You probably don’t think of baseball as a contact sport, though catchers might beg to differ. Whether it’s blocking a baseball or taking a foul ball to the mask, catchers are constantly at war with a five-ounce ball of leather. That’s why catchers have to commit to blocking through and through. You can’t cheat your way to being a good blocker; you have to learn your pitchers to understand what pitches they tend to spike and how those pitches spin off a bounce. The stakes will always depend on the situation, but as a catcher, you try to gain the confidence in your pitcher to throw a pitch in the dirt by committing to the grind in the bullpen, during warmup pitches, and in game.

I’ve been anticipating Statcast adding blocking metrics for a while now. As a former college catcher, it doesn’t take much to make me appreciate the league’s great blockers, but our culture in baseball gives more attention and value to the things we can measure. With the introduction of the new blocking leaderboard, we no longer need to guess at just how impactful or skilled some catchers are relative to their peers.

In a similar fashion to how I reviewed Statcast’s arm strength leaderboards, I am going to highlight some of the best blocking catchers in the game. The criteria for this exercise is straightforward: I took the catchers ranked first through fifth on the default leaderboard and chose what I deemed to be an impressive pair of blocks from each from the 2022 season. The mechanics of blocking can vary from player to player, but what matters most is killing the speed of the bounce with the lower half of your chest protector. These five catchers can do that on a variety of pitches going in any direction.

Adley Rutschman (no. 1 overall, 18 Blocks Above Average)

I’ll start with this: the debate between catching with one knee down versus in a traditional stance has no absolute answer; it’s entirely dependent on the individual catcher. In the case of Adley Rutschman, he is capable of being both a top-tier framer and blocker primarily in the traditional stance. But the combination of his mobility, flexibility, and hip anatomy allows him to shift his knees down from his traditional stance without needing to get into a pronounced traditional squat.

On this 90-mph splitter from Félix Bautista, Rutschman anticipated the pitch in the dirt and blocked up with what looked like an effortless movement. Bautista is without question one of the most difficult pitchers in the game to catch: triple digits from a straight over-the-top arm slot high off the ground, paired with a blistering splitter that hitters swing through over half the time. Because of that, Rutschman must always be ready to get his knees on the ground and stuff the splitter, especially when runners are on. He put on a clinic all year, and this pitch was no exception.

The second block was just as impressive. On a 92-mph changeup, Rutschman read the arm-side spin and opened up his left hip to create space for a side shuffle to get in front of the baseball. Blocking pitches over 90 mph is a doozy, but it’s all in day’s work for one of the best in the game.

Jose Trevino (no. 2 overall, 15 Blocks Above Average)

Every time I watch Jose Trevino catch, it’s clear to me that he is a former infielder. The way he can shift and rotate his hips while in such a deep position is truly impressive. He is one of the catchers who can have one knee down and be even better at blocking. Since he has such a great feel for his pitcher’s tendencies, he can sink into his one knee stance and block a Gerrit Cole knuckle curve in the dirt if he needs to, or get under the pitch and frame it if it’s in the shadow zone.

The sweeper he blocked from Lucas Luetge with the bases loaded was what I like to call a confidence block. Luetge’s strength is using his sweeper for soft contact and chases on his glove side; that he throws it on an 0–1 count with the bases loaded says a lot about his trust in his catcher. And Trevino stuffed the sweeper right in front of him, showing me that he was relaxed as can be. When a pitch is about to hit your chest protector, you’re taught to exhale so you can soften your body and accept the pitch into your stomach rather than stiffening up. Few catchers do that as well as the Yankees’ backstop.

J.T. Realmuto (no. 3 overall, 14 Blocks Above Average)

J.T. Realmuto is an iron man behind the plate: He has caught over 130 games in back-to-back years, including a deep playoff run last year where he did not miss a single game. This is a perfect example of an everyday catcher who relies on the one knee down stance to take some wear and tear off his body. Like Trevino, he uses it to his advantage when blocking. Because he is so flexible, he can extend his right leg outwards as far as he can, which lets him get ahead of the movement; in a traditional stance, you have to recognize the pitch, then shoot your leg out for a block.

A spiked changeup is no challenge for Realmuto. His body is already in a perfect position to be a wall for a long or short hop. All he has to do is move his glove to cover his five hole like he did in the first clip. The reason I included the blocked curveball was so that I could highlight how he uses his legs to recover from the block in a one knee down stance. Focus on how his left knee slides inward as the pitch hits his chest protector. That lets him tighten his five hole and put his body in a better position to shoot up quickly. He then pulls in his extended right leg under the center of his body so he can push off both legs to chase the pitch to ensure the runner doesn’t advance. This is not a simple movement; it requires next-level mobility and strength to pop up this quickly. It’s just one of the many strengths of Realmuto’s catching game.

Sean Murphy (no. 4 overall, 12 Blocks Above Average)

As a baseball fan on the east coast, I didn’t always get a chance to watch Sean Murphy display his catching prowess in Oakland. But in doing the research for this piece, I was impressed to see how athletic he is back there. Blocking splitters that hit the plate is a painful job; when any pitch hits the plate, it hardly loses any speed. But Murphy grew up in the bigs catching and blocking this pitch from Frankie Montas, and he is a better defensive catcher for it.

Murphy’s stance — with his behind high up in the air — is reminiscent of an old school catcher preparing to stuff a pitch in the dirt. You’ll notice that in the second GIF, he also uses the one knee down stance to block. Some catchers will vary their stance depending on the pitcher. As I said earlier, blocking splitters is extremely difficult; in fact, I’d bet it’s the toughest pitch for catchers to get in front of when it’s spiked because of how it can bounce off dirt. That’s why Murphy opted for the traditional stance with Montas but went with one knee on a curveball from Jared Koenig. When you know your pitchers, you can be savvy with how you set yourself up for success.

Tomás Nido (no. 5 overall, 12 Blocks Above Average)

This wouldn’t be an article about great catching without including a Puerto Rican backstop. Tomás Nido is your classic backup defense-first catcher who has made his carer off being an elite framer and blocker. His placement on this list is incredible given that he is only a part-time player. Similar to some of the catchers already highlighted, he is dealing with some electric pitchers with air-bending offerings. I didn’t include traditional chest protector blocks in either clip because I wanted to use Nido as an opportunity to talk about a crucial part of catching/blocking that isn’t always realized: the art of picking.

Picking is a flashy, beautiful move that can only be executed by players with the softest of hands. The retired Yadier Molina always had a knack for picking balls that looked destined for the backstop, and his fellow Puerto Rican Nido is no different. On an overthrown changeup from Max Scherzer, Nido smoothly moves his glove across the zone and effortlessly stops the pitch from getting by him. He did almost the same thing on the spiked changeup from Joely Rodríguez, but in the opposite direction. Picking is something that you do when you know you have no shot at blocking a pitch. It’s a necessary skill that isn’t always rigorously trained, but it should be for that exact reason. Depending on how you were set up, there are times when there is no shot to contort your body in front of the ball. When that time comes, all you have is your glove and your instincts. Nido has proven time and time again he can do this on a pinch.

I hope you’ve come away from this piece learning a thing or two about blocking. There are the obvious things you cannot miss when it comes to blocking, but aspects such as recovery, picking, and exhaling upon impact are all minute details that don’t always get attention. This list of catchers displays those abilities on a routine basis, and that is why they have found themselves atop this new leaderboard.

After all the rumors and money and projections and Carlos Correa signing announcements (and un-announcements), here we are, back at 0-0, with every team having at least some technical level of hope for the 2023 season. Until today’s games start the process of turning projections into history, the season is a blank piece of paper or canvas, a fresh layer of snow without a hint of gray, a home improvement project before the moment you remember you barely know how to assemble an IKEA end table. Now before I get too wistful and start sounding like Paul Harvey or weird AI Vin Scully, let’s get down to business.

Since I am the owner, caretaker, and occasional messer-upper of the ZiPS projection system, that’s the system I used to run the 2023 season a million times. The methodology I’m using here isn’t identical to the one we use in our Projected Standings, meaning there will naturally be some important differences in the results. So how does ZiPS calculate the season? Stored within ZiPS are the first through 99th-percentile projections for each player. I start by making a generalized depth chart, using our Depth Charts as a jumping off point. Since these are my curated projections, I make changes based on my personal feelings about who will receive playing time as filtered through arbitrary whimsy my logic and reasoning. ZiPS then generates a million versions of each team in Monte Carlo fashion (the computational algorithms, that is — no one is dressing up in a tuxedo and playing baccarat like James Bond).

After that is done, ZiPS applies another set of algorithms with a generalized distribution of injury risk that changes the baseline PAs/IPs for each player. Of note is that higher-percentile projections already have more playing time than lower-percentile projections before this step. ZiPS then automatically (and proportionally) “fills in” playing time from the next players on the list to get to a full slate of plate appearances and innings. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, we wrote about three interesting players who had been putting up massive exit velocity numbers in spring training. Today we’ll highlight two more players in depth, and touch briefly on a two more. Ben Clemens will be writing about Ryan McMahon, who happens to be the spring training exit velocity champion, tomorrow.

Now that spring training is over, you can find the final exit velocity leaderboard at the bottom of this article. It’s got some notable names: Ke’Bryan Hayes is crushing the ball, but he’s still not elevating it; Kris Bryant is healthy and mashing; Nolan Gorman is demonstrating that Jordan Walker isn’t the only exciting prospect in St. Louis; Christian Walker is making last year’s breakout look more sustainable, rocket by rocket; and Zac Veen is giving Colorado fans something, anything to look forward to.

If you read Monday’s article, you likely noticed that the featured players shared a similar profile. A list of players who can demolish a baseball but aren’t established stars is going to be heavy on strikeouts and problematically high groundball rates. You should expect that trend to continue today. Read the rest of this entry »

Opening Day is finally upon us. The weather is getting warmer, the smell of spring is in the air, and regular season baseball is back. Enjoying games around the league on Opening Day is a ritual for many baseball fans including myself, and these games are particularly exciting because teams always bring the best they have to offer. The long slog of the season sometimes leads to rest days for star hitters, and a string of injuries can ruin a lineup come June or July. But Opening Day is the only day where everyone is on display, particularly on the mound, as each team hands the ball to its no. 1 starter to start the season, health permitting, to produce some of the best matchups we’ll see all year.

In total, 19 of the top 30 pitchers by our Depth Charts projections will take the hill today, from no. 1 Jacob deGrom to no. 29 Hunter Greene. A few top pitchers lost Opening Day nods to a superior teammate — for example, the pocket aces at the top of Philadelphia’s rotation will force Zack Wheeler to wait his turn to start until Saturday. In other cases, a team’s Opening Day starter isn’t its best by our projections; Brady Singer, the no. 30 pitcher by Depth Charts with a projected WAR of 2.9, was supplanted by Zack Greinke and his 1.1 WAR projection. But overall, the combined skill of today’s starters outclasses that of any other day in the season. With these great matchups in mind, let’s plan out a full day of baseball watching that will maximize the amount of elite starting pitching on the screen. Read the rest of this entry »

After an offseason marked by big free-agent contracts, big bases, and the introduction of the pitch clock, the 2023 season is almost upon us; we made it. And on this, the morning of Opening Day, we engage in our annual tradition of asking our staff to open themselves up to public ridicule and predict the year in baseball. Some of these predictions will prove to be prescient; others will make their forecaster feel a little silly. Last year’s Mariners? Our staff thought they’d finally bring an end to the franchise’s playoff drought, and wouldn’t you know it, they did just that. The division-winning Cleveland Guardians? We fared less well. Such is the prognostication business.

We asked the staff to predict the playoff field, pennant and World Series winners, and the individual award recipients. Folks from FanGraphs and RotoGraphs weighed in; here are the results. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, Andrés Giménez enjoyed quite a breakout season, helping to lessen the sting of the Francisco Lindor trade by emerging as one of the top second basemen in the game. He made his first All-Star team, won his first Gold Glove, and helped the Guardians win the AL Central for the first time since 2018. Now, the team has guaranteed that he’ll stick around for a good long while. On Tuesday, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that Giménez has agreed to terms on a seven-year, $106.5 million extension that also includes an option for an eighth season.

The full details of the contract have not yet been reported, but the deal appears to cover the 2023-29 seasons, with a $4 million signing bonus and a $23 million club option for 2030 that comes with a $2.5 million buyout. Via as-yet-unspecified escalators, that option can increase to $24 million (note that Passan has reported the option year as 2031, meaning that the guaranteed portion of the deal wouldn’t begin until next season). At its maximum, the extension could pay Giménez $128 million over eight years, his ages 24-31 seasons.

The guaranteed portion of the contract is the second-largest in team history after José Ramírez’s five-year, $124 million extension signed last year. The extension is the latest manifestation of what has practically become a Cleveland tradition, one that traces back to the rebirth of the franchise. In the mid-1990s, general manager John Hart pioneered the practice of signing young stars such as Sandy Alomar Jr., Carlos Baerga, Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome, and Omar Vizquel to extensions that ran through at least some of their arbitration years and kept them in the fold when they would have hit free agency. It’s a strategy that enabled the team to save millions of dollars while maintaining a competitive nucleus, and one that has become popular with several other teams, most notably the Braves (for whom Hart served as president of baseball operations from late 2014 to late ’17). Long after Hart left Cleveland, successors Mark Shapiro and Chris Antonetti continued to sign players such as Ramírez, Michael Brantley, Travis Hafner, Jason Kipnis, Corey Kluber, Carlos Santana, and Grady Sizemore to deals along those lines.

That’s an incomplete list of players who went this route, but it never included Lindor, who went year-to-year during his arbitration years until the team decided it couldn’t afford him at a full market price. On January 7, 2021, Lindor and Carlos Carrasco were traded to the Mets in exchange for the then-22-year-old Giménez, shortstop Amed Rosario, outfielder Isaiah Greene and righty Josh Wolf.

Giménez had hit an impressive .263/.333/.398 (105 wRC+) in 49 games with the Mets during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, but he struggled in his first year with Cleveland, batting .218/.282/.351 (74 RC+) in 68 games sandwiched around a detour to Triple-A Columbus that lasted nearly three months. He did hit much better after returning (.245/.320/.382, 94 wRC+) than before (.179/.226/.308, 43 wRC+) even if he didn’t actually make better contact. As I noted last fall, he held his own after returning despite lacking a consistent approach at the plate. “Last year [2021] he’d deviate after like a bad game,” manager Terry Francona told the Akron Beakon Journal’s Ryan Lewis in May. “You’d have different stance, you have a leg kick you didn’t have, you get a toe-tap.”

Guardians hitting coaches Chris Valaika and Victor Rodriguez helped Giménez ditch the leg kick, which they felt was hindering his pitch recognition and his timing. He fared better against every major pitch type in 2022 than ’21, and overall batted .297/.371/.466 with 17 homers and 20 steals. His 140 wRC+ finished in a virtual tie with Rafael Devers and Carlos Correa for eighth in the AL (one point ahead of Ramírez) and among second basemen of either league trailed only Jose Altuve and Jeff McNeil. On the other side of the ball, Giménez’s 16 DRS, 9 OAA and 6.5 UZR each ranked second among all second basemen, and overall, his 6.1 WAR tied Xander Bogaerts for fifth in the AL, and among second basemen trailed only Altuve. That’s some fine company.

Giménez’s performance included a few areas of concern, notably a 40.8% chase rate, 6.1% walk rate, and Statcast contact numbers (87.8 mph average exit velocity, 6.2% barrel rate, 37.6% hard-hit rate) that placed only in the 29th–36th percentiles. Thanks in part to his 94th-percentile speed, he was nonetheless one of the majors’ most productive hitters on groundballs, ranking among the top half-dozen in both batting average and wRC+:

As noted last fall, hitters combined for a .235 AVG and 35 wRC+ on grounders; based on that, Giménez netted an extra 17 hits, without which he’d have finished with a .263 AVG and .433 SLG, much closer to his expected numbers.

While I do wonder about the sustainability of that aspect of his game, in all, that’s a pretty impressive showing for a 23-year-old. In fact, it’s one of the best age-23 seasons of the past decade:

Again, fine company even given the presence of a few players who have flamed out; Bellinger and Bryant have both dealt with a series of injuries, while Puig’s decline has been an ugly mixture of on- and off-field issues. The book isn’t closed on any of the above players, but several are Cooperstown bound. It’s worth noting that the two other Cleveland players on the list have turned out quite well, and that Giménez’s 140 wRC+ is actually higher than all of the other non-first base infielders — even those who out-homered him by a significant margin.

Because Giménez spent so long in the minors in 2021, he’s accrued only two years and 106 days of major league service time, 66 short of reaching three full seasons (which would have made him eligible for free agency after the 2025 season) and 22 short of becoming an arbitration-eligible Super Two. Thus, his contract for 2023 was among the 28 the team recently renewed; most of those salaries haven’t even been published yet, but Giménez was only set to make $739,400. The $4 million signing bonus bumps him up to something closer to what a star-caliber player in his first year of arbitration eligibility might make. For example, Bichette, who’s heading into his age-25 season with 3.063 years of service time, is making $2.85 million in salary plus a $3.25 million signing bonus as part of his three-year, $33.6 million extension, while the Padres’ Jake Cronenworth, who has exactly three years of service time, is making $4.225 million coming off back-to-back 4.1-WAR seasons. Had he reached three years, Giménez might be somewhere in that ballpark.

Via Dan Szymborski, here’s Giménez’s projection through 2030, the year with the club option:

Even with some regression to 4.5 WAR per year at his peak, the ZiPS contract projection for Giménez if he were a free agent comes to a whopping $287.2 million, which is more than Bogaerts received from the Padres as a 30-year-old free agent (and spread out over 11 years, at that). Even with the expected discounts for his arbitration years, Giménez projects to be worth $139.5 million through 2029, and $170.8 million through ’30; through that lens, this looks like a rather club-friendly deal. It’s not an out-and-out steal the way Ramírez’s five-year, $26 million deal for 2017-21 — over which the third baseman produced 28 WAR, made three All-Star teams and finished in the top three in AL MVP voting three times — turned out to be, but it’s clear that Giménez traded some risk for financial security. If he’s still even close to being a three-win player in 2030, he’ll stand to make tens of millions more, though he’s unlikely to approach the windfall he might have reaped if he’d spent all of 2021 in the majors and hit free agency after 2025, his age-26 season.

All of which is to say that this is A Very Guardians Deal, and while we can again bemoan the salary structure that prevents players short of six years of service time from getting anything approaching their full market value, it takes two sides to tango. And we shouldn’t be surprised if at least a couple more extensions follow in short order. Via The Athletic’s Zack Meisel, the team is in “advanced negotiations” with multiple players including Rosario, Triston McKenzie, Steven Kwan, and Trevor Stephan, hoping to complete extensions by Opening Day (Stephan’s is reportedly nearing completion). Meanwhile, Emmanuel Clase (five years, $20 million) and Myles Straw (five years, $25 million) signed such deals last spring, albeit at a scale much smaller than that of Giménez. If some of those extensions come though, they’ll probably increase the team’s payroll — estimated at around $90.7 million even with several of those aforementioned extension candidates’ salaries unknown — by a few million dollars. They’re still likely to rank among the bottom third of the 30 teams, even while contending for another AL Central title or at least a playoff spot. This approach has worked for the Guardians before, and at least in terms of establishing generational wealth for Giménez, it will work for him as well.

Over the past week and a half, we’ve published our annual season preview, ranking the league’s players by position and team based on a blend of our projections (a 50/50 split between ZiPS and Steamer) and our manually maintained playing time estimates courtesy of Jason Martinez. If you happen to have missed any of those installments, you can use the navigation widget above to catch up.

Today, I’m going to summarize the results. We’ll look at some tables and pick out a few interesting tidbits in a moment, but first, it’s important to remember that this exercise captures a snapshot of how we project teams to perform right now. Teams aren’t static. Since we began publishing our rankings, prospects Anthony Volpe, Jordan Walker, and Brice Turang all made their respective clubs’ Opening Day rosters, and Grayson Rodriguez and Brett Baty learned they will have to wait a little while longer. The Brewers designated Keston Hiura for assignment (he has since cleared waivers and been outrighted to the Brewers’ Triple-A team) and signed non-roster invitee Luke Voit to a one-year big league deal. Rhys Hoskins tore his ACL and will likely miss the season; Triston McKenzie injured his shoulder and could miss up to eight weeks.

This being baseball, players will tweak elbows and hamstrings, lose playing time to underperformance, and get traded. That’s why we maintain a Team WAR Totals page, which lists projected positional WAR by team and updates regularly throughout the season as we learn more about who is likely to take the field every day and what shape they’ll be in when they do. It’s important to note that the WAR numbers you see on that page may differ from those you’ve seen on the positional power rankings, mostly because those figures are aware of the injuries and transactions that have altered our playing time estimates since the rankings went live; the Z-Scores I’ll include later also use the WAR figures that power the Team WAR Totals page. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back baseball! After an exciting and dramatic World Baseball Classic to whet our appetites, the main course is finally here. I introduced these power rankings a few years ago as a way to think about all 30 teams in baseball and stack them up against each other outside of the rigid structures of leagues or divisions. Nearly every major site has some form of power rankings, usually derived from whatever panel of experts each site employs. These rankings, though, are entirely data driven.

A reminder for how these rankings are calculated: first, we take the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), their pitching (a 50/50 blend of FIP- and RA9-, weighted by starter and reliever IP share), and their defense (RAA) — and combine them to create an overall team quality metric. For these offseason power rankings, I’ve used each team’s projected stats based on their Depth Charts projections which are now powered by our blend of ZiPS and Steamer projections. I’ve also used the projected fielding component of WAR that appears on our Depth Charts projections as the defensive component for each team in lieu of RAA.

The Braves haven’t budged from the top of these rankings throughout this offseason. Sure, the Mets spent a ton of money this offseason, and the Phillies just went to the World Series, but Atlanta has owned this division for the last half decade. There are still some lingering questions, however. Orlando Arcia likely isn’t the long-term solution at shortstop, but both Vaughn Grissom and Braden Shewmake were optioned to Triple-A last week; the former has some defensive issues to work through, and the latter needs more exposure to high-level pitching before being handed a job in the big leagues. There are also some injury concerns in their pitching staff, with both Kyle Wright and Raisel Iglesias dealing with shoulder issues this spring and Michael Soroka not fully recovered from his many maladies. Still, this team is loaded with young talent and poised to win its sixth consecutive division title.

The big storyline for the Yankees this spring has been the competition for starting shortstop, with top prospect Anthony Volpe earning a spot on the Opening Day roster. That should provide youthful excitement to cover the very real concerns in the rotation and outfield. Harrison Bader likely won’t be out for long with his strained oblique, but his absence has revealed how shallow the position group is when Aaron Judge has to slide over to center field. And injuries of varying severity to Carlos Rodón, Luis Severino, and Frankie Montas aren’t exactly how you want to start off the season. Read the rest of this entry »

With Opening Day on the horizon, three teams are planning to enter the season with exclusively right-handed rotations: the Guardians, the Twins, and the White Sox. As I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, that’s not the only thing these clubs have in common; they’re also the three contenders for the AL Central crown. An all-righty rotation isn’t unheard of, but it is uncommon, and it’s particularly unusual to see three within the same division. Here’s how they each stack up:

Around this time last season, there were likewise three teams planning to deploy all-righty rotations: the Guardians, the Twins, and the Mets. The Mets, however, had lefty in David Peterson at Triple-A, and it was only a matter of time before they needed him. Indeed, he was called up two days into the season and made his first start a week later. As for the Guardians and Twins, they also had lefties waiting in the wings. Konnor Pilkington was the first man called up when Cleveland needed a sixth starter; Devin Smeltzer wasn’t the first call-up for Minnesota, but he was soon to follow.

This year, the White Sox have joined the all-righty ranks. In fact, they haven’t had a left-handed starter since releasing Dallas Keuchel last May. Meanwhile, the Guardians and Twins have more right-handed depth than last season. Pilkington is still around for Cleveland, but he had a poor showing this spring, and several right-handed prospects are moving their way up the depth chart. As for Minnesota, Smeltzer elected free agency in October, and every new starter the team acquired this offseason has been a righty. Read the rest of this entry »

Sean Hjelle has been turning heads this preseason and seems to have pitched his way into a major league job. Then again, Hjelle turns heads everywhere; the former Kentucky Wildcat is the tallest player in baseball, at 6-foot-11, leaving him tied with Jon Rauch as the tallest player in MLB history. Anytime a pitcher above 6-foot-6 or so gets extended major league run, there’s an assumption that with a big body comes big velocity. That might be entirely Randy Johnson’s fault; Rauch sat in the low 90s, and until the end of last season, Hjelle didn’t throw much harder.

But as as he told Alex Pavlovic of NBCSN Bay Area early in spring training, Hjelle had been able to tickle 96 or 97 for one adrenaline-fueled inning in his last appearance of the 2022 season. This winter, his goal was to hold that velocity deeper into games. How? Well, to quote legendary Giants fan Huey Lewis, by working out most every day and watching what he eats. And after almost two months of training camp, Hjelle can look back and see the fruits of his labor. Read the rest of this entry »