Brendan Donovan knows who he is as a hitter. The St. Louis Cardinals rookie is at his best when he’s hunting line drives, and that approach has been working like a charm. Two months into his big-league career, the 25-year-old is slashing .315/.426/.448 — with 14 doubles and one home run — in 197 plate appearances. Moreover, his 146 wRC+ is tops among qualified first-year players.
A left-handed hitter whom the Cardinals selected in the seventh round of the 2018 draft out of the University of South Alabama, Donovan is coming off a 2021 season that saw him climb from High-A to Triple-A, then excel in the Arizona Fall League. That meteoric rise continued this spring. Donovan earned a promotion to St. Louis in late April, and all he’s done since arriving is spray line drives. It’s what he does.
Donovan discussed his swing and approach when the Cardinals visited Fenway Park earlier this month.
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David Laurila: How have you developed as a hitter since coming into pro ball?
Brendan Donovan: “We made a change in our hitting department — Jeff Albert, Russ Steinhorn, and those guys came in — and I was someone that made contact, but it wasn’t always quality contact. What we did is put me into a better body posture, better positioning, more tilt over the plate. I learned how to load the back hip a little better and flatten out my path. From there, it’s basically, ‘Let’s just try to get on plane, and see how long we can stay on plane.’ That’s helped me with fastballs up, and given me more adjustability on breaking balls and changeups, because I’m in the zone longer. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, I took a look at the fascinating race for the American League Rookie of the Year award, where four of our top five preseason prospects who have made their major league debuts — three of them on Opening Day — are making for a packed and compelling competition. In the National League, the race is just as crowded, though there isn’t a clear-cut favorite. And while the race in the AL is filled with top prospects, there are far more surprises and underdogs in the NL.
Before we get into the details, here’s some important context from that previous article:
When Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association signed a new Collective Bargaining Agreement this offseason, it included some interesting provisions designed to combat service time manipulation. Top prospects who finish first or second in Rookie of the Year voting will automatically gain a full year of service time regardless of when they’re called up, and teams that promote top prospects early enough for them to gain a full year of service will be eligible to earn extra draft picks if those players go on to finish in the top three in Rookie of the Year voting or the top five in MVP or Cy Young voting. The goal was to incentivize teams to call up their best young players when they’re ready, rather than keeping them in the minor leagues to gain an extra year of team control. So far, the rule changes seem to have had their intended effect: three of our top five preseason prospects, and 11 of our top 50, earned an Opening Day roster spot out of spring training.
Of those 11 top 50 prospects who started off the season in the major leagues, just five of them were in the National League. The highest-ranked player in that group was CJ Abrams (15), with the four others falling below 30th on our preseason list. That’s not to say that there’s a lack of highly regarded prospects making their debuts in the senior circuit; there have been a few more big call-ups since Opening Day, including our No. 8 prospect, Oneil Cruz, just a few days ago. Still, the differences between the two leagues are stark when you pull up the rookie leaderboards.
With that in mind, here are the best rookie performers in the NL through June 22:
Where the AL had a trio of top prospects leading the way, the NL has seven players firmly in front with plenty of others close behind. In that group, just Alek Thomas was ranked on our preseason top 100; the others were a mix of the unheralded, the very young, or those who had already lost their prospect sheen. Read the rest of this entry »
Miguel Cabrera, Albert Pujols, and Joey Votto are three of the best hitters of our generation. All are future Hall of Famers. They are also aging veterans. The illustrious threesome has combined to play 58 big league seasons, with Votto the baby of the bunch at 38 years old. Cabrera is 39. Pujols is 42. Their cumulative experience is nearly as notable as their prodigious statistical accomplishments.
What is it like to work with legends like Cabrera, Pujols, and Votto? I asked that question to their current hitting coaches: Detroit’s Scott Coolbaugh, St. Louis’ Jeff Albert, and Cincinnati’s Alan Zinter.
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Scott Coolbaugh on Miguel Cabrera
“It’s a privilege and an honor to be around somebody as good as Miggy. He’s obviously a future Hall of Famer. To accomplish the things he’s been able to is eye-opening. I obviously haven’t been around him his whole career — just the last few years — but the way he goes about his business, and the enjoyment he has in the game… he’s still a young kid, even though he’s 39 years old. He treats it like a game. He has fun with it. He keeps it simple.
“Everybody is in awe of how pure of a right-handed hitter he is, how pure his swing is. The things he can do with the baseball a lot of guys have worked hard to do just one time. He does it on a consistent basis. It makes you a better coach to be around somebody like that, to see how he goes about it, and hear what his thoughts are. To sit in a cage and have the conversations with him… and sometimes it’s not even about hitting. It’s about how simple he keeps the game. Read the rest of this entry »
What is your favorite baseball memory? I posed that question to 10 major league players, and in nearly every instance, the response began with a question of their own: “Does it have to be from my own career?” While all were happy to share one (or more) meaningful memory from their time in the big leagues, it was primarily magic moments from their days as fans and/or young amateurs that stood out the most.
“I have two. Being able to have all of my family members at the All-Star game with me in San Diego in 2016 is one. The other is having my family with me in London, England for the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry series [in 2019]. They were all with me for the [2018] World Series as well, so there are actually three: All-Star Game, World Series, and being able to travel all the way to London, halfway around the world, to watch me play. In no particular order, those would be my favorite baseball memories.” Read the rest of this entry »
The St. Louis Cardinals played Friday night’s game in Boston with one catcher. Iván Herrera had been called up from Triple-A to replace the newly-sidelined Yadier Molina, but cancelled flights delayed his arrival. The highly-regarded prospect didn’t get to Fenway Park until the final inning of a 6-5 Red Sox win.
Asked who would have been used in an emergency had Andrew Knizner been injured, St. Louis manager Oliver Marmol named three possibilities: Edmundo Sosa, Brendan Donovan, and Nick Wittgren. That Marmol added, “Not necessarily in that order,” is intriguing, if not suggestive. Sosa and Donovan are infielders. Wittgren toes the rubber.
Might we have seen Wittgren, a 31-year-old pitcher with no professional experience at any another position, donning the tools of ignorance? It’s a definite possibility. Prior to the game, Marmol approached Wittgren and asked, “How do you think you’d do catching?” Wittgren replied that he’d be perfectly fine. Marmol responded with “I think so too.”
According to The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Derrick Goold, Wittgren isn’t the first Cardinals pitcher to be designated (or at least hinted) as an emergency catcher. Jason Motte, who worked out of the St. Louis bullpen from 2008-2014 previously claimed that distinction. Even so, Motte had caught in the minor leagues. Wittgren would have been a novice.
In a season that has already produced two no-hitters (as well as two that would have counted as such before Major League Baseball tightened its definition of the feat), this week produced two near-misses on consecutive nights. On Tuesday night in St. Louis, the Cardinals’ Miles Mikolas came within one strike of no-hitting the Pirates, and on Wednesday night in Los Angeles, the Dodgers’ Tyler Anderson fell two outs short of no-hitting the Angels. It’s fair to say that we’ve never seen anything quite like this.
Had either Mikolas or Anderson pulled off the feat, they would have joined Tylor Megill and four Mets relievers, who combined to no-hit the Phillies on April 29, and the Angels’ Reid Detmers, who no-hit the Rays on May 10. In the first of several coincidences that run through this tale, Detmers was actually Anderson’s opposite number on Wednesday, though he exited in the fourth inning after being roughed up for four runs. The Pirates, as it turns out, were already held hitless in a game on May 15 by the Reds’ Hunter Greene and Art Warren, but because they scored the game’s only run and didn’t need to bat in the ninth given that they were at home, the effort did not count as a no-hitter based on a 1991 ruling by MLB’s Committee for Statistical Accuracy.
(In the other non-no-hitter this year, six Rays pitchers held the Red Sox hitless for nine innings on April 23, but a seventh pitcher allowed a hit in the 10th inning.)
The 33-year-old Mikolas started the nightcap of a day-night doubleheader against a team that owns the NL’s weakest offense (3.42 runs per game) and its second-lowest batting average (.220). He only got as far as the second inning before allowing his first baserunner; with one out, he hit Canaan Smith-Njigba in the left foot with a slider, then erased him when Diego Castillo grounded into a 5-4-3 double play. Mikolas need another double play in the third after leadoff hitter Hoy Park reached on an error, as third baseman Brendan Donovan, who fielded his grounder, pulled Paul Goldschmidt off first base with a high throw. Yu Chang followed by working a seven-pitch walk before Michael Perez grounded into the needed 4-6-3 double play and Tucupita Marcano struck out, one of six punchouts on the night for Mikolas.
That 20-pitch third inning was the St. Louis righty’s most labor-intensive of the night. By comparison, Mikolas needed only 10 pitches in the fourth, which began with another error by the Cardinals’ defense; this time, Bryan Reynolds‘ fly ball glanced off the glove of left fielder Juan Yepez. He took second on the error, then came around to score after groundouts by Jack Suwinski and Daniel Vogelbach.
By that point, the Cardinals had already plated seven runs, and Suwinski’s grounder began a string of 17 consecutive batters retired that carried Mikolas to within one out of completing the no-hitter. He passed the 100-pitch mark while facing Castillo, who led off the eighth inning by battling for eight pitches before striking out. By the end of the frame, Mikolas had matched his MLB career high of 115 pitches, set on May 29 in a 5.2-inning grind against the Brewers (Lord knows how high he went during his three years in Japan).
Mikolas needed just two pitches to dispatch Perez on a grounder to start the ninth, and six more to get Marcano to fly to right. Facing Cal Mitchell for the final out, he fell behind 2–0, then got a called strike on a fastball and a swinging strike on a down-and-in curve. Mitchell fouled off another fastball, then hit a deep fly ball to center field. Gold Glove winner Harrison Bader leaped in pursuit of the ball but just missed as it went over his head and bounced off of the warning track and over the wall for a ground rule double. Mikolas exited to a hearty ovation from Busch Stadium’s 33,977 fans, leaving Packy Naughton to record the final out. Read the rest of this entry »
Dakota Hudson shouldn’t be this good. It’s hard to analyze baseball, and pitchers are good for all sorts of difficult-to-comprehend reasons, but look at his numbers. It shouldn’t work. His career strikeout rate is a lackluster 17.2%. He walks more than 10% of the batters he faces. Either of those numbers would be alarming; both together is a recipe for trouble.
Naturally, Hudson is off to another roaring start. His 3.29 ERA is actually worse than his career mark, and it’s still 17% better than league average in this low-scoring year. He’s outperforming every available peripheral by miles – just like he always has. Three-hundred-and-fifteen innings into his major league career, his stat line will make you question what you know about ERA estimators. His FIP is a so-so 4.56. It’s not some home run rate fluke, either; his xFIP is exactly the same. SIERA clocks him at 4.96. xERA, the Statcast version of an ERA estimator, is right in line with everything else at 4.55. And yeah… his career ERA is 3.17. So let’s investigate what the heck is going on. Read the rest of this entry »
This season, Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin will have periodic minor league roundup post that run during the week. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.
Before we get to this post’s analysis, some housekeeping. I’m continuing to trudge through the last few team lists, and hope readers will understand that part of why this has taken so long is because a) we lost multiple writers to teams during the process and b) it takes a lot for me to compromise my vision for the depth and quality of my work. I’m on pace to finish just before the draft while also updating and expanding the draft prospect list so that draftees can quickly be added to their club’s pro list right after they’re picked. I realize that continuing this way during future cycles would leave valuable and relevant info unpublished for too long, and that I need to make changes. For instance, I don’t have a Cardinals list out yet while guys like Andre Pallante, Brendan Donovan and Juan Yepez are all playing big league roles. I’ve had well-formed thoughts on that group of guys since they were part of last year’s Arizona Fall League, and need to find a way to shorten the lag between when I’m taking those notes and when they’re turned into actionable info on the site, especially when it comes to short-term big leaguers.
My approach for in-season updates (which have already underway — duh, you are reading this post) will again be to group teams based on the geographic location of their spring training facility (for example, teams with East Valley facilities in Arizona are already being updated) and drill down deepest on contending clubs (within that East Valley cluster, the Giants) as they’re more likely to part with prospects ahead of the trade deadline. There will still be à la carte updates where I see a player and add them, or where someone’s performance prompts me to source info from scouting and front office contacts and brings about a change in their evaluation or valuation. Read the rest of this entry »
This season, Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin will have periodic minor league roundup post that run during the week. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.
I noticed what felt like an unusually high number of rehabbing big leaguers (and some prospects) in the box scores over the last several days, so I called around to get info on how these pitchers have looked on their way back from injury.
The Rays have two prominent members of their pitching staff currently working back through the minors: former top prospect Luis Patiño and current top prospect Shane Baz. Patiño, who was put on the IL on April 12 with an oblique strain, has only just begun his climb through the minors. He threw one inning in the Florida Complex League on Monday night and sat 94–96 mph with his sliders in their usual 84–87 range. He threw just one changeup. Baz, who is coming off of arthroscopic surgery of his right elbow, has been rehabbing at Triple-A since the end of May, working on four days rest and ramping up to about 80 pitches in his most recent outing, in which he struck out 10 hitters in 4.1 innings on Sunday. He looks like his usual self, sitting 94–97 and touching 99, and is poised to rejoin the Rays’ rotation within the next week.
(Another Rays note: former first rounder Nick Bitsko, who is coming off of a prolonged rehab from labrum surgery, was sitting 92–95 during his Extended Spring outings and has moved up into the 40+ FV tier now that he’s shown his arm strength is mostly back to pre-surgery form.)
Also set to return to a big league rotation is Nationals righty Stephen Strasburg, who has made three rehab starts with Triple-A Rochester, also on four days rest, recovering from thoracic outlet surgery. While he’s still showing plus secondary stuff, especially his changeup, his velocity has been way down, hovering in the 88–92 range with poor shape. Of all the pitchers who I’ll cover today, he’s the only one who hasn’t looked anything like himself. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’ve watched any baseball highlights recently, you’ve probably seen a familiar face lashing line drives. Paul Goldschmidt has a 22-game hitting streak and 28 extra-base hits on the year, which makes him a regular in game recaps. That frequent loud contact has produced one of those hitting lines that makes it clear that we’re still early in the season: .352/.422/.626 screams “small sample!” as loudly as Dan Szymborski does every April.
Sure, that’s true. I don’t think that Goldschmidt is going to post a .402 BABIP on the season. I don’t think that he’s going to keep hitting homers on 18% of his fly balls while also hitting fly balls more frequently than he ever has, or posting a pristine strikeout rate while chasing more often than league average. But again, he’s hitting .352/.422/.626. He has plenty of space to cool off while still being red hot, so let’s look at how he’s setting himself up to succeed.
Want to hit a home run? Step one is to swing at a good pitch. Goldschmidt has done exactly that this year; the location and type of the pitches he’s hit for home runs look like a hitting textbook:
Hanging sliders, sinkers that don’t sink, and four-seamers all over the place? That’s how they teach it to you in slugger school.
When he makes contact, he’s pulling the ball more than ever. Eight of his 11 home runs have been pulled, with another two going to straightaway center. The lone exception? It was on that four-seam fastball away that you can see up above. Goldschmidt is, after all, still an excellent hitter, with enough power to hit the ball where it’s pitched. He’s simply picking inside and middle pitches and pulling them into the stands. Read the rest of this entry »
