After acquiring José Berríos at last year’s trade deadline and signing Kevin Gausman to a massive five-year deal in November, the Blue Jays put the finishing touch on remaking their starting rotation by signing Yusei Kikuchi to a three-year contract on Saturday. The deal is worth $36 million, with $16 million of that total frontloaded in 2022. The lefty will slot into the back of Toronto’s rotation — one that suddenly looks like a strength for a team that came just a game shy of the postseason in 2021.

That Kikuchi was available as a free agent at all was a bit of a surprise. The Mariners declined what was a uniquely structured four-year option valued at $16.5 million per year at the end of last season, and he declined his $13 million player option. Looking at his season, you can understand why. Though he started off well last year, putting up a 3.48 ERA during the first half of the season and earning the Mariners’ lone All-Star selection, he fell apart after the break, with his ERA ballooning to 5.98.

The inconsistency is something the Blue Jays will need to figure out if they want to maximize the promising raw skills that Kikuchi possesses. After debuting in 2019 with a four-seam fastball that averaged just 92.5 mph, he spent the offseason optimizing his mechanics to unlock an increase in fastball velocity. It worked: During the shortened 2020 season, he came out throwing 95 mph — the fifth-hardest fastball thrown by a left-handed starter during these past two seasons — and was able to maintain that velocity jump in ‘21. With all that extra heat, the whiff rate on his four-seamer jumped up from 15.9% in 2019 to 30.5% over the last two years. Read the rest of this entry »

After the end of the owners’ lockout on Thursday and the reopening of the offseason, the Giants wasted little time making a big splash in the second free agency period, signing Carlos Rodón to a two-year deal worth up to $44 million with an opt-out after the first season. The addition of the ex-White Sox lefty gives San Francisco the top-end talent that was missing from the rotation after the departure of Kevin Gausman earlier in the offseason. It’s a move filled with risk, but with the potential for great reward.

Rodón was a revelation in 2021. He threw a nearly perfect game on April 14, settling for a no-hitter instead; made the All-Star team for the first time; and set career highs in nearly every meaningful pitching metric, with his 2.37 ERA, 2.65 FIP and 4.9 WAR all leading Chicago’s pitching staff. And all this came after the White Sox had non-tendered him before the season, only to re-sign him on a one-year deal worth just $3 million.

As Rodón put it last March, getting cut by the team that had drafted him was a wake-up call. He committed to an improved offseason training program and diet to help him get into better shape, and the transformation of his body helped him fix his mechanics and improve his overall strength. He entered spring training throwing in the upper 90s regularly, and his fastball wound up averaging 95.4 mph last year, the hardest it had been in his career. All that additional velocity took his fastball from an average pitch to an elite weapon. His heater’s whiff rate had never topped 20% in his career but jumped to 29.7% in 2021, and opposing batters managed just a .264 wOBA off the pitch. It also paired nicely with his already excellent slider and changeup to form a trio of plus pitches to mow down opposing batters. Read the rest of this entry »

The Royals have a wave of strong position player prospects that look like they’re ready to make their debuts as early as 2022, led by the No. 2 player on our Top 100 list, Bobby Witt Jr., as well as MJ Melendez, Nick Pratto, and Vinnie Pasquantino. All four of those players carry a 50 FV or higher and could form a formidable young core in Kansas City for years to come.

Amidst all the hype over those four prospects, it would be understandable if you forgot about Kyle Isbel, who turned a fantastic spring training last year into a starting role in the Royals’ Opening Day lineup. While he didn’t have the prospect ceiling of Witt or the rest of that quartet, he did rank fifth on the 2021 edition of Kansas City’s prospect list with a 45 FV. But after starting off his major league career with five hits in his first two games, Isbel collected just four more across ten more appearances and was optioned down to Triple-A on April 22.

A rookie with a strong spring and a flash-in-the-pan debut who struggles to follow up on his early success isn’t an uncommon storyline, and it’s not surprising given Isbel’s lack of experience. A 2018 draftee out of UNLV, he had only played in just 123 minor league games and only reached High-A before making his debut. The canceled 2020 minor league season had a huge impact on that lack of experience, though he did play at the Royals’ alternate site.

Isbel’s first taste of Triple-A didn’t exactly go well either, as he struggled to a .220/.316/.360 line and a 84 wRC+ through his first 50 games there. But he managed to acclimate and adjust: Over his next 55 games in Triple-A, he slashed .320/.399/.531 (148 wRC+), bopping nine home runs and walking in more than 10% of his plate appearances. His rediscovered production at the plate earned him a second stint in the majors; he was recalled on September 12 and he posted a 138 wRC+ across 16 games down the stretch. Read the rest of this entry »

With no clear end in sight to the owner’s lockout, free agent Kwang Hyun Kim 김광현 has decided to return to Korea for the 2022 season. On Monday, Jeeho Yoo of Yonhap News reported that Kim has signed a four-year deal with the SSG Landers (previously the SK Wyverns). The deal is worth 15.1 billion won ($12.3 million dollars) and breaks the record for largest KBO contract that was previously held by Dae-Ho Lee 이대호 and Sung-bum Na 나성범. In a statement released by the Landers, Kim said, “I was able to challenge myself in the majors because of support from fans here. I decided I wanted to give back to them once I returned to the KBO. The Landers recognized my value with the biggest contract ever in the KBO — I didn’t have to think long and hard about the reunion.”

Kim returns to his old team in Incheon, a squad that has missed the playoffs both years since he made the jump to the major leagues after the 2019 season: They placed ninth in the 10 team league in 2020 but came up half a game short of qualifying for the Wild Card game in 2021. Kim solidifies a starting rotation that also includes former major league pitchers Iván Nova and Wilmer Font. Font led the Landers pitching staff with a 3.46 ERA and a 3.25 FIP, but the four pitchers in the rotation behind him all had ERAs and FIPs over five. With Kim back in the fold, the Landers are likely one of the preseason favorites heading into the regular season.

I asked former FanGraphs contributor Sung Min Kim for some additional context on Kwang Hyun Kim’s return to the KBO.

“Landers are now in a very good position, especially with their pitching staff. Not only do they get one of the better KBO pitchers back in their rotation, but they also bet highly on Wilmer Font, who pitched very well with them in ’21, and Iván Nova, and they also have two solid Korean-born starters in Jong Hoon Park and Seung Won Moon set to return mid-season from injuries. Those five pitchers would make up the best rotation in all of KBO, and make them instant pennant favorites for 2022. They will certainly be a very fun team to watch.”

Kim’s time in America was anything but easy. A club legend while playing for the Wyverns from 2007-19, he made the transition to the US prior to the 2020 season. Unfortunately, his introduction to the major leagues was interrupted by a global pandemic. The next season was a little more normal, but his two-year deal with the Cardinals expired at the end of 2021 and the 33-year-old again found himself in strange circumstances, with the owner’s lockout disrupting his foray into MLB free agency.

While pitching for St. Louis, Kim’s role was as settled as the circumstances around him these past two years. He began the 2020 season as the Cardinals closer, notching his first professional save in his first major league appearance. A COVID outbreak on the team forced him into the starting rotation soon after, and he made seven starts during the remainder of the abbreviated regular season with an additional start in the Cardinals Wild Card series against the Padres. He allowed just nine total runs to score against him in those eight regular season appearances, good for a 1.62 ERA.

Last year, two separate stints on the injured list limited Kim to 21 starts and six relief appearances. The second of those trips to the IL came in mid-August after the Cardinals had acquired J.A. Happ and Jon Lester to bolster their rotation for the stretch run. Kim returned after two weeks on the sidelines but had lost his spot in the rotation by then. He made two more starts through the end of the season but was mostly relegated to mop up duty in the bullpen over the last month of the season.

All told, he made 28 starts during his time with the Cardinals and seven additional relief appearances. He compiled 1.8 WAR with an excellent 2.97 ERA that outpaced a more middling 4.34 FIP. He never racked up big strikeout totals, instead relying on good command and a solid ability to limit hard contact. Just 25.6% of the plate appearances against him ended with a hard hit batted ball, right in line with the league average over the last two seasons. He allowed a 6.3% barrel rate during his time in the majors and just a .348 expected wOBA on contact.

On the pitcher’s decision to return to Korea, Sung Min Kim had this to say:

“I think he was always inclined to stay in the US and try to prolong his career in the US by signing with another team. He’s had a desire to challenge himself in the majors for a long while, even before he signed with the Cardinals. With his age and the decreased velocity he showed during his two seasons in St. Louis, I wasn’t sure what the market looked like for him, especially given that he was relegated to a bullpen role later in 2021. I think, with the lockout taking awhile, him missing his family being back in Korea, and definitely having a clearer role guaranteed back in KBO, it was very hard to say no to a lucrative deal to come back.”

Kim’s departure from the US creates an even bigger hole in the depleted free agent starting pitching market. Twelve of the 18 starters listed on our top 50 free agents list signed new deals prior to the lockout. That leaves very few options for teams looking to bolster their rotations once the offseason resumes. Kim was ranked 35th on that list of top free agents, ahead of Zack Greinke, Michael Pineda, and Yusei Kikuchi. Though he probably wasn’t likely to land a significant payday from an MLB club, he could have been a solid back-of-the-rotation option for a contending team that needs a bit more depth in their rotation. Those teams that might have been interested in Kim’s services are now limited to looking at starters like Pineda, Kikuchi, Tyler Anderson, and Garrett Richards.

This may also be the first instance of the ongoing owner’s lockout influencing a player to leave the US to find other opportunities abroad. Obviously, Kim returning to his home country to play for the same team he starred for previously is a unique circumstance, but the fact that there was no clear end to his free agent limbo in America had to have entered into his decision-making process when opting to return to Korea. Kim chose to leave behind the uncertainty of MLB for a record-setting KBO deal.

If negotiations between MLB and the Players Association continue to drag on, jeopardizing more and more of the regular season, it wouldn’t be surprising to see players consider signing with international leagues to give them some guarantee of earnings and playing time. Bryce Harper already joked about playing in Japan and Taiwan on his Instagram account:

What's the size of your jersey??
? https://t.co/YgSUH0sEp5#BryceHarper #?????????@bryceharper3 #?? #?? #?????? #giants #?? #tokyo #?? #???? #tokyogiants pic.twitter.com/jJW2yNcULa

— ????????????? (@TokyoGiants) March 1, 2022

It’s not hard to imagine a situation where MLB players start to seriously consider their options abroad if progress towards a new CBA deal hasn’t been made. Opening day in Korea is set for April 2, while the Nippon Professional Baseball season begins on March 25. That gives players an increasingly narrow window to make a decision. Established stars like Harper probably won’t be making the jump to Asia this year, but for players still mired in free agency or on the fringe of a major league roster and ineligible to play in minor leagues, a guaranteed paycheck and playing time in a foreign league could become increasingly enticing.

For Dane Dunning, consistency will be key in 2022. A first round pick back in 2016, his professional career has been pretty turbulent for someone of his draft pedigree. He’s been the headlining return in two major trades — the Adam Eaton deal in 2016 and the Lance Lynn swap in ’20 — and also lost a season and a half to a torn UCL. To further complicate matters, the beginning of the pandemic disrupted his rehab just when he was preparing to compete for a spot on a big league roster. The delayed start to the 2020 season probably benefited him, however, as he finally made his major league debut for the White Sox in August of that year.

Dunning had just gotten his feet wet at the game’s highest level when he was shipped off to Texas during the offseason. The Rangers were extremely careful with him in his first season with the organization. You can understand why. He had missed more than two seasons worth of games between his Tommy John surgery and the lack of a minor league season in 2020. His first start in the big leagues was the first time he had pitched in an official game since June 2018. In 2021, he averaged just under five innings per start and threw more than 80 pitches in a game just four times. Still, with just over 150 total major league innings under his belt, Dunning has shown some real promise, even if there are a few kinks to work out.

Last year, Dunning managed to post a 3.94 FIP that was supported by a 3.87 xFIP. Unfortunately, his 4.51 ERA far outpaced his peripherals. He didn’t give up very many home runs — just 13 all season — but he did allow a lot of contact. Opposing batters produced a 78.1% contact rate against him, well above league average, though more than half of those balls in play were put on the ground. His strikeout-to-walk ratio was almost exactly league average, which meant he wasn’t really mitigating that contact with a gaudy strikeout rate and or a minuscule walk rate. Despite those mixed results, there are some positive signs under the hood that could bode well for Dunning’s development this year. Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees starting rotation sits in an odd position while rosters are frozen during the owner’s lockout. No one can question Gerrit Cole’s dominance as the team ace, but after him, there are some real concerns about the health of the rest of the rotation. Luis Severino returned from Tommy John surgery to pitch in four relief appearances in 2021 plus one additional outing in the American League Wild Card game. Jameson Taillon’s season ended prematurely after he tore a ligament in his ankle, and his previous health history isn’t exactly spotless. It’s hard to know what to expect from Nestor Cortes or Domingo Germán either. That leaves Jordan Montgomery as the presumed number two starter behind Cole.

Montgomery missed nearly two seasons after his own Tommy John surgery back in 2018. He returned to the mound late in 2019 and struggled through the abbreviated ’20 season. Last year, he put together his most complete season of his short career, posting a career-best 3.69 FIP while accumulating 3.3 WAR. It was a solid performance in his first true full season since his rookie campaign back in 2017.

Ignoring his four-inning cup of coffee in 2019, Montgomery posted the highest strikeout rate of his career last season. Nearly all of those punch outs are fueled by two phenomenal secondary pitches. Both his changeup and curveball feature whiff rates around 40% and he uses both to dispatch batters. When the count gets to two strikes, he throws one of those two pitches over 60% of the time and opposing batters can’t help but swing and miss. Read the rest of this entry »

Before the lockout froze the offseason, the Rangers were in the middle of an incredibly active winter. They signed Corey Seager and Marcus Semien to massive contracts, and added Jon Gray and Kole Calhoun as well. That was a good start to addressing the needs of a team that lost 102 games in 2021, but per Dan Szymborski’s mid-lockout ZiPS projections, those moves only got Texas to around 73 wins. If the Rangers have designs on competing for a playoff spot in 2022, they’ll need to continue adding to their roster once the owner’s lockout is lifted.

One of those potential additions could come via trade. Back in September, the Rangers were one of the many teams that checked in with the Oakland A’s about a potential deal involving Matt Olson. The Athletics seem likely to tear down their current roster at some point in the near future, possibly as soon as teams are able to trade with each other again. Just last week, Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News wrote that the Rangers were “absolutely” planning on revisiting their earlier talks with Oakland.

Olson would be a massive addition to Texas’s roster, as he’s coming off a year in which he set career bests in strikeout rate, home runs, wRC+, WAR, and a number of other offensive categories. Of course, the Rangers already have an incumbent first baseman whom they traded for just a year ago. If it came down to it, though, Nathaniel Lowe shouldn’t be much of a barrier to adding Olson to their lineup; Olson is one of the premiere first basemen in the game and only has a year and change on Lowe age-wise. But the Rangers shouldn’t write off Lowe just yet either. He had his ups and downs during his first full season in the majors, but he showed some promise as a potential middle-of-the-order bat in 2021. Read the rest of this entry »

The Twins starting rotation is a clear area of weakness for the team as they head into the 2022 season. The departures of José Berríos, J.A. Happ, and Michael Pineda, plus Kenta Maeda’s elbow injury, drained the group of some serious talent. Before the lockout, Minnesota’s only move to address this concern was to add Dylan Bundy on a one-year deal. For all sorts of reasons, it seems clear the team just isn’t likely to bring in another quality starter from outside the organization. Instead, I suspect the Twins are hoping some of their young starters will take a significant step forward in 2022.

Bailey Ober, Joe Ryan, and Randy Dobnak have fewer than 50 career starts between them but each is likely to hold down a significant role this year. Earlier this week, I examined Ober’s deep arsenal and the path he could take toward a breakout sophomore season. Despite being injured for most of 2021, the five-year extension Dobnak signed before the season should give him a long leash to prove he can be a successful major league starter. Luke Hooper already investigated the intriguing addition of Jharel Cotton to the pitching staff (though his role is far from defined at this point). As for Ryan, he has a fascinating profile that has the potential to be the best of the bunch.

Ryan was a seventh round pick in the 2018 draft out of Cal State Stanislaus. He was assigned to Low-A that same year and started racking up tons of strikeouts. After blowing through three levels of the minors in 2019, he started appearing on Rays prospect lists, debuting at 13th on the 2020 list as a 45 FV. In all, he compiled a 36.7% career strikeout rate as a member of Tampa Bay’s farm system. Questions about his fastball, which sat around 90-94 mph, and a lack of quality secondary stuff held him back from rising any higher on our prospect lists despite the elite results he was putting up at each level.

Eventually, Ryan was traded to the Twins in the Nelson Cruz deal and made his major league debut on September 1. The strikeouts continued to come in the big leagues, as he sent down 30% of the batters he faced on strikes. He wound up with a 3.43 FIP and a phenomenal 6.00 strikeout-to-walk ratio across his five starts during the final month of the season. Read the rest of this entry »

After trading away José Berríos and J.A. Happ last season and losing Kenta Maeda and Michael Pineda to Tommy John surgery and free agency, respectively, the Twins rotation was in serious need of rejuvenation. Instead of diving into the pre-lockout free agent frenzy in November, the Twins stayed on the periphery, only signing Dylan Bundy to a one-year, bounce-back contract after his ugly season for the Angels. With Byron Buxton newly signed to a long-term extension, the Twins have indicated their intention to compete for the AL Central crown in 2022. But even with Bundy added to their staff, their starting rotation looks exceedingly thin.

Under president of baseball operations Derek Falvey and general manager Thad Levine, Minnesota has been notoriously risk averse when it comes to committing to pitchers for any significant length of time. It was probably a long shot to assume the Twins would be among the suitors for the top names in a strong class of free agent starting pitchers and once the lockout is lifted, it seems like it’ll be difficult to add another arm to their rotation. Of the 16 starters ranked in our top 50 free agents, all but six have already signed with a new team. That doesn’t leave many options for the Twins when it comes to outside help.

Instead of bringing in another quality arm from outside the organization, I suspect the Twins are hoping some of their young starters take a significant step forward in 2022. Bailey Ober, Joe Ryan, and Randy Dobnak have less than 50 career starts between them but each will likely hold down a significant role this year. Additionally, top pitching prospects Jordan Balazovic and Jhoan Duran could make their major league debuts some time during the season. It may not be an inspiring group of names, but one of those young pitchers holds potential that could provide some upside for Minnesota.

Among that group of inexperienced starters populating the Twins’ projected rotation, Ober compiled the most innings in 2021. He made his major league debut in mid-May and wound up throwing 92.1 innings with a 4.19 ERA and a 4.56 FIP that was just a step behind. Even more impressive was his 5.05 strikeout-to-walk ratio, the 13th highest in the majors among starters who threw at least 90 innings. Those excellent peripherals formed the foundation of his 4.01 xFIP, with only his extremely high home run rate holding him back.

A 12th round pick in the 2017 draft, Ober compiled a 31.9% strikeout rate during his minor league career. He paired that lethal ability with a 3.4% walk rate; astonishingly, his walk totals never crossed double-digits in any of his minor league stops. With such phenomenal results, you might expect Ober to be highly ranked on the Twins prospect lists, but he never reached higher than 22nd on the 2021 list with a 40 FV. His command was an obvious strength but his fastball consistently sat below 90 mph in the minors. There was some considerable dissonance between his scouting reports and the results he was putting up.

During the 2020 season, Ober wasn’t invited to the alternate site but worked on smoothing out his mechanics on his own. Upon reaching the majors in May 2021, his fastball averaged 92.3 mph, a big uptick in velocity. The raw velocity he showed in the big leagues was a significant improvement over what he was showing in the minors, but 92 mph isn’t exactly head-turning. Fortunately, his gigantic 6-foot-9 frame allows him to impart a ton of additional effective velocity on his pitches. Just six other pitchers had a higher release extension than Ober’s 7.3 inches. That elite extension helped him add more than 2 mph to his heater, the largest difference between raw velocity and effective velocity among all fastballs thrown at least 100 times in 2021.

With a heater that plays up due to his extension and uncommon delivery, he leaned on that pitch pretty heavily during his rookie season. His excellent command allowed him to locate his fastball up in the zone regularly. The combination of effective velocity and location led to a 24.8% whiff rate, slightly above the league average for four-seamers. Even though batters often had trouble making contact with the pitch, they did tremendous damage against it when they did put it in play. Throwing hard stuff up in the zone comes with its drawbacks if batters are able to connect with those pitches. Nearly 60% of the balls in play off Ober’s fastball were fly balls or line drives and he allowed a .578 expected wOBA on those elevated batted balls.

Ober’s repertoire also includes a slider, changeup, and curveball. Of those three secondary pitches, the two breaking balls are the most interesting. Along with his fastball, those three pitches each ran swinging strike rates in the double digits, forming a deep arsenal to give Ober plenty of options with which to attack batters. What’s more, he completely revamped his slider mid-season. In an effort to differentiate his slider from his curveball a little more, he tinkered with a new slider grip and started implementing it in mid-August. He detailed his process in an interview with David Laurila in September:

I started throwing a new slider [in early-to-mid-August]. I wanted something a little bit harder. It had been around 78-80 [mph] and I wanted to give hitters something different. It was kind of blending with my curveball, too. Basically, the idea was something with a bigger speed difference between my curveball and my slider.

Before, I had it a little deeper in my hand and it had a lot more horizontal movement on it. It wasn’t as depth-y as my new one. My new one is harder [82-84] and has a little more depth, and it’s also not as horizontal anymore.

Here’s how different his two sliders looked in practice. This slider was thrown in mid-July:

And here’s his overhauled slider from a game in mid-August:

They’re completely different pitches. Ober still used them both similarly, locating them on the outer edge against right-handed batters to generate swings and misses. Here’s what the physical characteristics and results of the two pitches looked like:

Despite the drastic changes to the pitch’s shape, his results were nearly the same as they were with the slower, looping slider. But with his harder slider established in his repertoire, his curveball suddenly became vastly more effective. From August 11 through the end of the season, Ober’s curveball ran a 45.5% whiff rate, a 26.5 point improvement over the 19% whiff rate he ran during the first half of the season. Differentiating the two pitches really helped him mold his breaking balls into two separate weapons that should give batters fits at the plate.

The path towards a breakout season for Ober seems pretty clear. He has three pitches that produce excellent results and he has excellent command of his entire arsenal. His fastball is decent, especially with its effective velocity helping it play up, but he could probably stand to throw it a bit less in favor of his two breaking balls. Pounding the strike zone with his heater is a fine strategy in the minor leagues, but he needs to learn how to better incorporate his two breaking balls into his pitch mix to avoid allowing so much loud contact off his elevated fastballs. I haven’t even mentioned his changeup, which was graded his best secondary offering as a prospect. With such a deep repertoire, Ober has plenty of avenues to take to build on his promising debut.

Back in December, I wrote about Cedric Mullins’ breakout 2021 season, the catalyst for which was a decision to stop switch-hitting and begin batting exclusively from the left side of the plate. By dropping his right-handed swing, Mullins, a natural lefty, could focus on honing one swing instead of struggling to maintain two separate swings.

Switch-hitting has always been a rare skill throughout baseball history, but the number of batters who can swing both ways has dwindled in recent years. From that previous piece:

In 2021, just 17 qualified batters (13.1%) were switch-hitters, right in line with the league-wide average over the last decade. Compare that to the decade between 1986 and ’95 (excluding the strike-shortened 1994 season), when more than one in five qualified batters (21.1%) hit from both sides, with a peak of 24.8% in ’89. With modern baseball strategy so heavily emphasizing the platoon advantage, it’s surprising to see so few switch-hitters these days. Giving up that advantage in every at-bat is a radical decision, and there’s barely any precedent for it.

The number of players who have dropped switch-hitting after making their major league debuts is tiny. J.T. Snow did it in 1999, halfway through his career. So did Orlando Merced in 1996. Shane Victorino flip-flopped between switch-hitting and batting right-handed after injuries forced him to give up left-handed batting at various points during his career. More recently, Tucker Barnhart gave up switch-hitting in 2019.

After seeing the success Mullins had after giving up swinging from the right side, the obvious follow-up question is whether we can identify any other switch-hitters who might benefit from focusing on swinging from one side or the other.

The extremely small number of players who have actually made the decision to stop switch-hitting at the major league level should tell us that this isn’t a silver bullet solution to a player with a wide platoon split. Anecdotally, more players stop switch-hitting in the minors because they have a lot more to gain if the adjustment pays off. For those players who have already made it to the majors but haven’t truly established themselves, like Mullins, it’s a risky decision. They’d be making the change against the best the sport has to offer, likely resulting in a significant adjustment period. Still, with teams focused on finding every miniscule advantage to wring out of their rosters, it’s a worthwhile question to pursue.
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