Drey Jameson is one of the more-intriguing pitching prospects in the Arizona Diamondbacks’ system. Drafted 34th overall in 2019 out of Ball State University, the 23-year-old right-hander possesses a lean frame — he is listed at six-foot-even and 165 pounds — yet he consistently pumps mid-to-high-90s gas. Moreover, the secondary pitches he throws from a deceptive delivery all grade out as plus. A native of Greenfield, Indiana, he entered the year ranked 13th on our 2020 D-Backs Top Prospects list.

Jameson discussed his repertoire and how COVID-19 impacted what would have been his first full professional season during the final week of Arizona’s fall instructional league, which wrapped up earlier this month.

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David Laurila: What should people know about you as a pitcher?

Drey Jameson: “I’d say I’m kind of electric, kind of fast-twitch with a really fast arm. It’s more like [deception]; I’m not a guy who is standing tall on the mound and has that straight downhill with his fastball. And my stuff separates. With my changeup, I’m a pronation guy, so my changeup works really well for me. Outside of that, I consider myself a fierce competitor who goes out and attacks guys.”

Laurila: You’re listed at six foot and 165 pounds. Is that still accurate?

Jameson: “I’m six foot, but I’m ranging anywhere from 170 to 178. I guess I’m usually around 175.”

Laurila: When our 2020 Diamondbacks Top Prospects list came out, your writeup included, “His high-maintenance delivery is hard to repeat.” Is that accurate? Read the rest of this entry »

Torey Lovullo didn’t have a lot of game-changing hits over the course of his career. The Arizona Diamondbacks manager finished his playing days with just 60 RBIs in parts of eight big-league seasons as a utility infielder. But he did have a handful of memorable knocks, three of which he recounted in a conversation earlier this week.

The first of Lovullo’s standout moments came in his second-ever game. Called up by the Detroit Tigers in September 1988, he plated a run with an 18th-inning single against the New York Yankees. Adding to the thrill was the fact that the Tigers were in a three-team pennant race with the Bombers and the Boston Red Sox. The balloon burst in short order. Claudell Washington walked off Detroit southpaw Willie Hernandez with a two-run shot in the bottom half, negating Lovullo’s heroics in blunt fashion.

Five years later, the Santa Monica native turned the tables with an extra-inning walk-off of his own. Lovullo had signed with the California Angels — a team he’d grown up cheering for — prior to the 2013 season. On a July afternoon, he made the most of a second chance.

“In the bottom of the 11th inning, [Yankees manager] Buck Showalter walked the bases loaded in front of me and I popped up with one out,” recalled Lovullo. “We ended up going deeper into the game, and in the 14th inning he did the exact same thing [issued two intentional walks to load the bases]. This time I got a base hit. That was a proud moment for me, because I didn’t want it to happen again. A manager targeted me, and I came through.” Read the rest of this entry »

I had the honor of voting for this year’s American League Rookie of the Year award, and the biggest challenge was — not unpredictably — how to weigh performances over a 60-game season. Adding a layer of difficulty was the fact that some of the best numbers were put up by players who weren’t with their team for the duration of the campaign.

Willi Castro and Ryan Mountcastle excelled with the bat — especially Castro — but each had only 140 plate appearances. Sean Murphy, who augmented his solid offense with strong defense behind the plate, had exactly that same number. Are 140 plate appearances enough in a truncated campaign? Following a fair bit of deliberation, I decided that they aren’t. As a result, all three players fell off my consideration list.

And then there were the pitchers. Not a single rookie in the junior circuit threw as many as 65 innings, and the most dominant of the bunch totaled just 27 frames. This made for an especially difficult dilemma. Would it be reasonable to give one of my three votes to a lights-out pitcher whose relative workload was akin to that of the position players I’d chosen to discount? Moreover, had any of the higher-innings hurlers done enough to preclude me from making what amounts to a contradictory choice? We’ll get to that in a moment. Read the rest of this entry »

Like most big-league broadcasters, Joe Block got his start down on the farm. The radio and TV play-by-play voice of the Pittsburgh Pirates broke into the business with the South Atlantic League’s Charleston RiverDogs back in 2000. That part of his story is isn’t unique. What is unique is that Block first shared the booth with a blind man.

Looking to break into baseball, Block traveled to Anaheim for the 1999 Winter Meetings after graduating from Michigan State University. Charleston had posted a broadcast intern position, and the fresh-faced Spartan secured an interview with the club’s then-broadcaster. The sit-down went well. Block hit it off with Dave Raymond — now the TV voice of the Texas Rangers — and was offered the job.

As fate would have it, they never got to call games together. Later that winter, Raymond took a job with the Triple-A Iowa Cubs. Replacing Raymond in Charleston was a duo that had worked together with the St. Paul Saints.

“I don’t know if you’re familiar with them, but Jim Lucas and Don Wardlow had been in the minor leagues for a number of years as a tandem,” explained Block. “Don was born blind. He never saw anything in his entire life.”

As an intern, Block’s primary responsibility was doing the pre- and post-game shows. Most appealing among his other duties was the opportunity to do play-by-play when Lucas took time off. What he learned was invaluable, and the unique circumstances played a big part in that. Read the rest of this entry »

Dick Hall had a long and remarkable career, and at 90 years young, his memory remains strong. There’s a lot for him to reminisce about. Originally an infielder/outfielder with the Pittsburgh Pirates — he debuted in 1952 — Hall converted to the mound in 1955 and went on to pitch for 16 big-league seasons.

A right-hander who both started and relieved, Hall had his best years with the Baltimore Orioles, with whom he had 65 wins, 60 saves, and a 2.89 ERA over two stints and nine seasons. His career culminated with three consecutive Fall Classics, the middle of which saw Baltimore beat the Cincinnati Reds in the 1970 World Series. All told, Hall pitched eight-and-two-thirds postseason innings without allowing an earned run.

Hall discussed his career shortly before becoming a nonagenarian in late September.

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David Laurila: You pitched for a long time, but only after starting your career as a position player. How did that come about?

Dick Hall: “Well, there was no draft when I signed with the Pirates in the fall of 1951. I then started playing in their minor league system in 1952, and after my
second season — after the 1953 season — they sent me down to Mazatlán, Mexico
to get further experience. I was a second baseman/outfielder in those days. Mazatlán almost sent me home, but then I changed the grip on my bat and started hitting home runs. Mazatlán calls Pittsburgh and said, ‘We’ll keep him after all.’

“I set the league home run record, so they welcomed me back the next year. I told the manager, ‘Look, I pitched all the time in high school, college, and semi-pro,’ so if he wanted, I could pitch. One Sunday we were up in Hermosillo, which is a few hours from Arizona, and we played a four-game series which included a doubleheader on Sunday. We carried four pitchers. We had a Cuban pitcher, a Mexican pitcher, and two from the United States. Anyway, on Sunday they scored a couple runs early. Our starting pitcher ran into huge trouble, so the manager called me in from center field. I ended up pitching six-and-a-third innings and gave up one single. Read the rest of this entry »

A number of you reading this will share the same opinion: A.J. Hinch was suspended for his role in the Houston Astros cheating scandal, and for that reason he has no business managing a major league baseball team. It’s a reasonable stance. The integrity of the game matters, and while Hinch wasn’t fully on board with the shenanigans — he twice smashed the monitor used to steal signs — he nonetheless shares in the blame. That he didn’t put a stop to the outlawed actions is an indelible stain on his reputation.

On Friday — freshly freed from MLB’s sanctions — Hinch was named the new manager of the Detroit Tigers. Speaking at his introductory press conference, the club’s one-time catcher was understandably contrite.

“I’ve reflected back… from something that was very wrong,” Hinch expressed to a bevy of reporters. “As I told Mr. Ilich, and Al, that’s part of my story. It’s not the Tigers’ story… it’s not a part of the players I’m going to be managing. I’m sorry that they’re going to have to deal with it, [but] that’s our reality. Wrong is wrong, and I feel responsible, because I was the manager. It was on my watch.”

Mr. Ilich is Christopher Ilich, the Tigers’ Chairman and CEO. Al is Al Avila, the club’s Executive VP, Baseball Operations/General Manager. The latter, who’d phoned Hinch 30 minutes after the conclusion of the World Series to request he get on a plane to Detroit, was already well-acquainted with the now-free-to-negotiate candidate. Based on his history with Hinch, Avila wasn’t overburdened by what had happened in Houston. Read the rest of this entry »

JT Brubaker had a satisfying summer. The 26-year-old right-hander didn’t dominate the stat sheet — neither his 4.94 ERA nor his 4.08 FIP was anything to write home about — but the fact that those numbers came in a Pittsburgh Pirates uniform was a reason to smile. A sixth-round pick in 2015 out of the University of Akron, Brubaker debuted in late July and went on to throw 47.1 solid innings. Initially used out of the bullpen, he finished the season having made nine of his 11 appearances as a starter.

Brubaker was somewhat of a question mark coming into the campaign. He tossed just 27.2 minor-league innings in 2019 due to an arm ailment, and as a result garnered no better than a 40 FV and a No. 25 ranking on our 2020 Pirates Top Prospects list. As Eric Longenhagen opined back in February, the Springfield, Ohio native, “should fit in the back of a rotation or in a relief role [and] his health may dictate which.”

Brubaker discussed his debut, and his impressions of a season played amid a pandemic, following his final start of the year.

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David Laurila: How would you describe the 2020 season?

JT Brubaker: “It’s been fun for me. It’s my first year in the big leagues, so I’ve enjoyed it. I feel like players have shown a little bit different side of bonding in baseball. They’re having fun with each other. I’ve seen more teammates laughing and joking with each other. The Cubs, for instance. That’s one team I’ve noticed just hooting and hollering in the dugout — stuff you might not be able to hear when there’s a crowd there.” Read the rest of this entry »

Caleb Thielbar didn’t come out of nowhere, but he did return from a form of baseball oblivion. A reliable reliever for the Minnesota Twins in 2013 and 2014 (103 appearances with a 2.59 ERA), the 33-year-old southpaw had spent all but six innings of the next five seasons in the minors or indy ball. His 33rd birthday fast approaching, he re-joined the Twins organization last December with designs on resurrecting a career that had regressed, then found itself stuck in neutral.

Thielbar’s return went better than many had expected. Featuring the game’s slowest curveball — a mesmerizing 68.8 mph on average — the Gopher State native fashioned a 2.25 ERA, and a 2.34 FIP, over 17 appearances covering 20 innings. A dark-horse contributor coming into the season, he instead was a godsend for the Minnesota bullpen.

He discussed the roots of his hiatus, and the reasons behind his successful return, in the final days of the 2020 campaign.

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David Laurila: We first spoke during the 2014 season. How would you describe what’s transpired since that time?

Caleb Thielbar: “The five years in between my last appearance [on April 30, 2015] and being back this season was a lot of experimenting and trying to find what works. I went exploring. I drastically changed my workout routine. I drastically changed my throwing program. I finally figured out something that really worked, and was actually sustainable.” Read the rest of this entry »

Brad Keller had a boffo season for the Kansas City Royals, and his slider was a big reason why. Buoyed largely by its improvement, the 25-year-old right-hander logged a 2.47 ERA and a 3.43 FIP over nine starts covering 54-and-two-thirds innings. Five times, Keller worked five or more scoreless frames, a complete-game shutout in mid-September serving as his shining-star effort.

Helped by pitching coach Cal Eldred, he jumpstarted his career by developing more depth during his pandemic-forced downtime.

“We made some adjustments during the shutdown,” Keller told me following the completion of the season. “Between spring training and spring training 2.0 we made some mechanical adjustments that allowed my arm to become more athletic, if that makes sense. That’s kind of a weird way to put it, but whenever I would throw my slider in the past, I’d almost block my arm out. We were like, ‘OK, we don’t do that on a fastball, we don’t do that on anything else, so let’s do that same thing on the slider.” Basically, I needed to start throwing my slider just like I throw my fastball.”

The adjustment took time to bear fruit. Initially, the pitch wasn’t breaking at all. As Keller put it, “the very first one almost took the catcher’s head off,” as it was devoid of downward movement. Diligence, accompanied by a Rapsodo and an Edgertronic, eventually did the trick. Once mundane, his slider morphed into a monster.

“With the help of analytics, it became like my fastball for a longer time toward the plate,” explained Keller. “The spin went up. It became sharper, and as a result I started getting some silly swings-and-misses on it.” Read the rest of this entry »

Tom House doesn’t need an introduction within baseball circles, and that’s especially true when it comes to pitching. His credentials are impeccable. A big-league reliever throughout the 1970s, the now-73-year-old went on to have an extensive coaching career, not only in MLB, but also in NPB and at the amateur level. A co-founder of the National Pitching Association, and the author of several books, House has been referred to as “the father of modern pitching mechanics.”

House addressed a variety of pitching topics — and shared a handful of interesting anecdotes — earlier this week.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with pitch counts. Atlanta manager Brian Snitker said during an NLCS media session that he was “blown away” to learn that Max Fried had never thrown more than 109 pitches in a game, adding that a career-high should be closer to 140. He also suggested that once Fried got into his rhythm he might have been able to throw 200 pitches. What are your thoughts on that?

Tom House: “From research, there are three things that keep a pitcher’s arm healthy: workloads, number of pitches, [and] his functional strength and mechanical efficiency. The research goes all the way back to Paul Richards, who was the general manager of the Orioles. Richards was the first guy, when he had ‘the baby birds,’ the four 20-game winners. He intuited that 100 pitches was about when most pitchers start getting into muscle failure — this assuming they have pretty solid mechanics and some functional strength. The 100-pitch idea grew from there, and has kind of become the standard.

“What it boils down to is, if you can pitch… I’m going to give you a resource. If you go to ASMI.org and look for age-specific pitch totals, Glenn Fleisig and a bunch of us did the research. I know for a fact that Nolan Ryan had a 260-pitch outing one time, and came back four days later and threw a two-hitter. He was with the Angels, and I think threw 14 or 15 innings. But with pitch totals, a blanket 100-pitch per game is kind of the standard right now. Everybody works forward and backwards from there. Read the rest of this entry »