Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Justin Dunn, Justin Grimm, and Tyler Mahle — on how they learned and developed their curveballs.

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Justin Dunn, Seattle Mariners

“I had a curveball before I had my slider. I learned it from my dad at 12 years old. He used to play in men’s leagues, and while he never played at a real high level, he loves the game. He’s a student of the game.

“Essentially, I take a two-seam grip and put my thumb underneath, finger through the lace, pressure to the ball.When I was younger, he would tell me to just throw it like a football, to never turn my wrist down. It would be big, loopy, and slow. As I got older, I started to throw harder and understand finger dexterity and about pulling the ball down. I learned that I could pull a little bit more with my middle finger and get it a little tighter, and sharper. Read the rest of this entry »

Logan Gilbert has all the makings of a quality big-league starter. Drafted 14th overall by the Seattle Mariners in 2018, the 22-year-old right-hander pairs plus stuff with a classic pitcher’s build. Moreover, he’s studious about his craft. The Stetson University product has embraced technology since signing — this per a Mariners executive I spoke to — and he’s using it to better understand, and help fine-tune, his arsenal.

Gilbert debuted professionally last season and went on to excel at three levels. Topping out at Double-A Arkansas, the 6-foot-6, 225-pound hurler logged a 2.13 ERA with 165 strikeouts in 135 innings. Displaying good command, he issued just 33 free passes.

Gilbert — No. 45 on our 2020 Top 100 Prospects list — discussed his four-pitch mix, as well as the extension and ride that help his heater play up, late last week.

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David Laurila: To start, can you give a self-scouting report?

Logan Gilbert: “I try to get ahead with the fastball. Everything for me is getting into good counts, because of how that plays better. I’ve seen the averages — how they change based on the counts — so I go right at guys. But I can also land a curveball, which for me is a big, slow curveball. I also have a harder slider that I used for strikeouts a lot last year; I used it for put-aways. I’ll also mix in a changeup. That’s kind of a fourth pitch, kind of a weak-contact pitch to give lefties a different look.”

Laurila: I understand that your velocity was down for a period of time at Stetson.

Gilbert: “It went down a little my junior year [2018], but last year it was pretty good for the most part. This spring it’s been pretty good again. Last game I was sitting around 94 [mph] for my two innings. In college, I was around 90, so it’s come back up.”

Laurila: Is velocity important to you? Read the rest of this entry »

March 8: Kansas City vs. Chicago

Kris Bubic is a 22-year-old lefty with prototypical starter size, who snuck onto the back end of Eric’s 50 FV tier after a strong year in High-A.

On Monday, Bubic worked up to 93 with the fastball, but sat lower and was in the upper-80s at times. He also mixed in a cutter, a roundhouse 11-5 curve with long but sharp break, and a fading changeup. Against one of the best lineups he’s ever seen, Bubic wasn’t sharp and paid the price. He nibbled a bit with the fastball and fell behind in counts too often. His change and curve had hitters on their front foot when in the zone, but didn’t miss any bats even when they were located well. He had trouble getting a feel for his change early, throwing four of his first five low and well outside to righties. At their best, both offerings were above average.

We shouldn’t make too many judgements from one spring start, particularly a game where Bubic didn’t catch a lot of breaks: He was charged with a questionable balk and gave up a couple of hits on slow bouncing grounders that went to the wrong places, which extended innings and fluffed up his pitch count. That said, he’ll need to find a way to miss a few bats, and if nothing else, this game helped illustrate why he’ll have to battle finer margins than most hurlers on our Top 100. Read the rest of this entry »

Kody Hoese exploded last season at Tulane. In a breakout junior campaign that saw him shoot up draft charts, the right-handed-hitting third baseman slashed a preposterous .391/.486/.779, bashing 23 home runs along the way. Duly impressed, the Los Angeles Dodgers selected Hoese with the 25th pick of the first round.

He proceeded to acclimate well to pro ball. The numbers weren’t nearly as loud as they were with the Green Wave, but his .299/.380/.483 line between rookie-level Arizona and the low-A Great Lakes Loons was more than adequate. In terms of getting his feet wet, Hoese did just fine.

Asking Hoese about the sudden-rise path he took from Tulane to top-shelf prospect unearthed no great revelations. The 22-year-old Griffith, Indiana native feels that he simply matured and grew into having a more-advanced approach at the plate. “There weren’t really any mechanical changes, or anything like that.”

Hoese’s setup and stroke are anything but complicated. He presents with a “little-lower-hands slot” and a simple load where he “kind of gets into [his] back side, and then strides.” He tries to stay balanced — “centered through my body, upright” — with minimal head movement. His primary objectives are a consistent swing path and focusing on driving the ball up the middle and to the opposite-field gap.

Aaron Bates, who tutors hitters in the Dodgers system, offered a similar take when queried about Hoese’s M.O. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mariners are bringing former top prospect Taijuan Walker back to the Northwest. Yesterday afternoon, the right-hander signed a one-year contract worth a base salary of $2 million, with incentives that could push the deal up to $3 million. As with Kendall Graveman earlier this winter, the Mariners have done well to round out their thin rotation with a low-cost option that could plausibly produce a significant return on their investment.

Unlike with Graveman, there’s plenty of sentimental value here, too. For most of the early part of the decade, Walker was the player Mariners fans salivated to see. Prior to Seattle’s current crop of farmhands, Walker led the vanguard of exciting Mariners prospects, the jewel in a class that also included Danny Hultzen, Brandon Maurer, and James Paxton. Stories of Walker’s athleticism and skill spread quickly as he blitzed through Seattle’s system — my personal favorite is the time he wrote “Tai was here” on a piece of athletic tape and then showed off his NBA-esque vertical by jumping and sticking the tape too high for anybody else to reach — and many pinned their hopes of a Mariners resurgence on his powerful shoulders.

But just when Walker looked ready to make his mark in Seattle, he suffered a few incremental setbacks. He needed the better part of two years of seasoning at the upper minors before reaching the big leagues for good in 2015, and then ran into plenty of bumps that first season. His secondaries backed up between Double-A and the show, and big league hitters routed his pin-straight fastball and sloppy secondaries over the first two months of the year — a period during which a promising Mariners club imploded in part because of Walker’s 7.33 ERA in his first nine starts. Read the rest of this entry »

When publishing prospect lists — in particular, the top 100 — I am frequently asked who, among the players excluded from this year’s version, might have the best chance of appearing on next year’s version. Whose stock am I buying? This post represents my best attempt to answer all of those questions at once.

This is the third year of this exercise, and last year Kiley and I instituted some rules. First, none of the players you see below will have ever been a 50 FV or better in any of our write-ups or rankings. So while I think Corbin Martin will return from Tommy John and become a 50 FV again later next year, I’m not allowed to include him here (although I just sorta did). The second rule is that I am forbidden from using players who have ever been on this list before, which means no Gilberto Celestino (on the list two years ago) or Lenny Torres (who was on last year’s) even though they might soon be 50s. McDaniel and I were right about 18 of the 63 players we picked the first year, about a 29% hit rate, and we were right about 16 of the 55 players on last year’s list, which is also 29%. Two years still isn’t long enough to know whether that’s good or not, but it does appear as though a baseline is being established.

At the end of the piece, I have a list of potential high-leverage relievers who might debut this year, because readers seem to dig that category. These are not part of the 50+ FV forecasting; it’s just a way to point an arrow at guys I like who might have real big league impact in a smaller role very soon.

I’ve separated the players into groups or “types” to make the list a little more digestible and to give you some idea of the demographics I think pop-up guys come from, which could help you identify some of your own with The Board (with The Board, through The Board, in The Board). For players whose orgs I’ve already covered this offseason, there is a link to the applicable team list where you can find a full scouting report on that player. I touch briefly on the rest of the names in this post. If you want to peek at the previous lists, here is Year 1, and here is Year 2. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers and catchers have begun reporting to camps, and all but a small handful of name-brand free agents have found home. From among our Top 50 Free Agents list, one in particular stands out for multiple reasons: Yasiel Puig. The enigmatic 29-year-old right fielder’s current plight and potential matches are worth a closer look.

Signed to a seven-year, $42 million contract after defecting from Cuba in 2012, Puig made an instant impact upon debuting with the Dodgers on June 3, 2013, and was just about the game’s most arresting — and polarizing — presence for his first two seasons in the majors. What’s an article about Puig without some video? Let’s remember some highlights.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday afternoon, the Mariners announced a four-year contract extension for Marco Gonzales with a guarantee of $30 million. This new deal will cover the 2021–2024 seasons, with a club option for a fifth year that could bring the total value of the deal to $45 million. Because he signed an unorthodox contract extension in 2018 — Gonzales signed to avoid an unpleasant service time issue inherited by the Mariners — this new deal will cover all three of his arbitration years and potentially two free agent years.

With Gonzales’ $5 million 2021 salary on the books, the Mariners have just over $50 million in committed salary next year. That’s the season when the Mariners have been aiming to transition out of their soft rebuild phase. By then, Jarred Kelenic, Logan Gilbert, and possibly even Julio Rodriguez could all have graduated to the majors and the Mariners should have a ton of room to add salary. Signing Gonzales to an affordable contract now locks in his salary figures during his arbitration years, giving Seattle some cost certainty during the seasons where they’ve indicated they plan to spend more.

It’s likely the framework for Gonzales’s extension was built on the flurry of four-year extensions handed out to a number of starting pitchers last offseason. Aaron Nola, Luis Severino, Blake Snell, Kyle Hendricks, and German Márquez all signed four-year pacts with their respective teams prior to the season starting. The table below lists the six pitchers with their age, service time, and cumulative performance prior to signing their extension:

Read the rest of this entry »

Jake Rogers is regarded as a strong defender who has issues with the stick. Ten months ago, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel wrote that the Detroit Tigers prospect, has “a shot to approach the low offensive bar at the catcher position, [but] his glove alone makes him a high-probability big leaguer.” Not much has changed. Rogers proceeded to log a .779 OPS in Triple-A, then slash .125/.222/.259 after receiving his first-ever call-up in late July. Most alarmingly, he fanned 130 times in 431 plate appearances between three levels.

Rogers’s efforts to improve his offensive game were what I had in mind when I approached him in the Tigers clubhouse last August. And while we did we did address that, a few tangential topics turned out to be more captivating. We’ll get to those after touching on postural adjustments.

“A big thing has been that my hips are a little up, and I want to get them back to level,” Rogers told me. “That way I can get my swing more on plane and cover more pitches. Right now, when I get to toe-touch my head is back, which causes my hips to be at an upward angle. I need to get more balanced, with my hips and shoulders both level.”

The former Tulane Green Wave standout had also lowered his hands a few inches, and worked to keep to his head still. What goes on between the ears is likewise important. With that in mind, I asked the 24-year-old if he ever finds himself thinking like a catcher in the batter’s box. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a relatively quiet winter for Jerry Dipoto and the Mariners. Seemingly content to let their youngsters play (or develop in the minors), the frantic wheeling and dealing that we had become accustomed to in offseasons past has subsided this year. With their eyes set on 2021, there hasn’t been much of a need to add to their roster. But while most of their key positions are manned by players who, in an ideal world, will form the core of the competitive roster next year, the bullpen is filled with a number of question marks. The Mariners addressed that concern by signing Yoshihisa Hirano to a one-year contract yesterday.

The deal guarantees $1.6 million to the pitcher with a number of performance bonuses based on appearances and games finished. The most interesting wrinkle to his contract comes in the form of a $250,000 bonus that kicks in each time he’s traded. This “Jerry Dipoto clause” is a savvy inclusion for the veteran reliever who will likely be shopped around near the trade deadline if he’s any good at all.

After an 11-year career in Japan, Hirano made the jump to the States in 2018. In two seasons with the Diamondbacks, he was a decent option towards the back end of the bullpen. Last year, he improved his strikeout rate by almost four points but saw his FIP jump over four due to an increase in his home run rate. Through August 12, he had actually posted a 3.30 FIP with just three home runs allowed, but a nasty two-game stretch on August 14 and 16 led to a brief stint on the Injured List with elbow inflammation. He returned in mid-September, but continued to struggle, giving up four more home runs in his nine appearances after August 12. Read the rest of this entry »