Below is my latest in a series discussing each team’s 60-man player pool with a focus on prospects. Previous installments of these rundowns, including potentially relevant context for discussion, can be found here:

AL East and Intro
NL East
AL Central
NL Central

Arizona Diamondbacks

Prospect List / Depth Chart

Remember that, Greinke trade aside, the Diamondbacks have been operating like buyers for the last little while, and only four of their projected regulars/rotation members are under 29. It’s unknowable whether the shortened, but more condensed season will be good or bad for their veteran’s productivity and health, but the DH spot will probably help in that regard. It means little breathers for Kole Calhoun and David Peralta, and extra at-bats for Kevin Cron and Jake Lamb without the defensive drawbacks.

Some of the same benefits could result from rostering Daulton Varsho, especially if Carson Kelly gets dinged and suddenly 36-year-old Stephen Vogt and John Hicks are platooning. Varsho could caddy for any or all of Vogt, Calhoun and Peralta, keeping the older guys fresh while getting plenty of reps so his development isn’t stifled even though he’s technically playing a bench role. This is the type of move that might help Arizona catch Wild Card lightning in a 60-game bottle, but I don’t think their current catching depth allows for it right now. The club only has four backstops in their pool, and even if they eventually add spring NRI Dominic Miroglio they still have fewer catchers than most teams and probably not enough for sticking three on the big league active roster. Perhaps Wyatt Mathieson will put on the gear at the campsite.

The next-highest ranked prospect likely to debut this year is righty J.B. Bukauskas. Some of the Arizona bullpen pieces need to really pop if the team is going to compete (perhaps Archie Bradley truly returns to form, or Yoan López takes a leap, or Hector Rondón bounces back, etc.) and Bukauskas has the stuff to be part of a contingent that helps win coin-flip games. Aside from some other backend/middle relief prospects who might play a role this year (Jon Duplantier and Taylor Widener could usurp Merrill Kelly as the fifth starter, and Kevin Ginkel is a bullpen lock) and a couple likely role players perhaps debuting (bat-first infielder Andy Young and bat-only 1B/DH types Seth Beer and Pavin Smith), the other, more exciting D-backs prospects are young guys just getting reps in camp (Alek Thomas, Corbin Carroll, Blake Walston, Geraldo Perdomo, Levi Kelly, Luis Frias). It’s possible the roster clocks of Josh Green (who doesn’t have to be 40-man’d until 2021) or even 2020 draftee Bryce Jarvis are punched early but Arizona would really need to be in the thick of the postseason picture for that to happen. It’s more likely spot-starter types Jeremy Beasley and Keury Mella are called upon if they need to dip into the campsite for starters. Read the rest of this entry »

The Baltimore Orioles didn’t sign José Iglesias for his bat. The 30-year-old shortstop was brought on board this past winter for his glove, which is Wizard-like in quality. Iglesias routinely makes plays that produce hosannas from his hurlers, and harrumphs from the hitters he robbed.

Offensively, he’s humdrum. Iglesias has batted a solid .273 over 2,915 plate appearances, but a stubbornly-low walk rate and sporadic power are flies in the ointment. His 83 wRC+ isn’t bottom of the barrel — not for a middle infielder — but it’s also not indicative of a threat. Nary a pitcher shudders in fear when Iglesias stands in the box.

Is he capable of more? Could a change to his approach and/or swing mechanics result in a mid-to-late career resurgence? I asked that question to Orioles hitting coach Don Long, pointing out that Iglesias went yard a personal-best 11 times last season despite having one of the highest ground ball rates in either league.

“I don’t think it’s so much of a swing change as it is being a little bit more disciplined in what he swings at,” responded Long. “He swings a lot. He’s very similar to [Hanser] Alberto in that sense. They both have a great ability to make contact and put the ball in play. I would like to see Jose really concentrate on… being a line drive type of hitter, and if he misses a little bit toward the bottom of the ball, and it is in the air, it’s got a chance to get in the gap or out of the park.”

Long went on to say that he’s been impressed — both in the original version of spring training, and now in ‘summer camp’ — with how Iglesias is striving to improve his plate discipline. Read the rest of this entry »

Kyle Boddy has been playing an important role for the Cincinnati Reds since being hired as the club’s pitching coordinator last October, and his duties have included more than pitching initiatives. The Driveline Baseball founder has also contributed on the scouting side, particularly in assessing and recruiting undrafted free agents. Boddy was involved in the amateur draft as well, and while his efforts there weren’t as extensive, he now knows the respective skill sets of the pitchers the Reds selected as well as anyone. He discussed all three, and a few of the undrafted newcomers, in a recent phone conversation.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with your role in the scouting process.

Kyle Boddy: “I was involved right away helping with the scouting department, which is cool because that’s something I’d expressed a strong desire to be a part of. Like with everything else, the Reds held up their end of the deal on that. I started out on the professional scouting side — there was no amateur baseball when I signed my contract — so I immediately began identifying minor-league free agents to bring into camp. Of the ones we brought in, I probably contributed to signing four or five — identifying them, recruiting them, and bringing them in.”

Laurila: Who are the guys you contributed to signing?

Boddy: Dylan Rheault was one. Walker Weickel, a former first rounder by the Padres, was another. Those are the two prominent ones. A few others I gave some input on.”

Laurila: What made those ‘four or five’ guys appealing?

Boddy: “It wasn’t necessarily the performance work. We have the fifth most analysts in baseball, and they’re better at it than I am, so I let them do their job. A lot of it was character stuff — where they train, and are they a good fit for our player development system. That was the case on the amateur side, as well.

“We pride ourselves in having strong ‘actual’ scouting coverage. We have good area scouts, and it always starts with them. Especially when it comes to amateur guys. It starts with their reports and then we build off of that. On the pro side it’s a little more pitched in.”

Laurila: What was your role in the amateur draft? Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, Miguel Castro’s hard changeup caught my eye. It’s a weird, good pitch, and it’s thrown by a pitcher who might otherwise fade into the background. What’s more, he’s still bad against lefties despite a spectacular pitch for attacking them. About the only thing that made sense to me in the whole scenario was that Castro uses his changeup to attack lefties, the way right-handed pitchers are supposed to.

We’ll get to whether that’s true in a moment. First, let me introduce you to a righty pitcher who looks at this conventional wisdom — changeups to lefties, sliders to righties — and says eh, pass. Maybe not introduce you, actually, because he’s a notable pitcher on a marquee team, but at least alert you to his weirdness. Meet Tommy Kahnle, the man who throws his changeup when he shouldn’t.

As a rule, pitchers hate changeups to same-handed batters. Of all the pitches that righties threw to righties in 2019, only 7.1% were changeups or splitters (a splitter behaves almost exactly like a changeup, and pitch classification algorithms sometimes struggle to differentiate between the two, so for the remainder of this article I’ll be lumping both pitches together). On the other hand, they love them against lefties — 17.5% of right-to-left pitches were changeups. It’s pitching 101.

Kahnle surely took pitching 101; he just doesn’t seem to care. His changeup is his best offering, and he absolutely leans on it against lefties. 59.6% of his pitches to lefty batters in 2019 were changeups. It can’t even properly be called a secondary pitch; it’s just a primary pitch! Nothing to see there — a changeup-heavy pitcher throws a lot of changeups to opposite-handed batters. Where it gets interesting is when he faces righties. What does he do there, in the matchup his pitch wasn’t designed for? Why, he throws a changeup 44.2% of the time, of course.

He’s not alone in this weirdness — Héctor Neris and Tyler Clippard, just to name two, do similar things. But Kahnle interests me, because he wasn’t always this way. In 2017, he was spectacular. A 2.59 ERA, a 1.84 FIP, a Gerrit-Cole-facing-minor-leaguers 37.5% strikeout rate and a minuscule 6.6% walk rate — he was nothing short of dominant. That year, he threw a changeup to righties 14.7% of the time. Huh? Read the rest of this entry »

Last month, in the wake of nationwide anti-racism protests following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, the Quaker Oats company announced that it would retire the name and logo of its Aunt Jemima brand of pancake mixes and other breakfast foods, acknowledging that its origins are “based upon a racial stereotype.” Other corporations quickly followed suit as the branding for products such as Uncle Ben’s rice, Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup, Cream of Wheat cereal, Dixie Beer, and Eskimo Pie ice cream bars came under closer scrutiny. This remarkable, long overdue reckoning on branding and symbolism, on who we honor and how, had already spilled over into the sporting arena with NASCAR’s decision to ban the Confederate flag from its events and the Minnesota Twins’ removal of a Target Field statue of former owner Calvin Griffith over racist remarks he made in 1978, but last week it advanced on several fronts. The NFL’s Washington Redskins and MLB’s Cleveland Indians (hereafter referred to by the team’s respective city names) both announced that they would consider name changes, while the Baseball Writers Association of America has begun an internal discussion to change the names of two awards on which its members vote.

On the NFL front, in the latest turn of a decades-old battle, Washington announced that the team “will undergo a thorough review of the team’s name.” That came after FedEx, which owns the naming rights to the team’s stadium, requested it do so. Within hours, Cleveland followed suit with a statement saying that the club is “committed to engaging our community and appropriate stakeholders to determine the best path forward with regards to the team name.”

pic.twitter.com/NUM5GYvlwe

— Cleveland Guardians (@CleGuardians) July 4, 2020

The statement arrived nearly a year and a half after the franchise announced a phaseout of its Chief Wahoo logo, a grotesque and demeaning caricature that in various incarnations had been in use since 1948, the same year that Cleveland won its last World Series. The logo made its last lap around the league in 2018, and did not appear on any of the team’s 2019 uniforms. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley provide a brief update on the health of co-host Sam Miller (who’s on hiatus), then preview the 2020 New York Yankees with The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler, and the 2020 Detroit Tigers (46:57) with the Detroit Free Press’s Anthony Fenech.

Audio intro: Bombadil, "Binoculars"
Audio interstitial: The Sadies, "Tiger Tiger"
Audio outro: The Isley Brothers, "Hope You Feel Better Love"

Link to Lindsey on the Yankees’ revamped pitching development
Link to Lindsey’s Q&A with Matt Blake
Link to Lindsey on Happ’s reinvention
Link to article on Yankees’ overhauled training staff
Link to Lindsey’s Q&A with Tanner Swanson
Link to Lindsey on Sánchez’s new catching stance
Link to Lindsey on Sabathia paying homage to the Negro Leagues
Link to Lindsey on Gardner’s evolution
Link to Dan’s 2020 breakdown candidates
Link to photo of Lindsey’s binoculars
Link to Fabian Ardaya’s binoculars photos
Link to Fabian’s photo-taking technique
Link to Anthony on Mize striking out Cabrera
Link to Anthony’s Boras story
Link to Anthony on the Tigers’ analytics investments
Link to more recent story on the Tigers’ analytics upgrades
Link to FanGraphs’ Tigers prospect rankings

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Below is my latest in a series discussing each team’s 60-man player pool with a focus on prospects. Previous installments of these rundowns, including potentially relevant context for discussion, can be found here:

AL East and Intro
NL East
AL Central

Chicago Cubs

Prospect List / Depth Chart

It’s likely top prospect Nico Hoerner sees a lot of time at second base and center field. The prospects ranked two through five in the system are all on the 60-man player pool. Of those, right-hander Adbert Alzolay and, to a lesser extent, catcher Miguel Amaya (who is now on the 40-man) are the two most likely to see some big league time this year. Were Willson Contreras to get hurt, I’m not sure if the club would let iffy defender Victor Caratini play every day, add veteran NRI Josh Phegley to the 40-man to share duties, or if they’d simply promote 21-year-old Amaya, who has been lauded for his maturity and advanced defense since he was 18.

I also think there’s a chance the Cubs are in the thick of it come September, consider 21-year-old lefty flamethrower Brailyn Marquez one of the org’s best dozen pitchers, and decide to bring him up as a late-inning relief piece. He’s going to be added to the 40-man this offseason regardless.

The other very young guys in the player pool are Christopher Morel and Brennen Davis, two big-framed, tooled-up developmental projects. It’s interesting that the Cubs added Morel ahead of Cole Roederer or any of their 2019 and 2020 college draftees, but the club is only at about 50 of their 60 allotted players and they clearly need more hitters in the offsite camp, so I expect several notable names to be part of the group in South Bend soon. Read the rest of this entry »

Darren O’Day isn’t your typical submariner. While most pitchers with down-under arm angles live down in the zone, O’Day features a lot of four-seamers up, and he’s thrived while doing so. Over his 12 big-league seasons, the 37-year-old right-hander has logged a 2.55 ERA and fanned better than a batter per nine innings. Since the start of the 2015 season, his K/9 is an eye-opening 13.1.

O’Day, whose best seasons have come with the Baltimore Orioles, is currently with the Atlanta Braves. He discussed his pitching M.O., and explained why his “Jenny Finch” is such an effective weapon, in a recent phone conversation.

———

David Laurila: You’re atypical in that you work up in the zone from a low arm angle. How did that come to be?

Darren O’Day: “When I was a rookie — kind of a scared rookie — I did what the team told me to do. My short time with the Mets, as well. I pitched down in the zone, because I’m a sidearmer, a submariner, and they wanted groundballs. They didn’t care about strikeouts as much back then; they just wanted quick outs, which was kind of the philosophy of the game.

“Then I bounced to my third team, the Rangers, about a year after [breaking into the big leagues]. I kind of said, ‘Forget about that. I’m going to pitch the way I want and figure out if I’m good enough to be here.’ That’s when I started pitching up in the zone, in 2009, and you saw the strikeout numbers go up a little bit.

“That’s really been the big paradigm shift in baseball, and it’s kind of ‘the chicken or the egg’ — did the high damage come first, or did the need for the swing-and-miss come first? But that’s what everybody wants, even if it costs you a couple more pitches per inning.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about baseball dreams and a holiday weekend in MLB marred by testing delays, canceled practices, concerned players, and other impediments to a safe and smooth season, then pick up where they left off four months ago in their season preview series by previewing the 2020 Tampa Bay Rays (16:05) with The Athletic’s Josh Tolentino and the 2020 Miami Marlins (57:10) with the Miami Herald’s Jordan McPherson.

Audio intro: Warren Zevon, "Disorder in the House"
Audio interstitial 1: Superchunk, "Florida’s on Fire"
Audio interstitial 2: Modest Mouse, "Florida"
Audio outro: Mac DeMarco, "Dreams From Yesterday"

Link to Jay Jaffe’s summary of MLB’s testing mess
Link to story on Chaim Bloom’s cardigan
Link to Yandy Díaz workout
Link to story on Jonathan Erlichman
Link to Josh’s Rays return-to-play guide
Link to Josh on the Rays’ farm system
Link to FanGraphs’ Rays prospect rankings
Link to Jordan on the Marlins’ furloughs
Link to Jordan on the Marlins’ COVID-19 concerns
Link to Jordan on Marlins roster decisions
Link to FanGraphs’ Marlins prospect rankings
Link to Roster Resource Team Info Tracker

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 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Below is another installment of my series discussing each team’s 60-man player pool with a focus on prospects. If you missed the first piece, you’re going to want to take a peek at its four-paragraph intro for some background, then hop back here once you’ve been briefed.

Updating the East

Because our world is a roil of chaos in which people often drop the ball when the stakes are high, there have been a few roster changes in the Eastern divisions, mostly related to COVID-19’s spread or the reasonable fear of it. My initial thoughts on the AL East are linked above, while the NL East is here.

Atlanta’s positive tests during intake included Freddie Freeman, Touki Toussaint, Pete Kozma, and Will Smith, while Felix Hernandez and Nick Markakis opted out. The combination of Markakis’ opt out and Freeman’s delay (Markakis cited a discussion with Freeman as part of his reason for opting out) makes it much more likely that Yonder Alonso breaks camp with the big league club because he plays first base and hits left-handed, the latter of which the Braves’ major league roster sorely lacks. The Markakis opt out also means one of the dominoes leading to a slightly premature Cristian Pache and/or Drew Waters debut has fallen.

The bullpen is thinner without Touki and Smith but still strong because of all the talented youngsters, while Felix’s opt out makes it more likely that one of young arms, most likely Kyle Wright or Bryse Wilson, ends up in the Opening Day rotation.

Meanwhile, Philadelphia’s COVID situation is already so dire that it seems likely they’ll qualify for the “extenuating circumstances” clause in Section 6 of Major League Baseball’s 2020 Operations manual:

In the event that a Club experiences a significant number of COVID-19 Related IL placements at the Alternate Training Site at any one time (i.e., three or more players), and the Club chooses to substitute those players from within the Club’s organization, MLB reserves the right to allow that Club to remove those substitute players from the Club Player Pool without requiring a release.

Read the rest of this entry »