Tuesday’s 40-man roster deadline led to the usual squall of transaction activity, with teams turning over portions of their rosters in an effort to make room for the incoming crop of young rookies. Often, teams with an overflow of viable big leaguers will try to get back what they can for some of those players via trade, but because we’re talking about guys straddling the line between major league viability and Triple-A, those trades tend not to be big enough to warrant an entire post. Over the next few days, I’ll endeavor to cover and analyze the moves made by each team, division by division. Readers can view this as the start of list season, as the players covered in this miniseries tend to be prospects who will get big league time in the next year. I’ll spend more time discussing players who I think need scouting updates or who I haven’t written about in the past. If you want additional detail on some of the more famous names you find below, pop over to The Board for a more thorough report. The Future Value grades littered throughout these posts may be different than those on the 2022 in-season prospect lists on The Board to reflect my updated opinions, and may be subject to change during the offseason.
In addition to free agent departures (Rougned Odor and Jesús Aguilar to name a few), the Orioles primed space on their 40-man roster by outrighting several fringe big leaguers, and opened Tuesday morning with just 34 players on their 40-man. They’ve had an especially high rate of turnover at catcher over the last few weeks, as they let Robinson Chirinos walk in free agency, outrighted Cam Gallagher and Anthony Bemboom off the roster, claimed both Aramis Garcia and Mark Kolozsvary off waivers from the Reds, and then outrighted Garcia. I have Kolozsvary, who is still prospect-eligible, evaluated as a third catcher on the 40-man.
Mike Elias also scooped up old buddy Daz Cameron, who replaces Yusniel Diaz on the 40-man. Daz has been in “prospect limbo” for about a year, as he graduated from rookie status in 2021 but still spent most of this season in the minors. The 40 FV (a fifth outfielder eval) and tool grades assigned to him at that time still hold (you can see those on his player page), making Daz a defensive upgrade to Diaz (who was outrighted off the roster) and a L/R fit with a couple other Orioles outfielders (Kyle Stowers, Cedric Mullins, maybe some Terrin Vavra). Cameron is out of options while Ryan McKenna (who I preferred to Cameron as a prospect by the time he graduated) is not, so barring further moves I assume Daz is more likely to break camp with the big club at this point. Read the rest of this entry »
The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2023 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.
Albert Belle was baseball’s most notorious bad boy in the 1990s, and he developed into one of the game’s elite sluggers. He flat out terrorized pitchers — and was no picnic for many of those around him — for a decade before a degenerative hip condition forced his retirement at age 34. Even at the height of an offense-heavy era, his numbers are something to behold.
So, too, are stories of Belle’s temper. A 1996 Sports Illustratedcover story, “He Thrives on Anger” — a title taken from a quote by Cleveland clubhouse attendant Frank Mancini, one of Belle’s closest friends — detailed his throwing baseballs at a photographer, hurling epithets at a broadcaster, and chasing teenagers who had egged his house in his Ford Explorer. While Belle overcame early-career problems with alcohol to flourish in the majors, his actions once he did rarely cast his as a feel-good story. Had the behavior that incurred multiple fines and suspensions — not to mention a 1998 domestic battery complaint that was later dropped — occurred two decades later, he could have received even heavier punishment that might have altered his career path. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’ve been aware of either the Baltimore Orioles or FanGraphs Dot Com in the past nine months, you already know the two entities have not always played nice with one another. On the eve of the 2022 season, our playoff odds gave Baltimore just 0.1% chance of making the playoffs, meaning that out of 20,000 simulated universes, the Orioles would only reach the Wild Card round 20 times. (I’ve been to one of those universes. Chick-fil-A is open on Sundays, Ryan Reynolds owns Twitter, and the airlines never got deregulated. It’s heaven.)
As late as September, when the Orioles had clearly surpassed any reasonable expectations and were still in the hunt, our playoff odds were still quite pessimistic relative to other projections systems. Sure enough, Baltimore finished 83-79, three games behind Tampa Bay. But for a team that hadn’t finished at or above .500 since 2016 and hadn’t even won 55 games in a full season since 2017, that’s a good year. Something to build on, particularly considering the wellspring of young talent bubbling up from the minors like the Clampett family’s oil well.
And yet the Orioles aren’t exactly keeping the band together. After moving Jorge López and Trey Mancini at the trade deadline, the first week of the offseason proper has seen several more departures, including Robinson Chirinos, Rougned Odor, and Jordan Lyles. That’s three starting position players (at least for part of the season), as well as Baltimore’s leaders in saves and innings pitched. Read the rest of this entry »
The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2023 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been expanded and updated. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.
On July 15, 2005, Rafael Palmeiro became the 26th player to collect his 3,000 hit, and joined Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Eddie Murray as the only players to attain both that milestone and 500 home runs. Even for a player who didn’t get as much recognition as his heavy-hitting peers in the All-Star, MVP, and postseason departments, and who had been viewed more as a compiler who benefited from playing in hitter-friendly ballparks than as a bona fide superstar, the 40-year-old slugger appeared to have secured a spot in the Hall of Fame.
Less than three weeks later, on August 1, 2005, Major League Baseball suspended Palmeiro for 10 days for testing positive for Winstrol (stanozolol), a banned anabolic steroid. Just five players had been suspended before him, none of whom was anything close to a star. For Palmeiro the suspension was all the more humbling because four and a half months earlier, he had wagged his finger in front of Congress while adamantly denying that he used performance-enhancing drugs. For as brief as his suspension was — first-offense penalties would increase to 50 games the following season — it all but ended the debate about Palmeiro’s Hall-worthiness. His career didn’t even outlast the debate; upon returning, Palmeiro played in just seven more games, struggling while enduring a persistent chorus of boos. He didn’t even finish out the season.
Palmeiro wasn’t the first PED-linked star to land on the BBWAA ballot — that distinction belonged to Mark McGwire — but he was the first to do so after being suspended. The voters were unsparing, giving him just 11% of the vote in 2011, and while his share rose to 12.6% the next year, the handwriting was on the wall. As the ballot grew more crowded over the next two years, with the arrivals of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza, Curt Schilling, and Sammy Sosa in 2013, and then Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, and Frank Thomas in ’14, Palmeiro was lost in the shuffle. He faded to 8.8% in 2014, then 4.4% the next year, bumping him off the ballot. He’s rarely been heard from since, though he did surface a couple of times to play on independent league teams with his son, Patrick Palmeiro, most recently in 2018.
Palmeiro’s presence on this ballot is puzzling, even given that he’s got the numbers for the Hall. The fact that McGwire, who was never suspended, got the cold shoulder from the 2017 Today’s Game panel without testing positive, and that Bonds and Clemens are also on here without testing positive but with superior credentials as players, suggests a very low likelihood that the voters will tab a lesser player who was suspended. More likely, Palmeiro is here mainly as ballast, a candidate easily overlooked so as to focus voters’ attentions elsewhere. It seems probable that such a result will only reinforce the Hall and the Historical Overview Committee that builds the ballot burying him in oblivion, though if that means that Dwight Evans and Lou Whitaker — both of whom were widely expected to be included in this year’s slate after solid debuts on the 2020 Modern Baseball ballot — it’s tough to complain.
2023 Contemporary Baseball Candidate: Rafael Palmeiro
Player
Career WAR
Peak WAR
JAWS
Rafael Palmeiro
71.9
38.9
55.4
Avg. HOF 1B
65.5
42.1
53.8
H
HR
AVG/OBP/SLG
OPS+
3020
569
.288/.371/.515
132
SOURCE: Baseball-Reference
Born in Havana, Cuba on September 24, 1964, Palmeiro emigrated to the U.S. with his parents in 1971, when he was six years old; his father, José Palmeiro, had been an outstanding center fielder on a top Cuban amateur team in his own day. The family settled in Miami, and five or six days a week, José came home from his construction job and took his youngest three sons — the oldest, José Jr., had remained in Cuba to serve in the military — to one of the local diamonds for batting practice and grounders. As a child, Palmeiro learned to filter his father’s negative criticism, understanding how to separate the message to work harder and strive for improvement, from the delivery.
After starring at Jackson High School in Miami, Palmeiro was chosen in the eighth round of the 1982 draft by the Mets, but he bypassed the chance to sign in favor of accepting a baseball scholarship from Mississippi State University. At MSU, he starred alongside fellow future major leaguer Will Clark, becoming a three-time All-American and the first Triple Crown winner in Southeastern Conference history in 1984. In 2019, the pair were honored with statues in front of Dudy Noble Field.
The two teammates were chosen in the first round of the 1985 draft — Clark second overall by the Giants and Palmeiro 22nd by the Cubs. That same round was headed by future Orioles teammate B.J. Surhoff, and it also produced Barry Larkin (fourth, to the Reds) and Bonds (sixth, to the Pirates). Just 15 months later, and 16 days before his 22nd birthday, Palmeiro debuted in the majors, singling off the Phillies’ Tom Hume on September 8, 1986. The next day, he hit a three-run homer off Kevin Gross.
Palmeiro hit .247/.295/.425 in a 22-game cup of coffee, and after beginning the 1987 season at Triple-A Peoria, he was in the majors for good by mid-June. He hit .276/.336/.543 with 14 homers in 84 games as a rookie, then earned All-Star honors and finished second in the NL batting title race in 1988 while hitting a relatively thin .307/.349/.436 with just eight homers. The Cubs had Leon Durham and then Mark Grace at first base during those seasons, so Palmeiro played primarily in left field. After the 1988 season, he was dealt to the Rangers in a nine-player trade that also included Jamie Moyer heading to Texas and Mitch Williams to Chicago.
Palmeiro emerged as a minor star in Texas, leading the American League with 191 hits in 1990 and earning All-Star honors for the second time in ’91, when he hit .322/.389/.532 with 203 hits, a league-leading 49 doubles and 26 homers; his 155 OPS+ ranked fifth in the AL, his 5.8 WAR ninth. He set a career high with 37 homers in 1993, hitting .295/.371/.554 and ranking fourth in WAR (6.9) and sixth in OPS+ (150). The Rangers finished above .500 in four of his five years with the team, but they never won more than 86 games or finished higher than second in the seven-team AL West.
Palmeiro parlayed that big season into a five-year, $30.35 million deal with the Orioles, but not without some drama that involved his former college teammate. Though he wanted to return to Texas, Palmeiro turned down the team’s initial offer of five years and $26 million and entered free agency. The Rangers turned to Clark, who had reached free agency after his impressive eight-year run with the Giants; he agreed to a five-year, $30 million deal. “Palmeiro chose not to come off his original offer one penny; in fact, he went up,” said Rangers president Tom Schieffer while noting that he had been the team’s first choice for a left-handed power hitter.
Palmeiro was stung, particularly by the fact that his former teammate replaced him. “That’s Will,” he told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “That’s the way he is. He’s got no class. Friendship didn’t matter to him. He was looking out for himself. I don’t think much of Will. He’s a low-life.”
Palmeiro publicly apologized to Clark the next day, and about three weeks later signed with the Orioles, becoming the marquee addition of new owner Peter Angelos in his quest to build a winner to fit the team’s new Camden Yards ballpark. The move brought him to the team he used to watch train in Miami, and reunited him with manager Johnny Oates, who had coached him with the Cubs.
Over the next five years, Palmeiro hit a combined .292/.371/.545 (134 OPS+) while averaging 36 homers and 4.7 WAR despite the 1994-95 strike. His 39-homer, .289/.381/.546 showing in 1996 helped the Orioles reach the playoffs for the first time since ’83. He homered in three consecutive postseason games, and got on base in all five plate appearances in the infamous Jeffrey Maier game against the Yankees in the ALCS opener, but he hit a lopsided .206/.317/.500 in 41 plate appearances during the playoffs overall as Baltimore fell short of the World Series.
Palmeiro fell off somewhat the next year (.254/.329/.485 with 38 homers), but did win a Gold Glove for his play at first base, which rated at 10 runs above average according to Total Zone. While the O’s made it back to the playoffs again with a star-studded lineup that also included future Hall of Famers Murray, Roberto Alomar, Harold Baines, and Cal Ripken Jr., they again couldn’t get to the World Series.
After a strong walk year in 1998 during which he tallied 6.3 WAR (seventh in the league), 43 homers (sixth, and a career high) and a second Gold Glove, Palmeiro returned to Texas via a five-year, $45 million contract. He turned down a $50 million offer in order to be closer to his family, and again was reunited with Oates, who had been fired by the Orioles after the ’94 season. In the hitter-friendly Ballpark at Arlington, he set career highs in all three slash stats (.324/.420/.630) in 1999 as well as homers (47) and RBIs (148) — the last three figures all ranked second in the league — while helping the Rangers to their third division title. He finished fifth in the MVP balloting, his highest showing ever, and won one of the most dubious Gold Gloves in history in a season where he played just 28 games in the field, spending most of his time DHing.
Palmeiro hit .284/.390/.566 (140 OPS+) and averaged 43 homers during his five-season stint in Texas; his total of 214 dingers during that span were surpassed only by Sosa, Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and Jim Thome. Between the high-scoring era, the hitter-friendly environment, and his increasing amount of time at DH, his total of 20.9 WAR during that stretch (4.2 per year) ranked 35th among position players — good but not as valuable as his raw numbers would suggest. On May 11, 2003 he hit his 500th homer off Cleveland’s Dave Elder, becoming the 19th player to reach that plateau.
Palmeiro turned 39 at the end of that season, and after entering the free agent market yet again, decided to return to Baltimore to chase 3,000 hits. Whether due to age or environment, his power dissipated; he declined from 38 homers and a .508 slugging percentage in his final year in Texas to 23 and .436 with the Orioles in 2004.
Prior to the 2005 season, Palmeiro was among the former teammates named as a steroid user by Jose Canseco in his tell-all book, Juiced. Canseco claimed that during his 1992-94 stint with the Rangers, he had not only introduced Palmeiro, Juan Gonzalez and Ivan Rodriguez to steroids, but to have personally injected them as well. Palmeiro denied the assertion via a statement: “At no point in my career have I ever used steroids, let alone any substance banned by Major League Baseball. As I have never had a personal relationship with Canseco, any suggestion that he taught me anything, about steroid use or otherwise, is ludicrous.” In March, both Canseco and Palmeiro were among the major leaguers subpoenaed to testify under oath in front of the House of Representatives Government Reform Committee regarding the spread of steroids in baseball. Palmeiro was blunt in his testimony. “I have never used steroids. Period,” he said, punctuating his denial by wagging his finger at the panel.
That image was still burned into the collective consciousness when Palmeiro collected his 3,000th hit, a double off Seattle’s Joel Pineiro, on July 15. Just over two weeks later, all hell broke loose when MLB announced that he had tested positive for a banned substance. Palmeiro claimed to have not taken the drug intentionally and received a 10-day ban, the penalty in place at the time for first offenders. A celebration in honor of his milestone hit was canceled, and when he returned from his suspension, he was showered by so many boos that he took to wearing earplugs. That state of affairs didn’t last long. After collecting just two hits in 29 plate appearances over a two-week span, he left the team and never played in the majors again. In September, the Associated Press reported that he had been sent home by the Orioles after implicating teammate Miguel Tejada as having provided him with an allegedly tainted B-12 supplement, both before MLB’s Health Policy Advisory Committee and a Congressional perjury investigation.
Palmeiro was not prosecuted any further, but he remained haunted by the way his career ended, and continued to contend that the offending substance came from a tainted B-12 vial. He came and went on the writers’ ballot, and while he gave up on hopes of reaching the Hall of Fame, he shifted towards an attempt to salvage his reputation by staging an unlikely comeback. In 2015, at the age of 50, he made a one-game cameo with the independent Sugar Land Skeeters of the Atlantic League, for whom his son Patrick — who was born in 1990, drafted by the Pirates in 2009, and spent 2012-14 in the White Sox system following college — was playing; he went 2-for-4 with a walk and an RBI.
In December 2017, Palmeiro toldThe Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal that he was planning another comeback with the intention of returning to the majors. “Maybe 12 years later, if I can come back and prove I don’t need anything as an older player with an older body, then people might think, OK, maybe he didn’t do anything intentionally,” he said.
Though he was in better physical shape than in 2015, a return to the majors proved to be a pipe dream, but Palmeiro did rejoin his older son (his younger son, Preston, was born in 1995, drafted by the Orioles in the seventh round in 2016 and spent ’22 with the Angels’ Double-A Rocket City affiliate) as a member of the independent Cleburne Railroaders of the American Association. This time, in his age-53 season (!), he played 31 games and hit .301/.424/.495 with six homers. His May 21 homer made him the oldest professional player to homer, while on July 13, he and his son both homered (the latter twice).
Alas, knee problems that resulted in surgery limited his play, and while he intended to continue the following year, both he and Patrick were released in the spring.
…
Setting the steroid saga aside for the moment, Palmeiro’s dual milestones suggest he belong in Cooperstown. Save for the banned-for-life Pete Rose, every player who reached the 3,000 hit mark prior to Palmeiro was elected to to the Hall on his first try, though since then, Biggio needed three tries, and Rodriguez came nowhere near election (34.3%) in his ballot debut last year. Meanwhile, all of the previous members of the 500 home run club save for McGwire were elected to the Hall of Fame as well, though it took four ballots for Harmon Killebrew to gain entry and five for Eddie Mathews. Since then, six other PED-linked players (Bonds, Sosa, Gary Sheffield, Manny Ramirez, and Rodriguez) have failed to gain entry, with Thomas, Thome, Ken Griffey Jr., and David Ortiz the only ones to make it.
The common knock against Palmeiro — that he racked up his numbers under extremely favorable conditions and was never considered a star — doesn’t entirely hold up under scrutiny. His total of four All-Star appearances is indeed low for a potential Hall of Famer, but he received MVP votes in 10 seasons, and while he cracked the top 10 in those votes just three times, that still means he was considered among the league’s best hitters in half of the seasons he played. He scores 178 on the Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor metric, which measures how likely (not how deserving) a player is to be elected, with 100 rating as “a good possibility” and 130 “a virtual cinch.” For what it’s worth, Palmeiro didn’t derive a great advantage from his home parks, hitting .285/.375/.527 in Chicago, Texas and Baltimore, and .291/.366/.502 elsewhere, a fairly typical split.
Of course, we’ll never know the extent to which PEDs affected Palmeiro’s performance, and we don’t even know for how long he was using them. He wasn’t setting the world ablaze during the season in which he tested positive, and we don’t know whether he used the drugs during his prime — a time when offense was at its highest point in decades, and PED use was on the rise as well — or simply made a mistake as his career was waning. Was he caught red-handed after years of relying upon the drugs? Was he set up by a teammate? We don’t know and I’m not sure we ever will. That said, I don’t think it’s going too far out on a limb to suggest that even knowing those answers isn’t likely to get Palmeiro into Cooperstown, and that he will instead remain a cautionary tale.
Every year I have to remind myself that Gold Glove snubs aren’t worth getting worked up about. It’s exceedingly difficult to measure defense objectively, especially in a single season’s worth of games. It’s even harder for voters to make judgments about players’ defensive capabilities when they only watch them play a handful of games each year. Beyond that, the Gold Gloves have gone to “unworthy” players so often before that it’s foolish to be bothered by one more bad choice. Sometimes the wrong guy wins the Gold Glove, and that’s just how it goes. The players know it, the fans know it, and we all go on living.
Yet here I am, about to spend the next thousand or so words rattling on about how Jorge Mateo was snubbed for a Gold Glove. Because as troublesome as it is to evaluate defense, we do have some pretty great statistics available to help accomplish that task. And while Gold Gloves are awarded to undeserving fielders almost every season, they tend to go to those who need them the least: established stars with impressive offensive numbers. This year, the metrics make an ironclad case for Mateo at shortstop, and he would benefit from the recognition more than any of the three finalists. So against my better judgment, I’m here to write about a Gold Glove snub. If Rawlings won’t honor his dazzling defense, I’m going to have to do it myself. Read the rest of this entry »
Adley Rutschman batted .304 with a .581 slugging percentage against four-seam fastballs this season, and learning how to handle heaters up in the zone played a big part in that success. Prior to being drafted first overall by the Baltimore Orioles in 2019 out of Oregon State University, the 24-year-old catcher wasn’t used to being attacked with elevated offerings. That changed when he entered pro ball. As a result, Rutschman found himself having to make both mental and mechanical tweaks as a hitter, and he’s done so with aplomb. The switch-hitting catcher is coming off a rookie season during which he logged a 133 wRC+ with 49 extra-base hits in 470 plate appearances.
Rutschman discussed his up-in-the-zone approach when the Orioles visited Fenway Park in late September.
———
On adjusting to professional pitchers:
“Comparing the pitching styles of college versus pro ball, one of the biggest changes I’ve seen is guys pitching up in the zone. Another is that, analytically, teams are more so taking into account what guys do well and working off of those strengths. In college, I feel like how teams pitched was very program-dependent.
“Up here, if guys have a good four-seam fastball, they’re usually pitching up in the zone. If they’ve got a good two-seam fastball, they’re attacking you horizontally. That was a big adjustment, learning to cover top to bottom instead of just in and out. Not that guys here don’t ever thrown in and out. They will, so there’s more variation. Read the rest of this entry »
Two years before being hired to manage the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Joe Maddon interviewed for the job in Boston. The winter-of-2003 vetting by the then Red Sox decision-makers — a subject I broached with Maddon in a 2007 interview — didn’t bear fruit… but what if it had? Earlier this week, I asked the proud son of Hazleton, Pennsylvania what might have happened had he started his big-league managerial career in Boston.
“I don’t think it would have turned out as well,” responded Maddon, who spent nine years in Tampa before going on to manage the Chicago Cubs and the Los Angeles Angels. “I wasn’t ready for that; I wasn’t ready for that market. Theo [Epstein] and Jed [Hoyer] made a great decision. Tito was the right guy.”
History bears that out. Four years removed from managing the Philadelphia Phillies for the same number of seasons, Terry Francona led the Red Sox to their first World Series title since 1918. While Maddon went on to win a World Series of his own, with the Cubs in 2016 — the team’s first since 1908 — hiring a first-year manager as Grady Little’s replacement wouldn’t have been in Boston’s best interests. Nor in Maddon’s.
“I needed more time to really develop what I wanted to do, and how I wanted to do it,” explained Maddon, whose managerial resume includes nine 90-plus-win seasons. “I really did need more of an expansion team than a tradition-based team at that point. I could experiment. I could try different things that weren’t very popular, or that nobody had thought about. I needed that wider berth, and the support that I got from Andrew [Friedman] at that particular time. So, thank God for unanswered prayers. I wanted the Red Sox job, but it was so much better for me to start out with the Devil Rays.” Read the rest of this entry »
We bring you a trio of AL East-flavored interviews this week as we find ourselves in the middle of the divisional playoff round.
At the top of the show, David Laurila welcomes Eve Rosenbaum, assistant general manager for the Baltimore Orioles. The former director of baseball development, Rosenbaum shares how her responsibilities have changed in her new role as she puts much more focus on the major league club. We also hear about the Orioles’ player development machine, the details of how waiver wires and DFAs work, how the team is making pitchers better after acquiring them, what they saw in Jorge Mateo, and insight as to why they made so many transactions during this encouraging season. [5:30]
Finally, David Laurila returns in the third act with Julian McWilliams, reporter for The Boston Globe. We get the story behind McWilliams’ Baseball-Reference page and short indy ball career, including how long it took him to realize he was joining a team in Las Vegas, New Mexico. The duo also talk about Xander Bogaerts‘ importance to Boston, the comparison between Rafael Devers and Matt Olson, making a comparison between Olson and Triston Casas, being in awe of Yordan Alvarez, and the difference in consistency versus championship success between the Yankees and Red Sox in recent years. [56:51]
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Riley Greene was 18 years old and only three months removed from being drafted fifth-overall when he was first featured here at FanGraphs in September 2019. Harking back to our earlier conversation, I asked the Detroit Tigers rookie outfielder what he knows now that he didn’t know then.
“When I first started, I didn’t really think about much,”replied Greene, who celebrated his 22nd birthday four days ago. “I kind of just went up there, and was free-swinging almost. I was a young kid who didn’t really know anything. Since then, I’ve come up with a routine and am more educated on what I need to do at the plate. I have a plan. Whether it works or not is up the baseball gods.”
The extent to which the baseball gods have been on his side is relative. Greene isn’t exactly setting the world on fire — he has a 100 wRC+ and five home runs in 400 plate appearances — but again, he’s been old enough to take a legal drink for barely over a year. He also came into the season with just 198 professional games under his belt, only 55 at the Triple-A level. His potential far exceeds his present.
In some respects, Greene is much the same player Detroit drafted in the first round out of Oviedo, Florida’s Paul J. Hagerty High School. Read the rest of this entry »
On September 1, one day after baseball’s no. 5 overall prospect made his major league debut, Dan Szymborski wrote that the Baltimore Orioles “showed mercy to minor league pitchers … officially calling up infielder Gunnar Henderson.” As my colleague pointed out, the 21-year-old left-handed hitter had slashed .297/.416/.531 with 19 home runs over 112 games between Double-A Bowie and Triple-A Norfolk. His wRC+ was a healthy 154.
Henderson has continued to impress at the big-league level. In 110 plate appearances with the O’s, the young slugger has punished pitchers to the tune of a 139 wRC+, with 12 of his 27 hits going for extra bases. He’s left the yard four times, with the latest of those blasts leaving his bat at 111.1 mph and traveling 428 feet into Fenway Park’s center field bleachers.
Henderson sat down to talk hitting on Tuesday, one day before he was named Baseball America’s Minor League Player of the Year.
———
David Laurila: Let’s start with your evolution as a hitter. What do you know now that you didn’t when you were drafted by the Orioles [42nd overall in 2019 out of Selma, Alabama’s John T. Morgan Academy]?
Gunnar Henderson: “I would say that it’s the number of good pitches you get to hit. In high school, you’ll get multiple pitches to hit within an at-bat, and then as you progress, at each and every level, it’s less and less. Especially here in the big leagues. You really have to take your walks and not give in to what the pitcher wants you to do. You’ve got to hunt for that one pitch, because you might only get one, maybe two, a game.”
