I just finished an extended trip to watch instructs and the Arizona Fall League, and I’ve got enough in the notebook for a few posts. We’ll start with some of the looks I got at Royals, Giants, and Padres prospects on the backfields and, in a few cases, during the AFL as well. Let’s hop to it.
We’ll start with the guy people will ask about first. Gomez is a tapered 6-foot-2. While he isn’t a freaky athlete in the Elly De La Cruz mold, he’s limber and has a fast bat for a kid his age. Facing some of the best stuff of his life, his feel for hitting stood out. Gomez is athletic in the box, and he was able to fight off above-average velo on the hands, turn around 97 above the belt, and flatten the bat and hit a line drive on a hard fastball up, all while holding his own versus spin. He fouled off a couple tough sliders and took one just beneath the zone. He wasn’t perfect — he expanded the zone a few times and chased a curve in the dirt — but it was a really impressive showing in context.
Where does this go from here? To my eye, Gomez doesn’t look like an early-mature guy, but he also isn’t someone who screams “physical projection” in the way that, say, Sebastian Walcott did at his age. Gomez already has average measurable power, and while there’s room for him to grow into more, my projection leans closer to “comfortably plus” than “80.” Read the rest of this entry »
At no point during the National League Division Series between the Brewers and the Padres did either team lead by more than two runs. The total runs scored in a game never exceeded seven. But neither fact should in any way imply that the series was a no-offense snoozefest.
All four games produced a disproportionate number of baserunners given the actual number of runs allowed, at least when compared to regular-season averages. During the 2026 season, the league averaged nine runs per game on around 24 total baserunners. The Brewers and Padres likewise averaged 24 baserunners per game, despite logging combined run totals between four and seven. Close games and that much traffic on the basepaths made this series a real booty-hole-clenching experience for fans of both teams, as well as the empathetic neutral observers. By the time the fans watching Game 4 could finally unclench, the Brewers had defeated the Padres, 3-1, to advance to the NLCS against the Dodgers.
Though both teams named a traditional starter for Wednesday’s Game 4, neither Walker Buehler for the Padres nor Robert Gasser for the Brewers was expected to pitch particularly deep in this game. Buehler was healthy enough to make 32 starts this season for the first time since 2021, but he wasn’t able to match his innings total (207 2/3 IP) or replicate the 60 ERA- he posted that year. Instead, he was a slightly below-average starter, with an ERA- of 115 over 153 2/3 innings. He also missed the first two games of the NLDS on paternity leave, which likely interrupted his typical throwing schedule, and any departure from routine has the potential to leave a pitcher feeling out of rhythm. Buehler wound up going three innings, allowing one run on a pair of consecutive singles from Sal Frelick and Garrett Mitchell. His command looked shaky from the jump and alternated between non-competitive pitches outside the zone and offerings that caught way too much of the plate.
For his part, Gasser covered four innings, and the only real blemish on his evening was a solo shot hit by Fernando Tatis Jr. to lead off the third. After spending the first half of 2026 on the Triple-A shuttle, Gasser was able to stick in the majors from July 11 onward, posting a 93 ERA- over 109 1/3 innings. A lefty with a low arm slot, he gave the Brewers the option to throw a slightly different look at the Padres than what they’d seen during the first three games of the series. He relied heavily on his sinker, using it to set up his changeup and sweeper. Because of how the pitches interacted with one another, he locked up hitters for 10 called strikes on his sinker, while getting hitters to chase his changeup and generate weak contact on his sweeper.
But with the starters out relatively early and the score knotted at one through four innings, the game would ultimately be decided by the pitchers entering from the bullpen. Both teams had used almost their entire pitching staff extensively over the first three games, making the hitters more familiar with their opponents on the mound than new dads Buehler and Mason Miller are with their newborn children. (Miller missed Game 3 for the birth of his first child.) Read the rest of this entry »
Come on in. Thanks for coming all the way up on short notice, and, uh, sorry about the mess. I really should’ve saved Mr. Splash for later in the day. I’d never seen him fire that water gun in anger before, but he is remarkably accurate. Did you know he was a Green Beret? Anyway, have a seat. I have some difficult news for you.
Oh jeez, I didn’t think about the tail feathers. You can stand, whatever. You can stand.
So as you know, we have been forced to make some prettysubstantialcuts. And believe me, it’s the last thing we want to do. We consider everyone who works here family. But there comes a time within any family when you have to identify your least productive family members, cut them out of your life forever, and leave them without any way to support themselves, at which point they’re not family anymore. They’re just strangers who know things about you that you’d rather not become public. Unfortunately, that includes you. Are – are you following any of this?
We’re going to have to let you go.
I realize that you’ve been with us for – wow – coming up on 50 years now, and I want to assure you that we are grateful for everything you have given to the Baltimore Orioles organization. You’ve brought happiness and joy to so many people. Unfortunately, it has been determined that keeping you on staff would be a suboptimal allocation of resources, because according to a report from this latest round of consultants – you know, I think you deserve to know the truth, so let me get my glasses so I can quote this accurately – “Happiness and joy don’t make the cash register go ka-ching.” So really, our hands are tied. Read the rest of this entry »
NEW YORK — For one brief moment, all had been forgiven. The unreasonable hope, the unbearable burden, the unfulfilled potential — it all had led to this point, when the local kid and lifelong Yankee fan finally made good.
Anthony Volpe stepped into the box in the bottom of the sixth inning with a runner on first, two out, and the Yankees down by two and facing elimination in Game 3 of the American League Division Series. After taking a Griffin Jax sweeper in the dirt for a ball, the one-time second coming of Derek Jeter, who’d stalled and backtracked and flamed out in frustrating fashion, turned on a sinker running in on his hands and lifted a high-arching fly ball to left field that just cleared the wall for a game-tying home run. As he made his way around the bases, all the emotions of the last four years came pouring out of him.
But just after he crossed the plate, the six umpires came together and called for a crew chief review. Reality set in as the replay repeated on the jumbotron in center field, showing different angles of the same disappointing event. Several minutes of deliberation made it official: The home run was overturned. A fan in the first row had reached over the wall with both hands and touched the ball before it rolled up his arms and into his lap.
Volpe was awarded second base, as the umpires determined that the ball would not have been caught even if the fan hadn’t interfered with it. They also concluded that George Lombard Jr., who began the play on first and was running on contact with two outs, would’ve scored on the play. That run turned out to be the final one of the game for either team, as the Rays held on to beat the Yankees, 4-3, and complete the sweep. Read the rest of this entry »
Major League Baseball is once again using the Arizona Fall League as a laboratory for potential rule changes at the major league level. In the past, the AFL has been a proving ground for rule alterations that have made their way to the top level of play, from the pitch timer, to limits on infield shifts, to the ABS challenge system; other initiatives, such as check swing challenges and fully automated balls and strikes, have previously been tested in Arizona but not implemented in the majors. This year, FanGraphs can report that the AFL is piloting new rules restricting defender positioning both on the infield (with the bases empty) and, perhaps more notably, in the outfield. Though MLB implemented restrictions on where infielders can play in 2023, this is the first time the league is piloting guard rails around where outfield defenders can be positioned when a pitch is thrown.
These restrictions first came to my attention during Monday’s game at Salt River Field, where Brendan Gawlowski and I noticed two things. First, Brendan noticed that the two teams’ corner outfielders were positioned both very close to the foul lines and much shallower than contemporary outfielders typically play. Of course, there are situations where a team might want to strategically align their outfielders like this, but for both teams to be doing so regardless of the hitter or game situation struck us as strange. Here is what that looked like on Monday:
Ike Irish is among the more intriguing prospects currently playing in the Arizona Fall League — and not just because of a promising bat that produced a .286/.388/.528 slash line with 15 home runs and a 135 wRC+ over 343 plate appearances with High-A Frederick. Ranked seventh in the Baltimore Orioles system with a 45 FV, the 23-year-old outfielder/first baseman got a new lease on life when he moved out from behind the dish.
The story behind Irish’s positional change isn’t as simple as his not possessing the requisite skills to one day catch at the highest level. He had already begun transitioning by the time the Orioles drafted him 19th overall in 2025 out of Auburn University, and one of the reasons was an issue that is clinically defined as a psycho-neuromuscular impediment affecting the execution of fine motor skills during sport performance.
More on that in moment.
“It was always in the back of my head,” said Irish, who is in the AFL partly to make up at-bats lost due to a torn meniscus suffered in late July. “In college, we had conversations after my sophomore year: Is catching what we really want to do? At the end of the day, I believe in my bat, and I didn’t really believe in my defense. I want my bat to perform, so I think the decision for me was a no-brainer. I play this game because I love to hit.”
It reached the point where he hated to catch. Struggling to master mechanical intricacies played a part, but as he went on to explain, it wasn’t the main reason. Read the rest of this entry »
The 34th Arizona Fall League season opens today with three games staggered across the Phoenix metro area. There are future stars in the Fall League every year, as well as many more workmanlike players who are competing for a 40-man roster spot on next year’s club. It’s a wonderful league for teams to develop and scout prospects because of the cross section of talent it tends to include (there are usually lots of good position player prospects), its timing (which allows players who were injured during the regular season to catch up on reps), and its structure (which allows for six weeks of steady looks). Teams almost always take the AFL seriously and send players who they want to see more of, or want to test. Being on the roster is, on its own, a flare for people like me who are looking for future big leaguers. It’s an indication that a player is worth paying attention to from a scouting standpoint even if I didn’t know the guy’s name until I saw the roster.
Previewing this league with prospects’ scouting reports risks putting the cart before the horse because the scouting part has yet to happen. I want to give you the notes I already have, to play the hits and make sure you have Jarlin Susana and Arjun Nimmala reports and tool grades in front of you right now (don’t worry, you will), but a huge part of the pro scouting exercise that is the Arizona Fall League is mining for the deeper-cut prospects, and I can’t tell you who those guys are going to be just yet. Still, I can show you the initial steps I take to prepare to go to the field and try to systematically unearth these guys, give you the tools to do so on your own, and, in the process, let know you who it is I’m most curious and excited to learn more about for the next six weeks.
The players who become scouting “targets” tend to fall into a handful of categories: famous players, potential dudes, statistical performers, and players in a key roster situation. Read the rest of this entry »
Cade Smith is one of the game’s most dominant closers. Since debuting with the Cleveland Guardians in 2024, the 27-year-old right-hander from Abbotsford, British Columbia boasts a 2.26 ERA, a 1.84 FIP, and a 35.5% strikeout rate over 219 appearances comprising 233 innings. Moreover, he enters October on the heels of his best season to date. Not only did Smith forge a 1.95 ERA over 74 frames, his 41 saves tied him with Tampa Bay’s Bryan Baker for the most in the majors.
His development is a testament to his raw talent and work ethic, but also to the Guardians’ highly regarded pitching program. When Smith signed with Cleveland as an amateur free agent in 2020 following the pandemic-truncated five-round draft, he barely resembled the pitcher he is today. The University of Hawaii product now features a 97.5-mph heater that ranked in the 91st percentile for velocity this year, a devastating bat-missing splitter, and a sweeper that elicited a .133 xBA.
A lot has changed over the years.
“When Cade entered the organization he was a low-90s pitcher with no secondary stuff,” explained Guardians bullpen coach Caleb Longshore, who previously tutored Smith as both a minor league pitching coach and coordinator. “We identified some things in his delivery that he has leaned into over the years, and we’ve seen a steady year-over-year increase in velocity. He started working on the splitter in 2023, in [Double-A] Akron, when [now big league assistant pitching coach] Brad Goldberg was there.”
Smith’s relationship with Longshore and Goldberg was a point of interest when I spoke with him in the final week of the regular season. Read the rest of this entry »
When is an injury so bad that it requires time off? That depends on all sorts factors. How badly does it hurt? How badly does the team need that player’s production, and how much would playing through it inhibit that production? Would playing through it keep it from healing, exacerbate it, or lead to other injuries? How big is the drop-off between the injured player and whoever would be taking their place?
When is the right time to return from an injury? At any given time in the spring, summer, and fall, we can point to a dozen players whose performance is suffering as they return from an IL stint. Should they have spent more time on the shelf? Nobody knows this for sure, least of all those of us who are watching from the outside. Players see their performance drop off when they return from injuries all the time. Sometimes they returned too early, but sometimes no amount of rest or recuperation would have allowed them to avoid it. Maybe it’s just the unavoidable cost of catching back up to game speed.
Late on the evening of September 25, after the Orioles’ disappointing 2026 season had come to its abrupt, merciful end, Gunnar Henderson revealed to reporters that he’d spent half of it playing through a right wrist injury. “He declined to share the exact details,” wrote The Baltimore Banner’s Andy Kostka, “but said he will not require any surgery.” Even without details, we can draw some obvious inferences. The injury was severe enough to linger for at least three months. That Henderson mentioned it at all indicates that the injury was significant enough to impair his performance, a notion supported by the fact that manager Craig Albernaz “said there were daily check-ins to assess his availability.” Read the rest of this entry »
Major league baseball’s postseason derives its spine-tingling intrigue from many sources. There’s the tension — and inherent cruelty — of a months-long season coming down to a handful of games. Perhaps nothing in sports is better than a tightly-contested postseason game entering its final innings, the score so close and the stakes so high that it’s impossible to look away, while also leaving even the most devoted fans wondering if they can bear to watch. From these theatrics we often get epic performances and precise execution. Cam Schlittler dismantling the Red Sox with coiling curveballs and unfair fastballs in front of a bloodthirsty Yankee Stadium crowd, for instance. Grant Taylor’s dastardly 3-2 slider to strike out the potential tying run and end the eighth inning in Tuesday’s Game 1 against the Astros also comes to mind, as does the Braves’ note-perfect double play to squash the Phillies’ ninth-inning rally in their opening round first game.
But sometimes, well, sometimes a similar type of joy comes from the baseball equivalent of a windmill dunk.
The scene? Petco Park, Game 1 of the National League Wild Card Series between the Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres. The Padres hold a comfortable 7-0 lead in the bottom of the seventh inning. The actor? Fernando Tatis Jr., arguably the most exhilarating player in the game when he’s hitting all his marks. Looking to extend the lead — or maybe just have a little fun — Tatis takes off from first base on a 2-1 pitch and is rewarded with a curveball in the dirt, a basestealer’s delight. Tatis not only beats the throw to second, it pings off his sliding leg and into no man’s land, dribbling slowly into shallow left field as the Friar Faithful slowly ascertain what’s about to happen. Tatis is going turbo mode.
Moments like this bring fans to their feet and opponents to their knees. Tatis — who reached first on an infield single, and saw the opportunity to turn that hit’s 49.7 mph exit velocity into a run — seemed hellbent on scoring as soon as the ball caromed away from the Cubs’ infield. Is stealing a base with a touchdown-sized lead sort of reckless and unnecessary? Sure. But these are the playoffs, where it’s never a bad idea to add on, especially when presented with the opportunity to exploit a catcher like Carson Kelly, who struggled with the running game all year. We can assume Tatis merely read the scouting report and was putting that knowledge to good use. But once he took second, surely he’d chill there (with no outs!) and give the heart of the Padres’ order a chance to drive him in. Right? Wrong:
Tatis did not stop at third, and probably didn’t even consider doing so. Why would he? Because his third base coach explicitly told him to, long before Tatis even reached third base? That’s super boring. And Tatis, ever the entertainer, sensed that this blowout needed a little extra oomph before people started leaving to beat the traffic. Flying into third base, completely ignoring Bob Henley’s stop sign, and rounding for home are the sorts of moves that only the game’s great showmen have the ability to recognize, and even fewer have the aplomb to pull off. Lurking backlash for running up the score be damned (thankfully, the internet seemed to agree that this play was so awesome that he was spared any criticism), Tatis wants to remind everyone that he’s capable of things other ballplayers are not.
The Padres’ rambunctious right fielder, who has an 89th-percentile sprint speed, correctly identified that his speed would provide much more exhilaration in this situation than scoring from second on a Dustin Harris single would. Again, pretty unnecessary given the circumstance, but people don’t pay postseason ticket prices to see the mundane. They want to see superstars do superstar things, punctuated with the type of emotional outburst that makes postseason baseball so special. Does one man’s primal scream after diving across home plate register as much of a sound when 47,000 San Diegans are also screaming? Probably not, but it makes for one hell of a highlight:
None of this even accounts for the fact that Tatis started this baseball bash with a leadoff home run, giving him seven in 17 playoff games and boosting his lifetime postseason OPS to a nirvanic 1.178. All this from a man who finished April with a 75 wRC+ but who put up a 143 the rest of the way, giving him a strong chance to finish in the top five of MVP voting. His 2026 statistics will show yet another season with at least 25 homers and 25 steals — the fourth time he’s done that — with the lowest strikeout rate of his still-ascendant career to boot. But the numbers won’t tell the full narrative arc. His first home run of the regular season famously did not come until late May, and his team’s playoff odds sagged to a season-low 7.4% in July. The Padres were under .500 as late as July 25, and their deadline acquisitions of Casey Mize and Robbie Ray didn’t do much to help. But thanks to a bullpen unit that tied for second all-time in collective WAR, Jackson Merrill’s second-half revitalization, the surprise production of Harris, Ty France, and Samad Taylor, plus Tatis finding some sort of flow state (which may or may not have something to do with planetary alignment), the Padres are poised to advance into October.
The lesson here? Chase wild, thrill-seeking endeavors over playing it safe. This style of play might just be what San Diego needs in a hypothetical Division Series against the Milwaukee Brewers and their tight, fundamentally sound, 103-win operation. Run free, Fernando Tatis Jr., and deal with the consequences later. At the very least, you gave everyone something to marvel at and helped your team to a convincing win. Which is kind of the whole point of playing postseason baseball.
