Penn Murfee was mentioned in the interview with Trent Blank that ran here at FanGraphs on Friday. Discussing pitch profiles, Seattle’s director of pitching strategy recalled the erstwhile Mariners reliever being “a guy who had cut-ride” on his four-seam fastball.
Murfee is now with the White Sox, and Chicago’s South Side club is in Boston for a weekend series, so I took the opportunity to get his own perspective on the offering. What I learned talking to him at my home base of Fenway Park is that the movement he gets on his heater is circumstantial. Moreover, it’s legal.
“Back in 2021, in [Triple-A] Sacramento, my pitch profile changed from a running arm-side fastball,” explained Murfee, who was in the Seattle system from 2018-2023, the last year-plus of that span in the majors. “For whatever reason, I started choking the ball a little tight, and began throwing what was classified as a cutter. It went to zero inches of horizontal movement. My pitching coach at the time said, ‘Whatever you changed, don’t change it back.’ He said that I went from having a very average fastball to something unique.”
When the Padres signed Nick Pivetta to a four-year, $55 million deal in mid-February, it marked an awakening from a sleepy and disappointing winter. With ownership embroiled in a battle over who would control the team in the wake of Peter Seidler’s death, San Diego had let several key free agents from last year’s 93-win Wild Card team depart, including Jurickson Profar and Ha-Seong Kim, but hadn’t spent more than $3.5 million or issued a contract longer than a year when it came to restocking. Pivetta was the exception, and while he was signed to be the fourth starter behind Dylan Cease, Michael King, and Yu Darvish, so far he’s been the stingiest rotation member on the hottest team in baseball.
On Wednesday afternoon at Petco Park, Pivetta spun six innings of one-run ball against the Cubs, allowing just four hits and striking out six, while Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. each drove in a pair of runs. Though reliever Wandy Peralta served up a solo homer to Pete Crow-Armstrong in the eighth inning — the rare lapse by a bullpen that’s been lights out so far — the Padres won 4-2. After beginning the season with seven straight wins over the Braves and Guardians, and winning their first 11 games at home before losing to the Cubs on Tuesday, they’re now a major league-best 15-4, outdistancing the world champion Dodgers, who have played just .500 ball since opening the season 8-0.
Though San Diego swept the Braves in the Wild Card Series last year and then went the distance with the Dodgers in the Division Series before getting eliminated, this season’s club wasn’t expected to be a particularly strong one in light of its offseason inactivity, which also included losing reliever Tanner Scott and catcher Kyle Higashioka to free agency. The Padres replaced Profar — who had followed up a career-worst season with a career-best one that earned him his first All-Star selection — in left field with a platoon built around 35-year-old Jason Heyward, whom they signed for one year and $1 million. They went light at catcher following Higashioka’s departure, cobbling together a tandem of Elias Díaz and Martín Maldonado, two backstops who were released by their respective teams last summer; San Diego had added Diaz after he was dropped by the Rockies in August, then retained him on a one-year, $3.5 million deal. The Padres appeared so geared toward reining in spending that the Pivetta move was initially presumed to be a precursor to trading Cease. Read the rest of this entry »
At risk of stating the obvious, Luis Arraez doesn’t strike out often. Since 2022, his first full season and the year he won his first batting title, Arraez has struck out 5.5% of the time. Let me put that into context. As of this morning, the Padres have a 6.0% chance to win the NL West. That means they are more likely to upset the baseball-ruining Dodgers than Arraez is to strike out in any given plate appearance. And that might be underselling his skills. In the second half of 2024, he reduced his strikeout rate even further, going down on strikes just five times over his final 57 games. That included baseball’s first 30-game strikeout-less streak in 20 years. Since the 2024 All-Star break, Arraez has struck out in 1.9% of his trips to the plate. Meanwhile, San Diego’s odds of winning the World Series currently sit at 2.2%. A pessimist might use that comparison to demonstrate that the Padres are long shots; 17 teams have a better chance to win it all. An optimist would counter that every time Arraez strikes out, it’s a reminder that the Padres are still World Series contenders. If that’s the way you see it, well, boy did the Padres get one heck of a reminder on Wednesday afternoon. For the first time all season, Arraez struck out.
It was the top of the ninth. The Padres were up 2-1. The inning began with a base hit by Martín Maldonado. That itself is a rare enough event. No other batter in recorded major league history has taken as many plate appearances as Maldonado (3,888) and has such a low batting average (.204) to show for it. Adding to the unlikelihood of Maldonado’s single, the batted ball had a mere .100 expected batting average, a 1-in-10 chance to be a hit. Yet, third baseman Max Schuemann, who entered the game that inning as a defensive replacement, flubbed the play. The ball slipped right out of his glove. As I watched his ill-fated attempt to retrieve the ball, I couldn’t help but think of my 6-year-old self trying to crossover dribble like Allen Iverson. Neither of us had any control of the ball:
With Maldonado on first, Arraez stepped up to the dish. He was already 0-for-4 with three fly outs, a strange enough day for a player who rarely hits fly balls. Since the day of his debut in 2019, Arraez has taken 2,916 plate appearances. Thirty-nine others have taken as many or more plate appearances in that time. None of them has a lower fly ball rate. But I’m getting off track. We aren’t here to talk about fly balls.
The pitcher on the mound was Justin Sterner, who somehow isn’t the A’s player with the closest-sounding name to a current or former Dodgers third baseman. Sterner, an offseason waiver claim from the Rays, has looked sharp so far in seven games for his new team. He entered this contest with nine strikeouts through his first six appearances. His 10th would be his most impressive yet. Arraez took Sterner’s first pitch, an 88-mph cutter on the upper-inside corner, for a strike. The count was 0-1:
Pitch number two was a 94-mph fastball that Arraez sent straight back into the crotch of catcher Shea Langeliers:
Is it funny when a man gets hit in the family jewels? I’ll let you decide for yourself. What I like so much about this moment isn’t the slapstick, but rather the subtle humor of how awkwardly Arraez behaves in the aftermath. One of my favorite bits from the little-known television comedy Friends is the scene where Ross picks up a lamp. That’s the first thing I thought of when I saw Arraez pick up that baseball. Why was his first instinct to pick up the ball as quickly as possible? I’m truly not sure. Was he worried someone would trip on it? Was he trying to hide the weapon? Or did he simply feel a need to do something, and picking up the ball was the first idea that popped into his head? He’s like a well-meaning but clueless husband trying to offer support while his wife is in labor. But instead of running for ice chips, he decided to pick up a baseball.
Arraez’s next move made more sense, as he went to pat Langeliers on the back. However, the consequences of his earlier actions soon returned to haunt him. He was still holding that damn baseball:
It became something of a dance for Arraez, who went back and forth between comforting Langeliers and dealing with the ball. It’s funny to watch because we’ve all been in that position before, facing a situation where we feel like we should help but there really isn’t much we can do. It’s even funnier in juxtaposition to the physical comedy of a man getting bopped in the beans. It’s certainly funnier than the A’s TV broadcaster suggesting they call the catcher “Shea Pain-geliers,” though perhaps not quite as funny as the Padres announcer blurting out, “They call him Langy!” in response to absolutely nothing (unless he was listening to the A’s broadcast). He just seemed to be reading the name plate on Langeliers’ chest protector because, much like Arraez, he wasn’t sure what else to do.
The third pitch of the at-bat was an 81-mph sweeper in the dirt. It never came close to Arraez, and indeed, he watched it bounce. Yet, seemingly still spooked by what happened on the previous pitch, he made a delayed effort to avoid getting hit. Maybe Arraez thought the ball was going to bounce off Langeliers and hit him in an act of swift poetic justice. That would explain why he shielded his face with his hand as he spun almost 360 degrees to avoid a projectile that did not come anywhere close to his body:
At long last, you’re all caught up on the series of incidents that set the stage for the strikeout. With a 1-2 count, Sterner threw another inside cutter, much like the first pitch of the at-bat. This time, however, he missed his spot badly:
The pitch hit Arraez squarely on his left thigh. Home plate umpire James Hoye called it strike three. The call was correct:
Indeed, there wasn’t anything controversial about it. Even as Arraez stood up and started walking to first base, and even when Mike Shildt came out to discuss the call, I don’t believe either was strong in his convictions. Simply put, it wasn’t close. This wasn’t a case of a batter accidentally bringing his bat around as he tried to avoid a missile hurtling toward him. Arraez began his swing with intention and didn’t even start to pull it back until the ball had already made contact with his body. Some umpires might be holding a grudge against Arraez for disparaging comments he made in spring training, but that’s not what this was. This was a strike:
Throughout his career, Arraez has only swung and missed at 16 of the 930 (1.7%) pitches he’s seen in the waste zone (per Statcast). That’s one-third of the league-average rate. Of the 257 batters who have seen at least 500 waste zone pitches since 2019, only five have a lower swing-and-miss rate than Arraez. It’s not often you’ll see him fail to make contact so miserably. In fact, having watched all 16 of his waste-zone whiffs, I could argue this was the single worst swing decision (category: context neutral) of his career.
Perhaps there was something in the air in Sacramento that day. After all, Maldonado got a hit, and Arraez did not. If that’s not a sign of the apocalypse, I don’t know what is. Supernatural or not, this strange, funny, and painful sequence of events that finally led to Arraez’s first strikeout is exactly why I love writing about baseball.
Welcome to this season’s first edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. I’m never more excited to watch baseball than I am at the end of March. The winter feels endlessly long, even for me in pleasant San Francisco. Spring training doesn’t quite scratch the itch. A series in Tokyo? Eh, everyone was asleep. But then comes Opening Day, and suddenly there’s baseball everywhere. Hats at the grocery store. Announcers on television and on the radio. Crowds filling bars and stadiums, TVs broadcasting the soothing sounds of my favorite sport. I’m all fired up. You only get one opening week a year, and this one’s been excellent. So after the customary nod to Zach Lowe (now of The Ringer, congrats Zach) for the format, let’s get right to the things that made me jump out of my seat this week.
1. Mookie!
I’ll admit to being a little skeptical about how the start of Mookie Betts’s season would go. It’s not because of any doubt about his skill – at this point in his career, I think he’s earned the benefit of the doubt there. But we’re not talking about how Betts would look at full strength. In fact, the reason I was skeptical was because he’s specifically not at full strength after losing nearly 20 pounds during a bout with norovirus.
Betts doesn’t weigh a lot to begin with – he’s officially listed at 180 pounds, but he checked into spring training this year at 175, according to Dodgers announcer Joe Davis. Losing 20 pounds from there is a big deal. Betts hits for a ton of power given his stature, but reducing his body weight by more than 10% makes that an even greater challenge. When he missed the Dodgers’ two games in Tokyo and then came back to play on Opening Day while still clearly affected, I mentally marked down my expectations for him early on.
Betts still isn’t back to full strength. Per a Dodgers broadcast last week, he’s back up to 165 pounds, and still hoping to gain more weight sooner rather than later to deal with the rigors of the season. That lack of oomph shows in the batted ball data; it is, of course, very early in the season, but Betts has barreled up only a single ball, and the hardest he’s hit one all year was a mere 100.8 mph. (For context, his max exit velo last season was 109.4 mph.) His bat speed is down. It shows on Betts’s body, too; he’s always been slight, but he looks smaller this year, because he is.
One place it hasn’t showed up? His batting line. He’s hitting .300/.364/.750 to start the year, and that’s with a .188 BABIP. He has more home runs (three) than strikeouts (one). Every single one of those homers gave the Dodgers the lead. And every single one of them had juuuuuust enough power to clear the wall:
How much distance did those balls have to spare? Maybe 10 feet combined? I think we need to look into the possibility that Betts is a magical being unconstrained by the rules of reality. I don’t know how else to explain his incredible performance even as he’s so focused on recovery that he eats meals during games to try to regain muscle mass.
If you’ve followed his career, you know that Betts is prone to white-hot streaks where he hits everything out of the park. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. But doing it when he’s visibly weakened by illness? Doing it while playing shortstop full time? Doubt Betts at your own risk. The Dodgers are impressive in a million ways – but right now, I can’t stop watching Mookie and giggling with delight.
2. Follow the Bouncing Wall
Ever heard of a strike ‘em out, throw ‘em out single play? Jeremiah Estrada managed that trick over the weekend, and in a way I’ve never seen before:
It’s not unheard of for a pitcher to retrieve the ball after a dropped third strike. Here’s another from the first week of the season:
But that’s how they happen, with balls that bounce back toward the field of play, and bounce far enough that the catcher can’t reach them. After the ball gets behind the plate, it’s the catcher’s ball for better or worse. Unless you’re playing with the wall bumper settings turned up to maximum, that is:
The ball hit a solid railing perfectly, flush and angled back into the field of play. A fraction of an inch in any direction would have made it completely unplayable. But throw enough fastballs off the wall behind the plate, and apparently one will kick back perfectly for some pitcher fielding practice. I’ve never seen anything like it – and that feeling, that I’ve never seen anything like what just occurred, is exactly why I’m so happy to have regular-season baseball back in my life.
3. Genius Defenders and Oblivious Baserunners
If you played baseball or softball growing up, you probably have the same instincts as me: When you see a rundown, you get giddy. Maybe, like me, you even say “Ooh! Pickle!” before you even notice that you’re talking. At the youth level, turning a pickled runner into an out is anything but a sure thing, and both the defenders and the runner have a lot to say about how things go. In the big leagues, the defenders are just too good for that. Escaping a rundown is getting tougher every year, because with perfect execution by both the runner and the defense, the runner is always out.
Here’s a classic one for you, a grounder to third base that hung Dairon Blanco out to dry on the basepaths:
You can quibble with having Blanco run on contact there, with no outs and Bobby Witt Jr. on deck. After the ball was in play, though, he didn’t have a lot of options. Catcher Bo Naylor came up the line aggressively and gave Blanco nowhere to hide. So Blanco went for the classic “break toward the thrower after he releases” plan; he didn’t execute it perfectly, but even if he did, it probably wouldn’t have worked. José Ramírez is fast, Hunter Gaddis and Carlos Santana were both covering home plate for reinforcements if the rundown continued, and like I said, it’s nearly impossible to escape a rundown conducted by major league fielders.
Why am I showing you this standard play? Because it wasn’t a standard play, and didn’t end there. Ramírez wasn’t just bluffing to third with that post-tag pivot:
It’s fun to watch a baseball genius at work. Ramírez made a string of great decisions on this play that equaled Kansas City’s string of bad ones. First, he took off down the third base line even before Naylor’s throw was in his glove. Blanco might be faster than him in a footrace, but he was already accelerating homeward when Blanco planted and changed direction. Rundowns are about quickness, not speed, and Ramírez is preternaturally agile.
He had the runner at second on his mind the entire time, too. You can see him waving Naylor toward him to hurry the play up. By the time he received the throw, he was already thinking about second base. Then, as he turned that way, he gave Kyle Isbel enough of a deke to freeze him on the basepaths. He even managed to re-insert himself into the rundown, though he wisely stepped aside when he saw his teammates had it under control.
Isbel, on the other hand, didn’t cover himself with glory. On this snapshot, the play should essentially be over:
Look at how far down the line Ramírez had already gotten, with Blanco still trying to change direction. That out was as good as made, Isbel had a perfect view of it, and he was close enough to second base to get back easily. But with the ball still right near third base and a fast and accelerating player holding it, Isbel inexplicably decided to take off:
Here’s how bad that decision was: Between Isbel deciding to run and Ramírez tagging Blanco out, Isbel took exactly two steps. He was maybe 20% of the way to third when Ramírez made the tag, and Ramírez was maybe 20% of the way from third to home.
Poor Jonathan India. He seems to know his way around a rundown. While the rest of the Royals were finding ways to create outs, he played everything perfectly. He tore down the line to first. When the defense abandoned him to cover the rundown, he went partway to second. And when Isbel got caught too, India did the right thing and went all the way to the second base bag. Just to put the cherry on top, rewatch the clip of Isbel getting tagged out. India didn’t step on the bag until the tag was applied. That’s because he was trying to start a rundown of his own; if Isbel had just sprinted back to second instead of stopping, India would have retreated to first, hopefully allowing Isbel to reach third or maybe even getting out of the rundown without being tagged given how many fielders were down near home plate. It’s amazing how good baseball players are at these little things. Well, how good they usually are, at least.
4. Lunging Practice
Double plays are a frequent feature of this column, because a well-turned double play, particularly if the degree of difficulty is high, is one of the most exciting plays in baseball. It features so many people operating in unison, there are usually close plays for at least one of the outs, and acrobatic pivots at second are just visually pleasing, period. And then you’ve got the double plays that aren’t perfect but are satisfying nonetheless:
What happened here? First, Mark Vientos made a difficult pick on a short hop. Then he judged that he had enough time and threw to second:
You can tell that something is wrong with the throw even in that abbreviated clip. The angle looks wrong, and so does his arm action. Good hands, yes, but bad throw:
Luisangel Acuña made that look easier than it was, but that could have been a disaster. His glove actually clipped second base as he went down for that one. How could it not, given the short hop? The ball rattled around in his glove, and he nearly lost his footing on the base while securing it, but he made the tough catch and even kept himself in position to throw to first.
At this point in the play, doubling up Isaac Paredes was far from automatic. Acuña didn’t have the time to baby the throw; he had to rip it and hope for reasonable accuracy. And “reasonable” is about what he got:
Pete Alonso isn’t a heralded defender, but he played this ball perfectly. When he saw the flight path, he went out and attacked the catch point. Stay back, and you have an in-between hop. Paredes might even beat out the throw; it was a really close play. But Alonso cut down the distance with his stretch, and he even got a bit of momentum by pushing on the base with his right foot, making sure to keep in contact until after he’d caught the ball. I love the brace with his right hand, too; that’s a good way to make sure that a collision with the ground doesn’t jar the ball out of the glove.
Honestly, that ball should be a double play every time without the need for anything spectacular. But hey, it was the first day of the season. Everyone was still getting up to game speed. And what better way to do that than by practicing some tough catches?
5. George Springer Still Has It
In the prime of his career, George Springer was a do-it-all outfielder in addition to being a slugger. He played 500 or so innings a year in center, spent the balance in right field, and showed off a cannon arm and fantastic instincts to go with plus speed. At 35, he’s not that kind of defender anymore. His last two seasons have been his worst defensive efforts as a major leaguer. But there’s a big difference between a diminished Springer and your regular kind of bad defender.
You can be a bad defender in many different ways. You can have bad instincts, or no speed, or a scattershot arm. But while Springer’s sprint speed is down, his heady play isn’t. How many below-average defenders can do this?
That’s not a great angle from the live broadcast, but I wanted to show it to you first so you can get an idea of how routine everything looked until the slide. Springer was playing far off the line in right when Ryan O’Hearn ripped the ball down the line, so it was a clean double off the bat. With Colton Cowser running from first, the math was pretty easy: If the ball hits the wall, Cowser scores. That’s why the broadcast cut to Cowser rounding second; he was the focus of attention at that point.
In his younger years, Springer might have gotten to that one standing up. But even missing a step or two, he has outstanding defensive instincts. He realized there was little downside and plenty of upside in trying to make a tough play, then pulled it off perfectly:
Every little thing about that is gorgeous. He was into the slide with legs extended by the time the ball hit his glove. He set his feet and lifted his body off the turf without using either hand, which let him complete the transfer from glove to throwing hand more quickly. Check out his left foot as he pivoted into the throw; his toe was pointed in the wrong direction at first, so he gave a quick jab to establish the correct position. Then he ripped the throw, off balance and falling away, hitting the cutoff man on the fly. Cowser had rounded second before Springer even started his slide, and yet the ball was back in an infielder’s hands by the time he stepped on third.
Small potatoes? Sure. He didn’t record an out or even prevent the hitter from getting to second. But keeping a runner from scoring, even with one out, has value. The O’s didn’t score in this inning, and that definitely wouldn’t have been true if Springer hadn’t made the play so seamlessly. And seriously, he was way off the line for that one. Here’s where he started the play:
The Jays like to shade Springer that way against lefties, but it’s nowhere near a straight-up right field position. Look at where he was standing against righties:
Now, did I pick that particular clip to show you that Andrés Giménez can juggle a baseball with his feet? I sure did. But you can see where Springer came into the picture, and he was maybe 20 feet closer to the line than he was against O’Hearn. My point is that it would have been easy for him to play that ball off the wall, or trap it with his momentum going the wrong way, or any number of ways that bad defenders play the ball when it’s not right at them. But Springer still has the elite defensive instincts he showed earlier in his career, and he made the kind of play that he always has. I love it. Even as he ages, you can still see what makes Springer so electric. Oh, and he’s slugging so far this year too. You love to see it.
Programming note: My chat next week will take place Tuesday at 2 p.m. Eastern, as I’ll be out on Monday. Talk to you then, I hope.
During the offseason, I examined Jackson Merrill’s excellent rookie season and concluded that his next big developmental step would have to involve getting on base more. A week into his sophomore season, we don’t know if Merrill is going to walk more. But if he does, he’ll have plenty of walkin’ around money.
Yeah, I feel good about that little bit of wordplay. Let’s move on.
On Wednesday morning, the Padres announced that they’d signed their precocious young outfielder to a nine-year contract extension. The contract is worth $135 million and kicks in next year, leaving his $809,500 salary intact for 2025, but incentives and an option for 2035 could push the total value of the deal to $204 million. Read the rest of this entry »
Alan Roden roped baseballs with regularity this spring, helping himself to land not only a roster spot, but also an Opening Day start in right field for the Toronto Blue Jays. Showing signs that he’s ready to take off at the MLB level, the 25-year-old left-handed hitter punished Grapefruit League hurlers to the tune of a 1.245 OPS and a 220 wRC+. He also coaxed six free passes and fanned just four times over his 37 plate appearances.
More than spring training results factored into his first big-league opportunity. Building on a strong 2024 season, split between Double-A New Hampshire and Triple-A Buffalo, Roden has been adding pop to his profile. Previously known more for his bat-to-ball skills than for his ability to clear fences, the erstwhile Creighton University Bluejay is now looking to lift.
Having read of Roden’s efforts to generate more power, I asked him how he’s gone about impacting the ball with more authority.
“I think it’s less of the actual impact that’s better,” Roden told me at Blue Jays camp. “It’s more the shape of the ball off the bat, directionally. The exit velocities are high enough to where if I’m getting in the air to the pull side, it’s going to go. That’s where the damage comes from, hitting the ball with more ideal launch angles.”
Roden has a B.A. in physics, so understanding the aerodynamics of ball flight, and the swing paths that produce results, comes with the territory. Explaining his mechanical adjustments was a simple exercise for the Middleton, Wisconsin native. Read the rest of this entry »
Joshua L. Jones-USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Every year, most teams hold some sort of team bonding, social event during spring training. The specifics of the event vary from team to team, but frequently they include renting out a movie theater and showing some cloying, inspirational movie like The Blind Side, Cool Runnings, Rudy, or better yet, a documentary like Free Solo. Regardless of the team’s outlook on the year, the goal is to get the players amped up for the season and ready to compete on the field, even if the competition in question is for fourth place in the division.
But what if instead of taking the clichéd route, teams actually tried to select a movie that fits their current vibe, one that’s thematically on brand with the state of their franchise? They won’t do this because spring training is a time for hope merchants to peddle their wares, even if they’re selling snake oil to sub-.500 teams. But spring training is over now, the regular season has begun, and it’s time to get real. So here are my movie selections for each National League team, sorted by release date from oldest to newest.
If you’re interested in which movies I selected for the American League teams, you can find those picks here. Read the rest of this entry »
In which ways would a fully-implemented Automated Ball-Strike System [ABS] impact pitching? According to a coordinator I spoke to, one effect could be a further increase in the number of power arms who can get away with attacking the middle area of the zone. Conversely, crafty finesse types will become even less common, as getting calls just off the corners will no longer be possible.
Count Chris Bassitt among those not enamored with the idea.
‘“If you go to a full ABS system, you’re going to develop more throwers and the injury rates are going to spike,” opined the 36-year-old Toronto Blue Jays right-hander. “Then you’ll have to go back to pitching. The only way to stay healthy is to pitch. That’s never going to change in our sport. No matter how many people want to do something different, you have to pitch. There are obviously a number of facets for why people get hurt at the rate they’re getting hurt, but the answer for the injury history of the sport for the last five, ten years is more throwers. I don’t agree with it.”
Dylan Cease was 21 years old and coming off of his first full professional season when Eric Longenhagen evaluated him for our Chicago Cubs Top Prospect list in January 2017. Cease was then ranked seventh in the system, with Eric assigning him a 45 FV and suggesting that he was more likely a reliever than a starter down the road. Cease has obviously followed a more successful path. Now 29 and about to begin his seventh big league season, and second with the San Diego Padres, the right-hander has been a top-shelf starter for four years running. Over that span he has toed the rubber 130 times — no pitcher has started more games — and logged a 3.52 ERA and a 3.32 FIP. Twice he’s finished top four in the Cy Young Award voting.
What did Cease’s 2017 FanGraphs scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think of it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what Eric wrote and asked Cease to respond to it.
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“Cease has done an admirable job at quelling what was once a violent head whack while still retaining the kind of velocity that made him an exciting prep prospect.”
“That sounds kind of like an old-school baseball thing,” Cease responded. “But… I don’t know. Maybe that was a thing? I know that I had a very long arm stroke. I’d have to see video, but I don’t recall it being like crazy violent. Usually, if you’re a starter you’re not too violent. Maybe it was, but my having very long arm action was the most memorable thing.”
“He was also flashing a plus curveball in the 79-81 mph range during instructs, but the pitch is more consistently average and, at times, below when it featured an easily identifiable, shapely hump out of his hand.”
“It’s funny, because there was no Trackman data,” Cease said. “If it was today, it would be like, ‘It’s moving at 15 or 18,’ or whatever. But yeah, while my curveball is pretty good, it’s never been my biggest swing-and-miss [pitch] or anything like that. So I would say that was probably fairly accurate; it did pop out sometimes. I actually don’t [throw a curveball] as much anymore.”
“There are several concerns about Cease, ranging from his size to his command to a lack of a third pitch; he has very little changeup feel right now.”
“That’s never changed, the changeup part of it,” Cease agreed. “I’ve never really been a plus-command pitcher either. I have my spurts, but for the most part it’s just getting my good stuff in the strike zone. I’ve also never been the biggest, but here we are.”
“Cease actually pitches with a good bit of plane when he’s working down, because of his vertical arm slot.”
“That sounds right,” he replied. “My slot is the same now, but with shorter arm action. I feel like that changed in my first or second year in the big leagues. It just happened. I was working on my lower half, and for whatever reason it just kind of played out that way.”
“His fastball has enough life to miss bats up in the zone when he’s missing his spots.”
“I think that’s just saying when I’m throwing heaters up in the zone, even if they’re out of the zone, sometimes I get the swings and misses,” Cease reasoned. “Basically it’s got good life. As for [the part about missing spots], honestly, I think I was just trying to throw it over; I was just trying to get it in the zone.”
“I’ve gotten a Yordano Ventura comp on Cease — undersized, hard-throwing righty with good curveball feel.”
“That’s pretty good,” Cease said with a nod of the head. “I mean, Yordano threw a little bit harder than me, but we both had lively arms.”
“He projects as a potential mid-rotation arm if the changeup and command improve, but he’s more likely to wind up in relief.”
“I do remember seeing that a lot as a young player, the bullpen aspect,” Cease recalled. “But yeah, pretty much it was, am I going to develop a third pitch, or get one or two pitches that are swing-and-miss, that can buy me multiple times through the order? I added a slider, which I didn’t have at that point. So I added my best pitch. I always had the velo, and if you have two good pitches you can kind of sprinkle in everything else and have them essentially play off each other. That’s worked out for me.”
If the winter is a time for dreams, the spring is a time for solutions. Your team may have been going after Juan Soto or Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani, depending on the offseason, but short of something going weird in free agency (like the unsigned Boras clients last year), if you don’t have them under contract at this point, they’ll be improving someone else’s club. However, that doesn’t mean that spring training is only about ramping up for the daily grind. Teams have real needs to address, and while they’re no doubt workshopping their own solutions – or possibly convincing themselves that the problem doesn’t exist, like when I wonder why my acid reflux is awful after some spicy food – that doesn’t mean that we can’t cook up some ideas in the FanGraphs test kitchen.
This is the final piece in a three-part series in which I’ll propose one way for each team to fill a roster hole or improve for future seasons. Some of my solutions are more likely to happen than others, but I tried to say away from the completely implausible ones. We’ll leave the hypothetical trades for Bobby Witt Jr. and Paul Skenes to WFAN callers. Also, I will not recommend the same fix for different teams; in real life, for example, David Robertson can help only one club’s bullpen. I wrote about the teams in the two East divisions last Wednesday, and then covered the Central divisions on Friday. Today, we’ll tackle the 10 teams in the West divisions, beginning with the five in the AL West before moving on to their counterparts in the NL West. Each division is sorted by the current Depth Charts projected win totals.
Texas Rangers: Reunite with Kyle Gibson
Look at the Rangers in our Depth Charts projection and glance down at the pitchers. Do you see a problem? We project the Rangers to have a decent rotation, right at the back of the top 10, but that also relies on a lot of innings from pitchers who have not been able to throw many in recent years. Jacob deGrom and Tyler Mahle are both projected to throw more innings apiece than the two of them have thrown combined over the last two years. I’d love to see 270 innings from deGrom and Mahle, but to count on that is just begging for a sad story. I probably believe in Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter more than most, but neither of them should be counted on to solidify an injury-depleted rotation in 2025.
The Rangers need a reliable innings-eater, and old friend Kyle Gibson is still out there. He has made at least 30 starts in five of the last six full seasons, with the one time he didn’t reach that threshold coming in 2019, when he made 29 starts, appeared in 34 games, and put up 2.6 WAR across 160 innings — the fewest innings he’s thrown in that span, excluding 2020. He’s probably never again going to be as good as he was in 2021, when he was an All-Star with Texas before getting traded to the Phillies and finished with a 3.71 ERA, a 3.87 FIP, and 3.1 WAR, but Gibson comes with a fairly high floor. His performance last year with the Cardinals (4.24 ERA, 4.42 FIP, 1.5 WAR, 169 2/3 innings) was his least-productive campaign during that 2018-2024 stretch, but even that would benefit the Rangers right now.
Seattle Mariners: Add some Tork to the lineup
The Mariners have gotten more out of Luke Raley than they’ve had any right to, but he remains a platoon first baseman, with a .575 OPS in the majors against lefties. Even if he can do better than that — ZiPS thinks he’ll put up about a hundred more points of OPS in 2025 — he’s not David Ortiz against righties, so it’s hard to just give him a full-time job at first. The likely candidates to pair with Raley are thoroughly uninteresting, so why not look at Spencer Torkelson, a player who is just begging for a change of scenery? The Tigers have clearly soured on him; otherwise, they likely would not have signed second baseman Gleyber Torres and moved Colt Keith to first base to start there over Torkelson. He’s still young enough to have some upside and get things back on track, but even if he doesn’t ever reach his full potential, he ought to at least beat up on lefties. The Mariners could use more power, and I doubt the price tag will be high.
Houston Astros: Add a very boring arm
The Astros dug themselves a hole early on in 2024, in large part because of a spate of pitching injuries that tested their depth to the breaking point. Houston’s rotation ought to be good, but there still are a number of pitchers with injury concerns, once again leaving the team vulnerable to some bad health luck. The Astros could use some veteran depth to preemptively reinforce the rotation just in case someone goes down, and I think for them, Lance Lynn is the most interesting free agent still available.
The Astros are skilled at refining pitch arsenals, for both prospects and veterans, and Lynn has the weirdest repertoire of the remaining free-agent starters. Rather than the standard fastball-breaking-offspeed mix, Lynn basically throws a bunch of slightly-to-moderately different fastballs, making him the type of pitcher who could benefit from Houston’s wizardry. A sweeper could cause some additional tension for batters compared to his cutter, and he’s never really had a refined offspeed offering to use as a putaway pitch against lefties. The specifics would be for the Astros to figure out. Lynn also has expressed a willingness to pitch out of the bullpen after teams started inquiring about using him as a reliever, so even if Houston’s rotation remains in tact for the whole season, Lynn could still have a role.
Athletics: Get Sandy before heading to the desert
The good: The A’s actually spent some money this winter. The bad: We still project the A’s to have a losing record. The really bad: Our Depth Charts project the A’s to have a worse starting rotation than the White Sox. The Marlins are clearly in the shopping mood, having already sent away Jesús Luzardo, and with teams likely waiting to see how Sandy Alcantara fares after returning from Tommy John surgery, the A’s have an opportunity to jump the 2022 NL Cy Young’s trade market and steal a march on the better wild card contenders. A potential wrinkle here: The Yankees may be in the market for Alcantara now that Gerrit Cole is going to miss the 2025 season while recovering from Tommy John surgery. Still, the A’s shouldn’t let that deter them from targeting an ace at a time when he could be relatively affordable.
Los Angeles Angels: Hire a team of archaeologists to design a very complex treasure hunt that convinces Arte Moreno to sell the team so that he’s free to go on an Indiana Jones adventure
I admit it, I’m at a loss for words with the Angels. In some ways, they’re actually worse off than the White Sox, in that Chicago at least has a reasonable long-term plan while the Angels keep teetering between strategies that are either unclear, unrealistic, or both. Their moves reflect their extreme short-term thinking, leaving the organization without a coherent path to winning now or winning later. Leadership has to come from the top, and Moreno continues to show he is incapable of fixing things. Case in point: The Halos spent this offseason adding veteran depth pieces. These would’ve been smart moves if the Angels were already a good team and looking to patch up their few remaining areas of weakness. That, of course, is not the case. The Angels need to accept that they’re lost before they can move forward and begin to assemble a winning team while Mike Trout is still around. But as long as they keep following an ineffective leader, they’re going to keep walking in circles.
Los Angeles Dodgers: Find a weird reclamation project
This one was a struggle because the Dodgers, while not having the highest median win projection of any team in ZiPS history (that’s still the 2021 Dodgers), they have the highest floor, with no obvious weaknesses anywhere. I guess the one thing the Dodgers are missing is that random broken-down reliever that you forget still plays baseball until they inevitably fix him. I’d love to see if Daniel Bard has another improbable comeback left in him, or maybe Adam Cimber, because a star in the sky disappears whenever a sidearmer loses his job.
Arizona Diamondbacks: See if the Yankees are interested in Jordan Montgomery
As I mentioned in the A’s section, Cole’s Tommy John surgery is a massive blow to the Yankees as they look to defend their American League pennant in 2025. Will Warren has a good shot at being a pretty solid rotation fill-in, but with Luis Gil also out for a while and Nestor Cortes now on the Brewers, the team now has just about zero starting pitching depth left. Jordan Montgomery and the Yankees have a good history, and there’s an obvious need now. Montgomery really struggled in 2024, to the point that Arizona owner Ken Kendrick said publicly that adding the lefty was a “horrible signing.” The Diamondbacks also have plenty of rotation options, so many, in fact, that RosterResource currently projects Montgomery to pitch out of their bullpen. They surely won’t get much in return for him, and they should be prepared to eat a good chunk of his remaining salary, but if they want to move on from him and maybe even get a prospect or two in return, this is the way to do it.
San Diego Padres: Sign David Robertson
The Padres’ bullpen is hardly a dumpster fire, but it is kind of top-heavy, and we project everybody after the fifth option (Yuki Matsui) to be at or below replacement level. There’s not a lot of financial flexibility right now in San Diego for various reasons we won’t go into here, but if the Padres are looking for marginal gains on a budget, David Robertson is by far the best move they could make. They shouldn’t have to spend much to get him, considering he’s 40 years old and remains unsigned in the second week of March, but he is coming off a very good season and is comfortable pitching in a variety of bullpen roles.
San Francisco Giants: Inquire about Jesús Sánchez
The Giants are likely a tier below the Diamondbacks and Padres in the NL Wild Card race, but they’re still close enough that short-term improvements matter. San Francisco’s designated hitter spot is bleak, and the player we have getting the most plate appearances there, Jerar Encarnacion, was in an indie league for much of last season and put up a .277 on-base percentage in the majors. The Giants should see what it would take to get Jesús Sánchez from the Marlins. He’s never developed into a big home run hitter despite solid hard-hit numbers, in large part because he’s never generated much loft. He’s also a spray hitter, and last season, 13 of his 25 doubles were line drives hit the opposite way. It’s the type of game that could be better suited for the spacious Oracle Park. Sánchez would provide a left-handed complement to Encarnacion, and he’s good enough to play all three outfield positions if needed.
Colorado Rockies: Find the next Nolan Jones and Brenton Doyle
Since the departure of former GM Jeff Bridich, the Rockies have made quite a bit of progress in no longer treating prospects as annoyances, and they now give internal, lesser prospects chances to surprise them. The last bit is important, as the Rockies of five or six years ago would never have given someone like Nolan Jones or Brenton Doyle enough playing time to break out in the majors. Doyle hit 23 homers and stole 30 bases in 2024 while winning his second Gold Glove in as many seasons, and although Jones struggled last year, he was hurt on and off and should be expected to at least split the difference between that performance and his 2023 production.
Considering this, the Rockies should go full-carrion bird as the season approaches. Colorado ought to be in on any and all mildly interesting players who are shut out of major league opportunities in 2025. Among the guys the Rockies should target are Mickey Gasper, Edouard Julien, Addison Barger, Shay Whitcomb, Curtis Mead, and Leo Jiménez. They may never develop into stars, but the Rockies need to be willing to throw everything at the wall and hope to find at least a few productive players.
