When Adam Jones compared his former Orix Buffaloes teammate Masataka Yoshida to Juan Soto, he quickly established the lofty expectations that Yoshida would face as he made the transition to the major leagues. The comparison painted a clear picture of the type of batter Yoshida was in Japan. For all of Soto’s success on contact, his truly elite skill is his plate discipline, and the same was true for Yoshida. In five of his seven seasons in Japan, he ran a walk rate higher than his strikeout rate while posting a 176 wRC+ during his career in his home country. In his final year in NPB, he had the second-lowest strikeout rate and second-highest walk rate among qualified batters.

The transition from Asian leagues to the majors has usually been more difficult for batters than for pitchers. High velocity is the greatest concern, but the quality of breaking and offspeed offerings is much higher as well. For Yoshida, his pitch recognition skills seemed like they’d help him overcome these common problems, even if his overall plate discipline suffered a bit. While he wasn’t able to reach the heights of his career in Japan, he did manage to record a 109 wRC+ in his first big league season, though his 0.6 WAR was certainly lower than the Red Sox were expecting when they signed him to a huge five-year deal. His overall value was hurt by some ugly defense in left field; then again, his glove was never his strength. More concerning was that his approach at the plate worsened as the season went on, leading to a dreadful final two months that greatly diminished what otherwise would have been a successful rookie year.

Through the first three months of the season, everything looked like it was working out; he was posting a 129 wRC+ with 8.7% walk rate and an 11.3% strikeout rate. The plate discipline looked like it had made the transition without any fuss, and he was hitting for some power to top it all off. Unfortunately, over the next three months, things took a turn for the worse, dragging his overall line down to where it ended the season. It’s pretty easy to see what the issue was when you look at his rolling strikeout and walk rates during the season.

From July 1 through the end of the season, he took just seven walks total and his strikeout rate jumped to 17.0%. He continued to produce in July, even as he began to lose his plate discipline, but everything crumbled over the final two months, when he slashed .257/.276/.371 and had a 68 wRC+ across 181 plate appearances.

So what happened to his legendary plate discipline skills that drew comparisons to those of Soto during the second half of the season? Looking under the hood, it seems like he started pressing once he started struggling. When you compare his underlying plate discipline metrics from his time in Japan to his rookie season, you can pretty clearly see where things went wrong.

In Japan, Yoshida’s low swing rates were the backbone of his approach. The qualified batter with the lowest swing rate in the majors last year was Yoshida’s World Baseball Classic teammate Lars Nootbaar (35.3%), followed by Soto (35.7%). At his peak in Japan, Yoshida approached that level of selectivity. This, combined with a low chase rate and high contact percentages on pitches in and out of the zone, was Yoshida’s recipe for success.

During the first half of last season when his plate discipline was still intact, his swing and chase rates looked similar to what he had been running in Japan. Everything trended the wrong way during the second half of the season; he became much more aggressive and started chasing pitches out of the zone at a far higher rate than he had in years.

It’s worth noting that fatigue certainly contributed to Yoshida’s struggles. The schedule in the majors is far more grueling than it is in NPB, where all the games are played in the same time zone and the longest flight takes about 3 1/2 hours. Yoshida was gassed by the end of June, right around the time he lost his approach.

When we’re analyzing a hitter’s plate discipline, looking at swing, chase, and contact rates are usually the most commonly cited metrics because they’re publicly available, but they’re a pretty blunt tool when trying to discern a hitter’s swing decisions. Thankfully, Robert Orr of Baseball Prospectus has done some fantastic work to illuminate this problem. Back in November, he introduced his SEAGER metric, which looks at expected swing or take run values and grades a player’s swing decisions based on what they actually did. It has two components: the rate of hittable pitches taken, which measures aggression; and the rate of bad pitches taken, which measures selectivity.

As you’d expect from the name of the metric, Corey Seager’s swing decisions grade out incredibly well. Juan Soto also does well via this methodology, sitting ninth in baseball in SEAGER and first in selectivity. Based on his reputation and his swing, chase, and contact rates in Japan, you’d expect Yoshida to have a high-selectivity, low-aggression SEAGER profile. That’s not exactly what the data bears out.

Yoshida’s SEAGER was quite poor because he wasn’t aggressive enough on hittable pitches to compensate for his lower-than-expected selectivity, which was roughly league average. For comparison’s sake, I included Soto’s SEAGER metrics above just to marvel at how incredible his ability to lay off bad pitches is.

When we look at the rolling graphs of Yoshida’s SEAGER components, we get a much clearer picture of what happened during his season. First his selection tendency:

We can see that Yoshida was extremely selective early in the season, up near the Soto range, but that cratered as the season went on and only barely recovered by the end of the year. His discerning eye at the plate was supposed to be the elite skill that would help him make the transition to the major leagues. That was the case for the first few months before he lost his way.

His rolling rate of hittable pitches taken doesn’t look much better:

As expected, Yoshida was pretty passive to start out the season, but he became more aggressive as he started to slump and never really recovered. Swinging at hittable pitches more often would be a good thing in a vacuum, but when taken into context with all the other things that were trending the wrong way during Yoshida’s second half, I’m not so sure it helped. Plate discipline is a fine balance between identifying bad pitches to take and being aggressive on good pitches to hit. Yoshida’s strengths seem like they’re more focused on the former, and when he became more aggressive, he threw that balance out of whack.

There were plenty of knock-on effects as Yoshida’s plate discipline deteriorated. Early on in the season, he was producing above average contact quality, helping him post a .174 ISO through the end of June. That metric dropped to .138 during the second half of the season as his contact quality collapsed along with his approach.

Despite seeing some decent results on balls in play in July, his contact quality took a steep dive in that month. Only a high BABIP and a couple of lucky home runs were able to buoy his production. His contact quality improved slightly in August, but he was hitting his batted balls at less than ideal angles, which led to far too many outs. Things got really interesting in September. His batted ball quality rebounded significantly with his highest expected wOBA on contact of the season coming during that month. Unfortunately, his actual results on those batted balls lagged well behind his expected stats. On top of that, he made far less contact that month, when he struck out 23.5% of the time. Still, it’s encouraging to see that his contact quality improved during the final month of the season, even if his discipline hadn’t recovered.

With this additional context, we can paint a pretty clear picture of Yoshida’s season. He started the season with his established approach and things were going well for him. In July, that approach started to unravel as he started swinging much more aggressively. His results on balls in play boosted his batting line that month, but everything collapsed once those hits stopped falling in. When he started slumping, he abandoned his extremely selective approach and his plate discipline never recovered. By the end of the year, his approach was completely unrecognizable from what it was in Japan.

With a full year of experience in the majors now under his belt, Yoshida has a better understanding of what to expect moving forward. His offseason training program was designed to better prepare him for the grind of a major league season, and being less fatigued should make it easier for him to return to form the next time he struggles. As he heads into his second year in the majors, he will need to lean on his excellent pitch recognition skills to sustain his success and pull him out of a slump when he goes cold. And when he inevitably scuffles again, he’ll need to remember why those skills are so critical to his success, so he doesn’t lose himself again.

Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick wants many things. Mostly, hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money with which to renovate his team’s aging and leaky home ballpark, but also, incidentally, a World Series. The D-backs came close last year, and even though they fell at the final hurdle, the outlook of the ballclub is optimistic. Their entire core is back, and young stars like Corbin Carroll and Gabriel Moreno should only improve with time. This offseason, Arizona has traded for third baseman Eugenio Suárez and signed lefty starter Eduardo Rodriguez to improve its rotation. Brandon Pfaadt should have a stronger sophomore season, and global top-10 prospect Jordan Lawlar should break into the lineup at some point this season.

Finally, the Diamondbacks have upgraded their designated hitter spot, which was a bit of a wild card last October. The most recent addition came this weekend, when they signed Randal Grichuk to a one-year deal worth $2 million in guaranteed money. Read the rest of this entry »

This winter has been one of the weakest markets for middle infielders in recent memory. You remember the shortstop glut of recent years? Carlos Correa, Corey Seager, Francisco Lindor, Trevor Story, Xander Bogaerts… the list of players who either reached free agency or signed extensions to take them off the market went on and on. But this year, the pickings were slim. Depending on personal preference, the best second baseman or shortstop available was… Whit Merrifield? Isiah Kiner-Falefa? I would have said Amed Rosario, only the market clearly disagrees:

Infielder Amed Rosario and the Tampa Bay Rays are in agreement on a one-year, $1.5 million contract, sources tell ESPN. Rosario, 28, will bring a strong bat against left-handed pitching and should get at-bats at shortstop, second base and potentially corner-outfield spots.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) February 20, 2024

That’s a shockingly light deal for Rosario, at least in my head. I had him at the tail end of my Top 50 free agent rankings, and the crowd and I both penciled him in for a two-year deal worth $8 million per year. Instead, he’s getting less than a fifth of that AAV, and for only a year at that. This merits some investigation, both into why his market didn’t develop and why the Rays came calling in the end. Read the rest of this entry »

The Blue Jays signed a lefty-swinging first baseman/designated hitter whose name begins with a V and an O, but it wasn’t Joey Votto. As position players report to camps, the longtime Red and all-time leader in games played by a Canadian-born major leaguer remains a free agent. Instead, the Blue Jays added Daniel Vogelbach on a minor league deal with an invitation to spring training. At his best, the well-traveled 31-year-old can help the Blue Jays, but in context, his limitations provide yet another reminder of the team’s underwhelming offseason.

Vogelbach’s deal calls for him to make $2 million if he’s in the majors, according to the New York Post’s Jon Heyman. This is actually his second go-round with the Blue Jays, but you’re forgiven if you need your memory jogged. He spent 10 days with the team during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, between being purchased from the Mariners and lost on waivers to the Brewers; within that span, he played two games, going 0-for-4 with a walk and two strikeouts. After spending all of 2021 with the Brewers, he split ’22 between the Pirates and Mets, with an effective stretch-run stint for the latter, and then spent last year in Queens as well.

Despite a productive opening month to his 2023 season, Vogelbach hit just .213/.326/.348 (92 wRC+) through the end of June, a span that included an eight-day benching for the purposes of a mental break. He was much better from July onward, batting .258/.355/.475 (131 wRC+) with eight homers in 138 plate appearances, but even so, he was an afterthought in September. He made just five starts that month, none in the Mets’ final 16 games, with just three of his 24 plate appearances for September coming in that span. Unsurprisingly, he was nontendered in November.

Even in a down season, Vogelbach again showed an excellent batting eye, chasing just 24.1% of pitches outside the strike zone and walking 13.2% of the time; that said, his strikeout rate crept to 25.4%, his highest since 2019. He didn’t get enough playing time to qualify for Statcast’s percentile cutoffs, but his 91.7 mph average exit velo and 50% hard-hit rate would have landed at the 86th and 93rd percentiles, respectively.

Vogelbach is a player with obvious limitations. He didn’t play a single game in the field during his Mets tenure, had just five for the Pirates before being dealt in July 2022, and owns DH-caliber metrics at first base for his seven-year career (1,059.2 innings, -8 RAA, -15 DRS). He went 0-for-15 with a walk and eight strikeouts against lefties in 2023, and has been utterly helpless against them for his career (.129/.248/.215, 35 wRC+ in 323 PA). He’s never even attempted a stolen base in the majors, a wise choice given his 2nd-percentile sprint speed. That’s not the easiest player to fit onto a roster, and if Vogelbach does stick with the Blue Jays, he’s not likely to get a ton of playing time unless things go wrong elsewhere. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is the incumbent first baseman, and Toronto signed the righty-swinging Justin Turner to a one-year, $13 million deal to serve as its primary DH while spotting all around the infield, as he did last year with the Red Sox. Turner hit for just a 105 wRC+ against righties (.273/.335/.430 in 462 PA) in 2023, but that may have been an aberration given his 132 wRC+ against them over the previous three seasons. He doesn’t need a platoon partner.

Given the size of the role in question, it’s not tremendously hard to understand why the Blue Jays signed Vogelbach instead of the 40-year-old Votto, who became a free agent after 17 seasons with the Reds and who scuffled in 2023. Coming off of August 2022 surgery to repair tears in his left rotator cuff and biceps, Votto didn’t make his season debut until June 19, and while he homered off Austin Gomber in his second plate appearance, he hit just .202/.314/.433 (98 wRC+) with 14 homers in 208 PA. Save for his slugging percentage and barrel rate, neither that slash line nor his underlying Statcast numbers were as good as those of Vogelbach.

The Blue Jays showed interest in Votto early in the offseason, with general manager Ross Atkins saying, “Incredible reputation, really dynamic personality, really bright (person) that I know our team would embrace… But I think that’s the case for probably 15 teams.” Based on Votto’s background, he added a potential for “massive impact in the community if he were to be a Toronto Blue Jay.”

Despite the obvious appeal, nothing ever materialized, and in the wake of the Turner signing, we can infer that the Blue Jays may not have been willing to offer Votto — whose 2022 production was underwhelming amid his shoulder woes — enough playing time. To date, it doesn’t appear that any team has offered the right mix of opportunity and money. On January 11, USA Today‘s Bob Nightengale reported that three teams were interested in Votto, and in his Sunday notebook a few days later mentioned the Blue Jays and Brewers as potential fits. The last report of a team’s interest in him came on January 24, when Heyman connected Votto to the Angels. That same day, Reds GM Nick Krall told season ticket holders he had no plans to bring back the franchise icon. Since those flickers of interest, the Blue Jays added Turner and the Brewers signed Rhys Hoskins. Meanwhile, the future Hall of Fame first baseman has popped up at the NHL All-Star Game in the company of Gritty and other mascots and quoted Dylan Thomas on Instagram, but otherwise, he’s been quiet on social media.

.@JoeyVotto is having the time of his life at the @NHL All-Star Game ?

via joeyvotto/IG pic.twitter.com/hBSOQfUhCr

— Cut4 (@Cut4) February 3, 2024

The Blue Jays/Votto connection has always been more speculative than substantial, but, like the Vogelbach signing, it’s at least interesting enough to underscore just how unremarkable Toronto’s offseason has been. Coming off an 89-win season in which it claimed the third AL Wild Card spot but made a quick two-and-through exit, the team hasn’t made anything that could be characterized as an impact move, even after showing signs of grand ambitions.

For a brief time, it appeared that the Blue Jays had won the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes, but alas that rumor proved untrue. With the possible exception of signing Yoshinobu Yamamoto, with whom they met before he chose the Dodgers as well, nothing else they could have done would have been as impactful. But they at least seemed to be thinking big by showing enough interest in Cody Bellinger to be considered co-favorites (along with the Cubs) to sign him as Christmas approached, and he remains a free agent as of this writing. Instead, in late December, the Blue Jays re-signed Kevin Kiermaier — a spectacular fielder but a league-average hitter who turns 34 in April — to a one-year, $10.5 million deal, presumably to be their regular center fielder between Daulton Varsho in left and George Springer in right.

And then there’s Toronto’s approach to its third base situation. Matt Chapman hit free agency after an uneven season that included a .255/.346/.449 (121 wRC+) line through August 12, when he sprained his right middle finger in a weight room mishap, and a .163/.250/.302 (54 wRC+) line the rest of the way; he initially missed three games after suffering the injury, then 15 more after trying to play through it. The Blue Jays, who reportedly offered Chapman an extension north of $100 million over four or five years before he reached free agency, extended him a $20.325 million qualifying offer, which he declined. Like Bellinger, he remains a free agent while the Blue Jays have moved on. Just after inking Kiermaier, they signed light-hitting Isiah Kiner-Falefa to a two-year, $15 million deal, then added Turner. Though he makes more sense fitting into the utility slot vacated by Whit Merrifield, who recently signed with the Phillies, Kiner-Falefa is currently projected to receive the most plate appearances of any Toronto player at third base (231), with Turner, Santiago Espinal, Cavan Biggio, and Eduardo Escobar also in the mix. The 35-year-old Escobar, who began last season as Vogelbach’s teammate on the Mets before being traded to the Angels, signed a minor league deal with a nonroster invitation last week; he’s looking to rebound from a dismal .226/.269/.344 (66 wRC+) performance in 309 PA.

Between Kiermaier, Kiner-Falefa, and Turner, that’s a not-so-grand total of $38.5 million committed to free agent position players this winter, short of enough money to cover the present-day value of one season of Ohtani. Their other major league deal was for Cuban righthander Yariel Rodriguez — who spent 2020–22 with NPB’s Chunichi Dragons, mainly as a reliever — whom they signed to a five-year, $32 million contract. After pitching for Cuba in the World Baseball Classic last year, Rodriguez sat out the regular season while establishing residency in the Dominican Republic so he could become a major league free agent. The Blue Jays intend to build him up as a starter, but he might wind up in Triple-A or in a multi-inning bullpen role as he begins his major league career. Meanwhile, the team will roll with a starting five of Kevin Gausman, José Berríos, Chris Bassitt, Yusei Kikuchi, and Alek Manoah, the last of those coming off a dreadful season after a top-three finish in the AL Cy Young voting in 2022. Lefty Ricky Tiedemann, no. 28 on our new Top 100 Prospects List, could help later in the year, but has just 36 innings above A-ball to his name, while righty Bowden Francis is being stretched out to provide more immediate depth. While they’ve been “quietly monitoring” the ongoing Blake Snell market, per Nightengale, the Blue Jays have never appeared likely to spend big on starting pitching this winter; instead, they have focused on improving their lineup.

Last week, Atkins said, “At this point, additions that would be of significance would mean some level of subtraction,” which didn’t sound like he was leaving the light on for either Bellinger or Chapman. If this is more or less the Blue Jays’ roster, according to Roster Resource, their payroll sits at $235.7 million in terms of actual salaries, up from $214.5 million last year, and $248.7 million for Competitive Balance Tax purposes, a hair ahead of last year’s $246.1 million and somewhere between the first and second tax thresholds ($237 million and $257 million, respectively). That’s the game’s sixth- or seventh-highest payroll, depending on which figure you’re using to rank them, so it’s not as though the Blue Jays are going cheap.

Nor do they project to be bad. We have them forecast for 83.5 wins, fourth in the AL East but part of a tight group with the Yankees, Rays, and Orioles; only 4.6 projected wins separates Toronto from New York, the projected first-place finisher. The thing is, the Blue Jays are right at the point where adding extra wins could increase their odds above their 14.2% chance at winning the division title and 47.7% chance to make the playoffs. While their AL East competition has added marquee players like Juan Soto and Corbin Burnes, the end result of the Blue Jays’ grand offseason just feels like a series of half measures.

Worried that civilization is going to come to an end this year? Fear not. The Red Sox and Brewers have both made big bets that life will go on in 2025. Boston has signed reliever Liam Hendriks to a two-year, $10 million contract with a mutual option for 2026. In Milwaukee, Brewers ace Brandon Woodruff, who was non-tendered in November, will remain a Brewers ace for the time being; Jon Heyman reported Monday morning that Woodruff and the team were in agreement on their own two-year contract, the terms of which are as yet undisclosed.

Based on their performance over the past several seasons, both Hendriks and Woodruff would probably be in line to make way more money on much longer-term deals if either one were expected to pitch in 2024. Woodruff made only 11 starts in 2023 and underwent shoulder surgery in October. Hendriks underwent treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma last offseason; cancer defeated, he returned to the field in May. His comeback was as short-lived as it was widely celebrated, though; less than two weeks after his first outing of 2023, Hendriks’ elbow started barking. The dreaded forearm strain turned into the even-more-dreaded torn UCL, and the avuncular Australian had Tommy John surgery in early August. Read the rest of this entry »

Kyle Teel is well positioned as Boston’s catcher of the future. Drafted 14th overall by the Red Sox out of the University of Virginia last summer, the backstop, who turned 22 last week, enters his first full professional season as the fifth-ranked prospect in Boston’s farm system and no. 80 on our Top 100. According to our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen, Teel “presents a well-rounded overall profile” that includes “a fabulous offensive résumé.”

His 2023 numbers were certainly exemplary. Teel slashed .407/.475/.655 with 13 home runs in his junior year at UVA, helping earn him first-team All-American accolades and rocketing him up draft boards. Upon reaching pro ball, his left-handed stroke produced a .363/.483/.495 slash line and a 173 wRC+ in 114 plate appearances across three minor league levels, his last stop being Double-A Portland.

Defense is, of course, a major responsibility for catchers. Last month, when Teel was at Fenway Park for Boston’s rookie development program, I spoke with him about his preparation and setup behind the plate, his throwing, and his offensive profile.

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David Laurila: Catching is a science as well as an art. With that in mind, what role does data play in what you do defensively?

Kyle Teel: “I really like data when it comes to how pitchers’ stuff moves, and heat maps on what to throw to certain guys at certain times. That’s obviously beneficial, but there is also nothing like the feel of the game. You need to be using your eyes and seeing what you can take in, in the moment. But the data is definitely important. Before every game, I look at what pitchers like to throw, their tendencies in certain counts, and things like that. That’s both as a catcher and when I’m hitting.”

Laurila: Do you think like a catcher when you’re in the batter’s box?

Teel: “I kind of do. There are benefits to doing that, just knowing how pitchers work and what guys tend to throw in certain counts. Overall, I would say that having a good feel at the plate and calling pitches is very similar.”

Laurila: How do you balance data and instincts? Read the rest of this entry »

Hey there, and welcome to the last edition of my data-driven look at some mid-tier hitting prospects I like more than the industry consensus. It feels weird, almost funereal, to start this article by mentioning that the series is ending, but that’s just how it is. This will be the fourth installment of my variably named Prospect Week contribution. In it, I use data and a big pinch of intuition to point out some hitters who I think have a good chance of sticking in the majors, even if they’re not your average Top 100 type.

In the past, I’ve done acceptably well at this; I don’t think it’d be fair to say that I’m great at it, but I’ve come up with my fair share of interesting players using this process. In looking through my past lists, I feel good about the process that led me to some guys you’ve heard of (Miguel Vargas and Ezequiel Tovar are probably my biggest hits so far, but I’ve also gotten some role players, and both Gabriel Moreno and Alejandro Kirk performed incredibly well by my model, though I didn’t end up including them in a list thanks to their pedigree) and plenty you haven’t.

What’s so hard about this project? The obvious thing is that my methods are archaic. I’m using some sorting techniques that are still reasonably current. K-nearest neighbors and multiple binary logistic regressions are still my two favorite techniques, and I think they both still do what I want them to. These approaches aren’t state of the art in statistical analysis, but they’re not particularly far from it, especially when you take into account that I’m a baseball writer instead of a data scientist. Read the rest of this entry »

The Phillies have the most stable roster in the major leagues. Not the best, the most stable. All five rotation spots are spoken for, the bullpen is pretty well settled, and at least eight of their nine starting lineup spots have strong incumbents, all of them under team control through at least 2025. Four of them are under team control through 2027.

This is a team that loves to throw around big money in free agency, but after re-signing Aaron Nola in November, and with an extension for Zack Wheeler looking likely, there isn’t really anyone obvious for the Phillies to spend that money on. So, after shoring up some Quad-A rotation depth with split contracts for Kolby Allard and Spencer Turnbull, the Dave Dombrowski-Sam Fuld duumvirate has turned its quartet of eyes to Whit Merrifield. The former Royals and Blue Jays speedster will make $8 million guaranteed, with an $8 million club option for 2025.

Sorry, this is first reference, and I forgot to use his full name: Whitley David Merrifield, Whose 11th-Inning Walk-off Single Led South Carolina to Its First College World Series Title in 2010. It’s a mouthful. (At the risk of overdoing the Gamecock baseball trivia up top, Merrifield just missed overlapping with Bryce Harper’s older brother Bryan, who pitched for Carolina the year after Merrifield got drafted.) Read the rest of this entry »

Eric Kubota is the longest tenured scouting director in MLB, having been promoted to his current position by the Oakland Athletics in 2002. The University of California, Berkeley alum has been with the organization even longer than that; Kubota began working with the A’s in 1984 while still a student. He went on to join the baseball operations department in 1989, serving as assistant scouting director, Pacific Rim coordinator, and then supervisor of international scouting prior to taking the lead role in draft decisions.

His first draft is his most famous — perhaps you’ve heard of Moneyball — but it is by no means Kubota’s only memorable draft, nor his most impactful. Moreover, he has seen a lot change over his time in the industry. That comes with the territory when your scouting experience runs over three decades deep.

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David Laurila: Looking back, something that stands out from the interview we did in 2009 was you saying, “The more you know about scouting, the more you know about the draft, and the more you know about prospects, the more you find out that there is more to learn.” All these years later, is there still more to learn?

Eric Kubota: “There is, and I feel even stronger about that now. The more I’ve gone through this, the more I realize how hard it is to try to predict the future on these kids, and the more I realize the need for as much information we can get to make informed decisions.” Read the rest of this entry »

Roman Anthony arguably has the highest upside in the Boston Red Sox system. Three months shy of his 20th birthday, the left-handed-hitting outfielder is No. 14 on our recently-released Top 100, and in the words of Eric Longenhagen, he “has the offensive foundation (plate discipline and contact) to be a top five prospect if he can more readily get to his power in games.”

Getting to more of his in-game power was an organizationally-driven goal throughout a first full professional season that saw the 2022 second-rounder begin in Low-A Salem and finish in Double-A Portland. Progress was made. Of the 14 home runs Anthony swatted over 491 plate appearances, all but one came from mid-June onward. Learning to lift was the key and, according to the youngster that came not from an overhaul of his mechanics, but rather from subtle adjustments.

“At the beginning of the year, I was pulling it on the ground a little more than I would like to,” acknowledged Anthony, who was 200-plus plate appearances into the season when he went yard for a second time. “But I worked with my hitting coaches and eventually it clicked. It was really just minor tweaks. It’s not as though I was redoing my swing, or anything like that. I still have pretty much the same swing I’ve always had.”

According to Red Sox farm director Brian Abraham, Anthony’s adjustments were crafted primarily in a batting cage with simple, yet creative, drill work. Read the rest of this entry »