Marcus Semien isn’t on pace to match his career-best 2019 and 2021 numbers, but he remains a productive hitter. Two months shy of his 33rd birthday and in his second season with the Texas Rangers, the venerable middle infielder is slashing .271/.338/.438 with 11 home runs and a 115 wRC+. A key cog in the lineup for a first place club, Semien batted leadoff for the American League in last night’s All-Star Game.
Semien sat down to talk hitting during the Rangers’ recent visit to Fenway Park.
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David Laurila: Let’s start with your formative years in the game. How did you learn to hit?
Marcus Semien: “As a kid, I watched major league baseball. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area as a Giants fan — my dad is a Giants fan — and we always had baseball on. From there, I was imitating Barry Bonds’ swing, Jeff Kent’s swing — all those guys I used to watch as a kid. Read the rest of this entry »
Jacob Berry saw his prospect stock drop earlier this season. Highly regarded coming in, the sixth overall pick in last year’s draft had an abysmal .477 OPS in April and his .509 mark in May was barely better. Showing little resemblance to the player who’d raked first at the University of Arizona and then LSU, he fanned 41 times while logging just 25 hits, only two of which left the yard. Playing at High-A Beloit in Midwest League spring weather certainly didn’t help, but red flags were nonetheless flying. When our Miami Marlins Top Prospects list was published on May 31, Eric Longenhagen wrote that he was “content to have a hair trigger when it comes to sliding Berry because I was already skeptical… but deciding how much to slide him is challenging.” Our lead prospect analyst ultimately settled on No. 11 and a 40+ FV for the switch-hitter.
Berry’s June was markedly better. Rebounding from his two-month swoon, the 22-year-old third baseman slashed a solid .287.358/.447, with 10 of his 27 hits going for extra bases. Only one of them cleared the fence — his surprising lack of pop remains a concern — but overall, his success at the plate was much more in line with expectations. Despite understandable concerns, he remains a viable big league prospect.
What’s been behind his improved performance? Berry declined a recent interview request to discuss any adjustments he might have made, but he did sit down to discuss his hitting approach late in spring training. Read the rest of this entry »
Isaac Coffey is rapidly emerging as a prospect to watch in the Red Sox system. Drafted in the 10th round last summer out of Oral Roberts University, the 23-year-old right-hander logged a 2.83 ERA with 86 strikeouts in 60.1 innings at High-A Greenville before being promoted to Double-A Portland a week ago. His profile is unique. Our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen has described Coffey as having “a funky, drop-and-drive, low-slot delivery (but his arm action is super short, not typical of low-slot guys) that creates big lateral divergence between his fastball and slider.”
Coffey discussed his four-pitch arsenal and his atypical arm slot prior to a recent game at Portland’s Hadlock Field.
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David Laurila: Let’s start with the self scouting report. What is your arsenal?
Isaac Coffey: “I’ve got a four-seam fastball. A lot of people think it’s a sinker or a two-seam, but with the release height and my slot — I spin it between 2:15 and 2:30 on a clock, with 100% spin efficiency — it tends to look like it’s rising, even though it has more run than ride. It plays up in the zone because it’s coming from that lower slot. It averages around 89 [mph], topping out at 91, but my command of it is pretty good. I can place it on both sides of the plate and use it whenever I need to.
“My changeup is a four-seam, basically a circle change. I spin it really good, and it’s got 100% spin efficiency, too. I spin it at like three o’clock to 3:15, and that creates a lot of run. It’s basically straight sideways but sometimes with a little negative drop. It’s always been my best off-speed pitch.
“I also have a slider and a cutter, both of which I developed this offseason. The cutter is just an offset four-seam that I try to throw hard. It gets a little bit of arm-side run, but compared to the fastball… it probably has perceived cut, but not actual cut on the Trackman numbers. I’m getting more comfortable with that and have been using it more and more each outing.
“My slider is also getting better as the season goes on. It’s got that nine o’clock sideways spin. The command is getting a lot better, so I believe I can use it in a lot of counts right now.” Read the rest of this entry »
Charlie Blackmon is heading down the home stretch of what has been a productive career with the Colorado Rockies. A little more than a week away from his 37th birthday and in his 13th season with the club that drafted him out of Georgia Tech in 2008, the left-handed-hitting outfielder has stroked 1,646 hits, 572 of which have gone for extra bases. Boasting a .296 career batting average — Coors Field has certainly benefitted him — he topped the Senior Circuit in that department in 2017, when he hit .331. Only Todd Helton has played more games in a Rockies uniform.
Blackmon, who is currently on the injured list with a fractured hand, sat down to talk hitting when Colorado visited Boston earlier this month.
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David Laurila: Prior to the 2017 season, I talked to you and one of your then-teammates for a piece titled “Charlie Blackmon and Chris Denorfia on Launch Angles.” What are your thoughts on that subject six years later?
Charlie Blackmon: ”Yeah, so launch angle is something people were really excited about a little while ago. I think that’s a way to reverse engineer a really good hit or a home run, right? It’s taking a dataset and saying, ‘Guys have a higher slugging percentage when they hit the ball in the air,’ and then basically find out that 31 degrees is their optimal angle. I mean, it’s like taking something you already knew was good and saying, ‘Well, now I’m going to try to hit it 31 degrees.’
“Adding lift to your swing is going to put the ball in the air, but I didn’t really like how people were going about it. Now I’m seeing that change. I think where the game is from a pitching perspective, even compared to five years ago, is very different. If you look across the league, I would bet that the amount of strikes thrown in the upper third of the zone has more than doubled. I would say that 70% of the pitchers in the league consistently throw high fastballs, whereas it wasn’t long ago that everybody was trying to throw down and away. There has been a big shift in pitching philosophy and fastball-location philosophy in the past few years.” Read the rest of this entry »
Giancarlo Stanton is a prolific slugger experiencing a frustrating season. A hamstring strain kept him out of the Yankees’ lineup from mid-April to early June, and he’s scuffled mightily since returning to action. Over 47 plate appearances this month, the 6-foot-4, 245-pound outfielder/DH is 5-for-41 with a pair of home runs and 15 strikeouts. On the year, he’s slashing .204/.267/.441 with a 91 wRC+ — well below his standards.
No stranger to the injured list, having landed on it multiple times since New York acquired him from the Miami Marlins via trade in December 2017, Stanton has mostly been excellent when healthy. Now 33 years old and in his 14th big league season, he has 384 career home runs, including 59 in 2017, to go with a .535 slugging percentage and a 139 wRC+.
Stanton talked about his evolution as a hitter, which includes no longer taking swings in the dark, when the Yankees visited Fenway Park over the weekend.
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David Laurila: [Toronto Blue Jays hitting coach] Hunter Mense told me that when you were Low-A teammates, he walked into an indoor cage and found you hitting with the lights off. Why were you doing that?
Giancarlo Stanton: “Dim lights, yeah. It was about trying to pick up the ball. My difficulty back then was picking up balls and chasing. It’s always a work in progress. I still get in trouble up here. You never completely eliminate your original mishaps; you can just get better and improve on them. But yeah, what I was doing was kind of finding obstacles.”
Laurila: Do you do anything like that now?
Stanton: “No. I don’t do anything that extreme anymore, but I did do a lot of extreme stuff to get here. I put it in my mind that someone is always working harder, and there were things I needed to get better at. With so much failure in this game, there are always ways to improve.” Read the rest of this entry »
Luke Raley has been one of the best hitters on baseball’s best team this year. Playing primarily against right-handed pitchers, the 28-year-old left-handed-hitting outfielder has ten two-baggers and 11 home runs to go along with a .258/.343/.570 slash line and a 154 wRC+ in 172 plate appearances, An outstanding athlete for his size — he’s listed at 6-foot-4, 235 pounds — he’s legged out a pair of triples and stolen eight bases in ten attempts.
It wouldn’t be fair to say that he’s come out of nowhere, but the Hinckley, Ohio native did enter this season with a meager resume. Selected in the seventh round of the 2016 draft out of Division II Lake Erie College by the Los Angeles Dodgers, Raley had a .538 OPS in 72 plate appearances with the NL West club in 2021; he had a .584 OPS in the same number of plate appearances with the Rays last season. He was anything but a sure bet to make the Opening Day roster when he reported to spring training.
How has Raley, whom Tampa Bay acquired last March in exchange for Tanner Dodson, emerged as a productive hitter at the big league level in his ninth professional season? I sat down with him recently to find out.
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David Laurila: How much of your success this year is a matter of opportunity, and how much is from improvements you’ve made to your game?
Luke Raley: “I think it’s a mixture of both, honestly. I kind of knew what I needed to work on going into the offseason, and I focused hard on them. And then, obviously, the more opportunities you have, the easier it is to get into a groove. So it was adjustments, and the opportunity certainly helped.”
Laurila: What were the needed adjustments?
Raley: “I needed to be more efficient to the ball, so I did everything I could to minimize movements at the plate. I brought my hands closer to my body, more into my launch position, instead of having them away from my body and then having to get them there. I also banged my leg kick and went to just a straight stride, which I felt could help me keep keep my head more still and recognize pitches earlier. Those are the two big ones, my hand placement and minimizing my leg movement.”
Laurila:Edgar Martinez mentioned having the hands close to the trigger position when I talked hitting with him a few years ago. It simplifies the action.
Raley: “That was kind of our thought process. It’s something that we even talked about last season, but we felt that was a big adjustment to make midseason. We decided that going into the offseason it was going to be my goal to kind of slot my hands in a better position. That would make me a little bit quicker to the ball.” Read the rest of this entry »
Will Brennan is a hot hitter on a Cleveland Guardians team that has struggled to produce at the plate. Over his last eight games, the 25-year-old rookie outfielder is 14-for-29 with four doubles and a home run. Rebounding from a slow start, he is now slashing .261/.298/.380 with an 88 wRC+ on the season.
How good of a hitter Brennan will be at the big league level remains to be seen. An eighth-round pick in 2019 out of Kansas State University, he debuted last September and slashed .357/.400/.500 in 45 plate appearances, this after posting a .314/.371/.479 line between Double-A Akron and Triple-A Columbus. Currently no. 7 on our Guardians top prospects list, he was described by our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen as a hitter who generates “doubles power with a compact swing and all-fields approach to contact.”
Brennan sat down to talk hitting when the Guardians visited Fenway Park at the end of April. Read the rest of this entry »
Joey Votto is nearing the end of a career that should land him in the Hall of Fame. Three months shy of his 40th birthday, the Toronto native has played 16 seasons, all with the Cincinnati Reds, and has a career .297/.412/.513 slash line to go with a 146 wRC+. A six-time All-Star and former NL MVP, he has led the senior circuit in OBP seven times, and in walks six times. Moreover — this amid criticism from the segment of the Cincinnati fanbase who feels he is too passive at the plate — his left-handed stroke has produced 2,093 hits, including 453 doubles and 342 home runs.
Currently on a rehab assignment with Triple-A Louisville, Votto is recovering from rotator cuff and biceps surgery and has yet to play in a big league game this year. He sat down to talk hitting when the Reds visited Fenway Park last week.
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David Laurila: Is hitting easy, or is it hard?
Joey Votto: “Well, it’s the only thing I’ve done, so I don’t have much to compare it to. I failed my math exam. High school math may be more difficult than major league hitting.” Read the rest of this entry »
Spencer Steer is emerging as a solid big league hitter. One of three prospects acquired by the Cincinnati Reds from the Minnesota Twins at last August’s trade deadline in exchange for Tyler Mahle — Christian Encarnacion-Strand and Steve Hajjar were the others — Steer is slashing .289/.356/.498 with a 124 wRC+ over 225 plate appearances. One year after homering 23 times between two minor league levels, and twice more after a September call-up, he’s gone deep eight times in 2023.
Eric Longenhagen has been bullish on his bat. Back in January, our lead prospect analyst wrote that the 25-year-old corner infielder has “a well-rounded hit/patience/power toolkit,” adding that he is “a good hitter who will stabilize an infield spot in Cincinnati for the next half decade or so.” Longenhagen ranked the 2019 third round pick out of the University of Oregon no. 2 in Cincinnati’s system; he was no. 47 on the preseason Top 100.
Logan Gilbert discussed his new changeup in detail when he was featured here at FanGraphs 12 months ago. Not satisfied with the one he’d been throwing, the Seattle Mariners right-hander had gone to “more of a traditional circle,” a grip he felt would yield better command and consistency. His stated goals included upping the pitch’s usage from 8% (it had been 7.8% in 2021) to 10-15%.
A certain amount of success followed — opposing hitters batted .125 with a .122 wOBA against the pitch — but Gilbert’s goals went largely unmet. The 6-foot-6 hurler never felt completely comfortable with the revamped offering, and by season’s end, his changeup usage was still a meager 8%. Instead of becoming a reliable weapon, it remained little more than an infrequently used, hit-or-miss option in his arsenal.
As pitching nerds are wont to do — and Gilbert certainly qualifies as such — he went back to the drawing board. The righty traded in his circle change for a splitter over the offseason, and the results have been just what he was looking for. He has been comfortably throwing his new weapon 12.7% of the time, and it has yielded a paltry .111 batting-average-against and an equally impressive .111 wOBA.
Gilbert explained the successful transition from his changeup to his splitter when Seattle visited Boston last week. Read the rest of this entry »
