried to change as a hitter?

Hosmer: “A couple of times. As you get older in your career, you might try to do certain things. The game went heavy to home runs and all that. It went to slugging. So you kind of try to change a little bit. You notice if it works, or doesn’t work, for you. You maybe end up trying to change back to what got you here.”

Laurila: You found that a particular approach doesn’t work for you.

Hosmer: “The trying to lift the ball? No, I don’t think that works too well for me.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and we’re once again hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features a young Seattle Mariners right-hander, Logan Gilbert, and a sneaky-good San Diego Padres reliever, Nabil Crismatt, on their changeups.

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Logan Gilbert, Seattle Mariners

“I changed the grip this offseason. I’d been throwing it a little more off my ring finger, and now it’s more of a traditional circle change. I’m also trying to throw it more like my fastball, which has helped the consistency. I obviously wanted to keep good action on it, but also be able to locate it in the zone; I wasn’t commanding the old one very well. More than anything, I was looking for something that I felt comfortable with. Read the rest of this entry »

The Los Angeles Angels can’t count clubhouse chemistry as the primary reason they entered Memorial Day weekend with the third most wins in the American League. Marquee players such as Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, and Anthony Rendon — not to mention Patrick Sandoval and Taylor Ward — bear a far larger responsibility for the club’s success. Which doesn’t mean that intangibles haven’t mattered. In the opinion of Angels GM Perry Minasian, they’ve actually mattered a lot.

Asked about his approach for building a winning team, Minasian responded with a rhetorical: “Do we have enough time for this?” The 42-year-old baseball lifer then proceeded to champion the value of non-quantifiable characteristics.

“Philosophically, we’re not only trying to get talented players,” Minasian told me when the Angels visited Fenway Park earlier this month. “We’re trying to get the right DNA, the right mix of guys from a makeup standpoint. That’s really important to me. Growing up around the game — I’ve been fortunate to spend a lot of time in big-league clubhouses — I really believe in mix and fit. It’s hard to quantify, but I think it has a huge impact. The room makes a big difference.”

So too does on-field talent. Identifying it — ditto projecting it — will always be an integral part of a general manager’s job. Minasian knows that as well as anyone. Read the rest of this entry »

Sergio Romo moved past Walter Johnson on the all-time pitching appearances list a few days ago. Now in his fifteenth season, and his first with the Seattle Mariners, the 39-year-old right-hander has taken the mound 804 times, a number that only 49 others have reached. Also in front of Tyler Clippard following yesterday’s outing in Boston, Romo was at 798 games to begin the campaign.

I asked the bearded-and-tattooed reliever when he started becoming aware of his place in history.

“This season, really,” Romo told me on Friday. “Earlier in my career, it had been more of a blur. But coming into this year, it was kind of, ‘Hey, man…’ My wife, too. She was aware of it. She was, ‘You’re two away from 800,’ so I started paying attention.”

Asked for his thoughts on having just passed a legendary Hall of Famer, Romo responded with a smiling, “Take that, Walter!”

Romo knows his history. “The Big Train” pitched long before he was alive — from 1907 through 1927 — but his legacy is no mystery.

“He was an infamous flame-thrower, and a guy who commanded a lot of respect,” said Romo. “He pitched a lot of innings, and he did it throwing gas. I actually play with Walter Johnson every now and again in MLB: The Show, The’ve got a lot of greats in that game. Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey… a lot of those guys.”

Nolan Ryan pitched in 807 games on his way to immortality.R omo will soon pass “The Ryan Express” on the all-time appearances, as well. I asked the owner of 137 saves, and a career 3.09 ERA, what it feels like — obvious caveats aside — to be in such company. Read the rest of this entry »

Steven Wilson is a 27-year-old rookie with a captivating pitch profile. His primary offering is a riding, mid-90s fastball delivered with good extension, and from a low vertical approach angle. His breaking ball is a bullet slider that’s he honed with the help of technology. Wilson also has a Vulcan change in his repertoire, although it mostly stays in his back pocket. By and large, the 6-foot-3 right-hander is thriving as a two-pitch pitcher.

An eighth-round senior-sign by San Diego in 2018, Wilson has come out of the Padres bullpen 15 times this season and thrown the same number of innings. With the exception of his most-recent outing — three earned runs allowed in two-thirds of an inning — he’s been very good. The Santa Clara University product has allowed 12 hits, issued five walks, and fanned 17 batters. He’s been credited with three wins and one save.

Wilson — No. 9 on our newly-released San Diego Padres Top Prospects list — discussed his pitch mix when the Friars visited Pittsburgh at the end of April.

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David Laurila: How do you get guys out? Can you answer that question without the cliche, “attacking the strike zone”?

Steven Wilson: “Well, that helps. But for me, it’s typically playing the fastball up in the zone, and then throwing a slider off of that. My slider goes down. It has more vertical break — more drop — than most sliders, and less horizontal than most sliders. A lot of people think it’s a curveball, but if you watch it in slo-mo, it actually has bullet spin like a slider. So yeah, fastballs up top and sliders down. Sometimes a changeup down.” Read the rest of this entry »

Who is the most underrated player in the game? The question isn’t an easy one, and that’s especially true for the combatants themselves. Asked for their opinions, a handful of players I approached in recent weeks figuratively threw up their hands. Of the 12 who did come up with names, a majority had to chew on the question before providing an answer. Almost to a man, the initial response was some form of, “Man, that’s tough.”

I posed the question with one ground rule. Players were allowed to name a current teammate, but only if they also named someone from another team. I also offered leeway on “most.” If choosing just one was too challenging, they could simply give an example of a player they consider to be underrated.

The answers, all procured at Fenway Park, are as follows.

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Jose Altuve, Houston Astros

“I’ll say Kyle Tucker. I think he’s one of the top-five best players in the league. He doesn’t get enough credit. For me, he’s an MVP type of player. I think he’s going to win multiple MVPs in his career.

“A guy on another team… give me a minute. I’ll say Javier Báez. People obviously give him some credit, but I think he is way better than what a lot of people think. What he brings to the team, to the league, to the fans… he’s fun to watch. He’s got power. He hits. He plays defense. He does everything. I would pay for a ticket to watch him.” Read the rest of this entry »

Josh VanMeter was in the news earlier this month for being put in an unfortunate position. A 27-year-old infielder with the Pittsburgh Pirates, VanMeter moved behind the plate in the eighth inning of a tie game when the team was forced to employ an emergency catcher. It didn’t go particularly well. Wearing the Tools of Ignorance for the first time since he was 14 years old, the Ossian, Indiana native took a foul tip off the mask, and Pittsburgh pitchers surrendered seven runs in his lone inning of unscheduled action.

There is more to VanMeter than his ill-fated notoriety. A 2013 fifth-round pick by the San Diego Padres who broke into the big leagues with the Cincinnati Reds in 2019, and who has since played for the Arizona Diamondbacks and now the Pirates, VanMeter is a bona fide hitting nerd.

In the latest installment of our Talks Hitting series, VanMeter sat down during a recent series at PNC Park to discuss the art and science of the craft.

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David Laurila: You’re a hitting nerd…

Josh VanMeter: “I am. It all started back in 2016 when I was with the Padres. I was in the Cal League and having a pretty good year, then got promoted to Double-A San Antonio about halfway through. I had a hitting coach there named Johnny Washington — he’s the assistant with the Cubs now — and I’ll never forget. I was a guy who hit a lot of groundballs and would occasionally clip some homers, but I was super steep. Within a week, Johnny — who I still love to this day — was like, ‘Man, that ain’t gonna work.’ I was like, ‘What do you mean it ain’t gonna work?’ I was 21 and had been having some success. But he was right. That half season I was in Double-A, I really struggled. Read the rest of this entry »