Spring training games get silly quickly. By the time the veterans have hit the showers, it’s time for raw prospects and reclamation projects to duke it out. So unless you’re a Carlos Estévez fan or a Padres loyalist, you probably didn’t see this live:

That home run, hit by Joshua Mears, is the hardest-hit ball of spring training so far — or, it was before a Giancarlo Stanton line drive yesterday that I’m totally ignoring for the purposes of this article. At 117.3 mph, it would have been one of the hardest-hit balls in the entire 2020 season. Laser beam home runs are fun to watch, though it’s a good thing a kid made a backhanded catch, or a reclining couple might have caught a baseball with their bodies.

Even if you didn’t see it live, you might have seen MLB Pipeline tweet about it. Failing that, maybe you read about it on MLB.com. Homers, especially smashed ones that show off Statcast, tend to make the rounds. Home runs are big business, and they get reported as such.

What you almost assuredly don’t know is that the previous inning, someone hit the third-hardest-hit ball of the spring (well, fourth now — thanks, Stanton). Feast your eyes on 115.6 mph of pure… well, pure groundball single to shortstop:

Surprisingly enough, MLB.com didn’t write an article about that one. This won’t be on any highlight reels for the year. And yet, that’s the hardest-hit tracked batted ball of Brendan Rodgers’ career. Given that he’ll be playing in the majors this year and Mears will be on a bus in some city you’ve never heard of, the grounder was more meaningful to this major league season. Read the rest of this entry »

The Pittsburgh Pirates have a lot of questions to address regarding their pitching staff. With the regular season just two-plus weeks away, final decisions have yet to be made on starter and bullpen roles alike. Candidates abound on both fronts, particularly the latter, with an addition and an injury-induced subtraction further muddying the waters in recent days. Here are snapshots from four conversations — three recent, and one somewhat older — with pitchers who could figure prominently in the team’s plans.

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Left on the cutting room floor from an interview I did with JT Brubaker at the conclusion of last season was what he said about his two breaking balls. The 27-year-old right-hander considers his slider his best secondary. He’s thrown it since his senior year of high school, and it’s firm. At 86.7 mph (per StatCast), it registered as the 11th-hardest among the 58 pitchers who worked at last 40 innings and had the pitch in their arsenal. Brubaker told me that while it sometimes registers as a cutter, he always considers it a slider.

Eric Longenhagen had written in his 2020 prospect profile that Brubaker’s “relatively new” curveball was his best secondary pitch. I asked the righty what might have prompted that opinion.

“Possibly the analytical side of it,” surmised Brubaker. “It’s something I’d put in the back pocket, then brought back out. I’m always been able to throw a curveball, but I’ve never been fully consistent with it.”

The pitch had actually gone into his back pocket at the bequest of the organization, as they wanted him to focus on his slider. He eventually pulled it back out in need of “something with a little more velocity separation between my changeup and slider, something in the lower lower spectrum to slow the batters down more.” Read the rest of this entry »

I invite you to look at the image below. Please, go ahead.

That’s Jordan Hicks on the mound — you know, “strike one at 104” Jordan Hicks. At the plate is Mets utilityman Luis Guillorme. Hicks, on Sunday, was making his first appearance on the mound since undergoing Tommy John surgery in mid-2019. Guillorme played an extremely solid 30 games for the Mets in 2020 and is 5-for-15 this spring.

What is happening in this picture? Look at Guillorme’s feet — his right ankle rolled, his left heel lifting off the ground, his arms flinging the bat desperately through the air. Yadier Molina extends his arm, holding his glove in place. Look at the scorebug — the 1-2 count. This could very well have been a picture of Hicks striking out Guillorme.

Except it wasn’t. Guillorme got his bat on it, somehow — not the heat Hicks is best known for, but a slider at 86 — launching the ball somewhere into the leftward distance. It was the 10th pitch of the plate appearance, the eighth he’d seen with two strikes. Molina and the umpire watched it sail away. Hicks’ next pitch, at 99, nearly took Guillorme’s head off. The count was now even, and the plate appearance was still only halfway done. Read the rest of this entry »

If you want power, pull the ball in the air. It’s a truism because it’s true. On pulled air balls (line drives and fly balls), batters hit .558 with a 1.285 slugging percentage in 2020. When they went to the opposite field, they hit .297 with a .522 slugging percentage. It isn’t rocket science; pulling means power, and power means production.

Want another way of putting it? Those opposite-field air balls were hit with an average 86.8 mph exit velocity. Only 26.6% of them were hit at 95 mph or harder. When batters pulled the ball, they did far better — they checked in at 94 mph on average and 54.7% were 95 mph or higher. You don’t need any fancy statistics to tell you how much better that is.

Even if you take for granted that a batter hit the ball hard, it’s still better to pull the ball. When batters barreled up balls to the pull side, they slugged 3.283. A barrel is high-value by nature, but a slugging percentage of 3.283 is still hard to fathom. Those balls were hit a comical 105.6 mph on average, and hitters posted a 1.679 wOBA on them — again, you don’t need me to tell you that’s good. It’s good!

Barrel a ball to the opposite field, and the results aren’t bad, per se — after all, a barrel is a high-value hit by definition. Compared to the gaudy results on pulled barrels, though, it’s a disappointment; a 2.588 slugging percentage on 102.4 mph average exit velocity, good for a 1.347 wOBA. Good, but not as good as it could be; pulling the ball creates more juice.

Got that all straight? It’s harder to barrel the ball up when you hit it to the opposite field. Even when you do, it’s hard to get as much production out of it as you do to the pull side. Great, we have that covered. Now, meet Eloy Jiménez:

That’s an opposite-field barrel, one of 10 such batted balls Jiménez hit last year. That led baseball, and it wasn’t some volume-based fluke; 21.3% of the opposite-field balls that he hit, period, were barreled. That’s almost double his rate on pulled balls (11.9%). Did Eloy figure out how to beat the sheer inevitability of pull production being better? Read the rest of this entry »

With nearly half of spring training already over, the Pirates made a last-minute addition to their starting rotation last week, signing Trevor Cahill to a one-year, $1.5 million contract with an additional $1 million in potential incentives. Cahill becomes the second veteran arm Pittsburgh has added this offseason, joining his former teammate from the Giants, Tyler Anderson. In a season where every pitching staff will be stretched thin, both ex-Giants give the Pirates much needed rotation depth.

Cahill joins an extremely young Pirates roster. Depending on what happens with Todd Frazier, who is in camp as a non-roster invitee, Cahill could enter the season as the oldest member of the 26-man roster. Pittsburgh was very aggressive in moving whatever value they could find from their starting rotation this offseason. Joe Musgrove and Jameson Taillon were both traded away within a week of each other, and Trevor Williams and Chris Archer both left in free agency. Steven Brault and Chad Kuhl have the most seniority now with nine seasons and 5.6 total WAR between them. Mitch Keller will get another chance to translate his excellent minor league track record and prospect helium into actual production at the major league level. Because of either their advanced service time or pedigree, those three should have rotation spots locked up with Anderson slotting into the fourth slot. That leaves Cahill and JT Brubaker to round out the staff — assuming the Pirates use a six-man rotation.

Pirates GM Ben Cherington has said that’s how he’d like to approach the season:

“We like the idea of having six starters on the team. Whether we’re actually using all six starters or are using them to come in behind guys and provide length or back and forth, we’ll see how that plays out. We just wanted to add as much starting depth as we could after the offseason moves.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Colorado Rockies. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. As there was no minor league season in 2020, there are some instances where no new information was gleaned about a player. Players whose write-ups have not been meaningfully altered begin by telling you so. Each blurb ends with an indication of where the player played in 2020, which in turn likely informed the changes to their report if there were any. As always, I’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside of a given org than those within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, I’ve primarily focused on data from there, and the context of that data, in my opinion, reduces how meaningful it is. Lastly, in an effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both on my lists and on The Board: MIRP, or multi-inning relief pitcher, and SIRP, or single-inning relief pitcher.

For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed, you can click here. For further explanation of Future Value’s merits and drawbacks, read Future Value.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It can be found here.

Brady Singer played in the SEC for three seasons before being drafted by the Kansas City Royals, so he faced a ton of talented hitters prior to starting his professional career. Pitching for the University of Florida from 2016-2018, Singer matched up against the likes of JJ Bleday, Nick Senzel, Bryan Reynolds, and Evan White. Easy marks were few and far between.

Which of his collegiate opponents does Singer recall respecting the most? More specifically, which hitter had him laser-focused on making quality pitches, lest an errant offering result in serious damage?

“One that really stands out wasn’t in the SEC, but rather in Omaha,” Singer told me. “I believe it was the first game I pitched there, in 2017 when we went on to win the [College] World Series. It was Brendan McKay, from Louisville. When he got in the box, I knew I had to dial in. Just the bat path he had, and how he stood in the box — how he presented himself — was tough.”

McKay’s hitting future is obviously in limbo. Ostensibly still a two-way player, he pitched 49 big-league innings for the Tampa Bay Rays in 2019, and logged just 11 plate appearances. Last season, a positive COVID test and subsequent shoulder surgery squelched his opportunities to do either. McKay’s Ohtani aspirations remain — he’s taking cuts in camp as he rehabs — but what happens going forward isn’t entirely clear.

Singer was correct when he told me that McKay could “really swing it back in college.” As the record shows, the fourth-overall pick in the 2017 draft slashed a snazzy .328/.430/.536 as a Cardinal. Singer — the 18th-overall pick a year later — is another story. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley pass the halfway point of their 30-team season preview series by previewing the 2021 White Sox with James Fegan of The Athletic and the 2021 Diamondbacks (46:45) with Nick Piecoro of The Arizona Republic, plus a brief postscript on the career and retirement of Nick Markakis.

Audio intro: Parquet Courts, "Black and White"
Audio interstitial: The Hives, "Try it Again"
Audio outro: Nick Lowe, "Halfway to Paradise"

Link to Athletic article on teams developing velocity
Link to James on Kopech
Link to James on Crochet
Link to James on La Russa and team unity
Link to report about Reinsdorf and La Russa
Link to James on Vaughn
Link to James on Giolito
Link to James on Lucroy
Link to James on Cease
Link to Dan Szymborski’s bust candidates
Link to Szymborski’s breakout candidates
Link to Nick on Lovullo’s contract
Link to Jake Mailhot on Ketel Marte’s power
Link to highest-WAR seasons without an MVP vote
Link to highest-WAR careers without an MVP vote

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With Fernando Tatis Jr. landing a massive, jaw-dropping contract extension last month, all eyes are now on the game’s other 22-year-old phenom and his next step. Juan Soto has hit at an historical level during his three seasons in the majors, landing himself on leaderboards among legends like Williams, Foxx, Hornsby, Cobb, and Trout. Reportedly, the Nationals intend to offer him a long-term extension, one that could in theory make him the game’s next $400 million man — a contract befitting a player who has already taken significant strides towards Cooperstown.

That may seem like hyperbole, but it’s not. Though Soto has played only one full 162-game season from among his three, the statistical history of players who have done what he’s done at such a young age overwhelmingly suggests a Hall of Fame-level career, and the projections based on his performance… well, we’ll get to those.

The Dominican-born Soto reached the majors on May 20, 2018, still more than five months shy of his 20th birthday. The next day, in his second major league plate appearance, he homered off the Padres’ Robbie Erlin, and he hasn’t stopped hitting, though he did his best to warp the space-time continuum by homering in the June 18 leg of a suspended game that began on May 15. Soto completed his rookie season with 22 homers and a .292/.406/.517 (146 wRC+) line, then followed up with a 34-homer, .282/.401/.548 (142 wRC+) full-season showing. In the pandemic-shortened season, he became not only the youngest player to win a batting title but also the youngest to win the slash-stat triple crown, hitting .351/.490/.695 (201 wRC+) with 13 homers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the San Francisco Giants. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. As there was no minor league season in 2020, there are some instances where no new information was gleaned about a player. Players whose write-ups have not been meaningfully altered begin by telling you so. Each blurb ends with an indication of where the player played in 2020, which in turn likely informed the changes to their report if there were any. As always, I’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside of a given org than those within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, I’ve primarily focused on data from there, and the context of that data, in my opinion, reduces how meaningful it is. Lastly, in an effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both on my lists and on The Board: MIRP, or multi-inning relief pitcher, and SIRP, or single-inning relief pitcher.

For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed, you can click here. For further explanation of Future Value’s merits and drawbacks, read Future Value.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It can be found here.