This season, Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin will have periodic minor league roundup post that run during the week. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

I noticed what felt like an unusually high number of rehabbing big leaguers (and some prospects) in the box scores over the last several days, so I called around to get info on how these pitchers have looked on their way back from injury.

The Rays have two prominent members of their pitching staff currently working back through the minors: former top prospect Luis Patiño and current top prospect Shane Baz. Patiño, who was put on the IL on April 12 with an oblique strain, has only just begun his climb through the minors. He threw one inning in the Florida Complex League on Monday night and sat 94–96 mph with his sliders in their usual 84–87 range. He threw just one changeup. Baz, who is coming off of arthroscopic surgery of his right elbow, has been rehabbing at Triple-A since the end of May, working on four days rest and ramping up to about 80 pitches in his most recent outing, in which he struck out 10 hitters in 4.1 innings on Sunday. He looks like his usual self, sitting 94–97 and touching 99, and is poised to rejoin the Rays’ rotation within the next week.

(Another Rays note: former first rounder Nick Bitsko, who is coming off of a prolonged rehab from labrum surgery, was sitting 92–95 during his Extended Spring outings and has moved up into the 40+ FV tier now that he’s shown his arm strength is mostly back to pre-surgery form.)

Also set to return to a big league rotation is Nationals righty Stephen Strasburg, who has made three rehab starts with Triple-A Rochester, also on four days rest, recovering from thoracic outlet surgery. While he’s still showing plus secondary stuff, especially his changeup, his velocity has been way down, hovering in the 88–92 range with poor shape. Of all the pitchers who I’ll cover today, he’s the only one who hasn’t looked anything like himself. Read the rest of this entry »

Eric Hosmer’s numbers have declined since Jay Jaffe wrote about him in early May. That was inevitable. At the time, the San Diego Padres first baseman was slashing a stupendous and wholly unsustainable .382/.447/.579. As my colleague pointed out, the question at hand was whether Hosmer “can still help a team that was close to unloading him just a month ago.”

His overall numbers remain solid. Even with the inevitable downturn, the 32-year-old Hosmer is slashing .312/.378/.435 on the season, with his .354 wOBA and 132 wRC+ both ranking second-best on the club behind Manny Machado. The Padres would be more than satisfied if Hosmer were to finish the season with those types of numbers.

Hosmer, a career .278/.337/.431 hitter who has incurred more than his fair share of peaks and valleys since breaking into the big leagues with the Kansas City Royals in 2011, talked hitting prior to a May 1 game at PNC Park.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with your formative years. How did you grow up learning to hit?

Eric Hosmer: “I grew up basically wanting to stay inside the ball. You’re kind of taught that approach when you’re a kid, and as you advance, particularly in pro ball, you get the timing involved. You want to be in a ready position while you’re reading the pitch and then pull off a good swing from there.”

Laurila: How many times have you tried to change as a hitter?

Hosmer: “A couple of times. As you get older in your career, you might try to do certain things. The game went heavy to home runs and all that. It went to slugging. So you kind of try to change a little bit. You notice if it works, or doesn’t work, for you. You maybe end up trying to change back to what got you here.”

Laurila: You found that a particular approach doesn’t work for you.

Hosmer: “The trying to lift the ball? No, I don’t think that works too well for me.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and we’re once again hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features a young Seattle Mariners right-hander, Logan Gilbert, and a sneaky-good San Diego Padres reliever, Nabil Crismatt, on their changeups.

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Logan Gilbert, Seattle Mariners

“I changed the grip this offseason. I’d been throwing it a little more off my ring finger, and now it’s more of a traditional circle change. I’m also trying to throw it more like my fastball, which has helped the consistency. I obviously wanted to keep good action on it, but also be able to locate it in the zone; I wasn’t commanding the old one very well. More than anything, I was looking for something that I felt comfortable with. Read the rest of this entry »

Steven Wilson is a 27-year-old rookie with a captivating pitch profile. His primary offering is a riding, mid-90s fastball delivered with good extension, and from a low vertical approach angle. His breaking ball is a bullet slider that’s he honed with the help of technology. Wilson also has a Vulcan change in his repertoire, although it mostly stays in his back pocket. By and large, the 6-foot-3 right-hander is thriving as a two-pitch pitcher.

An eighth-round senior-sign by San Diego in 2018, Wilson has come out of the Padres bullpen 15 times this season and thrown the same number of innings. With the exception of his most-recent outing — three earned runs allowed in two-thirds of an inning — he’s been very good. The Santa Clara University product has allowed 12 hits, issued five walks, and fanned 17 batters. He’s been credited with three wins and one save.

Wilson — No. 9 on our newly-released San Diego Padres Top Prospects list — discussed his pitch mix when the Friars visited Pittsburgh at the end of April.

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David Laurila: How do you get guys out? Can you answer that question without the cliche, “attacking the strike zone”?

Steven Wilson: “Well, that helps. But for me, it’s typically playing the fastball up in the zone, and then throwing a slider off of that. My slider goes down. It has more vertical break — more drop — than most sliders, and less horizontal than most sliders. A lot of people think it’s a curveball, but if you watch it in slo-mo, it actually has bullet spin like a slider. So yeah, fastballs up top and sliders down. Sometimes a changeup down.” Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the San Diego Padres. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the second year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Robinson Canó will get to write another chapter to his major league career. Cut loose by the Mets earlier this month amid a roster crunch, the twice-suspended 39-year-old second baseman is reportedly on the verge of signing with the Padres. While he may not have much left in the tank, there’s very little risk involved in giving him a look, and if nothing else, San Diego could use some help for its bench.

Canó hit just .195/.233/.268 in 43 plate appearances before being designated for assignment by the Mets on May 2, the day that rosters were reduced from 28 players to 26, and then released on May 8. They parted with Canó despite owing him $44.7 million on his contract over this year and next, the final portion of the 10-year, $240 million deal he signed with the Mariners in December 2013 (Seattle still has a $3.75 million installment to pay the Mets). The Padres will be paying him only the prorated portion of the $700,000 minimum salary, which is noteworthy given that they’re less than $1.2 million below the $230 million Competitive Balance Tax threshold, according to Roster Resource.

Canó was a very productive hitter as recently as two years ago, slashing .316/.352/.544 (142 wRC+) with 10 home runs in 182 PA during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. But on November 18 of that year, Major League Baseball suspended him for the entirety of the ’21 season following a positive test for Stanozolol, a performance-enhancing drug. Canó had already drawn an 80-game suspension in May 2018 after testing positive for the diuretic known as Lasix, hence the year-long ban. The two suspensions have carried a massive cost for the eight-time All-Star even beyond the roughly $36 million in lost salary, all but wiping out any hope that he would reach 3,000 hits (he has 2,632), surpass Jeff Kent’s record of 351 home runs as a second baseman (316 of his 335 have come in that capacity), and gain entry to the Hall of Fame, which would have been a lock given his milestones and no. 7 ranking in JAWS.

In his limited opportunities with the Mets this season, Canó showed little sign of hitting like the Canó of yore. He swung and missed on 15.9% of all pitches and struck out 25.6% of the time, rates that are both more than double his career marks. His chase rate was an astronomical 48.9%, over 14 points above his career mark, and his swing rate was 58.9%, over seven points above his career mark. I’ve played this song before — since swing rates stabilize before most other stats — but the pattern does suggest he was pressing, which is understandable given his long layoff and tenuous hold on a roster spot. Canó’s 85.4% average exit velocity, 6.7% barrel rate, and 40% hard-hit rate don’t suggest he was mashing the ball; his .359 xSLG is 91 points ahead of his actual mark, but there are more than 100 hitters with larger differentials in this offense-suppressed season, and his .264 xwOBA is still cringeworthy. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Tess Taruskin. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

Cade Cavalli, RHP, Washington Nationals
Level & Affiliate: Triple-A Rochester Age: 23 Overall Rank: 78 FV: 50
Line: 5.2 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 6 K, BB, HBP

Notes
Cavalli was dominant over his first few frames on Wednesday, dealing first-pitch strikes to most of his opposing batters and sending them down in order until a weak, bloop single in the fourth. His command faltered later in the game, and he allowed the opposing lineup to string together a few hits, then issued a couple of free passes (one walk, one HBP) and was pulled before he could get himself out of the sixth inning.

You might think that he plowed his way through the order the first couple of times by way of a whirlwind of whiffs – he did, after all, lead the minors in strikeouts in 2021. But many of those Ks were accrued in the early part of last season, as Cavalli began his rapid ascent through the Nationals system. He had a whopping 44.9% strikeout rate in his seven High-A games, then made 11 Double-A starts and fanned 32.9% of those opponents. But when he reached Triple-A for a six-start stint to close out the season, his strikeout rate dipped significantly, with the more advanced batters keying in on heaters that would’ve blown by bats at the lower levels. Read the rest of this entry »

Bob Melvin is more than a little familiar with curveballs. Now in his 19th season at the helm of a big-league club, the 60-year-old San Diego Padres manager logged over 2,000 plate appearances and was behind the dish for more than 4,600 innings during his playing career. Seeing action with seven different teams from 1985 to ’94, he caught numerous hurlers whose repertoires included plus benders.

Which pitchers have featured the most-impressive curveballs Melvin caught, attempted to hit, and that he’s viewed from his vantage point in the dugout? Moreover, how do the shapes and velocities of present-day curveballs compare to those of his playing days? Melvin did his best to answer those questions when the Padres visited Pittsburgh’s PNC Park over the weekend.

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David Laurila: Who had the best curveball you caught?

Bob Melvin: “I caught many guys with good curveballs, but none were better than Gregg Olson’s. I caught him a lot, and there were times you could literally hear it spinning coming to the plate. It was as 12–6 of a curveball that you could possibly see. He was able to throw it up top if he needed to, for a strike, but the big thing for him was the chase. Nowadays, you’re seeing a little different… a little tighter breaking ball, sometimes at the top of the zone by design. That’s one that’s really tough to lay off, especially if you’re trying to lay off the the high fastball.

“There are certain guys now that pitch strictly north-south. You see the catcher right in the middle of the plate. It’s a high fastball at the top of the zone, and then it’s either a curveball where they’re trying to nip the top or one where they’re trying to get the chase. It’s maybe a little different than back in the day, where there were more sweepers and everything was more down in the zone, unless it was for a first-pitch strike. If you look at Pierce Johnson, with us, his curveball is one of those that you think is going to break a little bit more, but it kind of stays at the top of the zone and you end up taking it for a strike.” Read the rest of this entry »

It would be an understatement to say that Eric Hosmer’s contract with the Padres has generally not worked out. Over the first four years of his eight-year, $144 million deal, the former Royal netted -0.1 WAR in over 2,000 plate appearances, making him one of the majors’ least valuable players to receive substantial playing time in that span. He’s been red-hot in the season’s first few weeks, however, and while he won’t sustain his current .382/.447/.579 clip, the question is whether he can still help a team that was close to unloading him just a month ago.

Hosmer signed with the Padres in February 2018 (right around the time this scribe joined the FanGraphs fold and shortly after noted Hosmer skeptic Dave Cameron — who included the first basemen among his free agent landmines — joined the Padres’ research and development department). In his first four seasons in San Diego, he produced WARs of -0.5, -0.9, 0.7, and 0.6, with the high coming in his 38-game 2020 season, during which he missed time due to a stomach ailment and a fractured left finger but hit .287/.333/.517 (128 wRC+) in 156 PA.

In the context of the first 11 seasons of Hosmer’s career, it would not be unreasonable to call that season a small-sample fluke. From 2011-21, he had nearly 200 38-game stretches across which he slugged .500 or better even if we limit those stretches to the same season and count overlapping ones. Yet he has never slugged .500 or better over a 162-game season, nor has he posted an isolated power of .200 or better. He maxed out on both of those in 2017, when he hit .318/.385/.498 with a .179 ISO while matching his career high in homers (25), a performance that led to the Padres backing up the Brinks truck. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and we’re once again hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features Wil Crowe on his circle changeup and Nick Martinez on his made-in-Japan Vulcan changeup.

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Wil Crowe, Pittsburgh Pirates

“I learned a changeup when I was about eight or 10 years old. Ex-big leaguer Steve Searcy lived in Knoxville, and my dad wanted to find me lessons — he’d played college ball, but wasn’t a pitcher — and that’s who he found. Steve was always big with fastball/changeup. I didn’t throw a curveball or slider until I was a senior in high school. Growing up, it was fastball/change. Locate the fastball, and the changeup comes off of it.

“The grip is a circle change. Now it’s a little modified; it’s out in my fingers a little more than it used to be. Middle finger and ring finger hold onto the laces, and the thumb is underneath. So it started out more of a traditional circle ball, and now it’s more on the end of the fingers. I did that in college, after I grew into my body. My hand was bigger and I was able to grip the ball better. But I think that starting at such a young age helped, because it’s a comfort thing. Read the rest of this entry »