Ty Buttrey has come a long way since being selected by the Red Sox in the fourth round of the 2012 draft out of a Charlotte, North Carolina high school. Following six often-tumultuous seasons in the minors, the 25-year-old turned a developmental corner last year and made his MLB debut in August. He did so with the Los Angeles Angels, who acquired him in the trade deadline deal that sent Ian Kinsler to Boston.

His future is bright. As Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel wrote in yesterday’s Angels Top Prospect list, Buttrey will likely be a significant part of the team’s bullpen this season. He logged four saves in last year’s 16-game, 16.1-inning cameo, and could very well earn the closer’s job.

His biggest strides have been mental. The power arm has always been there — Buttrey’s fastball sits in the mid-90s, and he’s reached triple digits — but as he readily admits, his mindset wasn’t where it needed to be. Rather than staying true to what came naturally, the 6-foot-6 righty too often found himself trying to fix things that weren’t necessarily broken. In short, he became a tinkerer.

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Buttrey on finding himself as a pitcher: “Starting out, I was listening to too many people, versus going out there and doing what makes me who I am, doing what got me drafted. There was a lot of noise that I wasn’t able to block out. I was trying to do so many things, just to make people happy. The next thing you know, I’d gotten really mechanical. I lost some ground on who I was as a pitcher.

“All coaches have things they preach, and some things work for players and others don’t. I’m not saying any of it was bad, or ill-intended, but if you listen to too many people, everything just kind of clouds over. You’re hearing, ‘Hey, stay taller on your back side,’ or ‘Let’s change this grip on this pitch,’ or it could be ‘Let’s get your front side at a different angle.’ Everyone is telling you something. Read the rest of this entry »

If you watch American football, you’re probably familiar with the concept of “icing the kicker.” For the uninitiated, icing the kicker is not actually the process of freezing the kicker in Carbonite, though that would probably be more fun. Instead, icing the kicker refers to the opposing team calling a time out just before the kicker is about to attempt a field goal or extra point, with the aim of disrupting the kicker’s timing or focus, and causing the kicker to miss said attempt. We saw it happen to the Chicago Bears’ Cody Parkey in the most recent NFC Wildcard game.

Why does this matter? Because a recent rule change has raised the question of whether such a tactic would work in baseball. The twenty-second pitch clock is currently being tested in spring training.

While this has been the rule in the minors for a while, it will be an adjustment for major league veterans who came up before 2015 and aren’t as familiar with it. And that’s led to the question of whether hitters should attempt the tactic of icing the pitcher. FanGraphs alum Travis Sawchik explained the reasoning thusly, while our own Dan Szymborski highlighted the loophole that makes it possible:

In other words, the new rule says that a pitcher has 20 seconds to begin his windup and come set from the time he receives the ball, provided it isn’t the first pitch of an at-bat. However, the rule doesn’t require the hitter to stay in the batter’s box during that time. So is Travis right? Could hitters “ice the pitcher” by waiting until five seconds before the pitch clock expires, thus forcing the pitcher to rush his delivery?

The answer is actually fairly complicated. The idea behind icing the pitcher is that it will make him deliver a worse pitch. It’s a mind game. But it might not be a mind game that works all that well. The evidence from other sports is mixed as to whether such a mind game would even be effective. Older research suggested a correlation between icing the kicker and missed field goals, but more recent research is all over the map. Some studies, for example, have found that icing the kicker can be effective, but only on longer distance kicks. Other studies of the effectiveness of iced kickers have found no statistically significant difference between the success rates of iced kickers and those who were allowed to proceed with their kicks without interruption. In fact, some of the research even found that the effectiveness of iced kickers was better than kickers who weren’t iced.

Now obviously, there’s a significant difference between kicking a football and throwing a baseball. So let’s look at the other sport where “icing” is a thing: basketball, where teams sometimes ice the opposing team’s free throw shooters. There, too, there’s no real evidence that icing a free throw shooter reduces the odds of making a free throw. The odds of a successful free throw are pretty much the same, whether or not the other team decides to ice the player. Interestingly, though, there is some evidence that icing can be effective when used against specific players. Pitchers are creatures of routine, and presumably could suffer from mind games just as their compatriots in other sports might. Further study would be required to verify if the practice had any baseball-specific effects. But the results from football and basketball suggest the practice’s efficacy might be limited.

So how likely are we to see icing the pitcher when the pitch clock makes its way to the majors? It’s unclear. We don’t see much – if any – pitcher icing in the minors, where the pitch clock has been in use for years. That might be the result of minors prioritizing player development over winning, but you’d think if it was at all effective, at least a few teams would have tried it.

And remember that a rule was implemented in 2015 that required hitters to keep one foot in the batter’s box between pitches, which could preempt this strategy. That is, it could preempt the strategy if the rule were enforced, which it really isn’t. As Eduardo Encina explained:

In 2015, MLB made a rule that hitters had to keep at least one foot in the batter’s box, but enforcement of the rule varied. Hitters received warnings for being slow and repeat violators were fined, but no penalty impacted the game itself.

But even if hitters followed this rule, a hitter could still ice the pitcher just by waiting to put his second foot in the batter’s box until five seconds were left on the pitch clock. Icing the pitcher as a strategy might be reduced, but it wouldn’t be eliminated.

So what could pitchers do instead? Under the proposed rule being tested in spring training, a pitcher has a few options. He could, first of all, come set and then step off the pitching rubber, thereby icing the hitter right back. Depending on how often this is used, the pitch clock could thereby actually lengthen games if we had a lot of the tit-for-tat icing contests, though I assume at some point we’d reach a homeostasis of sorts. The pitcher, if there’s a runner on base, could simply feint a throw there. Most relief pitchers, who are likely in the game in the highest-leverage spots, pitch from the stretch anyway, meaning it takes not much time at all to go from “staring in” to “coming set.” Even Dellin Betances, who is notoriously slow to the plate, doesn’t need five seconds to do that. And it’s worth noting that the pitcher might not even have to rush his delivery, even if he did have only five seconds left. The rule says that the pitcher merely has to begin his windup, not that he has to actually deliver the ball. In other words, it really doesn’t matter how fast you are to the plate. It just matters how quickly you can come to a set position, though pitchers will likely be loath to alter their mechanics in such a manner.

It’s also possible – though perhaps unlikely – that the catcher might be impacted by icing if a hitter waited fifteen seconds to get in the box. All of a sudden, the catcher has to call a pitch and get the pitcher to agree to it, in five seconds. The catcher can, of course, think about what to call when the hitter’s not in the box, but he can’t give the signs until the hitter settles in. Ordinarily, we’d probably see the catcher trot out to talk to the pitcher about it…but there’s that pesky mound visit rule. Of course, right now there’s no real way to quantify this, because it’s all theoretical, but it would be interesting to look at in a baseball-specific study of the phenomena.

All in all, icing pitchers seems unlikely to be a widely used strategy. Even if it became a Thing, it might be one of the more easily fixable Things in baseball history. One would imagine that if batters tried to press their advantage, opposing pitchers and managers would certainly have something to say about it. The desire to gain a small advantage might finally inspire greater adherence to the one-foot-in-the-batters-box. After all, all umpires would have to do to address the issue is start enforcing that rule, and icing would be essentially mitigated. In fact, it might make sense for umpires to start enforcing that rule now, along with the pitch clock. After all, the pitcher can’t delay a game all by himself.

Brett Hanewich opened a lot of eyes last year in his first full professional season. Thanks largely to a take-notice fastball, the 24-year-old right-hander logged a 2.61 ERA, and fanned 74 batters in 69 relief innings, between Low-A Burlington and Hi-A Inland Empire. The Los Angeles Angels took Hanewich in the ninth round of the 2017 draft out of Stanford University, where he graduated with an engineering degree.

Command is his biggest question mark. Hanewich issued six free passes every nine innings last season, and his walk rate as a collegian wasn’t anything to write home about either. A max-effort delivery is part of the reason, and therein lies a conundrum. Hanewich believes that his delivery — a byproduct of a summer spent with a former Cy Young Award winner — is partially responsible for his plus velocity.

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Hanewich on his heater: “I have a heavy fastball. That’s what everybody who catches me calls it. It feels like a bowling ball as opposed to, say, a Whiffle ball. I think it has to do with spin rate. My spin rate is anywhere between 2,300 and 2,400, which is above major league average.

“Another thing that makes my fastball different is my motion. I get very good extension. It’s somewhere between seven and eight feet, which is way above average. The way I throw, the ball jumps on the hitter — there’s more life to it because of the extension. The plate is sixty feet six inches from the mound, so a pitcher with a six-foot extension is throwing 54 feet six inches from where the ball is being released. There’s a thing called perceived velocity. The ball looks like it’s coming in faster than what it actually is. My perceived velocity is a plus, and the fact that I throw hard to begin with is obviously a factor as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Los Angeles Angels. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from our own (both Eric Longenhagen’s and Kiley McDaniel’s) observations. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a new feature at the site that offers sortable scouting information for every organization. That can be found here.

Other Prospects of Note

Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.

Current Pitching Depth
Jeremy Beasley, RHP
Miguel Almonte, RHP
Brett Hanewich, RHP
Williams Jerez, LHP

All of these guys are between 23 and 26 years old, and could contribute to the big club in some capacity this year or next. Beasley has the best long-term prognosis as a potential fifth starter. His splitter is plus, the rest of his stuff average. Almonte debuted way back in 2015 but injuries have kept him list-eligible. He has a plus curveball and fastball velo but the injuries and command issues are worrisome, and he was unclaimed after being DFA’d fairly recently. Hanewich is a one-pitch guy but it’s a great pitch. His fastball is 97-99 with plus-plus extension but his delivery is erratic and his secondaries are inconsistent, though his change plays well off the heater when he locates it competitively. Jerez is a mid-90s lefty with a good splitter and 40 control, and might be a reliever if the command improves.

Some Younger Sleepers
Robinson Pina, RHP
Hector Yan, LHP
Julio De La Cruz, INF
Sadrac Franco, RHP

All of these prospects are about 19 years old and currently in the lower levels of the minors. Pina sits 91-94 with 7-foot-2 of extension, and has an above-average slider. He may end up as a late-inning arm but looks more like a reliever who’ll take a few years. Yan is a lefty with presently average velo and an arm action that promises more. He has feel for a curveball that could be plus at peak but he’s probably also reliever due to a lack of changeup feel. De La Cruz isn’t a good defensive infielder but he has 55 bat speed and pull-side power; he’s a 50 runner with a 55 arm. He may end up in right field, but if the glove improves, he’ll be quite interesting. Franco will flash a plus curveball and he also sits about 90-94, but he’s less projectable than the typical 19-year-old due to a smaller frame.

Old Friends and Long Shots
Michael Santos, RHP
Mayky Perez, RHP
Adrian Almeida, LHP
Oliver Ortega, LHP
Adrian De Horta, RHP

Santos was a favorite of ours when he was a Giants AZL arm. He was part of Tampa’s return for Matt Moore but had a shoulder injury and was released. When healthy, he was 91-94 with a bevy of average secondaries and a chance one of the breaking balls would be above at peak. Perez was a hard-throwing, big-bodied relief type who was released by prospect-laden San Diego. Almeida was a minor league Rule 5 pick a few years ago. He sits 93-96 and has a plus curveball but 30 control. Ortega and De Horta both throw hard, peaking in the 95-96 range. All of these arms are age 22 to 24.

System Overview

Once clearly the worst system in baseball, this group is now pretty exciting, if somewhat monochromatic. There are some clear trends at play, the first being that the club’s draft strategy has taken on a toolsier, more athletic vibe in recent years, with several high picks spent on splashy high schoolers like Adell, Adams, and English. The club has also targeted versatile defenders with good plate discipline on the pro side, yielding Rengio and Soto, while doing everything it can to hoard pitching depth behind what has been a snake-bitten big league staff, even at the expense of some interesting young arms like Elvin Rodriguez, who would have fairly prominent placement in the 40 FV tier on this list had he not be dealt for Ian Kinsler (though Buttrey would rank higher). The Angels clearly have a type or two now, but they’re types we like.

The player development arm of the org is one of the more aggressive groups in the league, and is unabashed about mechanical tinkering. Trent Deveaux’s multitude of swings look bad because he has struggled so mightily, but there have been more prospects improved by the changes than there have been players who have gone backwards. Taylor Ward graduated off the list, but he made positive alterations before his call-up, and the changes made by Walsh, Thaiss, and Hermosillo have all been clear improvements, while the jury is still out on Jahmai Jones’ tweaks. Brandon Marsh may show a dramatic shift this year as the gap between his BP raw power and in-game approach to contact is quite, quite vast.

Another trend on this list: lots of pitchers throwing harder. Canning throws harder now than he did in college, Suarez and Madero had velo spikes last year, and Soriano’s uptick, while predictable because of his build, came sooner than expected. The scouting staff has given what appears to be a good player dev group lots of malleable athletes to work with and, so far, results have been positive even though most of the guys we’re excited about haven’t done anything in the big leagues yet.

For a player whom the Yankees acquired from the Twins in exchange for a backup catcher who hasn’t posted a positive WAR since the deal, Aaron Hicks was already quite a steal. Now the team has inked the 29-year-old switch-hitting center fielder to a very club-friendly seven-year, $70 million extension. It’s the second extension they’ve handed out this month, after Luis Severino’s four-year, $40 million deal, and likely won’t be the last, as the team is reportedly working on extensions for Dellin Betances and Didi Gregorius as well

The Severino extension has the same average annual value as Hicks’, but the two situations are rather different. Severino’s deal buys out just one year of potential free agency for a just-turned-25-year-old Super Two pitcher. While his career has had its ups and downs — including a detour to the minors in 2016 after a tantalizing 2015 debut, as well as a two-month slump last year that featured a 6.83 ERA, a 4.99 FIP, and concerns about pitch-tipping that carried into the postseason — we’re still talking about a pitcher who ranked fifth in the majors in WAR over the past two seasons while making a pair of All-Star teams and receiving Cy Young votes in both years, with a third-place finish in 2017. He may well win the award before his new contract lapses.

Hicks, who could have become a free agent after this season, isn’t nearly as accomplished, in that he’s never made an All-Star team, and has a single 10th-place AL MVP vote to his name. Indeed, he’s something of a late bloomer, having taken until his age-28 season (last year) to qualify for a batting title, though it’s not as though his talent was unexpected. The 14th pick of the 2008 draft out of Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, he made four appearances on Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects lists from 2009-2013, ranking as high as no. 19 (2010). While I could spend a thousand words explaining how the Twins botched his development, Baseball Prospectus editor-in-chief Aaron Gleeman, who has covered the team since the days when blogs were a novelty, offered a succinct summary in less than 280 characters:

In 928 plate appearances spread from 2013-2015, Hicks hit just .225/.306/.349 for an 81 wRC+, though above-average (and occasionally spectacular) defense pushed his WAR in that span to 2.5. But with top prospect Byron Buxton waiting to be similarly screwed up in the wings, Ryan sold very low on Hicks, trading him straight up for catcher John Ryan Murphy, a former second-round pick who through his age-24 season had shown promise on both sides of the ball, if not at a level that lands one on the upper reaches of prospect lists. Long story short, Ryan started his Twins career going 3-for-40 as a backup behind Kurt Suzuki, and never really had a chance in the organization before being dealt to the Diamondbacks in July 2017.

Though Yankees general manager Brian Cashman loved his athleticism, Hicks did not pan out immediately. Amid three trips to the injured list (once for each hamstring, and once for his right shoulder), he hit just .217/.281/.336 (64 wRC+, -0.1 WAR) in 361 PA as a fourth outfielder behind Brett Gardner, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Carlos Beltran in 2016, a step backwards from his modest but solid 2015 (96 wRC+, 2.0 WAR). He finally broke out in 2017 (.266/.372/.475, 15 homers, 10 SB, 3.3 WAR) despite oblique strains on both sides that limited him to 88 games. An intercostal strain sidelined him early in 2018, but he recovered to put together his best season yet, batting .248/.366/.467 with 27 homers, 11 steals, a 127 wRC+ and 4.9 WAR, the Yankee lineup’s second-highest WAR total behind Aaron Judge (5.0).

Hicks’ extension will pay him $10.5 million per year from 2020-2023, then $9.5 million in 2024-2025, with a $12.5 million club option and a $1 million buyout for 2026, his age-36 season. The deal incorporates the $6 million salary he and the Yankees had already hammered out for this year, sweetening the pot with a $2 million signing bonus.

That doesn’t change things all that much, but it makes it easier for apples-to-apples comparisons with the last two free agent center fielders to ink big contracts, namely Lorenzo Cain (five years, $80 million from the Brewers last winter) and A.J. Pollock (four years, $55 million from the Dodgers in January). Both were a bit older and more accomplished when they reached free agency. Cain hit the market after his age-31 season, having already made an All-Star team, helped the Royals to back-to-back pennants (with a 2014 ALCS MVP award, a 2015 ALCS-winning mad dash home, and a championship in that same season), and reeled off four straight seasons of above-average production totaling 17.0 WAR. Pollock reached free agency after his age-30 season, having made one All-Star team and won one Gold Glove. Those were both back in his monster 6.8-WAR 2015 season; since then, a variety of injuries has limited him to 237 games and 5.2 WAR.

Pollock’s deal included all kinds of bells and whistles: a $12 million signing bonus; an opt-out after 2021, with a potential $5 million buyout based upon his PA totals; a $10 million player option — which also increases based upon his PA totals as well as placement in MVP voting — with a $5 million buyout; a $1.5 million assignment bonus if he’s traded; and (probably) an extra popsicle out of the freezer every weekend night. Leaving all of that aside to focus on the guaranteed money, here’s a side-by-side comparison with Hicks, using ZiPS projections supplied by Dan Szymborski:

WAR-wise, the two players are just over half a win apart when it comes to their 31-to-35 projections; for that period, Hicks is guaranteed $50.5 million to Pollock’s $55 million, though the latter could reach $65 million if he maxes out his incentives with 600 PA in 2022 (a level he reached only in 2015), and go even higher if he finishes in the top 10 of the MVP voting in any of those four years (something he’s never done). Even before factoring inflation, Hicks is taking a discount relative to that guaranteed money, but again, he’s less accomplished in the traditional sense, even if he’s been the more valuable one over the past two or three seasons.

As with Severino’s extension (and most deals struck prior to a player reaching free agency), there’s a decent chance that Hicks has sold himself short. Then again, the past two winters’ trips through free agency haven’t been much fun for many players, and there’s also a chance Hicks might not merit a starting job by the middle of this deal, and thus be the kind of fourth outfielder who only a big-spending team like the Yankees — who are paying Gardner $7.5 million for a year in which he might wind up in that role, and have paid Ellsbury $42 million for the past two seasons, one of them a complete washout — can afford. If Mike Trout absolutely demands to wear pinstripes after the 2020 season, while Judge and Giancarlo Stanton are under contract, Hicks’ salary won’t be a huge impediment.

Seventy million dollars of guaranteed money isn’t nothing. For a player whose major league career seemed to take forever to get off the ground, and who, after one more good season before hitting the market, might at best have netted the same dollar amount but compressed into a shorter time period (say, five years and $70 million as Cain Lite) and then been forced to scramble for scraps given the way the market is treating outfielders in their mid-30s, it’s a solid payday. If this is Hicks’ one bite of the (Big) Apple, he did all right.

Last year, we discussed the lawsuit that former Yankees top prospect and current Athletics outfielder Dustin Fowler filed against the White Sox for the injury he suffered after colliding with a concealed electrical box while chasing a fly ball at what was then called U.S. Cellular Field (a vastly superior name to Guaranteed Rate Field). When last we checked in, the White Sox and the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority (the two defendants in the case) had removed the case to federal court and were trying to use something called labor law preemption to argue that the case should be dismissed.

The White Sox invoked the Labor Management Relations Act (“LMRA”), a federal law Section 301 of which states that federal courts, and federal law, govern all employment disputes where the rights of the parties have been collectively bargained. The team argued that “Plaintiff . . . was injured as a result of an incident that took place only because he was employed as a Major League Baseball Player pursuant to a highly regulated contractual employment relationship that specified all of the rights and duties of the respective parties – including with respect to Players health and safety.” Here, the White Sox pointed to Article XIII of the CBA, which governs players’ safety and health, and included a committee set up to assess potential player hazards.

Fowler, of course, disagreed, and noted the limitations of the Committee created by Article XIII.

At the time, I noted that while the issue wasn’t clear cut, I thought Fowler had the better argument. Last July, Judge Gary Feinerman agreed with Fowler, sending the case back to state court for adjudication of Fowler’s state law claims in a blistering opinion.

A state law claim is not completely preempted where a defendant contending that the claim requires interpretation of a CBA advances a frivolous or insubstantial reading of the agreement; rather, preemption applies only where the defendant’s interpretation of the CBA is arguable or plausible. . . .But the White Sox’s reading of Article XIII [of the CBA] is not plausible.  No club could have reasonably believed, based on the text of Article XIII, that the Committee would be able to identify safety risks so comprehensively and effectively that, as long as the Committee raised no objections, the club could simply assume that nothing in its premises posed an unreasonable risk to players.

In other words, Feinerman concluded that the team’s argument was implausible on its face, because it provided a means for teams to ignore real hazards to players simply by deferring to the Committee’s judgment. To Feinerman, that argument represented an absurd interpretation of the CBA – not to mention one that would have significant negative public policy ramifications.

Article XIII leaves no doubt that the clubs were in a vastly better position than the Committee to assess the safety of their own premises.  The clubs did not give up any control over their premises to the Committee, nor did they even grant it any consistent supervisory role.  . . . When the Committee does address a safety concern, its recommendations are only advisory, leaving final authority over the premises with the clubs.  It would have been wholly unreasonable for any club to delegate its responsibility to ensure the safety of its playing field to the intermittent and weak Committee described in Article XIII.

That language – calling the Committee weak – was an intentional swipe at Major League Baseball. Judge Feinerman was, in essence, finding that Fowler was entitled to a remedy in tort law because the CBA didn’t provide an appropriate remedy, either through the committee or through arbitration.

Feinerman also emphasized that the electrical box being a hidden hazard made the team’s argument implausible because it improperly placed the burden on the player rather than on the team. It was not the job of the player, held Feinerman, to alert teams to hazards on the playing field.

That conclusion applies with particular force to a small, hidden hazard like the metal box that injured Fowler.  Because the box was hidden from players’ view … no player could have realized the risk it posed and attempted to convene the Committee to address the problem.  And it strains credulity to suppose (and the White Sox do not assert) that the Committee would examine such granular details of individual ballparks in its occasional meetings “for purposes of review and planning.”  It follows that the White Sox’s interpretation of Article XIII is not plausible, that the Basic Agreement therefore will not affect the White Sox’s duty of care to Fowler, and therefore that Fowler’s claims are not completely preempted under Section 301.

Feinerman concluded by calling Fowler’s claims “true state law claims,” and remanded the case to the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, for a disposition on the merits; it remains pending there before Judge Kathy Flanagan.

I think Feinerman got it right here, even if, legally speaking, I thought this was a closer call than he did. That said, there’s no doubt that this case, for a lot of reasons, represents a possible sea change in how tort law will deal with these claims moving forward. Last June, in the context of Reggie Bush’s $12.5 million verdict against the Rams, I noted that victories like that were exceedingly unusual.

Remember that it’s really hard — and therefore really rare — for a professional athlete to sue for an injury sustained on the field. Verdicts like the one in Bush’s case, for an injury sustained in game activity and without the intentional act of another, are incredibly rare in the modern law.

One of the main reasons for that is the issue of labor law preemption, which was raised in Bush’s case. And yet, in two major cases in consecutive years, a court has ruled that doctrine inapplicable in favor of applying state law tort claims. Feinerman’s ruling is a first for professional baseball, and carries the implication that teams are, in fact, liable in tort for injuries suffered by players as the result of on-field hazards. In fact, Feinerman’s decision could be read to require teams to adhere to the same duty of care towards athletes as they would towards any other person.

Nevertheless, Feinerman’s decision did contain some interesting limitations. First, Feinerman made a distinction between a duty owed by a team to its own players and a duty owed by a team to visiting players. While Feinerman didn’t explicitly say that a team doesn’t owe a state law duty of care to its own players, or that CBA preemption would apply in those circumstances, he nonetheless did state that a team’s duty to players not its own differs. On one hand, that makes a certain degree of sense, both from an employment law perspective (suing your employer is different than suing someone else’s employer) and a tort perspective (in theory, you will know your own home ballpark better than a visiting player will).

Second, Feinerman held that Fowler’s injury was reasonably foreseeable assuming all facts in the complaint to be true. That’s significant, because it essentially states that as a matter of law, hazards on a baseball field are reasonably foreseeable to cause injury where not expressly addressed by the CBA. That holding necessarily means that a team that camouflages a sprinkler, or an electrical box, or even an unpadded wall, could face liability if a player is injured coming into contact with it.

That doesn’t mean Fowler will necessarily win his case. The team may well have state law tort defenses, or Fowler’s legal team could prove unable to prove his case at trial for several different reasons. That said, we now have case law that the courthouse doors aren’t closed to a player who suffers an on-field injury during the ordinary course of a baseball game. And that’s a really significant development.

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three San Diego Padres pitchers — Joey Lucchesi, Logan Allen, and Chris Paddack — on how they learned and developed their change-of-pace pitches.

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Joey Lucchesi, San Diego Padres (The Churve)

“I started off in a community college throwing a circle change. It was a regular changeup. Then I started throwing harder. I got stronger and my hands got bigger. As I went on to [Southeast Missouri State], I started developing it in a way that it moved differently. I hold it like a circle change, but it spins out like a slider and kind of drops like a curveball.

“Once I got to the minors, Eric Lauer and I played catch every day. We decided to give it its own name. It wasn’t like a regular changeup, so we called it ‘The Churve.’ I’ve stuck with that name for three years now. Read the rest of this entry »

Boston Globe sportswriter Nick Cafardo died tragically on Thursday at the age of 62. He was a friend — Nick had countless friends throughout the baseball community — and his Sunday Baseball Notes has long been a must-read. This column is dedicated to his memory.

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Aaron Loup has forged a solid career since being drafted by the Blue Jays out of Tulane University in 2009. The 31-year-old southpaw has made 378 relief appearances — all but four with Toronto — and put together a 3.49 ERA and a 3.49 FIP. Seven years after making his MLB debut, he’s now a member of the San Diego Padres.

Had he not changed his arm slot, he probably wouldn’t have made it to the big leagues.

“I wasn’t getting it done over the top,” admitted Loup, who dropped down in high-A. “For whatever reason, my stuff went away. It kind of sucked. My sinker flattened out. My breaking ball became a dud.”

When you’re getting hit around in the Florida State League, you listen to suggestions. Especially strong suggestions. The lefty recalls being told by then pitching coordinator Dane Johnson, “Give it a chance, because what you’re doing now isn’t working.”

Sidearm worked. Not only that, it worked right away. Read the rest of this entry »

For the second winter in a row, the Twins have taken advantage of a depressed free agent market to load up on players via short-term contracts, even doing so after camps opened. On Friday, they made their latest move, adding switch-hitting superutilityman Marwin Gonzalez — who ranked 15th on our Top 50 Free Agents List last November — to the fold on a two-year, $21 million deal.

Originally signed by the Cubs out of Venezuela in 2005, Gonzalez has spent the entirety of his seven-year major league career with the Astros, who acquired him from the Red Sox in a Rule 5-pick-and-trade in December 2011. Last year, he wasn’t quite as super with the bat as he was in 2017 (.303/.377/.530, 144 wRC+), but he overcame a slow start to hit a respectable .247/.324/.409 in 552 PA, with 16 homers and a 104 wRC+; it’s the fourth time in five years he’s had a wRC+ above 100. He’s been above-average from both sides of the plate in each of the past two seasons, and has a negligible platoon split for his career (104 wRC+ vs righties, 101 vs. lefties).

The versatility of “Swiss G” — that’s agent Scott Boras’ name for his client, and I swear on a stack of baseball cards that I won’t use it unironically ever again — extends to the field, of course. Last year, Gonzalez made 65 starts in left field, 29 at shortstop, 21 at first base, 19 at second base, and two at third base; he also made late-inning appearances at the other two outfield positions, and probably manned Minute Maid Park concession stands on both the first and third base sides when he wasn’t playing. The story was similar in 2017 (38 starts in left, 33 at short, 20 at first, 15 at third, and 14 at second). He can spot start to give a regular a day off, hold down a position for weeks at a time during another player’s IL stint (as he did last year for Yulieski Gurriel, Jose Altuve, and Carlos Correa), or serve as a primary option when other plans fall through (as the Astros’ left field machinations did last year). Defensively, he’s been a plus in left, and more or less average everywhere else except shortstop, where the metrics suggest he’s stretched (-6.5 UZR and -8 DRS over the past two seasons), though as we’re dealing with small slices of playing time, sample-size caveats do apply.

With 4.0 WAR in 2017 but a more modest 1.6 last year, and a total of just 3.1 from 2014-2016, Gonzalez was never in the same class as Ben Zobrist in terms of delivering value, though Boras reportedly sought a Zobristian four-year, $60 million deal for his client. Even if that was never going to happen, Gonzalez — like so many other free agents — was expected to net a larger contract than he landed, because frankly, very few teams couldn’t use a player like him. For our Top 50 roundup, Kiley McDaniel projected him to receive three years and $39 million, while even suggesting that a four-year deal was possible; our crowdsource median came in at three years and $30 million. But with deals like these already inked…

…a three-year contract for that kind of scratch wasn’t happening, particularly at this stage of the winter. Against that backdrop, it’s worth noting that Gonzalez, whose contract projection was in the ballpark of those of Moustakas and Dozier, outdid them both in AAV and total dollars. He wouldn’t have been a bad choice for either of those jobs, and personally, I’d much rather have him in a multi-position role than LeMahieu, a fantastic fielder at second base but less of a hitter, and with less experience juggling gloves.

Gonzalez’s signing is of a piece with what the Twins have been doing lately. Last winter, fresh off 85 wins and an AL Wild Card appearance, the team signed Logan Morrison to a one-year, $6.5 million deal on February 28, and Lance Lynn to a one-year, $12 million deal on March 12, those after previously adding Zach Duke (one year, $2.15 million), Michael Pineda (two years, $10 million), Addison Reed (two years, $16.75 million), and Fernando Rodney (one year, $4.5 million) in December and January. Morrison struggled and then needed hip surgery, Lynn scuffled as well, and when it was clear that it wasn’t the Twins’ year to win, they flipped Lynn along with Duke on July 30, part of a flurry of pre-deadline deals that also saw them trade Dozier away to the Dodgers, Eduardo Escobar to the Diamondbacks, and Ryan Pressley to the Astros, before sending Rodney to the A’s in August.

Despite so much going wrong — including dreadful, injury-marred seasons from Byron Buxton, Miguel Sano, and the since-departed Ervin Santana (who agreed to a minor-league deal with the White Sox on Friday) — the Twins finished 78-84. They’ve been busy handing out one-year deals this winter, adding Nelson Cruz ($14.3 million), Schoop, Martin Perez ($3.5 million), Blake Parker ($1.8 million), and Ronald Torreyes ($800,000), not to mention minor league deals for the likes of Lucas Duda and Tim Collins, plus C.J. Cron via a waiver claim.

Gonzalez is likely to reprise his multiposition role in Minnesota, filling in here and there while insuring against the possibility that things go south again for Schoop or Sano, whose 2018 performances offer less hope than their relatively sunny projections for two-plus wins apiece. Schoop, who split his season between the Orioles and Brewers, dipped from a 122 wRC+ and 3.8 WAR in 2017 to 80 and 0.5 last year, while Sano, whose 2017 ended with surgery to implant a titanium rod in his left leg to help it heal from a stress reaction, hit for an 82 wRC+ with 0.0 WAR. The bummer of it is that Gonzalez could squeeze the wonderful Willians Astudillo off the 25-man roster, though it might be Ehire Adrianza, who can play shortstop but can’t catch, who winds up drawing the short straw.

Given his versatility and his relatively modest salary, Gonzalez could have helped a whole lot of teams. He figures to be well worth his money for the Twins.

Shohei Ohtani won’t be pitching this season as he recovers from Tommy John surgery, and 2017 first-round picks Hunter Greene and Brendan McKay are a long way from reaching the majors, but this spring, several teams are experimenting with the possibility of two-way players — enough that it’s worth taking a closer look. If spring is a time to dream on lefty knuckleball pitchers who have been woodshedding in South Korea, then we can certainly spare a few thoughts for what might become a new breed of the 25th man.

Mind you, we’re not talking about a new generation of Ohtani clones. For these position players getting more serious about pitching, and the pitcher getting more serious about position play, the model is probably something closer to Brooks Kieshnick. A two-time winner of the Dick Howser Trophy in college for his double-duty work at the University of Texas, and then the 10th overall pick of the 1993 draft by the Cubs, Kieschnick more or less flopped in 113 games played for Chicago, Cincinnati, and Colorado from 1996-2001. He returned to the mound with the White Sox’s Triple-A Charlotte affiliate in 2002, and then with the Brewers in 2003-2004, where he livened up a pair of 94-loss seasons by hitting .286/.340/.496 with eight homers in 144 PA, and pitching to a 4.59 ERA and 4.13 FIP in 96 innings of relief work. He was more successful in the former year than the latter, totaling 0.8 WAR in his dual capacity overall.

The parallels of this quartet to Kieschnick aren’t exact, as each player has taken his own path, and each of these teams has its own vision of how this will work. In an age of longer pitching staffs and shorter benches, this nonetheless rates as a very interesting innovation, even if the returns don’t yield an Ohtani-level star.

Speaking of Ohtani, on the heels of a remarkable season in which he hit .285/.361/.564 with 22 homers and a 152 wRC+, and pitched to a 3.31 ERA and 3.57 FIP in 51.2 innings, he underwent surgery on October 1. The Angels are hoping to get his bat back in May, but he won’t pitch in 2019, which doesn’t rule out the possibility that they will have a two-way player on the roster at some point this season. Jared Walsh, a 25-year-old former 39th-round pick out of the University of Georgia, where he pitched regularly — most teams liked him more as a hurler than as a position player — in addition to playing first base, right field, and DH, is in camp on a non-roster invitation and pulling double duty.

Walsh, who bats and throws left-handed, hit a combined .277/.359/.536 with 29 homers while splitting his season almost evenly between the Halos’ Hi-A, Double-A ,and Triple-A affiliates. He played both outfield corners and first (he’s considered a plus defender at the latter position), and also made eight relief appearances — at least two at each stop — totaling 5.2 innings, striking out seven while allowing six hits and walking two. He pitched in some close games as well as some blowouts, taking an extra-inning loss at Inland Empire and notching a save at Salt Lake. Not that minor league reliever won-loss records mean anything, but he also went 1-1 in two appearances for the team’s A-level Burlington affiliate in 2016.

The Angels liked what they saw of Walsh on the mound enough to send him to the instructional league last fall. He received a crash course in mechanics and arm care, and reported to camp with the pitchers last week and began throwing bullpens. He sports an 88-91 mph fastball that can touch 93 or 94 mph (reports vary) and a slurvy breaking ball that he’s working to improve. The Angels believe he can pitch at the major league level in a relief capacity, though if he moves directly to the mound from a position (as he did in three games for Salt Lake), the team loses its designated hitter for the remainder of the game according to Rule 5.11(a)(14). Thus, that gambit might be saved for interleague games in NL parks.

“We feel like he can do both [roles] at the Major League level, especially with what he did last year offensively,” said new manager Brad Ausmus earlier this month.

“It’s exciting, but I’m trying to keep it simple,” said Walsh. “If I overthink it, things get too complicated. Just hit and pitch and have fun. I’m on the pitchers’ arm care program, so I’ll be doing that every day, but I’ll also be talking to the hitting coaches about hitting and all that stuff. Whatever the schedule is, I just figure it out that day.”

Walsh isn’t even the Angels’ only two-way experiment. They also sent Bo Way, a 2014 seventh-round pick who plays center field, to the instructional league, though he did not get an NRI to the big league camp this spring. Way, who’s another lefty/lefty, hit .312/.383/.376 last year, split between Double-A and Triple-A and made six appearances on the mound, whiffing five in 6.1 innings while allowing six hits, two walks, and two earned runs; twice he pitched in the same game as Walsh. Much further down the system, 2018 fifth-round pick William English was chosen as an outfielder and right-handed pitcher, though he didn’t make any game appearances in the Arizona League last season.

The Angels also planned to let former first-round pick and Baseball America Top 100 prospect Kaleb Cowart try pitching, because let’s face it, the hitting thing wasn’t working (.177/.241/.293 in 380 career PA, with even worse numbers last year). They lost him on waivers to the Mariners in December, however, and then in January, the Mariners lost him to the Tigers, who considered drafting him as a pitcher in 2010. He was considered a first-round pitching talent coming out of Cook High School in Adel, Georgia, where his fastball “sat in the low 90s with sink,” according to The Baseball America Prospect Handbook 2011.

Cowart has played every infield position and left field in the majors, and added right field to his resume while in Salt Lake City. He hasn’t pitched in a professional game yet, but as Tigers manager Ron Gardenhire said earlier this week, “We want him to get more involved in the pitching part of it right now. We know what he can do defensively… But he’s going to pitch for now. That’s the main reason we brought him in.”

Cowart has thrown bullpens in camp, but thus far, his control has been spotty. “He threw a pitch right over the hitter’s head and I was behind the screen. But it was right at my lips. I ducked and almost fell off the wheel,” said Gardenhire. “The ball came out of his hand really good, though. He has a nice breaking ball. But it’s going to be a process. He’s got arm strength, though.”

[Update: On Saturday, Cowart returned to the Angels via a waiver claim, as the Tigers needed a roster spot for newly-signed Josh Harrison.]

Speaking of former Baseball America Top 100 prospects, now-27-year-old corner infielder Matt Davidson made the list four times from 2011-2014, but has found major league success harder to come by, both with the Diamondbacks (2013) and White Sox (2016-18). He did show considerable improvement last year, hitting .228/.319/.419 with 20 homers, a 104 wRC+ and 0.8 WAR in 434 PA — not great, but big steps forward from his 84 wRC+ and -0.9 WAR in 2017. Though he struck out 165 times in each season, his walk rate climbed from 4.3% to 10.5%, with his strikeout rate dipping from 37.2% to 33.3%.

Last year, Davidson proved to be the most effective and plausible choice among position players to take up more regular pitching duty. Amid a season that saw a record 65 pitching appearances by position players (not including Ohtani), he threw three scoreless innings in three appearances, allowing one hit and one walk while striking out two (Rougned Odor and Giancarlo Stanton). At Yucaipa High School in California, he served as a pitcher/DH and wore no. 51 in tribute to Randy Johnson. Fitting, as he was chosen by Arizona as a 2009 supplemental first-round pick.

Beyond Davidson’s results, which amount to small-sample success in very low leverage situations, he showed an average fastball velocity of 89.9 mph, and maxed out at 92.3 mph. According to Pitch Info, he also threw a curve and a changeup, though Statcast classified some of those changeups as sliders and others as split-fingered fastballs, and various reports confirm that he does have a splitter in his repertoire.

The White Sox nontendered Davidson in November, and while the Rays and Orioles showed interest, he eventually signed a minor league deal with a non-roster invitation with the Rangers earlier this month, so he’ll get to rib Odor, whom he whiffed on a slider on June 29. He’s not aiming to be the next Ohtani. Instead he’s planning to reprise last year’s mop-and-bucket duty, and will work his way to throwing bullpen sessions. Via MLB’s T.R. Sullivan:

“I don’t want to make it sound like I am going to the big leagues and be a good pitcher,” Davidson said. “I’m not trying to be one of the seven or eight relievers. I want to be the pitchers’ best friend. Nobody wants to go in when it is a 7-0 blowout. I want to be the guy that helps them out.”

Finally, moving in the other direction is the Reds’ Michael Lorenzen, a 27-year-old righty who doubled as a center fielder and closer while attending Cal State Fullerton. He was considered draftable in the former capacity, though concerns about his ability to hit for average led him to be favored as a pitcher — favored enough to be a supplemental first-round pick in 2013.

After starting 21 games in 2015, Lorenzen has made just three starts from among his 150 appearances over the past three seasons, all of them last year. In 45 total appearances, he threw 81 innings with a 3.11 ERA and 4.16 FIP; he struck out just 15.7% while walking 9.9%. While he can dial his fastball into the high-90s, it’s generally a sinker he’s throwing (40.8% of all pitches last year, according to Pitch Info) rather than a four-seamer (10.7%); his expansive repertoire also includes a cutter, changeup, curve and slider — enough pitches to start.

On the other side of the ball, after homering once apiece in 2016 and ’17 while making a combined total of 17 plate appearances, Lorenzen bashed four homers last year, one of them a grand slam; in 34 PA, he hit .290/.333/.710. Two of last year’s homers, and his 2017 long ball, came as a pinch-hitter, a capacity in which he’s been used 22 times in his four years. Overall, he’s hit .250/.276/.500 for a 101 wRC+ in 92 PA.

All of which is to say that the Reds had an inkling of the possibilities before. Now they’re looking to take advantage of that to a greater degree, and, with the support of new manager David Bell, have let Lorenzen help craft a plan, which takes a lot of coordination across the coaching and training staff to prevent him from overexerting himself. On the pitching side, they’re stretching Lorenzen out to be either a starter or a multi-inning reliever, while on the position playing side, he’ll be available as a center fielder, though he’s not vying for the starting job, for which top prospect Nick Senzel, an infielder blocked at both second base and third base, is competing. Via MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon:

“It’s fantastic, the effort they’re putting in,” Lorenzen said. “A lot of the excuses were, ‘You know, we don’t want to overwork him.’ Well, let’s just sit down and talk about it then. They were willing to sit down and talk about it, which is one of the reasons why I love this staff so much and why I think the front office did a great job [hiring] this staff. They’re willing to find solutions for problems.”

…”We have the plan laid out. Everyone knows what I’m doing. When I need my rest, I will take my rest because I’m getting the work I need to get in, vs. me going out and getting extra work in all the time and wearing on my body.”

Said Bell, “I have to slow myself down, because I think it’s cool that he’s preparing himself the way he is … it’s very unique and pretty special that he can do it. I love his approach to it. He’s truly preparing himself to give as many options to our team to help us win. It’s nice.”

Because novelty — pitchers hitting home runs, position players taking the mound — enlivens the grind of the long season, rest assured that we’ll be following the progress of all of these players’ attempts to pull double duty, hopefully with some up-to-date scouting detail.