Earlier this week we heard from Minnesota Twins 2019 second-round pick Matt Canterino about his draft-day experience and his introduction to professional baseball. Today, we’ll hear from Aaron Schunk, whom the Colorado Rockies tabbed eight picks later, with last year’s 62nd-overall selection. The now 22-year-old third baseman out of the University of Georgia saw his draft stock skyrocket during a junior campaign when he crushed 15 home runs while putting up a .973 OPS; in his two previous SEC seasons, the Atlanta native left the yard just four times.

A two-way player with the Bulldogs, Schunk went on to slash .306/.370/.503 with six home runs in 192 plate appearances with short-season Boise. Now exclusively a position player, he’s No. 8 on our Rockies Top Prospects list.

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David Laurila: You were drafted one year ago. What have the last 12 months been like?

Aaron Schunk: “[The draft] was pretty cool. It was also a stressful night. Since then, the last 12 months have been a bit of a blur. All in all, this whole thing has been a dream come true for a kid who grew up watching the Atlanta Braves on a tube TV, begging his dad to watch John Smoltz and Chipper Jones. So it’s been amazing. Hopefully this will last a long time.”

Laurila: Draft day itself was stressful?

Schunk: “It was a little bit. For much of my baseball life I’ve been kind of an underdog-type player, and in my junior year I wanted to prove a lot of people wrong. I wanted to go out there and try to be a first-day guy. So knowing that my name had floated out there for the [first round] was a little stressful.”

Laurila: Did you have reason to believe you might go earlier than you did? Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Canterino was drafted out of Rice University a year ago this week. The now 22-year-old right-hander was selected in the second round by the Minnesota Twins, and soon thereafter signed his first professional contract. As is the case for every young player who gets to live that dream, it was an experience he won’t soon forget.

His subsequent introduction to pro ball centered more on education than on innings. Canterino took the mound just seven times, tossing 25 stellar frames — 31 strikeouts and eight hits allowed — between the rookie-level Gulf Coast League and the Low-A Midwest League. Most notably, he became acquainted with technology that showed him not only how his arsenal plays, but how his four-pitch mix can be optimized.

Canterino — No. 13 on our Twins Top Prospects list — discussed his draft experience, and his first-year education, over the phone from his home in Texas.

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David Laurila: What was draft day like for you?

Matt Canterino: “It was more exciting than anything. I had a decent idea of where I’d be going — obviously nothing was set in stone — so to see that all come together once things got rolling into where I was projected to go… it was pretty surreal. It was also a dream come true. I feel like I’m still living a dream.”

Laurila: Did you go where you expected?

Canterino: “Yes. My agent gave me a range, and I pretty much fell right in the middle of it. Those were the expectations I went in with, and once that range started coming around, I realized there might be kind of a crunch time. But it happened really quick for me. There wasn’t much banter. It was a couple of teams, then one team, and all of a sudden I was drafted.”

Laurila: When did you start tuning in to the draft coverage? Read the rest of this entry »

The NPB season is currently slated to start on June 19th, with hopes of playing a 120-game schedule followed by a condensed playoff docket. The 120 isn’t arbitrary. Per the league’s bylaws, that’s the number required for a season to be considered official. In a normal year, each NPB team plays 143 games.

The MLB season? That remains an unanswered question. It is also an angst-inducing question. As everyone reading this knows all too well, there may not even be a season.

Frank Herrmann knows baseball on both sides of the planet.The Harvard-educated hurler is heading into his fourth NPB season after playing professionally stateside from 2006-2016. As you might expect, he’s monitoring not only what’s happening in Japan, but also what’s happening back home.

“The schedule alignment here is essentially the opposite of what is being proposed by MLB clubs, who want fewer regular season games with longer playoffs,” Herrmann told me via email from Chiba, Japan. “Like most things, the motivation in both cases is money. NPB doesn’t have the lucrative TV deals that MLB does. Japanese teams rely heavily on ticket sales, merchandise, and concessions to generate income and offset salaries. There have been discussions to incrementally allow fans into games starting as soon as July 10. More regular season home gates for each team, stretching into mid-November, affords teams the best chance to cover losses.”

Salary structures and legal language weigh heavily into that equation. As Herrmann pointed out, high-end salaries in Japan are “more in the $7-8 million a year range, as opposed to the $30Ms in MLB.” Moreover, NPB contracts differ from those in MLB in that they “lack a specific clause for national emergencies, therefore players have been receiving their full salaries since February.” Herrmann expects NPB will add such a clause once the season is completed. Read the rest of this entry »

Colin McKee has exceeded expectations since being featured in a July 2017 Sunday Notes column. At the time, the Mercyhurst University graduate was not only a year removed from being drafted in the 18th round by the Houston Astros, he was playing short-season ball as a 23-year-old. To say the odds were stacked against him would be an understatement.

To a lesser extent, they still are. While McKee earned Texas League All-Star honors last season, he’s a soon-to-turn-26-year-old right-handed reliever who failed to impress after being promoted to Triple-A. Even so, some of his numbers suggest that he’s more than capable of taking those final steps. In 64 innings between Corpus Christi and Round Rock, McKee punched out 82 batters and allowed just 32 hits. Moreover, he’s studious about his craft. His post-playing career plans no longer include med school, but rather a position within pitching development.

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David Laurila: When we talked three years ago, you were 23 years old and playing short-season ball. I recall you being open about the long odds you were facing.

Colin McKee: “I definitely wasn’t ultra optimistic. I’m lucky that the Astros gave me the leash they did, because over the last couple of years I’ve started to figure some things out. I’m enjoying playing baseball, and hopefully I can continue to build on the progress I’ve made.”

Laurila: What were you thinking when you reported to spring training the following year? I assume your mindset was something along the lines of ‘sink or swim.’

McKee: “I wouldn’t say I was in desperation mode, but I was certainly aware of my age and the fact that I hadn’t played above short-season. Patrick Sandoval, who is with the Angels now, and I went down a week early. All I was thinking was, ‘Do anything to make a full-season roster.’ All I was hoping was to break camp with somebody and see what happens from there. Luckily I broke with Quad Cities, in the Midwest League, and pitched well enough that after three weeks they moved me up to the Carolina League.”

Laurila: What were your biggest development strides that season? Read the rest of this entry »

Jacob Cruz played with some great hitters from 1996-2005. Teammates bookending his career included Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr., and in between he shared the field with stalwarts such as Manny Ramirez and Larry Walker. Ever studious, the Arizona State University learned from them all.

Cruz’s now teaches hitting. He’s done so for the past decade, beginning with a six-season stint in the Arizona Diamondbacks system, followed by two seasons — the second of them as a minor-league hitting coordinator — with the Chicago Cubs. Cruz then spent 2019 as the assistant hitting coach for the Pittsburgh Pirates, which is the role he now has in Milwaukee. This past November, the Brewers brought Cruz on board to work alongside hitting coach Andy Haines.

In the 27th installment of our “Talks Hitting” series, Cruz addresses his philosophies, as well as Bonds and some of the players he’s worked with in Pittsburgh and Milwaukee.

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David Laurila: Has hitting changed much since your playing days?

Jacob Cruz: “Hitting has really changed. When I started coaching [in 2011], a lot of the terminology was different. It was Dusty Baker talking about ‘step on ice,’ ‘squish the bug,’ and ‘make sure you hit your back with the bat on your followthrough.’ That’s not the terminology that’s being used today, and a lot of it has to do with the tech side of it. We’ve grown. We now know how to measure things, whereas before hitting was more of a guess.

“The players have changed as well. They don’t expect you to give your opinion; they want facts. It’s now ‘Show me the data on why I need to make this change.’ As a coach, that means making sure you’re an expert on every facet of hitting, which includes the technology and the analytics. Everything you can possibly be asked, you want to be able answer. There is a lot of information out there, from the K-Vest to Ground Force data to the bat sensors. All of those are pieces of the puzzle.”

Laurila: You used the term ‘stepping on ice.’ I’m not familiar with that. Read the rest of this entry »

Kyle Farmer came in to pitch last August. The Reds were being mauled by the Chicago Cubs, and the 29-year-old Farmer is Cincinnati’s Mr. Versatility. Along with the cameo mound appearance, he caught and played all four infield positions over the course of the season.

What is surprising is that Farmer had never before pitched professionally. The 2013 draft pick — by the Los Angeles Dodgers out of the University of Georgia — has both the background and the bloodlines of an ideal mop-up artist. His father, Bryan Farmer, was an accomplished pitcher at Ole Miss who advanced as far as Triple-A in the Atlanta Braves system.

The chip off the old block was a two-way player as an Atlanta-area prep, and while his bat and glove ultimately became his calling cards, he was very much at home on the rubber.

“I loved pitching,” Farmer related to me recently. “I had a really good curveball — I could buckle some knees — and I also threw a lot of strikes, which is something my dad stressed the importance of doing. I was a closer my senior year of high school, but it turned out that I was a better shortstop than pitcher. My coach at Georgia wanted me to play shortstop every day, so that’s what I did.” Read the rest of this entry »

You have to scroll pretty far down our Texas Rangers Top Prospects list to get to Cole Uvila’s name. Befitting his under-the-radar status, the righty reliever is No. 36 in a system that, according to Eric Longenhagen, has a lot of high variance players. None of them are as unusual as Uvila, who at 26 years of age has yet to pitch above A ball.

Not only does his future looms bright — Longenhagen cited “seemingly imminent big league relevance” — Uvila’s backstory is borderline bizarre. Moreover, he boasts a Driveline-developed curveball that features elite spin. We’ll get to that in a moment.

Uvila is coming off a breakout season with the High-A Down East Wood Ducks. In 64-and-two-thirds innings (including seven with Low-A Hickory), the 1,199th pick in the 2018 draft punched out 95 batters and allowed just 34 hits. That was followed by an eye-opening Arizona Fall League campaign that inspired a head-scratching question: “How on earth did this guy last until the 40th round?”

He hasn’t always been a pitcher. The Port Angeles, Washington native was primarily a shortstop in high school, and that was his initial position at Pierce College. By his own admission, he wasn’t a very good one. That led him to the mound, albeit not in a way you might expect.

“I couldn’t hit — I couldn’t catch up to [junior] college pitching — so I ended up getting a shot as a submariner pitcher,” Uvila explained. “I wasn’t dragging my knuckles, but I was low enough that my chest was completely over the rubber. Sidearm is 90 degrees and I was about 45 degrees from the dirt. Anyway, that got me off the redshirt list and onto the field, which was pretty much all I wanted. I never really imagined playing past junior college.” Read the rest of this entry »

Scott Heineman has become increasingly interested in the mechanics of his swing. That said, the 27-year-old Texas Rangers outfielder isn’t married to the technical aspects of his craft. Nor is his approach what one could call cookie-cutter. That was crystal clear when I asked him the ‘art or science?’ question.

“I’d say hitting is more of an art,” Heineman expressed last Sunday. “I’m going to do what’s most comfortable for me. For instance, I’m not going to go out there and imitate Paul Goldschmidt. That’s what works for him — that stance — but I’ve tried it in the cage and it doesn’t work for me. That said, he does things I really like. I guess I could say I’m an artist painting my own picture, and at the same time looking at all the other pieces in the gallery. I’m seeing how they use colors, and whatnot, and putting parts of that into my own art. That’s what I’m doing with hitting.”

Heineman’s portfolio is somewhat spotty. Pointedly bland in last year’s cup of coffee — a .679 OPS in 85 big-league PAs — he’s otherwise made a good impression down on the farm. Heineman’s right-handed stroke has produced a snappy .303/.378/.475 slash line over four minor-league seasons. Ever the realist, he recognizes that those numbers aren’t going to translate to the big-league level if he doesn’t study the masters. Moreover, Goldschmidt isn’t the only bopper whose palette he’s perused. Read the rest of this entry »

Reggie Jefferson played alongside some elite hitters in a career that spanned the 1991-1999 seasons. His teammates included the likes of Albert Belle, Nomar Garciaparra, Ken Griffey Jr, Edgar Martinez, and Mo Vaughn. Jefferson was no slouch himself. A left-handed hitter who most often platooned at DH, Jefferson slashed .300/.349/.474 with a 110 wRC+.

Jefferson broke into the big-leagues with the Cincinnati Reds as a switch-hitter. A cup of coffee later, he joined the Cleveland Indians and continued swinging from both sides. He then scrapped the practice after being dealt to the Seattle Mariners in exchange for Omar Vizquel. His best, and most-turbulent, seasons came in his five-year stint with the Red Sox. In 1996, Jefferson batted .347 with a 140 wRC+. In 1999, a fractious relationship with Boston manager Jimy Williams led to an aggrieved exit, which was followed by a year abroad with NPB’s Seibu Lions.

Upon returning from Japan, Jefferson went on to earn a business degree from the University of South Florida. He’s now a player agent for Reynolds Sports.

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David Laurila: Where did you first learn to hit?

Reggie Jefferson: “My father played in semi-pro leagues. I’m from Tallahassee, Florida, and baseball was really big in the black community when I was a young kid. I remember him playing when I was four or five, and then he went straight into managing the team. Every Saturday I would go watch those guys play; he would have me all over these small towns, watching baseball. That’s really how I learned. Like most hitters, it just came to me naturally. There aren’t too many guys that you can teach to hit.”

Laurila: Did you grow up batting right-handed or left-handed?

Jefferson: “Left-handed, but it’s a funny story. No one in my family had ever been left-handed, and the first glove my dad bought me was actually for a right-handed thrower. I remember being in the yard, playing catch right-handed. I was kind of ambidextrous, so my dad never picked up on it. In time, I realized that I did things better with my left hand, so I played left-handed and became a left-handed hitter. Read the rest of this entry »

Ty Buttrey had an up-and-down first full big-league season last year. The downs tended to come in clumps. In a pair of early-September outings, the Los Angeles Angels reliever was charged with seven earned runs in just two-thirds of an inning. Prior to that there was a three-game stretch in late July where he allowed seven earned runs in two-and-a-third innings. Take those stink bombs out of the equation and Buttrey would have finished 2019 with a 2.34 ERA, rather than the rocky-by-comparison 3.98 that went into the annals.

Not that he wants, or deserves, a pity party. Unlike duffers, hurlers don’t get mulligans. Once it becomes an official game, everything you do ends up on the ledger.

I caught up to Buttrey at Fenway Park a handful of weeks after his July speed bump. When I asked him for a synopsis of his season as a whole, he pointed to occasional overuse of a 97 mph heater that, velocity-wise, ranked in the 96th percentile among his big-league brethren.

“Early in the year, I was doing pretty well mixing my pitches,” Buttrey told me. “I was feeling comfortable and having a lot of success. Then I had a couple games about three months in where I start getting really fastball heavy. I was throwing way too many and ended up needing to go back to the drawing board.” Read the rest of this entry »