Triston Casas and Grant Williams are teammates with distinctly different profiles. Boston’s first-round pick in the 2018 draft, the 21-year-old Casas is a 6-foot-4, 250-pound first baseman who is No. 2 on our Red Sox Top Prospects list, and No. 42 on our updated Top 100 Prospects list. Williams is unranked. A 25-year-old middle infielder who lasted until the 310th pick of the 2018 draft, he hit in the nine-hole when the Double-A Portland Sea Dogs hosted the Somerset Patriots on Wednesday night. Befitting his stature, Casas batted third.

Prior to the game, I spoke to both players about their respective hitting approaches.

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Casas possesses plus power, but he doesn’t present as a pure slugger. Patience is a big part of his M.O., as is a willingness to choke up on the bat when contact is at a premium. The lefty swinger cited Joey Votto as his role model when he was featured in a January 2020 Sunday Notes column, and as he acknowledged on Wednesday, that remains the case.

I asked Casas if he’s changed as a hitter since entering pro ball three years ago.

“I’d like to think I haven’t, but I have a lot,” responded the Plantation, Florida product. “I kind of battle that. I fight every single day to make adjustments and become the best hitter that I can, but to also apply what I’ve been doing my whole life. So I like to say that I haven’t changed too much, but at the same time, I have.”

I asked the up-and-coming youngster if he could elaborate. Read the rest of this entry »

The first time I saw a triple play, I was keeping score for one of my brother’s All-Star games. I don’t remember exactly how old I was, but for some reason 14 sounds about right, so let’s go with that. My exact age at the time is less important than the fact that I was old enough to have scored hundreds of baseball games. I had spent countless afternoons at practices with my dad and my brother. I had seen a lot of baseball and I knew enough to be momentarily confused by what had just happened.

The thing about a triple play is that even if you are paying complete attention to the game, there is a really good chance you are going to miss something. Maybe you catch one or two of the outs, but the play develops so quickly that if you are even remotely distracted when the ball is hit, it’s probably going to take a second for your brain to register that an ideal scoring situation for one team has been erased in mere seconds by the other.

You can spend your whole life watching your favorite team and never see them turn a triple play. I’ve been a Cubs fan for over 30 years, and in that time, the Cubs have turned just four triple plays. The only one I caught live was this disputed triple play from 2020, which many people rightly pointed out would have been overturned if the Reds had been able to review it. It was the first triple play the Cubs had turned in 23 years. It’s the only triple play I’ve ever seen them turn in real time and even though it’s on the record books, it didn’t really happen. There is a very real chance I could spend another decade or two waiting to cross “saw the Cubs turn a triple play” off my list. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets got a rare bit of good injury news on Wednesday. Marcus Stroman was pulled in the second inning on Tuesday after three pitches due to soreness in his left hip. Given the season the Mets are having in the injury department — there are 13 players on an Injured List as I type this — and really, the seemingly cursed history of the Mets and pitcher injuries, Stroman’s departure caused a lot of worries. But his MRI revealed no damage to the hip that would have resulted in a 14th name on the shelf.

That’s not to say the Mets are out of danger. The same day Stroman tweaked his hip, the team announced that Joey Lucchesi would undergo Tommy John surgery, ending his 2021 (and likely most of his 2022) season, and that Michael Conforto‘s return from the IL would be delayed. Given the team’s dissipating rotation depth, losing two pitchers instead of just one would have been a significant blow. Carlos Carrasco has yet to make his 2021 debut, Noah Syndergaard’s return date was pushed back due to elbow inflammation, and all-galaxy ace Jacob deGrom has had multiple injury scares already this season.

Now, the exercise here isn’t to depth-shame the Mets. In past years, the team had a bad habit of entering the season with interesting five-man rotations and highly worrisome Plans B, C, and D, generally consisting of converting relievers back to starters or leaning on whatever random Quad-A starting pitcher was playing decent ball for Syracuse. The additions of Carrasco, Lucchesi, Taijuan Walker, Jordan Yamamoto, Jerad Eickhoff, and Sam McWilliams provided the team a lot of fallback options on the pitching staff. That’s a notable improvement from a shrug-emoji-or-possibly-Walker-Lockett strategy.

Every team has a point at which they run out of good options. Even teams like the Rays, Dodgers, and Padres would be in dire straits if five starting pitchers suddenly decided to retire and sail around the world or sign with NASA to train full-time for a mission to Mars. The Mets were well-designed to support a number of significant losses, but the limits still exist. And they might have already come up against those limits — players like Johneshwy Fargas, Brandon Drury, and Mason Williams ought to be quite far down the depth charts — if not for the fact that no other team in the division has seized the opportunity. Despite all the injury losses, the rotation exceeding expectations and the division disappointing have been enough for the Mets to only be a single win off from where the preseason ZiPS projections saw them at this point.

ZiPS still projects the Mets as a .563 team going forward, just about where it pegged the club three months ago, and that’s with playing time assumptions in many cases far worse than they were in March. But a four-game lead in the division is not an unassailable position, and outside of not regressing toward the bleak history of Met injury management, there’s not much they can do to prevent a new rash of nasty surprises on that front.

So the question that comes to mind is just how much bad news can the Mets absorb before their postseason positioning proves perilous? Let’s start with updated ZiPS standings as of Thursday morning.

The combination of a poor start to the season and both Wild Cards likely being from the NL West (ZiPS sees 2.8 average playoff spots from that division) has probably rendered the Marlins a lost cause for the 2021 season. However, the other three teams remain threats even if the Mets are the deserving favorites at this point. To get an idea of how much margin for error the Mets have, I ran the 2021 rest-of-season simulation repeatedly, with different assumptions for the Mets roster.

When looking at these two graphs (DanGraphs?), the first thing I notice is the direct effect the Giants are having on the playoff race. If the Mets struggle and don’t win the division, they usually fall behind the Giants or Padres. And when the Mets are good enough to win a Wild Card, they usually win the division anyway.

The Mets’ roster is currently about three wins ahead of the highest-leverage point in their win curve. They don’t really start seeing diminishing returns until one or two additional wins on the roster, making a strong case for the team continuing to be aggressive despite their relatively strong position in the division.

Relative to the rest of the league, third base and catcher feature on our depth charts as the team’s weakest spots, making those positions arguably the best places to add wins. That seems unlikely behind the plate; I was never much of a fan of a four-year contract for James McCann, but it doesn’t seem likely the team would make an upgrade here. The rotation is hardly a source of weakness, but I still think that given Syndergaard and Stroman’s status as free-agent-to-be status and deGrom’s injury risk, adding a starting pitcher would be helpful. The Mets should not be panicking at this point, but continuing last winter’s aggression at the trade deadline would be a welcome sight.

While Yu Darvish carved up the Dodgers on Monday night at Petco Park, Mookie Betts accounted for the team’s only notable gasp of offense, clubbing a third-inning solo homer that accounted for Los Angeles’ only run in six innings against the Padres’ righty, and one of their two hits. The Dodgers trailed 4-0 at the time, and were down 6-1 when Betts had another chance to make an impact. Batting with two outs and the bases loaded in the seventh against Austin Adams, Betts swung at a 2-0 slider high in the zone but managed just a routine fly ball for the third out; the Dodgers went on to lose, 6-2.

It’s been that kind of season for Betts, who has certainly had his moments here and there — his leadoff homer and double play against the Pirates on June 10, for example — but has generally been unable to sustain the type of magic that he generated in his first year as a Dodger. Acquired from the Red Sox in February 2020 and subsequently signed to a 12-year, $356 million deal, Betts helped spur the team to its first championship in 32 years with his offensive, defensive and baserunning contributions; indeed, his postseason work was a tour de force. This year, the 28-year-old right fielder has battled minor injuries and has yet to go on any kind of sustained hot streak. Read the rest of this entry »

What if I told you that there is a pitcher who throws 92 mph but is actually throwing 95? That’s just Bailey Falter’s niche. Despite only throwing nine major league innings in his career to date, Falter has already shot to the top of some important leaderboards: release extension and average velocity added.

Here are the top-10 fastballs in June, sorted not by average velocity, but instead by average added velocity, which is the result of simple subtraction: effective velocity minus release speed. Effective velocity estimates the “actual” pitch speed the hitter faces based on where the pitcher releases the baseball and how much time the hitter has to react. If a pitcher releases the ball closer to home plate, the batter has less time to react, effectively (there’s that word again) making the pitch come in faster. This is music to Falter’s ears:

Read the rest of this entry »

Do you know the pitcher with the highest swinging-strike rate in all of baseball this year? Well, it’s Jacob deGrom, no surprises there; it’s such an obvious answer that I probably didn’t need to ask. But do you know the pitcher with the second-highest swinging-strike rate? It’s Raisel Iglesias, and the Angels’ closer has been impressive so far this season, even if his run prevention numbers don’t quite show it yet.

If I could see only one pitching statistic, I’d choose swinging-strike rate. That’s not to say that nothing else matters; that’s decidedly not the case, and there are easy examples of both pitchers who miss bats but aren’t effective and pitchers who are effective without missing bats. But as a first pass, swinging strikes are great. Everything else is contextual. Called strike? That’s because the batter didn’t swing. Foul? It’s not always worth a strike. Groundball? The batter could hit it through the defense or find a gap. A swing and miss is absolute.

You probably don’t need to hear that. Whiffs have been the premium currency of pitching for a long time, long before we had the pitch-level data to track them accurately. I merely thought I’d mention it, because wow does Iglesias miss a lot of bats.

Most closers operate with a common template. Throw a really good fastball — a really good fastball — and spot an unhittable secondary pitch off of it. It’s not always about velocity, though it often is. But it’s almost always about a fastball and one pitch spotted off of it — a guessing game for the hitter with two bad answers.

Iglesias is that pitcher, kind of. Against righties, he relies on a four-seam fastball and a devastating slider. He mixes in a smattering of two-seamers and changeups, but mostly for show; more than 80% of his pitches are fastballs or sliders. Against lefties, Iglesias also relies on two pitches: his fastball and changeup. He throws each of them roughly 40% of the time, with sinkers and sliders comprising the remainder of his offerings.
Read the rest of this entry »

We talk a lot about the “face” of baseball — a player who has the look, the excitement, the highlight reel, the things that make them an ideal candidate to be a poster child for the game. “Here,” we say, to would-be fans. “This is what you’re getting when you start to watch that sport.” It could be Bryce Harper with his GIF-worthy hair tosses, or Aaron Judge with his giant frame and home runs. It could be Mookie Betts or Mike Trout, whose talents defy generational lines and who we will likely be talking about for decades after they retire.

As baseball faces go, there are lots of options, even if it feels like no one can agree on them or decide who would be the best candidate to usher in a new generation of fans. Whose poster would these kids want on their walls? Whose stance would they most likely emulate in Little League games? Which superstar can surpass the limitations of team fandom to become beloved by all? It’s a tough request to fulfill, and that’s likely why there are no firm answers.

In recent months, I’ve begun to wonder if what baseball needs is a face at all. Perhaps what baseball needs instead is a voice.

Read the rest of this entry »

After losing Gerrit Cole in free agency after the 2019 World Series and Justin Verlander to a torn UCL just six innings into the season, the Astros found themselves in desperate need of pitching help last year. Zack Greinke helped fill the void left by Charlie Morton’s departure, and Lance McCullers Jr. returned after missing all of 2019, but besides those two pitchers, there were more questions than answers in Houston’s rotation.

Insert a quintet of young pitchers with varying degrees of experience: Framber Valdez (107.2 MLB innings to his name), José Urquidy (41 MLB innings and a stellar upper-minors track record), and three pitchers with a lot of blank space on their résumés in Cristian Javier, Enoli Paredes, and Luis Garcia. With the help of these five and some clever piggybacking, the Astros overcame a mediocre regular-season record to oust Minnesota in the wild-card round and Oakland in the ALDS before falling to Tampa Bay in the ALCS.

Of that group, I want to focus on Garcia, for two reasons. First, he is the team’s current leader in pitching WAR, narrowly edging out Greinke, with a 2.82 ERA supported by a 28.1% strikeout rate and 7.7% walk rate. Second, his rise to the big-league club was the most surprising of the five guys I mentioned above. He signed with Houston out of Venezuela at age 20 (which is old for an international amateur) for a mere $20,000. He had not pitched above high-A before his MLB call-up, though he did dominate the opposition at every level. In 2019, he saw a velocity bump and struck out almost 36% of the hitters he faced in 43 innings pitched at low-A, then whiffed 39.4% of batters he faced in 65.2 innings one level up.

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Because there are so few minor league baseball games on Mondays this year, you’ll see me play with the format of the Tuesday Daily Prospect Notes. I’m lucky that the top prospect in the sport, 20-year-old Tampa Bay Rays infielder Wander Franco, is likely to debut against the Red Sox this evening. The Franco report from the Rays/Top 100 lists still applies, and folks looking for a general overview of his talent should go jam on the clipboard here and read that if you haven’t already done so. Today I’m going to be breaking down his 2021 season using Synergy Baseball, a pitch-by-pitch video software program that is often used by MLB teams.

We made a decision to allocate scouting travel budget toward Synergy Baseball during the offseason, when the timeline for vaccines was still hazy but the presence of COVID was not. Unsure if/how much I’d be travelling again this year, we funneled money into Synergy in case I could not. It was initially useful for watching action in foreign pro leagues and during Spring Training as I worked on prospect lists, but Kevin Goldstein and I also have access to pitch-by-pitch video from Triple-A games (not the whole minors, just Triple-A), as well as metadata from each pitch. I can’t share video with you here (or anywhere) or I’d be in violation of MiLB.tv terms of service, but I can share with you some of the Franco metadata to illustrate the specific nature of his skills and put them in a big league context.

Read the rest of this entry »

Chas McCormick has already exceeded expectations. A 21st-round pick in the 2017 draft out of Division II Millersville University, the 26-year-old outfielder is getting semi-regular playing time with the Houston Astros, and he’s been sneaky good. His .226 batting average is nothing to write home about, but his 114 wRC+ and 0.5 WAR (as of Sunday night) are those of a rookie contributing to MLB’s highest-scoring team. That couldn’t have been predicted a few years ago — or even a few months ago. Coming into the current campaign, the West Chester, Pennsylvania native was No. 18 on our Astros Top Prospects list.

McCormick discussed his underdog-makes-good story when Houston visited Fenway Park earlier this month.

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David Laurila: In many ways, you’re a classic overachiever. What is your background in that respect?

Chas McCormick: “When I was younger, like high school — even before — and maybe a little bit of college, I was never the best. If I had to try out for a team… I wasn’t very good at tryouts. I got cut from some summer-ball teams because I wasn’t the fastest player, I didn’t have the strongest arm, I didn’t hit the ball the farthest. I wasn’t the biggest guy, either. That’s why I really didn’t get Division 1 looks, just a couple Division II, Division III. But the more I played, especially in college, the more people realized that I was a gamer. I wouldn’t take batting practice and have scouts saying, ‘Wow, he’s putting on a show,’ it was more, ‘You’ve got to watch this kid play nine innings.’”

Laurila: When did you realize you had a legitimate shot to play pro ball?

McCormick: “Not in high school. I was thinking about playing basketball in college — or baseball — but again, just Division II, Division III. I wasn’t really on anyone’s radar. So out of high school, I wasn’t really thinking about pro baseball at all. Then I got to college, and that was [as] a pitcher. I was a little erratic and didn’t throw strikes very well, so that ended quickly.

“Anyway, freshman year, an outfielder got hurt and I ended up starting. I played really well — I batted leadoff a couple times and hit close to .340 — but I still didn’t think I could play pro ball because I didn’t really have the power. Then I ended up hitting some home runs in my sophomore year, and had a good average as well — I hit around .350. So after my sophomore year, I was like, ‘You know what? Maybe I could play professional baseball.’”

Laurila: You then didn’t get drafted after your junior year. Read the rest of this entry »