Nick Plummer was looking like a bust. Drafted 23rd overall by the St. Louis Cardinals in 2015 out of a Detroit-area high school, the left-handed-hitting outfielder had a ho-hum debut summer, then he injured a wrist and missed what would have been his first full professional season. His next three years weren’t particularly fruitful either. Playing at the lower levels of the minors, Plummer put up a .194/.338/.309 slash line while fanning at a 32.3% clip. Add in last year’s lost-to-the-pandemic season, and the 24-year-old former first-round pick came into the current campaign with his stock having plummeted, and with his future very much in doubt.

That doubt is slowly dissipating. Given an opportunity to redeem himself at Double-A Springfield, Plummer has flourished to the tune of .307/.414/.507 line with 10 home runs in 268 plate appearances. Not coincidentally, his strikeout rate has improved to a still-too-high, yet much-more-palatable, 27.1%.

Earlier this season I asked the Brother Rice High School product — DJ LeMahieu is a fellow alumnus — about his previous struggles.

“Everybody’s journey is different,” responded Plummer. “That goes for baseball, just as it does for life. I think the biggest thing that’s helped me turn it around this year is having a mindset of learning from my past — my past failures — and applying the 1,200-1,300 at-bats I’d accumulated so far in the minor leagues. I’m fortunate to be with one of the best organizations in baseball. The Cardinals have continued to invest in me, and I’ve continued to invest in myself.” Read the rest of this entry »

Devlin Granberg is an under-the-radar prospect enjoying a breakout season. Boston’s sixth-round pick in 2018 out of Dallas Baptist University, the 25-year-old first baseman/outfielder — unranked on our 2021 Red Sox Top Prospects list — is slashing .315/.379/.573 between High-A Greenville and Double-A Portland. Swinging from the right side, the Hudson, Colorado native has slugged eight home runs while putting up a healthy 155 wRC+.

Granberg talked hitting prior to a recent game at Portland’s Hadlock Field.

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David Laurila: How much have you changed since coming to pro ball?

Devlin Granberg: “I’ve had a very similar swing since probably my sophomore year in college. I’ve got a very immobile body — I have tight hips and tight shoulders — but that helps me stay more consistent. It’s kind of what has allowed me to stay with a very similar swing.

“I think the biggest change for me has been the routine. It’s the same thing every single day, whereas in college you’re able to split it up. [College] is similar day-to-day, sure, but you also have different midweek games and practices, plus you get days off. Here, you have to get into a good routine and put yourself in the same state of mind each day in order to hit 95 [mph], or whatever it is the minor leagues throws at you.”

Laurila: Is a strict routine ever a negative? For instance, if you’re scuffling at the plate and doing the same thing day after day…

Granberg: “That’s actually one thing I learned this offseason. In my routine, I have different routines — I have two or three different drill sets that I do in the cage, and I never do the same thing on repeated days. Does that make sense? So, back-to-back days, I never do things exactly the same. I started implementing that in quarantine and I think it’s actually helped me stay a little bit more consistent. I think you have to keep the body guessing. If you stick to the same routine over and over, at some point the body is going to compensate, and then it’s going to overcompensate.

“A routine that is very positive could be maybe neutral, or maybe slightly negative, if you continuously do it every single day. That’s why I try to keep it fresh and mix it up. I’ll go BP, machine work, different things like that.”

Laurila: What was your routine today? Read the rest of this entry »

Ken Waldichuk has been a strikeout machine in his first competitive professional season. A fifth-round pick in 2019 out of St. Mary’s College, the 23-year-old southpaw boasts the third-highest K/9 in the minors, his 15.8 mark topped only by those of Reid Detmers and Carson Ragsdale. Waldichuk’s dominance, which includes a 1.18 ERA, has come in 10 starts — seven with High-A Hudson Valley and three with Double-A Somerset.

Flying well under the radar entering this season — he’s No. 45 on our Yankees Top Prospects list — Waldichuk was described by Eric Longenhagen as a “lanky lefty who… generates nearly seven feet of extension and has big carry on his fastball.” I asked the 6-foot-4 San Diego native if he agrees with that assessment.

“I do get good carry, although I’m not too sure about the extension,” Waldichuk told me. “I’m not really sure what creates the carry, either. I’m not really too good with all the analytics stuff. But I do understand some of it. The way I spin it makes it play well, up.
”

The carry is something Waldichuk has always had. What he’s learned since signing a professional contract is how to better avoid having the ball “spinning more sideways,” as opposed to getting the true backspin he wants. His heater typically sits around 2,400 rpm — “I’ve been as high as 2,700” — and in his penultimate start he “averaged 17 inches of [arm-side] horizontal and 16 inches of vertical movement.” His velocity averaged out at 92.2 [mph].”

Waldichuk also throws a slider, a slurve, and a changeup. Each is interesting in its own way. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in December, Eric Longenhagen compiled FanGraphs’ annual Dodgers Top Prospects List, identifying 51 noteworthy players in Los Angeles’ system. What follows is an update on the top-ranked players and best performers from that list, along with some previously unlisted prospects who’ve made a case for themselves to be included in prospect lists to come. (Note: The stats in this article are updated through Monday, June 28).

Updates on the Top Five

Josiah Gray, the Dodgers’ top-ranked prospect who they acquired in the Yasiel Puig trade, seemed to be a likely option to replace Dustin May on the big-league roster when May was sidelined by Tommy John surgery at the beginning of the year. But just a few days later, Gray made his first start at Triple-A and has been sidelined ever since with an arm injury of his own (shoulder impingement). He hasn’t pitched since then, and according to team personnel, they’re wisely taking their time with his rehabilitation. Whenever Gray is deemed healthy enough to pitch, he’ll still likely be on a fast track to the major league roster. Read the rest of this entry »

Triston Casas and Grant Williams are teammates with distinctly different profiles. Boston’s first-round pick in the 2018 draft, the 21-year-old Casas is a 6-foot-4, 250-pound first baseman who is No. 2 on our Red Sox Top Prospects list, and No. 42 on our updated Top 100 Prospects list. Williams is unranked. A 25-year-old middle infielder who lasted until the 310th pick of the 2018 draft, he hit in the nine-hole when the Double-A Portland Sea Dogs hosted the Somerset Patriots on Wednesday night. Befitting his stature, Casas batted third.

Prior to the game, I spoke to both players about their respective hitting approaches.

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Casas possesses plus power, but he doesn’t present as a pure slugger. Patience is a big part of his M.O., as is a willingness to choke up on the bat when contact is at a premium. The lefty swinger cited Joey Votto as his role model when he was featured in a January 2020 Sunday Notes column, and as he acknowledged on Wednesday, that remains the case.

I asked Casas if he’s changed as a hitter since entering pro ball three years ago.

“I’d like to think I haven’t, but I have a lot,” responded the Plantation, Florida product. “I kind of battle that. I fight every single day to make adjustments and become the best hitter that I can, but to also apply what I’ve been doing my whole life. So I like to say that I haven’t changed too much, but at the same time, I have.”

I asked the up-and-coming youngster if he could elaborate. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite things about attending a live baseball game is how it sounds. Sure, the pops and cracks of leather and wood on the field are comforting in their own right, but what I’m really talking about is the chatter. The constant din of anonymous talkers throwing out well-researched stats, or strongly felt opinions on pitchers’ hair length, or two-notches-too-loud questions about where the Bud Light guy is. And as much as I enjoy the ambient noise of a major-league ballpark, for my money, there is no baseball chatter that compares to that found in the stands of a high school game.

At the end of May, I attended my first live baseball game since 2019, a matchup on the South Side of Chicago between Marist High School and Marian Catholic. Heading into the game, Marist had the best record in Illinois, thanks in part to Noah Smith, their toolsy infielder, and our top-ranked high school prospect in the state. Also on the field was Smith’s Area Codes teammate and fellow Louisville commit, Eddie King Jr., playing in the outfield for Marian Catholic. But in the bleachers along the first base line, the chatter wasn’t about whether Smith would ever eliminate the sway in his swing and stabilize his head to more consistently identify breaking balls, or how hot a bat King was swinging after he smashed a double off the left-field wall (he had homered in the game the day before, also against Marist). Instead, I found myself seated in between a group of teens who had googled the team’s roster because one of them was pretty sure she’d sat next to one of the outfielders in Freshman Spanish, and a mom who spent the entire game playing defense against her toddler, who was intent on pulling on the cord coming out of the camera she had perched on the railing to record her older son’s performance on the field.

After the game, there were hugs and pats on the back from the parents in the stands, and awkward giggles from the group of girls I’d been sitting by, none of whom seemed keen on actually approaching any of the players. Marian Catholic won 9-7, issuing Marist its first conference loss of the season (and third loss overall), and knocking them down to second place in the state. If anyone in the stands noticed, they hid their disappointment well. But regardless of whether or not the audience at this mid-week, mid-afternoon high school game was aware of the stakes of the game itself, it was clear how much they cared about the players on the field. The sense of community was palpable. Even as an outsider, I felt like I’d attended an event that meant something to my fellow spectators – something specific, and unrelated to baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a quiet evening along the water—until a glowing set of eyes peers at you over the river bank. You convince yourself it’s just a pair of fireflies. But then there’s more of them. And more.

And more.

Then there’s the quiet, seamless grind of their gears as they pull themselves onto dry land and bound toward you with the same sleekness they have in the water: The effortless instinct of nature, programmed into a machine.

It’s far too late to run. And the only final thoughts you can muster are: Otter-bots? But… why…?

Why, indeed. Fortunately, when the Otterbots descended upon Danville, Virginia this past winter, they did so as a new summer collegiate wood-bat franchise in the Appalachian League, not a horde of semiaquatic cuddle-bugs converted into killing machines.

So if it’s not “terrorizing the waterfront,” then what are Otterbots doing in Danville? This summer, the burgeoning Virginia STEM hub is going to find out. And fortunately, no one has to die.

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Like a theoretical horde of river-dwelling killbots, the future is in a constant state of arrival. It can be jarring, damaging, and confusing at times. But with the right education, even an Otterbot can make a little more sense.

We are now living in a future that top minds foresaw decades ago. In 1994, in a coastal Virginia town four hours east of Danville called Poquoson, William L. Sellers III stated that the next generation needed nothing more than it would need science, technology, engineering, and math. Sellers had a masters degree and worked as a research engineer in fluid dynamics with NASA, as well as being a member of the local school board. Science had served him well, but as he explained, the whole point was for science to serve us all. Read the rest of this entry »

When Mario Feliciano made his major league debut last weekend, it was unlikely for a number of reasons. That’s not to say that Feliciano is a nobody: The hard-hitting catcher was the MVP of the Carolina League in 2019 and has been highly ranked by multiple outlets for some time now. But prior to the 2021 season, he had barely played above A-ball, having spent most of 2019 as a member of the Carolina Mudcats, then a high-A affiliate of the Brewers, before earning a late-season promotion to the Double-A Biloxi Shuckers, where he played in only three games. But when Omar Narváez was placed on the injured list on May 1, Feliciano was called up from the Brewers’ alternate site to replace the ailing backup catcher on the roster, though his call-up seemed unlikely to lead to playing time, barring unforeseen circumstances.

You know where this is going. Those unforeseen circumstances arrived in the form of an extra-inning game against the Dodgers, when Milwaukee called upon Feliciano, the only remaining player on the bench, to pinch hit in the pitchers slot in bottom of the 11th inning. Down by two with runners on first and second, Feliciano fouled off a couple of good pitches and laid off some close ones out of the zone, drawing the count full before walking to load the bases and eventually scoring the winning run on a walk-off single by Travis Shaw three batters later.

But that unlikely appearance meant that Feliciano’s MLB debut preceded his first game in Triple A by three days. And while a mid-week matchup between the Nashville Sounds and the Toledo Mud Hens may seem much less exciting than an 11th-inning at-bat against the reigning World Series champions, Feliciano’s Triple A opener was arguably steeped in more anticipation and intrigue. On the mound that night for the Mud Hens was Matt Manning, a Top 100 prospect who has earned future-of-the-franchise fanfare of his own. Indeed, this game represented the return of one of the aspects of the minors most sorely missed during the nearly 600 days since the end of the 2019 MiLB season: a glimpse into baseball’s future.

Read the rest of this entry »

The idea has long been a refrain for both proponents and critics of extra-innings baseball, though often voiced with tongue in cheek: instead of drawing out contests to 10 or 12 or 17 wearying innings, or starting each extra frame with a runner on second base, why not just settle the matter via a home run derby? This year, as the affiliated minor and independent leagues implement a variety of experimental rules, the Pioneer League will do just that. The “Knock Out” rule, as the league is calling it, is just one change from among a slate that should garner the league some attention — though that doesn’t mean it’s coming to major league ballparks anytime soon.

The idea of ending games that go beyond nine innings with some kind of home run contest has been in the ether for awhile, to say the least, and it’s even been implemented in some places:

Camseco care 9. No extra innings home run derby settles ties

— Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco) September 26, 2013

Game 5 is Monday. Bartolo Colon and Roberto Hernandez will decide extra innings with a home run derby.

— Matt Gelb (@MattGelb) June 1, 2014

Instead of extra innings, the @EasternLeague All-Star Game was decided with a Home Run Derby: http://t.co/UHogXJKROT pic.twitter.com/zDqBgIZtcI

— Cut4 (@Cut4) July 16, 2015

I'd take a Home Run Derby to settle extra innings over starting with a runner on second. That's how bad it is.

— Dan Szymborski (@DSzymborski) March 14, 2018

Thing I just learned: Extra-innings games in the Futures Collegiate League of New England are determined by a home run derby.

— Josh Norris ? (@jnorris427) January 31, 2019

If were going to do the whole runner on second base thing in extra innings a “swing off” home run derby would have made for better TV lol.

— Alex Wood (@Awood45) June 24, 2020

As best I can tell, the Futures Collegiate Baseball League, an amateur summer league akin to the Cape Cod League, has taken a variant of this rule for the longest spin. Introduced for the 2017 season, and applicable only after the 10th inning, the FCBL reported that 10 of its 238 games that year were decided via a derby, and the format proved popular enough to retain. With the exception of the aforementioned use in the Eastern League All-Star Game in 2015, it doesn’t appear to have received a trial in the professional ranks. Read the rest of this entry »

I obviously don’t have access to MLB Trade Rumors’ site traffic data, so it’s an educated guess that “[Team] Signs [Player] To a Minor League Contract” pieces are among their least trafficked pages. I get it. Big trades and big free agent acquisitions are exciting. Some vet trying to hang on and being given another chance? Not so much. That said, the world of minor league contracts for veterans is one that I was very close to during my time in baseball. The first time I was given the assignment of negotiating these deals, I thought they would be simple. I quickly learned they were anything but. Unless something dramatic and unexpected happens in terms of the labor negotiations between the league and the players, spring training is close. With an unprecedented number of free agents still out there, plenty of these types of deals are being negotiated as we speak, so it’s a good time to get into what it takes to get a deal over the line.

Opportunity

The crux of any minor league contract negotiation is opportunity. Players don’t want to be in the minor leagues. The focus is on playing in the majors, and which potential employer gives them the best chance to spend significant time in the big leagues. The reasons are obvious. They get paid like big leaguers, they accrue service time, and the perks (better per diems, charter flights, opulent hotels, palatial clubhouses) are phenomenal.

Agents don’t talk about money or contract clauses first, they talk about the possibility of their player being with the big league club. I would imagine that every Quad-A shortstop right now has his agent in touch with the Reds, while avoiding clubs like the Mets, Padres and others where the position is filled by a star-level talent who tends to stay on the field. Agents for these players become depth chart aficionados, studying every team’s situation across various position families to see where their player might slide in.

Personally, I always tried to be honest with agents and players with regards to said opportunity. Sometimes a team is offering the player a real chance to break camp with the big club; sometimes they are clearly a depth piece meant to bide their time at Triple-A until someone gets hurt or drastically underperforms. And yes, sometimes you do find yourself in direct contact with players. I always appreciated the conversations, and thought it spoke well of the player on a makeup level, as the individual was personally invested in the process.

Beyond the chances to play in the big leagues, clubs need to sell potential roster pieces on the additional benefits of joining the team. For the Astros, the player development system and the club’s ability to communicate data-based improvements was a big part of the pitch. Often players wanted to speak to someone more important than the negotiator, like the GM or field manager, just to hear assurances from the source themselves. Read the rest of this entry »