Taylor Williams is a tad shorter than the 5-foot-11 he’s listed at in the Milwaukee media guide. But as the saying goes, size doesn’t matter. His fastball averaged 96.1 mph, and ticked up even higher, in his 2018 rookie season. More importantly, he consistently recorded outs. In 56 appearances out of the Brewers bullpen, Williams fanned 57 batters in 53 innings, and fashioned a 3.95 FIP. All in all, it was a successful campaign for the 27-year-old right-hander who hails from Camas, Washington.

He faced a speed bump on his way to Beer City. Seemingly on the fast track after a stellar first-full professional season, the 2013 fourth round pick suddenly began feeling elbow discomfort. Rest didn’t help, nor did a platelet-rich plasma injection. He underwent Tommy John surgery and missed all of the 2015 and 2016 seasons.

He barely missed a beat after returning to action. Williams pitched well enough at Double-A Biloxi to earn a five-game cameo with the Brewers in September 2017. Then came last season’s further step forward, which portends a continuation of what could arguably be called a David-slays-Goliath career.

The undersized — but by no means underperforming — hurler discussed his path to the big leagues midway through last summer.

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Williams on being drafted out of Kent State: “I was originally at Washington State, but decided that I didn’t want to go back. This was after after my freshman year. I transferred to Mount Hood Community College, in Oregon, in part because I didn’t want to have to sit out a season. I finished my associates degree at Mount Hood, then transferred to Kent State.

“I’d played summer ball with some Kent State guys after my freshman year. That was up in the New England Collegiate Baseball League. The team I was with played out of Keene, New Hampshire. The NECBL is a good league. Our All-Star team actually beat Team USA that year. Read the rest of this entry »

Dustin Fowler may need to make an adjustment. The 24-year-old outfielder is coming off a rookie campaign that saw him slash an anemic .224/.256/.354, with six home runs, in 203 plate appearances. The Triple-A portion of his season was encouraging — a .310 BA and an .817 OPS — but his performance against big league pitching fell short of expectations. He went into the year ranked as Oakland’s No. 4 prospect.

He’d already made a notable adjustment. Prior to being acquired by the A’s in the 2017 trade deadline deal that sent Sonny Gray to the Yankees, Fowler had lowered his hands at the urging of then hitting coach, P.J. Pilittere. The reason was twofold: the team that drafted Fowler out of a Dexter, Georgia high school felt it would help him tap into his power. Every bit as importantly, his left-handed stroke wasn’t consistently catching up to high-octane heat.

Fowler talked about the 2016 adjustment midway through last season.

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Dustin Fowler: “I hadn’t had much coaching growing up, so I was very raw. I’d just had small-town coaching — not the big coaching I needed — so going into pro ball was the first time I got some real one-on-ones on how to hit.

“I was very tall in my stance. I was upright, and my hands were over my head. Ever since grabbing a bat, I’d put them up there. My hand-eye coordination was good enough to make it work against pitching that wasn’t as good — slower pitching — but it worked less and less here. There’s a big difference from high school to pro ball. The pitches here harder, and I wasn’t catching up to balls. I was just fouling them off, or making fly-ball outs. Read the rest of this entry »

Ross Atkins was hired as Toronto’s Executive VP of Baseball Operations and General Manager in December 2015, shortly after Mark Shapiro was officially named the team’s President and CEO. Both came to the Blue Jays from Cleveland, where they’d worked together with the Indians for the past 15 years. A formidable pairing atop Toronto’s front office hierarchy, they are — as Atkins is quick to point out — nonetheless just two pieces of a much larger puzzle.

The Blue Jays have undergone organizational change in recent seasons, but the past six months stand out. John Gibbons was formally dismissed as manager in late September, and several members of his coaching staff followed him out the door. The roster has also undergone change. Troy Tulowitzki has departed, as have Russell Martin, Josh Donaldson, Curtis Granderson, Marco Estrada, and JA Happ. Notably, all of these player are 33 years old or older.

Fifty-three-year-old Charlie Montoyo is the biggest incoming name. The bench coach in Tampa Bay last year, Montoyo has replaced Gibbons in the manager’s chair. Four of his coaches are imports from other organizations, while two others were promoted from Toronto’s minor league system. Pete Walker and Luis Rivera are the only holdovers.

As is common within the industry, there have also been hirings, promotions, and the shifting of responsibilities throughout Toronto’s various departments. How do Atkins and Shapiro go about making such moves — not just in the front office, but across the board? Atkins addressed that question in a wide-ranging interview late last week. Read the rest of this entry »

Tony Gonsolin made a name for himself last year. After meriting a mere mention in last spring’s Los Angeles Dodgers top prospect rundown, the 24-year-old right-hander went on to be named the NL West team’s 2018 Minor League Pitcher of the Year. A role change jumpstarted his breakout.

Primarily a reliever in his four years at St. Mary’s College of California, Gonsolin continued in that role after the Dodgers selected him in the ninth round of the 2016 draft. That changed once the forward-thinking organization got an extended look at what he brings to the table. Intrigued by his velocity, multi-pitch mix, and 6-foot-2, 205-pound frame, they decided to try him as a starter.

The results were a resounding success. Pitching between High-A Rancho Cucamonga and Double-A Tulsa, the St. Mary’s graduate — he earned a business degree before turning pro — Gonsolin logged a 2.60 ERA and allowed just 104 hits, while fanning 155 batters, in 128 innings.

Gonsolin discussed his development, including his transition from reliever to starter, earlier this month. Also weighing in on the promising young pitcher was Brandon Gomes, the Dodgers director of player development.

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Gonsolin on pitching analytics and his fastball: “I feel like every team is moving in that direction — they’re getting into more of the analytical side of baseball. Here, we have things like video with instant feedback where you can throw a pitch in your side work and by the time you get the ball back from the catcher you know how much it spun, and the axis in which it spun. That makes it easier to make pitch-to-pitch adjustments within the training element. Once you’re in-game it becomes, ‘What you have that day is what you have that day.’ You work with that. Read the rest of this entry »

When I interviewed him for Baseball Prospectus in March 2007, Curtis Granderson was a young outfielder coming off a promising first full season with the Detroit Tigers. He’s since made three All-Star teams, bashed 332 home runs, and accumulated 48.7 WAR. Still active at age 37, Granderson has had a very good career.

How much has his approach — and the game itself — changed since our bygone spring training conversation? Wanting to find out, I approached Granderson with an idea this past summer: what if I were to ask him the exact same set of questions I did more than 11 seasons ago?

Granderson was amenable. Standing by his locker, I pulled a copy of the old interview out of my back pocket and proceeded to revisit the past.

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Q: Cutting down on your strikeouts has been a main focus for you this spring. What adjustments are you making?

Granderson: “I think we’re all facing that in today’s game. Strikeouts are at an all-time high. Part of it is the talent that pitchers have now. Speaking 11 years later, they throw harder. Guys have more movement. Guys are bigger, more physical, and there are more of them doing different things — they have different pitches.

“It’s a constant battle to keep your strikeouts down. How to do that? Hopefully not getting yourself in too many two-strike counts. There really isn’t too much more you can do, except that when you do get to two strikes, just continue to battle. Fight.” Read the rest of this entry »

Steve Stone knows a lot about pitching. A savvy right-hander for four teams from 1971-1981, he hurled 43 complete games, and augmented a 101-93 record with a rock solid 3.97 ERA. Stone was especially stellar in the 1980 season, garnering 25 wins for the Baltimore Orioles and taking home the American League Cy Young Award.

He doesn’t lack for opinions. Given his current job, he’s not supposed to. The 71-year-old has been in the broadcast booth for 30-plus years, the last 10 of them with the White Sox. As fans of Chicago’s South Side team can attest, Stone knows his stuff, and he’s not shy about sharing it. Agree with him or not, he’s rarely boring.

Stone sat down for a wide-ranging interview — one that offered some blunt commentary on players and trends alike — during a visit to Fenway Park midway through the 2018 season.

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Steve Stone on learning as a young pitcher: “I pitched with Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry. I pitched with Jim Palmer and Mike Flanagan. I pitched with Wilbur Wood. One thing I learned … I was very young when I was with Marichal and Perry. I didn’t have Hall of Fame talent, so it was hard to assimilate what they had to show me. Plus, Gaylord wasn’t forthcoming about anything that made him the pitcher he was. Marichal probably would have been, had I been able to understand how he did certain things.

“Perry threw a spitter. He wasn’t going to share that. Not unless I brought $3,000 to the park. That’s how much he said he’d charge to teach me the spitter. I was taking home $8,500. I didn’t want to give him 40% of my yearly take-home pay to try to learn a pitch that very few people can master. Read the rest of this entry »

Matthew Boyd appeared in a handful of FanGraphs articles in 2018. The Detroit Tigers left-hander was included in a June installment of the Learning and Developing a Pitch series. A few months later, his hockey background was highlighted in an October Sunday Notes column.

Today we’ll hear from Boyd on a more-encompassing subject: how he learned, and approaches, his chosen craft. First, some pertinent biographical information.

A 27-year-old native of the Seattle area, Boyd was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds in 2012, but rather than signing a professional contract, he returned to Oregon State University for his senior year. He was subsequently selected in the sixth round of the 2013 draft by the Toronto Blue Jays, with whom he debuted in 2015. His big-league feet barely wet — he’d made just two appearances — he was then traded to the Tigers in that summer’s trade-deadline deal involving David Price.

Boyd made a career-high 31 starts this past season, logging a 4.39 ERA and a 4.45 FIP. This interview took place in mid-August.

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Matthew Boyd on pitching: “My dad (Kurt Boyd) was my coach from nine years old to when I went to college. He was also one of my main pitching coaches. He’d pitched in high school, then went into the Navy — he needed the G.I. Bill to pay for college — and served for seven years. He’s been coaching for a long time. He has a program out in Seattle called Mudville Baseball Club.

“He was always telling me how to read swings. I’ve had lots of people — other coaches in my life — telling me that, too. But my dad wanted me to understand what the hitter was trying to do. He never called pitches in high school; I always got to call my own game. There were times I got my teeth kicked in. There are times you learn stuff. Read the rest of this entry »

Chad Pinder learned how to turn on inside fastballs this season. Doing so didn’t turn the 26-year-old infielder/outfielder into a slugger, but it did make him a more well-rounded hitter. That’s bad news for opposing pitchers. Pinder had already been well on his way to establishing himself as an asset to the Oakland lineup.

A quest for higher launch angles wasn’t the impetus behind the “biggest adjustment” he’s made since the A’s took him in the second round of the 2013 draft out of Virginia Tech. While Pinder possesses pop, his 37% fly-ball percentage this year wasn’t exactly Khris Davis-esque. As much as anything, the former Hokie is now no longer quite so susceptible to being beaten by inside heat — even though his hands remain on the noisy side.

Pinder — coming off a season where he slashed .258/.332/.436 with 13 home runs in 333 plate appearances — discussed that adjustment, and his overall continued development as a hitter, earlier this month.

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Chad Pinder on hitting: “I’ve never actually gone through that phase of, ‘Hey, I’m going to hit the ball in the air.’ For me, it’s all about contact point. Contact point is everything. That’s what Jed Lowrie harps on. He’s all about where he’s meeting the baseball. Nothing else matters to him other than being in a position to get to the baseball, and he knows what move he has to make for every single pitch in the zone. That’s why Jed is such an incredible hitter.

“I’m still not there. I don’t have that deep of an understanding, like Jed does — or a JD Martinez or a Mookie Betts. Those guys are All-Stars for a reason. I’m still progressing. I’m still learning my swing. Read the rest of this entry »

The small-market Oakland A’s are outperforming expectations — they have a habit of doing this — and, as always, their front office deserves plaudits. Billy Beane famously fronts the group, with David Forst acting as his right-hand man in the general manager’s chair. And then there’s Dan Kantrovitz, whose primary duties are encapsulated with this line in the team’s media guide:

[Kantrovitz] is involved in all aspects of the A’s baseball operations department with a primary focus on overseeing statistical analysis for evaluating and targeting players in the amateur draft, free agent and trade markets.

Currently in his fourth season as Oakland’s assistant GM, Kantrovitz has both the background and the expertise to thrive in his role. The possessor of a master’s degree in statistics from Harvard, he’s served in multiple capacities within professional baseball, including a three-year stint as the director of scouting for the St. Louis Cardinals. This is Kantrovitz’s second go-round with his current club, as he previously worked in the Oakland front office from 2009 to -11.

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Kantrovitz on the A’s outperforming expectations this season: “With three weeks left, a lot can happen. I wish I had a good answer to explain the team’s performance so far, but I think you’ve got to start with the guys on the field. So many of our players are having great years — and, in some cases, career years. Then you can factor in that David [Forst] and Billy [Beane] and the coaching staff have made some good decisions along the way. Maybe we have had some good fortune on top of it?  Also — and this is maybe hard to quantify — I think the effect of a guy like Jonathan Lucroy on our pitching has been significant.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Are today’s analytically inclined players the next generation of top-level front-office executives? According to several baseball insiders, there’s a chance that could happen. While some to whom I spoke expressed skepticism, it does make a certain amount of sense.

A common criticism of your stereotypical Ivy League GM has been, “He didn’t play the game at a high level.” Conversely, former players in decision-making positions have often been accused (sometimes for good reason) of being behind the times. They have on-field experience, but they aren’t critical thinkers who embrace analytics.

A former player who thinks much like an “Ivy League GM” would offer the best of both worlds. He would know what it’s like to go through the grind of a 162-game schedule, and he’d also place a high value on objective analysis while showing a willingness to think outside the box.

I asked a cross section of players, coaches, managers, and front-office executives if they think such a trend is forthcoming.

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Manny Acta, Seattle Mariners third-base coach: “Eventually it’s going to happen, but it will take a little while. The percentage of players that believe and think like the new generation of GMs is still very low. It’s a transition that even coaches are going through right now: how to explain to players what is valued today by front offices and to convince them that they are not being valued as much by the old traditional stats.”

Read the rest of this entry »