At this point in his career, Eric Hosmer is a known quantity. A few good offensive seasons during his 10 years in the majors have been marred by just as many poor campaigns at the plate. Collectively, he’s been 7% better than league average as a hitter during his career. And because he’s been in the league so long, it’s pretty clear why he’s been unable to produce consistently. Among the more than 500 players who have qualified for the batting title since Hosmer debuted in 2011, his groundball rate is 20th at 54.3%.

With more than half of his batted balls getting pounded into the ground, Hosmer’s success has been dangerously tied to his BABIP. This table of batted ball stats from 2015 onwards tells most of the story:

Hosmer has never had trouble making solid contact. It’s just that more often than not, that hard contact is made on groundballs. That tendency to put the ball on the ground has only gotten worse since joining the Padres in 2018, and it’s come with an elevated strikeout rate as well. Since signing his eight-year deal, he’s been 7% below league average at the plate and has accumulated -0.5 WAR over two seasons. His contract and lack of performance has become a big problem for the Padres.

Things might be looking up for Hosmer in 2020, however. He started off the year with five hits in three games including two doubles and a home run. A stomach issue sent him to the Injured List for 10 days and he struggled in his first few games back, his body likely still recovering from losing some weight while he was sidelined. But from August 13-17, he put together a five-game hitting streak that included three home runs. Because of his missed time earlier in the season, he’s only accumulated 56 plate appearances, but there have already been some significant changes to his approach that deserve investigation.

Here’s the same table as above, this time with 2020 included.

Hosmer’s batted ball profile looks nearly unrecognizable from his previous career norms. His groundball rate has dropped to a career low, and his fly ball rate is among the league leaders at 46.5%. This spring, Hosmer made some comments recognizing the deficiencies of his approach and acknowledged the changes he needed to make:

“I’ve got to get the ball in the air a little more. I’ve got to drive the ball a little more. I hit the ball really hard. It just goes on the ground.”

This isn’t the first time Hosmer has expressed a desire to hit the ball in the air more often. He made similar comments back in 2018. But this is the first time that sentiment has led to an actual change in approach.

When a batter makes significant changes to his batted ball profile, the simple assumption is that he’s made a swing change, as so many other batters have recently. That doesn’t seem to be the case with Hosmer. Here’s an example swing from 2019:

And here’s a swing from 2020:

Hosmer still has the long, loopy swing that he’s always had. The leg kick is still present as a timing mechanism. If he made any mechanical changes to his swing, they’re likely small tweaks rather than the big, sweeping changes we’ve seen from batters like Justin Turner. In The Athletic interview linked above, Hosmer mentions maintaining balance on his back leg as a way to prevent him from swinging down on the ball. That minor mechanical adjustment is certainly present in his 2020 swing shown above but it probably isn’t the main source of his new batted ball profile; instead, a change to his swing profile is likely what’s driving the change in batted ball outcomes. Here’s Hosmer’s swing rate grouped by pitch type during his career.

He’s simply stopped swinging at breaking balls and offspeed pitches and has focused his approach on attacking fastballs. Over his career, his groundball rate against breaking balls is 57.7% and it’s even higher against offspeed pitches (60.6%). By reducing the number of swings on pitches that produce his highest rates of groundball contact, he’s bound to reduce his overall groundball rate. His historic groundball rate against fastballs has been high as well (53.2%), but this year he’s elevating the hard stuff he sees. His average launch angle against fastballs has increased by 10 degrees this year and his average launch angle against breaking balls has increased by 20 degrees!

There have been periods earlier in his career where his rolling average launch angle has been this high, but not since joining the Padres. (It should be noted that his average launch angle was higher (17.2 degress) through August 16 but he’s hit a bunch of groundballs in the days since — such is the nature of these early season stats.)

Hosmer hasn’t just increased his launch angle, he’s also changed his batted ball distribution. He’s had a fairly even distribution of batted balls throughout his career, with a 34.2% pull rate balanced by hitting to the opposite field 28.7% of the time. This year, his pull rate is up to 44.2%, easily a career high. And because he’s elevating the ball more often while still maintaining his hard hit rate, his barrel rate is also at a career high 12.2%.

Changing his swing profile has also helped him reduce his strikeout rate to where it was in Kansas City. His chase rate has dropped by four points and his contact rate has increased by more than 12 points, up to a career high 85.7%. Hosmer has a new plan at the plate. When he’s ahead in the count, he’s swinging at non-fastballs just 28.6% of the time, nearly 25 points lower than last year. He’s focused on attacking fastballs and pitches he can handle. And when he makes contact, he’s pulling the ball more often and elevating.

This new approach at the plate has resulted in a reinvention for Eric Hosmer. Nearly every single change he’s made has helped him produce better results at the plate. We’re getting close to the point where these underlying statistics become statistically reliable. It certainly seems like Hosmer has finally figured out the adjustments he needed to make to regain his productivity at the plate.

Thanks are due to Eric Longenhagen for sharing his notes on Hosmer’s adjustments.

If you follow baseball, you might be aware of the minor scandal “caused” by Fernando Tatis Jr. on Monday night. Without the usual tens of thousands of fans in attendance to serve as direct witnesses, Tatis brazenly and maliciously hit a grand slam of Texas Rangers pitcher Juan Nicasio on a 3-0 count, while fully aware that his team had a seven-run lead. Ian Gibaut then came in and threw behind Manny Machado, sending an important message that acts of baseball will not be tolerated! Despite Chris Woodward’s efforts to explain Tatis’ violations of baseball’s sanctified unwritten rules, MLB had the temerity to give suspensions to Woodward and Gibaut. Rob Manfred may as well have thrown mom’s apple pie off the window sill.

More of this, please.

Baseball’s unwritten rules are a dreary mess, a veteran-imposed caste system of arbitrary rules and penalties that attempt to impose conformity, often on players of color, without the slightest benefit to how the game is played on the field or how the product comes across to viewers. And in addition to being tone-deaf and nonsensical, they’re rarely consistently enforced! I certainly don’t remember Woodward issuing a heartfelt apology to the Royals last year when his team hit two home runs in the ninth against Chris Owings, dragooned into mop-up duty in a long-lost game. At least Nicasio is an actual major league pitcher.

But enough about that fussiness — let’s get back to the baseball-related awesomeness of Tatis.

Tatis isn’t going to be the highest-paid Padre for a very long time thanks to the presence of Machado, but if the next decade of San Diego baseball is successful, it will be defined by players like the young shortstop, not to mention Chris Paddack and MacKenzie Gore. The resurgent, seemingly fly ballism-converted Eric Hosmer is in his decline phase and Machado, while a special player, didn’t grow up in the organization. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, Jay Jaffe detailed Fernando Tatis Jr.’s ascent to superstardom. The 21-year-old shortstop is one of the most exciting players in baseball and is among the league leaders in nearly every meaningful offensive and defensive statistic. But he’s not the only player providing elite production from an up-the-middle position for the Padres. If you filter the position player WAR leaderboards to include players 23-years-old and younger, you’ll find one of Tatis’ teammates just a couple of spots behind him: Trent Grisham.

Among players 23-years-old and younger, Grisham is tied with Ronald Acuña Jr. and Juan Soto at 0.6 WAR. He doesn’t have the gaudy slash line Tatis has posted this year, but his overall offensive contribution has been 39% better than league average, just a couple points behind Acuña’s 141 wRC+. In his 51-game debut with the Brewers last year, Grisham posted a 92 wRC+. This improvement of nearly 50 points has been driven by an eight point jump in walk rate and an outburst of power.

Grisham’s plate discipline has always been a strength. While he was a Brewers prospect, he posted an excellent 15.8% walk rate, though that discerning eye didn’t always translate into low strikeout rates. Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel described his approach like this in his 2019 prospect profile:

The low batting averages he has posted have been due less to his inability to put the bat on the ball and more to an approach that is passive in excess. Grisham watches a lot of driveable pitches go by. That approach is also part of why he’s never run a season walk rate beneath 14%, and Grisham’s ability to reach base is part of why he’s still such an interesting prospect.

In 2019, it seemed like he had gotten his plate approach figured out, posting a 16.3% strikeout rate between Double-A and Triple-A. But the strikeouts returned in force after he was called up to the majors in August, jumping up to 26.2%, and his walk rate dropped to 10.9%. That elevated strikeout rate has followed him to San Diego but his walk rate has bounced back to 17.9%. Read the rest of this entry »

Fernando Tatis Jr. is the superstar baseball needs in 2020. Countering the multitude of anxieties that come with enjoying baseball amid the coronavirus pandemic, his towering home runs, bat flips, and celebratory dancing are as pure a distillation of the joy and excitement as the game can provide right now. Limited to 84 games in his rookie season due to injuries, the buoyant 21-year-old shortstop is off to a red-hot start, propelling an engaging Padres team to a 10-7 record while lighting up social media along the way. Unless you’re an opposing pitcher, it’s nearly impossible not to break out in a smile watching Tatis play.

On Sunday, Tatis crossed paths with a hanging curveball from the Diamondbacks’ Madison Bumgarner. Left fielder David Peralta couldn’t even be bothered to turn around to view the damage:

Admittedly, it wasn’t Bumgarner’s day — he served up a career-high four home runs in just two innings before departing due to back spasms — but it ran Tatis’ streak of consecutive games with a homer to four. The streak ended on Monday night at the hands of the Dodgers, who held him to 1-for-4 with an infield single, but the Padres’ 2-1 victory pulled them within 1 1/2 games of the NL West lead. Read the rest of this entry »

The cancellation of the minor-league season has presented teams with a huge challenge. Player development is being compromised, and the deleterious effects extend beyond the grooming itself. Prospects need to be evaluated, as well. With no games being played down on the farm, an integral part of the process has been lost.

As circus ringmasters were known to say, “The show must go on.”

Ben Cherington runs the show in Pittsburgh, and he’s less bearish on the quandary than you might expect. Technology, paired with the player-pool activities taking place at the club’s Double-A facility, is a big reason why.

“I’m not going to say it’s the same as professional games, because it’s not,” the Pirates GM said on Thursday. “But through video and technology, and the need for our pitchers in Altoona to get actual game experience, we do have an opportunity to evaluate pitchers and hitters in a way that’s not too different than a game setting. We have professional pitchers facing professional hitters [and] we can measure that through high speed video, through Rapsodo and TrackMan. We can pretty much measure all of the things we would in a in a normal minor-league game… we just don’t have a box score at the end of the night.”

Matt Blood, Baltimore’s first-year farm director, sounded somewhat less enthusiastic when addressing the subject earlier in the week. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is my latest in a series discussing each team’s 60-man player pool with a focus on prospects. Previous installments of these rundowns, including potentially relevant context for discussion, can be found here:

AL East and Intro
NL East
AL Central
NL Central

Arizona Diamondbacks

Prospect List / Depth Chart

Remember that, Greinke trade aside, the Diamondbacks have been operating like buyers for the last little while, and only four of their projected regulars/rotation members are under 29. It’s unknowable whether the shortened, but more condensed season will be good or bad for their veteran’s productivity and health, but the DH spot will probably help in that regard. It means little breathers for Kole Calhoun and David Peralta, and extra at-bats for Kevin Cron and Jake Lamb without the defensive drawbacks.

Some of the same benefits could result from rostering Daulton Varsho, especially if Carson Kelly gets dinged and suddenly 36-year-old Stephen Vogt and John Hicks are platooning. Varsho could caddy for any or all of Vogt, Calhoun and Peralta, keeping the older guys fresh while getting plenty of reps so his development isn’t stifled even though he’s technically playing a bench role. This is the type of move that might help Arizona catch Wild Card lightning in a 60-game bottle, but I don’t think their current catching depth allows for it right now. The club only has four backstops in their pool, and even if they eventually add spring NRI Dominic Miroglio they still have fewer catchers than most teams and probably not enough for sticking three on the big league active roster. Perhaps Wyatt Mathieson will put on the gear at the campsite.

The next-highest ranked prospect likely to debut this year is righty J.B. Bukauskas. Some of the Arizona bullpen pieces need to really pop if the team is going to compete (perhaps Archie Bradley truly returns to form, or Yoan López takes a leap, or Hector Rondón bounces back, etc.) and Bukauskas has the stuff to be part of a contingent that helps win coin-flip games. Aside from some other backend/middle relief prospects who might play a role this year (Jon Duplantier and Taylor Widener could usurp Merrill Kelly as the fifth starter, and Kevin Ginkel is a bullpen lock) and a couple likely role players perhaps debuting (bat-first infielder Andy Young and bat-only 1B/DH types Seth Beer and Pavin Smith), the other, more exciting D-backs prospects are young guys just getting reps in camp (Alek Thomas, Corbin Carroll, Blake Walston, Geraldo Perdomo, Levi Kelly, Luis Frias). It’s possible the roster clocks of Josh Green (who doesn’t have to be 40-man’d until 2021) or even 2020 draftee Bryce Jarvis are punched early but Arizona would really need to be in the thick of the postseason picture for that to happen. It’s more likely spot-starter types Jeremy Beasley and Keury Mella are called upon if they need to dip into the campsite for starters. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, a few days after the transaction freeze was lifted, we had our first mid-pandemic trade when the Padres acquired Jorge Mateo from Oakland for a Player to be Named Later. Let’s dig into this deal, which is more important mechanically than it is from a baseball standpoint.

The Padres sending a PTBNL to Oakland circumvents the stated 2020 restriction that only players who are part of the 60-man player pool may be traded. Even if the A’s and Padres already know who the player will be, announcing the deal with a PTBNL distinction enables Oakland to avoid using a player pool spot on the new prospect. It’s an indication that, whoever the player is or will be, they’re not currently in San Diego’s 60-man pool, otherwise they’d just have been announced as the trade piece. Since there will be no minor league season, we won’t have an awkward, Trea Turner or Drew Pomeranz situation where a team is rostering and developing a minor leaguer who they and the industry knows they’ll soon trade. Even if the PTBNL needs to be put on the 60 later this summer in order to complete the transaction, doing it at the last possible moment enables the teams to have that roster spot free for as long as possible. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m wading into the gaming and streaming space with Yeoman’s Work, a lo-fi, multimedia presentation that follows my pursuit of a championship in the baseball simulator, Diamond Mind Baseball, paired with single-camera footage from my baseball video archives. Below is its maiden voyage, which features a rematch of my league’s 2019 championship series paired with video from a few 2019 fall instructional league games between the San Diego Padres and Texas Rangers.

My initial plan was to stream Diamond Mind (henceforth DMB) on the FanGraphs’ Twitch account the same way my colleagues have been streaming Out of the Park Baseball and MLB The Show. But my home upload speeds are insufficient for streaming, and it was only after several failed attempts that I diverted to the format below, which enables some cool post-production elements that I’ll continue to explore. My goal with the archived game footage is to feature video that is either relevant to my recent prospect work or to the current discourse surrounding baseball culture. In the pilot that means focusing on prospects in the Rangers and Padres systems, as I’ve recently written about both.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, conflicting reports regarding the state of Major League Baseball’s ongoing effort to contract and realign the minor leagues surfaced. While Baseball America’s J.J. Cooper and the Associated Press both reported that MLB is nearing an agreement with Minor League Baseball that would result in the loss of 42 affiliated teams, MiLB countered with a statement disputing the accuracy of the reports. Regardless of exactly where things stand in the negotiations, particularly with the COVID-19 pandemic endangering the entirety of the 2020 minor league season, some thinning of the herd appears likely.

While I’ve lived in New York City for 25 years and attended hundreds of Yankees games and dozens of Mets games in both recreational and professional capacities, I grew up on minor league baseball, primarily in Salt Lake City, where I lived from 1973-88 (and where my parents still reside), and Walla Walla, Washington, where my paternal grandparents lived and where I visited for several summers in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Thus I’m all too familiar with the pain that comes from a city losing its minor league affiliate — and two of the 42 teams reportedly on the chopping block hit close to home, both my current one and the one of my youth.

When I began attending games circa 1977-78, the Salt Lake Gulls were the Triple-A affiliate of the California Angels, and part of the storied, high-scoring Pacific Coast League. They featured future big leaguers like Willie Aikens, Rance Mulliniks, and Dickie Thon, all of whom Angels general manager Buzzie Bavasi made sure to trade away for aging veterans (not without some success), a pattern that continued through the remainder of the two teams’ relationship. While I had no affinity for the big club, I enjoyed following the careers of the aforementioned players and their successors, like Tom Brunansky and Brian Harper, as they fanned out across the majors.

My father would take my brother and me to a few Gulls games each year — often against the Albuquerque Dukes, the Dodgers’ Triple-A team and therefore of considerable interest in our household — and highlights from those games still stick out, particularly from 1979, the year they won the PCL championship. In one game we attended, Ike Hampton, a catcher-turned-designated hitter who clubbed 30 home runs for the Gulls that year, bookended a 17-inning epic with a pair of homers, though I was safely tucked in bed by the time the latter landed. In another game, Floyd Rayford, a third baseman whom Earl Weaver later used as a backup catcher, mashed a dramatic eighth-inning three-run homer that turned a 4-2 deficit into a 5-4 lead, creating pandemonium; we could have turned cartwheels all the way home. Once my fascination with baseball statistics had begun, I’d pore over the Gulls’ daily box scores and update a hand-kept stat sheet, annexing my mother’s pocket calculator to figure out batting averages and ERAs. A few years later, I’d even apply rudimentary Bill James formulas to calculate runs created, though this involved some guesstimation when it came to counting walks via a standard four-numbered box score (AB R H BI). Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not privy as to whether the Cincinnati Reds assign a grade to character in their draft reports. I also don’t know how much the San Diego Padres weigh that attribute when pondering possible acquisitions. I do know that Taylor Trammell projects as more than a quality big-league outfielder. He projects as a role model.

Trammell became a Padre last summer. Part of the trade-deadline deal that sent Trevor Bauer to the Queen City, he’d been selected 35th overall by the Reds in the 2016 draft out of Kennesaw, Georgia’s Mount Paran Christian School. Blessed with plus raw tools, Trammell is slotted No. 69 on our 2020 Top 100 Prospects list.

A prima donna he’s not. When he reaches the big leagues, Trammell will do so with a genuine appreciation for what life has presented him. Moreover, he doesn’t just embrace the game of baseball. He embraces the people who come to see it played.

“I have thoughts on fans,” Trammell told me in Padres camp last month. “I love them. There are people who come to games and want to heckle, and they have the right to do that. Do I agree with it? No, but if you want to pay money to come yell at us, I mean, do whatever you want. Go to a boxing match. Go to a baseball game. Go to a basketball game. Any game. When there are a whole bunch of fans in the stands, whether they’re rooting for you or not rooting for you, it’s great for baseball. They want to see a game and we’re putting on a show for them.”

If you’re rolling your eyes with skepticism upon reading that, you shouldn’t be. By all accounts, that’s who Trammell is. Part of a working-class family — his father is a post office employee, his mother once balanced two jobs — he hasn’t forgotten where he came from. The values he grew up with remain the same. Read the rest of this entry »