I didn’t expect this from Wilyer Abreu. Don’t get me wrong. I love Abreu and I spent much of the offseason writing about him. I even developed a (literal) sliding scale to tabulate just how often and how intensely he dirtied his uniform. Abreu is a high-effort player who absolutely deserved the Rookie of the Year votes and Gold Glove he got last season. But I worried about him too. Abreu has done nothing but hit and play great defense since his 2023 debut, but he’s a lefty who’s been strictly platooned, and he only recently reached a full season’s worth of big league plate appearances. He seemed like a regression candidate, and that was before a gastrointestinal illness cost him a chunk of spring training and several pounds. The Red Sox weren’t even sure he’d be ready to start the season, but he was and he’s raked from day one. After this hot start, should we be all-in on Abreu?
First, I was worried a bit about Abreu’s defense. I didn’t expect him to turn into a pumpkin. He really was the best right fielder in baseball last season by pretty much any measure you can think of, and I expected him to remain great. Although he’s not a speedster, his instincts and effort have allowed him to make three three-star catches, two four-star catches, and one five-star catch this season. However, a ton of his value last year came from nine assists, and as I wrote in the Positional Power Rankings, that’s a volatile stat. You can’t just expect someone to rack up assists year after year, if for no other reason than the fact that word gets out about a rocket arm like Abreu’s. Those gaudy out totals would turn into smaller credits for keeping runners from taking extra bases. Or so I thought. Read the rest of this entry »
Lucas Giolito is looking to return to form following elbow surgery that cost him all of last year. Now 30 years old and in his first season on mound with the Boston Red Sox, Giolito has made a pair of starts — one solid, another squalid — in which he has surrendered 15 hits and nine runs over 9 2/3 innings. At his best, he’s been a top-of-the-rotation pitcher. From 2019-2021, the 6-foot-6 right-hander fashioned a 3.47 ERA and a 3.54 FIP while making a team-high 72 starts for the Chicago White Sox.
Turn the clock back 10 years, and Giolito sat atop our 2015 Washington Nationals Top Prospects list. Our then-lead prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel was understandably bullish about Giolito, writing that the 2012 first-round draft pick had true no. 1 upside.
What did Giolito’s FanGraphs scouting report look like at the time? Moreover, what does he think about it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what McDaniel wrote and asked Giolito to respond to it.
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“Giolito was nationally known by scouts all the way back to when he hit 95 mph at age 15.”
“I always threw hard,” Giolito said. “I was one of the hardest throwers in Little League and everything like that. I started long tossing a lot around the time I got to high school, and just kept building and building. I think I hit 90 when I was 14, and then 95 maybe closer to my 16th birthday. So yeah, it kept going up until I blew my elbow out.
“Probably,” Giolito responded when asked if the velocity was too much, too early. “There wasn’t too much understanding on the medical side, like strengthening, stability — all the stuff that we’re doing now to maintain the little muscles, the big muscles, to support your body when it’s outputting that much force. I was also very skinny. My shoulder blades winged out. I didn’t have much muscular development at that age, but I was moving very fast. It eventually caught up to me.”
“[He] was in the running to go 1-1 as one of the top prep pitchers of all time, until he was shut down with a sprained UCL in his elbow. This led to an expected Tommy John surgery one outing after he signed for an $800,000 overslot bonus as the 16th overall pick.”
“I remember having an outing where I think the Astros’ GM came to see me pitch in person,” Giolito said. “I pitched really well that day. I was on top of the world. It was like, ‘Oh my God, I might be the first-overall pick if I just continue what I’m doing for the rest of the season.’ It was the next outing, or maybe two outings later, where I hurt my elbow. I had to shut down. We didn’t want to do the full TJ yet, because we thought that would hurt me in the draft. Plus, if I was going to get TJ, I wanted to be in a professional organization where you get access to the best care. I tried to rehab it.
“Going into the draft, I had no idea,” added Giolito, a product of Harvard-Westlake High School. “I thought I’d be picked somewhere in the first three rounds, that a team would take a flier on me. I didn’t know I’d be in the first round. That was kind of the beginning of the pre-draft-deal era, but I literally was watching the draft on the TV when they said my name. That was when I found out I was drafted in the first round.
“The Nationals picked me. I was a prep arm with a blown-out elbow, which is a big, big risk. I have Stephen Strasburg to thank, because he was a big prospect who came up, blew his elbow out, got Tommy John, and had a relatively successful recovery from that. The Nationals kind of saw me in that same vein. It was, ‘OK, we’ll get this guy. He’ll have TJ, but we feel confident with this.’”
“The stuff was all the way back this year as he dominated Low-A at age 19/20 in his first full year coming off of surgery. The Nationals were understandably conservative with pitch and innings counts.”
“My first full season back they had my innings count at 100,” Giolito recalled. “I got to 100 innings and they shut me down, and that sucked, because our team was so good. Our starting rotation consisted of me, Reynaldo López, Nick Pivetta. Austin Voth was in the rotation, but he got sent up to High-A at some point that year. We had a really nasty one-two-three with me, Reynaldo, and Nick, but then I got shut down with a few weeks left in the season and had to be a cheerleader. We ended up losing in the playoffs.”
“His knockout curveball, which gets 65 or 70 grades from scouts, is his signature offspeed pitch.”
“Not any more,” replied the righty. “I still have it, but I don’t throw it as often. I always say that Tommy John gave me my changeup. When I was recovering I messed around with changeup grips a lot and found one that was comfortable. I threw it a lot in that same season you mentioned, that Low-A season. I threw a ton of changeups, because the curveball made my elbow hurt that first season back.
“My curveball was good in the minor leagues — I still used it — but we mixed that changeup in a lot. Over time, especially when I developed the slider, the changeup really became the big pitch for me.”
“He has true no. 1 starter upside.”
“Yeah, I mean, I had that with the White Sox for a couple of years,” Giolito said. “I still have confidence that I have true no. 1 starter upside. I just have to come back from this thing and develop some good consistency.”
Charlie Morton has been about to retire for a while now. The lanky curveball specialist first made headlines in the early 2010s; he’d been struggling over his first three major league seasons, so he came up with a novel, but hilariously simple, solution: Copy what Roy Halladay was doing. It worked for a while, but injuries piled up, and it wasn’t until Morton landed with the Astros in 2017 that he really, truly put it together.
In the first season of a two-year deal with the Astros, Morton set new career highs in wins, WAR, and strikeouts. He not only won a championship for the first time in his career, he was the winning pitcher in Game 7 of both the ALCS and the World Series, and got the last out of the season in the latter case. He turned 34 five days after the Astros’ championship parade, and by the following spring he was already musing publicly about hanging up his spikes. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. For once, I don’t have a fistful of double plays to show you. I don’t even have that many great catches. The baseball I watched this week was disjointed and messy, the regular season at its finest. Making the easy plays tough? We’ve got that. Bringing in your lefty to face their righty slugger? Got that too. Doubles that weren’t? Collisions between out-of-position players? Yes and yes. So thanks Zach Lowe for the wonderful article format, and let’s get started.
1. Tell ‘Em, Wash
I mean, how hard could first base be? Incredibly hard, of course. The Red Sox and Rangers are both on to their respective Plan Bs at first base after Triston Casas ruptured his patellar tendon and Jake Burger got sent down to Triple-A. No big deal defensively, right? Each team plugged in a utility player — Romy Gonzalez for Boston and Josh Smith for Texas — and moved on with life. Look how easy first is:
It’s rough being a reliever. Your whole career is a small sample. Emmanuel Clase has been one of the best pitchers in baseball since pretty much the moment he set foot on a major league mound in 2019, but over his entire career, he’s thrown just 338 innings. Our leaderboard says that total has been bested in 534 different player-seasons. That’s 534 times that one single player in one single season threw more innings than Clase has over his whole career. Clase set a personal best by throwing 74 1/3 innings last season, and on the individual season leaderboard, that total put him in a 79-way tie for 20,484th place. A small sample size means high variance. Over his entire career, Clase has never finished a season with an xFIP below 2.18 or above 3.42, which is pretty stable for a reliever. But after running a microscopic 0.61 ERA last season, his ERA is currently a so-big-you-can-see-it-from-space 5.51. Five-run swings are decidedly less stable.
When things go wrong to this degree, it’s usually because a combination of factors have conspired to make it happen. When you’re as good a pitcher as Clase, it takes both luck and skill to get results this bad. Our focus today will be on the extraneous factors. You know what else is subject to wild variations in short samples? Defense. And defense is letting Clase down in a big way. We’re here today because Mike Petriello asked me to look into something. Petriello is Major League Baseball’s Director of Stats and Research, and it’s my understanding that as such, I am legally required to investigate any statistical anomalies he assigns me. Here’s what he sent my way:
When Clase was on the mound in 2024, the Guardians racked up 5 Outs Above Average. They were great defensively. This season, even though he’s only pitched roughly one-fifth of the innings he did last year, Guardians fielders are already all the way down at -4. That’s an absurdly big swing. How is that even possible? Is it just luck? Read the rest of this entry »
Jackson Chourio is a star. You can see it the second he steps to the plate. He looks like he’s always been in a batter’s box, like hitting comes as easily as breathing. He has easy power and shockingly good contact skills for someone who swings so hard. So, uh, why can’t he take a walk?
Fine, that’s hyperbole. It’s May 8, 38 games into the season, and he’s walked three times in 165 plate appearances. That works out to a 1.8% walk rate, the third lowest among qualified hitters. Jacob Wilson? He’s walked six times already. Michael Harris II? Four walks in fewer games. Name a guy you think can’t walk, with the exception of platoon players Kerry Carpenter and Michael Massey, and you can be sure that Chourio is walking meaningfully less than they are. Chourio didn’t walk a ton in 2024 – his 6.8% walk rate was in the 31st percentile – but this is something different entirely.
Naturally, when I started writing this piece before Tuesday’s game, Chourio had two walks in 161 plate appearances for the lowest walk rate in baseball, but then he walked his second time up in the Brewers’ 9-1 loss to the Astros. (For the rest of this article, I’ll be using stats as of the start of play on Tuesday.) Anyway, the point still stands: Chourio isn’t walking. What’s going on here? Read the rest of this entry »
Matt Seelinger has taken an atypical path to the doorstep of the big leagues. Drafted in the 28th round by the Pittsburgh Pirates out of Division-III Farmingdale State College in 2017, the 30-year-old right-hander subsequently played in the Tampa Bay Rays, San Francisco Giants, and Philadelphia Phillies organizations before getting released and hooking on with the Atlantic League’s Long Island Ducks before the 2024 season. His fortunes turned last summer. The Detroit Tigers signed Seelinger in late June, and since returning to affiliated ball he has logged a 1.26 ERA and a 38.4% strikeout rate over 29 relief appearances between Double-A Erie and Triple-A Toledo. So far this season, the Westbury, New York native has a 4-0 record to go with a 0.57 ERA and a 30.9% strikeout rate over nine appearances, the last five of them with the Mud Hens.
His signature pitch is every bit as notable as his late-bloomer success. Seelinger’s repertoire includes a four-seam fastball and a cutter/slider, but it is his unique offering with an unorthodox grip that most stands out. Seelinger shared the story behind it when Toledo visited Triple-A Worcester last week.
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David Laurila: You throw a unique pitch. What exactly is it?
Matt Seelinger: “So, it was coined on Long Island, where I’m from. It’s called a knuckle drop. Basically, what I do is take a four-seam fastball grip and flip it so that the horseshoe is on the inside. I take my two fingers — my pointer finger and my middle finger — and bend them. I take the top lace, and put them on the bottom of it. I put my ring finger and pinky on the seams. The thumb, I try to get underneath as much as possible, although thumb placement isn’t as big of deal as long as it’s not too high up on the ball. From there, I throw it just like a fastball, only I’m pushing it out.”
On Tuesday night, Paul Skenes — the most electric pitcher in baseball, the future face of the sport, the only reason (apart from potatoes or metallurgy) that anyone would want to go to Pittsburgh — took the mound and did his stuff. He struck out six Cardinals in six innings pitched, allowed just two runs, and threw 22 four-seam fastballs that clocked between 98.0 and 99.1 mph. If you watched the game, you got what you were promised.
But Skenes was outdueled on the evening, by a pitcher whose developmental track took substantially longer than Skenes’. Matthew Liberatore struck out eight batters over seven innings, allowed only one run, put six baserunners on to Skenes’ seven, threw 70 strikes on 99 pitches to Skenes’s 60 out of 102, and got 17 whiffs to Skenes’ 13. Read the rest of this entry »
Associate – Baseball Systems – User Interface/Experience UI/UX
Location: Milwaukee, WI
Position Summary:
The Associate – Baseball Systems – UI/UX will work closely with the Software Engineering team within the Baseball Systems department. This position will be responsible for supporting the creation of intuitive, accessible, and visually appealing user experiences that enhance existing web and mobile technologies and creation of new tools.
Core duties for this role include, but are not limited to:
Create wireframes, mockups, and prototypes for web and mobile applications.
Participate in user research activities (e.g., user interviews, surveys, usability testing).
Analyze user feedback and research to refine designs.
The ideal candidate will be currently enrolled pursuing a bachelor’s degree (B. A.) in Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, Information Design, Digital/Graphic Design, or related field from four-year college or university; or related experience and/or training; or equivalent combination of education and experience.
Our Team
Baseball Systems is the software backbone of Baseball Operations. We provide data and decision-making tools for analysts, coaches, and front office personnel to help win a World Series. Our department consists of a team of data engineers and a team of software engineers who work across all different aspects of Baseball Operations providing support and tools relevant to each group. We work directly with stakeholders in every department of Baseball Operations to ensure every project we work on drives value to the organization and helps us win more games on the field. We help drive technical innovation to find new ways to solve baseball problems.
Our Pitch
You come here to make a difference. We are a purpose-led organization, focused on building an inclusive and engaging culture that fosters excellence, collaboration, and ingenuity. We strive to be a model employer and cultivator of talent, empowering our teams to drive innovation through the inclusion of diverse thoughts, ideas, and perspectives. We operate at the highest standard of excellence, investing in the development of our staff across all levels and embracing differences through a culture of respect and understanding.
We are proud to offer a highly competitive perks and benefits package including:
League wide medical insurance plan
401(K) match and an additional annual contribution from the Club
Collaborative recognition program and incentives
Online educational platform for personal and professional development
Employee Resource Groups
Paid time off for volunteering
Year-round diversity, equity and inclusion training and development
Brewers Home Game tickets, promotional giveaways and other discounts!
For more information about our Crew, other benefits and insight into our Club culture please visit our Careers Page
While the Cubs are 22-15 and own a three-game lead in the NL Central — the largest of any team at this writing — the rotation that’s helped them to that perch has taken its hits recently. Last month, 2023 All-Star lefty Justin Steele underwent surgery to repair his ulnar collateral ligament, and Javier Assad suffered a setback while rehabbing to return from an oblique strain. And then on Monday, the Cubs placed 2024 All-Star lefty Shota Imanaga on the injured list due to a left hamstring strain. While his injury isn’t considered to be major, his loss could tighten the division race and test the depth of the already-depleted rotation.
After leaving his April 29 start against the Pirates after five innings due to cramps in both quadriceps, Imanaga cruised through the first five innings against the Brewers on Sunday in Milwaukee, allowing just three singles while striking out four without a walk. The 31-year-old’s afternoon ended on a sour note, however. With the game still scoreless in the sixth, he yielded a leadoff single to Jackson Chourio and then a one-out walk to William Contreras. It looked as though he might escape unscathed when he got Christian Yelich to ground to first baseman Michael Busch, who started a potential 3-6-1 double play. Imanaga ran to cover first base, but not only was Dansby Swanson’s throw a bit late, the pitcher came up limping, forcing him out of the game.
Reliever Julian Merryweather entered, threw a wild pitch that allowed Chourio to score from third, and by the time he got the final out, three more runs had scored in what ended as a 4-0 loss for the Cubs. They suffered a much more gruesome defeat on Tuesday, when reliever Ryan Pressly allowed eight straight Giants to reach base in what became a nine-run 11th inning and a 14-5 drubbing. Read the rest of this entry »
