Rowdy Tellez has stopped swinging. Not entirely; he’s tied for ninth in the National League with 12 home runs and 20th with a .494 slugging percentage. But this year, the Brewers slugger has cut at just 35.3% of all pitches, the second-lowest rate in baseball after the famously choosy Juan Soto. It’s uncharacteristic of Tellez, representing an eight-point drop from last year and a 13.2-point drop from his 2021 campaign. The new approach has done wonders for his chase rate: his O-Swing%, which was 35.2% in 2021 and 31.0% in 2022, is now 33rd in the majors at 25.9%. And while he’s never been a terribly impatient hitter, cutting back on swings at bad pitches has meant a rising walk rate, which isn’t quite Soto-esque at 12.0% but is a marked improvement from his 7.1% rate two years ago. That alone will get you on base an extra 30 or so times over a full season.
Tellez started to change his approach last year, swinging at fewer and fewer pitches than he had through the first three-plus seasons of his career. For most of his time in Toronto, he offered at somewhere between 48% and 50% of pitches he saw, but right around the time he was dealt to Milwaukee in 2021, he got a fair bit more aggressive with pitches over the plate, cutting at 73.9% of strikes and just 34.5% of pitches outside the zone. Since then, the aggression at the plate has given way to radical levels of patience:
Now, stop me if you can guess what the problem with never swinging the bat is: he’s taking a lot more strikes. While everyone else in the league is swinging at a majority of the pitches they see in the zone, Tellez is offering at just 47.4%, nearly seven points lower than any of his contemporaries. If he keeps this up, he’ll be the first qualifier to swing at less than half of pitches in the zone since David Fletcher in 2019 and ’20. In the 22 seasons of our Z-Swing% data, his 47.4% rate would be second-lowest over a full season, beating only Brett Gardner’s 44.8% in 2010. Read the rest of this entry »
There is some fantastic coaching happening in Milwaukee. Over the last handful of years, there have been multiple instances of catchers completely turning their defense around with the Brewers, with Omar Narváez the most notable example. The team’s latest success story is William Contreras. In his first 146 games with Atlanta, Contreras was a solid player with an exceptional bat. In 376 plate appearances in 2022, he had a 138 wRC+. That is a great mark for any hitter, let alone a catcher. However, his defense was lackluster across the board. The skills were there — that didn’t seem to be a major concern — but Contreras’ performance was below average when it came to framing, blocking, and throwing. It seemed like his defense might be a slow burn, but Milwaukee had another plan in mind.
To get an idea of how incredible Contreras has been so far, we will start with the numbers. You might be shocked when you see them because this isn’t a story of a catcher going from below average to average. This is the story of a catcher going from below average to top tier:
William Contreras Catching Metrics
Season
Pitches Caught
Strike Rate
Framing Runs AA
Blocks AA
Caught Stealing AA
2021
1317
45.3
-3
-5
-1
2022
1629
45.1
-3
3
-4
2023
815
49.2
2
7
1
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
Are you confused? I’m confused. When I first saw these numbers, my jaw dropped. Catcher is the most physically demanding and difficult position on the field. To suddenly become one of the best at the position in a matter of months is inconceivable to me. Typically, a player will see improvements in one area one year, another in the next, and so on and so forth. Contreras didn’t have a typical ascent though. Instead, he did all of this practically overnight. His framing has moved from the 20th percentile last year to the 74th percentile this year. In 2022, he wasn’t even in the top 50 of blocking runs saved, but he now leads all catchers. Yes, that’s a better rate than J.T. Realmuto or Sean Murphy have managed. Lastly, his throwing has been good this year as well. Despite no real improvement in terms of his pop time, his CS% jumped from 7% to 33%. That is most likely due to significantly improved accuracy and footwork. So what gives? How in the world is he pulling this off?
I’ll start with blocking. A rapid improvement here makes more sense to me than framing. I say that because blocking is all about preparation, both pre-game and pre-pitch. Pre-game, you have to do the necessary work to understand your staff’s pitch shapes and tendencies. If this becomes back of the hand knowledge to you, then blocking in game is that much easier. Pre-pitch, you use that knowledge to determine your setup and decision making. After watching every pitch that Statcast labeled as a block for Contreras both last year and this year, it’s become clear to me that the improvement is rooted in Contreras no longer attempting to block right-handed breaking balls and offspeed pitches with his chest. Here is some video from 2022 to start:
All three of these pitches are standard blocking attempts. There isn’t a 30 foot spiked pitch or one with wicked side-to-side spin. Technically, they are all executed blocks since the runner doesn’t advance and they didn’t scoot far enough away to be passed balls. However, each of these locations should be areas that a catcher stuffs right in front of them. Now, let’s see what Contreras does this year in the face of right-handed breaking ball and offspeed pitches:
This is unorthodox! When I think of the great pickers, names like Yadier Molina, Francisco Cervelli, and Joe Mauer come to mind. But the weird thing is, they didn’t all exclusively pick! Usually there is a time and place where you just have to get your body in front of the ball, but for Contreras, his hand is the best possible extension of his body he could have. On spiked curveballs or side-sweeping sliders far in front of the plate, he is picking the ball with ease.
There were signs this was a special skill for Contreras last year — he picked countless nasty sliders from Spencer Strider all season. But it’s quite unorthodox to tell a catcher to completely sell out for this approach. However, if you’re confident enough in the scouting that says he has 80-grade hands and readability, then heck, just go for it! The early returns are quite promising too. You may think this is luck, but these four examples are representative of a skill that Contreras has shown to be repeatable all season no matter the pitcher or pitch shape.
Now, let’s move on to the other key part of catching directly related to smooth, strong hands: framing. If you can recall from the table above, Contreras’ strike rate has increased by 4.1 percentage points since last year, and his framing runs have increased by 5. The best opportunity for a catcher to make a big jump in framing is the bottom of the zone, from the middle of their body and away from their glove hand – and that has indeed been the point of focus and improvement for the Brewers backstop. Statcast defines these two zones as Zone 18 (middle-low shadow zone) and Zone 19 (arm side-low shadow zone). In Zone 18, Contreras’ strike rate has jumped from 43.6% to 62.7% (third in baseball). In Zone 19, it’s jumped from 20.3% to 29.7% (ninth in baseball). That’s another huge increase that warrants some video work. Here are six videos of pitches in Zone 18 – the first three are from 2022 and the second three are from 2023:
2022
2023
This trend was much easier to pick up on than the picking! Right away you can see that Contreras has changed his pre-pitch hand position. In 2022, his hands were stabby at the bottom of the zone. One crucial part of framing fastballs at the bottom of the zone is having a loose wrist as the pitch is being released. That slight quarter turn he did before the pitch wasn’t enough for him to keep consistent looseness between his wrist and elbow. Even when he did attempt a quarter turn (as with Kyle Wright’s sinker), it was off tempo and he still ended up bringing up his glove to the middle of his body before the pitch arrived.
In 2023, he has bought into a soft quarter turn that allows him to stay under the ball through reception. If you can stay under every single pitch, you can better manipulate the presentation of the ball. Pushing up through a fastball is much smoother than stabbing it and picking your glove back up. The best way for you to do that consistently is by making sure your glove always starts under the height of the shadow zone. It’s a simple concept that doesn’t require the catcher to take on a complete overhaul. Cue the right motions and targets, and the catcher will begin to understand what that reception should feel like. Contreras clearly now has that understanding and ability to execute every pitch.
As far as throwing is concerned, it’s not surprising to see early success for Contreras just from a mental point of view. If you’re confident in your receiving and blocking, then your mind is in a better place to execute solid mechanics and make an accurate throw. But I do have to point out how the improvement in framing can directly impact this as well. With a smooth motion from the ground up, your hands are in a better position to perform consistent exchanges. Stabbing at the ball brings your momentum back towards the ground, whereas a fluid motion starting from the ground lets you maintain a fluid motion towards your ear. It is all connected!
This early success is amazing for both Contreras and the Brewers. Last year, their two primary catchers were Victor Caratini and Narváez. Both were sub-90 wRC+ hitters despite their great catching. That led to 2.3 combined WAR on the year. Through 33 games (29 at catcher), Contreras has already accumulated 1.1 WAR. If he stays on that track, it will be a significant upgrade for the team. It’s an exciting development for both the club and a young catcher who looked like he might be an offense-first player behind the dish. Kudos once again, Milwaukee.
The 2023 season represents a golden opportunity for the Brewers. Their long-time tormenters, the Cardinals, can’t get out of their own way. The Cubs aren’t quite ready for prime time yet. The Pirates are an awesome story, but they’re light on impact players; this feels more like a feel-good warmup for the future than their year to shine. But the Brewers have problems of their own: their vaunted starting pitching has let them down to start the year.
You might assume I’m talking about the shaky back of the rotation; after all, the Brewers have been built around Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, and Freddy Peralta for years now. But Wade Miley is holding up his end of the bargain, and even Colin Rea and Eric Lauer have turned in mid-4s ERAs — hardly a disaster. Instead, the problems have come at the very top: Woodruff is out indefinitely with a shoulder injury, and Burnes simply doesn’t look like himself this year.
Over the past three seasons, Burnes had established himself as one of the best pitchers in baseball. He has outrageous strikeout stuff; his 33.4% strikeout rate over those three years was 0.1 percentage points off of the best mark in baseball for a qualified starter. He mastered his command in the past two seasons, turning in back-to-back years of excellent walk rates. He even added durability, topping 200 innings in 2022, the first time in his career he’d even exceeded 170.
What’s gone wrong this year? A little bit of everything, to be honest. He’s walking more batters. His strikeouts have gone missing in action. His velocity is down across the board, as are his swinging-strike and chase rates. He’s giving up more contact than ever before, and “ever before” encompasses the 2019 season, when he ran up an 8.82 ERA and 6.09 FIP and got sent to the bullpen. In sum, he’s pitched to a 3.86 ERA and 4.34 FIP this year, quite the letdown after his last three years produced a 2.62 ERA and 2.40 FIP. Read the rest of this entry »
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The Brewers announced on Sunday that pitcher Brandon Woodruff’s shoulder pain has been diagnosed as a mild subscapular strain, meaning a trip to the injured list was in order. But while the word “mild” appears, the result is anything but, as it’s almost certain that he will spend significantly more time on the IL than the minimum 15 days, and a trip to the 60-day IL may be in order.
The good news is that the team doesn’t believe, at this time, that surgery will be required. But in talking about the injury, Woodruff didn’t sound like a player who was particularly optimistic about a quick return.
“If this was something that happened midseason, All-Star break, right before or after that time, I would probably end up being done, to be honest, for the season.”
[…]
“I’m not going to rush this, I’m not going to come back too early just for the sake of coming back early,” Woodruff said. “That’s just not going to do anybody any good. I’m going to take my time, I’m going to listen to my body and trust the rehab process and just go through that, and hopefully come back at whatever point that is throughout the season and then try to finish up strong.”
The subscapularis is one of four muscles that make up the rotator cuff and is a stability muscle that is key to keeping the shoulder from being dislocated. It’s one of the muscles less likely to be injured, but the recovery time for pitchers has been significant. Corey Kluber missed three months in 2021, and Justin Dunn has been shut down since the start of spring training, though his case is complicated by the fact that his shoulder problems are more longstanding. In a small study of eight professional players in Japan with similar injuries, the five pitchers had a mean time of 81.5 days until return to play, with a significance variance among the players that wasn’t based on severity of the injury. Looking back at the players 21 months after their injury, none of the eight suffered a recurrent injury to the muscle. Read the rest of this entry »
We’re only a week into the regular season, which means it’s too early to do any serious analysis. Or, to spin things another way, it’s a perfect time to hurry up and write about something wild that’s happening before everyone regresses to the mean.
Anderson was the best hitter in baseball in the first week of the 2023 MLB regular season. Through Wednesday’s games, he led the league in wOBA and xwOBA, and was a close second to Adam Duvall in wRC+. Anderson probably won’t finish the season with a wRC+ over 300 — though if he does, I guarantee we’ll cover it — but he’s no Tuffy Rhodes. He was a very good player not too long ago, and this hot start might represent a return to form. Read the rest of this entry »
The ribbon has been cut on the 2023 season and I wanted to push a few prospect updates live to The Board, including a few tweaks to the Top 100 list. This update also includes publication of scouting reports such that every rookie currently on an active roster now has a current record on The Board, and a few additions the farm systems I’ve already audited during this cycle based on things I saw during spring training.
Let’s start with injury-related updates to the Top 100. Phillies top prospect Andrew Painter has a partially torn UCL and is approaching the end of his four-week shutdown period. Rule of thumb: Among a similarly talented group of players, you’d most want to have the healthy guys. Painter slides from fifth overall to 12th, right behind newly minted big leaguers Anthony Volpe and Jordan Walker, who are comparably talented, healthy, and making a big league impact right now. This is just a cosmetic change to the list; Painter’s evaluation hasn’t changed. If it turns out he needs Tommy John, whether or not I slide him any further will depend on its timing. If rest doesn’t work and his surgery is timed such that he also misses all of 2024, that’s the worst case scenario for Painter and the Phillies. We know for sure that Nationals pitching prospect Cade Cavalli needs Tommy John, so in a similar fashion he falls within the 50 FV player tier, sliding from 63rd overall to 99th, right next to Mason Miller of the A’s, with whom he now shares injury-related relief risk.
Tigers prospect Jackson Jobe, the third overall pick in 2021, is going to miss three to six months due to lumbar spine inflammation. This injury is more novel than a TJ, and Jobe isn’t exactly coming off a great 2022. Unfortunately, this situation merits a more meaningful shift, but I still want to reflect the upside of a healthy Jobe, so he downshifts to the 45+ FV tier, where the most talented of the young high-variance prospects reside. Assuming he comes back late this season, he’ll be one of the higher-priority evaluations in the minors. Read the rest of this entry »
The Brewers are vying for a playoff spot in 2023, and rightfully so. Despite coming up short last season, their roster is quite talented. Their playoff odds sit at 57% and their division odds at 37.6%, trailing only the Cardinals in the latter among NL Central squads. They’re led by a strong starting rotation, but the offense has at a least a few question marks. After trading for a potential bounceback candidate earlier this winter in Jesse Winker, they are hoping for the same in Luke Voit, who is joining Milwaukee this spring as a non-roster invite. After the worst offensive season in his professional career, Voit couldn’t land a guaranteed roster spot anywhere and will instead attempt to make a Brewers team in need of some offensive pop.
Voit is a good hitter. His recent track record might paint him as average, but injuries have limited his performance in consecutive years. Even though last season wasn’t nearly as productive as any of his years in New York, he still finished it with a 102 wRC+ in 568 plate appearances. And while it’s no longer realistic to assume good health from Voit, if he can sustain even semi-consistent health, he can be an offensive boost for the Brew Crew.
As it stands, the Brewers have a few options who will rotate between first base and designated hitter on a non-permanent basis, and none have the potential juice that Voit has. Let’s look at those options and how their ZiPS projection compares with Voit’s:
Assuming health, Tellez and Winker are the only hitters guaranteed to be in the lineup almost every game. Tellez performed well last year and has the advantageous platoon split; Milwaukee’s offense is highly dependent on him repeating his 2022 season. Winker is expected to be the most productive of the other options. He will likely move between the outfield and designated hitter (and probably spend more time doing the latter than playing the former), but if he hits anything like he did in Cincinnati and as ZiPS expects him to, the at-bats for Voit will be limited. Despite this, Winker and Tellez are both left-handed, leaving some room for Voit to get decent playing time. Read the rest of this entry »
Sal Frelick is a pure hitter from a cold weather climate. He is also one of the top prospects in the Brewers’ system and ranks 68th overall on our recently released Top 100. A Massachusetts native who was drafted 15th overall in 2021 out of Boston College, the 22-year-old outfielder is coming off of a first full professional season in which he slashed .331/.403/.480 with 11 home runs between three levels. Moreover, he fanned just 63 times in 562 plate appearances and spent the final two months with Triple-A Nashville. Assigned a 50 FV by our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen, the 5-foot-9-and-a-half, 184-pound left-handed hitter doesn’t project to hit for much power, but his elite contact skills make him one of the more intriguing position player prospects in the National League.
Frelick discussed his line-drive approach and his ascent to pro ball prior to the start of spring training.
———
David Laurila: You’re obviously a very good hitter. Where did you learn to hit?
Sal Frelick: “I don’t know if I ever learned from anybody, For as long as I can remember, the only thing I’ve tried to do is not strike out. I’ve wanted to put the ball in play, and over time, with that being the number one priority for me, it’s kind of how the swing I have now developed.”
Laurila: Is it basically the same swing you had as a kid?
Frelick: “Just about. It’s obviously gotten a little cleaner mechanically, but for the most part it’s been just short and compact. It’s not the prettiest thing you’ll ever see, but it gets the job done.”
Laurila: What’s not pretty about it?
Frelick: “If you look at your average lefty, sweet-swinging [Robinson] Canó-type of player, they have these nice long swings. Because I’ve always been trying to stay as short as possible, trying not to swing and miss, it’s just kind of compact.” Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the USA World Baseball Classic roster’s so-so starting pitching, the difficulty of recruiting top pitchers for the tournament, and Japan’s staff, Meg’s college baseball weekend and Juan Soto sighting, Orioles owner John Angelos’s latest comments, and MLB’s new Economic Reform Committee, plus a Stat Blast (31:56) about the greatest players who were never the best player on their team and an observation about the spread of projected win totals in the AL and NL. Then they continue their 2023 season preview series by discussing the Milwaukee Brewers (41:34) with Todd Rosiak of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Miami Marlins (1:21:34) with Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald, plus Past Blasts from 1971 (1:58:43) and a postscript (2:05:13).
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