Last week’s ‘Talks Hitting’ interviews featured a pair of prominent big-leaguers. Daniel Murphy and Nolan Arenado have combined to make seven All-Star teams over the past five seasons. Today we feature a far-less-accomplished player. Drew Ferguson, a 26-year-old outfielder currently in camp with the San Francisco Giants, has yet to make his major league debut.

Ferguson has a finance degree from Belmont University, but his true passion is the biomechanics of hitting. He can definitely swing the bat. In 316 plate appearances last year — all but 24 at the Triple-A level — Ferguson slashed .304/.432/.443. He did so in the Houston Astros organization, from which the Giants selected him in December’s Rule-5 draft.

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David Laurila: I understand that you have a strong interest in analytics.

Drew Ferguson: “I’ve been interested in analytics for many years — dating all the way back to high school — but numbers can only tell you so much. From a player development standpoint, it’s more about the biomechanics of the swing. How does the body move? What are we trying to do as hitters? What are the angles of the pitch versus the swing? What is a good approach based on your swing, based on the pitcher’s repertoire?”

Laurila: Hitting analytics are obviously becoming a big part of the game.

Ferguson: “100%. A lot of [hitting] is intuitive to players — guys describe things in different ways — but with the technology we have to describe a swing … I was just talking to one of my teammates about how angles are going to line up. For example, your posture and the direction of your swing can tell you that you should probably hit four-seam fastballs at the top of the zone easier than a sinker at the bottom of the zone. You can see that by looking at video, and at the metrics of your swing. Read the rest of this entry »

Nolan Arenado is one of the best hitters in the game. The 27-year-old third baseman has won four consecutive Silver Slugger awards, averaging a a 127 wRC+, 40 doubles, and 40 home runs over that stretch. Ensconced in the heart of the Colorado Rockies batting order, he’s driven in 503 runs, the most in MLB by a comfortable margin.

Like many players, Arenado has evolved. Unlike one of his new teammates, he’s done so in a more traditional —less nerdy, if you will — manner. On Tuesday we heard from Daniel Murphy on how he transformed himself into an elite hitter. Today we hear from Arenado.

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David Laurila: We first talked during your 2013 rookie season. How have you most changed as a hitter since that time?

Nolan Arenado: “When I’m going well, I’m good at staying on my back leg. I didn’t do that back then. I was a front-leg hitter. That’s why I wasn’t driving the ball out of the ballpark. I was good at putting bat to ball in 2013, but that’s it. I was just slapping the ball for a knock.

“I had to learn how to be quicker without jumping at the ball. I had to learn to control the middle-inside pitch, because they were beating me there. I was kind of drifting, and I was getting jammed. In 2014, I started focusing on getting the head out. Read the rest of this entry »

Daniel Murphy can rake. Since breaking into the big leagues in 2008, the 33-year-old infielder has slashed .299/.344/.458. Moreover, he’s become a better hitter — a more dangerous hitter — in recent seasons. While a knee injury limited him last year, Murphy’s left-handed stroke produced 146 extra-base hits and a 144 wRC+ between 2016-2017. And now he’ll get to play his home games in Coors Field. The Colorado Rockies signed him to a free agent deal back in December.

Murphy, who could accurately be described as a hitting nerd, talked about the art and science of his craft this past weekend at Colorado’s spring training facility in Scottsdale, Arizona.

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David Laurila: Hitting analytics are becoming an important part of the game. To what extent can they translate into improved performance? I’m referring primarily to the swing.

Daniel Murphy: “I think we were doing that even before there was a measure for it. If you talk to any hitting coach, he’s going to say, ‘I want you to get a good pitch to hit. I want you to hit it hard.’ — that’s exit velocity — ‘and I want you to impact it in the gap.’ — that’s measurable by launch angle. What’s really changed is that we can quantify, and measure, exactly what hitting coaches have always been telling us to do: Hit the ball hard, in the gap.”

Laurila: Basically, what Ted Williams was preaching 50 years ago.

Murphy: “That, and it’s measurable. If you talked to Ted, he would probably say, ‘I don’t want the infielders to catch my batted balls.’ Maybe I’d be putting words in his mouth, but that’s something I strive to do. I don’t ever want the infielders to catch my batted balls. No strikeouts, no popups, no ground balls. I want to hit line drives and fly balls. Line drives would be Position A, and if I miss, I want to miss in the air, over the infielders’ heads. Read the rest of this entry »

Scott Oberg had a breakout season in 2018. The 28-year-old right-hander came out of the Colorado bullpen 56 times and put up a 2.45 ERA and a 2.87 FIP. Working primarily in a set-up role — 45 of his appearances were in the seventh or eighth inning — he was on the winning side of all but one of his nine decisions.

His signature pitch is a slider. Oberg threw the late-breaker 37.4% of the time last year, often flummoxing opposing hitters who mistakenly read fastball out of his hand. According to the University of Connecticut product, that has been the key to his success. Oberg’s slider has emerged as a lethal weapon not just because he’s learned to manipulate it better — he’s also improved his fastball command.

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Oberg on learning his slider: “I was introduced to a slider in 2014, when I was in Double-A. I’d always been more of a curveball guy. At an earlier age, I guess it was easier to spin the ball that way, versus being very fine with a slider. It took a few years of maturing to get it to the point where it is now.

“As it was progressing, I started realizing that my slider and curveball were kind of morphing into each other a little bit. As a result, we ended up putting the curveball on the shelf and focusing solely on the slider. This was two seasons ago.

“In theory, you throw [sliders and curveballs] differently. There are different arm motions, different hand placements on the ball. With different finger placements, there isn’t as much confusion. That’s a problem I was having. The grips on my slider and my curveball were very similar. There wasn’t enough distinction between the two pitches in my hand. Read the rest of this entry »

Ty Buttrey has come a long way since being selected by the Red Sox in the fourth round of the 2012 draft out of a Charlotte, North Carolina high school. Following six often-tumultuous seasons in the minors, the 25-year-old turned a developmental corner last year and made his MLB debut in August. He did so with the Los Angeles Angels, who acquired him in the trade deadline deal that sent Ian Kinsler to Boston.

His future is bright. As Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel wrote in yesterday’s Angels Top Prospect list, Buttrey will likely be a significant part of the team’s bullpen this season. He logged four saves in last year’s 16-game, 16.1-inning cameo, and could very well earn the closer’s job.

His biggest strides have been mental. The power arm has always been there — Buttrey’s fastball sits in the mid-90s, and he’s reached triple digits — but as he readily admits, his mindset wasn’t where it needed to be. Rather than staying true to what came naturally, the 6-foot-6 righty too often found himself trying to fix things that weren’t necessarily broken. In short, he became a tinkerer.

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Buttrey on finding himself as a pitcher: “Starting out, I was listening to too many people, versus going out there and doing what makes me who I am, doing what got me drafted. There was a lot of noise that I wasn’t able to block out. I was trying to do so many things, just to make people happy. The next thing you know, I’d gotten really mechanical. I lost some ground on who I was as a pitcher.

“All coaches have things they preach, and some things work for players and others don’t. I’m not saying any of it was bad, or ill-intended, but if you listen to too many people, everything just kind of clouds over. You’re hearing, ‘Hey, stay taller on your back side,’ or ‘Let’s change this grip on this pitch,’ or it could be ‘Let’s get your front side at a different angle.’ Everyone is telling you something. Read the rest of this entry »

Brett Hanewich opened a lot of eyes last year in his first full professional season. Thanks largely to a take-notice fastball, the 24-year-old right-hander logged a 2.61 ERA, and fanned 74 batters in 69 relief innings, between Low-A Burlington and Hi-A Inland Empire. The Los Angeles Angels took Hanewich in the ninth round of the 2017 draft out of Stanford University, where he graduated with an engineering degree.

Command is his biggest question mark. Hanewich issued six free passes every nine innings last season, and his walk rate as a collegian wasn’t anything to write home about either. A max-effort delivery is part of the reason, and therein lies a conundrum. Hanewich believes that his delivery — a byproduct of a summer spent with a former Cy Young Award winner — is partially responsible for his plus velocity.

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Hanewich on his heater: “I have a heavy fastball. That’s what everybody who catches me calls it. It feels like a bowling ball as opposed to, say, a Whiffle ball. I think it has to do with spin rate. My spin rate is anywhere between 2,300 and 2,400, which is above major league average.

“Another thing that makes my fastball different is my motion. I get very good extension. It’s somewhere between seven and eight feet, which is way above average. The way I throw, the ball jumps on the hitter — there’s more life to it because of the extension. The plate is sixty feet six inches from the mound, so a pitcher with a six-foot extension is throwing 54 feet six inches from where the ball is being released. There’s a thing called perceived velocity. The ball looks like it’s coming in faster than what it actually is. My perceived velocity is a plus, and the fact that I throw hard to begin with is obviously a factor as well. Read the rest of this entry »

In an interview that ran here in March 2017, Dick Williams went in depth on innovation, infrastructure, and the rebuild his team had begun a year-and-a-half earlier. The Cincinnati Reds’ then GM — he’s now the President of Baseball Operations — told me, “In another couple of seasons, we expect to be competing again.”

The timeline was met. Baseball’s oldest professional franchise, as suggested by moves they made over the offseason (and confirmed by Williams), is no longer focusing primarily on the future. The focus is on the here and now.

Williams expounded on the moves the team has made, and on what it takes to build a sustainably strong organization, at the onset of spring training.

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Williams on moving on from the rebuild: “We’re now in a period of payroll growth. A few years ago we stepped back and looked at which areas of the business we needed to invest in away from major league payroll, and we were able to accomplish a lot of those goals. We significantly increased the resources we were providing to player development. We added coaches. We added new roles in analytics. That had been the focus. Now we’re ready to really focus on the talent we’ve got at the major league level.

“We obviously have a lot of room for improvement coming off of last year, but we knew that we were going to have some payroll to spend, and the farm system is stronger. We anticipated going into this winter with a focus on adding talent to the major league level, to help us compete. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »