Nick Loftin could get away with covering the entire plate against high school and college hurlers. That’s far harder to do in pro ball, which is why the 23-year-old Kansas City Royals prospect — per the tutelage of the organization’s hitting instructors — is now dialing in on pitches that can he do more damage on. The message he’s been receiving is pretty straightforward: Look for something in a certain zone, and when you get it, don’t miss it.

The dictum is simple; the execution is anything but. Not when you’re facing pitchers who are throwing high-90s heaters and breaking balls that are cutting and diving in either direction.

“It’s easier said than done,” admitted Loftin, whom the Royals drafted 32nd overall in 2020 out of Baylor University. “Hitting a baseball is one of the hardest things to do — besides hitting a golf ball. That’s really hard to do, as well.”

Wait. A golf ball isn’t moving unpredictably at great speed. Rather, it’s just sitting there, motionless, ready to be struck at the swinger’s leisure. For someone with the athleticism to play shortstop and centerfield in professional baseball, squaring up an immobile object should be as easy as pie.

Not necessarily. Read the rest of this entry »

If there were any fears about how well Seiya Suzuki would transition to Major League Baseball, his hot start with the Cubs has probably quelled them. The 27-year-old right fielder has collected hits in each of his first six games, three of them homers. He reached base safely at least twice in each of those games (the last only with benefit of a throwing error) while demonstrating otherworldly plate discipline to go along with his impressive power. Admittedly, we’re in small-sample theater, but the show thus far is worthy of strong reviews.

It’s not as though Suzuki was expected to flop given that the Cubs invested nearly $100 million in acquiring him — $85 million over a five-year deal plus another $14.625 million as a posting fee for the Hiroshima Carp. As Kevin Goldstein described him when he signed with Chicago in mid-March, “At 27, Suzuki is a player in his prime, with an impressive track record of performance at Japan’s highest level since his teens. This is not a prospect; this is an established talent who just hasn’t played in Major League Baseball yet.”

Suzuki hit .317/.443/.639 with 38 homers and just a 16.3% strikeout rate for Hiroshima last year while winning his second batting title — a slash-stat triple crown this time — and earning Best Nine honors for the sixth straight time in Nippon Professional Baseball. While both the homers and slugging percentage represented career highs, his season wasn’t wildly far off from his career numbers in NPB (.315/.414/.570). Between ZiPS and Steamer, our projection systems figured that he would lose some power in the move to MLB, but his Depth Charts forecast for a .287/.369/.508 line and .371 wOBA still casts him as one of the game’s top 20 hitters.

At least through Thursday, so far, so good. I won’t pretend that half a dozen games is proof of anything for any player, and none of the stats in this piece are even close to stabilizing, but Suzuki has proven to be very entertaining while more than holding his own against quality pitchers from day one.

Indeed, on Opening Day against the Brewers, Suzuki reached base in each of his first three plate appearances. He worked a six-pitch walk and collected a single off reigning NL Cy Young winner Corbin Burnes — no big deal, just having immediate success against the qualifier who had the majors’ lowest wOBA allowed in 2021 — and followed that with an eight-pitch walk against reliever Aaron Ashby. In Chicago’s second game two days later, he drove in three runs, the first two against Brandon Woodruff via a sacrifice fly and a bloop single to center, the third via a four-pitch bases-loaded walk off José Ureña. He capped the series against the Brewers by crushing a three-run first-inning homer off Freddy Peralta, a 110.9-mph, 412-foot shot to left center, then working a seven-pitch walk off Peralta in his next plate appearance.

Two days later, Suzuki went yard twice, accounting for both of the Cubs’ runs in a 2-1 win over the Pirates. His first blow was a 397-footer to right center field off former Cub José Quintana, his second a 398-footer to left field off Anthony Banda. On Wednesday against the Pirates, he went 1-for-3 with an RBI single off Zach Thompson and a walk off Wil Crowe. On Thursday against the Rockies, he hit a first-inning RBI double off Kyle Freeland, and reached base again in the third on a throwing error by José Iglesias.

Here’s the “greatest hits” reel:

Through Thursday, Suzuki is hitting .368/.480/.895 for a 262 wRC+ — absurd numbers straight out of a video game, unsustainable by definition, and yet compelling just the same; he entered Thursday with a 322 wRC+, which ranked third behind only the Guardians’ Owen Miller and Jose Ramírez, but dropped to eighth with his 1-for-4 night in Colorado. He’s averaged a 91.0 mph exit velocity on his batted balls, and his 28.6% barrel rate is tied with Aaron Judge for fourth in the majors, trailing only Byron Buxton, Joey Gallo, and Giancarlo Stanton — the big boys, so to speak.

While Suzuki is hitting the ball hard, what he’s doing when he’s not hitting the ball at all stands out even more. His swinging strike rate is just 3.8% — that’s four swings and misses from among 104 pitches, one against Woodruff, one against Banda, one against the Pirates’ David Bednar, and one against the Rockies’ Justin Lawrence, the last two of whom struck him out swinging. That 3.8% rate still trails Steven Kwan’s ungodly 0.7%, as well as the rates of four other players, but it’s amazing nonetheless. I won’t pretend to know where he’ll finish, but in the pitch-tracking era (since 2008), 54 batters have qualified for the batting title with swinging strike rates of 3.8% or lower. Only two of them, however, have done so while slugging at least .500, both in 2014: Victor Martinez (.565 SLG, 3.5% SwStr%) and Michael Brantley (.506 SLG, 3.6% SwStr%). Brantley barely missed in 2019 (.503 SLG, 4.0% SwStr%), as did Albert Pujols in 2008 (.653 SLG, 4.0% SwStr%). That would be some company to wind up in.

Also impressive is Suzuki’s 10.9% chase rate, which is in a virtual tie with Christian Yelich for the majors’ lowest among qualifiers. Suzuki entered Thursday at 8.3%, the only qualifier in single digits — even Kwan’s at a comparatively normal 23.7% — but went down chasing a well-placed sinker by Lawrence:

That was just the fifth pitch Suzuki has chased outside the zone; he fouled two of them off, singled off Woodruff, and doubled off Freeland.

Again, Suzuki won’t maintain those numbers, but it’s worth noting how advanced he is at controlling the zone relative to the other Japanese hitters who have come over recently. In mid-March, just after he signed, Hiroshi Miyashita published a piece on the FanGraphs Community Research blog comparing Suzuki’s final NPB season to those of Shohei Ohtani (2016 and ’17), Yoshi Tsutsugo (2019), and Shogo Akiyama (2019) via data from the 1.02 – Essence of Baseball site, with tables covering his slash stats, WAR components, batted ball stats, plate discipline stats, and more. The plate discipline one particularly stood out to these eyes:

Among MLB qualifiers, only Juan Soto (15.1%), Max Muncy (19.1%), Robbie Grossman (19.2%) and Tommy Pham (19.3%) swung at less than 20% of pitches outside the zone; Ohtani, the only one of the above players to qualify last year, had a chase rate of 30.1% in 2021 and is at 31.1% for his career, so perhaps we can expect Suzuki’s line to wind up in a range comparable to what he did in Japan.

Speaking of Ohtani, he and Keith McDonald (the son of an American serviceman stationed in Japan during the Vietnam War) of the 2000 Cardinals are the only other players born in Japan who homered three times in their first six games in MLB, with Kenji Johjima the only other one even to homer twice; no other Japanese player had a multi-homer game so early in his major league career. (Ohtani hit .364/.417/.773 (221 wRC+) in his first six non-pitching games in 2018, in case you’re wondering.) Meanwhile, Suzuki’s six-game hitting streak is the third-longest of any Japanese player to start his career, after those of Akinori Iwamura in 2007 (nine games) and Hideki Matsui in ’03 (seven games). His 10 RBI are the most by any Japanese player in his first six games, and in fact only two players born anywhere have more RBI in such a career-opening span, the Tigers’ Dale Alexander in 1929 (13) and the Rockies’ Trevor Story in 2016 (12), while four other players had 10, including the Reds’ Jonathan India last year.

That stuff is admittedly trivial and fleeting, and we’ll have to wait and see how well Suzuki maintains his power and plate discipline as pitchers adjust to what they’ve seen. Still, it’s pretty clear that he belongs in the majors, and it appears very possible that the Cubs have a legitimate middle-of-the-lineup star on their hands.

Welcome to KwanGraphs, your source for everything… wait, no, that’s not right. Welcome to FanKwan, your … no, still not it. This part is definitely true, though: today I’m here to talk about Steven Kwan, the Guardians phenom who swung for our hearts and didn’t miss. He was our No. 57 prospect heading into the season, and ZiPS concurred, calling him its No. 62 prospect. He’s been better than that so far — a top 10 hitter in baseball, more or less. Can he keep it going? Will he bat .330 with more walks than strikeouts? I crunched data and watched film to come up with some educated speculation.

Let’s start with the great news: Kwan’s phenomenal bat control is as real as it gets. He’s swung and missed either one or two times (and hey, good news for pedants everywhere, I’ve even thrown in a special postscript at the end of this post so everyone can whinge about foul tips in the comments) in his major league career so far, which is obviously great. Even better, this isn’t something new. In 2021, he was the best contact hitter in the minors, bar none.

Over 1,388 pitches I captured, Kwan swung 551 times. He swung and missed 39 times, and had another seven foul tips. That’s a swinging strike rate of either 2.8% or 3.3% depending on your definition, both of which are otherworldly. The contact rate is no joke, either: he made contact on more than 90% of his swings, which led the high minors and would have placed him in a dead heat with David Fletcher for best in the big leagues.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers couldn’t have asked for much more from Clayton Kershaw than what he gave them in his first start of the 2022 season, and so they didn’t. Faced with the unenviable choice of letting the future Hall of Famer push himself into the red in pursuit of a perfect game — under frigid conditions in Minnesota, no less — or take a more prudent course with a 34-year-old hurler whose last regular-season appearance placed his future in doubt, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts went against all sentimentality. He pulled Kershaw after seven spotless innings and 80 pitches, a move that the pitcher later called “the right choice,” and the Dodgers settled for a combined one-hitter and a 7-0 victory at Target Field.

For those seven glorious innings, it felt as though the three-time Cy Young winner had turned back the clock. Kershaw struck out 13 of the 21 batters he faced, generating 20 swings and misses, including 17 (out of 27 swings) with his slider. He added another 13 called strikes, including four with the slider and seven with his four-seam fastball, which averaged a modest 90.6 mph, 0.7 mph below last year’s mark. His 41% CSW% for the day was a mark he surpassed only twice last year, first with a 44% CSW% in his 13-strikeout June 27 outing against the Cubs — his last unfettered start of the season, as he landed on the injured list with inflammation in his left forearm following a four-inning start on July 3 — and then a 42% CSW in his September 19 start against the Diamondbacks, the best outing of his abbreviated September. Read the rest of this entry »

Hagen Danner has had a unique ride in our rankings. The 2017 second-round draft pick was No. 31 on our 2019 Toronto Blue Jays Top Prospects list, and after falling off completely in 2020 and ’21, he’s now a helium-filled No.14 on our ’22 edition. A position change has fueled the ascent; previously a catcher, Danner was moved to the mound in the months preceding the 2020 shutdown.

Last season saw the 23-year-old right-hander emerge as a shutdown reliever. Pitching against professional hitters for the first time, Danner logged a 2.02 ERA with 42 strikeouts in 35.2 innings with High-A Vancouver. Moreover, those numbers came courtesy of a power arsenal that has prompted our own Eric Longenhagen to proclaim that the Huntington Beach High School product is “on the fast track.”

Danner discussed his conversion — which wasn’t exactly a conversion — and the heater/slutter/curveball combination that he takes with him to the mound, following a spring-training outing against the Pittsburgh Pirates. He proceeded to break camp with the Double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats.

———

David Laurila: You were a two-way player in high school. How much did you actually understand pitching at that time?

Hagen Danner: “A lot. It was my main position until senior year, at which time I decided to just swing the bat. That allowed me to get drafted as a hitter and let me try to live out my dream of being a hitter in the big leagues. When that wasn’t going right, it was an easy transition.”

Laurila: You were drafted as a catcher. Why that position?

Danner: “It was what I played in high school when I wasn’t pitching, although I also was a third baseman. I guess it was better [draft-wise] to be as a power-hitting catcher. It helped being able to play defense behind the plate, too.”

Laurila: Do you feel that you had potential as a hitter? There was a lot of swing-and-miss to your game, but you did have a [.409] OBP as a 19-year-old in rookie ball. Read the rest of this entry »

Three days ago, Jesús Luzardo was a fun bounceback candidate. As a minor leaguer, he was one of the best prospects in the game, with an explosive fastball, a spectacular array of secondaries, and plus command. In his first two seasons of big league experience, that continued; he missed bats, walked only 6.8% of his opponents, and posted an ERA in the upper threes. But in 2021, his command collapsed, and with it his untouchable status in Oakland. In the midst of a 6.61 ERA season with an 11% walk rate, the A’s shipped him off to Miami in exchange for Starling Marte.

It’s not three days ago anymore. Now, after a dominant start, I’m considering a different question: is Luzardo Miami’s best pitcher? Is he one of the best pitchers in baseball, full stop? That’s probably hyperbole, but again: Luzardo was one of the best pitching prospects in baseball only a handful of years ago. Let’s give his remarkable turnaround the consideration it deserves, and see if we can figure out what changes he’s made to unlock this new level of performance while we’re at it.

First things first: has Luzardo made any changes to his delivery? To figure this out with my remedial understanding of pitching mechanics, I watched one fastball from his 2021 season and one fastball from his 2022 debut over and over (and over and over and over) again. Here are the clips in question. First, a called strike last April:

Next, a foul tip from Tuesday:

I’m hardly an expert here, but I noticed several differences. First, he’s more to the third-base side of the rubber. Second, at the peak of his lead leg’s lift, his glove position is meaningfully higher. Take a look at the two side-by-side and it’s somewhat obvious, even if the different aspect angles from the two broadcasts keep you from making a straight comparison:

Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, I looked at the hitters I’m bearish on, so it’s time to finish the series for 2022 with the pitchers that are causing me worries. (If you’re wondering about my breakout picks, wonder no more.)

So what exactly is a bust? I don’t take it to mean that a player is awful or has no value. For me, a bust is a player who will step down a tier in performance or who is in a down cycle and has passed the window to get back to what they used to be. None of the players involved are literally without value, and some of them are still really good. But they’re all players I think will be well below their best, usually in a manner that makes me sad as a baseball fan.

Before getting to the 2022 candidates, here are my ’21 bust choices and how they performed:

• Corey Kluber: 3.83 ERA, 3.85 FIP, 1.5 WAR in 80 IP
• Patrick Corbin: 5.82 ERA, 5.41 FIP, 0.2 WAR in 171.2 IP
• Jon Lester: 4.71 ERA, 5.41 FIP, 0.0 WAR in 141.1 IP
• Martín Pérez: 4.74 ERA, 5.54 FIP, 0.6 WAR in 114 IP
• Marco Gonzales: 3.96 ERA, 5.02 FIP, 0.6 WAR in 143.1 IP
• Johnny Cueto: 4.08 ERA, 4.95 FIP, 1.5 WAR in 114.2 IP
• Rich Hill: 3.86 ERA, 4.34 FIP, 1.7 WAR in 158.2 IP
• Dustin May: 2.74 ERA, 3.30 FIP, 0.5 WAR in 23 IP

Nobody really shone here, but by the same token, nobody was legendarily awful (I had expected Lester to go down that route and he didn’t really). We obviously didn’t get a ton of Kluber, but he was definitely much more effective than I expected. My concern with May was that he was still rather awkward at punching out batters, despite the explosiveness of his stuff, so I was happy that he spent April proving me very wrong about where he was as a pitcher — then very unhappy as he tore his UCL in early May and required Tommy John surgery.

As a reminder, I selected all of these players by Opening Day, so there’s no knowledge of anything that happened after Opening Day. It would have been really awkward if someone on my list had surprise Tommy John surgery this week! Read the rest of this entry »

The Colorado Rockies are projected to be gobsmackingly bad in 2022. Look no further than the summary of this season’s positional power rankings: They have three positions that rank 30th and six below 20th, which works out to a cumulative last-place finish. Most of it traces back to a lack of certifiable talent on Colorado’s roster. But some of it, inevitably, is a function of Coors Field. Today, I will mainly focus on the fact that at home, the Rockies allow lots and lots of runs. The common thinking is that this is because Coors is an environment conducive to home runs. While true, there’s another factor that arguably matters more. Check out this graph:

When a fly ball or line drive is hit at Coors, the resulting .459 BABIP has led all of major league baseball by a laughably wide margin for the past few years. The gap between the Rockies in first place and the second-place Red Sox (.421) is equal to that between second place and the 15th-place Orioles (.393). If you’re wondering why, the outfield at Coors is absolutely enormous, so much so that it’s hard to believe just three men patrol it. The thin air helps the ball travel, but crucially, there’s also a lot of space for it to land. It’s a two-part mechanism that captures why offense can get out of control in the Rockies’ home park. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Phillies signed Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos to free agent deals within a three-day span in March, there were more than a few giggles about the moves’ effect on what already figured to be a shaky team defense. Monday night provided ample demonstration of those concerns, though neither of those two new sluggers figured in the mishaps. Instead, the misadventures of third baseman Alec Bohm were in the spotlight, drawing attention to an area that might be of even greater concern.

The 25-year-old Bohm, who has struggled mightily at the hot corner during his brief major league career, was charged with throwing errors on three separate plays in the first three innings of Monday’s game, though the runs that scored in the wake of the first one were earned. He later found a measure of redemption by sparking a five-run rally in the team’s come-from-behind win over the Mets.

In the first inning, after Brandon Nimmo led off with a single, Starling Marte hit a comebacker that deflected off pitcher Ranger Suárez and over to Bohm, who made an awkward, sidearmed throw on a ball that he should have just kept in his pocket. The throw went into foul territory about 15 feet up the right field line as Marte took second and Nimmo third; while Bohm fielded grounders on the next two batters cleanly, Nimmo scored, and Marte soon did as well as part of a three-run inning. Read the rest of this entry »

With Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer fronting their rotation, the Mets were theoretically spoiled for choices when picking an Opening Day starter. Or at least, they would have been if deGrom hadn’t been hurt and Scherzer hadn’t picked up a few minor injuries of his own during the spring, throwing off his schedule a bit. Of course, New York also traded for Chris Bassitt during the offseason; he was the Oakland A’s Opening Day starter in 2021. They’ve also got a healthy Carlos Carrasco, who might have taken on the role during his Cleveland tenure were it not for Corey Kluber. Thus, it was rather surprising to see Tylor Megill take the mound last Thursday night.

While the start was certainly an honor for Megill, his throwing schedule also lined up most closely with the occasion. “It fit where he was. Not necessarily his pitch count, but his work load and experience factor,” said manager Buck Showalter after picking him. It’s a fun bit of trivia for the history books, but after the pre-game pomp and circumstance, Megill’s performance met the moment. He dazzled over five innings of work, holding the Nationals scoreless, allowing just three baserunners and striking out six. The biggest revelation of the evening was a fastball that was suddenly sitting 96 mph and that touched 99 mph, no doubt aided by the adrenaline of the first inning. In his second start of the season yesterday, Megill held the Phillies scoreless over 5.1 innings, allowing just three baserunners and striking out five. It’s just 10 innings and 144 pitches, but it certainly seems as though Megill’s entire arsenal — and not just his heater — has taken a step forward this year.

An eighth round pick in 2018 out of Arizona, Megill peaked at 25th on the 2021 Mets prospect list. His fastball sat in the low-90s in college and in his first taste of pro ball. After the cancelled 2020 minor league season, he showed up to spring training last year regularly throwing 94 mph, and that velocity increase stuck when he made his major league debut in late June. Now his fastball is up another tick and a half. Read the rest of this entry »