The modern game of baseball is defined by power and strength. You can turn on any game at any time and watch a guy swing his behind off as he launches a 100 mph fastball 450 feet. Of course, that wasn’t always so common — a lot of players used to swing for contact instead of the fences. Today, that skill set is more of a rarity, though there are still a few hitters who choke up on the handle and spray the ball from line to line. Jeff McNeil is perhaps one of the best in this category. Fresh off a batting tile, McNeil was due for a raise in arbitration. Instead, he and the Mets agreed to a four-year, $50 million extension.

The deal buys out McNeil’s two remaining arbitration years and two potential free agent years, taking him through his age-34 season. There’s also a $12.5 million club option for the 2027 season, giving the extension a chance to max out at five years and $62.5 million. On the surface, that seems like a bargain for a player coming off a 5.9 WAR, 143 wRC+ season that also saw him play the best defense of his career according to OAA. However, the free agent market doesn’t tend to be particularly generous to players who are over 30 or rely on contact as much as McNeil does. I asked Dan Szymborski if he could cook up a ZiPS estimate for a McNeil extension and as it turns out, the contract he signed isn’t as much of a bargain as I initially suspected. Including the discounts for the two cost-controlled arbitration years, ZiPS would have offered McNeil a five-year, $69 million extension. That is only $6.5 million more than the maximum the Mets offered when you include the club option. Dan also provided me with McNeil’s projected performance for the life of the contract:

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Last week, what felt like months of Pablo López trade rumors finally came to fruition, as he was sent to Minnesota (along with two prospects) for reigning batting champion Luis Arraez. (For an in-depth breakdown of the trade, check out Ben Clemens’ summary here.) In theory, the trade should help both rosters: the Twins needed pitching depth, and the Marlins needed offensive help. For this piece, I’m going to focus on how López can recover the best version of himself that we saw in 2021 before he missed much of that season’s second half.

López established himself as an above-average starting pitcher in the shortened 2020 season, when he threw 57.1 innings with a 3.61 ERA and 3.09 FIP. The main reason for his success: he bought into the idea of throwing your best pitches more often, throwing his four-seamer and changeup over 60% of the time for the first time in his career. That success carried over into 2021, when he threw 102.2 innings with a 3.07 ERA and 3.29 FIP, followed by a hot start to 2022. But from the middle of June through the rest of the season, he kept tossing up clunkers.

The short story is that hitters stopped whiffing at López’s changeup. He had a slight recovery in the final month, but as you can see in that pitch’s whiff rate and his strikeout rate, that wasn’t him at his best. His repertoire hinges on both righties and lefties swinging at and whiffing on changeups. It’s the key to his success, and it will need to be the focus if he hopes to return to his 2021 form.

So why did hitters swing and miss less at López’s changeup as the season went on, and is it directly related to the pitch itself?

To answer that, it’s worth considering first what a changeup is: a deception. And in order to deceive, you have to make the hitter believe something else is coming. To do that, you must throw your complimentary pitch regularly and in an ideal location. In the case of the changeup, you usually pair it with a four-seamer or sinker; for López, it’s the four-seamer. The success of those pitches goes hand in hand; if one is off, then the performance of the other could be in jeopardy. To go into more detail: if the shape of one changes and no longer tunnels as well with the other, then the combination isn’t as deceptive.

That seems to have been the case with López. Below is a table of his four-seamer/changeup metrics from the last few seasons:

The difference is jarring. López didn’t have pure backspin on his four-seamer to begin with, but a change in shape from the low-80s in Active% (also known as spin efficiency) to 66.2% completely alters a pitch’s shape and, as a result, its effectiveness. Even though his changeup metrics were relatively the same from 2021, the change in the fastball negatively impacted the entire arsenal. If a hitter can distinguish between those two pitches because of shape and/or location, they are less likely to be fooled by either one.

This negative development for López can be traced directly to an injury suffered when he took a liner right off the right wrist on June 10. After that, his performance was sporadic, and more importantly, his release point and pitch location changed:

During his rough patch in July and August, his release point moved down and closer to third base. This slight change perfectly tracks with a loss in active spin. By getting further around the ball, your finger and seam orientation at release are less on top of the ball and more on the side. To get more backspin, you ideally release the ball closer to the top of your fingertips. A change in grip strength that could be the result of a wrist contusion would have a direct impact on these components and cause compensations that take time to realize and adjust to. And while López felt healthy enough to throw 180 innings last year, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t compensating.

When combing through the video, it’s easier to see the change in release. Below are four total clips; the first two are from April, and the two after are from July and August.

There are a few things I want to address. First, López’s altered release point can be traced back in his delivery to a slight change in the use of his glove side. Comparing his throws in the spring to those in the summer, you can see that he’s altered the way he turns his glove over at peak lead arm extension. Early in the year, he only had a slight quarter turn in his glove; in the second half, he progressed into a full turnover.

That subtle difference creates two different reciprocal movements. A reciprocal movement is one that is a direct result of another; if you throw a ball up, it must come down. The same principle works for the body. A change in direction of the glove turn affects the direction of torso rotation, which then affects the angle or position of the throwing arm at release. (The kinetic chain!) That’s an area where he and his coaches can look at when discussing how he can make the proper mechanical adjustments to recover his fastball shape.

It’s important, too, to note how important that recovery will be for López’s tertiary pitches as well. When you lose one of your primaries, hitters can more easily sit on the pitches that aren’t as effective in the arsenal. For López, that pitch was his cutter. After two seasons with a wOBA under .325, the pitch was wrecked in 2022: a .447 wOBA and .321 batting average against. Its downfall can also be traced to his four-seamer, as the pitch went from the mid-50s in spin efficiency to the mid-30s. He may only throw it 10% of the time, but it was still a huge liability. Hopefully whatever mechanical adjustments López makes to recover his four-seamer can filter down to that pitch as well.

Injuries in general can be tough to overcome in the middle of a season. For a pitcher, that difficulty increases with anything related to their arm. A contusion may not be a long-term health concern, but López’s second half shows how something that looks insignificant can lead to detrimental short-term compensations. Luckily for him, this is the type of thing that shouldn’t take any drastic adjustments to fix, and he already has a blueprint for success from his 2020 and ’21 campaigns. With the help of a new coaching staff in 2023, his two-pitch combo should give him and the Twins an above-average starter for the next couple of seasons.

Checking in at no. 47 on our recently published Cleveland Guardians prospect list, Andrew Misiaszek was drafted in a round that no longer exists. Taken with the 23rd pick of the 2019 draft’s 32nd round, he had pitched four years at Northeastern University, serving mainly as a reliever and eventually as the team’s closer. Since being drafted, he has worked his way up the minor league ladder, finishing 2022 in Triple-A Columbus.

Beginning last season in Double-A, Misiaszek dominated to the tune of a 0.56 ERA in 32 innings. After he was promoted to the highest level of the minors, he threw 29.2 additional innings of 3.64-ERA ball while striking out over 32% of the batters he faced. I spoke with him early last December about the various mechanical adjustments he has made in the minors, as well as his progress in connecting the dots in his repertoire and how that has impacted his blueprint for success. Read the rest of this entry »

For some reason, a clip of Alex Rodriguez yielding shortstop to Cal Ripken Jr. in the latter’s final All-Star game just won’t stop popping up on my Twitter timeline. Maybe it’s because I seem to stop scrolling every time I see it, but regardless, it keeps making me think about the great shortstops who have gone from playing up the middle to patrolling the hot corner during the prime of their careers. Funny enough, Ripken wasn’t one of them. His switch came later in his career, but the guy who yielded to him transitioned after an MVP season. A-Rod moved over upon his trade to the New York Yankees, and the rest is history.

While Carlos Correa technically still doesn’t know where he’ll be playing baseball in 2023, assuming that he and the New York Mets work out a deal, it will involve him ceding his natural position to fellow island mate Francisco Lindor. Correa and Lindor don’t present a perfect parallel to A-Rod and Derek Jeter because the skill differential makes a little more sense this time around. But Correa has long been compared to Rodriguez when it comes to his physical stature, tenacity, and fervor for the game. Now Correa finds himself considering a switch similar to A-Rod’s despite very recently being considered one of the best defensive shortstops in the game. Luckily, in terms of his skill set, Correa is a near-perfect fit to immediately be an elite defender at the hot corner, much like A-Rod’s seamless transition. Before laying out the case defending that transition, let’s take a look at Correa’s fielding metrics over the years:

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The ongoing conversation as to whether a hitter can control where they hit the ball has always confused me. As a hitter, you tailor your swing for a specific batted ball profile and come to an understanding of the types of pitches you can handle and the types you cannot. Within that context, your swing might be malleable enough to produce different types of hard contact, but if it isn’t, then you have a plan for where adjustments can be made. From that perspective, a hitter has every bit of control over where they’re going to hit the ball, even it’s more of a long-term endeavor.

On the other hand, there is the dilemma of hitting what you get, and from pitcher to pitcher, that will vary. Each pitcher has a different plan of attack, whether it’s in the pitches themselves, command of specific areas of the zone, arm slot, etc. Most hitters have limitations, and it’s the job of the pitcher to pitch to those limitations. A hitter can have a specific set of strengths that can’t be bent much at all, but then there are hitters who can change their strengths, or more specifically their batted profile, to cater to where they are playing.

In any specific matchup, it might be hard to execute on that plan. For example, we often think about situational hitting and moving runners over or trying to hit a sacrifice fly. That is difficult to do if you don’t get the pitch to do it or don’t have the motor skills to control your body with a changing set of pitch speeds and locations. But when zooming out and looking at batted ball profile, some hitters can change with time. One example of that is Andrew Benintendi. Read the rest of this entry »

Ryan Smith is a left-handed pitching prospect in the Los Angeles Angels system. Taken in the 18th round of the 2019 draft as a senior out of Princeton University, he is, and always has been, an intellectual player. In fact, he spends time in the offseason tutoring high schoolers preparing for the SAT, a rather unorthodox job for a minor league player. After a 25.1-inning rookie ball debut his draft year, he lost out on a key developmental season due to the pandemic but came prepared for the 2021 season with increased velocity and a hunger to perform.

That year, Smith threw 129.1 innings across four different levels. A workload like that in your first full professional season is extremely uncommon. Indeed, coming off the lost 2020 campaign, many pitchers decreased their workloads. For that reason, Smith has had a unique path. His performance was good enough to rise all the way up to Triple-A in his first full season, but his adjustment to the Pacific Coast League has been a work in progress. I spoke to him about that adjustment, its impact on his game, and his repertoire earlier this month.

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Esteban Rivera: What does your pitch mix look like right now, and how has it changed since rookie ball?

Ryan Smith: “I throw a four-seamer with slightly above-average vertical break, but the velo range has been all over the place in pro ball. In rookie ball, the average was around 92 with a couple of outings in the 95-96 range. 2021 it was up to 97-98 in spring, but mostly sat 92-95 the first couple of months, then dropped down to 91-94 in the second half. This past year, my carry was down a bit playing mostly at high altitude, and my velo was 91-93. I’m hoping for it to come back after a velo program I’m on for the winter. I think it was down after the high workload in 2021 after no innings in 2020.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a fan of Michael Brantley. A big, big fan, in fact. He’s the type of hitter that both old school and new school folks adore. He doesn’t strike out and he hardly ever whiffs, but he still swings fast and with a variable bat path. He doesn’t necessarily light it up with his exit velocity, instead thriving by hitting it where they ain’t. On Sunday, he re-signed with the Astros on a one-year, $12 million contract; he can earn an additional $4 million in performance incentives. Basically, if he stays healthy and hits like he has since arriving in Houston in 2019, the deal will end up having about the same average annual value as his previous two-year, $32 million contracts with the Astros. Retaining Brantley is a low risk move. He is the perfect option to complete an already extremely balanced and talented group of hitters. And while he might not be the athlete he once was — his sprint speed dropped all the way down to the 11th percentile in 2022 — all the team needs him to do is stay healthy and hit in the DH spot.

Brantley has been extremely consistent during his four years with Houston; he’s posted a wRC+ ranging from 121 to 132 and been good for a three to four win pace no matter how many games he played. In his first two seasons, he didn’t miss much time at all, playing in 148 games in 2019 and 46 in the shortened ’20. However, his number of games played began to trail off in 2021, dipping to 121, and he only managed 64 in ’22 before requiring season-ending surgery on his right shoulder. After the injury, the Astros missed Brantley, including in the postseason. I know they won the World Series, but there were times throughout the playoffs when their lineup stagnated and could have used some of the variation Brantley provides. Their offense was still deeper than any other team, but if they could have asked for anything, it would have been another lefty to put the ball in play after the heart of the lineup delivered a mass of baserunners.

Of course, Brantley’s ability to play that role in 2023 assumes health, which as we’ve noted, hasn’t been a given. And injuries remain a significant concern after his shoulder surgery in August, the second of his career. No surgery is ever good, but for a hitter, lead shoulder surgery is particularly impactful. When you think about swing mechanics, having relaxed shoulders is key to avoiding too much tension in your upper body. One thing my hitting coaches always used to tell me was to relax from the chest up. Sometimes when hitters try to muscle up and take swings, they tense their shoulders. This can negatively affect a smooth energy transfer, as well as barrel accuracy and deceleration. Your shoulders should be along for the ride, not impeding your swing with roadblocks. Brantley has already overcome shoulder surgery before, but as you age, rehab gets more difficult. It’s obviously a concern. Read the rest of this entry »

Like several other players from the 2018 World Series champion core of the Red Sox, J.D. Martinez has found himself wearing a different uniform in a new city. After finishing out his five-year contract with Boston, he has agreed to a one year, $10 million contract to be the Dodgers’ designated hitter and reunite with his former hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc. That name might not ring a bell to you, but Martinez’s ascent as a hitter came after the work he did with Van Scoyoc before the 2014 season, when he officially broke out as a hitter with a 154 wRC+ with the Tigers. Martinez will also reunite with another teammate, Mookie Betts, whose work with Van Scoyoc led to a bit of a power breakout as well.

For Martinez, the reunion comes at a good time. After a big bounceback season in 2021 where he was hitting the ball consistently hard with a ton of success, his power took a significant step back. His hard-hit rate tailed off by about eight percentage points, his xwOBACON was his lowest in a full season with Boston, and he converted fewer of his fly balls into home runs. That amassed to a home run drop off from 28 to 16 despite only 38 fewer plate appearances. Martinez, being the extremely talented hitter he is, still put together a 119 wRC+, but that loss of thump at age 35 suggests that the downturn is coming. The hope for both him and the Dodgers is that some of that power and forceful impacting of the baseball can be recovered with Van Scoyoc.

The most glaring regression from 2021 to ’22 was in damage done in the heart of the plate. Looking at Martinez’s Statcast’s Swing Take profile, you can zero in on the run values in each area of the strike zone for any given hitter. Typically, hitters of his ilk will crush mistakes in the heart of the zone. In the simplest way possible, that is what it takes to a be a good big league hitter; pitchers will make mistakes, and you need to make them hurt.

What makes you special is if you can do anything in addition to that. Robert Orr of Baseball Prospectus has an informative piece about that exact topic. Basically, both good and great hitters do damage in the heart of the plate, but the difference between the two is that additional skill of crushing bad pitches. Martinez can’t expect to have sustained success if he is producing a -2 run value in the heart of the plate as he did in 2022. He needs to get closer to his +34 runs in 2021.

When breaking it down further between fastballs and breaking balls, we can get a little more insight into exactly what happened in the heart of the plate for Martinez. His swing rates stayed relatively the same on both pitch types, but the damage done on both varied; he was actually better on fastballs in the heart of the plate in 2022 (.442 wOBA) compared to 2021 (.390 wOBA) despite the overall downturn in production. Both those rates were well above the league average in each season.

The real issue here was only being pedestrian against breaking balls, with a .363 wOBA against them in the heart of the plate was only 15 points higher than the league average of .348. That was unlike Martinez; the path he creates with his swing is made to hit these pitches out of the park, or at least into the gaps. In four full seasons between 2017 and ’21, he hit 29 home runs on breakers in the heart of the plate and had a .502 wOBA; in 2022, though, he went deep just twice, with near-average production. No hitter needs to be excellent against breaking balls overall, but if a pitcher leaves a cookie over the middle of the plate and you can’t hit it, there is some cause for concern.

Will that be what Martinez works on? My guess: When he is in the cage, I think his focus will be on elongating his bat path further in front of the plate to pull breakers from left-center to the left field line, rather than strictly thinking about hitting breakers. There is a slight difference between the two.

Beyond that, it’s fascinating to think about the impact Martinez could have on his teammates. If you haven’t listened to him talk about hitting, then I strongly suggest you do. He is one of a handful of hitters in baseball who not only has an advanced level of understanding of swing mechanics, but can also communicate that understanding to others with words and visual assistance. That skill, while not seen in the box score, can make a huge difference when he has time to break down his video. But perhaps what is even more valuable about it is he can share his thoughts and knowledge with his teammates if they’re open to hearing it. Some that come to mind who might benefit from Martinez’s wisdom are Gavin Lux and Miguel Vargas. The former feels like he is close to a breakout, and the latter is a young, impressionable hitter looking for a shot to make him stick out among the rest of the Dodgers’ depth options.

Martinez’s approach to hitting is all about cleaning up bat path and swing mechanics rather than looking at a micro issue and trying to fix only that. By addressing the swing in general, those other problems should take of themselves. The good thing for him is that he is in the perfect place to do this now: with a team that gets hitting, and with the hitting coach who helped him dominate the AL East.

On Thursday, news broke that Jason Heyward had signed a minor league deal with the Dodgers. I’m not going to lie: there are very few teams who could have signed Heyward that would have compelled me to spend multiple hours doing research and writing about the former Cubs outfielder. Back in the day when he was floating in the free-agent market, I was excited about where he would land. His profile as a hitter has always compelled me: very good plate discipline, great athleticism, and, more interestingly, wiggly limbs.

I’m not sure I’ve ever used that saying before, but when I see Heyward, that’s what comes to mind. His arms and legs are always dancing in the box, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. In fact, he uses these movements to keep his body loose; energy can’t travel as smoothly through one’s body if there is tension in the way. Heyward has done this his entire life. It’s what made him special when he was one of the best high school players of all time, an incredibly productive minor leaguer, and a well-above-average hitter in Atlanta and briefly St. Louis. His success isn’t about removing these movements; rather, it’s about harnessing them.

Heyward’s run in Chicago didn’t bring out the best version of his swing. He was never expected to be an off-the-charts hitter, but his interest in the free-agent market at the time had much to do with his potential to harness the power and bat speed he had and turn that into more home runs. But for some reason, things instead went in the other direction, resulting in four below-average seasons by wRC+, two seasons of an exactly 100 wRC+, and an impressive run in the shortened 2020 season of a 131 wRC+ in 181 plate appearances. Yes, it was only a third of a full season, but Heyward flashed what seemed to be a concrete plate discipline improvement to go along with a swing that had been improved enough to do more damage on contact. Read the rest of this entry »

Tommy Kahnle has once again found himself back with the Yankees. Drafted by the team in 2010, he played four seasons in the minor leagues with the organization but was scooped in the Rule 5 draft by Colorado and pitched there in 2014. His stint in Denver wasn’t long, and he eventually found himself traded to the White Sox for Yency Almonte. Chicago is where Kahnle rose up as a prominent reliever; in 2017, it all clicked for him, and the Yankees thought so too, acquiring him along with David Robertson and Todd Frazier before that year’s trade deadline.

Each of them played a pivotal role in the first ALCS run of the Baby Bomber era. But after more than three seasons with the club, Kahnle was waived due to injury — a torn UCL — and missed all of 2020 and ’21. After a long rehab, he made his comeback with the Dodgers in 2022 and showed he still has his stuff, making him a coveted reliever in this year’s free-agent class. His two-year, $11.5 million deal with the Yankees begins yet another stint in the Bronx for the 33-year-old reliever.

The reason for the Yankees’ interest in Kahnle is the same as it’s always been: he posses an elite changeup that plays perfectly with his four-seamer. When looking at the quality of his changeup, no one aspect sticks out relative to his peers. In 2022, its vertical movement was 11% above average, and its horizontal movement was 12% below average; that vertical movement was higher than it had been in any year of his career, and the horizontal movement was about in line with previous seasons. Basically, the pitch is closer to horizontal neutral and has plenty of vertical depth. The horizontal approach angle (HAA) reinforces the movement with a -0.2 degree entry into the zone, and the vertical approach angle (VAA) is steep at 7.0 degrees.

Changeups are difficult to diagnose and/or develop. Similar to any other pitch, you’re looking for unicorn qualities to see what makes it so lethal. Does it have an extremely sharp or steep entry into the zone? Does it move so much that hitters just cannot get a barrel on it? Is the movement profile unique for the given player’s extension and/or release point? These are just a few questions you ask about any pitch, but with changeups specifically, another crucial component is how the pitch plays with the primary fastball, whether it be a sinker, four-seamer, or both.

The beauty of the changeup is in the deception. If you can get a hitter to see a fastball for as long as possible, then you can get them either to swing over the pitch or hit the ball on the top third and ground out. Kahnle’s ability to do this while commanding his changeup location is why teams like the Yankees, Dodgers, and other advanced thinkers covet his services and want him to spam the pitch. Read the rest of this entry »