The main reason why the Astros have been able to survive and thrive despite the departure of a large percentage of the core of their 2017 World Series-winning team is their success in developing their young talent. One of the most prominent of these players, Kyle Tucker, had his breakout season in the shortened 2020 and cemented those gains with a .294/.359/.557, 4.9 WAR 2021 campaign that saw him get his first MVP votes. With Tucker heading to arbitration this winter for the first time, the Astros discussed a long-term contract with their incumbent right fielder in recent weeks, but the deal has apparently fallen through.
The Astros recently spoke with Kyle Tucker’s camp about a contract extension, but the sides were unable to come to a deal and are no longer engaged, sources tell me and @brianmctaggart. Tucker will become arbitration-eligible for the first time at the end of this season.
While it hasn’t worked out, it’s the right idea. Teams want to lock up their best young players, and many players, especially before they get that first big arbitration bump, are interested in mitigating their personal risk. Wander Franco was more likely than not to beat the $182 million he’ll receive from the Rays and the team they trade him to around 2029, but it also provided him some real security, given he’s still a couple years from arbitration. These types of deals can be win-win.
So who should be the next players to get inked for the long haul? Here are my favorite picks. For each, I’ve included their ZiPS projections for both performance and a fair contract; after all, I don’t own a team, so I don’t have the motivation to pitch any absurdly team-friendly agreements like the one Ozzie Albies signed with the Braves. I’ve also omitted Juan Soto since we’ve already talked about him and a long-term deal quite a bit, most recently in Jay Jaffe’s piece before the season that already has the ZiPS projections. If you want a figure, let’s just say 10 years and all circulating US currency. Read the rest of this entry »
Last year’s National League West race was a doozy, with the 107-win Giants outpacing the 106-win Dodgers, but this year’s race is shaping up to be an interesting one for a different reason. Through Sunday, all five teams owned winning percentages of .500 or better, though Monday’s loss by the Rockies (17-18), part of a 1-7 skid, upset that arrangement. Even so, it’s an impressively strong division headed by the Dodgers (22-12), with the Padres (22-13) and Giants (21-14) close behind, and the Diamondbacks (18-18) and Rockies playing quite respectably, and much improved over last season.
The biggest surprise of the bunch is the Diamondbacks, who just last year tied the Orioles for the majors’ worst record at 52-110 and finished a honkin’ 55 games out of first place. The team did not have a high-impact offseason; the only free agents the Diamondbacks signed to major league deals were starter Zach Davies and relievers Mark Melancon and Ian Kennedy, with Melancon’s two-year deal the only one stretching beyond 2022. They weren’t exactly big players in the trade market, either, with Sergio Alcántara and Jordan Luplow representing their highest-profile acquisitions. That pair has combined for 103 plate appearances and 0.1 WAR, and Alcántara was DFA’d and lost to the Padres via waivers earlier this month. Read the rest of this entry »
This season, Eric and Tess Taruskin will each have a minor league roundup post that runs during the week, with the earlier post recapping some of the weekend’s action. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.
Notes
Loftin, who was drafted as a shortstop, was first listed as an outfielder on the Royals’ 2022 winter minicamp roster and has begun a transition to center field, playing there exclusively so far in 2022. It’s a logical move given the glut of middle infielders ahead of him in the org, and it’s worth noting that the Royals timed it so Loftin would have two seasons of play prior to his 40-man deadline day to make the move. While Loftin still needs some technical polish (for instance, he has a tendency to backpedal rather than turn his hips and run, and he doesn’t look comfortable with at-’em balls) and often looks like a recent conversion guy out there, his gap-to-gap range is very exciting, and he has the pure speed to be an above-average or better center field defender with reps.
Much more polished is Loftin’s bat. He’s extremely tough to beat with velocity and squares up fastballs with regularity, spraying them into both gaps. He keeps things incredibly simple at the plate, which is part of why he has made such consistent contact, but one can imagine him making more athletic use of his lower half and adding more power eventually. Loftin is also a very wiry, pretty skinny guy. He’s 23, so maybe the cement on his body is dry, but between his frame still having room for mass and his swing perhaps housing dormant power, there are a few potential avenues for him to add thump. Right now he profiles as a contact-oriented center fielder, a profile that’s currently pretty scarce across baseball. Myles Straw is a more extreme contemporary example. Read the rest of this entry »
Josh VanMeter was in the news earlier this month for being put in an unfortunate position. A 27-year-old infielder with the Pittsburgh Pirates, VanMeter moved behind the plate in the eighth inning of a tie game when the team was forced to employ an emergency catcher. It didn’t go particularly well. Wearing the Tools of Ignorance for the first time since he was 14 years old, the Ossian, Indiana native took a foul tip off the mask, and Pittsburgh pitchers surrendered seven runs in his lone inning of unscheduled action.
There is more to VanMeter than his ill-fated notoriety. A 2013 fifth-round pick by the San Diego Padres who broke into the big leagues with the Cincinnati Reds in 2019, and who has since played for the Arizona Diamondbacks and now the Pirates, VanMeter is a bona fide hitting nerd.
In the latest installment of our Talks Hitting series, VanMeter sat down during a recent series at PNC Park to discuss the art and science of the craft.
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David Laurila: You’re a hitting nerd…
Josh VanMeter: “I am. It all started back in 2016 when I was with the Padres. I was in the Cal League and having a pretty good year, then got promoted to Double-A San Antonio about halfway through. I had a hitting coach there named Johnny Washington — he’s the assistant with the Cubs now — and I’ll never forget. I was a guy who hit a lot of groundballs and would occasionally clip some homers, but I was super steep. Within a week, Johnny — who I still love to this day — was like, ‘Man, that ain’t gonna work.’ I was like, ‘What do you mean it ain’t gonna work?’ I was 21 and had been having some success. But he was right. That half season I was in Double-A, I really struggled. Read the rest of this entry »
Pitchers getting injured is never good news, even in a year in which pitching talent seems relatively easy to come by. Sadly, we got a bunch of high-profile names hitting the IL over the weekend, so here’s a quick Monday rundown in case you were doing something more fun on Sunday than stressing about injuries, like watching the baseball games (non-Giants fans, at least).
Given the monumental task of replacing Jacob deGrom in the Mets’ rotation at the start of the season, Megill took his job surprisingly literally, doing his best imitation of the team’s ace. Through six starts, his ERA stood at 2.43 with a nearly identical FIP at 2.44, improving significantly on his major league debut in 2021. Then came the worst start of his professional career — including the minors — as he surrendered eight runs and didn’t even make it through the second inning against the Nationals last Wednesday. Megill can’t point to bad luck either; it’s hard to complain too strenuously about BABIP when you have an xBA of .563 and an xSLG of 1.263.
On the plus side, Megill’s velocity wasn’t down during that disaster of a start, and he didn’t report any discomfort until after the game. One thing that struck me, however, is how much his horizontal release point has changed in a lateral direction throughout the season. From his first start to his last outing, Megill’s horizontal release point has shifted about five inches; those release points tend to be far more consistent in-season, as players are more likely to tinker with this in the winter and spring. Release point inconsistency is a concern, and at least one study that I’m familiar with has linked shifting lateral release points with an eventual need for Tommy John surgery, albeit with low odds (a roughly 5% higher chance of a UCL tear with every 10 centimeters of movement). That’s getting ahead of ourselves, but it’s something to file in the back of your mind.
The decision to put Megill on the IL was made after he experienced soreness during his bullpen on Saturday, with biceps tendinitis as the announced culprit. Colin Holderman got the immediate call-up to take Megill’s spot on the roster, though that may be short-lived, as David Peterson started on Friday. Trevor Williams will get Megill’s start on Monday night against the Cardinals.
In other Mets injury news — of course there’s more, it’s the Mets — catcher James McCann will be out six weeks due to a broken hamate bone. Patrick Mazeika was called up and likely endeared himself to Mets fans more than McCann has by hitting the go-ahead home run in the seventh on Saturday against the Mariners. McCann’s offense has disappeared so quickly over the last year-plus that there’s not likely to be any real consequence for the Mets other than a thinning of the depth chart.
Amid a promising comeback campaign, Luzardo took a step back last week, walking four and allowing four runs in 2.2 innings against the Diamondbacks, bloating his ERA to 4.03. Like Megill, there were no suspicious velocity dropoffs — something to watch for given Luzardo’s injury history — but he reported forearm soreness after the game. In “crossing our fingers” news, he did not believe the pain was similar to what he experienced before his first Tommy John surgery, back when he was a high schooler in 2016:
I just started feeling a little something in the San Diego game, towards the back end of it, but nothing when I was pitching or anything like that. It was more just a little soreness. I kind of backed off a little between my starts. There wasn’t really pain or anything, more like stiffness.
The Marlins held off until this weekend to place Luzardo on the IL, retroactive to his May 10 start, when it became evident that he would be unavailable. It seems that Cody Poteet, already stretched out a bit in relief of Luzardo against Arizona and not used since, will get the spot start on Tuesday, with Sandy Alcantara going on Monday.
As for replacing Luzardo long-term, it doesn’t appear as if the Marlins plan to recall top prospect Max Meyer to fill the spot. My reading of the tea leaves is that they’re not going to push Edward Cabrera up soon as a replacement either; while he’ll get another chance in the not-too-distant future, I think Saturday’s start against Triple-A Nashville would have been a few tune-up innings rather than a 90-pitch outing if a callup was imminent.
Short of any additional bad news, it’s entirely possible that, with two off days in the next week, Luzardo may only miss just the one start.
Kershaw was a late scratch on Friday against the Phillies, pushing Walker Buehler’s start up a day on normal rest. Kershaw has a history of lower back pain and at least one instance (2012) of hip impingement, so the Dodgers are being careful with him. The culprit this time is inflammation of the SI joint, which, I believe, is the sacroiliac joint and not the Sports Illustrated joint; on the pelvis, it’s between the hip and the spine. As I did not attend Hollywood Upstairs Medical College, and my medical knowledge is primarily evaluating how sick I’ll feel if I eat some deliciously spicy food, let’s consult actual doctors here:
Biomechanically, the sacroiliac joint performs several functions. Primarily, its purpose is to attenuate the distribution of force loads from the lower extremities. It functions both as a shock absorber for the spine above and converts torque from the lower extremities into the rest of the body.
As pitching largely involves transfers of force between body parts, it’s understandable why the Dodgers see the need to be cautious. Last year was the first time Kershaw was placed on the IL with elbow issues, and given that it scared them enough to shut him down quickly for the postseason, this is not unexpected caution.
To replace Kershaw on the roster, the Dodgers called up Michael Grove, who got the start on Sunday and may get another down the road, though with a very quick hook. Andre Jackson looked like a rotation fallback option at the start of the season, but he’s failed to finish the third in each of his last three starts for Triple-A Oklahoma City, allowing 10 walks in just 3.1 innings.
It was weird, it was wild, it was perhaps a bit irresponsible, and it was certainly bittersweet. On Sunday in Pittsburgh, Reds rookie Hunter Greene was dominant, setting a career high for strikeouts and combining with reliever Art Warren to hold the Pirates hitless for the entire afternoon. Yet when it was all said and done, Cincinnati — which had won six out of its last nine after starting the season 3–22 — found a new way to lose, 1–0. Greene and Warren didn’t even get credit for an official no-hitter, combined or otherwise.
The game’s only run scored in the bottom of the eighth inning. After Greene issued a pair of one-out walks to Rodolfo Castro and Michael Perez to push his pitch count to 118 — oh, we’ll get to that — manager David Bell pulled him in favor of Warren, who walked Ben Gamel, then induced a chopper by Ke’Bryan Hayes. Second baseman Alejo Lopez briefly bobbled the ball, and while he still threw to shortstop Matt Reynolds in time to force Gamel, Reynolds’ throw to first base was too late to complete the double play.
The Reds themselves managed just four hits against starter José Quintana and relievers Chris Stratton and David Bednar, the last of whom set down the side 1-2-3 in the ninth. Thus they joined a short and dubious list, becoming just the fifth team to hold their opponents hitless for eight innings but lose because they were nonetheless outscored. Such efforts used to be considered no-hitters, but in 1991, MLB’s Committee for Statistical Accuracy tightened the official definition of the feat, ruling that those falling short of nine innings would not receive such a designation. That put the Reds in this company:
The most infamous of such games is that of Hawkins, who allowed four eighth-inning runs via a combination of three errors and two walks, all with two outs; he did walk five overall, so his outing was kind of a mess to begin with. Greene and Warren combined to walk six, but they were the only one of the five teams above to lose after eight hitless innings without being charged with an error as well. Congrats on discovering that new way to lose, I guess. Read the rest of this entry »
The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and once again, we’re hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features a pair of southpaws — White Sox starter Dallas Keuchel and Brewers reliever Brent Suter — on their changeups.
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Dallas Keuchel, Chicago White Sox
“A changeup was the first pitch I learned growing up. My dad never let me throw a breaking ball. He just had me split my fingers and try to throw a fastball as hard as I could. That was probably … let me think for a moment with my Rolodex here. I was maybe eight years old? Regardless, I don’t know how many miles per hour it was off, but it had some good deception and movement, so that’s what I rolled with through a lot of my childhood.
“I didn’t grip it like a palm ball, but a kid’s fingers are obviously smaller than the baseball, so we just tinkered with splitting the two fingers. What stuck was splitting three fingers together, instead of a circle change. It’s more of a three-finger prong changeup. When I say prong, what I mean is like a fork. But it worked well for me. It just kind of rolled off, and I’d get some whiffs and some weak contact. Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
