I owe Red Sox catcher Carlos Narváez an apology. In my preseason write-up of Boston’s backstops, I called him “organizational depth.” I lumped him in with Blake Sabol and Seby Zavala as the uninspiring backup catcher options for the team with the worst projected WAR at the position in the American League. That was in March. Now it’s June, and the rookie is slashing .288/.356/.456 with five home runs and a 126 wRC+ through 47 games. Thanks to strong framing, blocking, and throwing skills, he has earned himself 6 DRS and a +6 FRV. The only catcher who has him beat in both metrics is defensive wizard Patrick Bailey. By WAR, Narváez is one of the top-30 position players in the game. Among catchers, he ranks fifth, and if you only consider WAR accumulated as a catcher, he ranks second. If he keeps this up for a few more weeks, he’ll have a compelling case to be Cal Raleigh’s backup at the All-Star Game this summer.

Regardless what happens from here on out, Narváez has already been far more than just depth for the Red Sox. I was wrong, and I will readily eat crow or humble pie, though I’d really prefer the pie. At the same time, I can’t blame myself too much for overlooking him. After all, it took more than eight years from the day he signed with the Yankees as an international free agent for him to appear as anything more than an honorable mention on one of our organizational top prospect lists. Even then, Eric Longenhagen ranked him 32nd in the Yankees system (35+ FV) entering 2024, with the words “third catcher” closing out his write-up. Meanwhile, Narváez didn’t appear on a Baseball America list until this past offseason, when the publication ranked him 29th in the Red Sox organization. Neither Baseball Prospectus, nor The Athletic mentioned him on their top-20 Red Sox prospects lists this winter.

While I might have been wrong about who Narváez would be, I wasn’t wrong about who he had been when I called him “unknown” and “hardly… a top prospect.” Still, I used his reputation, or really his lack of a reputation, to let myself off the hook from learning more about him. Relying on reputation is often a necessary heuristic technique – if we all had to verify everything for ourselves, we’d never accomplish anything – but that doesn’t mean it can’t lead to mistakes. With more than 100 catchers to consider for the Position Power Rankings, I needed to find ways to reduce my workload. So, I glossed over Narváez because he didn’t have enough of a reputation to attract more of my attention. Read the rest of this entry »

In early April, Davy Andrews penned an article that ran here at FanGraphs and began with the following: “You may have noticed that this is the Year of the Kick-Change.” My colleague went on to explain the pitch, which by now most people reading this are well familiar with. Our own coverage of the popular offering also includes an interview with Davis Martin and Matt Bowman from last September, and a feature from this spring on Hayden Birdsong, who throws a kick-change, and his teammate Landen Roupp, who does not. The pitch is thrown exclusively (at least to my knowledge) by supinators such as Martin, who explained that spiking his middle finger on a seam allows him to “kick the axis of the ball into that three o’clock axis [and] get that saucer-type spin to get the depth that a guy who could pronate a changeup would get to.”

Thinking about the pitch recently, a question came to mind: What would happen if a natural pronator tried to throw a kick-change?

In search of an answer, I queried three major league pitching coaches, as well as Tread Athletics’ Leif Strom, who in addition to having hands-on knowledge of the kick-change is credited with coining the term. Their responses varied. Moreover, they meandered a bit — but in a good way — as they offered insight into the science of throwing a baseball from a mound.

Here is what they had to say.

The following answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

———

Desi Druschel, New York Mets

“There are a couple of ways to look at the kick-change. Most people interpret it as, ‘the spike kicks the axis,’ but I’m not necessarily convinced. Another thought is that [the middle finger] is just out of the way, and the ring finger kind of swipes below it. You’re kicking the axis, for sure, but I don’t know if it’s always kicking it how people might think. That would be on the one where there is more supination. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a war going on across major league baseball. It’s been waged over decades, in fact, between two opposing factions of the game. Pitchers, at times aided by their catchers, want to own the top of the strike zone, the place where their fastballs have the easiest time missing bats. Hitters want to hit home runs, and the top of the zone is an ideal launching pad. But while both sides would dearly love to own the territory, they can’t both win at once. What follows are some dispatches from the front, the latest moves and counter-moves by some of the game’s best in this contested space.

Chad Patrick lives at the top of the zone. No pitcher in baseball throws upstairs fastballs more frequently. He might not seem like the type. He’s a soft tosser in the context of the modern major leagues, sitting in the low 90s with his four-seamer and sinker, and the high 80s with his cutter. But for Patrick, shape is more important than velocity.

As Alex Chamberlain has extensively explained, the plane of a pitch when it reaches home plate is a key determinant of its success. That’s most true at the top of the zone for four-seamers. Pitches that come in high and flat act like optical illusions – the average fastball thrown to that area falls more, because it’s falling at a steeper angle. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the San Diego Padres. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fifth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

The Diamondbacks did things the “right way,” to the extent that the right way means anything. After making the World Series unexpectedly in 2023, they went into the offseason with an exciting group of hitters and an unsettled rotation, so they opened the vault and signed two of the top-10 free agents that year — Eduardo Rodriguez and Jordan Montgomery — both starting pitchers. When those two flamed out in 2024 but the hitters kept producing, they went back to the well and signed Corbin Burnes, another marquee option. They refused to include top starting prospects in trades. They already had Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly in the fold. This is how you build a top rotation.

Er, well, this is a way that you can build a top rotation, but this particular iteration hasn’t panned out. In Phoenix, things are falling apart on the mound. Let’s look through Arizona’s problem rotation spots (read: everyone other than Kelly) and see if we can find a solution for each before it’s too late for the team’s 2025 season.

Corbin Burnes

The Problem: Injury
Burnes got off to a slow start in the desert, but like the weather in his new place of work, he was heating up as the year wore on. His cutter isn’t quite the devastating weapon it was during his 2021 Cy Young season, but it’s still a menace. He’s still one of the best in the business when it comes to spinning breaking balls. A well-located Burnes curveball is an absolute masterpiece, a pitch that will make you question the very basics of physics and reality.

In Burnes’ most recent four starts, he’s gone nuclear: 31% strikeout rate, 2.19 ERA, 2.67 FIP. He’d also been stacking up volume: Three of his past five starts lasted seven innings. But the most recent start ended prematurely in the fifth inning, when Burnes felt sharp tightness in his elbow, saw his velocity drop, and left the game. Burnes said after the game that he didn’t know the severity of the injury, telling reporters, “I’ve never had anything like it before, so I really have nothing to compare it to.”
Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers have had some impressive successes in recent years when it comes to acquiring pitchers who have struggled or failed to distinguish themselves elsewhere and then helping them flourish. Tyler Anderson made his first All-Star team as a Dodger in 2022, at his fifth stop in seven seasons. Evan Phillips owned a 7.26 career ERA before being plucked off waivers in 2021, and has since become a dominant part-time closer. Last summer Michael Kopech went from getting knocked around with the White Sox to closing games for the Dodgers within three weeks of being traded. Anthony Banda, Ryan Brasier, Andrew Heaney… the list goes on. Beset by pitching injuries yet again, on Thursday, Los Angeles acquired Alexis Díaz from the Reds with an eye toward helping him recover the form that made him an All-Star just two years ago.

The 28-year-old Díaz, the younger brother of Mets closer Edwin Díaz by two and a half years, has regressed considerably since his standout rookie campaign with the Reds in 2022. He spent the month of May pitching for Cincinnati’s Triple-A Louisville affiliate after a left hamstring injury suffered in spring training compromised his mechanics and displaced him from closer duty. The deal — which went down the day before the Dodgers announced that Phillips will undergo Tommy John surgery next week — sent 2024 draft pick Mike Villani to the Reds.

The Reds drafted Díaz in the 12th round in 2015 out of Juan Jose Maunez High School in Naguabo, Puerto Rico. His climb to the majors was slowed by 2016 Tommy John surgery and the coronavirus pandemic; he didn’t even reach Double-A until 2021. He broke camp with the Reds the following spring and allowed just one run and seven hits in his first 17 1/3 innings — capped by his first career save — while striking out 21. By late August, he was the primary closer, albeit on a team bound for 100 losses. He finished the year with a 1.84 ERA, a 32.5% strikeout rate, and 10 saves in 63 2/3 innings, a performance that helped him place fifth in the NL Rookie of the Year voting. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello, all of you FanGraphs readers! Are you a FanGraphs Member? Are you looking for something fresh to read on Saturday mornings? Do you have any burning baseball questions for us, but don’t quite know where to ask them? Well, then we’ve got great news for you.

FanGraphs is launching a weekly mailbag, curated by me, that will run on the website every Saturday morning. Anyone can submit a question, but the piece answering them will only be available to FanGraphs Members.

So how is this going to work? Send any and all of your questions — about baseball, baseball writing, or whatever else you might be interested in having us answer — to me via email at mailbag@fangraphs.com, and each week, I’ll pick a few that we’ll answer in that Saturday’s mailbag. That’s right, I said we, because my FanGraphs colleagues will be helping me out. If you have a Hall of Fame question, I’ll probably relay it to Jay Jaffe. We’ve got Eric Longenhagen for prospect inquiries, and Dan Szymborski if we need to consult the ol’ ZiPS machine — the list goes on! We’ll do our best to answer as many questions as possible each week, but we won’t be able to get to them all. The ideal mailbag question is something that requires a deeper dive than we can tackle in our various chats, but is not so expansive that it warrants an entire article. Read the rest of this entry »

Mikey Romero has hit a few speed bumps since the Boston Red Sox drafted him 24th overall in 2022 out of California’s Orange Lutheran High School. A back injury limited the 21-year-old multi-position infielder to just 34 games in 2023, and he then didn’t return to game action until last May. He also missed time in August after suffering a concussion.

When healthy, it’s been mostly smooth sailing for the former first-rounder. [Boston took Roman Anthony 16 picks later the same year]. Romero’s last-season ledger included 16 home runs and a 125 wRC+ over 362 plate appearances between High-A Greenville and Double-A Portland.

He’s off to a strong start in the current campaign. Back at the higher of those levels, Romero is swinging to the tune of a 134 wRC+ in 154 trips to the plate. Fully half of his 34 hits have gone for extra bases. The San Diego native’s smooth left-handed stroke has produced 10 doubles, a pair of triples, and five home runs.

As the season was getting underway, I asked the promising youngster how he’s grown as a hitter since joining the professional ranks. Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of weeks ago, Hannah Keyser of The Bandwagon asked Kodai Senga about his reverse splits when it comes to times through the order. His .347 wOBA allowed the first time through the lineup drops to .275 the second time through it, and then sinks to .205 the third time through. However, his total batters faced sits at just 90 for each of the first two times through the order and 48 for the third time through. That’s a small enough sample that it’s difficult to say how much of the credit goes to Senga and how much is naturally occurring variation.

Either way it doesn’t matter much to Senga, who cares more about process than results, “Quite honestly, I don’t feel like I’m very good at any point during the game this year,” he told Keyser through his interpreter. Harsh words for a pitcher with an ERA- of 37. He does acknowledge that he makes adjustments throughout the game to get a better feel for his pitches and tweaks his strategy based on how each pitch is looking in a given start, which offers some explanation for the improved outcomes as the game goes on. But according to Senga, all of his pitches feel off this year, as he remains in the process of re-establishing his mechanics following the shoulder and calf injuries that sidelined him for nearly all of last year.

Senga’s self-evaluation reminds us that folks performing at the elite level of their fields don’t get there by letting good enough be good enough, but rather by insisting that nothing is ever good enough. To the layperson, it’s baffling to hear that Senga feels he’s pitching worse, despite posting better results than in 2023, his first MLB season, and the last in which he was fully healthy. Add on that he somehow manages to gain effectiveness throughout his starts despite a certain level of displeasure with all of his pitches, and it couldn’t be any clearer that regardless of what you read in Us Weekly, the stars are not actually just like us. Read the rest of this entry »

Kyle Stowers used to be part of that Baltimore Orioles position player prospect fire hose, but it’s OK if you forgot about him. Said fire hose has turned to a dribble as the Orioles’ fortunes have reversed. You also might have gotten him confused with Colton Cowser, which might be why the Orioles felt like they could trade him to Miami last summer for Trevor Rogers. (The other prospect in that trade, Connor Norby, has the same similar-name-mixup thing going with Coby Mayo. This town ain’t big enough for the two of us, etc.)

And if you still had your eye on Stowers after all that, you were probably put off when he hit .186/.262/.295 in 50 games for the Marlins after the trade. A better team, with a deeper talent pool, might’ve removed a 27-year-old outfielder with that batting line from its major league roster. But in Miami it’s more like a talent splash pad, so Stowers remains.

So much the better, because after 52 games, the former Stanford slugger is hitting .291/.362/.508. He has the same wRC+ as the much-celebrated Pete Crow-Armstrong, a higher wRC+ than Fernando Tatis Jr., Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Bobby Witt Jr., three second-generation big leaguers with more than $1 billion in contracts among them. Read the rest of this entry »