The Joey Bart Era, such as it was, may already have ended in San Francisco. Struggling to fill the shoes of Buster Posey — admittedly, a ridiculously tall task for anyone — the 26-year-old backstop strained his groin in mid-May; by the time he was healthy enough to return, the Giants had shifted their focus to a younger catcher they were even happier with in Patrick Bailey. After finishing last season in High-A, the 24-year-old Bailey rocketed through the minors this spring, and upon arrival has hit and fielded well enough to help turn the Giants’ season around.

Recall that Posey retired abruptly after the 2021 season, at age 34. The move shocked the entire baseball world, not just the Giants, who had just won 107 games and planned to discuss retaining him upon the expiration of his nine-year, $169 million contract, whether by picking up his $22 million option or by hammering out a longer-term deal. Yet Posey, who had opted out of the 2020 season in order to spend time with his family, which had expanded to include two adopted twin daughters who had been born prematurely, felt the pull of home. Having checked every box for a Hall of Fame resumé except the padded career totals, the sad decline, and the long goodbye, he hung up his mask.

The Giants pivoted to Bart, who had looked like the heir apparent when he was taken with the second pick of the 2018 draft out of Georgia Tech. In Posey’s absence, he had done the bulk of the work behind the plate in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, but his inexperience showed, and he spent most of ’21 in the minors. While he began the 2022 campaign with promise by homering off Sandy Alcantara on Opening Day, he was optioned to Triple-A Sacramento in early June. Though he played somewhat better upon returning a month later, he finished with just a .215/.296/.364 (90 wRC+) line and an astronomical 38.5% strikeout rate in 297 PA, with -3.7 framing runs and a meager 0.6 WAR.

After making a two-inning cameo on Opening Day of this season, Bart landed on the injured list due to a mid-back strain. He additionally missed time in late April due to right groin tightness, then was diagnosed with a Grade 1 left groin strain in mid-May. In between all of the injuries, he hit just .231/.286/.295 (63 wRC+) in 84 PA; while he trimmed his strikeout rate to 25%, he walked just twice (2.4%). He started 22 of the team’s 43 games before landing on the IL a second time, with Roberto Pérez making five starts before suffering a season-ending rotator cuff tear and rookie Blake Sabol starting 16 games.

Enter the 6-foot-1, 210-pound Bailey, who was chosen with the 13th pick of the 2020 draft out of North Carolina State. He entered last season at no. 76 on our Top 100 list as a 50 FV prospect but was downgraded due to his early-season struggles at High-A Eugene, where he had finished the 2021 season. While he finished with a respectable .225/.342/.420 (113 wRC+) line with 12 homers, he missed the Top 100 — not just ours, but every major top prospect list of note throughout the industry. Baseball America, for example, ranked him 27th among Giants prospects, calling him a plus defender with “sound footwork and quick release” but also “a switch-hitter with an inconsistent approach [who] gets in trouble when he starts chasing power.” The publication saw his ceiling as that of “a defense-minded backup catcher.”

It wasn’t until last week that Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin published the Giants’ Top 49 Prospects list here. Ranking Bailey third behind Luis Matos and Kyle Harrison, they began the entry with a mea culpa: “Time to eat double crow here, as Bailey was just outside the Top 100 when he was drafted and throughout 2021 before we rounded his FV grade down during an uneven 2022. When we put together the lengthy Giants Imminent Big Leaguers piece, Bailey was not included, as we didn’t anticipate he’d spend just two weeks each at Richmond and Sacramento before the club decided to insert him as their primary big league catcher.”

Indeed, Bailey moved quickly this spring, hitting .333/.400/.481 (143 wRC+) with two homers in 60 PA in Double-A and .216/.317/.353 (61 wRC+) in 60 PA at Triple-A. He got the call when Bart hit the IL, debuted with a late-inning cameo on May 19, and went 1-for-3 in his first start the next day, singling off the Marlins’ Tanner Scott. The day after that, he clubbed a solo homer off Jesús Luzardo and added another RBI later in a 7–5 win. A week after his debut, on May 26, he went 4-for-5 with three RBI in a 15–1 rout of the Brewers; three days later, he went 3-for-5 with a double, a homer, and four RBI in a 14–4 shellacking of the Pirates.

The hits keep coming, and the Giants keep winning. Bailey is batting .302/.336/.512 for a 128 wRC+ — second on the team behind LaMonte Wade Jr.’s 139 — with five homers in 139 PA. The Giants, who were 20–23 before he was called up, are 27–17 since; they won nine straight from June 11 to 21 and soon after pulled to within 1.5 games of the NL West lead. They’ve since fallen back to third place in the division behind the Diamondbacks (50–37) and Dodgers (48–38) and are three games out at this writing, though they’re in a virtual tie with the Phillies (46–39) for the third NL Wild Card spot.

The one win during the team’s recent 1–6 skid was something of a Bailey showcase. Last Friday (June 30), in the eighth inning of the opener of a three-game series against the Mets at Citi Field, he hit a 432-foot three-run homer to center field off David Robertson, turning a 4–2 deficit into a 5–4 lead. With heat-throwing closer Camilo Doval issuing a one-out walk in the ninth, Bailey then made a perfect throw to nab pinch-runner Starling Marte attempting to steal, thus ending the Mets’ franchise-record streak of 35 straight stolen base attempts. On the next pitch, Doval struck out Brandon Nimmo to preserve the win.

“That was as good as it gets,” manager Gabe Kapler said afterwards. “That was superstar-caliber stuff.”

Getting back to our prospect team’s evaluation of Bailey: while putting a 40 present and 50 future grade on his overall defense and a 45 grade on his throwing, they noted, “He is a skilled one-knee’d receiver, great at beating the pitch to the spot in all parts of the zone, often subtly shifting his body to help him receive borderline pitches with strike-stealing stillness.” The numbers back this up; by FanGraphs’ measure, Bailey is 4.8 runs above average in framing in just 302 innings behind the plate, and by Statcast’s measure, he’s four runs above average. He’s done a great job against the running game, with pop times to second base averaging 1.87 seconds. He’s thrown out 12 out of 31 stolen base attempts for a 39% success rate, nearly double the league average of 20%; Statcast rates him as two runs above average in that department, but one run below average in blocking.

On the offensive side, while Bailey hit well from both sides of the plate in college, he struggled mightily against lefthanders in the minors, albeit in a comparatively small sample, an average of less than 50 PA per year. “A natural righty, he viewed the splits as being in part because of a lack of opportunity — he had just 61 at-bats against lefties last year — and made adjustments this spring to his swing and approach,” wrote NBC Sports’ Alex Pavlovic. “The Giants sent Bailey off to Double-A with a plan to spend more time on his right-handed swing during batting practice since he won’t get as many opportunities in games.”

The practice seems to be paying off, because Bailey has not only been effective against lefties within a very small sample, but he’s also put up insane numbers thanks to a BABIP that’s nearly double what it was in the minors — and quite unsustainable. Those have propped up a righty performance that’s slightly above the league average for a catcher (86 wRC+) but hardly exceptional, with strikeout and walk rates that rate as concerns.

Contact-wise, Bailey’s got enough total batted ball events that he’s past the point where the numbers start to stabilize. While the individual platoon splits haven’t entirely reached that point, his actual numbers from both sides are close to his expected numbers — and quite robust:

Bailey really is hitting the ball much harder from the right side of the plate, not that anyone should expect him to maintain Rogers Hornsby’s 1924 numbers.

Getting back to the walk and strikeout stuff: Bailey’s rates are out of balance, but it’s not as though his 44.7% swing rate, 29.1% chase rate, or 9.9% swinging-strike rate stand out as egregious or as marks that can’t be attached to reasonable production. Consider, for example, this list of players who are within 0.2 percentage points of his overall swing rate, two points of his chase rate, and one point of his swinging-strike rate:

Those are largely productive hitters, and the biggest difference seems to be that they’re taking fewer called strikes than Bailey en route to more balanced walk and strikeout rates. But again, it’s not like he is extraordinarily passive or aggressive. Note his -1 run rating in the Statcast shadow zone; he’s taking slightly more pitches in that zone than the league average (52% to 47%) and slightly more than average in the heart of the zone (31% to 28%) as well:

Anyway, for now as he’s making his way around the majors for the first six weeks of his career, Bailey has been exceptionally productive. I would caution that while he appears to have taken a significant leap forward from his minor league stats and pre-2023 scouting profile, the Posey comparisons he’s drawn — comparisons to a franchise pillar and future Hall of Famer (seriously, fight me) who began his career by winning NL Rookie of the Year honors in 2010 — are over the top. “Hey, let’s pump the brakes a little bit,” said Kapler in response to that line of discussion prior to Bailey’s big game in New York. “It’s a month into his career. Let’s let things unfold.”

As for what this means for Bart, he hasn’t exactly been Pipped out of a job given his struggles, but it’s tough to see him getting it back. For the near future, he may be blocked by Sabol, a Rule 5 pick from the Pirates who’s hitting .251/.313/.438 (104 wRC+) and putting up decent defensive numbers while splitting time between catching (26 starts and a total of 228 innings) and left field (183.2 innings). With his versatility, the Giants could carry three catchers, but doing so only to have Bart sit on the bench instead of working to improve at Sacramento probably isn’t in his best interest. For the longer term, he may be a change-of-scenery candidate — a player whose value is currently at the lower end of its range but one who was previously judged to have the makings of an everyday catcher, who has fewer than 500 PA under his belt, and who still has five years of club control remaining. If he doesn’t get another look in San Francisco, somebody out there will give him a shot.

As the Giants approach the August 1 trade deadline, it will be interesting to see if Bart’s name comes up as they shop to fill their needs. In the meantime, we should probably expect Bailey to cool off and should hope that folks cool it with the Posey comparisons; he casts a long enough shadow over the Giants’ organization as it is. Nonetheless, it’s exciting for any rookie to arrive, put his claim on a starting spot, and help turn his team’s fortunes. Let’s see where Bailey goes with this next.

Bryce Miller led off last Friday’s game with a fastball to Yandy Díaz. He missed low and away, and Diaz took the pitch for ball one. Miller came back with another fastball, wildly away, then another one low to send the count to 3–0. But then things turned. He threw another fastball right down the middle for strike one, fired one past Díaz for strike two, and finally threw a perfectly-located missile that Díaz waved through. Six pitches, six fastballs, and one out: it’s exactly how Miller drew it up at home.

The rest of the first inning held more of the same. He threw Wander Franco three straight fastballs to garner another strikeout, one that Luke Raley tapped into play (he reached on a fielding error), then six straight fastballs to Randy Arozarena to duplicate the 3–0-to-strikeout path he’d walked against Diaz. All told, Miller threw 16 fastballs in the first inning and nothing else whatsoever.

To some extent, this was an unsurprising tactic. Miller boasts one of the best fastballs in baseball, period. It’s one of those mindbending pitches that seems to defy gravity by rising out of its path halfway to home plate. Whether you’re looking at it statistically or visually, it’s hard to find faults. He’d used it nearly two-thirds of the time heading into last Friday’s game. Read the rest of this entry »

When my colleague Ben Clemens wrote about Eury Pérez a week ago Tuesday, he called him “amazing.” It’s an apt description. Over his first 10 big-league starts, the 6-foot-8 Miami Marlins right-hander is 5–2 with a 2.47 ERA, a 3.61 FIP, and 54 strikeouts in 47.1 innings. Moreover, if not for a clunker in his most recent outing — six runs allowed and just one out recorded against the powerhouse Atlanta Braves — his numbers would be even better. Less than three months after celebrating his 20th birthday, Pérez has already established himself as one the best young pitchers in the game. His bona fides preceded his mid-May debut; the precocious youngster came into this season ranked as our top pitching prospect (and No. 3 overall on our Top 100).

Pérez has matured exponentially, both physically and as a pitcher, since being signed by Miami out of the Dominican Republic in July 2019. Reportedly 170 pounds when he inked his first contract, he’s now listed at a sturdy 220. His fastball velocity has grown just as much, climbing as high as triple digits and averaging a firm 97.6 mph. He’s also honed his secondary offerings: a changeup, a curveball, and a slider.

I asked the über-talented Santo Domingo native about his development path when the Marlins visited Fenway Park last week. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers came into 2023 with a ton of question marks. Was a platoon of James Outman and Trayce Thompson truly the answer in center field? Was Miguel Rojas a sufficient backstop given Gavin Lux’s injury? Was Jason Heyward’s bat salvageable, and where would he play if it was? Was Miguel Vargas ready? The offense was hardly up to the standards of the team’s recent run.

They didn’t answer all those questions positively, but with the benefit of hindsight, the offense seems fine. The team is hitting a collective .243/.328/.446, good for a 110 wRC+. They’re one of the best baserunning teams in baseball. Mookie Betts can play shortstop now, which is neat. But they’ve exchanged those worries for one that has dogged every team in baseball over the years: Is there enough starting pitching to go around?

In the past week, the Dodgers were dealt two more blows on that front. One is a bump in the road: Clayton Kershaw’s sore left shoulder sent him to the IL Monday, where he hopes to make a minimum 15-day stay. That’s mildly concerning, but if Kershaw and the Dodgers are right, it’s just a temporary setback. One of Kershaw’s potential replacements got far worse news, however. Yesterday, the club announced that Dustin May will have elbow surgery to repair his flexor tendon, which means he’s done pitching in 2023. Read the rest of this entry »

Mookie Betts ended June the way he began it, by leading off the Dodgers’ half of the first inning with a homer, then adding another later on as one of his three additional hits. He bookended his month by doing so against the Yankees in Los Angeles on June 2, then against the Royals in Kansas City on June 30. Along the way, he added an additional five homers, boosting his season total to 22 (he hit his 23rd on Tuesday night against the Pirates), and he’s remained hot as July has begun. Not surprisingly, he’ll be the National League’s starting lineup in next week’s All-Star Game.

Betts has been on a leadoff homer binge this season. Just past the midway point, he’s hit nine already, including five in June, and three in an eight-day span as the month ended:

Betts’ total to date ties him for ninth on the single-season leaderboard, though he’s just four homers shy of the record, which was challenged by Jose Altuve last year, when he fell one short:

You’ll note that all but one of those 13 seasons has taken place in the Wild Card era (1995 onward), and over half of them have occurred in what we might call the Statcast era (2015 onward). Those high concentrations have plenty to do with the higher home run rates of recent seasons, and they also owe plenty to teams’ increasing willingness to bat power hitters first. Who doesn’t find the possibility of a quick 1–0 lead tantalizing? Read the rest of this entry »

Jacob Berry saw his prospect stock drop earlier this season. Highly regarded coming in, the sixth overall pick in last year’s draft had an abysmal .477 OPS in April and his .509 mark in May was barely better. Showing little resemblance to the player who’d raked first at the University of Arizona and then LSU, he fanned 41 times while logging just 25 hits, only two of which left the yard. Playing at High-A Beloit in Midwest League spring weather certainly didn’t help, but red flags were nonetheless flying. When our Miami Marlins Top Prospects list was published on May 31, Eric Longenhagen wrote that he was “content to have a hair trigger when it comes to sliding Berry because I was already skeptical… but deciding how much to slide him is challenging.” Our lead prospect analyst ultimately settled on No. 11 and a 40+ FV for the switch-hitter.

Berry’s June was markedly better. Rebounding from his two-month swoon, the 22-year-old third baseman slashed a solid .287.358/.447, with 10 of his 27 hits going for extra bases. Only one of them cleared the fence — his surprising lack of pop remains a concern — but overall, his success at the plate was much more in line with expectations. Despite understandable concerns, he remains a viable big league prospect.

What’s been behind his improved performance? Berry declined a recent interview request to discuss any adjustments he might have made, but he did sit down to discuss his hitting approach late in spring training. Read the rest of this entry »

I like to think I’m pretty tuned in to what’s going on in baseball each day. I check the news and the standings regularly, and my morning wouldn’t be complete without a quick scan of the leaderboards in all the major statistical categories. That being so, it’s rare that I’ll be caught off guard by a player’s ERA, or batting average, or WAR. That doesn’t mean it never happens, though, and when it does, I often feel compelled to share my surprise.

With that introduction as a clue, would you care to guess who leads the Rays in home runs? You know, the Rays who have more homers than any team in the American League. The Rays who rank second in baseball in runs scored and first in wRC+. The Rays who do all that despite playing in one of the least hitter-friendly home ballparks in the game. Yeah, those Rays.

It’s not All-Star first baseman Yandy Díaz or rookie sensation Luke Raley. It’s not Wander Franco, or Isaac Paredes, or anyone with the last name Lowe.

I’ll give you another hint: Two players are actually tied for the team lead in long balls, and one of them isn’t so hard to guess. Randy Arozarena hit his 16th homer of the season on Sunday, pulling even with the mystery player for first place, and only kind of ruining the guessing game I had planned. Then again, the title and featured image already gave it away, so it’s time I pull back the facade of this rhetorical device. No team in the American League has more home runs than the Rays, and no one on the Rays has more home runs than Jose Siri. Read the rest of this entry »

From the time he signed a one-year deal with the Royals in late January, it appeared highly likely that Aroldis Chapman’s stay in Kansas City wouldn’t be long. Either he would continue last season’s slide into irrelevance and get his walking papers once the team decided he was more trouble than he was worth, or he would pitch well enough to make himself a viable midseason trade candidate. He ended up pitching his way into the latter route; on Friday, he was dealt to the Rangers in exchange for two young players, 25-year-old lefty Cole Ragans and 17-year-old outfielder Roni Cabrera.

The 35-year-old Chapman was an All-Star as recently as 2021 with the Yankees, but his career, which had survived a 2016 suspension for violating the league’s domestic violence policy, began accelerating downhill with increasing speed in June of that season. In a nine-game span, from June 10 through July 4, he allowed 15 runs and walked nine in 5.2 innings, blowing three saves. He struggled with his release point and missed time due to elbow inflammation but more or less maintained his hold on the closer spot for the rest of the season, though he finished with a 3.99 FIP (then a career worst) and a 3.36 ERA (his worst mark since 2011). He lost the closer job for good in mid-May of last season, when he went on the injured list for Achilles tendinitis, incurred the team’s wrath by missing three weeks due to a tattoo-induced infection in his leg (one that introduced the phrase “veritable moat of pus” into the lexicon), finished with ugly career-worst numbers (4.46 ERA, 4.57 FIP, -0.2 WAR), and burned his final bridge in the Bronx by skipping a mandatory workout before the Division Series.

Particularly when coupled with his 2021 troubles and past history, that drama no doubt cooled the market for Chapman. During the winter, seven relievers netted deals with average annual values of at least $9 million, including non-closers such as Rafael Montero and Robert Suarez and post-prime closers such as David Robertson and Craig Kimbrel; more than a dozen received multiyear deals. Chapman, though, could only secure a guarantee of $3.75 million over a single season. He did get some incentives in the deal: $312,500 for reaching thresholds of 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, and 55 games, and another $312,500 for reaching thresholds of 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, and 40 games finished. The Rangers will be responsible for those bonuses, as well as about $1.875 million in remaining salary. Read the rest of this entry »

Content warning: This story contains details of domestic abuse.

Professional sports are enthralling for the action they produce on the playing field. Highlights of home runs, slam dunks, and touchdowns can create lifelong relationships between fans and the sports they enjoy. Yet it’s necessary to remember that sports are situated within the world around them, and often mirror wider trends within it.

It’s easy to think of baseball players as little figures on a screen who appear at 7:00 every night, run around for a few hours while being televised live, and blink out of existence until the next evening when network cameras are back on. It seems that the closer we get to perfectly measuring a player’s value on the diamond, the more we detach the dots on the television from real people who, like us, have lives even after the camera operators go home for the night. People with hobbies, homes, and families, people who matter to other real people besides the fans on the other side of the screen with emotions, bragging rights, or even money staked to what the little humanoid figures do. Every baseball player possesses the same traits that make those watching at home human, and with that unfortunately comes the capacity to cause indescribable harm to others. Read the rest of this entry »

Jazz Chisholm and Jean Segura caught my attention while they were playing catch prior to a recent Miami Marlins road game at Fenway Park. Unlike their teammates, the duo was trading tosses underhand, windmilling their throws like fastpitch softball pitchers. Moreover, they looked good doing it. Their motions were smooth and easy, their deliveries firm and accurate. Having never seen professional baseball players do this, I was very much intrigued.

Standing nearby was Jennifer Brann. Now an analyst with the Marlins, Brann had excelled on the mound at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Maryland prior to being hired by Miami two years ago. I asked her if she had seen them do so previously.

“I’ve seen Segura mess around a little bit, but I’d never seen Jazz pitch underhand like that,” Brann told me. “It was cool to watch. They knew what they were doing, especially Segura; he threw a rise ball and a changeup. But Jazz looked pretty good, too.”

The following day, I made it a point to approach both players in the clubhouse to find out if they had any softball experience. It turns out that they did.

“My grandma was a professional [fastpitch] softball player,” said Chisholm, who grew up in Nassau. “She played for the Bahamas National Team. That’s what really got me into baseball — I learned a lot of my baseball skills from softball — and she played until she was 60, too. She was just superhuman.”

Chisholm played fastpitch growing up, in part because the sport is played in Bahamian high schools, while baseball is not. (He did play Little League baseball.). Having attended a K-12, he began competing against upperclassmen as a sixth grader, both as a shortstop and a pitcher. Chisholm subsequently moved to the United States at age 12, thus ending his competitive softball days, Read the rest of this entry »