The Cleveland Indians were looking into the future when they selected Will Benson 14th overall in the 2016 draft. The powerfully-built Atlanta, Georgia product was a week shy of his 18th birthday, and his left-handed stroke — lethal against prep competition — was going to require polish if he hoped to reach his sky-high ceiling. Two years later, that process is well underway.

“You really wouldn’t,” Benson responded when I asked if now-versus-then film footage would show the same setup and swing. “In high school, you’d see a very athletic kid just competing and somehow getting it done. What you’d see now is more efficient movement — that’s a big thing I’ve worked on — and I’m maintaining better posture throughout my swing. Mechanically, making sure I’m getting behind the baseball is huge for me.”

Hitting the ball long distances isn’t a problem for the young outfielder. His power potential is a primary reason he went in the first round, and 545 plate appearances into his professional career — keep in mind he’s still a teenager — Benson has gone yard 23 times. The youngest position player on the roster of the Lake County Captains, he currently co-leads the low-A Midwest League with seven round trippers.

While Benson’s swing is conducive to clearing fences, his mindset is that of a well-rounded hitter. While he’s embraced launch-angle concepts, his focus is on simply squaring up the baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Cal Quantrill’s potential is considerable. Drafted eighth overall by the Padres in 2016 despite having undergone Tommy John surgery while at Stanford — he missed all of his junior year and much of his sophomore season — the 23-year-old right-hander possesses a combination of plus stuff and pitchability. Baseball America and MLB.com rank him as the fourth-best prospect in the San Diego system, while our own list — expect that soon — will have him a bit lower.

Quantrill, who is lauded as having one of the best changeups in the minors, has made seven starts for Double-A San Antonio this season and has a 3.52 ERA, a 3.29 FIP, and is striking out 8.2 batters per nine innings. He discussed his multi-pitch mix, and his take-no-prisoners approach, during spring training.

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Cal Quantrill: “I’m a fastball pitcher. Am I a power pitcher? I guess that would depend on how you want to define it. To me, a power pitcher is someone who attacks hitters, regardless of how fast their fastball is. They don’t fool around — they don’t play around with the edges of the strike zone — they go right after them. Getting ahead in the count is something I take great pride in. I try to make hitters get themselves out, and I want that to happen quickly so that I can go deep into games.

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier today, Jeff Sullivan examined the most changed hitters — change for better and for worse — in the game.

In this post, I want to revisit one of the hitters most famously averse to change — for better and for worse — in Eric Hosmer.

From speculating on what sort of contract he might receive to analyzing the contract he actually did receive to evaluating his swing mechanics, this author and others at FanGraphs considered Hosmer at some length during the offseason. He was one of the key figures of public interest in what seemed like the longest winter ever.

It only seems appropriate that we revisit Hosmer this spring — particularly after I approached him in Arizona during exhibition season and asked him about whether he was thinking about making changes.

That conversation didn’t start well.

“What are you trying to ask me? About launch angle?” exclaimed Hosmer as I (indeed) attempted to use that precise term, which can have a negative connotation in clubhouses. The conversation proceeded rather amicably, though, and Hosmer even disclosed he had spent some time exploring the “Air Ball Revolution” and how he could possibly benefit from coming aboard.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tanking is a problem. Professional sports like baseball are built on the assumption that both sides are trying to win. Organizations putting forth less than their best efforts hurts the integrity of the sport and provides fans with little reason to engage. That said, the perception of tanking might have overtaken the reality of late. Competitive imbalance is not the same as tanking. Sometimes teams are just bad, even if they are trying not to be.

Tanking concerns are not new. Two years ago, just after the Astros and Cubs had turned their teams around, the Phillies were attempting to dismantle their roster by trading Cole Hamels. The Braves had traded multiple players away from a team that had been competitive. The Brewers, who traded away Carlos Gomez, would soon do the same with Jonathan Lucroy after he rebuilt his trade value.

The Braves, Brewers, and Phillies all sold off whatever assets they could. Two years later, though, those clubs aren’t mired in last place. Rather, they’re a combined 54-37 and projected to win around 80 games each this season in what figures to be a competitive year for each. While the Braves and Phillies could and/or should have done more this offseason to improve their rosters, neither resorted to an extreme level of failure, and the teams are better today than they would have been had they not rebuilt. While accusations of tanking dogged each, none of those clubs descended as far as either the Astros or Cubs. None came close to the NBA-style tank jobs many feared.

One might suspect that I’ve cherry-picked the three clubs mentioned above, purposely selecting teams with surprising early-season success to prop up a point about the relatively innocuous effects of tanking. That’s not what I’ve done, though. Rather, I’ve highlighted the three teams Buster Olney cited by name two years ago — and which Dave Cameron also addressed — in a piece on tanking.

Read the rest of this entry »

A couple Fridays ago, Tyson Ross took a no-hitter against the Diamondbacks into the eighth inning. It was complicated, even as no-hitters go — no-hitters are special, and the Padres have never thrown one, but it should also be more about the team than the player. On top of that, Ross was allowed to throw 127 pitches, and he’s a guy with a record of arm problems. Even going into the eighth, Ross completing the no-hitter seemed highly unlikely. You could argue, if you wanted to, that Andy Green took too great of a risk.

Over the course of that dominant start, Ross racked up ten strikeouts. And as long as we’re here, let’s consider that record of arm problems. Ross had a miserable 2017. That followed a differently miserable 2016, in which he was able to make only one start. What that would suggest is that, these days, Tyson Ross might be fragile. On the other hand, what if he’s not? What if he’s actually all the way better? Because it’s looking to me like Tyson Ross is all the way better.

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For most of his professional career, now in its 10th season, Christian Villanueva has been largely irrelevant.

He appeared on Baseball America’s top-100 list in 2012 — but as the last player on that list.

He was the “other guy” in the deal the that sent Kyle Hendricks — and Villanueva — from the Rangers to the Cubs for Ryan Dempster on July 31st, 2012.

While putting together a solid 2013 season in Double-A, he observed as the Cubs selected University of San Diego third baseman Kris Bryant with the second overall pick in the June draft. While Bryant was a level or two behind Villanueva in 2013 and 2014, the former soon passed the latter en route to the majors.

As Bryant was fashioning a Rookie of the Year campaign in 2015, Villanueva slashed .259/.313/.437 in Iowa with 18 home runs over 508 plate appearance as a 24-year-old in Triple-A. Not only was he blocked, but he wasn’t performing like someone who appeared to be a future regular. In 2016, he suffered a broken leg and missed the entire season.

At the end of the 2016 season, with seemingly no place for him in the Cubs’ infield or on their 40-man roster, Villanueva was granted free agency. He signed a minor-league deal 10 days later with the San Diego Padres.

At that point in time, Villanueva wasn’t particularly relevant in baseball circles. He wasn’t particularly relevant last season, either, when he slashed .296/.369/.528 with 20 homers in Triple-A, a trying year personally after his brother died in the spring.

He was a relative unknown for the first nine years of his professional career. That’s changed early this season.

A player with whom few were acquainted a month ago now leads baseball in wRC+ (236) among hitters with 70 or more plate appearances and is eighth in WAR (1.4) as the season approaches May.

He got our attention early with a three-homer game on April 3rd.

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Villanueva doesn’t have exceptional exit velocity like his teammate Franchy Cordero, the latter perhaps representing the greatest curiosity in the majors. He ranks 193rd in exit velocity on fly balls and line drives early this season, according to Baseball Savant.

But he is doing several things unusually well.

For starters, he’s been air-balling since before air-balling was a thing. The only time Villanueva hit more ground balls than fly balls at a professional stop was in Rookie ball in 2009. Villanueva has the 23rd-lowest ground-ball rate (29.3%) in the sport.

His average launch angle of 19.4 degrees ranks ranks 30th and his 11 launches between 20 to 30 degrees ranks 30th, as well.

And it’s not just that he’s putting balls in the air, it’s where he’s directing them: to his pull side and in an extreme way.

As you’ll notice in the above clips, he’s even been able to hook breaking balls on the outside part of the plate over the left-field wall in a Gary Sheffield sort of way. He’s covering the whole plate and with power.

Villanueva leads the majors in pull percentage on fly balls and line drives (62.1%) and that’s in large part why he ranks first in the majors with a 36.8% HR/FB rate.

Can he continue to pull fly balls and line drives at such a rate? It’s rare. Since 2007, only 37 batters have accomplished it, including the aforementioned Sheffield twice.

If he can, he’s interesting. This isn’t just a bat-only corner bat, it’s one that plays third and one with which the Padres have even considered experimenting at shortstop.

Might this be for real?

It’s a unique batted-ball profile, one that should lend itself to constant home-run power so long as he can make contact and pull air balls. Another key is that Padres manager Andy Green said Villanueva has tightened up his strike zone.

“It’s been great to see Villa make the adjustments he’s made,” Green said. “When he got to the point where he was swinging at everything, you know that’s not going to play well in the long run. Seeing him make that adjustment, be a bit more patient, means more to me than seeing him hit three homers in a game.”

Maybe Green is seeing something from dugout level, but Villanueva doesn’t seem patient by the numbers: he’s swinging at out-of-zone pitches at 40% rate. While he never had major contact issues in the minors, he’s striking out on 30% of his plate appearances thus far in the majors. He has a swinging strike rate of 17.4%.

While he’s crushing fastballs and changeups, he’s swinging through an awful lot of curveballs and sliders. He’s not going to continue to see fastballs at a 56% rate.

If there isn’t yet a book on Villanueva, one is being written by opponents as we speak. He’ll have to make some adjustments now that he’s no longer a secret, now that he’s no longer irrelevant.

Zack Godley threw 34 curveballs on Tuesday in a 96-pitch effort that saw him hold the Dodgers to four hits and one run over seven innings. The defending NL champs knew to expect a goodly amount of them. The Diamondbacks’ right-hander went to his signature offering 35.6% of the time last year, the second-most hook-heavy ratio among pitchers with at least 150 innings, behind only Drew Pomeranz’s 37%.

The results support the frequency of usage. Per our friends at Baseball Savant, opposing hitters went just 33 for 218 (.151), with a .248 SLG, against Godley’s bender in 2017. Deception was a big reason why. Everything Godley throws looks the same coming out his hand.

“Especially the curveball,” opined D-Backs catcher Jeff Mathis. “It’s coming out on the same plane. With a lot of guys, you’ll recognize curveball right away. With Zack, you’re not seeing any keys, any little tips, when the ball is being released. On top of that, he’s got good stuff.”

Arizona’s newest backstop had yet to catch Godley when I asked for his perspective, but he had good reason to concur with his colleague. Read the rest of this entry »

The Padres are interesting because they have one of the game’s best farm systems. Talents like Fernando Tatis Jr. could be difference-makers and change fortunes.

The Padres are interesting because they gave Eric Hosmer an eight-year deal when similarly productive corner bats went for far cheaper this winter.

The Padres are interesting because they raided this very site of its previous managing editor and Face of the Franchise, Dave Cameron. The Padres were all about acquiring Faces of Franchises this offseason.

But the Padres are also of interest because they have one of the game’s more intriguing bullpens. As you might be aware, bullpens continue to gain a greater share of regular-season innings. Last season, relievers accounted for 38.1% of innings thrown in the regular season, a major league record. In the postseason that jumped to 46.4%. So if the Padres are really going to turn things around, they’ll probably need a quality reliever corps and they just might have one. Read the rest of this entry »

Ian Happ had a solid rookie season with the Chicago Cubs in 2017. The switch-hitting outfielder slashed .253/.328/.514 and went deep 24 times in 413 plate appearances. He learned a lot of lessons along the way, and they began early with an influx of high heaters.

“I was pretty successful in the first week or two,” said Happ, who logged 10 hits in his first 28 big-league at bats. “Then I started seeing a lot of elevated four-seamers. It took me a long time to figure out how to hit that pitch.”

The method he adopted was antithetical to the launch-angle swing.

“Belt-high four-seam fastballs, especially when guys have ride, or something that looks like it’s jumping at you… that’s a pitch where you need to be able to adjust your swing plane in oder to handle it,” explained Happ. “You have to be flatter. You almost have to be above the baseball and attacking with a downward plane. That’s the only way to be direct and get on that pitch, which is different than hitting an off-speed pitch or something low in the zone where you can kind of create a little more lift.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Padres pulled a bit of a fast one on the rest of baseball by scheduling left-handed pitching prospect Joey Lucchesi to start the Friars’ second game of the year versus the Brewers on Friday. The 24-year-old lefty spent last season split between High- and Double-A, netting 148 strikeouts in 139 innings while walking just 33. He spent most of this spring on the minor-league side of camp and only tossed 11 innings with the big club.

Lucchesi appeared within the honorable-mention section of our top-100 list as a 50 FV prospect. We considered him a No. 4 starter who was pretty likely to realize that outcome relatively soon. His stuff is generic. He sits 89-92, will touch 94, both of his breaking balls are average, and his changeup is slightly above.

What makes Lucchesi unique are his cartoonish on-mound mannerisms, many of which aid his effectiveness. He has a drop-and-drive delivery and extreme overhand arm slot, two opposing forces which create an odd initial look for hitters and cause Lucchesi’s fastball plane to be very flat, which is especially effective when he works up in the zone. Typically, pitchers with this sort of arm slot have a difficult time working east and west within the strike zone, but Lucchesi is athletic enough to maintain his delivery while making subtle variations. It allows him to do things like attack right-handed hitters in on the hands with his fastball. He also has a deep, downward-plunging stab as he loads his arm.

The flat-planed fastball works well in concert with the changeup, and both of Lucchesi’s breaking balls play up against lefties because of his delivery’s deception. In a vacuum, he’s a 45 fastball, 50 curve, 50 slider, 50 changeup guy with potential plus command. With the mechanical funk thrown in, though, everything plays up a half-grade or so. Fold into that Lucchesi’s ability to control the run game with a great pick-off move and timing variations from the stretch, and you’ve got a big-league ready, 24-year-old arm despite relatively little upper-level experience. I think he can compete at the big-league level right now.

Lucchesi will also serve as a data point to better understand Padres LHP prospect MacKenzie Gore, as Gore and Lucchesi possess shockingly similar deliveries. Gore, too, gets extremely low to the ground, using a vertical arm slot and stride direction that makes hitters visibly uncomfortable. Unlike Lucchesi, Gore sits 93-96 with a bunch of 55 and 60 secondaries. It’s not feasible to teach such a delivery across a wide population of pitching prospects because so few of them are athletic enough to maintain it. But we might be able to extrapolate exactly how much Gore’s stuff will play up against opposing hitters compared to his raw stuff by watching Lucchesi.