Recently, I posted notes on Cleveland ace Corey Kluber to give readers some idea of what a pitcher of such obvious talent looks like on a scouting report. Well, I recently ran into Rockies righty German Marquez — a 55 FV on his final FanGraphs prospect list and a 2.5 WAR pitcher as a rookie (which is a 55) — so here’s a similar rundown.

Marquez’s body looks like it’s backed up a bit, but he was still generating premium velocity with ease, sitting 94-96 with his fastball throughout my viewing. It, along with his low-80s curveball, is comfortably plus, and he threw several 70-grade curveballs. Marquez is clearly working on developing two other pitches — an upper-80s slider and mid-80s changeup — that are both below average right now. The change has promising movement, Marquez just lacks feel for it.

Marquez barely threw anything other than his heater and curve last year and was able to succeed anyway because they’re both excellent. If a tertiary offering is his focus this year, it’s reasonable to expect some growing pains and regression, though this is probably best for his long-term development. His fastball velocity has fluctuated a bit this spring (as low as 92 in other outings), but that’s to be expected.

He’s not technically a prospect, but Rockies righty Jairo Diaz looks poised to make an impact in the bullpen this year. Diaz missed all of 2016 and most of 2017 due to Tommy John, but his stuff has been vicious this spring. In two looks at him, Diaz has been 96-99 with a plus slider in the 87-90 mph range.

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Manny Margot upped his launch angle more than any other player in the second half of the 2017 season. Eno Sarris wrote about that fact in January, and as he did so with data alone, a not-insignificant piece of information remained unaddressed: How purposeful was the change, and what (or who) prompted it?

The answer to the latter question is Johnny Washington. San Diego’s assistant hitting coach made the suggestion, and knowing that “hitting the ball in the air gives you more chances in the gaps,” Margot took it to heart.

The 23-year-old outfielder confirmed that “right around the halfway point” is when he began trying to hit more balls in the air. The ways in which he accomplished that goal were twofold. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the passage of the so-called “Save America’s Pastime” Act, the future of minor-league spending, the endangered status of lower-level independent leagues, Ryan Zimmerman’s spring-training trailblazing, leadoff hitter Aaron Judge, actual likely Opening Day Dodgers starter Matt Kemp, a Zack Greinke anecdote, and Miguel Cabrera’s solution for not knowing teammates’ names, then preview the 2018 Mariners (20:38) with FanGraphs’ Meg Rowley, and the 2018 Rockies (53:35) with Rockies Magazine’s Jesse Spector.

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“The game power plays beneath his raw because Vogelbach’s approach to hitting is often of the Take What You’re Given variety and he’s spraying contact all over the field.”

– Eric Longenhagen

FanGraphs’ lead prospect analyst wrote those words about Dan Vogelbach for last year’s Mariners list and largely echoed them in this year’s version, as well. The appraisal is accurate: Vogelbach has never put up the kind of power numbers that his hulking physique suggests he should.

He’s looking to change that. Seven years after the Cubs drafted him in the second round out of a Fort Myers, Florida, high school — and 20 months after the Mariners acquired him in the Mike Montgomery deal — Vogelbach has decided that what’s always worked for him isn’t working well enough.

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Brendan Rodgers is living up to his billing. Drafted third overall by the Colorado Rockies in 2015 out of a Florida high school, the smooth-swinging shortstop slashed .336/.373/.567 between high-A Lancaster and Double-A Hartford last year. His calling-card bat speed on full display, he crashed 18 home runs in 400 plate appearances.

Rodgers was seemingly born to hit. He’s worked hard to hone his craft, but at the same time, letting his natural talent shine through is his M.O..

“I keep hitting as simple as possible,” explained the talented 21-year-old. “Body movement, stride, how my hands work… everything. I keep all it to a minimum. I try to not make the game harder than it is.”

Mechanically, Rodgers sticks with what he was taught “when he was younger.” He told me that the Rockies haven’t suggested any notable tweaks, and that for him “it’s all about being on time and in rhythm.”

He doesn’t have a leg kick — “just a little stride” — although he did have one back in his formative years. Wanting to feel more balanced, he “shut that down and spread out a little bit,” which he feels helps him stay in his legs better. Approach-wise, he attacks the baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

The Seattle Mariners are making a bold move with their run-prevention model. They’re not changing it (at least not very much), but they are making a defensive change that isn’t without risk. A team built around fly-ball pitchers and ball hawks is planning to play an infielder with no professional outfield experience in center field.

Not surprisingly, the decision to do so was built partly on projections that came from Statcast data. The player in question is 29-year-old Dee Gordon, who has performed exclusively at the shortstop and second base positions since being drafted in 2008.

Earlier this spring, I asked Mariners executive vice president and general manager Jerry Dipoto about the move and how it ties in to his club’s overall approach to keeping runs off the board.

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Jerry Dipoto on Dee Gordon and the Mariners’ run-prevention model: “I’d like to tell you that [the disappointing 2017 season] was mostly health. We were down 80% of our starting rotation, and a few of our everyday players, before we got to the first week of May. That was certainly a big factor. But dating back to 2016, when we first started to re-create our club, I feel like we nailed it in terms of the science. We built around fly-ball-oriented pitchers with an outfield that can go catch fly balls. What we weren’t planning on, along with the health issues, was the home-run explosion over the last two years. A lot of those fly balls ended up going over the fence.

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PEORIA, Ariz. — Dee Gordon is in demand.

On a Tuesday morning, the slight 29-year-old enters the Mariners’ spring clubhouse wearing a black T-shirt, sweats, and — after exchanging words with teammates en route to his locker — a grin, as well. Before even having an opportunity to shed his street clothes, though, he’s pulled away by a Mariners public-relations staffer. Given a cell phone, he’s ushered out of the clubhouse. The reason: a radio request he has agreed to fulfill. He returns some 20 minutes later and, almost immediately, another reporter — this very FanGraphs dot com employee — intercepts him.

After spending the last three years in Miami, Gordon is not accustomed to regular media attention. But he’s a man of interest this spring because the Mariners are asking him to change positions. He was not caught off guard by the move: Marlins executive Michael Hill had alerted Gordon to the possibility of the trade and position change several weeks before the deal was finalized. And when he returned from a trip to the Dominican Republic in early December, Gordon was awoken by a call informing him he was traded. Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto then called to talk about the position change.

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The Mariners made the Ichiro Suzuki signing official on Wednesday, returning the 44-year-old outfielder to the team for whom he starred from 2001 until mid-2012, when he was traded to the Yankees. Aside from a genuinely useful 2016 season in a part-time role — highlighted by his 3,000th major league hit — he hasn’t been a very productive player over the past five years, totaling 2.5 WAR over the span, and he may not have much to offer the Mariners beyond wisdom, leadership, warm fuzzies, and other soft factors. Still, there are worse ways to end a storied career, as Rian Watt pointed out when the news of Ichiro’s westward return first broke.

The history of such homecomings among Hall of Fame-bound players isn’t filled with many resounding successes, and in Seattle’s case, the most immediate example that comes to mind represents a worst-case scenario in this realm: an old, underperforming player outright embarrassing himself in some way, as Ken Griffey Jr. did in 2010. Junior hit just .184/.250/.204 without a homer before being released on June 2, shortly after he allegedly fell asleep in the clubhouse and missed a pinch-hitting opportunity. That’s no way to go, whether or not you’re a member of the 600 home-run club.

Via a quick skim through annals of the game, I counted 13 other stints in which a Hall of Famer wrapped up his career with a return to his original team, plus one that deserves an asterisk. That count doesn’t include players who finished with the team for whom they became stars after previously breaking in elsewhere, as was the case with Early Wynn coming back to the Indians, Dennis Eckersley to the Red Sox, or Fergie Jenkins and the Cubs. Nor does it include players who moved on again after their second stint with their original team, such as Greg Maddux with the Cubs, Tim Raines with the Expos, or Ivan Rodriguez with the Rangers. Listed chronologically, these are the most noteworthy.

Eddie Collins (A’s 1906-14, 1927-30)

During his first run with the A’s, the Columbia University-educated Collins played the keystone in Connie Mack’s “$100,000 Infield,” which led the team to four pennants and three championships. But after losing the 1914 World Series to the “Miracle” Braves, Mack broke up the team for financial reasons — one of the earliest tank jobs. Sold to the White Sox for $50,000, Collins spent 12 years on the South Side, helping the team to pennants in 1917 and 1919 (he was not part of the World Series fix), becoming the sixth player to collect his 3,000th hit in 1925, and serving as player-manager for that season and the next.

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Felix Hernandez’s 2018 season got off to a rough start, as he was drilled on the right arm by a line drive in his February 26 appearance against the Cubs. The Mariners say he’ll miss just one Cactus League start, but on the heels of two subpar, injury-shortened seasons, M’s fans can be forgiven for curling up into the fetal position.

Hernandez took the hill just 16 times in 2017 due to shoulder bursitis and was lit up for a 4.36 ERA and career-worst 5.02 FIP; his 17 homers allowed in 86.2 innings was more than he served up in four of his eight 200-plus inning seasons. His 2016 campaign, which was shortened to 25 starts by a right calf strain, featured a less-than-inspiring 3.82 ERA and 4.63 FIP, as well. His recent decline probably owes something to eroding velocity. Via Pitch Info, his four-seamer has averaged around 91 mph in the past two years, down from a high of 96 in 2008 and 93.6 as recently as 2014. The story is similar for his sinker. He’s not missing as many bats as he used to, and his home-run rate is soaring along with those of just about every other pitcher in baseball. In short, he looks more peasant than king.

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Seventeen years ago, a man named Ichiro Suzuki came east over the ocean to play baseball in Seattle. He was 27 years old then, and very good at what he did. Today, multiple reports indicate that Suzuki, now aged 44, will return to the Mariners. And it doesn’t matter, really, how good at baseball he is or isn’t anymore.

It matters a little, of course. The Mariners announced today that Ben Gamel will be out for four-to-six weeks with a strained oblique, and although that injury does not necessarily prohibit him from serving as the team’s unofficial hair model/Adonis, it does probably preclude him from playing the outfield, because Opening Day is about three-and-a-half weeks away. Suzuki, for all of his recent decline in offensive skills, can still play the outfield with reasonable competence — and certainly well enough to cover for Gamel where Guillermo Heredia and Taylor Motter cannot while also coming off the bench when needed.

I’m guessing that had a little to do with the timing of the deal, but it probably wasn’t everything.

In another sense, though, Ichiro’s performance on the field won’t matter a whole lot. Suzuki is a shadow of the player he once was, but the player he once was was one of the greatest to ever play the game, and he did most of it in a Mariners uniform. Only Ken Griffey Jr. and Edgar Martinez generated more wins in teal than did Suzuki, and both of them will be in the Hall of Fame eventually. So will Ichiro. This year may well be his last on a big-league field — there was talk that he’d retire, or head to Japan, if not offered a big-league contract — and there’d be no better way to go out than in Seattle, no matter what form that exit takes.

Maybe Ichiro will make contact with the ball 90% of the time again, like he last did in 2015. Maybe he’ll strike out less than 10% of the time again, like he last did in 2012. Or maybe he’ll hit .300 again, like he last did in 2010. I doubt any of those things will happen. What will happen, I’d hazard to guess, is that he’ll play at about replacement level for the first few months of the season, run out of opportunities in the late spring, and make a dignified exit from a legendary career during some sunny Seattle homestand this summer. If that’s how it goes, there are worse ways to end a career. Ichiro is back home, heading west into the sunset.