Bryson Stott had a pretty good idea of what to expect coming into the 2019 draft. Ultimately taken 14th overall by the Philadelphia Phillies, the now-23-year-old shortstop out of the University of Nevada Las Vegas had reason to believe that he would be selected in that neighborhood of the first round. Our own mock draft had him going one pick earlier, while Baseball America ended up being spot-on with their prediction.

Stott likewise knew that several of his friends would be taken in the first round, albeit not necessarily by which organizations. He and a handful of former USA Baseball teammates would periodically update each other on what they’d been hearing, as well as any pre-draft workouts they’d been invited to. Specific expectations were couched in caution.

“As I’m sure you know, you don’t really get much before the draft,” Stott told me earlier this month. “It’s kind of, ‘You hear one thing and then something else happens.’ So it’s a weird time, and an exciting one, but still pretty stressful.”

As Stott pointed out, the entire 2018 USA team infield went in the first round the following year. Andrew Vaughn was at first base, Braden Shewmake was at second, Stott played short, and Josh Jung covered the hot corner. Will Wilson was an extra infielder, while Shea Langeliers and Adley Rutschmann were the catchers. Last year’s first-overall pick, Spencer Torkelson, was also on the team.

“It was a pretty good infield,” said Stott, in what could rightly be called an understatement. Read the rest of this entry »

Devlin Granberg is an under-the-radar prospect enjoying a breakout season. Boston’s sixth-round pick in 2018 out of Dallas Baptist University, the 25-year-old first baseman/outfielder — unranked on our 2021 Red Sox Top Prospects list — is slashing .315/.379/.573 between High-A Greenville and Double-A Portland. Swinging from the right side, the Hudson, Colorado native has slugged eight home runs while putting up a healthy 155 wRC+.

Granberg talked hitting prior to a recent game at Portland’s Hadlock Field.

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David Laurila: How much have you changed since coming to pro ball?

Devlin Granberg: “I’ve had a very similar swing since probably my sophomore year in college. I’ve got a very immobile body — I have tight hips and tight shoulders — but that helps me stay more consistent. It’s kind of what has allowed me to stay with a very similar swing.

“I think the biggest change for me has been the routine. It’s the same thing every single day, whereas in college you’re able to split it up. [College] is similar day-to-day, sure, but you also have different midweek games and practices, plus you get days off. Here, you have to get into a good routine and put yourself in the same state of mind each day in order to hit 95 [mph], or whatever it is the minor leagues throws at you.”

Laurila: Is a strict routine ever a negative? For instance, if you’re scuffling at the plate and doing the same thing day after day…

Granberg: “That’s actually one thing I learned this offseason. In my routine, I have different routines — I have two or three different drill sets that I do in the cage, and I never do the same thing on repeated days. Does that make sense? So, back-to-back days, I never do things exactly the same. I started implementing that in quarantine and I think it’s actually helped me stay a little bit more consistent. I think you have to keep the body guessing. If you stick to the same routine over and over, at some point the body is going to compensate, and then it’s going to overcompensate.

“A routine that is very positive could be maybe neutral, or maybe slightly negative, if you continuously do it every single day. That’s why I try to keep it fresh and mix it up. I’ll go BP, machine work, different things like that.”

Laurila: What was your routine today? Read the rest of this entry »

On hiatus since the onset of the COVID pandemic, the Learning and Developing a Pitch series returned last week with three pitchers telling the stories behind their sliders. Today, in the second of this year’s installments, we hear from Jake Brentz, Brooks Kriske, and Hirokazu Sawamura on their changeups and splitters.

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Jake Brentz, Kansas City Royals

“I never had a changeup in the minor leagues. I was fastball slider/breaking ball, but I always mixed around my breaking ball. I didn’t really find a breaking ball that worked for me until probably a year and a half, two years ago — not until I got to Triple-A.

“Paul Gibson is our pitching coordinator here with the Royals, and last year at the alternate site he told me, ‘Hey, I would like you to develop a changeup; I think it would be a very valuable pitch for you.’ So I really focused on developing one, throwing it as many times as I could during an outing. We were just playing each other — nothing really mattered — so it was just developing and whatnot. I’d throw it back to back to back, and messed around with grips. I found one that really worked for me, and then worked on it more over the offseason. In spring training I wasn’t throwing it a lot at first, but Mike [Matheny] came to me said, ‘I think your changeup can be a devastating pitch, so we’re going to throw that a lot.’ Over time, I’ve continuing to throw it. Read the rest of this entry »

Matthew Barefoot initially struggled to get a foothold in pro ball. A sixth-round pick by the Houston Astros in 2019 out of Campbell University, the now-23-year-old outfielder slashed a woeful .155/.241/.159 that summer in the New York-Penn League. On the heels of that abysmal debut, and with no 2020 minor league season in which to redeem himself, Barefoot was an afterthought on our 2021 Astros Top Prospect list.

He’s proceeded to make people stand up and take notice. Fueled by mechanical changes and a relaxed mental approach, Barefoot has been one of the best hitters in the Houston system this season. In 190 plate appearances split between the Low-A Fayetteville Woodpeckers and the High-A Asheville Tourists, the former Campbell Fighting Camel has socked a dozen home runs while slashing .329/.384/.618 with a 167 wRC+. Befitting his plus athleticism, he has 15 steals to boot.

Asked what was behind his his boffo numbers, Barefoot alluded to an age-old baseball adage: You can’t think and hit at the same time.

“This year, I’m able to just go out and play and let the results take care of themselves,” explained Barefoot. That’s been a real key for me. In my first season, I was working on a bunch of swing-mechanics stuff, so I really wasn’t competing how I wanted. I was more or less trying to make swing changes in-game, which made it really hard. Mentally, I wasn’t in a great spot every game.”

Organizations often don’t ask newly-drafted players to make meaningful adjustments until they report to instructional league. The initial months are mostly a hands-off acclimation period, allowing a player to simply get his feet wet in pro ball. That wasn’t the case with Barefoot. Read the rest of this entry »

Ken Waldichuk has been a strikeout machine in his first competitive professional season. A fifth-round pick in 2019 out of St. Mary’s College, the 23-year-old southpaw boasts the third-highest K/9 in the minors, his 15.8 mark topped only by those of Reid Detmers and Carson Ragsdale. Waldichuk’s dominance, which includes a 1.18 ERA, has come in 10 starts — seven with High-A Hudson Valley and three with Double-A Somerset.

Flying well under the radar entering this season — he’s No. 45 on our Yankees Top Prospects list — Waldichuk was described by Eric Longenhagen as a “lanky lefty who… generates nearly seven feet of extension and has big carry on his fastball.” I asked the 6-foot-4 San Diego native if he agrees with that assessment.

“I do get good carry, although I’m not too sure about the extension,” Waldichuk told me. “I’m not really sure what creates the carry, either. I’m not really too good with all the analytics stuff. But I do understand some of it. The way I spin it makes it play well, up.
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The carry is something Waldichuk has always had. What he’s learned since signing a professional contract is how to better avoid having the ball “spinning more sideways,” as opposed to getting the true backspin he wants. His heater typically sits around 2,400 rpm — “I’ve been as high as 2,700” — and in his penultimate start he “averaged 17 inches of [arm-side] horizontal and 16 inches of vertical movement.” His velocity averaged out at 92.2 [mph].”

Waldichuk also throws a slider, a slurve, and a changeup. Each is interesting in its own way. Read the rest of this entry »

On hiatus since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, FanGraphs’ Learning and Developing a Pitch series returns with three pitchers — Michael King, Lucas Luetge, and Jordan Romano — telling the stories behind their sliders.

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Michael King, New York Yankees

“I’ve been developing a slider since my freshman year of college. I was always bigger curveball, and then I had like seven different grips in college. I could never get consistent with anything — not consistent movement, not consistent location — and it just never felt comfortable. So I always used to say that I was a sinker/slider guy that didn’t have a slider.

“Once I got drafted in 2016, I said, ‘I don’t care what it does, I’m sticking with this grip so I can at least locate it.’ In 2018 is when I finally felt like I was consistent with the shape and the location. Then we got a new pitching director, Sam Briend, and he said, ‘Your slider is terrible. It’s located well, but it doesn’t have a good movement profile. Let’s fix it.’

“In 2019, I got hurt, and then it was the whole process of trying to change the movement profile. I wanted it to be more horizontal, more sweepy, like [Corey] Kluber’s, rather than the slider I had, which just had a little bit of depth. This year I’m finally figuring it out. Having Kluber on my team, I could talk to him about his grip, what his mentality is, what he’s trying to do at release.

“A big thing for me was, because I wanted to get that sweep and horizontal, I would get really rotational with my body to try to pull it sideways. [Kluber] said that’s the opposite of what you want to do. He said to just let the grip do the work. Read the rest of this entry »

Mitchell Kilkenny is quietly having a stupendous season. A second-round pick by the Colorado Rockies in 2018 out of Texas A&M, the 24-year-old right-hander boasts a 1.47 ERA over eight starts with the Low-A Fresno Grizzlies and the Spokane Indians. Moreover, he’s fanned 54 batters and issued just five free passes in 43 innings.

His plus command is a much-needed asset. Kilkenny is more finesse than power, his fastball ranging from the upper 80s to the low 90s. At least for now. Kilkenny threw harder as a collegian, but then came Tommy John surgery shortly after he was drafted, and last year’s cancelled minor-league season only muddied the waters. No matter. He fully expects his velocity to tick back up in time, and even if that doesn’t happen, his ability to mix, match and tunnel two- and four-seam fastballs, a slider, a curveball, and a changeup has proven to be plenty effective. As Kilkenny put it, “I might not be bright and flashy, but I’m having success.”

Prior to matriculating at Texas A&M where he double-majored in Renewable Natural Resources and Forestry, he excelled in English class at Houston Christian High School.

“My one fun fact is that I won two awards in creative writing contests,” Kilkenny told me. “One was for a class project where we were to write to a favorite author of ours. I picked Bill Watterson, for Calvin and Hobbes, because that was my favorite comic growing up, I love Calvin and Hobbes. Anyway, it was just a little piece about what the author had given me, which was some of the insights you can get out of a simple comic.” Read the rest of this entry »

Triston Casas and Grant Williams are teammates with distinctly different profiles. Boston’s first-round pick in the 2018 draft, the 21-year-old Casas is a 6-foot-4, 250-pound first baseman who is No. 2 on our Red Sox Top Prospects list, and No. 42 on our updated Top 100 Prospects list. Williams is unranked. A 25-year-old middle infielder who lasted until the 310th pick of the 2018 draft, he hit in the nine-hole when the Double-A Portland Sea Dogs hosted the Somerset Patriots on Wednesday night. Befitting his stature, Casas batted third.

Prior to the game, I spoke to both players about their respective hitting approaches.

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Casas possesses plus power, but he doesn’t present as a pure slugger. Patience is a big part of his M.O., as is a willingness to choke up on the bat when contact is at a premium. The lefty swinger cited Joey Votto as his role model when he was featured in a January 2020 Sunday Notes column, and as he acknowledged on Wednesday, that remains the case.

I asked Casas if he’s changed as a hitter since entering pro ball three years ago.

“I’d like to think I haven’t, but I have a lot,” responded the Plantation, Florida product. “I kind of battle that. I fight every single day to make adjustments and become the best hitter that I can, but to also apply what I’ve been doing my whole life. So I like to say that I haven’t changed too much, but at the same time, I have.”

I asked the up-and-coming youngster if he could elaborate. Read the rest of this entry »

Chas McCormick has already exceeded expectations. A 21st-round pick in the 2017 draft out of Division II Millersville University, the 26-year-old outfielder is getting semi-regular playing time with the Houston Astros, and he’s been sneaky good. His .226 batting average is nothing to write home about, but his 114 wRC+ and 0.5 WAR (as of Sunday night) are those of a rookie contributing to MLB’s highest-scoring team. That couldn’t have been predicted a few years ago — or even a few months ago. Coming into the current campaign, the West Chester, Pennsylvania native was No. 18 on our Astros Top Prospects list.

McCormick discussed his underdog-makes-good story when Houston visited Fenway Park earlier this month.

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David Laurila: In many ways, you’re a classic overachiever. What is your background in that respect?

Chas McCormick: “When I was younger, like high school — even before — and maybe a little bit of college, I was never the best. If I had to try out for a team… I wasn’t very good at tryouts. I got cut from some summer-ball teams because I wasn’t the fastest player, I didn’t have the strongest arm, I didn’t hit the ball the farthest. I wasn’t the biggest guy, either. That’s why I really didn’t get Division 1 looks, just a couple Division II, Division III. But the more I played, especially in college, the more people realized that I was a gamer. I wouldn’t take batting practice and have scouts saying, ‘Wow, he’s putting on a show,’ it was more, ‘You’ve got to watch this kid play nine innings.’”

Laurila: When did you realize you had a legitimate shot to play pro ball?

McCormick: “Not in high school. I was thinking about playing basketball in college — or baseball — but again, just Division II, Division III. I wasn’t really on anyone’s radar. So out of high school, I wasn’t really thinking about pro baseball at all. Then I got to college, and that was [as] a pitcher. I was a little erratic and didn’t throw strikes very well, so that ended quickly.

“Anyway, freshman year, an outfielder got hurt and I ended up starting. I played really well — I batted leadoff a couple times and hit close to .340 — but I still didn’t think I could play pro ball because I didn’t really have the power. Then I ended up hitting some home runs in my sophomore year, and had a good average as well — I hit around .350. So after my sophomore year, I was like, ‘You know what? Maybe I could play professional baseball.’”

Laurila: You then didn’t get drafted after your junior year. Read the rest of this entry »

Braxton Roxby was an unpolished gem when the Cincinnati Reds signed him as a non-drafted free agent last summer. A 6-foot-3, 235-pound right-hander, Roxby possessed projectable stuff, but his resume was anything but shiny. In three collegiate seasons with the Division-II Pittsburgh-Johnstown Mountain Cats, he logged a 7.31 ERA. Moreover, that number was 9.68 in his junior year.

Then came Kyle Boddy and the Reds pitching-development machine.

In what is shaping up as one of the best underdog stories in recent memory, Roxby has been shoving in his first professional season. Pitching in a relief role for the High-A Dayton Dragons, the 22-year-old hurler has surrendered just four hits and one run in 16 innings. He’s punched out 28 batters.

How he ended up signing with Cincinnati is a story in itself. Roxby talked to 20-plus teams after being bypassed in last year’s truncated draft, and the tenors of the conversations were largely the same… with one notable exception.

“The Reds were the only team to take it a step above,” said Roxby, who majored in Civil Engineering at Pittsburgh Johnstown. “They had me on a Zoom meeting — [Director of Pitching] Kyle Boddy and [Assistant Pitching Coach] Eric Jagers were both on there — and they had video breaking down my mechanics, as well as the analytics of my pitches and how I can use them better. That made it hard not to choose them.” Read the rest of this entry »