Bobby Miller was pitching in High-A when I first interviewed him for FanGraphs in June 2021. Drafted 29th overall the previous summer by the Los Angeles Dodgers out of the University of Louisville, the right-hander possessed both a high-octane heater and a lofty ceiling. Since making his MLB debut this past May, he’s met those expectations, going 9–3 with a 3.80 ERA and a 3.67 FIP over 17 starts. The 24-year-old is also coming off of his most impressive outing. Facing the powerhouse Atlanta Braves on September 3, he allowed just three hits and one run in a career-high seven innings.

Miller discussed his continuing evolution as a pitcher and his efforts to find consistency with his slider when the Dodgers visited Fenway Park in late August.

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David Laurila: We talked two years ago when you were pitching for the Great Lakes Loons. What has changed and what has stayed the same since that time?

Bobby Miller: “A lot of stuff is the same. At the end of the day, it’s still the same game. But the competition is obviously a lot higher. The hitters are lot more disciplined and experienced. Most of them have seen the game’s best arms, so when you’re out there, you’ve got to know that they’ve faced guys just as good or better than you are.

“Game-planning comes in a lot more at this level. I feel like game-planning is super important to learn in the minor leagues, studying hitters and all that, and I wish I’d have learned more before I came up here. While I had somewhat of an idea, I still have a lot of room to improve on that. I think that’s the biggest thing for me: how much time I spend looking at the upcoming lineups I’m going to face.”

Laurila: Basically, what hitters’ hot and cold zones are, and what they hit and don’t hit in certain counts.

Miller: “Yeah. What to avoid in certain counts. When they’re aggressive and when they’re not aggressive. How aggressive they are with runners in scoring position. At some point, I could get better at learning the baserunners, too. But at the end of the day, the most important thing is getting the batter out of the box. It’s about getting outs for your team.” Read the rest of this entry »

Steve Sparks had a solid playing career. The now Houston Astros broadcaster debuted with the Milwaukee Brewers two months before his 30th birthday, in 1995, and went on to toss butterflies in the big leagues through 2004. His best season came with the Detroit Tigers in 2001 when he logged 14 wins and posted a 3.65 ERA over 232 innings.

Sandwiched between the knuckleballer’s stints in Beer City and Motown were a pair of seasons in Anaheim, where his teammates included Orlando Palmeiro. According to Sparks, the left-handed-hitting outfielder wasn’t always a left-handed-hitting outfielder.

“He was originally a right-handed second baseman, but he broke his arm,” the pitcher-turned-broadcaster explained prior to a recent game at Fenway Park. “He was ambidextrous to begin with, so he started playing the outfield throwing left-handed, and that’s how he remained. I played with Orlando, but he never told me that. Joe Maddon was a minor league field coordinator with the Angels, and he’s the one who told me.”

Sparks proceeded to point out that Palmeiro made the final out of the 2005 World Series against the Chicago White Sox while playing for the Astros.

Meanwhile, an outfielder whose best big-league seasons came with the Boston Red Sox played with Sparks on the rookie-level Helena Brewers in 1987. Read the rest of this entry »

Between Shohei Ohtani, Félix Bautista, and now Tony Gonsolin, the fragility of ulnar collateral ligaments has been an all-too-frequent topic of conversation within the past week. Gonsolin, in case you haven’t heard, is headed for Tommy John surgery on Friday, while we’re still waiting to hear whether the UCL injuries of Ohtani and Bautista are significant enough to merit going under the knife. Between that trio and the Rays’ Shane McClanahan going down earlier this month — and the fact that neither Gonsolin nor McClanahan are the first members of their teams’ rotations this year to need such surgery — it certainly feels as though we’re dealing with a lot of Tommy Johns lately, so it’s worth cutting through the numbers.

First, however, let’s spare a few paragraphs for Gonsolin and the Dodgers. The 29-year-old righty was coming off an All-Star season in which he posted a 2.14 ERA and 3.28 FIP in 130.1 innings, and owned similarly impressive career marks (2.51 ERA, 3.45 FIP) despite his intermittent availability due to injuries, which included a six-week absence near the end of last season due to a forearm strain, and just two appearances totaling 3.1 innings afterwards, one of them a four-out start in the 2022 Division Series. After spraining his left ankle during fielding drills in early March, he was playing catch-up and never seemed to find a comfort zone. He began the regular season on the injured list, finally debuting on April 26, and while his run prevention numbers looked good in the early going, his peripherals told another story, and his average fastball velocity was down. On June 11, manager Dave Roberts alluded to some health issues with Gonsolin, noting that his between-starts recovery “hasn’t been great,” and wondering if he was having trouble getting loose or pacing himself. In his next start two days later, Gonsolin threw six shutout innings but averaged just 91.1 mph with his four-seamer, two full ticks below last year.

To that point, Gonsolin had a 1.93 ERA but a 4.25 FIP, and soon he began to get roughed up on a routine basis. Over his next seven starts, he allowed four or more runs six times, producing a 7.25 ERA. Following a 3.1-inning, five-homer, 10-run stinker on August 18, Gonsolin’s second bad start out of three, Roberts told reporters that Gonsolin had been pitching through an unspecified “arm issue” for four to six weeks and would likely head to the injured list. On Sunday, the Dodgers acknowledged that surgery was an option, and on Monday it was revealed he’d undergo Tommy John on September 1. Read the rest of this entry »

Gavin Stone was credited with his first big league win on Sunday. Working in a bulk role behind opener Caleb Ferguson, the 24-year-old rookie right-hander went six solid innings as the Los Angeles Dodgers topped the Boston Red Sox 7-4 at Fenway Park. His changeup played a predictably prominent role. Stone threw the pitch that our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen has assigned a 60/70 FV (current/projected) on the 20-80 scouting scale a total of 22 times, with a vertical break averaging 30 inches and diving as low 39 inches. Velocity-wise, it ranged from 82.6 mph to 87.7 mph.

Stone was making his fifth major league appearance (and his first since July 4) when he took the mound in Boston. His earlier outings had been on the rocky side — his ERA and FIP are now 10.50 and 6.72 respectively — but there is no denying his potential. The 2020 fifth-round pick out of the University of Central Arkansas is currently no. 40 on The Board with a 50 FV.

Stone told the story behind his signature pitch the day before facing the Red Sox. Read the rest of this entry »

John Michael Bertrand is an under-the-radar pitching prospect with multi-sport bloodlines and a good backstory. Moreover, he’s performing above expectations in his first full professional season. Drafted in the 10th round last year by the San Francisco Giants out of the University of Notre Dame, the 25-year-old left-hander is 10-5 with a 3.17 ERA in 99-and-a-third innings across three levels. Bertrand began the campaign at Low-A San Jose and has since progressed to High-A Eugene and Double-A Richmond.

Growing up in Alpharetta, Georgia, the 6-foot-3, 225-pound hurler aspired to play college basketball, but it eventually became apparent that baseball would provide him with the better long-term opportunity. The decision proved prudent, but only after a bumpy beginning. Bertrand’s Blessed Trinity School prep days were followed by a pair of disappointments that might easily have ended his career before it even started.

“I went to the University of Dayton for a camp, and they told me that I didn’t throw hard enough,” Bertrand explained. “I was around 82 [mph] and had a loopy curveball, so it was basically, ‘Thank you for your time.’ After that, my guidance counselor suggested Furman [University]. It was closer to home, and purple happened to be my favorite color, so I was like, ‘Perfect, I’ll go.’ I walked on to their baseball team, but ended up getting cut my first fall. The coaches told me that I wasn’t good enough to play Division One baseball.”

Undeterred, and more determined than ever, Bertrand decided that not only would he return the following year and make the team, he intended to go on to play professionally. As he put it, ‘God kind of called me to go back to that campus and work even harder.’ That started that train, started my journey.” Read the rest of this entry »

Freddie Freeman is a fantastic baseball player. Since the beginning of 2020, he is tied with Juan Soto for fourth in wRC+, sitting at 157. He is also as durable as any other position player in the league, ranking third in games played in that same span. But wRC+ and durability aren’t why I’m here to discuss Freeman today. Instead, I’m interested in his baserunning.

Baserunning is certainly not the most important aspect of Freeman’s game, but he is darn good at it. Before I get into how and why, though, I want to talk about his lack of speed. At 26.6 ft/s on average, Freeman is a 35th-percentile runner; in the landscape of the league and other good baserunners, he is a bit of a tortoise. But that doesn’t stop him on the bases.

When it comes to baserunning, your chances are much better of being above average on the basepaths if you can boogie. If you peruse the BsR or Statcast Runner Runs leaderboards, you’ll see mostly 90th-percentile runners and above, with the bottom line being in the mid-70s. Rarely does a name like Freeman’s pop up, but he ranks 17th of 139 in BsR and 37th of 295 in Runner Runs. For him, these results come about because of other aspects of the game that you don’t need speed for: instincts, reads, and preparation. The further down you are in the speed department, the more important these skills become. This wasn’t always a positive part of Freeman’s game, but in the last few years, he has been consistently above-average. Read the rest of this entry »

June 23, 2023, was a rough day for the Braves. They scored 10 runs but gave up 11 in a hard-fought battle with the Reds. It was the first time they’d given up more than ten runs all season, and the first time they’d scored double-digit runs and still lost in over a year. They blew two leads and couldn’t quite pull off the comeback at the end of the night.

Yet in the grand scheme of things, June 23, 2023, was an insignificant day for the Braves. By that point in the season, their playoff odds were 99.5%. Sure, they lost the game, but it was one of only four losses they would suffer all month. They went on to win the series and sweep their next two, increasing their playoff odds to 100% within the week. The Braves have about as much reason to worry about losses as I have to worry about werewolf attacks. It’s not worth agonizing over something that only happens once in a blue moon.

But for one particular Brave, June 23, 2023, was an excellent day. Ronald Acuña Jr. went 3-for-5 with a home run and a stolen base. He made a great catch, too, covering 78 feet in 4.6 seconds to rob Tyler Stephenson of a hit. The following morning, he rose to first place in the National League in WAR, a position he has held ever since.

First place on the WAR leaderboard isn’t necessarily meaningfully different from second, third, or even fourth. At times, Acuña’s lead was so slight that you had to add another decimal place just to see it. Still, leading the league for 53 days (and counting) is an impressive accomplishment. Plenty of guys can get hot and amass a high WAR in a short stretch, but maintaining such a high degree of excellence over eight weeks is something else. Four others occupied second place in that time, and nine shuffled through spots three to five. But Acuña has yet to give up his lead. Read the rest of this entry »

LOS ANGELES — In an honor that was decades overdue, the Dodgers finally retired Fernando Valenzuela’s number 34 on Friday night at Dodger Stadium. The festivities kicked off Fernandomania Weekend, a three-day celebration of the transcendent superstar’s impact on the franchise, first as a pitcher during his initial 11-season run (1980–90) and then as an analyst on the team’s Spanish-language broadcasts (2003–present). Beyond starring on the field by winning NL Rookie of the Year and Cy Young honors and helping the Dodgers capture a world championship in 1981, Valenzuela emerged as an international cultural icon. He brought generations of Mexican-American and Latino fans to baseball and helped to heal the wounds caused by the building of the very ballpark in which he starred.

Valenzuela’s rise is something of a fairy tale. The youngest of 12 children in a family in Etchohuaquila, Mexico (pop. 150), he was discovered by Dodgers superscout Mike Brito at age 17 and signed the next year (1979). Taught to throw a screwball by Dodgers reliever Bobby Castillo during the 1979 Arizona Instructional League, he went on a dominant run at Double-A San Antonio the following year and was called up to the Dodgers in mid-September. The pudgy and mysterious 19-year-old southpaw spun 17.2 innings of brilliant relief work without allowing an earned run during the heat of a pennant race. He made the team as a starter the following spring, and his career took off when he tossed an Opening Day shutout against the Astros in an emergency start, filling in for an injured Jerry Reuss. He kept putting up zeroes, going 8–0 with seven complete games, five shutouts, and a 0.50 ERA in 72 innings over his first eight starts, drawing outsized crowds in every city where he pitched. Despite speaking barely a word of English, he became an instant celebrity on the strength of a bashful smile, preternatural poise, and impeccable command of his signature pitch, delivered with a distinctive motion that included a skyward gaze at the peak of his windup.

To borrow a metaphor from Erik Sherman, author of the new biography Daybreak at Chavez Ravine, Valenzuela was baseball’s version of the Beatles, a composite of the Fab Four with a universal appeal. He landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated less than two months into his rookie season, an unprecedented event in the magazine’s history. Fernandomania took hold of baseball and survived that summer’s seven-week player strike. In October, the rookie displayed incredible guile, winning two elimination games and preventing the Yankees from taking a 3–0 series lead in the World Series. His Herculean 149-pitch effort in Game 3 turned the tide, helping the Dodgers capture their first championship since 1965. He would play a vital part on two more NL West-winning Dodgers teams and make six All-Star teams before leaving the fold and making stops with half a dozen other major league teams, though he never matched his success in L.A.

On Friday night, a crowd of 49,315 fans, many of them wearing replicas of Valenzuela’s Dodgers and Team Mexico jerseys, showed up early to pay tribute to the beloved pitcher. U.S. senator Alex Padilla, the first Hispanic senator from California; team president and CEO Stan Kasten; retired Dodgers broadcaster Jaime Jarrín, who served as his interpreter during Fernandomania; and former battery-mate Mike Scioscia spoke about Valenzuela’s impact upon the team, the city, and a fan base that expanded radically as it supported him. Sandy Koufax, Julio Urías, and broadcaster Pepe Yñiguez joined them onstage, with broadcaster Charley Steiner serving as master of ceremonies. A mariachi band accompanied a beaming Valenzuela’s walk to the stage. Afterwards, former teammates Orel Hershiser and Manny Mota unveiled the number 34 on the Dodgers Ring of Honor. Read the rest of this entry »

Kenley Jansen was a 19-year-old catching prospect in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization when he played for the 2007 Great Lakes Loons. Sixteen years and 417 saves later, he looks back at his time in Midland, Michigan fondly. The All-Star closer didn’t hit much — his conversion to the mound in 2009 came for a reason — but the overall experience shaped who he is today.

“I loved everything about that city, man,” said Jansen, a native of Curaçao who also called Midland home in 2008. “It was cold, but probably also my favorite city from my time in the minor leagues. We played at Dow Diamond and that place was packed every night. The fans were great. I lived with Rob Wright and Lori Wright — Danny Wright, too — and I don’t even consider them my host family anymore; they’re part of my family now. I didn’t play very well, but a lot of good things came out of that whole experience. Great Lakes helped transition me from being a kid to being a man.”

The 2007 season was also notable because of his manager and a pair of teammates. Longtime Detroit Tigers backstop Lance Parrish was at the helm of the Midwest League affiliate, the club’s primary catcher was Carlos Santana, and a teenage left-hander was the most-prominent member of the pitching staff. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you remember the springtime? We were so young and carefree, so full of hope. We hadn’t even breathed in our first lungfuls of Canadian wildfire smoke. Pitchers were full of hope, too. They’d spent the whole offseason in a lab, or playing winter ball, or maybe just in a nice condo, trying to figure how to get better.

Amazingly, a lot of them settled on the exact same recipe for success: start throwing a cutter. You couldn’t open up a soon-to-be-shuttered sports section without reading an article about some pitcher whose plan for world domination hinged on whipping up a delicious new cut fastball. Now that we’re in the dog days of summer, it’s time to check and see how those cutters are coming along. Are they browning nicely and just starting to set? Or have they filled the house with smoke, bubbling over the sides of the pan and burning down to a carbonized blob that needs to be scraped off the bottom of the oven with steel wool?

I pulled data on every pitcher who has thrown at least 400 pitches in both 2022 and ’23, focusing on the ones who are throwing a cutter at least 10% of the time this year after throwing it either infrequently or not at all last season. These cutoffs did mean that we missed some interesting players like Brayan Bello and Danny Coulombe, but we’re left with a list of 25 pitchers.

So did their new toys turn them into peak Pedro? The short answer is no. Taken as a whole, they’ve performed roughly as well as they did last season. As you’d expect from any sample, roughly half our pitchers got better, and half got worse. Of the pitchers who improved from last year to this year, I don’t think I can definitively say that any of them reached new heights specifically because of the cutter. Read the rest of this entry »