Unless you count Stephen Strasburg’s much-hyped debut, a top pitching prospect’s first start usually doesn’t have much to write home about. While talented, the player in question is understandably an unfinished product who’s facing big league hitters for the first time, in addition to fighting off nerves and perhaps pressure to perform. If you’re looking for some razzle-dazzle, it’s best to wait out a season of adjustments, maybe two. I mean, just look at how Shane McClanahan is taking off this season!
At a glance, Max Meyer’s debut is emblematic of the rookie pitcher’s all-too-common plight. Sure, he did strike out five and hold his own through five innings, but things quickly unraveled afterward. In the top of the sixth, the Phillies got to see Meyer for a third time, which resulted in a home run, walk, and a double. Richard Bleier then took over, but the lefty allowed both runners to score, ballooning Meyer’s earned run total to five. You never got the sense that Meyer was in control of the Phillies, and you couldn’t be blamed for thinking he was ill-prepared.
But c’mon, FanGraphs doesn’t just stop at the box score. From a different angle, Meyer’s debut is one of the more striking ones in recent memory. Read the rest of this entry »
When he was first featured here at FanGraphs three years ago, I wrote that Nestor Cortes “barely registers a blip on the national radar.” With his multiple windups in mind, I called the then-24-year-old southpaw “probably the most unique member of the 2019 New York Yankees.”
A lot has changed since that time. Cortes is still unique — the funkiness and deceptive deliveries remain part of his M.O. — but he’s otherwise a much different pitcher. He’s also become a household name. Traded to Seattle in November 2019, Cortes returned to New York in free agency prior to last season and has since been remade into one of the top starters in the American League. A first-time All-Star with a 2.63 ERA and 99 strikeouts in 95-and-two-thirds innings, Cortes attacks hitters with a different arsenal than the one he employed as an obscure reliever.
How has Cortes evolved, and just as importantly, can he continue to thrive if he doesn’t evolve further? Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake addressed those questions when the team visited Fenway Park earlier this month.
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David Laurila: You’ve obviously been asked about Nestor Cortes numerous times already this season. That said, why has he been so good?
Matt Blake: “When he first started going last year, the league didn’t really know who he was. I mean, they knew of Nestor, but they hadn’t necessarily seen this version of him, where there’s a little bit more velocity [and] the fastball has kind of a true riding profile, one that’s a little bit closer to cut than run. And then the cutter off of that creates a really tough visual for hitters to identify. He’d also added the sweeper slider to be able to slow guys down and steal some strikes. Read the rest of this entry »
The Nationals are going to trade Juan Soto. Oh, sure, it’s not official yet, but it’s basically official. After he turned down their most recent extension offer, a reported 15-year, $450 million deal, reports emerged that the team was open to dealing him. And with the trade deadline conveniently only weeks away, general manager Mike Rizzo will have no shortage of phone calls to field in the coming days.
In a fortuitous coincidence, I’m currently working on our annual trade value series, so I’ve spent a good deal of time considering Soto’s value. He’s an interesting case, perhaps one without precedent in the trade market. He’s undoubtedly one of the best five or so players in baseball. In a down year, he’s still hitting .250/.405/.497, good for a 152 wRC+. That’s the kind of production that most players would call a career year, and we’re writing about adjustments he can make.
In addition, Soto is no rental. He’s under team control through the 2024 season, and while he’ll command record-breaking arbitration salaries for the next two years, he’ll still be an unbelievable bargain while doing so. Consider: He’s making $17.1 million this year in arbitration and on pace for roughly 5 WAR in a down year. What would teams pay for that production on the open market? Well, the Mets are paying Max Scherzer $43.3 million per year over the next three years, and Soto has out-WAR’ed Scherzer in each of the past three seasons. He’s also only 23, so it’s not as though he’s approaching age-related decline. Read the rest of this entry »
Robert Hassell III hasn’t experienced much adversity in his young career. Since being drafted eighth overall by the San Diego Padres in 2020 out of a Tennessee high school, the 20-year-old outfielder has climbed to No. 42 on our Top 100 Prospects list while logging 134 wRC+. Last night he was in the starting lineup for the National League in the All-Star Futures Game.
He’s shown that he’s well-equipped to handle adversity when it does occur. The sweet-swinging Nashville-area native went through a cold stretch in May, and just as he was emerging from it, he contracted COVID. That learning experience is what Hassell chose to share when I sat down with him in late June to ask about his season to date.
“I had a 3-for-30 stretch — something like that — which I hadn’t had in pro ball, or really anywhere,” said Hassell, who has spent the season with the High-A Fort Wayne TinCaps. “Playing every day you’ve got to be able to make immediate adjustments, and it took me awhile to get going again. Basically, I had to begin simplifying things, which is something I continue to do.”
Mature beyond his years, the third-ranked prospect in the Padres system agreed when I suggested that a slump doesn’t necessarily mean that changes are in order.
“That can be an adjustment itself, realizing that you don’t need to change anything,” said Hassell, who was featured in our Talks Hitting series in April. “At least not mechanically. It’s about knowing who you are, and like I said, keeping things simple. Looking back at video, it might be, ‘There is is no real difference between that guy and what I’m doing now.’ That’s why I’m big on the mental part of the game. Read the rest of this entry »
Note: This article was published shortly before a San Diego radio station reported that general manager A.J. Preller said that Fernando Tatis Jr. has finally been cleared to begin his hitting progression.
A 23-year-old star shortstop walks into a doctor’s office and… well, we don’t exactly know what happens next, at least in the case of Fernando Tatis Jr. On Monday, Tatis had his left wrist examined by the surgeon who repaired the fracture he sustained during the offseason, but the Padres did not announce a timetable for his return, because while he had been cleared to resume nearly all baseball-related activity, doctors had yet to allow him to swing a bat at full intensity. That holding pattern lasted until Friday morning, shortly after this article was originally published, when general manager A.J. Preller revealed that Tatis was finally cleared to take hacks. The green light comes with team in the midst of a four-week skid after briefly supplanting the Dodgers atop the NL West.
All the uncertainty has been par for the course, as the entire saga of Tatis’s wrist injury is rather murky. In early December, shortly after the lockout began, he was reportedly involved in a motorcycle accident in the Dominican Republic, via which he sustained “minor scrapes.” He apparently did not begin feeling the effects of the injury until he began taking swings in mid-February in preparation for spring training. On March 14, with the lockout finally over, the team announced that x-rays revealed he had suffered a fracture; when asked about the motorcycle accident at the time, the shortstop responded, “Which one?” and acknowledged “a couple incidents” without further specificity. Tatis underwent surgery to repair his scaphoid bone on March 16, at which time general manager A.J. Preller estimated a three-month recovery and a mid-June return.
That timetable proved to be too optimistic. As of early May, Tatis was running and taking grounders, but on June 14, Preller told reporters, “Another MRI scan continues to show healing, but it was not quite at the level for … a full green light.” In other words, he had not been cleared to hit, though he was able to play catch at full intensity. Eight days later, he was able to swing “at 40% intensity” for what acting manager Ryan Christenson called “a systems check” (manager Bob Melvin was in COVID-19 protocol at the time). After a visit to doctors on June 28, Tatis said he expected to be taking swings in two weeks, but he did not get the expected green light in Monday’s follow-up.
Via the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Kevin Acee, the delay reflected the team exercising caution because there had not been a full consensus from among the doctors the Padres were consulting on whether Tatis has healed enough to begin swings:
Multiple people insist Tatis has had no setbacks. As stated in previous tweet, team is being extremely cautious. As is often the case in these situations, doctors differ on opinions re: what is "enough" healing. Tatis could begin swing progression by the weekend.
The hope that Tatis would finally be cleared at some point this weekend has now been realized. The expectation is that his “progression from dry swings to swinging against live pitching is expected to take about 10 days,” after which Tatis will go on a rehab assignment whose length of time will be dictated by how comfortable he feels and how quickly he gets up to speed. Thus, even with Friday’s announcement, it sounds like he won’t be back until the end of this month or early in August. Read the rest of this entry »
On this episode, we discuss the surging underdogs of the AL East before a chat about finishing up prospect lists in time for one of the most eventful weeks on the baseball calendar.
At the top of the show, David Laurila welcomes Geoff Arnold, broadcaster for the Baltimore Orioles. We hear about the club’s recent win streak, exceeding expectations in a very challenging division, and how doing so has made for an entirely different environment at the ballpark. Arnold tells us how stoked the team is for All-Star Jorge López, and how Tyler Wells deserved a nod as well. We also hear about the team’s strong farm system, why Brandon Hyde deserves consideration for Manager of the Year, how the team might handle the trade deadline, and who the O’s might take first overall in the upcoming amateur draft. [3:22]
In the second segment, lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and managing editor Meg Rowley discuss the herculean task that was finishing the 2022 prospect lists. We hear about how the sausage is made when it comes to this annual feat, including how the process has changed over the years. The duo also look ahead to the crowded field of All-Star events, including the Futures Game and the amateur draft, and discuss what they are excited about while also lamenting the week’s imperfect scheduling. Finally, we hear suggestions for how the draft and Futures Game could be marketed differently at a time when fans seem more interested than ever in prospects. [34:34]
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As free-agent signings go, you could be forgiven for having missed Martín Pérez’s return to the Rangers. His agreement to a one-year, $4 million deal happened amid a flurry of signings in mid-March, just after the lockout ended, and the transaction even slipped through the cracks in our coverage. That will happen for a guy who’s been knocked around while bouncing around, but in his return to Texas, the 31-year-old lefty has pitched his way onto the AL All-Star team, making him the longest-tenured major leaguer from among this year’s first-time honorees.
The honor is well-deserved. In 106 innings thus far, Pérez has pitched to a 2.72 ERA (71 ERA-) and 3.07 FIP (76 FIP-). His FIP ranks fifth in the AL, and his ERA and 2.3 WAR both rank sixth. Already, all of those numbers represent career bests, including his WAR, which matches his total from 2016. At that time, Pérez was just 25 years old but already in the post-hype phase of his career.
The Rangers originally signed Pérez out of Venezuela on July 2, 2007, via a $580,000 signing bonus. As a 17-year-old he held his own against college draftees in the Northwest League in 2008 and made prospect lists in each of the next five seasons as the team looked to his arrival, hopeful that he could help further the Rangers’ run after back-to-back pennants in 2010 and ’11. The hype was intense. As Jamey Newburg, who has covered Rangers’ prospects dating back to the late 1990s, wrote for D Magazine in June, after splitting his 2009 season between Low-A and Double-A stops, “[H]e flashed unnatural confidence for a teenager, a willingness to throw any pitch in any count. Baseball America tabbed him as the 17th-best prospect in baseball, third among left-handed pitchers (behind Brian Matusz and Madison Bumgarner and ahead of Aroldis Chapman). His feel for the craft and unassuming build triggered comparisons to the likes of Ron Guidry and Johan Santana.” No pressure, kid!
Pérez debuted as a 21-year-old in 2012 and spent part or all of the next six seasons with the team, but the hopes that he would develop into a homegrown ace faded as he battled injuries (including 2014 Tommy John surgery) and a hitter-friendly ballpark. In his time in Texas, he pitched to a 4.63 ERA (103 ERA-) and 4.44 FIP (103 FIP-), totaling 8.6 WAR. The Rangers signed him to a four-year, $12.5 million extension in November 2013, one that included club options for the ’18–20 seasons, but after picking up the first one, they had seen enough, declining his $7.5 million club option for 2019 and paying him a $750,000 buyout.
After reaching free agency, Perez signed modest one-year deals with the Twins and Red Sox, the latter twice; each of those deals included a club option that the team subsequently rejected as well, with Boston giving him what amounted to a 23% pay cut to return for 2020. Though his nomadic stretch began with a very solid first half for Minnesota in 2019, his second-half fade sent him packing. Last year, he pitched his way out of the Red Sox rotation and into its bullpen for the final two months of the season. For those three years, he pitched to a 4.88 ERA (106 ERA-) and 4.75 FIP (107 FIP-) and 2.8 WAR, with his 2021 numbers — a 4.74 ERA (105 ERA-) and 4.82 FIP (114 ERA-) in 114 innings — suggesting that he would be in for more of the same in 2022, though not necessarily with a contender.
To the Rangers, even those unimpressive 2021 numbers represented an improvement upon most of their returning options. While bigger names such as Clayton Kershaw and Carlos Rodón spurned the team’s advances to sign with contenders, just before the lockout Texas landed Jon Gray via a four-year, $56 million deal to head the rotation. Pérez was added in the post-lockout frenzy in the belief that he still represented not only a potential improvement but also a possible mentor for a young staff. “We want a guy with some experience, that’s been through some ups and downs in the big leagues and does things the right way,” said manager Chris Woodward at the time. “That would be probably more beneficial than anything they’ll do on the field to be honest with you. But the next part of that would be the expectation to compete on the field. Obviously we want to bring in somebody that’s gonna be good and that’s gonna pitch quality innings for us.”
Pérez has more than lived up to expectations for the Rangers already, not only with his performance but also, as Newburg reported, with his mentoring of several minor league hurlers. The 6-foot, 200-pound southpaw has never been a pitcher who has missed a ton of bats, and he isn’t suddenly doing so now; though his 19.7% strikeout rate represents a career high, it’s still 1.7 points below the rate of the average starter this season. That said, he’s coupled a slight increase in strikeouts (from 19.1%) with a slight drop in walk rate (from 7.1% to 6.0%), and so his 13.8% strikeout-walk differential is not only a career high, but also nearly double his 7.0% mark from 2012 to ’21. Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s an example of why baseball is complicated. By a lot of measures, Hunter Greene and Spencer Strider are near-identical players. Both are righty pitchers who rely on their four-seam fastballs, for good reason; they’re producing some of the highest average fastball velocities we’ve ever seen from a starter, pushing the limits of what’s possible. They’re doing that as rookies, with Greene, 22, only a year younger than Strider. These are bright futures we’re talking about.
And yet, the on-field results couldn’t be any more different. As of this writing, Greene owns a 5.43 FIP in 85.1 innings, which is close to replacement level. Meanwhile, Strider has been thriving in the Braves’ rotation, with a 2.07 FIP in 46 innings so far as a full-time starter. Baseball is complicated, because even when two pitchers execute a similar blueprint, one can end up with better numbers than the other. With Strider and Greene, something isn’t adding up. Read the rest of this entry »
Robert Gasser is emerging as one of the most promising pitching prospects in the San Diego system. Over his last six starts with the High-A Fort Wayne TinCaps, the 23-year-old southpaw has fanned 47 batters while allowing just six earned runs in 36-and-two-third innings. On the season, Gasser has a 3.76 ERA to go with a 3.09 FIP; the latter is the third-best mark in the Midwest League.
He isn’t the same pitcher the Padres drafted 71st overall last summer out of the University of Houston. Gasser still throws from a low three-quarters slot, but his arsenal has changed, and to a certain extant, so has his attack plan. Armed with a more diverse mix that includes tweaked grips, the 6-foot-1 El Dorado, California native doesn’t believe in being bland.
David Laurila: What is your M.O. on the mound? In other words, how do you get guys out?
Robert Gasser: “Honestly, just keeping them off balance. I think that’s the most important thing for me. Throwing all of my pitches in the strike zone consistently gives me an opportunity to miss barrels while I’m changing speeds and location.” Read the rest of this entry »
There is a rule in baseball that allows managers to intentionally walk opposing batters automatically. More specifically, “following the signal of the manager’s intention, the umpire will immediately award first base to the batter.” Depending on who you ask, it’s either a minor time saver or completely pointless.
There is a generally accepted practice in baseball that intentional walks are either issued at the start of a plate appearance, after first base becomes open, or when the count begins to favor a batter. You won’t find that anywhere in the rulebook, but it’s true nonetheless. It’s a common-sense practice: the only other time you can walk a batter intentionally is after a pitch tilts the count in the pitcher’s favor, and if an intentional walk makes sense then, it probably made sense before that pitch was thrown.
Baseball conventional wisdom isn’t always correct. In the case of when to intentionally walk a batter, though, it follows straightforward logic. Allow me to make an analogy. Let’s say you and I have made a strange deal. I have 60 seconds to accomplish some task – call it untangling a knot. If I manage it, you’ll owe me $10. Before I start, I make you an offer: you can just hand me $5 now and we’ll call the whole thing off. You can trade the possibility of a $10 loss for the certainty of a $5 loss.
Let’s further say that you turn me down, and that the clock starts. For the first 10 seconds, I don’t do anything — maybe I stubbed my toe and am hopping around in pain. After those 10 seconds, I offer you the same deal: for $5, we can call the same thing off. You wouldn’t take me up on it, of course. You liked your odds enough that you didn’t opt out before, and now I’m less likely to accomplish my task.
Anyway, Tony La Russa intentionally walked José Ramírez yesterday. He did so automatically, in keeping with the rules of the game, by signaling to the umpire from the dugout. He did it in contravention of the generally accepted practices of the game, though, by issuing the walk while Ramírez was behind 0-1 in the count.
In an abstract sense, it’s pretty clear why you wouldn’t do this. The knot-untangling game is a clunky analogy but it gets the point across. There’s no reason to run the numbers: by the numbers, the walk doesn’t make sense. But abstractions don’t always tell the whole story, so let’s look at the specific circumstances around this walk and see if any of them can shed some light on what happened here.
First, the situation. Ramírez came to bat with two outs in the fifth inning. Amed Rosario, the previous batter, had doubled to make the score 4-0 and now stood on second base. Davis Martin, the White Sox starter, stayed in to face Ramírez. Pitching coach Ethan Katz came out for a discussion with Martin. After that meeting came this pitch:
From there, La Russa had seen enough: he walked Ramírez. Martin recovered to strike Franmil Reyes out, escaping the inning. It didn’t matter, in either case; the Sox only scored once all game, and Cleveland held on to win 4-1.
“…Sometimes… they get themselves out. And if they get good patience, it’s like an unintentional intentional walk. So that’s what Ethan went out to say, and the first pitch was on the plate. He fouled it off, so I said, well, put him on. I just think it’s lack of experience for Davis and understanding more about that situation. Because he’s smart enough to know to pitch off the plate and he got it on, cost him two runs. He was supposed to do it again, and after one strike, said no.”
First things first: that explains the pitching meeting. Katz was out there to tell Martin to pitch around Ramírez. Ramírez had singled in two runs in the third inning, as La Russa alluded to above. Easy peasy, right? He wanted Martin to get Ramírez to chase, Ramírez didn’t, let’s face the next batter.
Only, that description glosses over the change in count, which is the most meaningful thing that happened on that first pitch. If you’re looking to record an out, a foul ball is a pretty good place to start. José Ramírez is one of the best hitters in baseball. For his career, he’s hitting .279/.356/.507, and he’s better than that now. Even after 0-1 counts, he’s hitting .266/.307/.472 for a perfectly acceptable 106 wRC+.
But again, the question isn’t whether walking Ramírez made sense. I think I would have walked him there from the start, but I don’t believe it’s an obvious choice either way. The question, instead, is whether the information in that foul ball tilted the balance in favor of an intentional walk.
We know La Russa’s case: the pitch being on the plate proved to him that Martin couldn’t follow his instructions. He wanted pitches out of the zone, he didn’t get them, and he didn’t need to see anything more. It’s not that Ramírez made devastating contact – per Statcast, that foul ball was 63 mph off the bat, though I’m not sure how accurate foul ball exit velocity readings are – but merely the location of the pitch that made an intentional walk a good option.
I can’t tell you what the odds of Ramírez getting a hit on a ball in the strike zone were. La Russa can’t either – but from the sound of his comments, it sounds deterministic. In the third inning, when Martin left a pitch over the plate, it “cost him two runs.” Let’s see the pitch in question:
Unquestionably, two runs scored on that play. Unquestionably, Ramírez hit a single. He even hit the ball pretty hard. But is that a process failure by Martin? I’m not so sure. He threw a well-located changeup that Ramírez put on the ground into the shift. Position your second baseman three steps to the right, and that might be an out instead. Ramírez is great – but he’s hardly a guaranteed base hit every time a pitch is in the strike zone.
There’s really not much more to say than that. In La Russa’s mind, a pitch in the strike zone was unacceptable. I don’t for a second think that Martin meant to throw that changeup in the zone. Pitchers miss their targets sometimes, and Reese McGuire was setting up fairly close to the zone anyway.
I’m just an analyst on the internet. I’ve never managed a team. I won’t claim to know any of the exact numbers here, or whether Katz came out to tell Martin that any pitch in the strike zone, regardless of outcome, would lead to an intentional walk. But if I were La Russa, I wouldn’t give that order.
I’m just projecting, but it seems to me that La Russa is substituting absolutes for probabilities. You can pitch Ramírez in the zone and get an out. You can try to miss the zone and hit it. It’s not black and white – sometimes a bad process leads to a good outcome, and vice versa. That’s baseball in a nutshell: the edges are small either way, and both sides can’t win. All you can do is give yourself the best chance to succeed – pitchers have singled against Jacob deGrom, and Mike Trout has struck out against bad relievers. There are no absolutes.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding La Russa’s logic. Maybe there’s a detail left out somewhere, or something lost in translation. I don’t think so, though. Sometimes, you have to take people at their word. La Russa didn’t care about the fact that the foul ball made the count 0-1. It didn’t enter into his decision making. It wasn’t a question of whether Ramírez’s odds of getting on base changed after the combination of a pitch in the zone and a foul ball. It was just: pitch in zone, walk.
If you like La Russa’s decision making this year, this one won’t change your mind. In fact, you probably agree with him that baseball can be reduced to a binary. Pitches in the zone when you want to throw them out of the zone turn into runs, and so on and so forth.
If you haven’t liked La Russa’s decision making, on the other hand, this is just more evidence. When you deal in absolutes, you miss out on the fact that hitters do worse after 0-1 counts than overall, or that getting the other team’s best hitter to ground the ball into the shift is an overall good thing. You might also inadvertently belittle your pitcher after the game; “he’s smart enough to know” is something people say about children or pets.
If you came here to see the math behind another unlikely intentional walk, I’m sorry. There really isn’t any. You either trust that Tony La Russa knows enough that when he makes a wildly counter-intuitive decision, it’s for good reasons, or you don’t. As best as I can tell, there have never been any similar intentional walks, though our pitch-by-pitch database only goes back to 2002 and it’s entirely possible I missed some anyway. Is your faith in La Russa’s genius enough to outstrip that? That’s for you to decide on your own.
