If you’re a reader of this site, you probably know that spring training results don’t carry much weight. If you’re really invested in spring outcomes, try exploring them on a rate basis, as those metrics seem to provide the most signal. But what I’m most interested in during the spring are the underlying characteristics that drive outcomes, and often, those characteristics are much stickier than pure results.

Notching high exit velocities in-game, for example, can be thought of as a player tapping into their top-end strength. It can be tough to discern fact from fiction among the countless “best shape of his life” reports, but I figured there might be something to Brendan Donovan’s offseason adjustments when I saw him obliterate a home run to right field in his first spring plate appearance, 105.5 mph off the bat:

Now, 105.5 mph isn’t light-tower power, but it’s notable coming from the slap-hitting utilityman. After posting an ISO over .139 just once across the four minor league stops where he had at least 100 plate appearances, that mark dropped to a paltry .097 in Donovan’s big league debut. And he hit all of three balls harder than 105.5 mph in the majors last year, none of them going for homers, en route to posting an eighth-percentile barrel rate. Ouch. Read the rest of this entry »

Alejandro Kirk slashed a solid .285/.372/.415 with 14 home runs and a 129 wRC+ last year in his first full big-league season. Moreover, the 24-year-old Toronto Blue Jays catcher drew 63 free passes while going down by way of the K just 58 times. His 10.7% strikeout rate was third best in the junior circuit, behind only Steven Kwan’s 9.4% and Luis Arraez’s 7.1%.

How similar of a hitter is Kirk to Arraez? I asked that question to Blue Jays manager John Schneider prior to Thursday’s game in Dunedin.

“When you talk about contact, not a lot of swing-and-miss, yeah, they’re similar,” replied Schneider. “There’s a little more damage potential with Kirky. But more walks than strikeouts is tough to do at any level, [especially] the big leagues. So, I think when it’s just strike zone command, on-base, and contact-ability, they are pretty similar.”

Arraez, now a member of the Miami Marlins, won the American League batting title with the Minnesota Twins while slashing .316/.375/.420 with eight home runs and a 131 wRC+. Following up on my initial question, I asked Schneider if Kirk has the potential to capture a title of his own. Read the rest of this entry »

Remember the 107-win Giants, the only team to take an NL West flag away from the Dodgers over the past decade? Last year’s crash to an 81-81 record marked a rude awakening, as the post-Buster Posey era got off to a rocky start following the future Hall of Famer’s abrupt retirement after the 2021 season. Now the Giants enter the post-Brandon Belt era as well, as the regular first baseman from their last two championship teams joined the Blue Jays in January.

I mention the Giants because in this National League counterpart to my examination of the weakest spots on American League contending teams, their catching and first base options occupy the first two spots, as they did little to address either position over the winter — a point that’s been overshadowed by the Padres’ spending spree and the Dodgers’ free agent exodus (a phrase I’ve now used for three straight articles and expect to deploy at this year’s Passover seder). The Giants are projected to finish third in the NL West with 84 wins, and while they do have a 41.8% chance of making the playoffs, improvements in both spots could have bumped them up by a good 20 percentage points.

As with the AL installment, here I’m considering teams with Playoff Odds of at least 10% as contenders; that threshold describes 10 NL clubs (all but the Cubs, Pirates, Reds, Rockies, and Nationals). It’s worth noting that because of the general tendency to overproject playing time and keep even the weakest teams with positive WAR at each position (in reality over 10% of them will finish in the red), our Depth Chart values at the team level are inflated by about 20%. That is to say, instead of having a total of 1,000 WAR projected across the 30 teams, we have about 1,200. Thus, I am discounting the team values that you see on the Depth Chart pages by 20%, and focusing on the lowest-ranked contenders among those whose adjusted values fall below 2.0 WAR, the general equivalent of average play across a full season. The individual WARs cited will remain as they are on the Depth Chart pages, however, and it’s worth noting that many of the players here — particularly youngsters with shorter track records — don’t project particularly well but aren’t without upside; hope springs eternal. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s talk about free agent outfielders. Nearly every team could use one, either to serve in a starting role or to provide an upgrade over the players who are currently fourth or fifth on the depth chart. Unsurprisingly, reigning AL MVP Aaron Judge took home the largest contract of any outfielder this winter, but 11 inked average annual values of at least $10 million. Along with a variety of part-time and platoon players signed for smaller sums, nearly every big league-caliber outfielder has found a home for the season. Most of the remaining free agents, like Alex Dickerson and Jackie Bradley Jr., project to be around replacement level for 2023. But there’s an outlier, someone who just posted a career-best 2.5 WAR and was projected by our readers for a three-year, $30 million contract – Jurickson Profar. No other unsigned player is projected to earn even a third of that, but as teams start to finalize their rosters during spring training, Profar still doesn’t know what uniform he’ll be playing in come Opening Day.

Entering the offseason, we had Profar pegged as the 36th-best free agent in the class after his $10 million mutual option with the Padres was declined. Neighboring hitters on that list include Michael Brantley, Brandon Drury, and Josh Bell; all three have signed and will earn a combined $37 million in 2023. So what makes teams hesitant to add Profar to their roster?

Let’s compare him to the aforementioned trio of Brantley, Drury, and Bell. In fact, Profar is quite comparable to Brantley and Bell, who both play a position down the defensive spectrum. Both are also considerably better hitters than Profar. Brantley’s wRC+ hasn’t sat below 120 in five years, while Bell’s mark sits at 121 since the beginning of 2021. On the other hand, Profar’s 110 wRC+ last year was his highest in a full season, and his career mark of 94 is substantially worse than that of Brantley or Bell. Other outfielders like J.D. Martinez and Michael Conforto also signed in that price range. In other words, if a team was looking for an everyday left fielder who wouldn’t break the bank, Profar probably wouldn’t have been their first call. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes things just come together. On Wednesday, all the cosmic tumblers clicked into place at Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers, Florida. In the first inning of a spring training game between the Twins and the Phillies, all the big stories of the offseason seemed to collide in one at-bat.

It started with Andrew Painter, the player who has thus far been the talk of spring training. The 19-year-old right-hander ranks fifth on our Top 100 Prospects list. His ascent was so rapid that he wasn’t even on last year’s list (he did make last year’s end-of-season update as a 60 FV), and now baseball is abuzz with the possibility that he might break camp as the fifth starter for the reigning National League champs. Painter even managed to make headlines during live batting practice.

There’s a lot about Painter that seems improbable. 19-year-olds who stand 6-foot-7 don’t often have 50/60 command grades. They’re the guys who spend years in the minors piling up walks and strikeouts while they slowly figure out where exactly all those limbs are supposed to go. Painter shouldn’t be free and easy throwing 99 mph in the zone. He should be a gangly, awkward teen like Alfredo Linguini from Ratatouille. Instead, he’s a commanding, fireballing teen who just happens to look like a whole lot like Alfredo Linguini from Ratatouille:

Read the rest of this entry »

Ricky Tiedemann is one of the fastest-rising pitching prospects in the game. Drafted 91st overall by the Toronto Blue Jays in 2021 out of a Huntington Beach junior college, the 20-year-old southpaw not only finished last season in Double-A, he dominated at all three levels where he saw action. Over 78-and-two-thirds innings, Tiedemann logged a 2.15 ERA while fanning 117 batters and allowing just 39 hits. No. 24 on our recently released Top 100, he possesses, in the words of Tess Taruskin, “three potential plus pitches and front-end upside.”

Tiedemann discussed his M.O. on the mound and his power arsenal prior to Thursday’s spring training game in Dunedin.

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David Laurila: How would you describe yourself as a pitcher? Give me a self-scouting report.

Ricky Tiedemann: “I like to use the fastball a lot — I work off of that — especially now that I’m throwing a little bit harder. Throwing a lot of strikes is my big thing, just keeping it in the zone, along with my slider and changeup. I also try not to keep a rhythm that guys can catch on to; I try to mix it up and work backwards sometimes, starting with a slider and then going fastball in. But I do work with my fastball more than my other pitches.” Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s take a look at the AL Central. (Audience turns away like a child in a high chair trying to avoid being fed creamed peas.) No, I’m serious. I don’t think the division is going to be good — quite the opposite, in fact. Teams like the Diamondbacks or Orioles, likely cursed to be no-hopers this year by the vicissitudes of geography, would be quite competitive in the AL Central.

But within that mediocrity comes unpredictability. We project the entire division to be covered by a spread of just 12 wins, the lowest total for any division. The top three teams are separated by just three projected wins, and each has its own particular idiosyncrasies that turn the division race into a truly intriguing game of rock, paper, scissors. This year’s AL Central race is like the 2006 action thriller Smokin’ Aces: Is it good? Not as such. But is it fun, with a loaded cast? Absolutely. Read the rest of this entry »

As Gavin Lux’s season-ending knee injury reminded us, the Dodgers had quite the free agent exodus during the offseason. Nearly two months ago, they led the pack when Ben Clemens examined which teams were at the extremes in terms of production lost and gained via free agency. With all but a few free agents of note now signed, I thought it would be worth circling back to those rankings before moving on to highlight some notable holes on contending teams, something of an offseason version of my Replacement Level Killers series.

When Ben checked in just after the New Year, the Dodgers were runaway leaders in terms of net WAR lost to free agency, having already parted ways with Tyler Anderson, Cody Bellinger, Justin Turner, Trea Turner and a dozen other players in an effort to trim payroll and lessen (if not eliminate) their Competitive Balance Tax burden. Towards that end, only two of their incoming free agents (J.D. Martinez and Noah Syndergaard) will make more than $10 million annually. To put it another way, the team won 111 games last year with a payroll just south of $270 million for CBT purposes, but after falling short of the National League Championship Series, they’re hoping to get as far or further by winning 80-something games and spending maybe $25 million less. Such are the vagaries of postseason baseball that it just might work. Read the rest of this entry »

From a pure talent perspective, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is special. Only 10-15 players in any given season run a strikeout rate in the mid-teens while posting an ISO of .200 or better. Guerrero has done so in each of the last two seasons (his .290 ISO in 2021 was fifth among qualified hitters). I try to keep that context in mind when I analyze players of Guerrero’s caliber. While I think it’s fair to say that his 132 wRC+ in 2022 was underwhelming, that mark is still quite impressive — indeed, it ranked 29th among qualified hitters last season. He was still productive despite running a 52.1% groundball rate, a mark exceeded by just six qualified hitters, none of whom came close to matching his year at the plate. If he continues to hit like this for the rest of his career, he’ll be a perennial All-Star. Still, given his talent and the lingering expectations of his prospect pedigree, I suspect the Blue Jays are looking for ways to get Guerrero back to something resembling the superlative 2021 version of himself. So let’s do the same.

Now you may be thinking, “Esteban, we all know Vlad Jr.’s problems come when he gets too groundball happy. Why not just tell him to hit more fly balls?” That’s good advice, but I’m more interested in the finer details. For example, Guerrero’s increased groundball rate is the result, but his process has an effect on that outcome. Depending on the hitter, swinging at pitches in zones that don’t match up with their spectrum of swing planes can lead to a change in their batted ball profile. Alternatively, a hitter’s swing decisions could be roughly the same, but a slight mechanical change could alter their bat path. For the Blue Jays first baseman, I think there was a combination of both. Let’s start with how his batted ball profile changed from 2021 to 2022:

Read the rest of this entry »

Yuli Gurriel has played professional baseball around the world, suiting up in Cuba and Japan before making his way to MLB. Yet since moving stateside, Gurriel has worn just one uniform, and it still seems strange to think of him wearing any colors other than blue, orange, and white. In seven years with the Houston Astros, he won a Gold Glove, four American League pennants, and two World Series championships. Someday, he’ll earn a plaque in the Astros Hall of Fame. In 2023, however, he’s hoping to prolong his big-league career with a new ball club.

Astros GM Dana Brown has professed a tad bit of interest in re-signing Gurriel, although that supposed interest may have been a gesture of respect rather than a genuine expression of desire. With José Abreu at first base and Michael Brantley as the DH, there isn’t room for Gurriel in Houston’s starting lineup. He could take a spot on the bench, displacing David Hensley, but Gurriel would likely prefer more guaranteed playing time and the Astros might prefer to see what Hensley has to offer.

Per the Miami Herald, the Marlins made an offer to Gurriel earlier this winter, but the veteran was hesitant to accept. The Fish eventually nixed the deal, although the Herald’s report suggests they could still invite Gurriel to camp as a non-roster invitee. Perhaps he should have taken the guaranteed cash when it was still on the table. The Twins, another club linked to the first baseman this offseason, recently came to terms with Donovan Solano. Presumably, Solano took the roster spot and the salary that might have otherwise gone to Gurriel. Read the rest of this entry »