Richie Palacios barely missed a beat when he returned to action last year. Sidelined for two seasons due to a torn labrum followed by a minor-league summer that never happened, the 24-year-old Brooklyn-born infielder/outfielder came back to slash .297/.404/.471 over 428 plate appearances between Double-A Akron and Triple-A Columbus. His wRC+ was a healthy 141.
Palacios had gotten off to a strong start after being taken by Cleveland in the third round of the 2018 draft out of Towson University. Playing at the lower rungs of the minors, he batted .361 with a .960 OPS in his 45-game introduction to pro ball. He arrived with baseball bloodlines. His older brother, Josh Palacios, made his major league debut with the Toronto Blue Jays last year and is now with the Washington Nationals, while their uncle, Rey Palacios, played for the Kansas City Royals from 1988-90.
Richie Palacios — No. 32 our newly-released Cleveland Guardians Top Prospect list — discussed his post-injury learning curve, and his “Let The Kids Play” approach to the game he grew up with, during a November stint in the Arizona Fall League. Read the rest of this entry »
Nick Loftin could get away with covering the entire plate against high school and college hurlers. That’s far harder to do in pro ball, which is why the 23-year-old Kansas City Royals prospect — per the tutelage of the organization’s hitting instructors — is now dialing in on pitches that can he do more damage on. The message he’s been receiving is pretty straightforward: Look for something in a certain zone, and when you get it, don’t miss it.
The dictum is simple; the execution is anything but. Not when you’re facing pitchers who are throwing high-90s heaters and breaking balls that are cutting and diving in either direction.
“It’s easier said than done,” admitted Loftin, whom the Royals drafted 32nd overall in 2020 out of Baylor University. “Hitting a baseball is one of the hardest things to do — besides hitting a golf ball. That’s really hard to do, as well.”
Wait. A golf ball isn’t moving unpredictably at great speed. Rather, it’s just sitting there, motionless, ready to be struck at the swinger’s leisure. For someone with the athleticism to play shortstop and centerfield in professional baseball, squaring up an immobile object should be as easy as pie.
Hagen Danner has had a unique ride in our rankings. The 2017 second-round draft pick was No. 31 on our 2019 Toronto Blue Jays Top Prospects list, and after falling off completely in 2020 and ’21, he’s now a helium-filled No.14 on our ’22 edition. A position change has fueled the ascent; previously a catcher, Danner was moved to the mound in the months preceding the 2020 shutdown.
Last season saw the 23-year-old right-hander emerge as a shutdown reliever. Pitching against professional hitters for the first time, Danner logged a 2.02 ERA with 42 strikeouts in 35.2 innings with High-A Vancouver. Moreover, those numbers came courtesy of a power arsenal that has prompted our own Eric Longenhagen to proclaim that the Huntington Beach High School product is “on the fast track.”
Danner discussed his conversion — which wasn’t exactly a conversion — and the heater/slutter/curveball combination that he takes with him to the mound, following a spring-training outing against the Pittsburgh Pirates. He proceeded to break camp with the Double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats.
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David Laurila: You were a two-way player in high school. How much did you actually understand pitching at that time?
Hagen Danner: “A lot. It was my main position until senior year, at which time I decided to just swing the bat. That allowed me to get drafted as a hitter and let me try to live out my dream of being a hitter in the big leagues. When that wasn’t going right, it was an easy transition.”
Laurila: You were drafted as a catcher. Why that position?
Danner: “It was what I played in high school when I wasn’t pitching, although I also was a third baseman. I guess it was better [draft-wise] to be as a power-hitting catcher. It helped being able to play defense behind the plate, too.”
Laurila: Do you feel that you had potential as a hitter? There was a lot of swing-and-miss to your game, but you did have a [.409] OBP as a 19-year-old in rookie ball. Read the rest of this entry »
Robert Hassell III is a confident hitter, and for good reason. No. 50 on our 2022 Top 100 Prospects list, the 20-year-old outfielder — in the words of Eric Longenhagen — “arguably wielded the most advanced bat of the 2020 draft’s high school hitters.” Drafted eighth overall that summer by the San Diego Padres, he’s lived up to that billing. Playing last year at Low-A Lake Elsinore and High-A Fort Wayne, Hassell slashed .303/.393/.470, with his left-handed stroke responsible for 33 doubles, four triples, and 11 home runs. Moreover, he swiped 34 bases in 40 attempts.
Hassell — back at Fort Wayne to begin the current campaign — talked hitting prior to taking the field for the TinCaps opener last Friday.
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David Laurila: In your own words, who are you as a hitter?
Robert Hassell III: “Last season was the first time I played more than 50 games in a season — I played 110 — and after that, I definitely had a good idea — if I hadn’t already — of what I do consistently. It didn’t take me long. Even through last spring training, just getting in the daily reps, I knew that I was going to be a barrel guy [and] an on-base guy. That’s kind of what I’ve been my whole life, so it’s what I would self-identify as, for sure.”
Laurila: Define “barrel guy.”
Hassell: “I would say that a barrel guy isn’t a dude that can only hit fastballs, or only hit curveballs, or that he excels at one thing way more than the other. I wouldn’t consider that guy a ‘barrel guy.’ I see myself being able to hit every pitch, in any count. That’s what I mean by that.” Read the rest of this entry »
Carson Spiers has quietly thrived since being bypassed in the five-round 2020 draft. Signed that summer by a Cincinnati Reds team that at the time employed Kyle Boddy as their pitching coordinator, the 24-year-old right-hander has done so with a studious approach that he pairs with a bulldog attitude. Featuring a well-rounded pitch mix, Spiers is coming off a season where he logged a 3.55 ERA with 130 strikeouts in 111-and-two-thirds innings spent between Low-A Daytona and (primarily) High-A Dayton.
A senior-sign with a management degree from Clemson University, Spiers — currently on the roster of the Double-A Chattanooga Lookouts — is No. 15 on our newly-released Cincinnati Reds Top Prospects list. He discussed his development, and the debt he owes to Boddy, over the phone in mid-March.
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David Laurila: Who are you as a pitcher? How would you describe yourself?
Carson Spiers: “I’d say that I’m a competitive guy who likes to attack. I’ll fill the zone with four different pitches and let my arsenal work for me. I wouldn’t say I’m the most overpowering guy on the mound, but I have a good enough fastball to play at any level. I also have some pretty good off-speed that I can throw in any count; I can create swings and misses with those pitches, as well. But I’d say that my best trait is my competitive edge. I have a strong will to want to win.”
Laurila: What is your best pitch?
Spiers: “My best pitch is strike one, for sure. My slider and my changeup are definitely my out pitches, but ‘best pitch’ is tough to say, because I can throw all four in any count. I wouldn’t say I have a best.”
Kevin Gausman had a career year with the San Francisco Giants last season. Pitching a personal-best 192 innings, the 31-year-old right-hander won 14 of 20 decisions while logging 227 strikeouts with a 2.81 ERA and a 3.00 FIP. Buoyed by that performance, he was bestowed a five-year, $110M contract by the Toronto Blue Jays, who inked him to a free-agent deal in December.
Gausman’s Giants experience was as educational as it was successful. Signed to a less-lucrative free-agent deal with San Francisco prior to the 2020 season, the LSU product embraced not only his new surroundings, but also the organization’s pitching development process.
“Their big thing over there is pitching to your strengths, and we’d do things to kind of teach ourselves what we’re good at,” explained Gausman, who’d previously pitched for the Baltimore Orioles, Atlanta Braves, and Cincinnati Reds. “For me, it was pitching up in the zone. My bullpens would be focused on strings up in the zone, trying to throw above them, and then on splits down in the zone.”
Brian Bannister, who Gausman called one of the best pitching minds he’s ever been around, played an important role. The righty pointed to Bannister’s knowledge of how grips work for each individual pitcher, how an arm path works, and “what you can do to manipulate a ball.” Gausman wasn’t the only beneficiary. San Francisco’s Director of Pitching also helped Anthony DeSclafani have a career year. Read the rest of this entry »
Much of the New York-market media attention that’s followed the announcement that Ron Marinaccio will be on the Yankees’ Opening Day roster has centered on his roots. A boyhood fan of the team that he now plays for, the right-hander was born and raised in Toms River, New Jersey.
There’s much more to his story. A 2017 19th-round pick out of the University of Delaware, Marinaccio has gone from a marginal prospect to the doorstep of a major-league debut in a little more than a year. As Eric Longenhagen put it when he wrote up the 26-year-old reliever for our 2022 Yankees Top Prospects list, “Marinaccio was a 2021 revelation.” In 40 outings comprising 66.1 innings between Double-A Somerset and Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Marinaccio logged a 2.04 ERA and allowed just 35 hits. Moreover, he fanned 105 batters.
A pitch that he hadn’t previously featured has played a big role in his ascent. Described by Longenhagen as a “trapdoor-action changeup,” the offering grades out at 60 on the 20/80 scouting scale — and it’s not his only effective weapon. Marinaccio has increased the velocity of his fastball, and he’s also revamped his slider, in the process adding a horizontal-in-the-opposite-direction component to his arsenal.
Marinaccio — No. 20 on on the aforementioned Yankees list — discussed the analytics-driven evolution of his repertoire prior to a recent spring training game.
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David Laurila: What is the story behind your changeup?
Ron Marinaccio: “I’ve always had it, and the analytics kind of helped bring it out. With the boost of my velo last year, they moved me up a level, and from there we started diving a little bit deeper into the analytics. I realized that I’d only been throwing the changeup around 5% of the time, whereas last year it was probably closer to 40%, maybe even 50%. The usage went way up.”
Laurila: You said the analytics helped bring it out. Had you not known that it was good?
Marinaccio: “Yes, but in the past things were generally more fastball/slider. That was the way people thought righties should pitch to righties. I would throw it mostly to lefties, but once I started throwing it more to righties, I started to get more confidence in it. That’s when I was like, ‘Wow, I was only throwing this 5% of the time?’ My first outing, I threw over 50% changeups.”
Bailey Falter is unique. As erstwhile FanGraphs scribe Devan Fink explained when he wrote about the 24-year-old Philadelphia Phillies left-hander last summer, Falter features a 92-mph fastball that is, for all intents and purposes, a 95-mph fastball. The effective velocity comes courtesy of extreme extension. A 6-foot-4, 195-pound native of Chino Hills, California, Falter has a delivery that puts him seven-plus feet off the mound when he releases the baseball.
Projected to be a valuable part of the Phillies bullpen this year — some evaluators feel he’ll ultimately secure a spot in the starting rotation — Falter is coming off of a rookie campaign where he logged a 5.61 ERA and a 3.79 FIP over 33.2 innings. He’s been impressive this spring; with the caveat that Grapefruit League performances need to be taken with a large grain of salt, the southpaw has been sharp, allowing just five baserunners in seven innings.
Falter discussed his delivery, and the repertoire that comes with it, following a recent game in Clearwater.
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David Laurila: You’re known primarily for your delivery, particularly the amount of extension you get. Have you always thrown that way?
Bailey Falter: “Yes. I’ve had the same delivery and extension ever since I can remember. Honestly. I had a pitching coach back home, when I was growing up, named Steve Lefebvre. He tried to tweak me up a little bit — kind of shorten me up — because I was a guy that was never going to light up a radar gun, and we thought it could possibly be due to me having such a long stride. I ended up throwing the same speed.” Read the rest of this entry »
Stephen Ridings strikes an imposing figure on the mound. He also misses a lot of bats. Straddling the rubber at 6-foot-8, 225 pounds, the 26-year-old right-handed reliever is coming off a season where he recorded 42 strikeouts in 29 minor-league innings, and another seven in a five-inning cup of coffee with the New York Yankees. Moreover, he allowed just 20 hits and six walks in the 34 cumulative frames.
Drafted out of Division-III Haverford College by the Chicago Cubs in 2016 — the Yankees are his third organization — Ridings comes out of the bullpen with an attack-dog mindset.
“Right now, I’m the guy that wants to blow doors off,” explained Ridings, whom New York signed in January 2021 after he was released by the Kansas City Royals. “I’m trying to strike out as many guys as humanly possible.”
The 18% swinging strike rate that Eric Longenhagen noted when writing up Ridings for our 2022 Yankees Top Prospect list — the righty is No. 21 in those rankings — comes courtesy of three-pitch mix. A heater that sits mid-to-high 90s and tops out in triple digits is his bread-and-butter, and a slider he began throwing in spring training of last year is his best secondary. A knuckle-curve rounds out his repertoire. Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier today, Jay Jaffe rounded out the outfield with his look at right fielders. Now we conclude our rankings of the game’s position players with a deep dive on designated hitters.
As Meg Rowley did when she introduced this year’s positional power rankings, I’ll begin with a quick refresher: All 30 teams are ranked here based on the projected WAR from our Depth Charts, which is arrived at using a 50/50 blend of the ZiPS and Steamer projections and our manually maintained playing time estimates. In other words, the teams and players populating the bottom of this list aren’t there based on any one person’s opinion. You’re free to disagree, or even to yell, but doing so in this author’s direction would be misguided.
That said, this particular list is twice as long as it used to be. The National League — to the whole-hearted appreciation of some, and the consternation of others — has finally adopted the designated hitter. Five decades (minus one year) after the junior circuit introduced the rule, pitchers will no longer hit. Of course, Shohei Ohtani still will, but only because he can do something few pitchers in history have been capable of doing: swing the bat like a DH. Now, on to the rankings! Read the rest of this entry »
