Prospect writers Kevin Goldstein and Eric Longenhagen will sometimes have enough player notes to compile a scouting post. This is one of those dispatches, a collection of thoughts after another week of college baseball and the return of minor league play. Remember, prospect rankings can be found on The Board.

Kevin’s Notes

After nearly 600 days without them, it was sure nice to have minor league boxscores. It was also overwhelming in terms of thinking about who to highlight for today’s notebook. During a lunchtime call with Eric Longenhagen, we probably discussed 40 or 50 guys. To celebrate the long-awaited return of minor league baseball, I’ll push the draft aside for a week and talk about some prospects with real numbers next to their names for the first time in over a year. Instead of just finding five players, I decided to focus on a quintet of catchers who had big starts to the season. Catching prospects fascinate me as it’s the toughest position to find. There’s aren’t 30 legitimate starting catchers in baseball, but there are 30 teams, so while the bar is ridiculous on a defensive level, the necessary production in terms of offense is nowhere near that of other positions. Here are five real prospects — some big names, some sleepers — who have a shot at becoming that everyday guy.

Francisco Álvarez, C, New York Mets (Low-A St. Lucie)

Álvarez put up a .916 OPS in his 2019 stateside debut as a 17-year-old, and his 2021 is off to an impressive start. Eric ranked Álvarez as the best prospect in the Mets system this spring, and I support that ranking whole heartedly. Famous in the international community since his early teens, Álvarez commanded a $2.7 million bonus, and it’s easy to see why as there is the potential for the Venezuelan product to be an plus contributor both at the plate and behind it. He’s tightened up his meaty frame over the past year, which gives him good mobility in terms of block and receiving to go with a plus arm. With a bat in his hands, he has showcased an impressive approach for a teenager to go with real power that projects for 20-plus home runs annually when all is said and done. He’s not only the Mets’ best prospect, he’s on of the best catching prospects in all of baseball, a player who has the potential to be ready somewhere around the end of James McCann’s four-year deal. Read the rest of this entry »

A’s third baseman Matt Chapman has had a pretty brutal start to his season. In 96 plate appearances through games played on April 27, he’s slashing just .152/.281/.329 and has struck out more than 34% of the time. His wRC+, meanwhile, is 45 points below his career-average into this year.

Chapman also finds himself atop a leaderboard that would, upon first glance, seemingly lead to success at the plate. Year-over-year, no hitter has increased his Center% — or percentage of batted balls hit up the middle — more than he has, with a rate that has gone up by more than 1.75 times.

Strikeouts aside, you would think that Chapman should at least be getting some decent batted ball results. More than 52% of his batted balls so far this year have gone up the middle, leading all hitters. Amazingly, though, he has hit the most groundballs up the middle this season without a hit, at 12. That’s right: On twelve different occasions this season when Chapman has hit a ball back towards the middle, it’s gone for an out.

Read the rest of this entry »

Prospect writers Kevin Goldstein and Eric Longenhagen will sometimes have enough player notes to compile a scouting post. This is one of those dispatches, a collection of thoughts after another week of college baseball, minor league spring training, and big league action. Remember, prospect rankings can be found on The Board.

Kevin’s Notes

John Baker, RHP, Ball State: 9 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 8K

When I saw John Baker’s line from Friday’s game against North Illinois, my first reaction was, “Wait a second, that John Baker?” It feels like he’s been part of the Redbirds’ weekend rotation since the Clinton administration, but in reality he’s a fifth-year senior with 60 games and over 300 innings on his college resume. He’s always been good, earning All-Conference awards and a couple of pre-season All-American mentions while compiling a 3.17 career ERA and more than 10 strikeouts per nine innings. In 2019, he was a 29th round pick of the Marlins; he was overshadowed on that year’s Ball State team by eventual Arizona first-round pick Drey Jameson, who was taken 34th overall. Read the rest of this entry »

The end of April always sees some teams with their hands hovering above the panic button, some pitchers wondering what the heck is happening, and others hoping their newfound glory is more than just a phase. As the month comes to a close, we’ll see all of those tropes beautifully on display. Here are the week’s best matchups.

Tuesday, April 27, 6:10 PM ET: Kenta Maeda vs. Aaron Civale

Heading into the season, three AL Central teams had playoff odds above 24%. Nearly a month into things, two of those teams are struggling with losing records (Minnesota and Cleveland), while the Royals, who had the fourth-lowest playoff odds of any AL team, are the surprise of the spring. This week brings the first Minnesota-Cleveland series of the year as both sides try to find their mojo. On Tuesday, they’ll each turn to guys with a wide array of pitches who currently occupy different ends of the success spectrum.

One year removed from finishing second in Cy Young voting and AL starter WAR, Kenta Maeda is searching for answers. He’s only seen the sixth inning once in his four starts this year, going exactly 6.0 innings in a game against the clawless Tigers. He’s had two starts flame out at 4.1 innings; his other outing was a meltdown at the Coliseum on April 21. The A’s clobbered three home runs, whacked five balls with exit velocities above 100 mph, plated seven earned runs, and hooked him after three innings.

Those big-time exit velocities are becoming a troubling trend for Maeda, a pitcher who thrived in his first five major league seasons by limiting hard contact. According to Statcast, Maeda had the lowest average exit velocity among all starters from 2015-20 who threw at least 500 innings. Today, he’s floundering in the 28th percentile for average exit velocity and the 29th percentile for hard-hit percentage, partially due to the fact that his four-seam fastball just flat out ain’t working.

Last season, when Maeda had the lowest average exit velocity of any starter and the highest K% of his career, hitters flailed their way to a .086 batting average and .103 wOBA (.150 xwOBA) on his fastball. The average exit velocity against that pitch (83.4 mph) was even weaker than his league-leading overall average (85.3). This year, that’s all gone awry. His fastball is getting lit up for a .313 average and .372 wOBA (.430 xwOBA). He even allowed a home run on the fastball for the first time in his Twins tenure. This Matt Olson skyscraper, measured at 107.8 mph on a middle-middle meatball, is a perfect encapsulation of how things are going for Maeda when his catcher puts down one finger.

Aaron Civale, on the other hand, has taken the thump out of opponents’ bats. Cleveland’s third-year righty is in the 88th percentile of exit velocity, and his heater is the one steadying the ship. As Devan Fink laid out, Civale has overhauled everything, mainly his philosophy on fastballs. After throwing a four-seam 2.5% of the time in 2020, he’s shot that percentage all the way up near 30.

It’s now Civale’s turn for a tour of the exit velocity leaderboard. His revamped changeup – which, as Devan also mentioned, is now a split-change – is working so well that he may even want to consider upping its dosage. The split-change is sending everyone back to the dugout having made weak contact (or no contact at all), but particularly left-handers, who have yet to record an extra base hit, and are slap boxing a 78.0 average exit velocity against this diverting action.

Like a scrap-hungry seagull or a fan with the day off tomorrow, Civale is also sticking around late into the game. As opposed to Maeda, Civale has pitched into the sixth inning in each of his starts, twice going seven frames or longer. With both teams looking to course-correct after chumpish starts, and the Royals’ making things even more crowded in the Central, Tuesday’s Maeda-Civale ticket is one to pinpoint.

Friday, April 30, 9:40 PM ET: John Means vs. Jesús Luzardo

Fresh off a resounding 8-1 win that ended Oakland’s 13-game winning streak, the Orioles meet the A’s for a second straight weekend series. John Means will attempt to keep Oakland earth-bound on Friday, matched up with the same youngster he defeated last time out. Means and Luzardo had a timeshare of the strike zone when they last linked up, pouring in strikes on over 60% of their identical 101 pitch counts.

Means has stuck to the same script for virtually his entire career, though this season he’s relegating his slider from supporting actor to bit part. With roughly 10 mph separating his fastball and changeup – Means’ most common offerings – the rock of the Orioles’ rotation is letting those two do the lion’s share of the work. Eighty-three of his 101 pitches in the clubs’ first meeting were either a fastball or changeup, and the A’s could only scrape together two hits in 6.1 innings. Will Means follow the same path when they collide this weekend, or will he try to confound Oakland by peppering in more sliders and curves?

Both pitchers will throw their fastballs more often than not, though they use different lanes of the highway. Per Baseball Savant, Luzardo was responsible for each of the 23 highest-velocity pitches in Sunday’s game against Means, topping out just a hair under 98 mph.

The Athletics’ Peruvian prodigy took the L thanks to Austin Hays’ two home runs, giving Luzardo five gopher balls in 25 innings, all provided by right-handed hitters. Since his big-league career began in 2019, Luzardo has allowed 15 home runs, 14 of which have come from the right side of the batter’s box. (To satiate your daily need for useless trivia, the only lefty to take Luzardo deep is Mariners’ 28-year-old rookie José Marmolejos.) Don’t let the Orioles band of nameless, faceless offensive players fool you. Though they’ve managed just one souvenir shot against lefties this season, Baltimore’s left-handed hitters are fifth in wRC+ against same-handed pitchers.

Friday, April 30, 9:40 PM ET: Jon Gray vs. Madison Bumgarner

Friday evening will be extremely conducive to the two-screen lifestyle, as Gray vs. Bumgarner gets underway at the same time as Means vs. Luzardo. Both of these towering NL West staples are intimately familiar with their opponent. Gray has tussled with the Diamondbacks 13 times in his seven-year career while Bumgarner’s career stats against the Rockies read like a full season for a 1960’s workhorse: 37 starts, 230.1 innings, 218 strikeouts, 62 walks. Despite inhabiting the same division as Bumgarner for his whole career, Gray has only matched up with the inimitable lefty twice. Entering round three, both guys are hot.

Gray shut out the non-Bryce Harper parts of Philadelphia’s lineup on Sunday, allowing just two runs on a pair of solo shots to the Phillies’ right fielder. Though he’s running the first double-digit walk rate of his career, Gray is doing well at keeping those base on balls from becoming runs. His 85.8 LOB% will surely come down, and his .208 BABIP will likely come up, but there are some encouraging trends that suggest Gray’s early-season fortune could be here to stay.

Keeping balls on the ground means they can’t be added to the collection of Coors Field moon shots, and Gray has gotten his groundball percentage back above 50%, much more in line with his 46.6% career average than the 36.7% outlier from last season. The Rockies also have to love their ace’s hard-hit rate, as it mirrors the numbers he maintained in 2016-17, the only seasons he’s eclipsed 3.0 WAR. So far Gray has been riding the slider – a pitch that’s been his best since 2019 – until the wheels fall off. Hitters began whiffing on it 40% of the time during that 2019 breakthrough, and this year they’re hardly faring any better, swinging and missing at a 42.5% clip and striking out in 19 of the 51 plate appearances that have ended with this unrighteous pitch.

The desert faithful will get their first look at Bumgarner since his seven-inning no-hitter. The zero hits part jumps out of the box score, but Sunday’s shortened no-no was also MadBum’s best all-around game as a Diamondback. It was his first start for Arizona without a walk, and he matched his Diamondback-high with seven strikeouts. Bumgarner generated 10 swings and misses on his cutter and curveball, the latter of which is quickly becoming an essential out pitch. With a Whiff% of 40.0 (and a staggering 75.0 against lefties), Uncle Charlie is bringing gifts every time he visits Bumgarner.

This could spell doom for Ryan McMahon, the Rockies’ left-handed hitting outfielder who’s carrying around an 0-for-10 with three strikeouts against the legendary lefty. Trevor Story, the only current Rockie with more than 18 plate appearances against Bumgarner, has also had a bad time. His 8-for-41 (.195/.233/.561) numbers are hilariously heightened by the fact that five of those hits have landed in the seats.

Under the Radar Matchup – Friday, April 30, 8:05 PM ET: Nathan Eovaldi vs. Kohei Arihara

Here’s the situation: Eovaldi has one of the lowest barrel percentages of any starter; Arihara has one of the highest. Unsurprisingly, Eovaldi has been one of the more valuable pitchers around, becoming one of the first American League hurlers to hit 1.0 WAR. He’s done it by converting to the church of groundballs, getting disgusting ride on his fastball, and harnessing a curveball that’s experienced a 180-degree turnaround in just two years.

As recently as 2019, Nathan Eovaldi was downright bad, trying to smile through the pain of home runs and walks. That is no longer the case, as Eovaldi is working on a streak of 42.2 consecutive innings without allowing a dinger, and his walk rate is a microscopic 4.2%, down from the 11.6% that severely hampered him two years ago.

While Eovaldi’s aversion to hard contact has very plainly made him Boston’s best pitcher, his Friday counterpart’s success has been much more confusing. Arihara was managing a 2.21 ERA (3.05 FIP) heading into his last start despite constantly getting hit on the thick part of the bat. After coming over from Japan on a two-year pact with the Rangers, Arihara experienced unbelievable luck through his first four starts until stopping by Guaranteed Rate Field on Sunday. His 93.9 EV (highest of any starting pitcher), 12.9% Barrel% (fifth-highest), and 50.0% HardHit% (tied for highest in the league), tell us that hitters are having a very easy time squaring him up. Yet, he went longer than five innings with zero earned runs in his two previous starts before getting beat up by the White Sox in his worst showing to date, pushing his ERA to 4.03 (4.17 FIP). Even after getting his “Welcome to MLB” moment in Chicago, Arihara still has a HR/9 under 1.00 and is feeding groundballs to 40.6% of his adversaries.

His teammate Mike Foltynewicz, who has the dubious distinction of being neck-and-neck with Arihara on HardHit Mountain, has a 5.32 ERA, 6.78 FIP, and leads the world in home runs allowed. Baseball is hard and unfair.

The end of Wednesday’s A’s-Twins game was, fittingly for an up-and-down Oakland team, absolutely wild. After the A’s tied the game in the bottom of the ninth, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli pulled Josh Donaldson, who was set to be the runner on second base in the 10th, in favor of rookie infielder Travis Blankenhorn. That speed upgrade proved inconsequential when Byron Buxton hit a towering home run to score Blankenhorn, but Baldelli’s move ultimately proved unintentionally costly.

In the bottom of the inning, Twins closer Alex Colomé got two quick outs, then walked the next two batters to load the bases. A weakly-hit ground ball to second should have ended things, but Blankenhorn, now at the keystone after pinch-running, bobbled it to allow one run to score and bring the A’s within one. Ramón Laureano followed that up with a hard-hit grounder to third, where Luis Arraez had taken over for Donaldson after playing the previous nine innings at second. He fielded the ball cleanly but overthrew first base for a game-ending two-run error. The A’s won without collecting a single hit in the inning.

It’s not unfair to chalk that win up to luck. But winning 11 games in a row takes a lot more than luck, and that’s just what the A’s have done — an especially impressive feat, considering the team’s historically horrendous start. Losers of six straight to open the year, they’re now tied with the Mariners for first in the AL West. How exactly have the A’s been able to turn their season around in such dramatic fashion?

Read the rest of this entry »

Cesar Valdez’s name has graced this column a handful of times over the past year, most recently a month ago when I asked him about his powerful paralyzing perfect pachydermous percussion pitch. (No, the Baltimore Orioles reliever doesn’t actually call it that, but given that Bugs Bunny changeups make up the lion’s share of his deliveries, he arguably should). Since the start of last season, Valdez has thrown the mesmerizing offering an eye-popping 83.1% of the time.

The Red Sox have faced the 36-year-old slow-baller on three occasions so far in April, so I asked Boston hitting coach Tim Hyers what kind of advice he gives his charges when Valdez is on the bump.

“First, it is totally different in the batter’s box than it is watching video,” responded Hyers. “I can tell you that.The first time we faced him, the hitters were like, This is not your typical changeup.’ It’s almost like a unique curveball, because it gets to home plate and just dives. And at times it can dive both ways; it can break in, or break out. The guys have probably talked about him more than anybody else so far this season.

“It’s kind of an illusion,” continued Hyers. “You have to wait one tick longer in the contact point to get your swing off. It’s been helpful for us to face him [multiple times in a short time period], but it’s definitely very unique and challenging for hitters to face a guy like that.” Read the rest of this entry »

After pitching his way back from the outskirts of oblivion last year, Trevor Rosenthal fared relatively well via free agency, landing a one-year, $11 million deal from the A’s. Unfortunately, he has yet to take the mound for the team, and now it appears that it could be awhile before he does, even in a best-case scenario. On Thursday, Rosenthal underwent surgery to alleviate thoracic outlet syndrome, a loss that hardly helps an A’s pitching staff that’s off to a rough start this season.

The 30-year-old Rosenthal spent 2020 with the Royals and Padres, notching 11 saves while tossing 23.2 innings with a 1.90 ERA and 2.22 FIP; both his 41.8% strikeout rate and 33.0% strikeout-walk differential ranked sixth in the majors among relievers with at least 20 innings. He made an impressive rebound from a rough 2 1/2-year stretch that began with late-2017 Tommy John surgery that cost him the last quarter of that season and all of ’18; when he returned, he struggled greatly with his control, walking 26 batters in 15.1 innings while being rocked for a 13.50 ERA, and getting released in mid-season by both the Nationals and Tigers.

Rosenthal agreed to a deal with the A’s on February 18, making him the last reliever from among our Top 50 Free Agents (where he was 36th) to find work. Among free agent relievers, only the pitcher he was expected to replace, Liam Hendriks, received a contract with a higher average annual value, and only Hendriks, Blake Treinen, Trevor May, and Pedro Báez received larger guarantees. Though slowed by a groin strain in early March, Rosenthal appeared to be on track to open the season with the A’s until a bout of shoulder inflammation led to his placement on the injured list on April 1. Read the rest of this entry »

It took until the late innings of their seventh game of the season, but the 2021 A’s have finally showed they have some fight in them. After losing the first six games of the season by a combined score of 50–13, Oakland was en route to loss No. 7 in a listless Wednesday matinee against the Dodgers, entering the bottom of the seventh with just a single hit and trailing 3–1. Then Matt Chapman halved the deficit with his first homer of the season and, two innings later, opened the ninth with a single to center. A walk, bunt and sacrifice fly scored him to tie the game, and a walk-off single by Mitch Moreland ended things in the 10th, at long last etching a “1” into the Athletics’ win column.

Oakland was the last team in baseball to secure its first win of the season, and by facing Houston and Los Angeles right out of the gate, those wins were always going to be hard to get. But the A’s aren’t a bottom feeder; they were division champs last year and 97-game winners in each of the two previous seasons. But the first week of the season shows how much weaker this year’s edition may be, and that can be traced directly to the effort, or lack thereof, that went into building this roster.

Read the rest of this entry »

Most of the time, I don’t like to make predictions. For one thing, they’re hard! The amount of public information out there is borderline overwhelming. Beating the wisdom of the crowd isn’t easy, particularly when the crowd is using fancy models and copious batted ball data to be wise.

The other big problem with making predictions is that they’re usually wrong if they’re bold. That’s the nature of the game — a bold prediction can’t be the majority of the probability mass, or it wouldn’t be bold. How fun can it possibly be to read a list of things that probably won’t happen?

Well, hopefully very fun, because I’m going to make some this week. These aren’t going to be completely wild guesses, of course, because I do have some idea what I’m doing, but I’m not expecting to go 100% on these. If I go two for four, I’ll definitely call that a win. These are merely the synthesis of some observations that I’ve made over the past year or so, sprinkled with a little bit of boldness dust where necessary to make them exciting instead of milquetoast. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley preview the 2021 Athletics with Alex Coffey of The Athletic and the 2021 Phillies (30:13) with Matt Gelb of The Athletic.

Audio intro: The Divine Comedy, "Come Home Billy Bird"
Audio interstitial: George Harrison, "Stuck Inside a Cloud"
Audio outro: The Apples in Stereo, "Play Tough"

Link to Alex on Beane
Link to Alex on players’ reactions to Semien leaving
Link to Ken Rosenthal on Semien’s exit
Link to Alex on Oakland’s offseason and finances
Link to Alex on the 1955 Mays/Aaron exhibition team
Link to Sam on the Phillies’ rebuild
Link to Matt on the Phillies’ revamped player dev
Link to Matt on the Phillies’ rebuilt bullpen
Link to Matt on Kingery
Link to Matt on Fuld’s promotion
Link to Matt on Dombrowski’s front office
Link to Matt on Harper and the Phillies’ offseason
Link to R.J. Anderson on Mathis
Link to Matt on the Phillies’ outfield failures
Link to Matt on the Phillies’ new roster

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