Taylor Davis plans to stay in the game once his playing days are over. Currently on the roster of the Indianapolis Indians — Pittsburgh’s Triple-A affiliate — the 32-year-old catcher intends to become a coach, a manager, or a decision-maker in a front office. He’s already received overtures for one of those positions.
“The question does get asked,” said Davis, whose resume includes 22 MLB games over parts of four seasons. “It’s something that started even before I got to the big leagues. The first time I got asked if I wanted to coach was in 2017. That was early in the year, and then I ended up making my debut later that season. Obviously, I want to play for as long as I can, but after it’s done, doing something within the game is what I want.”
Managing might be his primary down-the-road goal, but the erstwhile Chicago Cub would also be well-suited for a corner-office role. Asked about that possibility, Davis said that he’d be equally happy wearing a polo shirt or a uniform. Roster construction and “the whole business side of the game” are among his interests. So is the data that influences, and often dictates, the decisions that are made.
“I dive into analytics probably more than the average player,” the veteran catcher explained during spring training. “I try to understand where teams are coming from, where agents are coming from, and where a player is going to come from in terms of analytics. It’s a piece of the puzzle that’s become increasing important.” 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 »
If there’s anything as inevitable as the Tampa Bay Rays trading away a top starting pitcher, typically for salary reasons, it’s their development of the next one. Shane McClanahan looks a lot like their next one. The Baltimore native was highly effective in his rookie season, putting up a 3.34 ERA and 3.31 FIP with 10 strikeouts per nine over 25 starts in 2021. Even more impressive, he did it with minimal professional experience, with only four games in the high minors before becoming the first pitcher to make his major league debut in a playoff game.
2021 was a fine rookie season for McClanahan, but 2022 is looking like something special. In seven starts, his ERA stands at 2.52, and with a FIP of 2.67, it’s not a BABIP-fueled mirage. His strikeout percentage has jumped by about 40% year-on-year, from 27% to 38%, a notable improvement even in a very pitcher-friendly season. Batters are making both less contact than last year (dipping from 70.4% to 63.6%) and worse contact — their average exit velocity declined from 91.7 mph to 89.3, while their Statcast sweet spot percentage dipped from 36.8% to 26.5%. Among all pitchers with at least 20 innings thrown this season, only Corbin Burnes and Michael King have lower contact rates.
One of the primary differences between this season and last season for McClanahan has been the development of his changeup. Despite a fastball that can hit the high-90s with some nasty late break, McClanahan does not use his heat to finish off batters the way pitchers like Brandon Woodruff or Lance Lynn tend to. In fact, when batters get to him, it’s usually on the fastball, with a batting average well over .300 and 12 of his 19 career home runs allowed coming on the heater. Read the rest of this entry »
In a Seattle Mariners system that features a number of high-profile prospects, Zach DeLoach flies under the radar. His skill set suggests that he would. Selected in the second round of the 2020 draft out of Texas A&M University, the 23-year-old outfielder doesn’t possess flashy tools. What he does possess is a well-rounded game that helped propel him to Double-A in his first full professional season. In 501 plate appearances split between High-A Everett and Double-A Arkansas, DeLoach slashed .277/.373/.468 with 14 home runs and a 126 wRC+.
DeLoach — back with Arkansas to begin the current campaign, and No. 24 on our newly released Mariners Top Prospects list — discussed his game during the Arizona Fall League season.
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David Laurila: Let’s start with your 2021 season. How satisfied were you with it?
Zach DeLoach: “On a scale of one to 10, probably about a six. Maybe a seven. I definitely have some things to work on, and being here in the Fall League is exposing some of the weak points I had throughout the season. It’s really good that I was able to come here to participate, and to continue to grow as a player. I’ll continue to get after it in the offseason.”
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Seattle Mariners. 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 »
The Yankees swept the Blue Jays in a quick two-game series in the Bronx this week on the strength of the long ball. More specifically, they sandwiched a pair of shots into Yankee Stadium’s infamous short porch in right field around a towering, no-doubt walk-off homer by Aaron Judge on Monday night, with all three homers of the three-run variety. In a year where home run and scoring rates have plummeted, the Bronx Bombers are 22-8, off to their best start since 2003 in large part because they’ve handily outhomered their opponents — an achievement that owes something to their pitchers as well as their hitters.
In Tuesday night’s game, the Yankees trailed 3-0 in the bottom of the sixth inning but put two on base with one out to bring Giancarlo Stanton to the plate against Yimi Garcia. The righty left a slider to the slugger on the outer third of the plate, and Stanton poked it to right field. Tie ballgame.
This was not a standard Stanton special. While it sped off the bat at 105.1 mph, its 33 degree launch angle gave it an estimated distance of just 335 feet, still more than enough to get out when hit into the right field corner of Yankee Stadium, where the distance is just 314 feet at the foul pole. It was Stanton’s shortest home run since at least 2015, and according to the Statcast Home Run Tracker leaderboard would not have gone out at any other major league park (though the @would_it_dong Twitter account and its Dinger Machine web page — both of which automatically pull from Statcast data — calculated that Stanton’s drive would have been out at Target Field, which is 328 feet down the right field line, as well. Read the rest of this entry »
Winning a batting title was long a prestigious accomplishment. If you led your league in hitting, you were generally viewed as one of the best in the game for that reason alone. That’s no longer the case, though, and while batting average still has meaning — like every other stat, it paints part of the picture — it only tells you so much. Metrics such as wOBA and wRC+ provide far better snapshots of a hitter’s value.
Which isn’t to say that hitting for a high average, particularly the highest average among your peers, doesn’t matter to many players. Ditto to others who make baseball their profession. As Minnesota Twins manager Rocco Baldelli put it, “I think it does matter, and it should matter. If you have a player who is getting a crap ton of hits, that’s a nice way to bring value. I’ll take a bunch of guys with a .320 batting average… who are getting on base all the time.”
Luis Arraez is that type of player. Since he debuted in 2019, no one on Baldelli’s club boasts a higher batting average, and only the now-departed Nelson Cruz has a higher OBP. A .312/.374/.400 hitter in 1,048 big-league plate appearances, Arraez profiles as a potential batting champion.
“Luis Arraez” was Jayce Tingler’s immediate response when I asked Minnesota’s bench coach which Twins player would be most likely to capture a batting title. “He’s got great judgment of the strike zone, great hand-eye [coordination], he hits the ball from chalk line to chalk line. He’s one of the best line-drive hitters in the game.” Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s first full season in the major leagues was somehow both a success and a disappointment. League average offensive production from someone who only hit Double-A in 2019, with solid defense to boot? That’ll get you 2 WAR in just over 500 plate appearances, an impressive showing. He cranked 18 homers as well – all in all, a statistically solid debut.
On the other hand, he did it in a way that looked nothing like his minor league numbers. Chisholm’s intrigue had always stemmed from his sneaky power. Despite his diminutive frame – he’s listed at 5-foot-11, but I’d take the under – he put up impressive raw exit velocities and excellent home run numbers. He hit 25 homers in just 501 plate appearances in 2018, then followed it up with another 21 in 458 plate appearances in ’19. Those are serious numbers, and it’s no accident that Eric Longenhagen graded Chisholm’s raw power as a 60 on the 20-80 scale.
Despite his 18 bombs, though, he didn’t really display the thump he’s capable of. It’s not that he didn’t have the raw power we thought he did – he posted an 84th percentile maximum exit velocity – but quite frankly, he just hit too many grounders. You can look at his minor league GB/FB ratios, compare it to last year, and see the change:
Jazz Chisholm Jr., Batted Balls by Year
Year
Level
GB/FB
GB%
FB%
2016
R
1.72
49.7%
28.9%
2017
A
0.86
35.3%
41.2%
2018
A-A+
0.82
35.0%
42.5%
2019
AA
0.25
15.0%
59.5%
2020
MLB
0.72
37.1%
51.4%
2021
MLB/AAA
1.59
48.8%
30.7%
Aside from a brief and grounder-heavy rookie ball debut, Chisholm has avoided putting the ball on the ground. You can’t hit a home run on a grounder, no matter how hard you try. That’s how he ended up with average isolated power in 2021 despite his prodigious pop. He just couldn’t elevate, plain and simple.
This season, that’s in the past. He’s come out firing on all cylinders, hitting .295/.337/.611 with six homers in his first 105 plate appearances. He’s probably not going to keep hitting .295, but he probably will keep up his power output, because he’s back to doing what he used to do best: getting the ball in the air with great regularity. His groundball-to-fly ball ratio is back down to 0.76, his 30.6% groundball rate is the 12th-lowest in the majors, and he’s elevating and celebrating as well as he ever did in the minors.
Call it rocketed-ball science: if you have Chisholm’s power, putting the ball in the air is the best thing you can do. In his major league career so far, when Chisholm can’t get the ball in the air (which I defined as launch angles of five degrees or below), he’s hitting .252 with a .289 slugging percentage, good for a .237 wOBA. That’s awful – and that’s when he puts the ball in play. That’s when the good results are supposed to come.
When he gets above the five degree mark, good things start to happen. He’s hitting .421 with an .870 slugging percentage. If you’re a wOBA person, that works out to .531. That’s the good stuff – the kind of premium production on contact scouts expected out of Chisholm. This isn’t some “oh, he’s just on a hot streak in 2022 that’s the majority of his production” nonsense, either; cut 2022 out, and he’s hitting .412 with an .848 slugging percentage.
Think my five degree cutoff was arbitrary? It absolutely was! Let’s do it again at 10 degrees. Under 10 degrees, Jazz is hitting .327 with a .375 slug. At 10 or more, he’s batting .388 with an .881 slug. No matter how you slice it, when he can keep himself from hitting the ball into the ground, good things happen.
So why doesn’t he do it all the time? Because of pitching, basically. You don’t get to hit off a tee and launch moon shots (named after Wally Moon, thanks Effectively Wild!) all day. Pitchers want grounders or whiffs, and where they locate the ball has a lot to do with what happens after hitters connect.
The lower the pitch, the higher your chances of hitting a grounder, obviously. Even as he’s made strides at putting the ball in the air, Chisholm is hitting grounders on 41.7% of his batted balls when he makes contact in the lower third of the zone. That number stood at 55.3% last year.
Make contact in the middle third, and what kind of hitter you are does more to determine the outcomes. Last year, Chisholm stayed on the ground on exactly 50% of his batted balls that were in the middle third of the strike zone height-wise. This year, that’s down to 35.7%. By the time you get to the upper third, you almost can’t help but elevate. Chisholm hit grounders on 30.2% of his batted balls that originated from the upper third of the strike zone last year, right around league average for that area of the zone. This year, that’s down to 10%.
In other words, Jazz is finding a way to put everything in the air again, like he always has. The question, then, should be what happened last year. As it turns out, he had a few stretches of productive air contact, but spent a few months with some absurdly high groundball rates, torpedoing the whole operation:
I’ll be honest with you: I can’t completely explain this one. It’s not like he’s fixing it with approach, at least not entirely. Sure, he’s swinging more at pitches in the upper third of the zone, but he’s swinging more at pitches in the lower third as well. More of his contact has come in the lower third of the zone this year, in fact.
I can speculate, though. I watched a giant pile of at-bats from the peak of his grounder-heavy spell last year and tried to pick something out that could explain the change. This is extremely non-scientific, but here, watch him hit a grounder on August 31 last year on a fastball right down the pipe:
Now, for a baseline, here he is hitting a grounder on a fastball right down the pipe this April:
Is that difference in swing responsible for the huge change in groundball rate? I’m hesitant to pin it all on that. But he clearly looks less comfortable in the first clip; he’s bouncing around, his hands are meaningfully higher at pitch release, and his lower body looks to me like it’s slightly out of sync at the point of contact.
I’m absolutely not a hitting coach. I wouldn’t take what I’m saying here as gospel. But if you asked me which hitter was more likely to do damage, I’d take the one who stayed still, kept his hands lower, and looked more balanced on his follow-through.
He’s doing other things too, of course. He’s making far more contact over the heart of the plate (61% of his batted balls this year compared to 50% last year), and those are easier pitches to hit. He’s more aggressive over the heart of the plate in general – 78% swing rate this year against 70% last year – while chasing fewer breaking balls outside the strike zone. The more you do that, the more you get pitches to hit.
It’s not resulting in more walks, but that might change. Challenging Chisholm is a tricky proposition; he still swings and misses quite a bit in the zone, but he does a ton of damage when he connects. The equation was a lot easier last year, when he was putting the ball on the ground far too often. Now, you’re liable to watch a jog around the bases if you get too comfortable with throwing him pitches in the zone. Thus far, pitchers haven’t given in. They’re getting their strikeouts, but Chisholm is turning plenty of those in-zone pitches into souvenirs.
Of course, he can hit home runs outside the zone too. Just ask Mark Melancon, Chisholm’s latest victim:
I’d like to have a better answer for you. I’d like to give you one simple statistic that explains Chisholm’s new form. I don’t have one, though. I think it’s a confluence of many things. He’s swinging at better pitches. He looks more locked in at the plate. He’s returning to his old batted ball distribution – maybe this has basically been him the whole time. Whatever it is though, it boils down to this: when Chisholm is rolling, he’s got top-shelf power and the batted ball distribution to take advantage of it. Only time will tell if he can keep it up, but things look pretty rosy in Miami at the moment.
As offense dips down, it was bound to happen. Reid Detmers of the Angels threw the first solo no-hitter of the year last night, facing only 28 batters as he beguiled the Rays’ lineup for nine innings. But this no-hitter wasn’t filled with drama, or even short on offense. The Angels put up 12 runs, powered by a two-homer game from Mike Trout. One of baseball’s unique charms is that the two halves of the game are disconnected; you can have a tense chase of a no-hitter on one side and silly season on the other. Silly season? Well, let’s get right to it.
Top of the Early Innings
Detmers didn’t exactly roll out of bed dealing. After a first-pitch ball, he laid one in there, and Yandy Díaz tagged it for the hardest-hit ball that anyone on either team managed all game. Luckily, it was into the ground and straight at shortstop Andrew Velazquez. Wander Franco followed with another hard-hit grounder, and Harold Ramirez ended the inning with a sinking liner right at left fielder Brandon Marsh. Read the rest of this entry »
