This week’s docket has several marquee matchups, but we respect your intelligence enough not to explain why Shane Bieber vs. Lucas Giolito or Yu Darvish vs. Dustin May is worth watching. Instead, turn your attention to three games where the visiting pitcher will return to their old stomping grounds, and don’t gloss over Tuesday night’s game in Atlanta either.

Wednesday, April 14, 6:35 PM ET: Joe Musgrove vs. Tyler Anderson

Joe Musgrove is baseball’s hottest pitcher at the moment, and after becoming the first Padres pitcher to throw no-hitter, he’ll try to become the latest ex-Pirates pitcher to make Pittsburgh look silly for having traded him. Musgrove, who Pittsburgh traded to San Diego in January, is looking to join Gerrit Cole and Tyler Glasnow as the latest pitcher to take another leap forward ditching his black and gold threads, and his early-season showing has been superlative. Still only 28, Musgrove was deemed unlikely to help the next good Pirates team (he’s a free agent after the 2022 season), and was traded for prospects. Over his three-year stay in Pittsburgh, during which the team had the majors’ seventh-lowest winning percentage, Musgrove was the Pirates’ best pitcher by nearly two wins. Now, he’s part of a San Diego team built to win a championship, which would already be the second of Musgrove’s underrated career. Read the rest of this entry »

Dylan Bundy’s career has hardly flown under the radar. He was arguably the top pitching prospect in baseball when he debuted, and his subsequent injury troubles made the next part of his career a well-known cautionary tale. When he returned to effectiveness in the second half of 2019, then broke out in 2020, it was a story arc we’ve all seen before: the post-hype prospect makes good.

While you might know that, you probably don’t know the secret skill that’s powering Bundy’s resurgence. It’s not a high-octane fastball — he’s lost that since his prospect days. It’s not a gaudy swinging strike total — he’s no slouch in that department, but nor does he excel. What Bundy does best is loop breaking balls through the strike zone and coax batters into taking them. He might be baseball’s best at it, and the piles of free strikes he racks up power the rest of his game.

Want a quick visual before we dig into the numbers? Tim Anderson is a free swinger, but even on 0-1, he couldn’t unlock his bat against this slider:

Want it with a curveball? Watch Bundy demonstrate the low and away boundary of the strike zone to Adam Eaton:

Read the rest of this entry »

Spring games are a blast, a return to baseball after a starved winter of boring transaction rumors. They’re the first chance to see major league players in their natural environment, and the pinnacle of baseball talent facing off against each other (and, inevitably, against some overmatched minor leaguers getting their first taste of the big time). One thing they are most assuredly not, however, are tactical masterpieces. The highest-leverage decision a manager makes is whether to bat their veterans at the top of the lineup so that they can duck out early. In the majors, though, tactical decision-making started when the regular season began. Almost immediately, a neat situation came up, and I’m excited enough to talk tactics that I’m going to give it far more coverage than it deserves.

In the second game of the season, the White Sox were in a pickle. After busting out to a 7–1 lead over the Angels, they’d frittered most of it away. A three-run shot from Albert Pujols here, an Adam Eaton three-base error there, and it was 7–6. A laugher had turned into a struggle for survival.

In the bottom of the eighth, the Angels were again threatening. After Mike Trout led the inning off with a walk, manager Tony LaRussa went to Evan Marshall. Marshall started strong, inducing a pop up from Anthony Rendon and a groundout from Justin Upton. But wait! LaRussa intentionally walked Pujols, putting the go-ahead run on base. What the!?
Read the rest of this entry »

The Angels locked up their second baseman on Opening Day, inking David Fletcher to a five-year contract that will keep him in Anaheim through at least the 2025 season. In addition to the baseline guaranteed money ($24.5 million), there are two club option years at $8 million and $8.5 million. Both option years have buyouts for $1.5 million, the first one bringing the contract to the headline figure of $26 million.

Fletcher has been a find for the Angels, and I daresay that he’s outperformed the original expectations for him. Drafted as a shortstop out of Loyola Marymount, he avoided the wacky error totals that many middle infield prospects put up in the low minors. Still, his offensive profile wasn’t seen as having enough upside to propel him to the top of the team’s prospect lists. The consensus going into 2018 was generally that he would be a utility infielder, though a dependable one.

Notably, even the lukewarm evaluations had nuggets of Fletcher’s later success. John Sickels gave Fletcher a C+, but praised his reliability and noted him as a player who could surprise.

David Fletcher, SS, Grade C+: Age 23, a sixth-round pick in 2015 from Loyola Marymount, hit .266/.316/.339 with 20 doubles, three homers, 20 steals, 27 walks, 55 strikeouts in 448 at-bats between Double-A and Triple-A; easy to under-estimate, old-time scouts would have called him an “intangibles” player; runs well, but throwing arm is nothing special and hitting power is below average; all that said, he is a very reliable defensive shortstop how outplays his mediocre defensive tools with positioning, instincts, and impressive reliability: has a .982 career fielding percentage at short; most likely a utilityman but might surprise eventually; ETA 2018.

Here at FanGraphs, Eric Longenhagen gave Fletcher a 40-grade in 2017 but had praise for his contact skills.

A draft-eligible sophomore at Loyola Marymount, Fletcher projects to carve out a big-league job as a utility man capable of competently playing both middle-infield positions, a terrific outcome for a sixth-round pick.

Fletcher is an above-average straight-line runner but not an especially twitchy athlete, and he’s able to play short despite fringey range and an average arm because of polished but unspectacular actions, hands, and good instincts. His bat is quick, his stroke short but effortful. Fletcher projects as a fringe hitter with 40 raw power and less than that in games.

As for ZiPS, it saw Fletcher as merely a .237/.276/.304 hitter with above-average defense at second in the majors in 2018, so I cannot claim that my work nailed his rise either! ZiPS didn’t really start getting interested until after 2018 when it translated his full season at .274/.314/.394 but at 13 runs better than average at second.

Read the rest of this entry »

During the last few days of spring training, most teams are wrapping up position battles and preparing for Opening Day. The Angels, meanwhile, decided the waning days of March were a great time to revamp their bullpen. On Sunday, they signed Noé Ramirez to a minor league deal. Then on Monday, they acquired James Hoyt from the Marlins for cash considerations and signed Steve Cishek and Tony Watson to matching one-year, $1 million deals. Save Hoyt, all these pitchers were available because they had already been cut from other team’s rosters. That’s not a promising way to build a bullpen, but the Angels, who desperately need additional depth on their staff, didn’t have much of a choice.

Bolstering the relief corps was a priority for new Angels GM Perry Minasian, and he made a handful of moves in the winter to do so. In December, he acquired new closer Raisel Iglesias from the Reds in exchange for Ramirez and a player to be named later. Ramirez ended up getting cut by the Reds, and the Angels scooped him up again, effectively acquiring Iglesias for free. The team also added Alex Claudio and Junior Guerra via free agency, but even with those three new relievers, Los Angeles still lacked depth in the middle of their bullpen. The projected relief corps before this week included control artist Aaron Slegers, the raw but promising Chris Rodriguez, and veteran Jesse Chavez to hold the line during the middle third of the game. Conspicuously absent from that group is Ty Buttrey, who was a solid option out of the bullpen in 2018 and ‘19 but greatly disappointed last year. He was optioned to minor league camp last week. Felix Peña will likely be counted on for some high-leverage work as well, but he strained his hamstring this spring and will start the year on the Injured List.

With Hoyt, Ramirez, Watson and Cishek on board, here’s what Los Angeles’ bullpen now looks like:

Adding so many relievers has definitely increased the depth, but the flexibility isn’t all that improved. The first seven names on that list are either out of minor league options or good enough to hold a roster spot for the entire season. If the Angels carry eight relievers on their 26-man roster, that means the final bullpen spot will be a rotating door for whichever reliever is the freshest.

Of the four relievers added this week, Hoyt has the most interesting projection. He broke into the majors in 2016 with Houston and won a championship there the next year, though he was left off the postseason roster. He was traded to Cleveland mid-way through 2018 and spent what was left of that year as well as the majority of ’19 in Triple-A, logging just 8.1 innings in the majors that season.

When the Marlins faced a team-wide COVID outbreak at the start of last year, they acquired Hoyt for cash considerations to help fill out the bullpen. He enjoyed the best season of his short career in Miami, striking out over 30% of the batters he faced despite a huge drop in velocity across all four of his pitches. To combat that, he started throwing his slider more than two-thirds of the time. With a whiff rate over 40%, that pitch formed the foundation of his success.

Hoyt’s velocity hasn’t returned this spring: His fastball is topping out under 90 mph, and his slider is coming in around 80 mph. But if he maintains his approach from last year, he’s shown that his slider is good enough to thrive without elite velocity. The other important thing he possesses is a minor league option. The Angels’ bullpen has a lot less flexibility to call up fresh arms when the attrition of a full season starts to hit. Since Hoyt is one of the few relievers with an option still available, he’ll probably ride the shuttle between Triple-A and the majors regularly this season.

In Cishek and Watson, the Angels add two relievers with plenty of high-leverage experience and funk. Cishek scuffled through his worst season in the majors in the White Sox’ bullpen last year. The frisbee slider he whips in from an extremely low release point was as good as ever, but his sinker was crushed. In the past, he had relied on that pitch to maintain his above-average ground ball rate, but opposing batters elevated and celebrated against it in 2020. At this point, he’s best cast as a right-handed specialist so he can use his slider as much as he needs to. Facing too many left-handed bats will leave him exposed, especially now that his sinker is barely crossing 90 mph regularly.

Watson’s career arc closely mirrors Cishek’s. He was a solid high-leverage option for the Pirates, Dodgers, and Giants for a number of years, but the quality of his stuff has deteriorated recently. The 2019 season was his nadir — a 4.17 ERA, 4.81 FIP, and -0.2 WAR in 54 innings — though last year represented a small bounce back. And like Hoyt and Cishek, he had to learn how to survive with diminished velocity: He saw a three mile per hour drop across his entire repertoire, though his strikeout rate did jump up three points from ’19.

Watson’s extreme release point nearly matches that of fellow lefty sidearmer Claudio. But where the latter has historically struggled with a significant platoon split, the former’s has been much less dramatic. In 2020, that handedness split was mitigated even further as Watson increased the usage of his changeup to 45%, making it his primary pitch. But like Hoyt, his velocity failed to show up this spring, and he opted out of his minor league deal with the Phillies, who had signed him over the winter.

With Cishek and Watson now in the fold, the Angels’ bullpen has another pair of sidearming relievers to pair with Claudio. It brings to mind the multi-faceted bullpen the Rays put together last season, where nearly every reliever threw from a different arm slot. The Angels aren’t as extreme as the Rays were, but they have a couple of different looks they can trot out to throw off the opposing team.

The velocity issues each of these pitchers are dealing with certainly doesn’t inspire confidence. But when you’re bringing in relievers off the scrap heap, there isn’t much you can do about warts like that. Hoyt, Cishek, and Watson have all shown a willingness to adapt their approach and have had some success with their diminished repertoires. Luckily, the Angels aren’t counting on them to handle critical innings for them — only to provide a competent bridge to the back end of the bullpen.

Dylan Bundy had his best statistical season in 2020. Pitching for the Los Angeles Angels after four-plus years with the Orioles, the 28-year-old right-hander posted career-bests in ERA (3.29), FIP (2.95), and K/9 (9.87). Small sample that it was — 11 starts in a pandemic-shortened campaign — the results represented a breath of fresh air. Bundy had become somewhat stagnant in Baltimore, putting up pedestrian numbers for a club that was going nowhere in terms of short-term contention. Change proved to be a panacea.

Bundy’s secondary pitches, paired with improved command, went a long way toward his success. The fourth-overall pick in the 2011 draft no longer has a plus fastball, but buoyed by a better understanding of his craft, he no longer needs one. With his third decade on planet Earth looming in the not-too-distant future — and his early-career injuries long in the rearview — Bundy has made the full transformation from thrower to pitcher.

———

David Laurila: How would you describe your career so far?

Dylan Bundy: “It’s flown by, that’s for sure. You learn a lot when you first break into the league — 2016 is when I stayed here — and that’s [continued] up to now. The game doesn’t change, but with hitters’ swing paths, the analytics, the shifting… there are ways that the game does change, slowly over time. I think that would be the biggest thing I’d take away from when I first started, to now.”

Laurila: Have you changed?

Bundy: “Overall, I guess… numbers-wise, I have changed. Obviously, everybody knows about the velocity. It’s come down, so now I’m learning how to pitch more. Ever since 2016-2017, I’ve been learning how to throw more off-speed stuff, and finally it clicked. You know, these hitters can time up a 110 mph fastball if you throw it down the middle three times in a row. Eventually, they’re going to catch up to it.

“I’ve really learned that you’ve got to throw pitches for a purpose. That’s whether it’s off the plate, in, off-speed stuff earlier in the count, heaters later in the count, or whatever it may be on that specific day. But it’s definitely been a long journey, learning this stuff.” Read the rest of this entry »

Friday was a red-letter day for the Angels as well as anyone else who’s been following the ongoing saga of the majors’ most notable two-way player. Shohei Ohtani made his first Cactus League pitching appearance of the spring — his first in nearly three years, actually — a milestone that will hopefully become a footnote as he works his way back to regular rotation duty following a string of injuries.

The 26-year-old Ohtani started Friday’s exhibition against the A’s and worked 1.2 innings, throwing 41 pitches, 24 for strikes (five swinging, eight looking, eight foul, three in play). All five A’s that he retired were via strikeouts, though his outing was hardly pristine. In the first inning, after striking out leadoff hitter Mark Canha looking at a fastball, he yielded a sizzling double down the line by Elvis Andrus, then after whiffing Matt Olson via a fastball, he walked Matt Chapman before striking out Mitch Moreland swinging at a filthy splitter. He got into further trouble in the second inning, serving up a hustle double to Ramón Laureano and then another double to Tony Kemp — a fly ball into the right-center gap, the hardest hit he allowed — that sandwiched a strikeout of Chad Pinder via another splitter. He then walked Aramis Garica before striking out Canha, again on a splitter.

Ohtani departed with two outs in the second because he’d surpassed the Angels’ 40-pitch target. With three hits, two walks, and one run allowed, this was no gem. The scoreboard didn’t have velocity readings and there was no Trackman data, but a scout relayed to Eric Longenhagen that his fastball ranged from 96-99 mph (some reports had 100), with the strikeouts coming on 98 and 99. His slider ranged from 82-85 mph, his curve was 76 mph, and his changeup/splitter (Eric’s source thought it was a splitter, but the broadcast referred to it inconsistently) 88-90 mph. While he struggled to command his slider, the splitter was devastating. Manager Joe Maddon described Ohtani’s delivery as “more clean and consistent,” adding, “I like his arm stroke better. It starts there and then he’s able to recapture the velocity he’s had in the past, and the really good break of his splitter. The big thing for his success is going to be repetition of delivery and knowing where his fastball is going consistently.” Read the rest of this entry »

Shohei Ohtani has already done it. There’s a video on YouTube you can watch if you want to — hundreds, actually, but I’m thinking of one in particular. Over 22 minutes long, and all of it beyond belief. There is the best pitcher in the league, with the diving splitter, with the fastball no one can catch up with; there is the best hitter, with his OPS over 1.000, launching baseballs with such power that they seem to disappear off the bat, flying over scoreboards, into streets, to the very furthest reaches of where you could imagine a human being could hit a baseball. And it is the same person, just one person, doing both of these things. You wouldn’t believe it unless you saw it. But you can see it, right now. Back then, too, people saw it. Millions of people: watching from their homes, from bars, from the stands, where they held up signs, held their breath, waiting for the next feat to come.

This was in 2016. Ohtani was only 21 years old.

***

It’s hard to believe that the spring of 2018, when Ohtani played his first games with the Angels, was only three years ago. It seems like so much longer. Partially because so much happened so fast. One moment, it was the Ohtani Sweepstakes of 2017-18, with the number of teams being gradually narrowed, the reports trickling in, each fanbase eventually resigning themselves to his absence, except for the one that won out. There was a brief time of dreaming, all smiles and photoshoots, slotting his name into imaginary batting orders alongside Mike Trout — and then it was time for spring, when it didn’t matter and you didn’t have to worry about it, except it did, and you did, too. Those first few outings — the walks from the mound, the strikeouts at the plate — the crowing from fans who would have you believe they never wanted the guy in the first place, the reports from anonymous scouts saying it wouldn’t play, it couldn’t play, not here in the big leagues.

But it played. From the very beginning, it played — like it had been scripted. A solid, winning start — a home run, launched, with the bases nearly full — a high five to an imaginary line of teammates, and then the real celebration. A perfect game taken into the seventh inning. More trips around the bases. He’s already done it. Why not again? Why not now, with even more millions of people watching? Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about spring training games starting, Jeff Mathis batting cleanup in a spring training game (and once improbably batting fifth in a regular-season game), the latest reports about suspended Angels pitching coach Mickey Callaway, the postponement of the start of the Triple-A season, the outlook for attendance in Texas, and Zack Greinke’s quest to join the exclusive 10-10 club for pitchers, then preview the 2021 Angels (26:23) with Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic and the 2021 Royals (1:09:10) with Lynn Worthy of The Kansas City Star.

Audio intro: Shovels & Rope (Feat. Brandi Carlile), "Cleanup Hitter"
Audio interstitial 1: Filthy Friends, "Angels"
Audio interstitial 2: Heart, "Treat Me Well"
Audio outro: Pavement, "Harness Your Hopes"

Link to 2012 Mathis game
Link to latest Callaway report
Link to Alderson comments about Callaway
Link to Passan report about Triple-A
Link to Rangers attendance story
Link to Greinke’s 10-10 quote
Link to Fabian on Ohtani’s offseason
Link to story about Angels’ GM hiring process
Link to story about Angels’ furloughs
Link to story about Pujols paying employees’ salaries
Link to Jared Diamond on the Royals treating people well

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As the calendar flips to March, exhibition season has begun (!) in both Arizona and Florida, and yet a few top free agents remain unsigned. Atop the list in terms of projected impact is Jake Odorizzi, who’s had the misfortune of mistiming the market, in part due to an injury-wracked 2020 season. Still, there’s no shortage of teams that the veteran righty, who placed 24th on our Top 50 Free Agents list, could help.

Odorizzi, who turns 31 on March 27, spent the past three seasons with the Twins, putting together a solid campaign in 2018 (4.49 ERA,4.20 FIP, and 2.5 WAR in 164.1 innings), and an All-Star one in ’19 (3.51 ERA, 3.36 FIP, and 4.3 WAR in 159 innings). Last year was a near-total loss, though, as he was limited to 13.2 innings by an intercostal strain and a blister. Prior to that, Odorizzi pitched four years and change with the Rays, that after being traded in blockbusters involving Zack Greinke and Lorenzo Cain (2010) — he was originally a supplemental first-round pick by the Brewers in ’08 — and then James Shields and Wil Myers (2012). In Tampa Bay, he totaled 6.5 WAR from 2014 to ’16 before a bout of gopher trouble (1.88 homers per nine) led to a replacement level season in ’17. That hiccup aside, he’s been very solid and (prior to 2020) rather durable, averaging 30.3 starts per year from 2013 to ’19; an oblique strain in ’15 and hamstring and back woes in ’17 kept him to 27 starts in those seasons. As best I can tell, he’s never missed significant time due to an arm injury.

Odorizzi has gone his entire career without signing a multiyear deal. He won back-to-back arbitration cases against the Rays in 2017 ($4.1 million) and ’18 ($6.3 million), the reward for which was being traded to the Twins just two days after the latter decision was announced. After making $9.3 million in 2019, his best season, he received a $17.8 million qualifying offer from the Twins, which apparently put a drag on his market before he could fully test the waters. Via MLB.com’s Do-Hyoung Park, Odorizzi received “a lot of interest” from other teams at the time, to the point of exchanging dollar figures, “but the uncertainty generated by the timeframe and the draft considerations ultimately led to his return to Minnesota.” The fact that Odorizzi wouldn’t be be subjected to another qualifying offer the next time he reached free agency, and thus wouldn’t have the millstone of draft compensation attached to his signing, was a factor in his decision.

Alas, his 2020 season didn’t pan out as planned. The intercostal strain landed him on the injured list to start the season, and so he didn’t make his season debut until August 8. In his third outing, on August 21, he was hit in the chest by a batted ball, suffering a contusion and landing on the IL again. Upon returning, a blister problem led to another early hook. Though he was on the roster for the AL Wild Card series against the Astros, he did not pitch.

Read the rest of this entry »