Cameron Cauley has one of the highest ceilings in the Texas Rangers organization. Selected in the third round of the 2021 draft out of Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu, Texas, the 20-year-old shortstop has been described by Eric Longenhagen as “an incredible athlete” who not only “has a chance to be a Gold Glove shortstop,” but also possesses “plus bat speed and the pop to do damage to the oppo gap.” In a second full professional season split between Low-A Down East and High-A Hickory, Cauley made strides by slashing .245/.333/.411 with 12 home runs and a 109 wRC+. Moreover, he took advantage of his plus-plus wheels by swiping 36 bases in 41 attempts.

There are reasons to pump the brakes. As our lead prospect analyst pointed out, Cauley’s throwing accuracy needs polishing, and his strikeout rate (32.6% since entering pro ball) is a major concern. Especially troublesome is a 25.8% in-zone swing-and-miss rate that compromises his ability to produce high exit velocities when he does square up a baseball.

Cauley, who carries 175 pounds on a lithe 5-foot-10 frame, discussed his game late in the Arizona Fall League season.

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David Laurila: I’ve read that you have elite athleticism. Do you agree with that?

Cameron Cauley: “I’d say so. God blessed me with athleticism. I’ve always been athletic, from a young age to now, so I’m pretty good at sports. I’m good at golf. I’m good at football and basketball…” Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a mean-spirited but persistent thread in American pop culture, in which the Midwest is depicted as a cultural backwater, populated by sleepy, gormless, unattractive rubes and devoid of meaningful art or culture. For example, this sidesplitting musical interlude from 30 Rock. As an East Coast snob who lived for many years among the Great Lakes, I find this line of comedy offensive. Midwesterners are friendly, vigorous, beautiful people, and they live in a land of marvels. (If you’re wondering why I’ve chosen to open with this confusing and risky metaphor: We just got a new assistant editor, Matt Martell, and I’m hazing him by handing him a grenade on his second day.)

But when it comes to pitching, the coastal elites might have a point: Standards have slipped a little in the heartland. For the Chicago White Sox and Pittsburgh Pirates, John Brebbia and Aroldis Chapman, respectively, are marquee signings. (Now I’ve thrown all that goodwill away by puncturing Pittsburghers’ delusion that they’re from the East Coast. How foolish of me.) Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s be honest: Dylan Cease is in the general baseball consciousness to such an extent right now because it’s all we have. The free agent class of 2023-24 was weak to begin with, and Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto have already signed. Juan Soto is now a Yankee. Tyler Glasnow got traded. Cease is such a focus because the shiniest free agents are gone and because if your team isn’t going to spend any money – Hi there, O’s! – he’s the best imaginable improvement.

Cease is a good pitcher with flaws. He’s a strikeout machine thanks to his glorious slider, and he’s made every start available to him for four straight years. He also walks far too many batters – partially thanks to his glorious slider – and despite sitting 95-97 mph, his fastball is remarkably hittable. Add that all up, and his aggregate numbers over that four-year span – 3.58 ERA, 3.70 FIP, 12.3 WAR in 585 innings – are excellent. But he always feels one bad start away from regression, one batter realizing that slider is unhittable away from a six-walk outing.

All that is to say that Cease probably isn’t the no-doubt ace that his 2022 season portended, but he’s a very good pitcher nonetheless. Steamer thinks he’s somewhere between the 21st and 40th best pitcher in baseball, which isn’t as good as his results, but I’m willing to take the over on that projection because a lot of it seems to rely on his home run prevention declining meaningfully. If your team has Cease as their second-best pitcher in 2024, they’re probably ecstatic about the top of their rotation. If they have him penciled in as their best pitcher, they might still be okay! He’s good, is my point. Read the rest of this entry »

The first two months of the offseason were entirely defined by one player: Shohei Ohtani. The two-way star’s departure for (the actual city of) Los Angeles had a particularly meaningful effect on his former club, which is in need of some major moves to be remotely competitive in his absence. To fill the Ohtani-sized hole on the roster, the Angels have signed… a 37-year old reliever, two different sidearmers named Adam, and a hurler whose claim to fame is having suffered multiple self-inflicted injuries as a result of frustration. In spite of these lackluster additions, ZiPS views this team rather favorably given the circumstances – nowhere near title favorites, but not complete embarrassments either. And while none of the relievers they’ve added thus far will really move the needle in either direction, their latest signing adds a significant high-leverage arm to the mix, with righty Robert Stephenson inking a three-year deal worth $33 million to come to Anaheim. Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros undoubtedly view their 2023 season as a disappointment. They won 90 games, their lowest full-season total since 2016. They won the AL West, but only via tiebreaker, and then lost a tight ALCS to the division rival Rangers. Viewed through the lens of Houston’s recent domination of the American League, even a solid result isn’t enough.

Just one problem: There weren’t a lot of obvious places for the team to improve. Their lineup is full of the guys who have been mashing for them for years. José Abreu might theoretically be a weak link, but he looked better in the playoffs, and it’s not like there are a ton of exciting first basemen available in free agency anyway. Michael Brantley’s retirement lets Yordan Alvarez DH more frequently, and between Jake Meyers and Chas McCormick, the team has outfielders to fill any voids out there.

Still, the Astros wanted to get better, and hats off to them for that. Could they use some pitching? Sure, of course, but their top duo of Justin Verlander and Framber Valdez is already great, and I really like both Hunter Brown and J.P. France as options behind them. If there was a weakness, it was a thin bullpen, but that can be fixed. Like, say, for example:

BREAKING: Star closer Josh Hader and the Houston Astros are in agreement on a five-year, $95 million contract, a source tells ESPN.

The deal contains no deferrals. It is the largest present-day value contract for a relief pitcher in baseball history.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) January 19, 2024

Read the rest of this entry »

Jace Jung is following in his brother’s footsteps, albeit via a distinctly different path. Unlike his older sibling, Texas Rangers 2023 rookie standout Josh Jung, the 23-year-old Detroit Tigers infield prospect isn’t a self-professed hitting nerd. Which isn’t to suggest he lacks the skills needed to one day wield an impact bat at the big league level. A top prospect in a solid Detroit system, the younger Jung is coming off of a first full professional season where he slashed .265/.376/.502 with 28 home runs and a 143 wRC+ between High-A West Michigan and Double-A Erie.

His left-handed stroke has long been his calling card. A three-year stalwart at Texas Tech University — the same school Josh attended — Jace put up an 1.116 OPS as a collegian before being taken 12th overall by the Tigers in the 2022 draft. That he’s continued to bash in pro ball is anything but a surprise. Possessing a plus power profile, he is in many ways a mirror image of his right-handed-hitting brother, though again, not when it comes to having an analytic approach to the craft. As he explained to me late in the Arizona Fall League season, Jace is a proponent of keeping things as simple as possible.

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David Laurila: Your brother told me that you’re not nearly as much of a hitting nerd as he is. How much do you study hitting?

Jace Jung: “I’ve actually gotten into it a lot more this year, trying to figure out what pitchers’ pitches do. At the same time, when I get up to the plate, I mostly just trust my swing. I know that what it comes down to for me is rhythm and timing. So really, I try to keep it as simple as possible when I get up there. I just try to hit the baseball.” Read the rest of this entry »

Billy Wagner has a chance to be voted into the Hall of Fame this year. As I type these words on Saturday evening, the erstwhile left-handed reliever — this in his penultimate appearance on the BBWAA ballot — is polling at 80.0% with nearly half of the electorate having disclosed their choices. If he finishes at or above the 75% threshold required for induction he will become the ninth closer enshrined in Cooperstown.

Many will argue that closers — at least not those named Mariano Rivera — don’t belong in the Hall of Fame. The reasoning, by and large, is lack of innings thrown (Wagner has just 903), which factors into comparably low WAR totals (Rivera has 38.6, whereas workmanlike starters such as Kenny Rogers and John Lackey are north of 40). Add in a rule that allows for what might be deemed “cheap saves” and the argument against closers is understandable.

Personally, I don’t think there are enough closers in the Hall of Fame. It’s not as though the role isn’t important, and it certainly isn’t recent. The first 15-save season came exactly 100 years ago, with Firpo Marberry doing the honors with the Washington Senators (the right-hander added two more saves in that year’s World Series). Marberry subsequently logged the first 20-save season in 1926, and by career’s end he’d led the American League in saves and appearances six times each. Marberry isn’t in the Hall of Fame, but when you factor in his historical significance — ditto his higher JAWS score than all of Rollie Fingers, Lee Smith, and Bruce Sutter — he arguably should be.

If a “closer” with Marberry’s statistical résumé — he finished with 99 saves and 148 wins (56 of them as a reliever) — could be deemed Hall-worthy, what about a Wagner contemporary like John Franco? While not as overpowering as Wagner, Franco did amass 424 saves — two more than the on-the-doorstep Hall of Famer’s total, and the most ever for a southpaw. Moreover, it ranks fifth-most all-time, while his 1,119 appearances ranks third-most. With the caveat that JAWS isn’t bullish on his credentials, Franco presents an intriguing case. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, I wrote about Emmanuel Clase. Specifically, I wondered whether a lower release point, or whatever caused that lower release point, was the reason his performance took a step back in 2023. I don’t know the answer for sure. I don’t even think there is a way to know the answer for sure, but I’ve spent the last few days thinking about release points. Clase’s has fallen roughly two inches over the last two years. That feels like a lot to me, but I realize that I don’t have a basis for that feeling. What happens to a pitcher’s release point on a year-over-year basis? Does it stay the same? What constitutes a normal amount of variance? Does it only fall off once things are starting to go wrong? Does it slowly degrade over time just like the pitcher himself, who is after all merely an ephemeral vessel of bone and sinew, destined to return unto the dust?

Naturally, there’s only one place to find answers for metaphysical questions like these: Baseball Savant. I pulled the average vertical release point for every pitcher in the Statcast era, calculating the year-over-year change for their primary fastball. For pitchers who threw both a four-seamer and a sinker, I ignored whichever pitch they threw less often. I also threw out seasons in which players changed their release point by more than four inches, which to me indicates an intentional change to a pitcher’s delivery and overall approach to pitching. We’re interested in cases like Clase’s, where his release point changed unintentionally as he tried to pitch in the same way.

That left me with a goodly sample of 5,353 player seasons. In addition to calculating the change in vertical release point, I also noted the change in fastball velocity, along with the changes in the pitcher’s overall FIP-, whiff rate, and groundball rate (adjusted to league average). The first thing I did was create an aging curve, but before I show it to you, I’d like to tell you what I was expecting to see. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a biased observer. I watch the offseason hoping something will happen, and not just because I’m rooting for one particular team to get better. My job is to write about baseball, and it’s a lot easier to write about things changing than things staying the same. “This just in: Yankees roster same as yesterday” is not a story that I’d be very excited to write, and it’s also probably not a story that many people would be excited to read. Change is imperative for content, especially in the offseason.

With that intro in mind, I have a bone to pick with the Baltimore Orioles – a bone that, coincidentally enough, Meg and Other Ben discussed on today’s Effectively Wild. The Orioles won the AL East last year and finished with 101 wins, second-most in baseball. They seemingly ran out of gas in the playoffs; they didn’t hit or pitch particularly well in their ALDS loss to the Rangers. They followed that up by doing – well, a whole lot of nothing. It’s not just that they’re making my job harder. They’re making their own job harder, and doing so while the clock is ticking on their young, cost-controlled team core.

The AL East is always a competitive division, and it’s gone exactly according to type so far this winter. The Yankees went out and got a star – Juan Soto, not Alex Verdugo, if you’re keeping score at home. The Rays traded six nickels, two dimes, and two pennies for a quarter, three dimes, and a nickel. The Blue Jays shored up their infield depth, though they still need to find a replacement for Matt Chapman. (The current leader in the clubhouse for that position? Matt Chapman.) The Red Sox – well, the Red Sox are certainly making moves, even if I can’t quite figure out the end goal. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2023 season seemed to be studded with stars. Two-way phenom Shohei Ohtani turned in by far his best offensive season (not to mention a very good pitching season before succumbing to injury) en route to a unanimous MVP selection. Ronald Acuña Jr. made counting stat history with the first ever 40–70 season, posting a .428 wOBA that was somehow 35 points shy of his .463 xwOBA and earning his own unanimous recognition from MVP voters. This despite playing in the same league as Mookie Betts, who had what would have been a career-best season for almost anyone else, slashing .307/.408/.579 with a career-high 39 home runs. Freddie Freeman had the best season of one of the best active careers in baseball, somehow improving on a 2022 campaign that featured a .325/.407/.511 slash line and 7.1 WAR. And I could go on — Matt Olson hit 54 home runs, Marcus Semien and Corey Seager anchored a championship lineup, Francisco Lindor quietly put up another 6.0-WAR season, and Corbin Carroll wasted no time in establishing himself as a bona fide superstar. Read the rest of this entry »