Ryan Fuller taught high school English in Higganum, Connecticut for four years before becoming the hitting coach of the Baltimore Orioles. An infielder at the University of Connecticut before spending a year in the Arizona Diamondbacks system, the 32-year-old Fuller went on to earn a Master’s degree in Education from the University of New Haven. Books, and the lessons they provide, remain a big part of his life.

Asked about his favorites to teach, Fuller began with Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

“That was a big one for me in 10th-grade honors,” said Fuller, who has tutored hitters at different levels for over a decade. “From a morality standpoint, there are so many things that I connect with. Kids love reading the book and being able to tie it in with what it means to be a good person. They think about other people — about walking in their shoes, as Atticus put it —and the values and morals are still the same today.”

Fuller cited Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” and Stephen Crane’s “The Red Badge of Courage” as other books he’s seen impact specific age groups in particular ways. The lessons are analogous to his current job.

“It’s kind of the same thing we’re doing with our hitters,” explained Fuller, who is well-schooled in hitting analytics. “We’re taking sometimes complex, abstract things that maybe the hitters aren’t really grasping, and turning them into something tangible. They’ll say, ‘Oh, man, that makes sense.” That’s what I enjoy most about being a teacher.” Read the rest of this entry »

This season, Eric and Tess Taruskin will each have a minor league roundup post that runs during the week, with the earlier post recapping some of the weekend’s action. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

Jared Shuster, LHP, Atlanta Braves
Level & Affiliate: Double-A Mississippi Age: 23 Org Rank: TBD FV: 45
Weekend Line: 6 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 8 K

Notes
Shuster’s velocity fluctuated wildly from start to start in 2021, and altogether he averaged just 89-90 mph last year, about three ticks below his typical velo in the lead up to the 2020 draft. It has been more consistent so far in 2022 but had still resided in the 88-91 mph range until Shuster sat 91-93 in his weekend outing. Except for that brief run up to the 2020 draft, Shuster has shown below-average fastball velocity, and while it’s worth continuously monitoring for change (especially because things were up a tad in this most recent start), Shuster’s history as a player points toward this velo band being where he’ll sit for the long haul. His fastball has other characteristics that help enable it to punch above its weight, but it isn’t a plus pitch at its current velocity. Instead, he continues to rely on his plus changeup, of which he has plus command. Shuster locates his cambio down and to his arm side with remarkable consistency, and it is by far his best offering. In part because of how well he hides the ball, Shuster’s slider has some in-zone utility, especially against left-handed hitters, though he struggles to locate it in that enticing, off-the-plate location where most sliders play best. While Shuster doesn’t have a tool for every situation, he is a lefty with a plus changeup whose fastball has sneaky utility despite medium velocity, the skillset of many a No. 4/5 starter. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I discussed some of the young, pre-free agency players who teams should be trying to sign to long-term contract extensions. I hadn’t been planning for there to be a part two, but you guys had so many additional players you wanted to talk about, and I can’t remember the last time I got more DMs about a piece than that one — well, about a piece for which everyone isn’t mad at me, at least!

So, let’s oil up and turn the crank on the ol’ ZiPS-o-Matic and get this projection mill hopping for seven more players.

Walker Buehler, Los Angeles Dodgers: Eight years, $204 million

Buehler is currently in the second and final year of an extension with the Dodgers that pays him $4 million a year. His next deal will be a tad more pricey. Clayton Kershaw is still around in Dodger blue, but his injury history and mild decline resulted in 2021 being the year that Buehler became The Man in the rotation, reducing Kershaw to the role of deuteragonist. And while Los Angeles still has a rocking rotation, the depth isn’t quite what it was in recent years, so there should be more than slight concern that the franchise’s most valuable pitcher is unsigned. With Buehler two years from free agency, the Dodgers aren’t likely to get any massive discounts, but this is the best time to sign him if you don’t want to pay him Gerrit Cole money later. The Dodgers don’t necessarily have to stop at this figure, either; what’s the fun of being wealthy if you don’t use that cash to pay for cool things?

There may be some concern in some places about the dropoff in Buehler’s strikeout rate, but while strikeout rate changes do tend to stick very quickly, they stick far more when the underlying stats support the drop-off than when they don’t. In this case, the contact rates and swinging-strike rates haven’t worsened at all, nor has his velocity fallen off a cliff, suggesting that it’s a blip rather than a plunge. You can make a similar argument for the Dodgers signing Julio Urías to an extension, likely for a significantly lesser haul, but given the workload Buehler has shown he can handle, he’d be my priority. Read the rest of this entry »

The Brewers are atop the NL Central thanks in large part to a rotation that has ranked among the game’s best, but the team’s postseason hopes took a hit this week with the news that righty Freddy Peralta will miss “a significant amount of time” due to a posterior shoulder strain. Milwaukee, which is additionally dealing with multiple injuries in its lineup, believes that Peralta will avoid surgery and return this season, but his loss is a disappointment given the 25-year-old’s recent return to form.

Peralta left Sunday’s start against the Nationals after three-plus innings due to tightness in his left shoulder. He failed to retire any of the three batters he faced in the fourth inning, and all three came around to score, the last two on reliever Brent Suter’s watch along with three others. The five runs that Peralta was charged with were as many as he had allowed over his previous five starts.

Indeed, Peralta had been on a roll. After starting the season by allowing nine runs in seven innings in his first two turns, he went on the aforementioned five-start run. In 28.2 innings, he struck out 38 (a 34.2% rate) and walked six (5.4%) without allowing a single homer, a run capped by his seven-inning, two-hit, 10-strikeout game against the Braves on May 16. Granted, the competition he faced during that strech wasn’t fierce, as the Phillies, Pirates, Reds (twice), and Braves are all below .500, and only Philadelphia has a team wRC+ higher than 94, but such is the schedule of an NL Central contender.

Peralta underwent an MRI on Monday, which revealed the strain. The Brewers expect the injury will heal with rest, but it will take some time. “He will be back this season but it’s going to be a lengthy absence,” manager Craig Counsell told reporters on Monday. “We’re confident that there’s gonna be no aftereffects to this thing but it’s going to take a while to heal and then build it back up.”

Through the ups and downs of his season so far, Peralta’s ERA is a gaudy 4.42, but among the 66 NL pitchers with at least 30 innings through Monday (the cutoff point for all stats here unless otherwise noted), his 2.10 FIP was the league’s lowest, his 0.23 homers per nine ranked third (teammate Adrian Houser was first at 0.21), his 1.3 WAR and 30.3% strikeout rate were sixth, his 22.4% strikeout-walk differential was seventh, and his 2.88 xERA was 14th.

Those peripherals are in line with the All-Star campaign he put up last season. After three years of careful workload management — a span during which he struck out 258 in 192.2 innings but never threw over 85 innings in a season — Peralta broke out with career highs of 27 starts and 144.1 innings in 2021. Among NL pitchers with at least 140 innings, his 2.81 ERA placed sixth and his 3.12 FIP was seventh. His 33.6% strikeout rate was third behind only teammate Corbin Burnes and Max Scherzer, and his 24.0% strikeout-walk differential was good for fourth behind that pair and Aaron Nola. Only a late-season bout of shoulder inflammation, for which Peralta spent 15 days on the injured list and had a few shortened starts on either side, put a damper on his strong campaign and prevented him from down-ballot consideration in the Cy Young voting. Read the rest of this entry »

This Wednesday, Corbin Burnes had a forgettable start. In six innings, he allowed four runs and struck out five while walking none. The scoring came courtesy of two home runs, a three-run shot by Austin Riley and a solo homer by Marcell Ozuna. Burnes lasted six innings, and while the Brewers ended up winning the game 7-6 in extras, it wasn’t exactly the kind of start you expect from the defending NL Cy Young winner.

Last year, Burnes was downright electric en route to winning the award. He led the NL in ERA at 2.43, and his ERA was significantly higher than his 1.63 FIP. He struck out 35.6% of the batters he faced while walking only 5.2%. He did it in only 28 starts and 167 innings, which raised questions about the trade-off between transcendent pitching and bulk innings.

If you only looked at his first and most recent starts of 2022, you might think the same thing was happening again. You’ve already heard about the most recent one; in his first start, he went five innings against the Cubs, allowed three earned runs, and struck out only four while walking three. Sure, the runs were uncharacteristic, but five and six inning starts? We’ve seen that before. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and once again, we’re hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features a pair of southpaws — White Sox starter Dallas Keuchel and Brewers reliever Brent Suter — on their changeups.

———

Dallas Keuchel, Chicago White Sox

“A changeup was the first pitch I learned growing up. My dad never let me throw a breaking ball. He just had me split my fingers and try to throw a fastball as hard as I could. That was probably … let me think for a moment with my Rolodex here. I was maybe eight years old? Regardless, I don’t know how many miles per hour it was off, but it had some good deception and movement, so that’s what I rolled with through a lot of my childhood.

“I didn’t grip it like a palm ball, but a kid’s fingers are obviously smaller than the baseball, so we just tinkered with splitting the two fingers. What stuck was splitting three fingers together, instead of a circle change. It’s more of a three-finger prong changeup. When I say prong, what I mean is like a fork. But it worked well for me. It just kind of rolled off, and I’d get some whiffs and some weak contact. Read the rest of this entry »

Brandon Woodruff has been good for years now, but he’s always flown a bit under the radar. In some ways, he can thank his rotation-mates for that: Corbin Burnes has overshadowed him with his ascension to ace status, and Eric Lauer and Freddy Peralta have taken big steps forward of their own. The lack of attention directed Woodruff’s way might also have something to do with him being a little boring. He’s been a polished pitcher with a diverse arsenal since his major league debut in 2017, and nothing has really changed about him since he broke out as a full-time starter in ’19; his performance, velocity, mechanics, and arsenal have all remained consistent. And while having the seventh-best ERA- and fifth-best FIP- in baseball since 2019 unequivocally makes him a great pitcher, he doesn’t seem to have been as big a part of the “best pitcher in baseball” conversations that happen around hypothetical water coolers as those numbers might suggest.

His start to 2022 isn’t helping him much in that regard, with a 5.18 ERA through five outings, though there’s some small-sample funkiness behind that number. Woodruff’s BABIP is 25 points higher than his career average, his LOB rate is an unsustainably low 60%, and his ERA estimators are all around where they typically have been (2.83 FIP/3.25 xFIP/3.07 xERA). I’m not worried about his long-term performance, and regardless, that’s not what this article is about. Instead, I want to focus on Woodruff’s changeup, a pitch that has been anything but boring this season and that was on full display in his most recent start against the Reds:

Most of the talk surrounding Woodruff focuses on his pair of elite, high-velocity, whiff-inducing fastballs, which he throws over 60% of the time. Otherwise, he mixes in a curve and a slider that have both served him well, even if they’ve never quite reached the level of his heaters. Woodruff’s changeup, though, has started to become a serious weapon:

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been far too long since we celebrated Rowdy Tellez. We ought to be toasting the achievements and the moniker of the Brewers’ burly first baseman on a routine basis, as they testify to the extent to which skilled ballplayers comes in all shapes and sizes, and if anyone wants to convene a parade towards that end, I’m happy to volunteer my services as grand marshal. With the 27-year-old slugger in the midst of a superlative week that’s placed him among more familiar names on the leaderboards, it’s high time to check in on ol’ Rowdy.

In the midst of a six-game onslaught during which the Brewers pounded 20 homers and scored 54 runs against the Cubs and Reds, on Wednesday, Tellez put together the biggest game of a career that’s spanned parts of five seasons, going 4-for-6 with a double, two homers, and eight RBIs. To be fair it came against a Cincinnati squad that took the opportunity to allow a season-high 18 runs while losing their eighth straight game and 19th out of 20, and against pitchers of questionable quality even within that context. After collecting a first-inning single off Vladimir Gutierrez, Tellez crushed a grand slam off him in the third, one with a projected distance of 453 feet; the drubbing helped push the Cincinnati righty’s ERA to 8.86. In the sixth inning, Tellez added a 431-foot two-run homer off rookie reliever Dauri Moreta (ERA: 5.11), and in the eighth, he added a bases-loaded double against position player Matt Reynolds:

Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Developer – Baseball Systems

Summary The Developer – Baseball Systems will collaborate with the Application Development team to develop exciting user-facing applications for platforms within Baseball Operations. This position requires strong software development skills and experience, as well as a demonstrated ability for independent thought and the willingness to work within a team framework.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. Other duties may be assigned.

• Design new experiences and displays for usage within our systems especially with the R&D team
• Develop new application features and work with end users to ensure acceptance and reliability
• Assist in creation of application content and visualizations, especially for mobile environments
• Create tests, document, and participate in code reviews around new features and functionality
• Work with teammates to support existing functionality of systems, including user support

Qualifications To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.

• Experience with software development, including requirements definition, design, development, testing, implementation, and iterative improvement
• Proficiency with front-end web development technologies (including HTML5, CSS, JavaScript)
• Strong understanding of desktop, laptop and mobile UI/UX design concepts and demonstrated ability to apply responsive design techniques
• Familiarity with server-side web programming languages such as Java, C#, or Go
• Baseball fan with a desire to work closely with the entire Baseball Operations department

Preferred skills The skills listed below will help an individual perform the job, however they are not all required.

• Familiarity with advanced statistical baseball concepts, including advanced statistics and player evaluation metrics
• Experience with data visualizations tools such as D3.js or similar, particularly for large data sets
• Experience with Microsoft technologies including C# and SQL Server
• Experience with front end JavaScript frameworks such as Angular, React, or Vue

Education and/or Experience
Bachelor’s degree (B. A.) in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field from four-year college or university; and zero- three years related experience and/or training; or equivalent combination of education and experience.

Computer Skills
To perform the job successfully, the individual must be proficient using Microsoft office software including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook, and Internet Explorer.

Other Skills and Abilities
Capable of working extended hours such as overtime, nights, and weekends when necessary.

Language Skills
Ability to read and comprehend simple instructions, short correspondence, and memos. Ability to write reports, business correspondence, and procedure manuals. Ability to effectively present information in one-on-one and small group situations to department members and non-technical baseball operations staff.

Mathematical Skills
Ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide in all units of measure, using whole numbers, common fractions, and decimals. Ability to compute rate, ratio, and percent and to draw and interpret bar graphs.

Reasoning Ability
Ability to define problems, collect data, establish facts, and draw valid conclusions. Ability to apply common sense understanding to carry out detailed but uninvolved written or oral instructions. Ability to deal with problems involving a few concrete variables in standardized situations.

Physical Demands
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this Job, the employee is regularly required to use hands to finger, handle, or feel and talk or hear. The employee is frequently required to reach with hands and arms. The employee is occasionally required to stand; walk; sit and stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl. The employee must regularly lift and /or move up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, peripheral vision and ability to adjust focus.

Work Environment
The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this Job, the employee is regularly exposed to outside weather conditions, which may include heat, cold and various forms of precipitation.
The employee is occasionally exposed to moving mechanical parts.
The noise level in the work environment is usually quiet.

Work Hours
Business hours are Monday – Friday 9am – 5pm, however, candidates must be capable of working extended hours such as overtime, nights, and weekends, when necessary.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Milwaukee Brewers.

One of my favorite yearly preseason pieces is also my most dreaded: the breakout list. I’ve been doing this exercise since 2014, and while I’ve had the occasional triumph (hello, Christian Yelich), the low-probability nature of trying to project who will beat expectations means that for every time you look smart, you’re also bound to look dumb for some other reason.

Let’s start things off with a brief look at last year’s breakout hitter list and see how they fared.

• Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: .311/.401/.601, 166 wRC+, 6.7 WAR
• Alex Kirilloff: .251/.299/.423, 93 wRC+, 0.3 WAR
• Kyle Schwarber: .266/.374/.554, 145 wRC+, 3.1 WAR
• Gary Sánchez: .204/.307/.423, 99 wRC+, 1.5 WAR
• J.P. Crawford: .273/.338/.376, 103 wRC+, 3.1 WAR
• Nathaniel Lowe: .264/.357/.415, 115 wRC+, 1.6 WAR
• Ryan McMahon: .254/.331/.449, 95 wRC+, 2.5 WAR
• Luis Urías: .249/.345/.445, 111 wRC+, 2.7 WAR

On the plus side, nobody really embarrassed me. Alex Kirilloff came closest, but in his defense, he was playing with a wrist injury that eventually required surgery. Read the rest of this entry »