In the wake of Freddie Freeman’s starring role in the Braves’ championship run, the sequence of events that landed him in a Dodgers uniform was swift and shocking. Three months later, the 32-year-old first baseman still appears to be searching for closure, but for all the drama and the concerns about where his loyalties lie, he’s remained exceptionally productive even while the Dodgers’ offense has cooled off.

Freeman spent 15 seasons in the Braves’ organization, 11 as their regular first baseman (five times an All-Star, once an MVP), and last fall helped them win their first World Series since 1995. While most of the industry assumed he and the Braves would find a way to remain together once he reached free agency, on March 14 the team pulled off a blockbuster to acquire Oakland’s Matt Olson, abruptly closing the door on the Freeman era and underscoring that by quickly agreeing to an an eight-year, $168 million extension with the ex-Athletic. The suddenly jilted Freeman agreed to a six-year, $162 million deal with the Dodgers on March 16, returning him to his native California via the team that faced his Braves in the NLCS in each of the past two seasons. For as celebratory as the occasion should have been, in his introductory press conference Freeman described himself as “blindsided” by the Olson trade, adding, “I think every emotion came across. I was hurt. It’s really hard to put into words still.”

“I thought I was going to spend my whole career there, but ultimately sometimes plans change,” he said.

It didn’t take long for Freeman and the Braves to cross paths again. The two teams squared off for a three-game series in Los Angeles starting on April 18, with the first baseman punctuating the reunion by homering in the first and third games of the series and going 4-for-11 as the Dodgers took two of three. Not until last weekend did the two teams meet in Atlanta, providing the Braves with the opportunity to present the former face of the franchise with his World Series ring. Ahead of the ceremony on Friday, a teary-eyed Freeman said in his press conference, “I don’t even know how I’m going to get through this weekend,” and had to pause several times to collect himself when discussing his time with the Braves. After the team paid tribute to him, and manager Brian Snitker presented him with his ring, Freeman teared up again while addressing the Atlanta crowd:

Freddie's message to @Braves fans had us all crying. ?? pic.twitter.com/2a9GijKOni

— MLB (@MLB) June 25, 2022

It was, perhaps, a bit much for the Dodgers to stomach. In discussing the Freeman tribute with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Clayton Kershaw hinted at his teammates’ impatience when he said, “It was very cool (to see Freeman’s reception Friday night)… He’s obviously been a big contributor for our team. And I hope we’re not second fiddle. It’s a pretty special team over here, too. I think whenever he gets comfortable over here, he’ll really enjoy it.”

Freeman didn’t homer during the series but he he did survive the weekend, going 4-for-12 with three walks and an extra-innings RBI double in Sunday’s rubber match as the Dodgers again took two out of three. Read the rest of this entry »

You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

I’m touching up prospect lists using the same complex-based clustering as usual, incorporating notes from my in-person looks, sourced data, and the opinions of pro scouts. Up is the group of teams based in Phoenix’s East Valley, with a focus on the Cubs largely due to the depth of their system, making them the team most likely to be motivated to part with prospects between now and the trade deadline. Players whose Future Value grade changed have an “Up” or “Down” arrow in the “Trend” column on The Board.

Oakland Athletics

Jonah Bride and Jordan Diaz move into the 40+ FV tier on the strength of their bat-to-ball skills. Bride, who recently made his big league debut and is currently on the IL, is a recent (part-time) catching convert who would be stuffed in the 45 FV tier if his ball-blocking and receiving had progressed more quickly and I felt more confident that he could catch often. It’s still possible that he could turn into a role player with this sort of special versatility if his defense behind the plate continues to improve, but because he can hit, Bride is at least going to be a solid part-time infielder, with third base his most natural position.

The long-term athletic projection concerns that have been a part of the 21-year-old Diaz’s profile for the duration of his young career continue to apply, and it counterweights the fact that he’s performing so well (.293/.342/.537, a 121 wRC+ as of Tuesday) as a college-aged hitter at Double-A. But Midland isn’t exactly hitter-friendly, and his feel for contact is freaky enough to value him as more than just a corner bench player.

Mason Miller (scap strain) hasn’t pitched all year after sitting upper-90s with a plus slider during late-2021 looks in Mesa. Neither has titanic 23-year-old righty Jorge Juan, due to a multitude of issues. In addition to elbow treatment, he has had setbacks unrelated to the original injury while rehabbing. He was DFA’d and re-signed to a minor league deal after being a bold, surprising 40-man add in the offseason.

A-ball righties Blake Beers (plus slider, late-bloomer traits, a great day three draft find) and Yehizon Sanchez (lanky, above-average arm strength and curveball) have been added to the A’s prospect list, and their full scouting reports are available over on The Board. Read the rest of this entry »

Things haven’t quite gone to plan in San Francisco this year. That’s not to say that the Giants have been bad, or even that they’ve been disappointing exactly. At 39–33, they’re squarely in the playoff hunt, and if you go by our odds, they’re more likely to make the postseason today than they were before the season. But after a 107-win 2021, “in the playoff hunt” doesn’t sound nearly as enticing. The same is true for their individual performers. It’s hard to be impressed by a nice season when seemingly everyone on the team had a career year last year.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Logan Webb has been pretty darn good so far this year. In 15 starts, he’s compiled a 3.04 ERA, which nearly matches his 3.03 FIP. That’s roughly a match for his breakout 2021 season, which sounds great, but the resounding roar around the Giants’ unstoppable player development engine over the past two years makes Webb’s success feel almost pedestrian.

It’s not, though. Pitchers with ERAs near 3 don’t grow on trees. Webb is one of the best 30 starters in baseball; that should speak for itself. Since the start of 2021, he’s 12th among pitchers in WAR, 18th in ERA, and fifth in FIP. He’s 32nd in K-BB%, which doesn’t sound quite as impressive until you consider the fact that he gets so many grounders. No starter has allowed fewer home runs per inning, and only human cheat code Framber Valdez has a higher groundball rate.
Read the rest of this entry »

George Kirby is off to a solid start in Seattle. Since debuting with the Mariners in early May, the 24-year-old rookie right-hander has a 4.04 ERA and a 4.73 FIP (numbers that were markedly better before last night’s career-worst outing) to go with 49 strikeouts in 53 innings. Lending credence to scouting reports — our Eric Longenhagen lauded not only his high-octane heater, but also his plus-plus control — Kirby has issued just seven free passes.

Drafted 20th overall in 2019 out of Elon University, Kirby ranked No. 3 on our 2022 Seattle Mariners top prospects list. Kirby discussed his early career development, including what he’s learned from analytics, earlier this month.

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David Laurila: You’ve had access to a ton of information playing in the Mariners’ system. What are some of the ways you approach pitching differently than you did just a few years ago?

George Kirby: “One thing I’ve really tried to hammer on is being location-based. I look at the analytics for certain pitches. With my slider, for instance, there is my release point and the horizontal movement. There are good tools to see where you’re at and kind of how to manage your off-speed. I’m always looking at that stuff.”

Laurila: By location-based, I assume you’re referring to how your pitches play best in certain zones?

Kirby: “Yes. With the Mariners, we have our ‘green clouds,’ which show the best pitch in that location in certain counts. I try to really focus on that. And one of the biggest numbers is that 94% of the time when you throw a first-pitch strike, you’re either getting the ball back 0–1 or it’s an out. That’s a huge part of pitching — not being scared of the zone and allowing that first pitch to work in your favor.” Read the rest of this entry »

As you might imagine, I watch a lot of baseball for work, and one of the things that stands out to me the most this year is just how dang hard pitchers are throwing. I’m not just talking about that new hotshot reliever your team called up who’s dropping triple digits like peak Aroldis Chapman, though that’s part of it. I’m talking about existing starters, guys I’ve watched for years, adding a little oomph.

Max Fried has topped out over 100 mph this year; his teammate Kyle Wright has never thrown harder. Framber Valdez is up nearly two ticks on average. Carlos Rodón already threw hard, and now he throws even harder. You can’t walk 10 feet without tripping over a pitcher throwing harder than ever – or so it seems to me, a fairly interested observer.

But appearances can be deceiving. I can think of any number of baseball truths that were considered evidently true by observation for years, only to later be disproven. I decided to put my eyes to the test. Have pitchers learned how to throw harder from one year to the next, changing the fundamental truth of how aging works? Let’s find out.

My method is fairly simple. I took every starter who threw at least 10 innings since pitch-level data began in 2008. I took their average four-seam fastball velocity, but only in games they started; I didn’t want to have swingmen who changed roles within or between seasons in my data. From there, I looked at every pitcher to see if he’d thrown in the majors the previous year, and if so, the change in fastball velocity from one year to the next.

In this way, I got a yearly sample of how much every returning pitcher in baseball’s velocity changed, on average, every year. As a quick example, there were 176 pitchers who compiled at least 10 innings as a starter in both 2013 and ’14. On average, they threw 0.21 mph slower in 2014 than they did in ’13. I found those pairs for every year, which gave me a yearly average of velocity changes over time. Read the rest of this entry »

Since firing manager Joe Girardi on June 3, the Phillies have made significant strides toward climbing back into the playoff hunt, but on Saturday night, their chances took a significant hit. In the fourth inning of their game with the Padres in San Diego, Bryce Harper was hit by a 97-mph Blake Snell fastball, fracturing his left thumb and knocking him out of the lineup indefinitely.

When Harper was hit, his hands were so near his head that initially it appeared he got hit in the face. Even after it was clear that it had not, it was apparent that his injury was a significant one:

“I kind of wish it would have hit me in the face,” Harper told reporters afterward, conveniently forgetting many a career-altering beaning. “I don’t break bones in my face. I can take 98 to the face, but I can’t take 97 to the thumb.”

The 29-year-old Harper, the National League’s reigning Most Valuable Player, was already playing through a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, an injury that was diagnosed in mid-May, after which he received an injection of platelet-rich plasma. The tear is apparently traceable to an April 11 throw from right field that had limited Harper to designated hitter duty since April 17. Last week, he missed three games due to an infected blister at the base of his left index finger.

Despite the elbow injury, Harper has thrived. He’s hitting .318/.385/.599 with 15 homers, with both his slugging percentage and 166 wRC+ ranking second in the NL — the latter mark just four points below last year’s major league-leading figure — and his 2.7 WAR ninth. This month, as the team has gone 18–6 (17–6 since firing Girardi, including wins on Saturday and Sunday over the Padres), Harper hit .359/.455/.641 (201 wRC+), practically carrying the offense. But at this writing, he’s the third of the NL’s top 10 players in WAR to be sidelined by an injury, joining Manny Machado (sprained left ankle) and Mookie Betts (cracked rib) in the virtual infirmary. Read the rest of this entry »

Brendan Donovan knows who he is as a hitter. The St. Louis Cardinals rookie is at his best when he’s hunting line drives, and that approach has been working like a charm. Two months into his big-league career, the 25-year-old is slashing .315/.426/.448 — with 14 doubles and one home run — in 197 plate appearances. Moreover, his 146 wRC+ is tops among qualified first-year players.

A left-handed hitter whom the Cardinals selected in the seventh round of the 2018 draft out of the University of South Alabama, Donovan is coming off a 2021 season that saw him climb from High-A to Triple-A, then excel in the Arizona Fall League. That meteoric rise continued this spring. Donovan earned a promotion to St. Louis in late April, and all he’s done since arriving is spray line drives. It’s what he does.

Donovan discussed his swing and approach when the Cardinals visited Fenway Park earlier this month.

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David Laurila: How have you developed as a hitter since coming into pro ball?

Brendan Donovan: “We made a change in our hitting department — Jeff Albert, Russ Steinhorn, and those guys came in — and I was someone that made contact, but it wasn’t always quality contact. What we did is put me into a better body posture, better positioning, more tilt over the plate. I learned how to load the back hip a little better and flatten out my path. From there, it’s basically, ‘Let’s just try to get on plane, and see how long we can stay on plane.’ That’s helped me with fastballs up, and given me more adjustability on breaking balls and changeups, because I’m in the zone longer. Read the rest of this entry »

Jordan Lyles plays for a Baltimore Orioles team that stands 34-39 and is currently projected to finish 72-90. For the 31-year-old right-hander, that qualifies as more of the same. Lyles is in his 12th big-league season, and not once has he played a full year with a team that finished above .500. Moreover, he’s been on four clubs that lost 100-plus games. The worst of the worst was the 2013 Houston Astros, who went 51-111, a staggering 45 games out of first place.

The three seasons in which he’s played for multiple teams haven’t been much better. In each of those years, one of the two clubs he took the mound for ended up losing over 90 games. To date, Lyles has never pitched in the postseason.

That he never anticipated such a dearth of winning would be stating the obvious. Selected 38th-overall in 2008 out of a South Carolina high school, Lyles entered pro ball with the same lofty hopes and dreams as his draft-class peers. When you’re young and talented, visions of championship glory come with the territory.

He did reach the big leagues in relatively short order. Seventeen when he signed, Lyles was a precocious 20 years old when he debuted with the Astros in 2011. His first outing was a harbinger of things to come. The fresh-faced youngster allowed just a pair of runs over seven innings, only to see the bullpen blow the lead, depriving him of a win. At season’s end, Lyles was 2-7, the team 56-106. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Miami Marlins. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the second 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.

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

All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details 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 »

Who is baseball’s most irreplaceable player in 2022? This doesn’t mean the most valuable player, and in terms of the playoff hunt, the hardest player to replace isn’t necessarily the best one. Some teams are either cruising to the playoffs or effectively eliminated in practice, if not in purely mathematical terms (hello, Tigers and Royals). To answer this question, I ran the updated ZiPS projected standings after Tuesday’s games and then re-ran the entire simulation with the assumption that each relevant player missed the rest of the season due to injury.

For the NL, ZiPS estimates that nine teams remain plausible playoff contenders, which I define as having a 5% chance of making MLB’s new 12-team playoff format. The exceptions are the Diamondbacks, Cubs, Rockies, Pirates, Nationals, and Reds. Seven of the nine remaining teams are above 50%, with only the Phillies (27%) and Marlins (8%) between a coin flip and that arbitrarily chosen 5% threshold. Let’s jump right into the NL’s top 10 list.

1. Corbin Burnes, Milwaukee Brewers, -11.0%

Burnes was always going to make this top 10 list, but Brandon Woodruff‘s ankle injury and Freddy Peralta‘s more significant shoulder injury push him into the top slot. The hit may even be more severe than the -11% listed here; ZiPS puts a lot of stock in Aaron Ashby’s presence, but any kind of forearm pain for a pitcher should lead fans to look sadly into the middle distance. Nobody on the Brewers comes even close to Burnes in playoff impact, so a nasty surprise here ought to make them very aggressive about picking up a pitcher. After all, we’re already into the Chi Chi González portion of the depth chart.

2. Matt Olson, Atlanta Braves, -9.0%

Ronald Acuña Jr. has a better projection than Olson, but ZiPS sees Atlanta’s options at first base to be relatively bleak. That was one of the team’s biggest questions back when Freddie Freeman was a free agent, and though Atlanta has patched together DH somewhat, all bets are off with a serious Olson injury. In the event he goes down, I expect it’s more likely that Austin Riley plays first with Phil Gosselin playing third than Adam Duvall or Eddie Rosario getting shifted to first, but since ZiPS isn’t a Gosselin-stanner, it thinks that’s only shuffling a hole around. Read the rest of this entry »