Scooter Gennett of the Milwaukee Brewers is among those players participating in an innovative cancer charity drive that ends Thursday night and benefits LUNGevity, “the largest national lung cancer-focused nonprofit.” An online auction, coordinated by Major League Baseball media and public relations offices, is awarding scores of unusual prizes to winning bidders. Pitching lessons with CC Sabathia or Dwight Gooden, for example. Rather than a game-used jersey or an autographed baseball, Gennett is donating his time and his noteworthy skills with ceramics, giving a pottery lesson to the winner of his auction.

MLB took this initiative in part to celebrate the life of Monica Barlow, who died earlier this year at age 36 because of lung cancer. Like a majority of people who get lung cancer, Barlow did not smoke. Gennett has gotten involved in part because his father is a cancer survivor. He discussed all of that and more in a phone conversation with FanGraphs during baseball’s winter meetings. In addition to the charity work, he also discussed how he’s preparing for the upcoming season, and further explained how Ryan Joseph Gennett became — sometimes — “Scooter.”

David Brown: Were you into Play-Doh as a kid?

Scooter Gennett: Yeah, when I was younger, I liked those kind of toys where you’d make something. I wasn’t the type of kid to play with action figures. I guess I was a Play-Doh type of kid. But once I turned 8 years old, until high-school age, there really wasn’t much for me other than playing baseball. So I didn’t take many art classes, certainly ceramics, until high school. It was all baseball.

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Dave Wallace played several minor league seasons in the Indians organization as a catcher before beginning his coaching career as a staff assistant in Cleveland from 2009-10. He has moved his way through the Indians organization quickly, managing the short-season Mahoning Valley Scrappers in 2011, the Class-A Lake County Captains in 2012 and the High-A Carolina Mudcats in 2013 before joining the Double-A Akron RubberDucks this year.

It’s no secret that, as a small-market ballclub, Cleveland has one of the most sabermetrically-inclined front offices in baseball alongside organizations like Oakland, Tampa Bay and Houston. After reading Alex Kaufman’s great piece on the Indians DiamondView system, I wanted to know how much of that trickled down to the minor leagues and what Wallace’s stance was with regards to analytics. Wallace mentioned he is a regular reader of FanGraphs and that one of his favorite things to do is comb through our glossary and learn about new stats. We talked about advanced numbers, their prevalence and role in the minor leagues and how he uses them as a manager:

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Cleveland right-hander Corey Kluber entered the 2013 season as a 27-year-old with fewer than 70 major-league innings. He’s departing it, however, having established himself as one of the club’s — and perhaps the league’s — most effective starters, having recorded strikeout and walk rates of 23.3% and 5.2%, respectively, and a 74 xFIP- that’s fifth among pitchers with 100-plus innings.

Nor does Kluber’s success appear to be founded upon deception alone. His two-seam fastball sits at 93-95 mph. He has command of a cutter, which he throws around 90 mph, to either side of the plate. His slider has excellent two-plane break.

In summary, Kluber’s career arc is an unusual one: he’s in what’s typically a player’s peak-age season, entered that season with little in the way of major-league experience, is having great success in the majors presently, and appears to have the armspeed/command capable of sustaining that success.

While the understated right-hander isn’t inclined to meditate at length on the significance of his achievement (“That’s external to what I’m trying to focus on,” he says), he did consent — while rehabbing from a sprained middle finger — to provide briefly for the present author a biography of sorts for each of his four pitches, which appears below.

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When scouting, the first instinct is to comp. You fight the urge, knowing every player is an individual, but the desire to quantify the unknown inevitably creeps into your thoughts. Who has a similar body type? A similar swing? Approach? Range and athleticism? Background? Instinctively, you formulate a first impression by answering one question: Who does he remind me of?

Then there are prospects like Stryker Trahan. The attributes packed into his dense 5-foot-10 frame are anything but ordinary:

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The list of pitchers Alan Ashby caught in 17 big-league seasons from 1973 to 1989 is an impressive one. The former Astros, Blue Jays and Indians backstop called games for some of the most dominant pitchers of his era. He also put fingers down for some pretty colorful characters. Now 61 years old, he works as a radio broadcaster for the Toronto Blue Jays.

Ashby talked about catching some of baseball’s finest during a visit to Fenway Park earlier this summer. A primary focus was “the best of the best,” which included Nolan Ryan’s fastball — not the most explosive he caught — and Mike Scott’s mystery pitch.

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David Laurila: Who were the smartest pitchers you caught?

Alan Ashby: “Let me start backwards on that one. Guys like Nolan Ryan — who I caught for nine years — there just aren’t many guys like Nolan Ryan. Nolan is a street-smart guy, a bright guy, but it didn’t take a lot of smarts with his stuff. He could pitch — and did for much of career — away, away, away. Let’s just say he was smart enough to know he could do that, because nobody could hit the stuff.

“Guys who had to move it around, like a Vern Ruhle or a Ken Forsch, had to utilize guile on the mound. If that translates into intelligence and smarts, so be it. A lot of guys who don’t have good stuff are applying everything they’ve got, intelligence-wise and otherwise. I could come up with a list of names of guys to put on that list.

“The guys that generally aren’t on the list are people like Nolan Ryan, J.R. Richard and Joe Niekro. They had very unique stuff. Mike Scott, in his heyday, was another.”

DL: How did Ryan’s fastball differ from Richard’s fastball? Read the rest of this entry »

Josh Outman was back last year after missing the 2010 season due to an arm injury that required Tommy John surgery. That alone doesn’t make him unique — plenty of hurlers undergo the procedure — but there‘s more to the story.

Outman was employing a conventional delivery when his pitching elbow gave out, but that hadn’t always been the case. Prior to being drafted — in 2005 by the Phillies — the hard-throwing southpaw utilized a biomechanically-structured delivery that was developed by his father, Fritz. When I first interviewed Outman, in 2008, he described it this way.

“You would start from what would look like the stretch, your glove side facing the plate with the pitching hand in the glove. The pitching arm would then go to where the humerus is vertical, or the pitching elbow facing the sky and the elbow at a 90-degree angle. The glove would come up to where it appeared as though you were catching your glove-arm shoulder while bringing the glove elbow up high enough to conceal the baseball that is positioned almost behind your head. Then, taking a walking step towards the plate you would deliver the pitch.”

Outman, who was acquired by the Rockies earlier this off-season, made 14 appearances with Oakland last year, going 3-5 with a 3.70 ERA. He was 4-1, 3.48, in 12 starts, at the time of his 2009 injury.

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David Laurila: You blew out your arm in the middle of the 2009 season. Would that have happened with your old delivery? Read the rest of this entry »

As noted in the introduction to last Friday’s conversation with Chris Chambliss, three years ago I did a series of short interviews that were never published and will appear in this space over the coming weeks. They focus on baseball during the decades of the 1980s, and today’s subject is Wade Boggs, who played for the Red Sox, Yankees and Devil Rays from 1982-1999.

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Boggs, on OBP in the ‘80s: “That was my game. It was how I thrived, but at the point in time that I played, I was criticized for doing something that is now fashionable – Moneyball, or whatever you want to call it. Today, everybody is looking for a guy who can get on base 250 times a year, and at the time I was doing it I was getting 200 hits and 100 walks. Then I would go to arbitration and be criticized for doing something that [front offices] now love.

“Billy Beane, the guy in Oakland, is the one who really put it on the map and it’s been fashionable for close to 10 years by now. Like I said, it wasn’t that way when I played, especially earlier in my career. I led off, so I always felt that it was my job to get on base and set the table for Jim Rice, Tony Armas, Dwight Evans, and all the big guys coming up to drive me in. That was a part of the game that I excelled at, but quite frankly, it was a part of the game that I was criticized for.”

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Ron Fairly was a better player than you probably realize. In 21 major-league seasons he hit .266/.360/.408, with 215 home runs, while spending the prime of his career in an extreme pitcher’s park, in an extreme pitcher’s era. Overshadowed by big-name teammates, he quietly helped the Dodgers to World Series titles in 1959, 1963 and 1965.

Fairly is also a good storyteller  — especially when the stories pertain to the Dodger-Giants rivalry. When Juan Marichal attacked John Roseboro with a bat, Fairly was there. Ditto when Sandy Koufax was dominating hitters, and Don Drysdale was knocking them down. What did it feel like to get drilled in the back by Bob Gibson? What hitting advice did he get from Ted Williams? What did Duke Snider say about Roy Campanella? Well, now you’ll know.

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David Laurila: You had a productive a career that looks even better after accounting for era and park factors. Were you underrated?

Ron Fairly: “I think everybody feels that maybe they weren’t appreciated as much as they should have been for the contributions they made to ball clubs. I think it goes without saying. A lot of players feel that way.

“I think my numbers would certainly be better today. I played in an era — the 1960s — that might have been the most difficult in which to make your living, as a hitter, of any in the history of the game of baseball. I played in Dodger Stadium, which was a big ballpark where the ball didn’t carry very well. It doesn’t take many [lost] hits during the course of a season for your average to drop a little bit, and you weren’t going to have as many home runs or RBIs there.”

Laurila: Sandy Koufax put up his numbers in that same environment. While he was obviously a great pitcher, was he maybe a little overrated? Read the rest of this entry »

A.J. Pierzynski is, in his own words, “not what people think.” But that only applies to off the field. The ChiSox catcher readily acknowledges being Public Enemy No. 1 between the white lines, an irascible gamer who cares far less about making friends than he does about winning. The 14-year, big-league veteran doesn’t mind that perception, just so as long as fans realize that he’s not a villain in street clothes. He may share traits with Ozzie Guillen — and get along with Barry Bonds — but he also stops to smell the roses. Behind the mask, big, bad A.J. Pierzynski is just a regular guy who likes to have fun.

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David Laurila: Who is A.J. Pierzynski?

AJ Pierzynski: I’m not what people think I am, for one thing. A lot of people think I’m a rough-and-tough and mean person. I’m just a normal guy who likes to have fun and is lucky enough to play baseball for a living.

DL: Where does that perception come from?

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Darwin Barney is a throwback middle infielder, and to the surprise of many, a Rookie-of-the-Year candidate. The 25-year-old Oregon State product came into spring training battling for a backup position, but instead established himself as the Cubs everyday second baseman. His skill set is more Glenn Beckert [fans under the age of 40 may need to look him up] than Starlin Castro, but there is nothing wrong with being scrappy when you’re hitting .297 and playing quality defense. In Barney’s opinion, there is also nothing wrong with following instructions from Carlos Zambrano. As for the infield surface of Wrigley Field…well, the youngster is a fan of historic ballparks.

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David Laurila: This year’s Baseball America Prospect Handbook says of you: “He isn’t flashy, but he’s the best defensive infielder in the organization, including the majors.” Do you agree with that?

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