Pitching is complicated. There are so many layers to it, including mechanics, sequencing, proprioception, supination/pronation… the list goes on and on. Depending on a player’s personality and knack for including analytical information in their learning and development process, digesting this information can be a battle. Over the years, we’ve seen Sonny Gray progress through this experience with multiple teams; now in Minnesota, it seems like he is hitting his peak. As David Laurila wrote, Sonny Gray is evolving as a pitcher.
That interview that David conducted with Gray is a must read. Having the player’s perspective on how they’ve thought through their own changes and development experience helps gives direction to an analyst, and it’s clear in that interview that Gray’s goal is to have a pitch that moves in almost any direction. As somebody who doesn’t have overwhelming fastball velocity (16th percentile), it’s crucial that he stays unpredictable and deceptive. That hasn’t been a problem for him in the past, but this year he has leveled up his diversification. Below is a plot of his pitch movement chart in 2023 (top) versus 2022 (bottom):
Last season, there were essentially two tiers of separation: fastballs in one area, breaking balls in another. For the most part, there isn’t much negative blending happening within either pitch group. The two-seamer has distinct horizontal separation from the four-seamer, and the curveball has vertical separation from the sweeper. The horizontal distribution of the sweeper is on the tail ends of the curveball; Gray manipulated the pitch to have more or less sweep than the curveball to ensure that separation. This year, he has taken his 2022 arsenal, improved upon it, and added two more effective pitches in the cutter and changeup.
In this interview with Rob Friedman, Gray goes into deep detail about the shape of each of his pitches and why he thought it would be valuable to include two new ones, particularly the cutter, in his repertoire, and about the value of his cutter serving as an in-between for the two fastballs and two breaking balls. From the hitter’s point of view, doing that complicates attacking or locking in on one zone or speed. If you’re a left-handed hitter sitting on a four-seam fastball on the inner third, a cutter could move in and jam your barrel or, if it has a little more vertical depth, slide right under. The same idea can be applied for expecting breaking balls; the cutter can stay up and freeze you instead of having the level of drop or sweep of a curveball or sweeper. In addition, the cutter velocity is just a few ticks faster than the two breaking balls and a few ticks slower than the two fastballs.
Gray has has done almost everything possible to assure he maintains deception. His release points are consistent. He has multiple layers of movement both vertically and horizontally. He can vary velocity and movement within a given pitch. If you were to build a pitcher who doesn’t have great velocity but can spin the heck out of the ball, this is a darn good blueprint.
It’s important to see exactly how Gray uses these pitches within the context of an at-bat. You can have all this movement and velocity diversity, but you still need to command each pitch and sequence correctly. I’ll start with an at-bat against a right-handed hitter.
Pitch 1 (0-0 count, four-seamer)
Pitch 2 (0-1 count, cutter)
Pitch 3 (0-2 count, curveball)
Pitch 4 (0-2 count, sweeper)
Pitch 5 (1-2 count, sweeper)
Gray has gotten his cutter usage up to 17.6% on the year; you should expect to see it only one or two times in an at-bat. But this at-bat against Yan Gomes is a perfect example of how the pitch allows him to progress with a four-seamer through to a sweeper. Gomes didn’t pull the trigger on the upper third four-seamer but did on a cutter that had enough separation to miss his barrel. Gray followed up with a curveball out of the same tunnel, and Gomes chopped it on the ground for a foul ball.
At this point, Gomes had failed to differentiate his swing enough to get his barrel to any of these pitches, and Gray still had the sweeper in his back pocket. The first he threw was backed up out of the zone, but the second was placed in the same tunnel as the other three pitches, and Gomes swung too early on it. Again, the cutter isn’t the main weapon here; it’s another layer to keep Gomes guessing.
Now, here is an example of how Gray used the pitch against a lefty:
Pitch 1 (0-0 count, curveball)
Pitch 2 (1-0 count, cutter)
Pitch 3 (1-1 count, curveball)
Pitch 4 (1-2 count, two-seamer)
This is one of my favorite sequences from any pitcher all year. After starting with a curveball out of the zone against Brandon Belt, Gray followed up with a cutter that stayed up. Belt was clearly prepared for a breaking ball of some sort based on his timing and swing path, but the cutter got above his barrel. Because Gray was able to keep the pitch in the zone, Belt’s eye level was changed, leading to him chasing the next curveball below the zone. With a 1–2 count and two bad swings from Belt, Gray could’ve gone in multiple directions but ultimately opted for a front-door running two-seamer at the knees. Why? Because Belt had showed Gray that his swing was geared for middle-of-the-zone loft; horizontal entry low was unhittable for that swing path if Gray could execute it, and that he did.
Gray’s -5 run value on his cutter is eighth in the league, right behind pitchers with established elite cutters like Kenley Jansen, David Robertson, Marcus Stroman, and Camilo Doval. To add such an effective pitch — a .231 batting average against, a .233 wOBA, and it doesn’t have bad splits, with a .153 wOBA and -2.4 run value versus lefties — into your arsenal this quickly is a career-changing development. All that, and I haven’t mentioned Gray’s changeup usage and effectiveness thus far (-1 run value). Having a sixth pitch with a .125 batting average against is a premium not many other pitchers in baseball have, even if you just occasionally flash it (and Gray has thrown it just 6.4% of the time).
Gray is on pace for the highest fWAR of his career and is a mere 0.4 wins behind the AL leader, Kevin Gausman. There may be some regression coming considering he has only given up one home run all season, but that is a skill he’s displayed his entire career anyways. If he can keep this up and stay healthy, he is in a for a career year.
The Guardians made a catching change heading into the weekend, designating veteran Mike Zunino for assignment and calling up prospect Bo Naylor from Triple-A Columbus to take his place. Zunino, signed this past offseason, hit .177/.271/.306 in 42 games in Cleveland, “good” enough for a 63 wRC+ and -0.1 WAR. Naylor, in his second go of Triple-A, is having a season similar to last one, hitting .254/.393/.498 with 13 homers in 60 games, giving him a wRC+ of 122.
Signed to a one-year, $6 million contract this past offseason, Zunino was never intended to be a long-term option for the Guardians. He’s always been a maddingly inconsistent hitter from year to year, oscillating between .850-OPS and .550-OPS seasons, and he missed nearly half of 2022 due to thoracic outlet syndrome. But the hope was that he’d be good enough to hold down the fort long enough for Naylor to get more time behind the plate in the minors.
Zunino’s offense didn’t initially seem all that crucial to his continued employment. Over the last decade, Cleveland has been more than happy to employ catchers who struggle with the bat, so long as said catcher was at least more than competent defensively. The last time Cleveland’s backstops combined for a wRC+ of even 90 was 2014, during the early stages of the Yan Gomes residency. This was a noted shift from the previous decade, when the organization took the opposite approach, with defensively challenged catchers like Victor Martinez and Carlos Santana making their money with their bats. Despite the absymal offense, if Zunino’s defense this season had been at the levels of his time with the Mariners, Naylor would still be hanging out in the state capital. Read the rest of this entry »
Marcus Semien is up to his usual tricks. He’s eighth among all position players in WAR, comfortably the best on a first-place Rangers squad. For the third straight year and the fourth out of five, he’s on track to rack up four-plus WAR as one of the two best players on his team. For someone who didn’t post an above-average batting line until his seventh major league season, it’s an impressive accomplishment.
Perhaps more impressive to me: he’s doing it right under our noses, and no one seems to notice. Semien is good at everything but not in a way that adds up to a tremendous offensive line. His best skill might be durability. He’s clearly a very good player, but his particular set of skills are highlighted by the framework we grade him under. I’m interested in Semien as a player, and I’m also interested in why he’s the poster boy for both what WAR gets right and where it has limits.
Let’s start with how Semien does it. It’s fairly straightforward: he’s above average at every phase of the game. It begins with his plate discipline. To put it simply, he doesn’t make bad decisions about when to swing. In each of the past five years, he’s accomplished an impressive double: chasing fewer pitches than league average and simultaneously swinging at more in-zone pitches than league average. To state the obvious, that’s a great way to both rack up a pile of walks and avoid strikeouts. Read the rest of this entry »
Joe Jacques had an anything-but-ordinary big-league debut with the Boston Red Sox on Monday at Fenway Park. The 28-year-old southpaw not only entered a game against the Colorado Rockies with two outs and the bases loaded in the 10th inning; he did so in a downpour. Moreover, the first of the five pitches he threw came on a 1-0 count. Unbeknownst to Jacques until he returned to the dugout, he’d committed a pitch clock violation before the 20-second countdown had started. More on that in a moment.
Drafted 984th overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2016 out of Manhattan College, Jacques had been claimed off of waivers by the Red Sox last December. Almost exclusively a reliever since coming to pro ball, he’d made 146 appearances down on the farm, including 23 with Triple-A Worcester this season. If there were any nerves associated with his taste of high-leverage MLB action, he wasn’t letting on.
“Honestly, I didn’t have that much of an adrenaline spike,” the Shrewsbury, New Jersey native told me on Wednesday. “That’s not the time to be panicking. With the bases loaded, in the rain, you’ve just got to come in and pound the zone. Plus, having been in Yankee Stadium the previous three days — I got hot once — definitely helped my nerves. I was pretty locked in.”
That wasn’t necessarily the case in terms of a pitch clock rule that many fans aren’t even aware of. What happened was initially a mystery to the left-hander. Read the rest of this entry »
The A’s have spent most of this season as the laughingstocks of the majors. Stripped of their most talented players as ownership focused on sneaking out of Oakland, they carried a .207 winning percentage into June, putting them on pace to beat the 1962 Mets’ modern-day record of 120 losses. With their recent seven-game winning streak — remarkably timed to coincide with the Nevada state senate debating and finally approving a bill to build a stadium on the Las Vegas strip, all but sealing their fate in Oakland — they’ve edged above what we might call the Throneberry Line. All the while, the Royals, losers of nine straight and 12 out of their last 13, have actually slipped below them in terms of winning percentage, .265 (18–50) to .267 (19–52).
This actually isn’t the first time the Royals have had a worse record than the A’s this year; Oakland won its first and fourth games of the season, whereas Kansas City lost its first and started 1–6. It took until April 8 for the Royals (3–6) to move ahead of the A’s (2–6). Since then, the two teams have spent a few days with the same record and winning percentage — on April 21 (4–16, .200), April 24 (5–18, .217) and May 6 (8–26, .235) — but the Royals had never been worse than the A’s until this week:
Where the plight of the A’s has captured national attention, that of the Royals has largely evaded it. That’s largely because the team’s ownership isn’t in the process of trying to relocate the franchise, which isn’t to say it doesn’t want a new stadium. But entering Friday, Kansas City was in a virtual tie for the sixth-worst winning percentage of any team since 1901 and is playing at a pace that would produce a 43–119 record, which would tie the 2003 Tigers for the second-highest total of losses in a season, behind only the 1962 Mets’ 120. Even if the Royals can’t catch the Mets, they’ll have to play much better ball to avoid surpassing the franchise record of 106 losses, set in 2005. Read the rest of this entry »
Around this time a year ago, Julio Teheran left the Atlantic League’s Staten Island FerryHawks for the Mexican League’s Toros de Tijuana, a move that on the FerryHawks Instagram account described as the right-hander getting “one step closer back to Major League Baseball.” Those steps were many: over the next 12 months, Teheran would suit up for Staten Island, Tijuana, Sultanes de Monterrey in the Mexican League, Toros del Este in the Dominican Winter League, the San Diego Padres as a non-roster spring training invitee, Team Colombia in the World Baseball Classic, and the Padres’ Triple-A El Paso Chihuahuas. Seven teams (from four different countries) later, he got his MLB shot, signing in late May with a Brewers team that had already lost five starters — Brandon Woodruff, Aaron Ashby, Eric Lauer, Jason Alexander, and Wade Miley – to injuries. Milwaukee needed a healthy arm badly, and Teheran had been looking for just that kind of opportunity.
The Brewers couldn’t have expected much from Teheran, the way you can’t usually expect much from the most available pitcher on the day that you place a fifth starter on the injured list. He hadn’t thrown a major league pitch since April 2021 with the Tigers, when he allowed one run over five innings before hitting the IL with a shoulder strain the following week. Even his Triple-A stint in the spring had been a mixed bag in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League.
But Teheran has answered the call, allowing just four earned runs and averaging over six innings in his four starts for the Brewers, striking out 16 and walking just three with a 1.48 ERA, 3.52 FIP and 4.48 xFIP. Those final two stats suggest a few balls bouncing his way through these first four starts, and he’s not going to give up a single earned run each time out there. But the early returns are strong: opposing hitters have a .396 xSLG and .294 xwOBA against him, and both his barrel and hard-hit rates (on just 70 batted balls, mind you) are comfortably above league average. In his last start on Saturday, he fanned six A’s over 7.0 one-run innings, his longest big league outing in nearly four years. Read the rest of this entry »
Luke Raley has been one of the best hitters on baseball’s best team this year. Playing primarily against right-handed pitchers, the 28-year-old left-handed-hitting outfielder has ten two-baggers and 11 home runs to go along with a .258/.343/.570 slash line and a 154 wRC+ in 172 plate appearances, An outstanding athlete for his size — he’s listed at 6-foot-4, 235 pounds — he’s legged out a pair of triples and stolen eight bases in ten attempts.
It wouldn’t be fair to say that he’s come out of nowhere, but the Hinckley, Ohio native did enter this season with a meager resume. Selected in the seventh round of the 2016 draft out of Division II Lake Erie College by the Los Angeles Dodgers, Raley had a .538 OPS in 72 plate appearances with the NL West club in 2021; he had a .584 OPS in the same number of plate appearances with the Rays last season. He was anything but a sure bet to make the Opening Day roster when he reported to spring training.
How has Raley, whom Tampa Bay acquired last March in exchange for Tanner Dodson, emerged as a productive hitter at the big league level in his ninth professional season? I sat down with him recently to find out.
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David Laurila: How much of your success this year is a matter of opportunity, and how much is from improvements you’ve made to your game?
Luke Raley: “I think it’s a mixture of both, honestly. I kind of knew what I needed to work on going into the offseason, and I focused hard on them. And then, obviously, the more opportunities you have, the easier it is to get into a groove. So it was adjustments, and the opportunity certainly helped.”
Laurila: What were the needed adjustments?
Raley: “I needed to be more efficient to the ball, so I did everything I could to minimize movements at the plate. I brought my hands closer to my body, more into my launch position, instead of having them away from my body and then having to get them there. I also banged my leg kick and went to just a straight stride, which I felt could help me keep keep my head more still and recognize pitches earlier. Those are the two big ones, my hand placement and minimizing my leg movement.”
Laurila:Edgar Martinez mentioned having the hands close to the trigger position when I talked hitting with him a few years ago. It simplifies the action.
Raley: “That was kind of our thought process. It’s something that we even talked about last season, but we felt that was a big adjustment to make midseason. We decided that going into the offseason it was going to be my goal to kind of slot my hands in a better position. That would make me a little bit quicker to the ball.” Read the rest of this entry »
There are two predominant fastball types in the majors these days: the four-seamer and the sinker. The cutter usually gets categorized as a fastball too, and for some pitchers, like Corbin Burnes and Kenley Jansen, it certainly is one. Then again, most pitchers use their cutter as a secondary or tertiary offering, and the average cutter comes in at 89 mph; that’s closer to the average changeup than the average four-seamer. The cutter defies simple classification. Then there’s the split-finger fastball, which is nothing more than a misnomer. It’s an offspeed pitch, no doubt about it, and therefore “splitter” is the more widely accepted label nowadays.
So, back to those two fastballs. The four-seamer is essentially the “throw it as hard as you can” ball; if you hear someone use the generic term “fastball” to describe a particular pitch, this is the one they’re talking about. In terms of grip, a four-seamer isn’t all that different from the way any other fielder throws the baseball. The sinker, on the other hand, is a more specialized weapon. As the name suggests, it has more movement than a four-seam fastball, and it’s more useful for inducing weak contact than blowing the ball past the opposing batter. Yet, modern pitchers have been taking that “throw it as hard as you can” approach with their sinkers as well. Over the past four seasons, the average sinker is only 0.6 mph slower than the average four-seamer.
Thus far in 2023, 52 starting pitchers have crossed the 50-inning threshold while using both a four-seam fastball and a sinker at least 3% of the time. Of those 52, 83% throw both pitches within 1 mph of one another. All but two throw both pitches within 2 mph of one another. As you might have guessed, I’m here to write about the two exceptions, the two starting pitchers who throw their four-seamer and sinker nearly 3 mph apart: Shohei Ohtani and Dean Kremer. Read the rest of this entry »
Gary Cosby Jr.-Tuscaloosa News / USA TODAY NETWORK
GAAAAAAH COLLEGE BASEBALL! No intro. Part 1 of my Men’s College World Series preview is here. Go read it if you haven’t. The second installment is below and delivers a brief overview of the four contestants I didn’t address last time: Their record, how they got here, and a brief précis on a key player, as well as a bit of trivia you can pull out to impress your friends or use as an icebreaker at a bar. LET’S ROCK AND ROLL.
No. 1 Wake Forest Record: 52-10 (22-7 ACC; Won ACC Atlantic regular season, eliminated in semifinals of conference tournament) Path to Omaha: No. 1 overall seed, No. 1 seed in Winston-Salem Regional (3-0, def. George Mason 2x, Maryland); Won Winston-Salem Super Regional vs. Alabama 2-0
To call this team a buzzsaw would be an understatement. The Demon Deacons are not only undefeated in the tournament, they won those five games by a combined score of 75-16. And those weren’t cupcakes they smashed; Alabama has been one of the hottest teams in the country since former head coach Brad Bohannon was fired for his involvement in a gambling scandal. Maryland was a monster by Big Ten standards and Wake put 21 runs on the board against them. Wake hasn’t lost a weekend series all year, and swept top-10 national seeds Clemson and Miami in the regular season.
Key Number: 0.73.
Wake Forest’s team ERA, 2.84, is not the key number, and that’s because it’s more impressive in context. Having the lowest ERA in Division I is great, but when Tennessee is no. 2 and Virginia and Oral Roberts are in the top 10, whoop-dee-doo, right? Well, that 2.84 is about three quarters of a run lower than any other team’s ERA. Only six other teams have a team ERA under 4.00. And it’s not like Wake is just about defense; the Demon Deacons are also third in Division I in both runs and OBP, and sixth in slugging percentage.
Better Know a Player: Junior RHP Rhett Lowder
It’s a crowded field. Wake had two different position players post an OBP over .500 and a SLG over .800, and the entire weekend rotation made first team All-ACC. I wanted to get creative and pick someone off the wall, but in the end why not go with the team’s biggest star? Lowder posted a 1.92 ERA and struck out 131 batters in 108 innings this season. He has a plus changeup and plus command and will probably be the second or third college pitcher taken in next month’s draft.
Trivia: The ACC is, what do we think, the second-best baseball conference out there? Well, before Virginia won the natty in 2015, the conference’s only Men’s College World Series title came courtesy of Wake Forest in 1955. That’s despite the ACC putting out numerous powerhouse schools; during that drought, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Virginia, and North Carolina (twice) all played for the title and fell at the final hurdle. (Miami won it all in 1985, but that was before the Hurricanes joined the ACC.) As an alumnus of an SEC school with an ACC archrival, and therefore something of an SEC jingoist, I found that streak riotously entertaining and was very sorry to see it end.
No. 8 Stanford Record: 44-18 (23-7 Pac-12; Won Pac-12 regular season, eliminated in semifinals of conference tournament) Path to Omaha: No. 8 overall seed, No. 1 seed in Stanford Regional (4-1, def. San Jose St., Cal State Fullerton, went 2-1 vs. Texas A&M); Won Stanford Super Regional vs. Texas 2-1.
Oh God, don’t make me explain this.
Okay, I’m just going to give you the last half-inning of Game 3 of the super regional. The score is tied 6-6, Stanford has already blown two three-run leads in the game and has been running into outs all evening. The inning before, they had a player run into his own bunted ball in fair territory, then had another runner get doubled off trying to tag up on cannon-armed Longhorns right fielder Dylan Campbell. In fairness, it was quite the throw, on the money, off the wrong foot, all the way across the field. If Bo Jackson is impressed, you know it’s good.
Anyway, with two outs, Pac-12 Player of the Year Alberto Rios came to the plate and lined a ball off the left field wall. Rios ran like hell out of the box, rounded first, and then slowed down when — for reasons unclear to anyone watching — the entire Stanford team poured out of the dugout. Rios, convinced he’d just hit a walk-off home run, tossed his helmet up in the air, slowed down, and almost got thrown out at second.
Stanford's Alberto Rios thought he hit a walk-off homer, only to find out that the ball didn't go over the wall, nearly getting thrown out at second.
I’ve never been to Sunken Diamond, but just based on what I saw on TV, it looked pretty dark there. Maybe Stanford got swindled out of its lighting budget by Elizabeth Holmes. That no doubt played a role in confusing Rios and his teammates (as did the mostly white Pac-12 logo), and definitely came into play two batters later. Drew Bowser popped up the third pitch he saw, and it stayed in the air forever. Long enough that any one of four Texas defenders, including Campbell, could have run it down. If any of them could see it.
Because that ball spent about six minutes in the air, and because there were two outs, Rios was pretty much at home plate by the time the ball landed. Stanford went to Omaha, and Texas went back to an offseason of nightmares. Someone in the comments of Part 1 said this was the first college baseball game they ever went to. I cannot imagine.
Key Number: 156.
That, in case you’ve been under a rock over the past week, is the number of pitches thrown by Stanford left-hander Quinn Mathews in his 16-strikeout complete game against Texas in Game 2 of the super regional. As you’d expect, there’s been Discourse on this subject, and here’s my take on the matter.
From the start of college baseball up until 10 or 15 years ago, coaches didn’t give a crap about their pitchers’ long-term health. Complete games of 140 or more pitches were commonplace, as were short rest relief appearances. Kirk Saarloos, now TCU’s head coach, would close on Fridays and start on Sundays when he was at Cal State Fullerton, like a Gen-X Ellis Kinder. My favorite college baseball game of all time, the South Carolina-Virginia national semifinal in 2011, featured some absolutely appalling pitcher usage by both coaches.
But it’s gotten better. Certain schools and coaches got a reputation for blowing prospects’ elbows and shoulders out. They got called out in the media, and had that reputation used against them by other coaches in recruiting. And eventually, many of the worst offenders retired. It was still a real problem as recently as 2018, when Oregon State freshman Kevin Abel won the College World Series by throwing a 129-pitch shutout on zero days’ rest in the decisive game against Arkansas.
I used to be a pitch count hardliner, but my views have evolved over the years for a few reasons. First, pitcher health is an inexact science. We don’t know if pitch no. 118 or 119 will be the one that leads to a torn UCL, and it’s silly to pretend otherwise. Second, many of these pitchers will go pro in something other than sports. If a potential first-round pick starts on two days’ rest, that’s a decision that could cost the kid millions of dollars. If that pitcher is a senior at a no. 4 seed out of the MAAC who’s going to go to go to pharmacy school in the fall, who cares? Third, these games are themselves inherently meaningful. Most of the players involved — even the majority of the ones who do go pro — will never participate in a bigger game after leaving college. In order to win these games, limited additional risk is sometimes appropriate. This last point can either be lost on or irrelevant to many observers who focus solely on professional scouting and development, and are frequently the biggest pitch count scolds.
Would I let Paul Skenes, the best pitcher in college baseball, throw 124 pitches in a five-run game against Tulane? Absolutely not. But it’s not the end of the world, and it’s a lot better than how LSU coach Jay Johnson managed his staff on his last trip to Omaha, with Arizona in 2016. I wasn’t wild about Texas using Big 12 Pitcher of the Year Lucas Gordon out of the ‘pen against Stanford two days after he’d thrown 110 pitches. But for a short relief outing, with the season on the line… just don’t make a habit out of it.
This isn’t Wayne Graham and Augie Garrido’s college baseball, in short, and in many borderline cases I can at least see the coach’s logic.
But 156 pitches? In 2023, by a guy who’s going to be a Day 2 pick? It’s indefensible, no matter how heroically Mathews performed under those conditions.
Better Know a Player: Junior OF Alberto Rios
The guy who almost synthesized DeSean Jackson and Fred Merkle was absolutely the player Stanford wanted at the plate with the season on the line. In 61 games this year, Rios hit .387/.491/.715 with 18 home runs and 23 doubles. He’s also not afraid to grind; he was hit by 11 pitches this season, second on the team. Having a 1.200 OPS is all the more impressive when you consider that this is Rios’ third season at Stanford, and heading into 2023 he’d never even gotten a hit. In his first two years with the team, he’d played in just eight total games, going 0-for-7 with a walk.
Trivia: The West Coast used to be the nexus of college baseball, but historical powerhouses like Southern Cal, Cal State Fullerton, and Arizona State have fallen on hard times as the money and talent has flowed toward the SEC. Nevertheless, Stanford is making its third straight trip to Omaha, and is the only returning team from last year’s Men’s College World Series.
No. 5 LSU Record: 48-15 (19-10 SEC; Finished 2nd in SEC West, eliminated in third round of the SEC Tournament) Path to Omaha: No. 5 overall seed, No. 1 seed in Baton Rouge Regional (3-0, def. Tulane, Oregon St. 2x); Won Baton Rouge Super Regional 2-0 vs. Kentucky
LSU was the no. 1-ranked team in the country from the preseason until early May, on the strength of having presumptive first overall pick Dylan Crews in the outfield, as well as the clear top two incoming transfers: Skenes and third baseman Tommy White. This in addition to a strong freshman class and a group of returning veterans — including Crews and first baseman Tre’ Morgan — who were coming off a season that would’ve been strong by most programs’ standards. That included 40 wins, a 17-13 conference record, and a trip to a regional final.
But LSU is not most programs; it is one of the most storied, best-resourced teams in the country, perhaps the best-resourced team in the country. And second-year head coach Jay Johnson, to his credit, built a roster commensurate with those expectations.
It’s not without flaws. The pitching staff after Skenes is vulnerable, particularly in the bullpen. And LSU lost two of its last three regular-season series. This is not the best team in the country, not the kind of unwavering, merciless killing machine Wake Forest built. What LSU is, however, is the most talented team in the country, a top-five offense, with the best pitcher in the field. It’s been tested by the kind of outrageously tough schedule every SEC team has to go through; of those 15 losses, 12 came against teams that made the NCAA Tournament. That includes all three of LSU’s regular-season nonconference losses.
Key Number: 188.
That’s how many batters right-hander Skenes struck out in just 107 innings this year. Of course, if you’ve been keeping up with your college baseball coverage here at FanGraphs Dot Com, you already know about Skenes, whom I interviewed before the season.
Triple-digit fastball, slider that stops just before the plate to ask for directions, good change-up. Skenes is listed at 6-foot-6, 247 pounds and looks four inches taller and 40 pounds heavier on the mound. And yet he’s shockingly athletic for a guy that big; he was a catcher until recently, and told me he missed being on the other side of the battery. In terms of talent as a college pitcher, people have compared him to Stephen Strasburg, which I think is a little ambitious. But I agree, there is not a pitching prospect this good in most draft classes.
Better Know a Player: Sophomore 3B Tommy White
I’d argue that the Tigers don’t just have the biggest star in college baseball, they have the three biggest stars: Skenes and outfielder Dylan Crews, the two top college prospects in the draft, and White. Skenes gets plenty of attention because of his extremely GIFable repertoire, while Crews shot to the top of everyone’s draft board because he had a .570 OBP this year and can probably play center field in the pros.
But don’t sleep on White, who had a monster freshman season at N.C. State last year before transferring to LSU in the offseason. He hit .377/.439/.750 with 22 home runs and 22 doubles, both tops on one of the best offensive teams in the country, and did so while transitioning to third base full-time after splitting time among the corners and DH as a freshman.
Trivia: Dani Wexelman tweeted this fun fact yesterday and I don’t think I can beat it: When LSU’s current juniors were freshmen, the Tigers opened the season against Air Force. There, Crews hit his first collegiate home run… off of Paul Skenes.
Tennessee Record: 43-20 (16-14 SEC, Finished fourth in SEC East, eliminated in first round of conference tournament) Path to Omaha: No. 2 seed in Clemson Regional (3-0, def. Charlotte 2x, Clemson); Won Hattiesburg Super Regional 2-1 vs. Southern Mississippi
The Vols got their spot in Omaha the hard way; they beat no. 4 national seed Clemson in the best baseball game that’s going to be played anywhere in 2023, I’m sure of it. Tennessee rallied from two runs down with two outs and the bases empty in the top of the ninth inning, when Zane Denton hit a three-run homer to take the lead after being down 0-2 in the count. Then Clemson came back in the bottom of the ninth to tie; the two teams were down to their last strike in that inning three times between them and both survived. Both teams escaped a bases-loaded, no-out jam in extra innings before Tennessee finally broke through in the 14th inning, tying the program record for longest game.
It was a tense affair, with both sides exchanging words throughout; Clemson outfielder Cam Cannarella was tossed in the 13th inning for running afoul of the NCAA’s absurd rules about taunting. (John Calvin took a look at what college umpires are supposed to call and said, “You need to loosen up a little bit there, bro.”) But it was nice to see the two orangest teams in baseball come to a compromise when they went head-to-head: Tennessee wore black jerseys, Clemson purple.
The Vols then had to come back to win back-to-back elimination games after dropping the super regional opener to Southern Miss. But they’ve played with their backs to the wall all year.
Key Number: 23-14 (5-10).
On April 18, Tennessee lost by seven runs at home to a Tennessee Tech team that ended up finishing 13 games below .500. The Vols had just been swept by Arkansas the previous weekend, and their conference record sat at 5-10. After that loss to Tennessee Tech in April, the Vols won their next nine games by a combined score of 108-33, including sweeps of Vanderbilt and Mississippi State that brought their conference record back over .500. They’ve won 20 of their past 26.
The slow start followed by a rapid turnaround stands in sharp contrast to 2022, when the Vols started 31-1 (their second loss was, again, a midweek defeat to Tennessee Tech) and ended up as the no. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. But things slowly deteriorated, culminating in a disastrous super regional against Notre Dame. Star outfielder Drew Gilbert was ejected for arguing balls and strikes in Game 1, and because player ejections carry an automatic one-game suspension, Gilbert missed the rubber match and the Vols lost.
And I guess this is as good a place as any to mention the one thing you need to know about Tennessee: They’re the most hated team in college baseball.
In the SEC, it’s easy for teams to have boom-and-bust cycles. LSU is always good. Vandy, Florida, and Arkansas have always been good under their current head coaches, and basically everyone else has ups and downs. Because this is the SEC and two thirds of the conference gets into a regional every year, “down” is a relative term, but still.
Tennessee was like that until Tony Vitello became head coach in 2018. The Vols have won 40 or more games their past four full seasons, went to Omaha in 2021, and had the aforementioned historic regular season last year. Vitello coaches an aggressive, hard-hitting, hard-throwing brand of baseball. Angels flamethrower Ben Joyce played for Vitello at UT, where they called him the “Volunteer Fireman,” even though he had a teammate who also threw 100-plus named Chase Burns.
Vitello’s team plays with a lot of energy. They celebrate, they needle their opponents, they talk back to umpires (in 2021, Vitello got tossed from a College World Series game). ESPN color commentator Kyle Peterson said during the Clemson game that the Vols aren’t afraid to “wear the black hat.” Which is both a lovely euphemism and an excellent distillation of what makes Tennessee unique. In every other sport, there are teams that are comfortable playing the bad guy. They go right up to the edge and sometimes over it, and if their opponents or other fans get angry, too bad. No one likes us, and we don’t care.
Baseball teams, by and large, don’t do that. And I have no idea why. Ironically, the Astros were getting close to mastering the kayfabe villain role right up until the moment they got caught stealing signs, at which point they folded instead of doubling down. I think Tennessee is an exciting, engaging, provocative team. This is a minority opinion. College baseball fans, generally speaking, come in two cultural flavors: frothing, blinkered partisans and buttoned-down decorum fetishists. These two disparate strands have two things in common: They’re incredibly touchy, and they think the Volunteers are a bunch of jackasses.
So yeah, maybe Tennessee is evil. But sometimes a little evil is just what the game needs.
Better Know a Player: Sophomore 2B Christian Moore
Moore and his double play partner, Maui Ahuna, have been everywhere this postseason. Moore was the MVP of the Clemson Regional, where he hit four of his 17 home runs this season.
T4 | GIVE ME CHRISTIAN MOORE
The Vols break through with a solo shot from No. 1!!
In total, Moore is 9-for-21 this tournament, with those four home runs and three multi-hit games. Over the full season, Moore hit .313/.458/.627, and led the Vols in OBP and stolen bases. If Tennessee is able to score along with LSU in their first-round matchup, Moore and Ahuna will have to drive the offense.
Trivia: More on Vitello and the boom-and-bust nature of Tennessee baseball. Vitello’s first regional appearance in 2019 broke a 13-year tournament drought for the Vols. He’s now made the tournament four years running. One more will tie the program record of five straight, set between 1993 and 1997 by teams that featured, among others, Todd Helton and R.A. Dickey.
The Men’s College World Series starts at 2 p.m. ET on Friday, with TCU-Oral Roberts.
I think people tend to overestimate their ability to avoid disappointment. We try to temper our excitement so that we won’t feel let down when something goes wrong, but it doesn’t really work. The bad times are always going to hurt. More importantly, tempering your excitement can limit the joy you experience when things finally go right. Nothing strangles happiness in the cradle like that little voice in your head that keeps whispering, “It’s probably going to fall apart.”
I’m not saying we should all be walking around puffed up with unfounded optimism. I just think that some things warrant excitement, that we should trust ourselves to recognize them, and that we should allow ourselves to enjoy them fully. To borrow a line, I think you ought to follow your heart. That’s all I ever thought about anything.
Last year, over 32 games and 115 plate appearances, a 21-year-old Corbin Carroll put up a wRC+ of 130. Excelling in the outfield and on the basepaths as well allowed him to rack up 1.4 WAR. That’s a 7-win pace. He wasn’t perfect: his walk and strikeout rates were nothing to write home about, and while his .358 wOBA said Alex Bregman, his .293 xwOBA said Raimel Tapia. But in all, it was enough to make Carroll our No. 2 prospect in baseball, net him a downright effervescent ZiPS projection and an eight-year, $111 million contract extension, and establish him as our staff’s runaway favorite for NL Rookie of the Year. Corbin Carroll in 2022 was a first date where you’re talking and laughing and then all of a sudden you look at your watch and realize five hours have passed. He was worth getting excited about. Read the rest of this entry »
