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 »

Toronto Blue Jays pitching prospect Hagen Danner is a converted catcher who gets good ride on his four-seam fastball, and he attributes that quality to his former position. Hearing that from the 23-year-old right-hander prompted me to ask Philadelphia Phillies manager Joe Girardi if what I was told made sense.

“I can definitely see that,” said Girardi, who caught for 15 big-league seasons. “But I don’t think it’s a guarantee; some [catchers] have a little tail to their ball when they throw. At times, I would have a little tail. But [Garrett] Stubbs really gets underneath it, really gets that spin. There are a lot of catchers who do. It’s how we’re taught to throw.”

Good ride typically comes with a four-seam grip, but unlike pitchers, a catcher isn’t standing on a mound with ample time to manipulate the baseball in his hand; he has to receive the ball, make the transfer, and get rid of it as quickly as possible. I asked the catcher-turned-manager about that as well.

“You don’t have time to get the grip, but ideally you want to throw it straight,” said Girardi. “And you can still throw it straight, pretty much, if you don’t have a perfect four-seam grip.”

Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch is likewise a former catcher, so I asked him the same questions I’d asked Girardi. Read the rest of this entry »

Rhys Hoskins hits for power. The 29-year-old Philadelphia Phillies first baseman went deep 27 times last year in 443 plate appearances; his home run totals in his previous full seasons were 34 and 29 respectively. Moreover, the most notable digits in his career .241/.360/.502 slash line are those of his slugging percentage. And then there is his average exit velocity. Last year, Hoskins ranked in the 83rd percentile for that particular metric.

Slugger bona fides aside, he’s no mere masher. Hoskins is a student of the art of hitting, and he has been since his days at Sacramento State University. That’s where he learned to hunt the heater, an approach that — as the numbers attest — has served him well.

Hoskins discussed his evolution as a hitter, and the mindset that helps him flourish in the batter’s box, at the Phillies’ spring training site in Clearwater on Wednesday afternoon.

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David Laurila: How do you identify as a hitter?

Rhys Hoskins: “I think I’m a hitter with a pretty good understanding of the strike zone. High on-base guy. High power guy with always a chance to hit for more average. That’s the way I would describe myself.”

Laurila: Many people view you as a power hitter. Do you like that label?

Hoskins: “I feel like when you hear ‘power hitter,’ there’s a little bit of all-or-nothing attached to that. So I don’t know if I would necessarily say I’m a power hitter. I think I’d rather say that I’m a hitter with some power.”

Laurila: Where, and from whom, did you learn to hit? Read the rest of this entry »

Ian Seymour throws ugly, and he looks good doing it. Drafted 57th overall by the Tampa Bay Rays in 2020 out of Virginia Tech, the 23-year-old southpaw is coming off his first professional season, one in which he logged a 1.95 ERA with 87 strikeouts in 55-and-a-third innings. The dominance came at three levels, with 10 outings in Low-A and two starts each in High- and Triple-A. Especially eye-opening was his September stint at Durham: facing hitters one rung below the majors, he allowed four hits and one unearned run over 10 innings of work.

Augmenting Seymour’s unique delivery is a five-pitch mix that leans heavily on his high-riding heater and a fading changeup, with a sweeping slider emerging as a potential third plus pitch. Dotting corners isn’t part of his attack plan. The erstwhile biology major — Seymour graduated from Virginia Tech last fall — doesn’t dissect hitters so much as he rears back and dares them to make contact. It’s hard to argue with success: Opposing batters slashed .139/.239/.246 against him last season.

Seymour — No. 16 on our newly-released Tampa Bay Rays Top Prospects list — discussed his game over the phone last week.

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David Laurila: What were your expectations going into the 2020 draft, and which teams did you feel would be the best fits for you development-wise? Read the rest of this entry »

I recently asked a pair of prospects which of their former teammates have the best wheels, and on each occasion a 24-year-old middle infielder in the Boston Red Sox system was on the short list. One had him numero uno. The other deemed the speedster in question as being a step behind his first choice.

“Corbin Carroll, for sure,” was Ryne Nelson’s response to my question, the top pitching prospect in the Arizona Diamondbacks system naming the organization’s top position player prospect. “That dude flies.”

While that answer was anything but unexpected, is Carroll truly faster than David Hamilton, whom Nelson played with in the Cape Cod League?

“I think so,” said the righty. “I’ve never seen them together, but I have watched Corbin get from home to third in what felt like three seconds. Hamilton is definitely up there, but it seems like Corbin is the fastest player I’ve ever seen in my life. He can really burn around the bases.”

So too can Hamilton, whom Kody Clemens played with at both the University of Texas and in the independent Constellation League during the 2020 shutdown. Prior to my conversation with Nelson, the Detroit Tigers prospect had told me that Hamilton is the swiftest he’s taken the field with. Read the rest of this entry »

Brett Wisely flies under the radar in a Tampa Bay Rays farm system where it’s easy to get overlooked. A 15th-round pick in 2019 out of Gulf Coast State College, the 22-year-old infielder is coming off a first full professional season where he augmented a .301/.376/.503 slash line with 19 home runs and 31 stolen bases between Low-A Charleston and High-A Bowling Green. Despite those eye-opening numbers, Wisely is unranked — albeit within a deep, talent-laden minor-league system — by Baseball America (our own list is forthcoming).

His low-profile status dates back to the day he was drafted. A two-way player at Jacksonville’s Sandalwood High School, and again in junior college, Wisely wasn’t even sure that his phone would ring.

“I didn’t think I was going to go at all, really,” Wisely admitted late last season. “I was playing summer ball and planning to go to USF the following year. But then the call came, and I got all excited. It was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up.”

It’s not as though the opportunity came out of the blue. Wisely had been in contact with Tampa Bay’s area scout, and he’d filled out pre-draft questionnaires for “four or five teams,” the Boston Red Sox and Chicago White Sox included. The interest shown by the Rays differed from the others.

“They were the only one for hitting,” Wisely explained. “Everything else was for pitching. The other teams preferred my arm over my bat.” Read the rest of this entry »

Brandon Walter hasn’t come out of nowhere, but he has come a long way. A 26th-round pick in 2019 out of the University of Delaware, the 25-year-old southpaw went into last season a veritable unknown, and he left it as the fastest riser in the Red Sox system. Displaying elite movement from a low arm slot, Walter fanned 132 batters and allowed just 67 hits in 89.1 innings, between Low-A Salem and High-A Greenville. He’ll enter the 2022 campaign ranked No. 10 on our newly-released Red Sox Top Prospects list.

Walter discussed his repertoire, and his unexpected emergence in a steadily-improving system, last month.

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David Laurila: Your Baseball America writeup said, among other things, “His stuff and pitch data suggest reason to believe in a big ceiling.” What does that mean to you, particularly the reference to data?

Brandon Walter: “I’ve learned a lot over the last couple of years, especially since Chaim Bloom came into our organization. They’re big on analytics and pitch data [and] they’re preaching it to us. To me, it mostly means that my stuff is plus, so I can simplify and just throw it in the zone. I can make hitters deal with what I’m throwing instead of trying to hit corners and risk falling behind in the count. Basically, I can just try to get ahead with with my three pitches and compete that way. Getting that information and knowing that my stuff is above average allows me to just attack hitters.”

Laurila: Has the data reinforced things you kind of already knew, or has any of it actually come as a surprise? Read the rest of this entry »

Robert Van Scoyoc has diligently built a reputation as one of the best hitting coaches in the game. Hired by the Los Angeles Dodgers in November 2018 after first having served as a consultant (with a year spent as a hitting strategist with the Arizona Diamondbacks in between), the 36-year-old Santa Clarita, California native is respected both for his communication skills and his nuanced understanding of the craft. Well-versed in technology and modern-day concepts while still being an adherent of proven old-school practices, he honed his knowledge base working alongside longtime hitting instructor Craig Wallenbrock.

In the latest installment of our Talks Hitting series, Van Scoyoc addressed several philosophies and principles, including the importance of angles and the relationship between process and outcome.

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David Laurila: Since coming to pro ball, the two titles you’ve held are “hitting strategist” and “hitting coach.” What’s the difference?

Robert Van Scoyoc: “In Arizona, the strategist role was more broad. I was involved in multiple departments, along with doing some of the major league advancing work. Being the hitting coach, my responsibilities are just with the major league team. That being said, we have a very collaborative organization where all three hitting coaches — me, Brant Brown, and Aaron Bates — are all working with [player development], and will even talk with amateur scouting and some of the guys watching our players. So my day-to-day responsibilities are with the major league staff, obviously, but with us being very collaborative, I’m involved with many different parts.”

Laurila: The Dodgers have a three-headed machine in charge of assisting hitters… Read the rest of this entry »