The Rangers announced Thursday that Joey Gallo will miss 4-6 weeks after undergoing surgery to remove a fractured hamate bone in his right wrist. That’s bad news for Rangers fans, who’ll see somewhat fewer moonshots and scalded line drives than they would have otherwise, middling news for the Rangers themselves, who were never really in the playoff race they’re now decidedly out of, and worst news of all for Gallo, who’d been in the middle of his best season yet.

Gallo has been part of our national baseball consciousness for many years now as a walking indicator of the game’s direction, possessed as he was of exceptional raw power, an abysmal contact rate, and horrific-even-for-the-late-2010’s strikeout numbers. In 2017, he hit 41 home runs and posted a 14% walk rate but got on base only a third of the time in part due to shifts that limited him to a .250 BABIP. 2018 was more of the same; his 110 wRC+ that year was good, but 75 big league players posted better.

This year had been different. Through June 1, when a strained oblique muscle cost him three weeks, Gallo was among the major league leaders in a number of offensive categories, including a few he’s never come close to ranking in before:

Read the rest of this entry »

In a year not otherwise flowing with surprises on the team level, the Texas Rangers have been a big one. A 50-46 record isn’t one that’s dominating the American League or the AL West but it’s good enough that if the season ended today, the Rangers would finish 16 games ahead of their preseason ZiPS projections on a seasonal basis. One of the players most responsible for Texas’s surprise prediction-rebellion is Mike Minor. At 8-4 with a 2.73 ERA — even his 3.82 FIP is just fine in 2019’s Sillyball environment — Minor made his first All-Star Game. From missing two seasons with shoulder problems to becoming a successful Royals reclamation projection to growing into a solid No. 2 starter to being named an All-Star, Minor’s emergence has been one of the best stories in baseball in 2019. And sports being cruel sometimes, the Rangers may very well be best-served by allowing Minor to wear another uniform in the denouement.

Coming into 2019, the computer’s reasons for Rangers skepticism were straightforward: Texas had some interesting, top-tier talent but also a stunning lack of depth around the diamond. Not a single Ranger had a three-WAR season in 2018 and the team’s WAR leader, Jurickson Profar, was an Oakland Athletic. Even the team’s most interesting talent had questions, whether it was Joey Gallo‘s batting average, Jose Leclerc‘s sustainability, Rougned Odor alternating between being Jeff Kent and Clark Kent, or Nomar Mazara’s puzzling lack of development. On some level, ZiPS wasn’t wrong, as the Rangers still lack depth, but it missed out on the magnitude of their good performances. Mike Minor and Lance Lynn look like pitchers you’d actually like pitching in a playoff game, Joey Gallo has spent much of the season challenging the Alomar Line instead of the Mendoza, and Hunter Pence is having one of the wildest, out-of-nowhere offensive comebacks that I can remember.

So, given all these happy surprises, which have led to real playoff contention, why should they explore a Minor trade? Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Jose Leclerc, Evan Marshall, and Tony Watson — on how they learned and developed their changeups.

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Jose Leclerc, Texas Rangers

“I was around 10 years old when I started throwing it — 10 or 12 — and I thought it was a regular changeup. When I was playing Little League, nobody told me that it wasn’t really a changeup. I just kept throwing it, kept throwing it, and when I signed my contract with the Rangers, the pitching coach told me, ‘That’s not a changeup.’ I said, ‘That’s how I hold my changeup.’ He said, ‘No, that’s a slider.’ But I kept throwing it, kept throwing it, and it was good.

“It’s a changeup grip, but I throw it like a football and it moves kind of like a slider. I don’t know why. I’ve tried to show it to my compañeros — to my teammates — and they can’t do it. Sam Dyson; he asked me to show it to him. A few others did, as well. Some of them could kind of throw it, but they couldn’t command it like I do.

“I throw it the same now as when I was a kid. Everything is the same. It is better, though. I throw harder now, so there’s more movement. But what it is … I call it a cut-change. It’s just something natural that I have. I don’t how I do it. For real.” Read the rest of this entry »

We all know factors beyond talent — be it contract length or value, a team’s competitive window, or a player’s social fit within the org, among others — have an impact on how trades balance and are agreed upon. Just being mindful that these factors exist, and that we’re not always privy to them, can help us to square what we perceive to be a context-free gap in the talents exchanged. But can we bridge what is, based on our evaluations, a sizable gap in this weekend’s Rangers and Rays prospect-for-prospect trade?

Rangers get:

2B Nick Solak, 50 FV, No. 93 overall prospect

Rays get:

RHP Peter Fairbanks, 40 FV

This deal looks very good for Texas in a vacuum based on our evaluations. Kiley and I both think Solak, who is a career .290/.382/.453 hitter in the minors and has raked since his freshman year at Louisville, is going to be an average everyday second baseman, while Fairbanks is a 25-year-old reliever who has had two Tommy John surgeries, a demographic we rarely rank at all. Read the rest of this entry »

Robert Stock is following a breakthrough season with a rocky season. Last year, the right-hander broke into the big leagues at age 28, and logged a 2.50 ERA in 32 appearances out of the Padres’ bullpen. This year he’s spent the bulk of his time with San Diego’s Triple-A affiliate, and scuffled in his smattering of opportunities in The Show. Currently on the IL with a bicep strain, Stock has a 10.13 ERA in 10-and-two-thirds innings of work.

There’s more to the Robert Stock story than his late-bloomer status and overall pitching prowess. When I talked to the former Los Angeles-area prep at Petco Park recently, I learned that he’s a converted catcher with an unorthodox workout routine.

“I use a training system called EVO UltraFit,” Stock told me. “It involves electrodes, and obscure ways of lifting weights. You’re doing things like jumping off of stuff, and catching things that are falling.”

Watching an ESPN feature on a former NFL safety was the catalyst. Learning that Adam Archuleta “found success through this weird training system,” he decided to try it himself. Just 13 years old at the time, Stock traveled to Arizona, “where the guru is,” and proceeded to adopt the program. He’s been a disciple ever since.

An electrodes apparatus was charging at Stock’s locker as we spoke. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night, Lance Lynn got the second half of the season off to a very good start for the Texas Rangers by striking out 11 while issuing just two walks in seven shutout innings. Even with that great start, Lynn is still second to Max Scherzer, who leads all pitchers with 5.5 WAR, but he’s now accumulated 4.4 WAR and is a full win clear of Charlie Morton and Gerrit Cole, who are tied behind him. When Lynn shut down the Astros, he wasn’t just dominating an average team. Houston has the best hitting offense in all of baseball, with a 118 wRC+ and an 18% strikeout rate that ranks second in the majors. Three weeks ago, I noted Lynn’s perch atop the AL WAR Leaderboard as an interesting peculiarity, an unexpected development. His performance since then has thrust him to the forefront of the American League Cy Young race.

On June 20, I wrote about how Lynn’s ERA was misleading, how he lessened his sinker usage in favor of the cutter, and how he used a different approach with runners on base to minimize damage. One thing I missed when writing that piece was Lynn’s slightly different arm slot, which Michael Ajeto wrote about at Pitcher List and which likely helped make his cutter better. In what ended up being less than fortuitous timing for my article, Lynn immediately went out and gave up four runs in the first inning of his June 22 tilt against the White Sox. Since that inning, Lynn has pitched 28 more frames, struck out 31 batters, walked just three, and allowed only three runs. His ERA at the time of the article was around four; it has since dropped to 3.69. That might not seem too low, but consider that Baseball-Reference’s version of WAR, which is primarily run-based as opposed to the FIP-based version here at FanGraphs, also thinks Lynn is excellent. His 4.5 WAR there is second in the AL to Mike Minor and third in baseball with Scherzer also ahead of him. Over at Baseball Prospectus, Lynn leads the AL with 4.2 WARP.

Here’s where Lynn ranks in a bunch of stats, both traditional and modern:

His relatively low poor ERA showing (13th) is mitigated by having no unearned runs, which is unusual, and pitching in a hitter-friendly park. Lynn’s case as AL’s best pitcher this season stands on its own, but he’s actually been even better since a so-so start to the season:

Consider this your Lance Lynn Cy Young update.

The Texas Rangers selected Texas Tech infielder Josh Jung eighth overall in last month’s amateur draft. They followed that up by taking Baylor infielder Davis Wendzel with the 41st overall pick. The Big 12 Conference co-players of the year both signed on the dotted line last week, Jung for a reported $4.4 million, Wendzel for a reported $1.6 million. Following get-ready stints at the team’s facility in Surprise, Arizona, each is expected to join short-season Spokane for the duration of the summer.

According to Rangers GM Jon Daniels, it wasn’t purely by chance that accomplished collegiate bats were his club’s top two selections.

“We didn’t make an about-face in our philosophy, but we did probably make a little more of a conscious effort to manage risk up top,” Daniels told me in mid-June. “That kind of dovetailed into where the strengths of the draft were, which in our opinion was more college than high school, and a little heavier on the position player side.”

The industry agreed with that assessment — only one prep pitcher went in the first 25 picks — but whether this was an outlier draft or not, pitchers are widely seen as riskier propositions. When I asked if that was a primary factor, Daniels delivered his answer with a wry smile. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Pete Fairbanks, Jack Flaherty, and Will Smith — on how they learned and developed their sliders.

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Pete Fairbanks, Texas Rangers

“My coach — this was in summer ball when I was 14 or 15 years old — was Matt Whiteside, who I believe pitched for the Rangers back in the day. He showed me a grip and said, ‘Hey, kind of just turn your wrist; turn it on the side when you throw it.’ It’s possible that it was originally taught to me as more of a curveball, but looking back it’s always had slider characteristics to it. Regardless, that was my introduction to a breaking ball.

Pete Fairbanks’ original slider grip.

“The grip was similar to the one I have now, although it has varied over time. My slider has been good and bad. For instance, it was really cutter-y in 2017; it was very flat. It had six-to-eight inches of lift to it, which obviously isn’t what you’re looking for from a slider. You’re trying to get closer to zero. But with the tweaks I’ve made to it this year, it’s really taken off.

“I worked with one of our systems guys, Sam Niedrorf, when I was down in High-A. He was the guy who was feeding me all of my numbers on it, so I could fiddle with it to get it where it needed to be this year. We had a portable TrackMan, and I threw a couple of bullpens in front of that. Read the rest of this entry »

A number of years ago, Boston sports-TV anchor Bob Lobel used to say of former Red Sox players excelling for other teams, “Why can’t we get players like that?” Similar words are currently being uttered in Detroit, in regard to James McCann. In his first season with the Chicago White Sox, the 29-year-old catcher is slashing a robust .320/.378/.519, and he’s already gone deep nine times.

McCann wasn’t nearly that good with the stick in his four-plus years with the Tigers. When he signed with the ChiSox in December — a bargain-basement one-year deal for $2.5M, no less — he was a .240/.288/.366 career hitter. How did he suddenly morph into an offensive force?

“Honestly, the biggest thing for me this year is that I’m trying to be the best James McCann,” is how the Tigers castoff explained it prior to a recent game at Fenway Park. “I’m staying within myself and not trying to do too much. I’m taking my base hits the other way — I’m taking my singles — and not trying to hit the impossible six-run homer.”

The breaking-out backstop trained with Rangers infielder Logan Forsythe over the offseason — both live just south of Nashville — and as McCann pointed out, each has played with some great hitters over the course of their careers. Not that attempting to emulate one’s more-talented peers is always the best idea. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Shelby Miller, Daniel Norris, Tyler Olson — on how they learned and developed their curveballs.

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Shelby Miller, Texas Rangers

“I probably didn’t start throwing a curveball until high school. Growing up, my dad always told me they’re not good for your arm — not at an early age — and that changeups are better. But then there was this guy named Jerry Don Gleaton in my hometown — he played professionally, and was a baseball coach at Howard Payne University and I worked with him. He taught me some mechanical things, showed me some grips, and it kind of went from there. Read the rest of this entry »