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.

Steer sat down to talk hitting prior to Tuesday’s game at Fenway Park. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Lars Nootbaar aspires to drive more balls in the air, and understandably so. The 25-year-old St. Louis Cardinals outfielder has a 120 wRC+ this season — his career mark is one point lower — but he also has a 55.7% groundball rate, which ranks sixth highest among qualified hitters. Not coincidentally, his slash line is an OBP-heavy .267/.390/.382.

Nootbaar does possess the ability to make hard contact. His average exit velocity was in the 90th percentile a year ago, although he has admittedly backslid this season to the less impressive 53rd percentile. And again, he’s killing too many worms. Moreover, not only has his groundball rate risen — last year’s mark was 43.8% — the percentage of balls he’s hit pull side has dropped from 42.4% to 32.3%. While his plus plate discipline has remained as good as ever, Nootbar needs to find a way to up his power production in order to do meaningful damage.

Nootbaar discussed his still-in-progress identity as a hitter, and his efforts to develop more pop, when the Cardinals visited Fenway Park earlier this month.

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David Laurila: How would you describe yourself as a hitter? In other words, what is your identity at the plate?

Lars Nootbaar: “I don’t really know. I guess I’m still kind of searching to figure out what kind of hitter I am. In the meantime, I’m just trying to do the best I can to compete up here. So yeah, right now I guess I’m not exactly sure.” Read the rest of this entry »

Tommy Henry isn’t a Statcast darling. The 25-year-old Arizona Diamondbacks southpaw doesn’t possess elite movement or spin on any of his four offerings, nor does he light up radar guns. What he does do… well, he pitches. Selected by the Snakes in the second round of the 2019 draft out of the University of Michigan, Henry might best be described as a purveyor of the art of pitching.

Fourteen starts into his big-league career — nine last year and five so far this season — Henry has admittedly had relatively modest success. He has a 5.23 ERA over 74 innings and has allowed 75 hits and 33 walks, with a pedestrian 49 punch
outs and a 15.3% K-rate. Writing him up prior to last season, our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen opined that “No. 4 starter is a reasonable ceiling” for the crafty left-hander.

Henry discussed his pitchability profile — one that stretches back to his formative days in Portage, Michigan — toward the tail end of spring training.

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David Laurila: You grew up in a cold weather state. With that in mind, how have you developed as a pitcher?

Tommy Henry: “I would say the biggest development thing for me, as a kid, was that I wasn’t a hard thrower, so I had to learn how to ‘pitch.’ Basically, I had to learn what pitching was. My dad also forced me to throw a changeup at a young age. And honestly, a lot of me developing as a pitcher has been learning through adversity. There are a lot of things you’d like to learn before the adversity happens, but going through experiences and learning from those experiences has probably shaped me into the person I am today the most.”

Laurila: Elaborate on “not a hard thrower.” The term is obviously relative, but you grew up in Michigan, not a baseball hotbed like Florida or Texas. Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Goldschmidt has been one of baseball’s best players for over a decade. Seemingly Hall of Fame-bound, the 35-year-old St. Louis Cardinals first baseman boasts a career 145 wRC+ to go with a .296/.391/.527 slash line, 322 home runs, and 55.9 WAR. A seven-time All-Star and four-time Gold Glove winner, he’s been awarded five Silver Sluggers and is coming off a season where he was voted National League MVP.

He’s been as good as ever in the current campaign. Over 186 plate appearances, Goldschmidt is slashing .319/.403/.546 with seven home runs and a 163 wRC+. With the Arizona Diamondbacks from 2011-2018, he came to St. Louis prior to the 2019 season in exchange for Carson Kelly, Luke Weaver, Andrew Young, and a competitive balance pick.

Goldschmidt sat down to talk hitting when the Cardinals visited Fenway this past weekend.

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David Laurila: Some guys are big into hitting analytics, while others like to keep things as simple as possible. Where do you fit in?

Paul Goldschmidt: “Somewhere in the middle? I mean, you’ve got to know your swing and you’ve got to know the pitchers, but once you get in the box, you’ve got to see the ball and react. So for me it’s kind of finding that happy medium.

“I’m also always changing. I’m always adapting. I’m always trying to learn and get better. I don’t think there’s any time that you quite figure it out, you’re always trying to find whatever it takes to perform.”

Laurila: In which ways do you utilize hitting analytics?

Goldschmidt: “The biggest thing for me is finding the why. Analytics are very good at telling you what is happening, but they don’t necessarily give you the answer to why something is happening, whether that’s fly ball rate, groundball rate, hard-hit ball rate, strike zone judgment — all those things. It’s good to identify things you’re doing well, or not doing well, but the real challenge in this game is the why. With that, you can make adjustments and hopefully perform to the best of your ability.”

Laurila: What tends to be the issue when you’re not going well? Read the rest of this entry »

Alex Verdugo has been one of the hottest hitters in baseball. Over his last four games, the Boston Red Sox outfielder is 8-for-19 with four doubles and a pair of home runs, and two of his hits have been of the walk-off variety. Moreover, he’s swung a productive bat all season. Verdugo’s left-handed stroke has produced a .317/.381/.524 slash line and five long balls in 139 plate appearances. His wRC+ is a healthy 148.

The 26-year-old Tucson native has slashed .290/.346/.433 in his three-plus years wearing a Red Sox uniform, and to say that his performance has attracted a fair amount of scrutiny would be an understatement. That’s understandable. In February 2020, Boston acquired Verdugo, along with Connor Wong and Jeter Downs, in exchange for Mookie Betts and David Price.

Verdugo discussed his evolution as a hitter, which has included the realization that trying to hammer home runs is detrimental to his success, prior to Tuesday’s game at Fenway Park.

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David Laurila: This is your 10th professional season. Comparing now to then, how similar or different are you as a hitter?

Alex Verdugo: “I think I have the same mindset of what I’m trying to do. I’ve always been a guy that likes to hit the fastball to left and then pull the offspeed pitches. What’s changed throughout the years is how I deviate from my game plan. Back in the minors, back in the first couple of years, and even last year… I know my strengths, but I would be like, ‘You know what? I’m going to try to hit for power. I’m going to try to lift this. I’m going to try to pull a heater.’ Read the rest of this entry »

Tanner Bibee will be coming off a successful big-league debut when he takes the mound for the Cleveland Guardians tonight against the New York Yankees. Last Wednesday, the 24-year-old right-hander allowed six hits and one run with no walks and eight strikeouts over 5.2 innings versus the Colorado Rockies. Since starting his professional career last season, Bibee has a minor-league resume that includes a 10–2 record, a 2.13 ERA, and 186 strikeouts in 148 innings.

His ascent up prospect rankings has been swift. Unranked within the Cleveland system a year ago, the 2021 fifth-round pick out of Cal State Fullerton came into the current campaign No. 70 on our Top 100, with a 50 FV. As our lead prospect writer Eric Longenhagen wrote in February, “What a difference a year makes… Bibee now looks like a polished mid-rotation prospect.”

Bibee discussed his debut and the plus repertoire he brings with him to the mound when the Guardians visited Fenway Park this past weekend.

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David Laurila: You just made your big-league debut. How would you describe it?

Tanner Bibee: “It was a whirlwind. It was hectic. It was all of the above. Every single thing that you can think of — the emotions, all of the work I’ve put in to get here… it was all just crazy hectic.”

Laurila: You hit the first batter you faced with a pitch.

Bibee: “I got [Charlie] Blackmon 1–2 and then tried to really hump up on a heater. I probably missed my spot by about 30 inches. I yanked it and drilled him.”

Laurila: Basically, you overthrew the pitch.

Bibee: “100 percent. I mean, I do that sometimes. I’ll hump up and try to throw a fastball up towards the top, but the command wasn’t quite where I wanted it to be on that one. Obviously.” Read the rest of this entry »