Justin Verlander wasn’t scheduled to start on Thursday, but he couldn’t even make it to the first pitch of his first Opening Day as a Met unscathed. The 40-year-old righty officially opened the season on the injured list due to a low-grade strain of his teres major, and while his absence isn’t expected to be a lengthy one, it comes at the tail end of a spring in which the Mets already lost starter José Quintana for about half the season and closer Edwin Diaz for most if not all of it.

Unfortunately, Verlander isn’t the only frontline starter to be sidelined by a teres major strain this week, as the Guardians’ Triston McKenzie recently suffered a more serious strain of the same muscle. Likewise, Verlander isn’t the only big-name hurler for a New York team who was sidelined this week (the Yankees’ Luis Severino is out again), nor is he the only NL East starter to turn up lame on Thursday (the Braves’ Max Fried took an early exit), or the only over-40 star whose plans took a turn (the Cardinals’ Adam Wainwright missed his Opening Day assignment). If it’s not a party until something gets broken, it’s not a new baseball season until a star pitcher goes down. Perhaps the only consolation to be had in this round-up is that all of these injuries are muscle strains of some sort rather than ligaments or tendons. Read the rest of this entry »

The Cardinals have put themselves in a bit of a bind. They take sustainability seriously, building to compete both now and tomorrow. They never rebuild, never go all in, and always balance the present and future responsibly. If your goal is to win forever, you have to think about more than just the next year when you make a decision. For all that focus on long-term planning, though, they have a lackluster rotation, and it’s slated to get a lot worse after this year.

Of St. Louis’ top five starting options, only one, Steven Matz, came into the spring under contract for 2024. That might not be a problem if there were a heaping helping of starting pitching prospects knocking on the door to the major league clubhouse, but there aren’t. Gordon Graceffo isn’t far off, and if you’re willing to do a lot of projecting, Tink Hence might be major league ready before too long, but the up-and-down fifth starters and swingmen with live arms that other teams use to bulk up their starting rotation in times of need don’t really exist here.

Now, the Cardinals have two starters under contract for 2024 after signing Miles Mikolas to a contract extension that will pay him $40 million for the 2024 and ’25 seasons, as Derrick Goold first reported. That doesn’t exactly create a complete 2024 starting rotation, but it’s twice as many pitchers as St. Louis had before last Friday. Bam, problem solved! Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Duffy is in camp with the Kansas City Royals on a minor-league contract, and as is common for veteran players in his situation, he has multiple opt-out clauses. Whether he ends up exercising any of them remains to be seen. The 32-year-old infielder is on the bubble with days left before the start of the regular season, and even if he doesn’t make the Opening Day roster, there is a chance that he would accept a Triple-A assignment with a call-up in mind. All Duffy knows for certain is that he wants to keep playing.

“I’ve kind of made the decision that they are going to have the rip the jersey off of me,” said Duffy, who has battled injuries throughout his seven big-league seasons. “If I were to call it a career at some point in the next five years, I would find myself saying, ‘Man, I wish I’d have played one more year.’ Life post-baseball is going to be so much longer than anything the grind can throw at me. At the end of the day, I really enjoy what this game does for me in terms of pushing me to learn something new.”

Duffy is 12-for-36 on the spring, and he can provide more-than-adequate defense at multiple positions. Assuming he can stay healthy, he can help a big-league team — be it the Royals or someone else — for the foreseeable future. Even so, he knows that the clock is ticking. While many players who are asked about their post-baseball plans deflect the question, Duffy is forthcoming on the subject. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the weekend, I participated in a panel at the SABR Analytics Conference in Phoenix. It was a ton of fun, and I enjoyed getting a chance to nerd out about baseball with a bunch of like-minded people. The awards show wasn’t bad, either. I look forward to Michael Baumann and I making subtle references to it the rest of the year (or maybe just me; Baumann is less arrogant than I am).

The topic of my panel, where I was joined by Yahoo Sports’ Hannah Keyser and moderator Vince Gennaro, was players we love for the 2023 season. I love Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout most for the 2023 season, but more specifically, it was about players we love who aren’t widely regarded as superstars. I came prepared; I picked two hitters and two pitchers who fit the bill.

A panel isn’t the same as a presentation, and our discussion ranged widely around these and other players (Hannah loves Wander Franco and Hunter Greene, Vince loves Dylan Cease), but I thought I’d lay out my research here as well. If you’re a frequent reader, you probably already know how much I like these guys, but it never hurts to reiterate a point. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve reached the point in the offseason when it’s time for one of my favorite/most hated preseason traditions: my attempt to predict breakouts and busts. Since those are beyond what a projection system suggests are naturally going to be low-probability outcomes, there’s a high probability of me looking pretty silly — something writers generally try to avoid. Let’s start by looking back at how smart I was last year…or how foolish:

Thank goodness I had a weaker year than average overall, as I included a few of my favorite players in the mix! Being right for breakouts is a lot of fun, but being right on the busts is a bit depressing, a definite sign that I’ve mellowed as I enter middle age. Trout’s contact rate didn’t bounce back, and his BABIP crashed by well over 100 points, but his newfound grounder proclivity disappeared, and the power boost more than compensated for an OBP nearly 50 points below his career average. Riley’s BABIP also predictably fell, but he hit the ball harder and became a more well-rounded hitter, crushing most pitches instead of predominantly fastballs. Most of the rest came in at the middle-third of the ZiPS projections, which is a victory for the computer rather than me — all that is except for Schwindel, who didn’t just regress toward the mean; he lapped it.

Now, let’s turn to this year’s picks, as I throw myself upon the tender mercies of fortune. Read the rest of this entry »

Gerrit Cole faced Jordan Walker for the first time on Wednesday, and he came away impressed. The New York Yankees ace induced a ground-ball out from the top prospect in the St. Louis Cardinals system in the first inning, but then surrendered a line-drive single to him on a 95-mph heater a handful of frames later. When Cole met with members of the media mid-game — standard fare for starters during spring training — I asked him about his matchups with the fast-rising phenom.

“I thought he put a good swing on it,” Cole said of Walker’s knock. “It was a good adjustment from the first at-bat. It was a good pitch, a borderline ball, and one of the better swings of the day, for sure.”

Cole needed clarification as to whom he was opining on before offering the praise. Understandably focusing on preparing for the regular season, he admitted — this with the caveat that he wasn’t being disrespectful — he didn’t know where Walker was hitting in the St. Louis lineup.

Walker was understandably very aware of Cole. Asked about what the five-time All-Star had said — the question came from a St. Louis scribe whom I’d shared the quotes with — he was equal parts pleased and humble.

“It means a lot, man,” said Walker, who is No. 12 on our Top 100 and at age 20 has a legitimate chance to break camp with the Cardinals. “He’s a helluva pitcher. His stuff was really electric today. His stuff was really jumping. His slider was good. So it means a lot to hear that from him. A wonderful pitcher.”

As Cardinals fans are discovering, the 6-foot-5, 220-pound Stone Mountain, Georgia native is more than just a star in the making. He also exudes fun. I asked the effervescent outfielder how he is balancing that trait alongside being hyper-focused in his quest to earn a big-league job. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve reached the point in the offseason when it’s time for one of my favorite/most hated preseason traditions: my attempt to predict breakouts and busts. Since any breakouts or busts beyond what a projection system suggests are naturally going to be low-probability outcomes, there’s a high probability of me looking pretty silly — something writers try to avoid. Let’s start by looking back at how smart I was last year…or how foolish:

First, the bad news. Kelenic and Adell were both just awful, and I would definitely call 2022 a giant miss for both players as they enter their post-prospect period. I suspect there’s more hope to still be had for Kelenic than Adell, but I wouldn’t exactly call myself prescient about either. Kepler’s breakout didn’t happen at all, and his power all but disappeared. Anderson I’ll call an incomplete because of injury, and while Higashioka did match his entire previous career in WAR, that was largely due to defense, which I can hardly claim credit for predicting. Hiura did hit far better than he had recently, but he also didn’t exactly get a ton of playing time with the Brewers, who appeared to have lost interest in him. There were a few triumphs, however: Kwan and Lux both had excellent seasons, especially the former. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a reader of this site, you probably know that spring training results don’t carry much weight. If you’re really invested in spring outcomes, try exploring them on a rate basis, as those metrics seem to provide the most signal. But what I’m most interested in during the spring are the underlying characteristics that drive outcomes, and often, those characteristics are much stickier than pure results.

Notching high exit velocities in-game, for example, can be thought of as a player tapping into their top-end strength. It can be tough to discern fact from fiction among the countless “best shape of his life” reports, but I figured there might be something to Brendan Donovan’s offseason adjustments when I saw him obliterate a home run to right field in his first spring plate appearance, 105.5 mph off the bat:

Now, 105.5 mph isn’t light-tower power, but it’s notable coming from the slap-hitting utilityman. After posting an ISO over .139 just once across the four minor league stops where he had at least 100 plate appearances, that mark dropped to a paltry .097 in Donovan’s big league debut. And he hit all of three balls harder than 105.5 mph in the majors last year, none of them going for homers, en route to posting an eighth-percentile barrel rate. Ouch. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Manny Machado’s extension, whether the Padres have spending constraints, and what the team’s future might look like, then (18:51) discuss their impressions of the pitch clock in spring training so far and offer a brief update on their podcast editor search (30:42). After that, they continue their 2023 season preview series by discussing the St. Louis Cardinals (33:55) with Katie Woo of The Athletic, and the Arizona Diamondbacks (1:09:31) with Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic, plus a Past Blast from 1974 (1:44:41).

Audio intro: Robyn Hitchcock, “1974”
Audio interstitial 1: Ween, “Stay Forever”
Audio interstitial 2: Rotten Mind, “Serpent Eyes”
Audio outro: David Crosby, “1974”

Link to Dan S. on Machado
Link to MLBTR on Machado
Link to WaPo on the Padres
Link to payroll breakdown
Link to next year’s FA class
Link to Colbert Stat Blast
Link to game-ending violation video
Link to game-ending violation story
Link to Sawchik’s game-time thread
Link to Ben on spring training
Link to Jeff on spring training pace
Link to FanGraphs playoff odds
Link to Cardinals offseason tracker
Link to Cardinals depth chart
Link to Katie’s spring preview
Link to Katie on players to watch
Link to Katie on bounceback players
Link to Katie’s author archive
Link to D-backs offseason tracker
Link to Diamondbacks depth chart
Link to BJOL regression article
Link to Nick’s spring preview
Link to Nick’s author archive
Link to 1974 article source
Link to 1959 article source
Link to Trueman’s CSUN page
Link to Trueman’s book
Link to Trueman’s other book
Link to David Lewis’s Twitter
Link to David Lewis’s Substack
Link to Britton on Mets pickoffs
Link to Woodward on Mets pickoffs

 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Twitter Account
 EW Subreddit
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

The St. Louis Cardinals consistently boast a productive prospect pipeline, and Randy Flores is one of the reasons why. The 47-year-old former big leaguer has been the club’s Director of Scouting since August 2015 — Assistant General Manager was added to his title in 2018 — and the drafts he’s overseen have yielded both admirable results and enviable promise. Especially impressive is the fact that the Cardinals haven’t drafted higher than 18th overall under Flores’ watch; the team has uncovered several gems beyond the first round.

Flores discussed St. Louis’ draft and development processes, as well as some of the organization’s current top prospects, in a recent phone conversation.

———

David Laurila: You were drafted out of USC by the Cardinals in 1996, and subsequently drafted and signed by the Yankees the following year. How do those experiences inform what you do as a scouting director?

Randy Flores: “When I think back to that — going through the internal pressures of the draft, which I felt — what stands out is that I was able to do it relatively anonymously. With today’s player, it’s completely different. With the growth of amateur coverage, third party, and all the social media platforms… these players already have followings in high school. They are ranked. They are graded against their peers at a level that I don’t know how I would have handled. So to answer your question, going through that experience gives me tremendous empathy for the modern young player who is embarking on this pressure-packed journey in a fish bowl that I couldn’t have imagined.” Read the rest of this entry »