Michael Chavis enjoyed a solid rookie season with the Red Sox in 2019. Primarily playing first and second base, the 24-year-old former first round pick slugged 18 home runs while putting up a .766 OPS and a 96 wRC+ over 382 plate appearances. Power was his calling card. Per Statcast, Chavis’ taters traveled an average of 419 feet, and his longest was jettisoned a prodigious 459 feet.

He rode a bit of rollercoaster on his way to Boston. Drafted 26th overall in 2014 out of Marietta, Georgia’s Sprayberry High School, Chavis scuffled in his initial professional seasons. Struggling to find his swing, he put up high strikeout rates, and tepid offensive numbers, casting doubt on his future. Then he began to find himself. Buoyed by a 2017 reunion with his old hitting coach, Chavis regained his stroke, turned a corner, and within a few years was once again propelling baseballs far distances.

Chavis discussed his power-packed swing — including how it was lost, and then rediscovered — at the tail end of last season.

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David Laurila: Is hitting simple, or is it complicated?

Michael Chavis: “It depends on the day you’re asking me. When things are going good, it’s as simple as could be — it’s easy — but when things aren’t going well, you start trying to find an answer. You start searching for a difference in your swing. Even though you know you should keep things simple, it’s not like you can be, ‘Oh, I just don’t care; it’ll figure itself out.’ It’s kind of… I guess the weird thing about hitting is you’re constantly making adjustments and changes in order to stay consistent.”

Laurila: You’re changing in order to stay the same…

Chavis: “Yes, which obviously doesn’t make sense. But that’s what it is. One day you can think — this is a random example — ‘swing down,’ because maybe you’ve been getting long and loopy. So you think about swinging down, and your body — just how the body works — is going to make an adjustment. But at some point your body is going to make that adjustment without you being aware of it. All of a sudden, thinking ‘swinging down’ is going to become physically swinging down. Then you have to make an another adjustment.”

Laurila: Basically, one of your mental cues needs to be adjusted. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the first installment of what we plan to make a daily series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

With thousands of players in major and minor league camps this spring amid what has grown into a pandemic with nearly 170,000 confirmed cases worldwide, it was only a matter of time before professional baseball had its first player test positive for the novel coronavirus. That came to pass this weekend; on Sunday, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that a Yankees minor leaguer has done so. The player in question, who did not spend any time this spring at the team’s major league camp a mile away in Tampa, Florida, has not been publicly identified, in accordance with HIPAA Privacy Rules.

Thus far among professional athletes, three NBA players — the Utah Jazz’s Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell, and the Pistons’ Christian Wood, the last of whom played against Gobert last Saturday and was diagnosed over the weekend — have tested positive. Gobert’s positive test led the NBA to suspend its season and set off a domino effect that led to other leagues and organizations suspending play as well, as governmental authorities moved to limit the size of gatherings well below thresholds that would allow sporting events to take place.

Per The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler, the minor leaguer in question was symptom-free as of Thursday, but woke up Friday feeling feverish and fatigued. After tests for influenza and strep throat came back negative, the player in question was quarantined. The team learned that his COVID-19 test was positive late Saturday night. Meanwhile, the minor league camp, which has been used by more than a hundred players on a daily basis this spring, was closed on Friday morning and underwent a “deep cleaning” on Sunday — not its first of the spring, according to general manager Brian Cashman. The major league facility will receive another such cleaning as well. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2020, we estimate that the Dodgers will pay out $236 million in salary. That’s 10% more than any other team in baseball except the Yankees, and over $40 million more than their closest National League competitor, the Cubs. The Dodgers have been big spenders for some time now, and one of the ways they’ve chosen to use their money is to ensure that every position on their roster is stocked with two capable big league players at the very least, and sometimes more than that. It’s not spoiling our upcoming Positional Power Rankings series to note that Los Angeles falls into the top half of every single position on our depth charts, and in the top five of six. Most of those positions are filled with well-paid veterans. The purpose of this piece is to investigate the one position on their roster that isn’t: catcher.

In fact, not a single likely Dodgers’ starter at catcher will be paid more than $1.1 million in 2020. Last year’s starting duo of Russell Martin ($20 million, $16.4 million of which was paid by the Blue Jays) and Austin Barnes ($575,000 in 2019, and $1.1 million this year) morphed, over the course of the 2019 season, into Will Smith and Friends. Although Martin and Barnes caught more games overall last year (61 and 52, respectively), 38 of Smith’s 45 starts came in the Dodgers’ last 57 games of the season, and he enters 2020 — whenever that begins — as the favorite to start the lion’s share of games this year. At 25, with less than a year’s service time under his belt, he’ll make $555,000 in 2020. Read the rest of this entry »

MacKenzie Gore struck me as a straightforward sort when I talked to him in San Diego Padres camp last Sunday. Polite but not loquacious, the 21-year-old southpaw perfunctorily answered each of my inquiries about his repertoire and approach. This is something he’s used to doing. As baseball’s top pitching prospect, Gore gets more than his fair share of media attention.

I didn’t walk into the conversation expecting to glean a boatload of fresh insight. I’m familiar with the scouting reports — all glowing — and as a FanGraphs reader you likely are as well. Even so, an opportunity to hear directly from the horse’s mouth wasn’t something I wanted to pass up.

A look at some numbers before we get to his words. In 20 starts last year between high-A Lake Elsinore (this in the hitter-friendly Cal League) and Double-A Amarillo, Gore logged a 1.69 ERA and won nine of 11 decisions. Moreover — this is the eye-popping part — he had 135 strikeouts, and allowed just 56 hits, in 101 innings.

“I’m a guy who attacks the zone with his fastball,” Gore told me. “I’m going out there looking to throw a lot of innings, so I’m trying to get people out early. I’m trying to throw the least amount of pitches possible.”

Fair enough. But given his explosive fastball and multiple plus secondaries, Gore is clearly blessed with the ability to overmatch. Is he ever on the mound hunting strikeouts? Read the rest of this entry »

Logan Gilbert has all the makings of a quality big-league starter. Drafted 14th overall by the Seattle Mariners in 2018, the 22-year-old right-hander pairs plus stuff with a classic pitcher’s build. Moreover, he’s studious about his craft. The Stetson University product has embraced technology since signing — this per a Mariners executive I spoke to — and he’s using it to better understand, and help fine-tune, his arsenal.

Gilbert debuted professionally last season and went on to excel at three levels. Topping out at Double-A Arkansas, the 6-foot-6, 225-pound hurler logged a 2.13 ERA with 165 strikeouts in 135 innings. Displaying good command, he issued just 33 free passes.

Gilbert — No. 45 on our 2020 Top 100 Prospects list — discussed his four-pitch mix, as well as the extension and ride that help his heater play up, late last week.

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David Laurila: To start, can you give a self-scouting report?

Logan Gilbert: “I try to get ahead with the fastball. Everything for me is getting into good counts, because of how that plays better. I’ve seen the averages — how they change based on the counts — so I go right at guys. But I can also land a curveball, which for me is a big, slow curveball. I also have a harder slider that I used for strikeouts a lot last year; I used it for put-aways. I’ll also mix in a changeup. That’s kind of a fourth pitch, kind of a weak-contact pitch to give lefties a different look.”

Laurila: I understand that your velocity was down for a period of time at Stetson.

Gilbert: “It went down a little my junior year [2018], but last year it was pretty good for the most part. This spring it’s been pretty good again. Last game I was sitting around 94 [mph] for my two innings. In college, I was around 90, so it’s come back up.”

Laurila: Is velocity important to you? Read the rest of this entry »

For someone who has spent his life in Ohio and West Virginia, I have a surprising number of friends who are fans of the Baltimore Orioles. Those friends have spent a large portion of their baseball-attentive lives waiting for the team’s catcher of the future. Toward the end of the 2000s, that seemed to be Matt Wieters, the fifth overall pick in the 2007 Draft and Baseball Prospectus’ No. 1 prospect in baseball before he debuted in 2009. After Wieters briefly lived up to his lofty expectations in 2011-12, fans waited for him to reach those heights again. Now, with the Orioles in the middle of another rebuilding cycle, the future of the organization rests on the shoulders of another catcher, Adley Rutschman, the first overall pick in 2019 and the No. 5 prospect in the game, according to Eric Longenhagen’s rankings.

Those are the most high-profile examples, but another top catching prospect existed between those two, and is entering an important season in his big league development. It wasn’t long ago that Chance Sisco, a second-round pick by the organization in 2013, was rising quickly through the system and turning into one of the best catching prospects in the game. Before the 2017 season, he was the top prospect in the organization and a consensus Top 100 prospect around baseball. That year, he was usually the only Orioles player ranked in the Top 100, a signal of how much he stood out in an otherwise listless farm system. That would be an acceptable development if the big league roster were teeming with youth and recently-graduated prospects, but instead, the club was anchored by aging veterans such as Chris Davis, Mark Trumbo, Adam Jones, and J.J. Hardy, and on the cusp of its first losing season in six years. It was time for the team to start thinking about its future, and that future started with Sisco.

Just three years later, Sisco, now 25, doesn’t inspire the same buzz he once did. Part of that is slow development at the upper levels, which is pretty typical for catchers. Last season was Sisco’s third in a row getting major league experience, but he’s still yet to reach 200 plate appearances in a season at the big league level, with the Orioles shuttling him back and forth from Triple-A. His first extended look at the majors in 2018 was a rough one — in 184 plate appearances, he hit just .181/.288/.269, running a 58 wRC+ and striking out almost 36% of the time. Combined with 38 games in Norfolk that were merely okay, it was the worst season of Sisco’s professional career. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2019 Yankees may have been the best direct-to-video sequel ever. Usually these types of movies are the worst, mainly cheap forgettable cash-ins missing all the actors who were some of the biggest reasons the original was good. At various times, the Yankees lost Luis Severino, Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge, Didi Gregorius, Dellin Betances, Miguel Andújar, Aaron Hicks, and others. But surprisingly, everything just kinda worked out. DJ LeMahieu earned a place at the back of the MVP ballot, the pitching held together, and the team got tremendous years from Gio Urshela and Mike Tauchman. The Yankees didn’t win the World Series, but they got closer than almost every other team in baseball, light years away from being, say, A Christmas Story 2 starring Daniel Stern, a movie that actually exists for some mysterious reason.

The Yankees survived the injuries, but it certainly wasn’t the desired outcome going into the year. Unfortunately for the Bronx Bombers, history has started repeating itself very quickly, leaving the team with the prospect of entering the 2020 season with a whole new slate of crucial injuries.

At the time of the ZiPS projection post for the Yankees, they were forecast for an obscene 102-103 wins (which would have been the best-ever ZiPS win projection). While this wasn’t with injury-free assumptions — ZiPS was already skeptical about the health of Hicks, Stanton, Severino, and James Paxton — this projection assumed that most of the stars would have healthier seasons. Paxton’s surgery to remove a cyst from his spine and the initial reports of Severino’s forearm soreness reduced these playing time estimates, dropping the Yankees to a “mere” 100 wins in the first public ZiPS run for the year. Read the rest of this entry »

Gavin Lux is one of most-promising young hitters in the game. He’s also among the most intriguing in terms of presentation at the plate. Ranked second on our 2020 Top 100 Prospects list, the 22-year-old Los Angeles Dodgers infielder has a swing profile that is both atypical and lethal in its execution. Eric Longenhagen saw fit to devote over 100 words to it when putting together Lux’s scouting profile.

The Kenosha, Wisconsin native has made several changes since being drafted 20th overall in 2016 out of Indian Trail High School. The results speak for themselves. Last year, Lux’s left-handed stroke produced a .346/.421/.607 slash line and 26 home runs between Double-A Tulsa and Triple-A Oklahoma City. A September call-up followed, with Lux logging a .705 OPS over 82 plate appearances in his first taste of major league action.

Lux broke down his mechanics, and his overall approach to hitting, last Friday.

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David Laurila: How would you describe your setup?

Gavin Lux: “I’ve kind of played around with different setups. The most comfortable is with my base a little wider. That helps me feel like I’m in the ground. It’s kind of like how when you’re guarding a guy in basketball you’re not going to be super narrow. So being wider, but not too wide — a little more than shoulder-width apart — is what works for me. I’m a pretty loose mover, so I need some tension to feel strong and like I can do damage.

“I’ve been that way since probably 2018. For me it’s more of an athletic setup. I do a lot of different moves, or unconventional moves, that maybe a lot of people don’t.”

Laurila: Has anything else changed since you entered pro ball?

Lux: “Yeah. I mean, a lot. Now I kind of do like a reverse barrel tip. You see Chris Taylor doing it, also. It helps me delay my back elbow. Before, I’d always get super tight. Laying my barrel off my back shoulder kind of relaxes my shoulders and back elbow. That’s helped me get on plane more, and hit the ball in the air more.”

Laurila: Have you adopted what some people refer to as a launch-angle swing? Read the rest of this entry »

All winter long we wait for spring to arrive so that baseball may begin again. And then once it starts and our precious stat columns begin being filled in Florida and Arizona, we spend most of the preseason assuring each other that none of it matters: The success is a mirage, achieved against a lower caliber of pitching, and the struggles are the result of experimentation and readjustments.

No need to panic. No need to celebrate. Let’s all just sit here in the sun and be happy that baseball has returned, while making sure to maintain an appropriate emotional response to afternoons full of practice games. Stat farming, percentage calculating, theory formulating, tantrum throwing, sadness having; that’s all for the regular season, as the nightly pace of baseball wears us down to the nub.

Here in spring training, we’re safe from such things. Unless! We cross that arbitrary threshold that we’ll say is right about now. Context is important in the preseason, if nothing else is, and in the case of two veterans, their spring performance has made the regular season in front of them a little more interesting.

Let’s just say it: Chris Davis looks amazing. And to echo what’s probably being said in his own head, who even cares why? Davis has to muscle his way out of a deep, deep hole into which the Orioles threw a base salary of $23 million last season as part of his seven-year, $161 million deal that will see him make over $1 million a year through 2037. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2019 Minnesota Twins hit, roughly speaking, all of the home runs. That’s not precisely accurate of course, but it’s close enough for government work; they set an all-time record for home runs. Of the 12 Twins who came to the plate 300 times in 2019, 11 hit 10 or more bombs. Bomba Squad isn’t just a nickname; it’s an accurate description of a team filled to the brim with home run hitters.

This article is about that 12th Twin. Luis Arraez had 366 plate appearances last year. He hit just four home runs. That was the sixth-lowest home run total among players with 350 or more PA, and the names below him aren’t inspiring; Billy Hamilton, Tony Wolters, Yolmer Sánchez, Nicky Lopez, and Dee Gordon weren’t exactly offensive powerhouses.

All told, only 29 batters hit less than 10 home runs in 350 or more plate appearances. That reflects the democratization of home runs, but it also means that it’s difficult to contribute offensively without dingers. In fact, 27 of those 29 players had a wRC+ below 100. The only two exceptions? Nick Markakis, who squeaked over the finish line with nine bombs and a 102 wRC+ — and Arraez, who batted .334/.399/.439 on his way to a scintillating 125 wRC+.

It’s not weird, not even a little bit, that players who don’t hit home runs are generally bad at offense. There’s no single outcome as helpful to a team’s cause as a home run. If you had to predict a player’s offensive output and you could only have access to one outcome type, you’d pick home runs, right? Walks might be okay, and doubles might be as well, but singles? Triples? Heck, throw in BABIP and strikeouts if you want. Nothing comes close to home runs. Read the rest of this entry »