Matthew Boyd has exceeded most outside expectations. Selected in the sixth round of the 2013 draft out of Oregon State University, the 34-year-old southpaw was ranked 29th when our 2015 Toronto Blue Jays Top Prospects list was published that March. He’d pitched well the previous year — a 3.17 ERA between High-A and Double-A — but as our then-lead prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel wrote, “Some scouts still think there isn’t enough here to stick as a starter.” Given Boyd’s relatively short track record of success, the skepticism was understandable.
The left-hander’s own expectations were loftier, and he wasted little time in proving his doubters wrong. Boyd made his major league debut three months later, and not only did he do so as a starter, he’s gone on to make 170 of his 184 career appearances in that role. Now in his 11th big league season, and his first with the Chicago Cubs, Boyd has never been front-of-the-rotation good — his career ERA and FIP are 4.79 and 4.56 respectively — but he’s been effective when healthy. The problem is that Boyd often hasn’t been healthy; over the past four years alone, he’s missed 390 days of the season due to injury. It’s early, of course, but so far in 2025, Boyd has been both healthy and effective. Across his two starts, he’s thrown 11 scoreless innings.
What did Boyd’s 2015 scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think of it a full decade later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what McDaniel wrote and asked Boyd to respond to it.
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“Boyd was a senior sign out of Oregon State in 2013 that got $75,000 in the 6th round after making real progress in his last amateur year.”Read the rest of this entry »
Matthew Liberatore was ranked eighth in one of the game’s top-rated farm systems when our 2019 Tampa Bay Rays Top Prospects list was released that January. Drafted 16th overall the previous summer out of Glendale, Arizona’s Mountain Ridge High School, the now 25-year-old southpaw was assigned a 50 FV by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel. Twelve months later, Liberatore was no. 3 — still with a 50 FV — on our 2020 St. Louis Cardinals Top Prospects list, which was published a week after Liberatore was traded to the NL Central club in a multi-player deal that included Randy Arozarena.
What did Liberatore’s 2019 and 2020 scouting reports look like? Moreover, what does he think of them all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what Eric and Kiley wrote and asked Liberatore to respond to it.
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January 2019:
“He was arguably the best high school pitcher in the class, evaluated heavily early on by the Giants (who picked second), before settling into the 7-13 range by June.”
“That’s pretty cool,” Liberatore replied. “I was highly scouted in my senior year — I think I had over 100 scouts at my first start — so I wouldn’t say it was one team in particular. I knew that I was going to be scouted through the first round, but there wasn’t necessarily any indication, right up until the draft, as to who was going to take me.”
“When [Kyler] Murray was selected, teams picking behind Oakland suddenly had access to one more player than they had anticipated… Other teams hadn’t considered the possibility that Libby would fall to them and either hadn’t done a lot of background work, or weren’t comfortable with how he might alter their bonus pool math.”
“I definitely thought the A’s were a possibility, and I was also told the Pirates were a possibility,” Liberatore recalled. “A couple minutes before the pick, we got a phone call saying [the A’s] chose to go another direction. I found out it was Kyler Murray. I figured he was probably going to go in the first round of the NFL draft in a couple of months, so I was definitely surprised by that. But I grew up going to Tampa every summer to visit family, and had been to plenty of Tampa Bay Rays games throughout my life, so to end up going to them at 16 ended up working out pretty well for me.”
“When Liberatore was at his best, he’d throw strikes with 93-97 for the first several innings of his starts, show you a 70 curveball, a good change, and alter the timing of his delivery to toy with hitters.”
“Pretty similar to now,” Liberatore opined. “I don’t necessarily quick pitch or do the hesitation to alter the hitter’s timing as much anymore, but that’s definitely not something that I’m crossing off the list. So, pretty similar scouting report to how I pitch now.”
“At other times, he’d sit 88-92 with scattershot command and get too cute with Johnny Cueto shenanigans.”
“Hmm. I mean, I’m not going to agree with that, necessarily,” Liberatore said. “You have days where you feel really good and go out there with your best stuff, and then you have days where you don’t feel so good and have to find other ways to get hitters out. If you look at my numbers in high school, I did a pretty good job of doing that. So, I wouldn’t say I got too cute with anything.”
Asked if he could directly address the Cueto comp — the way the veteran hurler will sometimes shimmy and turn before delivering a pitch — Liberatore said it was all about disrupting timing.
“Why do guys throw a breaking ball or a changeup?” he replied. “It’s all about altering timing, and that’s another way to do that. Some scouts didn’t like it. I had a guy come into my house and tell me to quit doing that. But if it gets outs it gets outs, and Johnny Cueto was doing it at the highest level of the game. And there are other guys that do the same thing. I don’t think that it ever hurt me at all.
“I actually used it as a reset a lot of times. If my regular delivery wasn’t working, I could go to one of those and find the right feel to lock me back in, sync me back up. I never viewed it as trying to trick the hitter outside of it being no different than throwing a changeup or a breaking ball to throw off the hitter’s timing. I mean, I’ve definitely toned it down since then. I do it rarely, but like I said before, it’s certainly not something I’m going to get away from forever.”
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January 2020:
“Because Liberatore’s fastball has sinker movement, the growth of this changeup is going to be the most important aspect of his development, since those two pitches have similar movement and will theoretically tunnel better.”
“I throw two different fastballs,” Liberatore said. “One of them has sinker movement, and one of them is a little more hoppy. I think the development of the cutter has been bigger than the development of the changeup for me. Being able to own the inner half of the plate is something that has helped me quite a bit.
“I’ve thrown both my whole life. The two-seam, if you look at it in a vacuum, is a pretty average analytical pitch. But it plays off the rest of my arsenal. It doesn’t sink, but it runs into left-handers so I’m able to show them a slight difference in shape without having to change the velocity.”
“His knockout curveball has all-world depth… it’s the type of pitch that’s hard to hit even if you know it’s coming, but it might be easy to lay off of in the dirt, because its Loch Ness hump is easy to identify out of the hand.”
“Yeah. I think it all depends on how you use your other stuff around it,” Liberatore said. “If you throw any pitch every single time, it’s going to be easier to pick up. That’s why I’ve always kept that four-seam fastball, to be able to show guys something up in the zone, to tunnel off of that curveball. Yeah, it can be easy to lay off at times, but if I start landing it for a strike you have to honor it. I think it can definitely be a knockout pitch for me.”
“The total package should result in an above-average big league starter.”
Landen Roupp leans heavily on his high-spin curveball, and Hayden Birdsong is a purveyor of the kick-change. Both pitches profile as plus, which is a big reason the right-handers are being counted on to provide quality innings in their respective roles with the San Francisco Giants this season; Roupp is in the rotation, while Birdsong is working out of the bullpen.
The early results have been promising. The 26-year-old Roupp, who is scheduled to make his second start on Tuesday night against the Cincinnati Reds, made his season debut on April 2 in a 6-3 Giants win over the Houston Astros. The start wasn’t great — he was removed with the bases loaded and nobody out in the fifth inning and was ultimately charged with three runs — but his eight strikeouts were encouraging. Seven of those strikeouts — and none of the four hits he allowed — came against his curveball. He threw his signature offering 34 times in his 83-pitch effort.
Birdsong has thrown four scoreless innings over two relief appearances. One of his four strikeouts has come courtesy of the kick-change, which he has thrown nine times out of 53 total pitches. The 23-year-old, likewise in his second big league season, has primarily attacked hitters with his high-octane heater (56.6% usage).
The stories behind Roupp’s hook and Birdsong’s changeup? I broached the subjects with the right-handers in Giants camps shortly before the start of the regular season.
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“I’ve thrown it my entire life,” Roupp said of his curveball. “All that’s really different is that I’m getting stronger with more mobility, and learning about the metrics. In college we didn’t have metrics. So, learning ways to make it move more and spin harder… learning and growing into my body has made it a lot better. For me, having confidence in it is the biggest thing.”
A 12th-round pick out of UNC-Wilmington in 2021, Roupp spun his curveball at 3,056 rpm in his April 2 outing, comfortably within the 2,900-3,100 range he’d described to me. Roupp also said that he “gets about 19 to 22 [inches] of horizontal [movement] and something like negative-11 vert” when he is executing properly. Timing is the key. When he’s out of sync with his delivery it doesn’t come out of his hand exactly as he’d like. Picking up a baseball, Roupp showed me his two-seam fastball grip, then rotated the ball just slightly. He explained that he throws his curveball just like his two-seamer, but “with a snap.”
Roupp’s curveball is “pretty slow,” averaging 77.4 mph since the start of last season. He said the speed differential between that and his fastball — his two-seamer averages 93.4 mph — is a big part of its effectiveness. As for its usage, he threw the curve 41% of the time in his first outing, which was slightly less frequently than he did last season (44.1%). With the caveat that one game is nowhere near a large enough sample size to determine what a pitcher’s usage rates will be, that dip was notable given that Roupp told me this spring that his plan was to throw his curve less often this season.
“Coming up through the minor leagues, they were telling me I was throwing it too much,” Roupp said. “That was more about developing my other pitches, though. But while I might throw it 40% of the time, I do think I’m going to lean back a little bit now that I have the changeup and the cutter. The changeup was new last year, and the cutter this year. I want to implement those and get people off my curveball so that it’s even more effective at the big league level.”
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“I have a high-vert heater with pretty good velo,” Birdsong said when asked to describe his full arsenal. “My curveball is the opposite of my fastball in that it’s just straight down; it’s negative-15 vert when it’s good. My slider is kind of in development and is more of a cutter. My changeup is just my changeup. I started throwing it last year, and it’s developed into one of my better pitches.”
That would of course be the kick-change. The right-hander supposedly learned it at Tread Athletics… except, that’s not true. Birdsong explained that while “everybody says that,” he’s never been to Tread, nor has he talked to anyone who works there. He simply watched a Tread video, then began experimenting with the grip the following day.
“I started playing catch with it — this was in spring training — and I’m not sure I can even remember who my catch partner was,” said Birdsong, whom the Giants took in the sixth round of the 2022 draft out of Eastern Illinois. “It might have been Spencer Bivens. But my changeup had been horrible the year before. It was basically just a bad fastball, a 15-vert slower fastball. That’s all it was. I needed to find another grip, one that wasn’t a splitter — I didn’t want to mess with one of those — so I started looking at videos. That one popped up.”
Birdsong’s previous attempts to find a quality changeup had all been for naught, but when he saw the kick-change, he thought, “Let’s try it.” To his knowledge, he’d never thrown one “under nine vert.” All of a sudden, he had one that was close to zero. The first coach he approached with that news didn’t believe it.
“I was throwing it, and it was tumbling,” Birdsong said. “It was doing what I wanted it to do. I told [bullpen coach Garvin Alston] that I’d thrown a changeup in the bullpen and it was negative vert. He goes ‘No.’ Then he was like, ‘Let me go take a look [at the data].’ I asked him about it the next day and he said, ‘Keep throwing it.’”
As Davis Martin and Matt Bowman explained here at FanGraphs last September, the pitch that Birdsong is now throwing has a close-cousin relationship with the better-known split change. While the name is new, the pitch itself really isn’t.
“I saw the video and called it a spike change,” said Birdsong. “I showed the grip to somebody — I forget who it was — and he was like, ‘Yeah, there are some guys who used to throw that. It’s called a kick-change.’ All it is, really, is that you’re kicking the axis of the ball. Whatever you call it, it works for me.”
Chase Dollander made his much-anticipated debut with the Rockies on Sunday afternoon, allowing seven hits and four runs over five innings and earning his first big league win. Ranked no. 12 on our Top 100 Prospects list this spring, the 23-year-old right-hander fanned six, walked one, and surrendered a pair of home runs as Colorado outscored the Athletics 12-5 at Coors Field.
His power arsenal was on display throughout. Topping out at 99.3 mph with his high-octane heater, the 2023 first-round pick out of the University of Tennessee threw 34 four-seamers, 21 sliders (which Baseball Savant classifies as a cutter), 15 curveballs, and nine changeups. Undaunted by a premiere in the majors’ most hitter-friendly venue, he aggressively attacked the zone, throwing 49 of his 79 pitches (62.%) for strikes.
Dollander discussed his repertoire prior to the start of the regular season.
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David Laurila: Scouting reports say you have a plus fastball, good secondaries, and that you usually command the ball well. Does that sound accurate?
Chase Dollander: “I would say so. I feel like my stuff is in a good spot right now. I do think that getting the slider a little harder and a little shorter would be good for me. But other than that, yeah, I feel like my stuff is in a good spot.”
Dylan Moore saw an ideal opportunity when he signed with the Seattle Mariners as a minor-league free agent in November 2018. Following a solid season split between Double-A and Triple-A in the Milwaukee Brewers organization, Moore had been discussing best scenarios with both his wife and his agent when Jerry Dipoto called. The Seattle GM told him, “Hey, we’ve got a spot you could win out of camp. What do you say?” Moore responded, “Let’s do it.”
Seattle’s Swiss Army Knife made a shrewd decision — as did Dipoto. In seven seasons with the Mariners, Moore has not only played every position besides catcher, he’s been slightly above-average with the bat. In just under 1,700 career plate appearances, the 32-year-old has swatted 54 home runs and logged a 104 wRC+. Moreover, he’s swiped 105 bases, including a team-high 32 last season.
Defensive versatility is arguably his greatest asset. Moore has already seen action at three infield positions this year, and his 2024 ledger includes 15 or more starts at four different positions. More than anything, it’s his ability to play all over the diamond that makes him the longest-tenured current Mariner. Moore understands that as well as anyone.
“I’ve gotten exponentially better since signing with Seattle,” the 2024 utility-position Gold Glove winner told me. “I’ve been really fortunate to have really good coaches, like Bone [renowned infield coach Perry Hill], who are making sure that I’m ready to go at any position. I work hard on my defense. I have a lot of pride in what I do, especially defensively. Versatility is what keeps my value up.”
Moore’s assessment of his offensive contributions stood out in our late-March conversation. Read the rest of this entry »
Ian Happ’s defensive future was unclear when the Chicago Cubs made him a first-round pick in the 2015 draft. The sweet-swinging switch-hitter was selected as an outfielder, but he’d also played multiple infield positions during his three years at the University of Cincinnati. That uncertainty — fueled more by versatility than any serious shortcomings with the glove — remained when he was rated the Cubs’ no. 2 prospect in January 2017. While Eric Longenhagen opined that Happ’s most expedient path to the big leagues was as a left fielder, he nonetheless had him on our list as a second baseman. Either way, Happ’s calling card was going to be his bat. As our lead prospect analyst stated, “It profiles wherever he ends up playing.”
What did Happ’s 2017 scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think of it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what Eric wrote and asked Happ to respond to it.
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“The Cubs drafted him ninth overall in a draft chock full of good college hitters up top despite questions about his ultimate defensive home.”
“There definitely were questions about my defensive home,” Happ said. “I’ve played seven positions in the big leagues, so while I ended up finding a home [in left field], I think it was an asset for me to be able to play a bunch of different spots — especially on those early teams with how many good players we had.
“We needed versatility in that group. We had Addison [Russell] playing shortstop. We had Javy [Báez], [Ben] Zobrist, Tommy La Stella, and myself at second. Kris Bryant was at third and [Anthony] Rizzo at first. In the outfield, we had [Kyle] Schwarber, [Albert] Almora, Jason Heyward, Jon Jay, Zobrist, and myself. We didn’t have a bunch of set positions, so to get in the lineup you had to hit, and you had to be versatile. That’s the way Joe Maddon ran teams over there. Had I been a one-position guy, I don’t know how much I would have played in the big leagues.”
“He’s an above-average straight-line runner with decent range and an above-average arm, but his actions and athleticism are not optimal for the infield.”Read the rest of this entry »
Bowden Francis was one of baseball’s best pitchers over the final two months of the 2024 season. From August onward, the 28-year-old Toronto Blue Jays righty made nine starts and posted a 1.53 ERA with 56 strikeouts while allowing just 24 hits and seven walks across 59 innings.
All told, Francis recorded a 3.30 ERA, a 22.5% strikeout rate, and a 5.4% walk rate last season across his 27 appearances (13 starts) spanning 103 2/3 innings. It stands to reason that the minuscule .211 BABIP he allowed isn’t repeatable, though it may not be due for as much of a regression as you might expect. Inducing weak contact is Francis’ modus operandi on the mound, and a low BABIP is a feature of his game, not a fluke.
Considering the priority for pitchers to generate as many swings and misses as possible, when I spoke with Francis during spring training, I wanted to understand his approach to pitching. Specifically, I asked him, “How do you get guys out?”
“Pounding the strike zone,” said Francis, who was selected out of Chipola Junior College in the sixth round of the 2017 draft. “Strike percentage, getting guys on their heels more. Mixing it up and moving it around, trying to keep them off balance. Pitchability is my thing. I’ve never been super-overpowering. I’ve always been more on the crafty side.” Read the rest of this entry »
Alan Roden roped baseballs with regularity this spring, helping himself to land not only a roster spot, but also an Opening Day start in right field for the Toronto Blue Jays. Showing signs that he’s ready to take off at the MLB level, the 25-year-old left-handed hitter punished Grapefruit League hurlers to the tune of a 1.245 OPS and a 220 wRC+. He also coaxed six free passes and fanned just four times over his 37 plate appearances.
More than spring training results factored into his first big-league opportunity. Building on a strong 2024 season, split between Double-A New Hampshire and Triple-A Buffalo, Roden has been adding pop to his profile. Previously known more for his bat-to-ball skills than for his ability to clear fences, the erstwhile Creighton University Bluejay is now looking to lift.
Having read of Roden’s efforts to generate more power, I asked him how he’s gone about impacting the ball with more authority.
“I think it’s less of the actual impact that’s better,” Roden told me at Blue Jays camp. “It’s more the shape of the ball off the bat, directionally. The exit velocities are high enough to where if I’m getting in the air to the pull side, it’s going to go. That’s where the damage comes from, hitting the ball with more ideal launch angles.”
Roden has a B.A. in physics, so understanding the aerodynamics of ball flight, and the swing paths that produce results, comes with the territory. Explaining his mechanical adjustments was a simple exercise for the Middleton, Wisconsin native. Read the rest of this entry »
Matt Chapman came in at no. 3 when our 2015 Oakland Athletics Top Prospects list was published in February of that year. Assigned a 45 FV by our then lead prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel, Chapman had been drafted 25th overall out of Cal State-Fullerton the previous summer. Playing most of his initial professional season in the Low-A Midwest League, the 21-year-old third baseman swatted five home runs and put up a modest .672 OPS over 202 plate appearances.
What did Chapman’s 2015 scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think of it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what McDaniel (now with ESPN) wrote and asked Chapman to respond to it.
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“A standout hitter and pitcher for Fullerton that didn’t have much first-round buzz for reasons I didn’t understand.”
“He was thinking like I do,” Chapman replied. “I thought I was a little underrated. Obviously, the A’s took a chance on me and it all worked out. But that’s funny, because I thought I had all the tools. I just wasn’t getting the love.”
“Chapman, has an 80 arm and has been into the high 90s on the mound, but is mostly an arm-strength guy with a short track record of pitching.”Read the rest of this entry »
In which ways would a fully-implemented Automated Ball-Strike System [ABS] impact pitching? According to a coordinator I spoke to, one effect could be a further increase in the number of power arms who can get away with attacking the middle area of the zone. Conversely, crafty finesse types will become even less common, as getting calls just off the corners will no longer be possible.
Count Chris Bassitt among those not enamored with the idea.
‘“If you go to a full ABS system, you’re going to develop more throwers and the injury rates are going to spike,” opined the 36-year-old Toronto Blue Jays right-hander. “Then you’ll have to go back to pitching. The only way to stay healthy is to pitch. That’s never going to change in our sport. No matter how many people want to do something different, you have to pitch. There are obviously a number of facets for why people get hurt at the rate they’re getting hurt, but the answer for the injury history of the sport for the last five, ten years is more throwers. I don’t agree with it.”
