These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Bryce Johnson, CF, San Francisco Giants
Level & Affiliate: Triple-A Sacramento  Age: 25   Org Rank: NR   FV: 35
Line: 5-for-5, 2 2B

Notes
Johnson was a 2017 sixth round pick out of Sam Houston State, his draft stock driven by his above-average speed, terrific baseball frame, and feel for the strike zone. His career .271/.358/.361 line in the minors perfectly illustrates his offensive skillset and flaws. He’s the sort of hitter who can be a bench outfielder if he can play a dynamic center field, where Johnson is closer to average. While the hitting environment in Las Vegas (where Sacramento spent their first six games) likely aided Johnson’s incredible start to the year (.684/.727/1.263 with five multi-hit games in six days), his swing is clearly different now than it was in 2019, so maybe he will actually hit for some more power now. His stride is quite a bit longer now than it was when we last saw him and the bigger move forward has made his swing a little more athletic. Johnson’s back foot is coming off the ground close to the time of contact, not something you’d see with his last swing’s more conservative footwork. It’s too early to re-evaluate an older hitter like this, and even if this change proves to be meaningful, Johnson is still probably just a bench player, but it might be the difference between him getting a cup of coffee at some point or not. Read the rest of this entry »

We are reaching peak levels of Shohei Ohtani early in the 2021 season. The true two-way play we were teased with in 2018 is now on full display, with both hitting and pitching in the same game. But as incredible as the hitting has been, there are still questions about Ohtani’s performance as a pitcher: In 18.2 innings, he has somehow pitched to a 2.41 ERA and 3.96 FIP despite a 22% walk rate that is third worst in the league among pitchers with 10 innings or more. Yet in the midst of massive control issues and everything he’s doing at the plate, Ohtani is continuing to develop as a pitcher, adding a multi-faceted cutter to the pitch mix.

There’s a Jekyll and Hyde nature that comes about even within Ohtani’s starts. Take a look at his April 26 outing in Texas to see what I’m talking about.

Updating Ohtani's night on the mound…

1st inning: 4 runs, 2 hits, 2 walks, HBP, 1 K, 11/29 strikes
Since: 0 runs, 1 hit, 0 walks, 8 Ks, 30/46 strikes https://t.co/H9xcc9hH6i

— Jack Harris (@ByJackHarris) April 27, 2021

Something obviously clicked after the first, and all was well again. But looking at his pitch usage that night tells a story itself about where Ohtani is in his development as a pitcher.

It’s an overly simple bit of visualization, and it should be pretty clear what’s going on: Ohtani is largely only comfortable with the fastball and splitter. You can see that the slider, curveball and cutter barely feature, with the latter two popping up in the first inning but not after and the slider appearing only in the fifth and sixth. That’s in line with his career (70 innings) to date: fastball (52% usage), splitter (21%), slider (12%), curve (6%), and cutter (7%). Not that there isn’t precedent for a pitcher who can live primarily off of a four-seam/splitter mix (cf. Kevin Gausman), but it’s a dangerous line for a starter to walk, especially with Ohtani’s command as is.

Read the rest of this entry »

In 2018, Matt Barnes had a promising season for the Red Sox. He struck out 36.2% of the batters he faced en route to a 3.65 ERA and 2.71 FIP. His one weakness? He walked 11.7% of the batters he faced, a dangerous number. That pattern carried through to 2019; he struck out 38.6% of his opponents but walked 13.3% of them. That strikeout rate is wonderful, but the walks gave him little margin for error, as evidenced by 2020, when he struck out 30.4% of his opponents (still great) but walked 13.7% on his way to a below-replacement-level season.

In 2021, you’ll never believe it — Barnes is striking out the world again, with a 48.4% strikeout rate that’s fourth among relievers, behind only Aroldis Chapman, James Karinchak, and Josh Hader. Oh yeah — he’s also walking 4.8% of his opponents and has been quite possibly the most valuable reliever in the game. Let’s get an explanation for that, shall we?

At surface level, it’s easy! Take a look at swinging strike rate, a statistic that becomes reliable quickly:

A 19.1% swinging strike rate is excellent; top-of-the-league excellent, really. Also true: Barnes hasn’t changed his pitch mix. He’s a two-pitch reliever, with a riding four-seamer and hammer curve. He throws them both roughly half the time, and they spin more or less exactly opposite out of his hand, which seems to help them both play up:

Great, problem solved. Hard curveball, decent fastball, they both play into each other’s deception, sounds like a good reliever to me. One small problem: there are maybe 50 relievers like that in baseball, and Barnes was also like that in the past, when he was far more walk-prone without his current killer strikeout numbers. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Corbin Carroll, CF, Arizona Diamondbacks
Level & Affiliate: Hi-A Hillsboro   Age: 20   Org Rank: 1 (20 overall)   FV: 60
Line: 3-for-5, HR, 3B, BB, 2 SB

Notes
I’m going to bet Carroll goes to the Futures Game and ends up promoted to Double-A shortly after the showcase. He’s shown no signs of slowing down after looking like the best player in all of Arizona during 2020 instructs. This is the kind of player who’s going to out-produce his raw power in games because the quality of his contact is just so good. His homer yesterday (which tied the game in the ninth) was hit to the opposite field. It wasn’t like a lot of oppo bombs that rely on brute strength (think of Giancarlo Stanton’s right-center homers) or just happen to suit the swing path of someone with big power (Ryan Howard). Instead, Carroll just dove to try to cover the outer third of the plate and poked the barrel there, and he hit the bottom of the ball with the sweet spot of the bat. Read the rest of this entry »

The Twins have won the AL Central in each of the past two seasons, but their chances for running their streak to three in a row have taken some major hits. Not only have they stumbled out of the gate with a 12-20 record, but now they’ve lost Byron Buxton, potentially for several weeks, due to a Grade 2 hip strain. Adding insult to injury, at this writing the team owns the dubious distinction of the largest drop in their Playoff Odds since Opening Day.

The 27-year-old Buxton was injured during Thursday’s 4-3 loss to the Rangers. He pulled up hurt while running out a groundball in the ninth inning, but he may have injured himself before that. In the top of the seventh inning, he crashed into the outfield wall and then tumbled to the ground in an unsuccessful attempt to rob Jonah Heim of a home run:

In the bottom of the seventh, he didn’t run hard to first base on a groundout (I made a GIF because the video’s not embeddable, but here you can hear Twins play-by-play announcer Dick Bremer noting, “Buxton does not run hard out of the box”):

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All the pitchers in the league seem to have gotten together and decided that someone has to throw a no-hitter each week. One of our best matchups this week involves a guy who already threw one, two guys meeting in LA who are certainly pitching well enough to nab one of their own, and an AL Central altercation between pitchers – and teams – trending in opposite directions.

Tuesday, May 11, 7:10 PM ET: John Means vs. Marcus Stroman

John Means got his 15 minutes of fame last week after methodically tearing the Mariners apart. Means’ destruction of the M’s lineup earned him a no-hitter and the baseball world’s spotlight, but the Baltimore bro has been reliably great all season. He’s allowed just five hits and three earned runs over his last 22.1 innings, striking out 27 hitters along the way. If we zoom out and look at his entire body of work across seven starts, we find that Means has become one of the best pitchers in the game thanks to one little trick.

Like a local magician bringing their act on the road, Means risked letting the secret out of the bag when he performed the trick over and over again in Seattle. The Orioles’ breakout star threw first pitch strikes to 26 of the 27 hitters he faced, elevating his first-pitch strike percentage to a maniacal 73.5%. Not only is this 12 percentage points above Means’ career-high, it’s also the highest of any American League starter. As a predominantly fastball-changeup artist, one would think that Means adheres to the traditional method of fastballs in the zone, changeups just underneath it. While he still utilizes his changeup in that fashion – to the tune of a 33.3% chase rate – it’s actually the pitch he throws most frequently in the zone, per Baseball Savant. Read the rest of this entry »

So far, the Red Sox have been one of this season’s biggest surprises. Since Opening Day, the Sox have already increased their playoff odds by 23.6 percentage points up to 61.5%, the second-largest percentage point increase in baseball (Athletics, +25.7).

To reach the pinnacle of the AL East this quickly, Boston has been successful on both sides of the ball, but it’s the team’s offense that has found itself alone at the top of most major league leaderboards. Through games on Saturday, the Red Sox are slashing .269/.334/.445, with the batting average and slugging percentage each ranking tops among the 30 teams. Their .338 wOBA is seven points above the next-best team, the Dodgers, and their park-adjusted 115 wRC+ is three points above Los Angeles as well.

The entire lineup is hitting, but it’s their core five of J.D. Martinez (195 wRC+), Xander Bogaerts (176 wRC+), Rafael Devers (150 wRC+), Alex Verdugo (135 wRC+), and Christian Vázquez (100 wRC+) that have more or less led the way. And though this could easily be an article about any of those five players’ starts, I want to highlight Devers, whose .281/.371/.544 slash line through games on Saturday actually represents one of the biggest under-performances in baseball relative to his batted ball quality. Read the rest of this entry »

Though he’s made just 12 appearances for them, Wade Miley’s time with the Reds has already been a rollercoaster. Last season, the first of a two-year, $15-million contract, he hit the injured list three different times and pitched so poorly when he was active that he lost his rotation spot. He earned it back this year, largely thanks to injuries to Sonny Gray and Michael Lorenzen, then began the season with 11 shutout innings over two starts. Eight runs in 16 innings over his next three starts followed, as his ability to miss bats waned and bad pitches landed in outfield seats. All of this adds up to an average pitcher playing on an average team in a division that average teams could win. Then, all of a sudden, came the extraordinary.

Miley no-hit Cleveland at Progressive Field on Friday, walking one batter and watching another reach on an error and striking out eight. It was the Reds’ first no-hitter since Homer Bailey’s second on July 2, 2013, and the 17th in franchise history. Expand the scope to all of baseball, and Miley joined a group whose size is increasing with perplexing speed. When he took the mound Friday, the dust had barely settled from a no-hitter thrown by John Means on Wednesday, who threw his on the heels of a seven-inning no-hitter by Madison Bumgarner, who threw his in the wake of nine-inning no-hitters by Carlos Rodón and Joe Musgrove. That’s five no-nos in a span of 29 days, with no end in sight.

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Brandon Woodruff has quietly been one of the better pitchers in the National League since the start of the 2019 season. In 42 starts comprising 237 innings, the Milwaukee Brewers right-hander has 285 strikeouts to go with a 3.11 ERA and a 2.93 FIP. The last of those numbers is equal to Shane Bieber’s mark over the same period.

A big reason for Woodruff’s success is a repertoire adjustment he made midway through the 2018 season. As he explained in an article that ran here at FanGraphs last April, he began throwing both two- and four-seam fastballs. Neither is anything to write home about movement-wise, but paired together and sequenced well they’re a formidable combo. As Woodruff told me at the time, “It’s hard for the hitter to distinguish which one is going to be coming.”

Pitchers often “pitch backwards,” throwing breaking pitches in fastball counts, and vice versa. Thinking back to what Woodruff had told me, an idea crossed my mind: is it possible to pitch backwards with two different fastballs?

I asked the 28-year-old Tupelo, Mississippi native that question in a Zoom call. Read the rest of this entry »

The news was as abrupt as a mid-afternoon tweet, and yet long overdue: On Thursday, the Angels designated Albert Pujols for assignment. The 41-year-old Pujols is a no-doubt Hall of Famer, one of four players to attain the dual milestones of 3,000 hits and 600 home runs. But he’s now a month into his fifth season of sub-replacement level production, an impediment to improving a team that needs all the help it can get to overcome a league-worst defense as it scrambles to return to the playoffs for the first time since 2014.

Mired in a 7-for-43 slump on a 13–17 team, Pujols is hitting just .198/.250/.372 with five homers and a 75 wRC+ in 92 plate appearances and making $30 million in the final season of the 10-year, $240 million deal that he signed following a remarkable 11-year run with the Cardinals. With his body unable to withstand a litany of leg and foot injuries — hamstrings, knees, plantar fasciitis — his megadeal provided little bang for the buck. Where he made nine All-Star teams and won three MVP awards as well as the NL Rookie of the Year award in St. Louis while helping the Cardinals to three pennants and two championships, he never approached such levels in Anaheim. As an Angel, he made just one All-Star team, finished no higher than 17th in the MVP voting, and was swept out of his lone playoff appearance.

This isn’t a move that the Angels have taken lightly, and it owes plenty to the pressures on new general manager Perry Minasian, who was hired last November, as well as the development of Jared Walsh and the continued health and presence of Shohei Ohtani. Walsh, a first baseman who has taken over most of the duties in right field since Dexter Fowler suffered a season-ending ACL tear on April 9, has hit for a 166 wRC+ in 222 PA since the start of last season. Ohtani, who this year has been available to serve as the designated hitter on days before and after his starts (which the Angels were reluctant to let him do previously), has hit for a 169 wRC+ with a major league-high 10 homers in 118 PA.

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