Jackson Wolf has unique characteristics. No. 22 on our updated San Diego Padres prospect rankings as a 35+ FV, the 23-year-old southpaw not only stands 6-foot-7 and features a deceptive delivery, his changeup grip is among the most unusual in the game. Drafted in the fourth round last year out of West Virginia University, he was described by Eric Longenhagen as “a funky, low-ish slot lefty with uncommon athleticism and flexibility… [with] arms-and-legs deception.”

A native of Gahanna, Ohio, Wolf made all but one of his 24 appearances with the High-A Fort Wayne TinCaps this season, logging a 4.21 ERA and 4.32 FIP with 95 hits allowed and 139 strikeouts in 142 innings. He sat down to discuss his repertoire, and the outlier properties that come with it, earlier this summer.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with how you self-identify as a pitcher. How do you get guys out?

Jackson Wolf: “I actually just had this conversation with one of our coordinators. Finding my identity is something we’ve addressed this year, and getting outs isn’t going to come from blowing fastballs by guys. It’s going to come from using my movement, and from using my weird motion and leverage — kind of my deception — to get hitters uncomfortable and off-balance.” Read the rest of this entry »

Mike McCarthy has followed a well-educated path in his pursuit of a big-league position. Currently the pitching coach for the Triple-A El Paso Chihuahuas, the 34-year-old Walnut Creek, California native earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Cal State Bakersfield while playing in the Boston Red Sox system, and he followed that up by earning an MBA, with an emphasis in global management, from the University of Phoenix. And he’s not done learning. Along with instructing pitchers in the San Diego Padres’ system, McCarthy is working toward a Master’s Degree in Sports and Health Science.

His educational pursuits have every bit as robust in the pitching realm. Ever since being introduced to analytical concepts as a Double-A hurler, McCarthy has strove to learn as much as he can. To say he’s made great strides in that area would be an understatement; McCarthy is one of the most forward-thinking pitching coaches in professional baseball.

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David Laurila: You’re big into pitching analytics. When did that start?

Mike McCarthy: “One of the moments I remember, one of the most distinct, is Brian Bannister coming to Portland. I believe that was in 2015. I was throwing a bullpen, and I asked Brian, ‘Why does Justin Haley get so many swings-and-misses on his fastball?’ I told him it seemed like an invisi-ball, and none of us could figure it out. He said, ‘We’re learning about this thing called spin rate, and his is really high. ‘I was like, ‘What the heck is that?’

“There was a saying that Anthony Ranaudo, Brandon Workman and Drake Britton were all using. They called it ‘elevate and celebrate.’ While I was throwing fastballs down and away, those guys were throwing fastballs up and getting swings-and-misses. That was kind of going against the grain at the time, and it turns out they all had high-carry fastballs. We just didn’t know what it meant.

“That was the first time I really started to ponder the idea, ‘What are we missing? What don’t we know yet?’ Since that time, baseball has obviously delved into the technology and analytics, and that’s something I’ve enjoyed using as a part of the way I approach coaching.”

Laurila: When did really start to dive in to analytics? Read the rest of this entry »

In what may have been the most surprising trade ahead of the August 2 deadline, the Brewers and Padres swapped closers on August 1 as part of a five-player deal, with four-time All-Star Josh Hader heading to San Diego and 2021 All-Star Taylor Rogers and three other players going to Milwaukee. But a trade that was supposed to improve both contenders while making some additional sense in terms of rosters and payrolls has thus far failed to pan out for either team, and at this point both clubs find themselves scrambling for the National League’s last playoff spot.

The full deal sent the 28-year-old Hader to the Padres in exchange for the 31-year-old Rogers as well as 30-year-old righty Dinelson Lamet and a pair of 23-year-old prospects, lefty Robert Gasser and outfielder Esteury Ruiz. Lamet didn’t even suit up for the Brewers, who designated him for assignment on August 5; he was claimed by the Rockies and at this writing has made eight appearances for them. Meanwhile, the Brewers sent Ruiz, who had been on the Padres’ major league roster, back to Triple-A and promoted Gasser from High-A to Double-A.

While the trade appeared puzzling on the surface, the Brewers seemed motivated to make the move because they perceived that they had a deep enough bullpen to withstand the loss of the increasingly expensive Hader, who’s making $11 million this year and could make around $15 million in his final year of arbitration. Even if Rogers didn’t wind up working the ninth inning, they believed that the extra goodies they were receiving from the Padres would help them in the long run. The Padres made the trade because they felt they needed an elite closer for a playoff push that they hoped would include a revamped roster, not only with Fernando Tatis Jr. after he rehabbed from a wrist injury but also other significant fortifications that were in the works; they landed Juan Soto and Josh Bell from the Nationals but might have turned to Willson Contreras had that massive blockbuster not materialized. Read the rest of this entry »

Friday’s interview with Michael Harris II focused on his career path, the 21-year-old Atlanta Braves rookie having excelled as a multiple-sport athlete while growing up in Stockbridge, Georgia. Moreover, he’d been a two-way player whom many scouts preferred as a pitcher. While baseball and outfielder-only are proving to be prudent choices, he had options along the way.

Jordan Romano’s path shares some similarities with Harris’s. Not only was the Toronto Blue Jays closer a multi-sport athlete in his formative years, he originally excelled as a position player. That he became a pitcher was circumstantial. Choosing baseball was a matter of passion.

“Being Canadian, I played a lot of hockey in high school,”said Romano, who grew up a Toronto Maple Leafs fan in Markham, Ontario. “I also played a little basketball and was pretty decent at volleyball. But with baseball, you kind of had to drag me off the field, even in practice. My parents wanted me to play a bunch of different sports, and while I really enjoyed hockey — I still do — I didn’t have the passion for it that I did for baseball.”

Romano never considered himself NHL material, but he does feel he had the potential to play collegiately, or in juniors, had he stuck with it. The decision to forgo that possibility came at age 17, and while it shaped his future, it didn’t end his time on the ice. Romano kept lacing up the skates for another year. Read the rest of this entry »

In a shocking story heading into the weekend, MLB announced that Padres shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. would be suspended for 80 games under the league’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. His positive test was for Clostebol, an anabolic steroid that previously led to the suspensions of Dee Strange-Gordon and Freddy Galvis. The ban ends his 2022 season before it ever officially started, and he will also miss a decent chunk of next year, as well.

To say this is unwelcome news would be an understatement. The Padres are in prime playoff position without having the services of Tatis this year, but this is a giant hit; they’re in this position in spite of his loss. Whether you’re talking about the projections of nerdy computer systems or the expectations of team employees and their fans, the idea that he would be back on the roster for at least most of the stretch run and the playoffs was baked into the assumptions.

While a certain trade with the team in D.C. for a specific outfielder of much acclaim rightfully got the most thundering plaudits after the deadline, the depth move for Brandon Drury in a small trade with the Reds is looking even better. After a string of disappointing seasons following his early success in Arizona, he’s having a career year, hitting .269/.333/.521 for a wRC+ of 130 and playing several positions. Drury is competent at both second base and third base, which amplifies the value of his offensive production, and that flexibility allows the Padres to shuffle players around the diamond as needs, matchups, or injuries demand. He’s even played enough shortstop that he can be at least considered an emergency option, but it’s less needed in San Diego with Ha-Seong Kim and Jake Cronenworth likely ahead of him in the depth chart at the position.

The Padres’ depth mitigates the loss of Tatis, but their young superstar is so good that practically any timeshare of mortals will represent a significant downgrade at the position. Entering 2022, ZiPS ranked him second in baseball in projected WAR, behind only Juan Soto, and only because it projected fewer games played for Tatis because of his injury history. ZiPS was not exactly going out on a limb here; Steamer and THE BAT held him in similar regard, as did, well, every person who was even vaguely familiar with baseball. Even my mom, who has just about zero interest in the sport, knew about the suspension, though admittedly she referred to him as “Taters.”

In any case, let’s run the median projections for the NL West, both without a Tatis suspension and with him returning at the end of this week:

The Dodgers have basically closed the door on the longshot chance that San Diego would catch them in the NL West, but the Padres are among the best situated of the plausible wild card teams. Adding Soto gave them the strongest roster among wild card contenders, a roster as strong as Los Angeles’ until Walker Buehler and Clayton Kershaw return. ZiPS saw San Diego, against league-average competition, as a .582 team with the assumption that Tatis would be back. Now let’s go to the current projection without Tatis, which reduces the roster strength by 26 points of winning percentage, to .556.

The impact on both San Diego’s chances of making the playoffs and winning the World Series is significant. In terms of the postseason, just under a tenth of the time, the Padres playing postseason baseball becomes the Padres playing golf and watching the playoffs on TV. Playoffs being a bit of a crapshoot, the absolute impact is relatively small, but that a sixth of their World Series chances just evaporated has to be a sore spot for a team trying to win right now. Against a .575 team, going from a .582 team to a .556 team reduces the chances of victory by about four to six percentage points every series, depending on length.

Naturally, Tatis’ teammates and organization have expressed their frustration with him publicly; it would be unreasonable for them to feel differently. Nobody can find fault when a player is injured, but when he’s out from actions of his own doing, it feels a bit like a betrayal. If I were suspended from my BBWAA membership for a year for conduct violations, while it would obviously affect my personal career, it would be a real slap in the face of my colleagues at FanGraphs and the many writers who have spread my work around over the years.

Joe Musgrove on Tatis:

“A little bummed, a little pissed,” said Joe Musgrove, the lifelong Padres fan and now a pitcher and a leader on the team. “It’s hard to make a judgement or say anything until I hear from Tati or what those details are. But yeah, not a good day.”
[…]
“You can say he’s a young kid and he’s gonna learn his lessons or whatnot,” Musgrove said. “But ultimately, I think you’ve got to start showing a little bit of that remorse and showing us that you’re committed to it and that you want to be here.”

Mike Clevinger:

“The second time we’ve been disappointed with him,” pitcher Mike Clevinger said last night. “You hope he grows up and learns from this and learns it’s about more than just him.”

President of Baseball Operations A.J. Preller:

“It’s very disappointing,” Preller said. “He’s somebody that from the organization’s standpoint we’ve invested time and money into. When he’s on the field, he’s a difference maker. You have to learn from the situations. We were hoping that from the offseason to now that there would be some maturity, and obviously with the news today, it’s more of a pattern and it’s something that we’ve got to dig a bit more into. … I’m sure he’s very disappointed. But at the end of the day, it’s one thing to say it. You’ve got to start showing by your actions.”

The explanation given by Tatis was unconvincing.

The Major League Baseball Players Association issued the following statement on behalf of Fernando Tatis, Jr.: pic.twitter.com/gCNVcs0a5Y

— MLBPA Communications (@MLBPA_News) August 12, 2022

Athletes blaming their positive tests on others is old hat, but the claims of a tainted ringworm treatment, while not impossible, sound like a stretch. Dr. Rany Jazayerli, a name most of you ought to be familiar with, is at that rare intersection of baseball analyst, long-suffering Royals fan, and working dermatologist, and he was highly skeptical about Tatis’ claims. On Twitter, he reiterated that he would not consider prescribing anything with Clostebol — as opposed to the similarly named Clobetasol — to a patient with ringworm.

I only speak from my experience as a US-trained, board-certified dermatologist for 19 years. Maybe Clostebol is used to treat ringworm elsewhere, even though it makes no medical sense.

Or maybe Tatis googled Clostebol and was fed a bunch of results for Clobetasol instead. ????

— Rany Jazayerli (@jazayerli) August 13, 2022

Tatis accepted the suspension without appealing, but that’s hardly a great sacrifice given that drug suspensions in baseball are largely strict liability. Without being able to challenge the proof of the violation itself, he must prove by clear and convincing evidence that he bore no significant fault or negligence for the positive test. That’s a tough burden and mostly serves simply to mitigate the penalty to a minimum of 30 games for a first-time offender while still leaving him ineligible for the playoffs. Luckily for the Padres, the postseason ban only applies to the season during which a suspension commences, not all seasons in which there is a suspension, which leaves Tatis eligible to play in the 2023 postseason along with most of the regular season.

There’s no real silver lining, but if Tatis had been suspended just a few weeks later, there would have been an additional problem for the Padres. Since his suspension runs for fewer than 40 games in 2023, he is allowed to play in all spring training games, not just the intrasquad games for which no tickets are sold. Given that Tatis had already missed most of a season with a fractured wrist, the franchise should be happy to get him into as many actual baseball games as they can before he returns sometime next year. If San Diego plays in the maximum of 22 postseason games, he could be back as soon as mid-April!

From a projection standpoint, little changes about Tatis other than the additional normal hit taken from missing time from a non-injury. ZiPS does not look at drug suspensions differently because, after spending a decade researching this issue from every angle I can think of, knowing whether or not a player has been banned for PED use has had no predictive value in the context of performance from MLB-level players. This is largely why I consider PED use a safety issue — players shouldn’t feel forced to use, whether or not they’re effective — and a public relations one.

That latter arena is where Tatis might take the biggest hit of all. The reputational damage will be immense, no matter the efficacy of his PED use. We’re in uncharted territory here, in which a young, elite player is caught using. While Alex Rodriguez has admitted using, and there’s at least a question about David Ortiz as a young player in 2003, these weren’t known at the time. Tatis could come back, put up a Hall of Fame-type run for a decade and pass every drug test with flying colors, and there will be inevitably some people who still think of him as a cheater. Robinson Canó didn’t have to play baseball for 15 years after a drug suspension, and players like Frankie Montas and Nelson Cruz just aren’t in the same tier as Tatis; fans seem to be far more forgiving of moderate talents than transcendent ones.

There could even be Cooperstown consequences. Only speaking for myself, I consider a drug suspension, even if I don’t believe it significantly changed performance, to be a serious offense. To me, as with corked bats, it’s the attempt to cheat, not the efficacy. I do think there is a gray area, as when Mark McGwire allegedly was using. Some will cite Fay Vincent’s 1991 memo banning steroid use as evidence of a baseball rule, but even Vincent himself didn’t believe his memo applied to players.

“I sent it out because I believed it was important to take the position that steroids were dangerous, as were other illegal drugs,” Vincent said. “As you know, the union would not bargain with us, would not discuss, would not agree to any form of a coherent drug plan. So my memo really applied to all the people who were not players.”

In other words, that memo could ban Jim Fregosi or Terry Collins for steroid use. But the drug testing agreement explicitly made it against the rules with penalties attached, and that wiggle room vanished.

Unlike some writers, I don’t consider a PED suspension an automatic disqualifier, but under the Hall of Fame’s voting guidelines, I consider it a violation of the character clause, which I see in baseball terms, and for a borderline candidate, that could put him out. That said, the Hall of Fame voting pool will change a lot in the 20–25 years before Tatis would come up to the electorate — I don’t vote until after the 2025 season, and by the point I would be voting on Tatis, I’ll be in my mid-to-late 60s — so it’s hard to gauge exactly how writers will feel about drug use with another quarter century of experience.

Regardless of what happens to Tatis personally, this is a hit for baseball. He’s one of the league’s most marketable young talents, and one of the proponents for baseball actually being allowed to be fun, not a Very Serious Affair in which we tut-tut about brutish bat flips and proletariat celebrations as we gently sip our beers (pinky out!) and yearn for the return of Regency Baseball standards. Tatis should be one of the faces of baseball, not one of its disgraces. When we lose a player like that, everybody who loves the game loses.

SAN DIEGO — August 2 blockbuster addition Juan Soto may be dominating the headlines, but it’s Manny Machado who has finally kick-started the Padres’ new-look lineup. On Tuesday night, Machado’s walk-off home run against the Giants’ Tyler Rogers helped offset Josh Hader’s ninth-inning meltdown and put an end to the Padres’ five-game losing streak. On Wednesday afternoon, the third baseman’s two-run double off of Jakob Junis spurred a six-run rally that helped the Padres overcome a 4-0 deficit. Machado added two more hits, a double and a two-out sixth-inning single that sparked a seven-run rally after the Padres had surrendered the lead, one that turned the game into a 13-7 laugher. Only a spectacular catch of his 97-mph drive by Luis González prevented him from collecting a third extra-base hit.

“You don’t see too many six spots and seven spots in the same game,” marveled manager Bob Melvin afterwards.

After acquiring Hader, Soto, Josh Bell, and Brandon Drury ahead of the deadline, the Padres beat the Rockies 9-1 on August 3, then proceeded to lose five straight while scoring just seven runs. After dropping their series finale to the Rockies, they were then swept by the Dodgers in Los Angeles, where they were outscored by a combined score of 20-4. They were shut out for 26 consecutive innings, from the sixth inning of Saturday’s loss through back-to back shutouts against the Dodgers on Sunday and the Giants on Monday, not scoring again until the fourth inning of Tuesday night’s game via Soto’s first homer as a Padre. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a spray chart of Manny Machado’s groundballs this year:

And here’s a heat map of all of the grounders he’s hit in his career:

Oh, hi there. Don’t worry, you haven’t inadvertently stepped into a list of every player’s batted ball tendencies. Part of writing is building a sense of mystery. I’m just setting you up for a payoff later on. Whoops, gave that one away too easily! In any case, let’s move on. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the day after the trade deadline, which always means one thing: baseball writers begrudgingly cleaning up their gross, sparkling-water-can-filled workspaces. Oh, wait, actually it means two things: that, and a flood of “who won the trading deadline” articles.

This year, I’m going to do something slightly different. I won’t claim that I’ve re-invented the wheel, but I’ve always thought that those winner/loser columns are too deterministic and don’t leave enough room for nuance. I thought about listing each team that made a trade as a winner, with a “maybe” appended to indicate that we don’t know what will happen in the future; if you really want to know who won and who lost, check back in October… or maybe in October of 2025. I thought about making each team a “loser (maybe)” for the same reason. In the end, I settled on some broad archetypes. I’ll throw a subjective grade on how much I like the move, and also endeavor to explain the risks around each team’s deadline. You can find all of our deadline coverage here. Let’s get started. Read the rest of this entry »

Another trade deadline has come and gone, and I must say, this one was more exciting than I expected. I didn’t see the Yankees, Astros, or Dodgers making huge splashes, given that all three are in a daunting position both for first place in their divisions and a first-round playoff bye. There were also relatively few short-term rental options available; Juan Soto, Frankie Montas, and Luis Castillo, among others, could always be traded, but with none of them free agents after this season, teams could also pull them back if they didn’t like the offers. Meanwhile, players like Willson Contreras, Ian Happ and Carlos Rodón stayed put, also to my surprise. By and large, though, we had a whirlwind of a 48-hour period leading up to the deadline.

So, who won and who lost? That’s a bit of a loaded question, because the definition of winning and losing varies depending on each franchise’s goals. A contending team improving, a rebuilding team getting worse but acquiring a stable of prospects, or an indolent team only re-signing its 37-year-old closer are all things that can be considered a win in one way or the other. But we’re here to do some hardcore ranking, so let’s look only at who improved themselves the most in 2022.

To keep this all science-y rather than a somewhat arbitrary exercise, I first projected the entire league’s rest of season in ZiPS and then repeated the exercise with all trades since July 19 unwound. Since some teams primarily got overall playoff boosts and some teams saw improvement mainly in terms of World Series gains, I took each team’s rank in both categories and then ranked everyone by the harmonic mean of those two ranks. Read the rest of this entry »

True to his word, Chaim Bloom bought as well as sold at this year’s deadline. Filling one of his team’s biggest needs on the heels of Eric Hosmer’s no-trade-clause refusal to go to the nation’s capital as part of the Juan Soto mega–deal, Bloom acquired the veteran first baseman, along with a pair of speedy outfield prospects, from the San Diego Padres in exchange for 2016 first-rounder Jay Groome. Still holding out hope for October baseball — Boston’s postseason odds currently sit at 33.4% — it was a move that improves their chances.

Hosmer isn’t the type of player who will lift a team on his shoulders and carry them to the promised land. A career .277/.336/.429 (107 wRC+) hitter whose present-season slash line dwells in that same neighborhood, he’s by no means a savior. After a blazing start to the season that saw him hit .382/.447/.579 through May 1, he’s cooled considerably, hitting just .235/.295/.309 since. Still, he’s a capable fielder and if he can recapture something of his early-season form, he represents an upgrade at his position. Red Sox first basemen have combined to slash a putrid .203/.278/.349 this year, and they’ve been even worse on the defensive side of the ball. At -10, they have the worst DRS in either league, and OAA doesn’t like them much better (-9).

Hosmer isn’t exactly Keith Hernandez with the glove, nor is he the same adroit defender who won four Gold Gloves in his glory days with the Kansas City Royals. But again, he represents an upgrade. While Bobby Dalbec, a converted third baseman, has at least been credible at the opposite corner of the infield, converted outfielder Franchy Cordero has been nothing short of cringeworthy. Acquired from Kansas City as part of last year’s Andrew Benintendi trade, Cordero has committed eight errors in just 316 first-base innings this year. Conversely, Hosmer has been charged with 14 errors over his last 2,122 innings. As much as they’ve needed a better bat, Boston needed someone capable of catching the baseball. Read the rest of this entry »