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 the fifth installment of this series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Max Fried, Tommy Kahnle, and John Smoltz — on how they learned and/or developed a specific pitch.
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Max Fried (Braves) on His Curveball
“I learned my curveball when I was pretty young, maybe nine or 10. It started out as more of a knuckle curve, although I didn’t really spike it. I would kind of curl my pointer finger down on the ball.
The track record for 37-year-olds coming off down years isn’t excellent.
(Photo: Keith Allison)
Jose Bautista hit 23 homers last season but still had trouble finding a job over the winter. This wasn’t a conspiracy against Bautista, though, or a case of the slow free-agent market at work. Those 23 homers put the former star in a tie for just 84th overall in the majors in 2017, a season during which 117 players hit 20 homers and three-fourths of qualified batters hit at least 15.
Between Bautista’s pedestrian home-run figure, his batting line of .203/.308/.366, and his 80 wRC+, few if any teams pursued him. His poor range in the outfield and similarly poor speed on the basepaths rendered him something worse than replacement-level last year, and at 37 years old, it’s reasonable to believe Bautista’s days as a productive player are behind him. Just in case he’s not done, however, the Atlanta Braves are going to give him a shot.
Editor’s Note: This piece originally appeared at FanGraphs on April 17, 2018 to mark the 71st anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking major league baseball’s color line.
Sunday was Jackie Robinson Day around the majors, commemorating the anniversary — the 71st, this year — of the fall of baseball’s color line via Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. But just as Robinson’s immeasurable courage in confronting racism and the immense talent he showed while playing at the highest level deserve more than a single day for paying tribute, so too is it worth remembering the black players who bravely followed in his footsteps and ensured that baseball’s great experiment would not be a one-off. In the two decades following Robinson’s arrival, the influx of talent, first from the Negro Leagues and then the sandlots and high schools whose players previously could not have dreamt of such an opportunity, radically transformed the National League, in particular.
Led by president and general manager Branch Rickey, the Dodgers, of course, got the jump. During Robinson’s major-league career, which lasted from 1947 to 1956, the Dodgers won six pennants as well as their lone Brooklyn-era championship in 1955. In addition to becoming a pioneer of tremendous importance, Jackie himself was the game’s third-most valuable player over that span according to WAR (57.2), behind only Stan Musial and Ted Williams. While the Dodgers had a great supporting cast of white players such as Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Reese, and Duke Snider, those teams also got great work from two Negro Leagues graduates whom Rickey had signed before Robinson even reached the majors — namely Roy Campanella, who debuted in 1948 and went on to win three NL MVP awards, and Don Newcombe, who debuted in 1949, won Rookie of the Year honors that season, and would later win a Cy Young and an MVP award.
Though Rickey lost a power struggle to Walter O’Malley and was forced to sell his share of the team following the 1950 season, the Dodgers furthered their dominance over the NL in part by continuing to sign talented black players. Under Buzzie Bavasi as general manager and Fresco Thompson as director of minor-league operations, the organization added right-hander Joe Black (1952 NL Rookie of the Year), infielder Jim Gilliam (1953 NL Rookie of the Year), outfielder Sandy Amoros, second baseman Charlie Neal, catcher John Roseboro, shortstop Maury Wills (1962 NL MVP), and outfielders Tommy Davis and Willie Davis (no relation), among others.
Amoros, Black, and Gilliam would augment the Dodgers’ Robinson-era core, and the latter remained a vital lineup cog through the transitional phase that included the franchise’s 1957 move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and their return to powerhouse status behind the one-two pitching punch of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. Neal, Roseboro, and Wills would each spend at least half a decade in the minors and/or as understudies awaiting their shots before contributing to the team’s 1959 pennant and championship, with the latter two becoming more central alongside the two Davises as the team won championships in 1963 and 1965, and added one more pennant in 1966, Koufax’s final year. Tommy Davis, a left fielder, won back-to-back NL batting titles in 1962 and -63, while Willie Davis, a center fielder, was the position’s best defender this side of Willie Mays (his three errors in Game Two of the 1966 World Series to the contrary).
The Braves and Cubs played a game on Saturday that offered some of the best elements in baseball, including a collection of great young players and an amazing comeback. It also possessed some of the game’s worst possible qualities, including awful weather and incredibly sloppy play likely caused by that same bad weather.
In the end, we saw the Braves jump out to a 10-2 lead and feature a 99.4% chance of winning the game as late as the seventh inning. Despite adding a few runs, the Cubs’ win probability was still just 2.0% in the eighth after Efren Navarro whiffed to record the inning’s second out. Nine two-out runs later, Chicago’s probability of losing was just 2.6%.
For five full innings in the middle of the Saturday’s contest, things appeared to be over. Before we get to the craziness of the eighth, however let’s talk a little about the weather. Cubs manager Joe Maddon did not believe the game should have been played and then added his perspective.
“I thought the 2008 World Series game I participated in was the worst. It just got surpassed,” Maddon said. “This is not baseball weather. The elements were horrific to play baseball in. That is the worst elements I ever participated in in a baseball game. Ever.”
Maddon has certainly been around for a while, so his comments carry some weight. His represents merely one opinion, though. What about the players? What about Peter Moylan, for example?
“I’ve been playing since 2006 and never seen anything like that,” said veteran Peter Moylan, the last of the relievers in the inning and the one who threw the wild pitch that let in a run. “We’ve been rained out and been snowed out, but we’ve never had to play through (expletive) like that.”
It’s probably nothing, right? It’s probably one of those things we only notice because it’s the start of the season, and there’s not enough signal yet to drown out the noise. You know how early statistics can be. Ryan Flaherty is batting .333. Gary Sanchez is batting .122. Every so often, Flaherty will bat .333, and every so often, Sanchez will bat .122, but most of the time we don’t care, because most of the time we don’t even know. That’s the beauty of baseball come July and August. The sheer size of the data samples prevents us from looking like idiots.
So, it’s probably nothing. I don’t want to alarm you. At the same time, I’m finding something hard not to notice. I have to at least raise this as a point of conversation. You’re familiar with Freddie Freeman. Amazing hitter. Best player on the Braves. For a month and a half to open last year, Freeman performed like a league MVP, before getting unfortunately hurt. There’s nothing weird about the fact that Freeman looks good again. Got a 208 wRC+. There is, however, something weird about this.
While employed as a beat reporter, one thing I learned from photographers is the virtue of patience. One has to keep paying attention, keep triggering the digital camera’s capture button, or risk missing a memorable moment, the best moment of a career. Photographers are fishing, really. There is no DVR playback in live-image capturing.
Only shaky video from a handheld smartphone captured the moment on Tuesday evening.
If it weren’t for Ashley’s wherewithal to employ her phone’s video option, the world might have missed Cristian Pache’s second professional home run. All those who were not present at SunTrust Park had already missed his first. Each occurred on Tuesday night in Atlanta.
Nowadays it seems everything that happens in major-league baseball is captured by high-definition camera. But the Braves’ final exhibition game against a contingent of their minor leaguers at SunTrust Park on Tuesday night was not televised. It was an exhibition, a final warm-up the club dubbed as the Braves vs. Future Stars. We will have only the oral histories to document what happened. And something remarkable did happen.
Kris Bryant has become the handsome, clear-eyed face of service-time manipulation.
(Photo: Arturo Pardavila III)
Three years ago, Kris Bryant ranked as the best prospect in baseball. Then 23 years old, Bryant had brutalized minor-league pitching the year before and destroyed the competition in spring training with nine homers and 17 total hits in 44 plate appearances. Despite a clubhouse that now included Jon Lester and manager Joe Maddon among others — part of the Cubs’ signal to the world they were ready to compete — Bryant was easily one of the best 25 players in the organization, probably among the top five, and eventually proved during the season he was Chicago’s best position player.
And yet, the Cubs opted not to start the season with Kris Bryant on the roster. Once Bryant had spent enough days at Triple-A to extend his team control by a year — to become a free agent after the 2021 season instead of the 2020 campaign — the future MVP received a callup to the majors.
Bryant is still the most famous and most obvious case of a team’s effort to manipulate player service time to the potential detriment of the on-field product, but it happened before Bryant, has happened since Bryant, and is likely to keep happening. This season, there are several prominent players who might be kept off their major-league rosters for a time so that the team might save money and gain control of the player for an extra season.
For those unfamiliar with how service time works in these instances, here it is briefly. Players achieve free agency once they have six years of service time. Although the season lasts 187 days, a player is considered to have played a full season if he appears on an MLB roster or disabled list for 172 days. In any season where a player hits the 172-day threshold, that counts as one season of service time. If a player belongs to the roster for fewer than 172 days, he must combine those days with days from another campaign to reach the official “full season” mark.
Kris Bryant’s case is a useful example of this work. In 2015, he was on the roster for 171 days. That time counts only as a partial season. In the last two years, Bryant has been on the roster for more than 180 days each year, and each of those seasons count as one year of service time. At the end of the 2020 season, Bryant will have five seasons and 171 days of service, one day short of the six seasons necessary for free agency. As a result, he will need to play in 2021 to become a free agent. An extended discussion of service time appears in the FanGraphs glossary.
On February 15, 2018, top prospect Ronald Acuña Jr. wore his hat in a way different than baseball players wear hats. Mass hysteria immediately followed. The teenagers looted. Bill Haley’s obstreperous pleas for 24-hour rebellion blasted. The unmistakable Mary Jane wafted through the air. Supporters of decorum openly wept. There was fire and dancing in the shadows of crumbling architecture.
Actually, no. None of that happened. Rather, Acuña Jr. let his locks show during spring-training camp. Nobody seemed to care at the time.
Yet, as Mark Bowman of MLB.com noted earlier this week, Atlanta was concerned. Wrote Bowman: “the Braves want Acuña to wear his hat straight and maintain a professional appearance while in uniform.
It was a shame, since it overshadowed former Brave wunderkind and Acuña spring-training mentor Andruw Jones seemingly inventing a fun new term.
From Jones:
The main thing he needs to remember is keep your head straight and respect [your surroundings]. Be humble, but a humble-cocky.
The cap story was controversial. Some noted the racial hypocrisy. Some theorized it was a ploy by Atlanta to later claim the very talented but very young Acuña should hang his hat in a home in Triple-A Gwinnett for the beginning of the 2018 season, in order to acquire an extra year of team control. Manager Brian Snitker said this afternoon talk of Acuña’s hat was “blown out of proportion.” Well, yeah. Acuña readjusting himself following a catch during Friday afternoon’s game against the Yankees should not have been as dramatic as it was.
Acuña hasn’t worn his hat any differently than his teammates in either of his televised spring-training starts, and photos from last year’s Futures Game show he probably never wore it at any disapproving angle during any game in his nascent career.
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Atlanta Braves. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from our own (both Eric Longenhagen’s and Kiley McDaniel’s) observations. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.
Acuna has taken an unusual path to becoming an elite prospect. He signed for $100,000 out of Venezuela in 2014, and less than a year later, the Braves knew they had something special. He had gotten more physical while also exhibiting both better-than-expected plate discipline and also lofty exit velocities. Many expected 2016 to be his coming out party — and, in fact, it was in the eyes of scouts who saw him. He had only 179 plate appearances due to injury, though, so he didn’t get a chance to put up the numbers to really draw attention. In 2017, Acuna made the leap from scout favorite and known toolshed to one of the top prospects in baseball.
Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Justin Verlander’s contribution to the juiced-balls debate, home runs, and a frank Justin Upton interview about how teams treat players, then preview the 2018 Cardinals (27:08) with FanGraphs’ Craig Edwards, and the 2018 Braves (57:28) with broadcaster Grant McAuley.
