After 17 seasons as a professional baseball player – very nearly half his life – Kyle Higashioka has signed his first major league free agent contract. And the timing couldn’t have been better. Higashioka entered a thin catching market coming off the most productive offensive season of his career, and he cashed in to the tune of a slightly back-loaded two-year, $12.5 million deal with the Rangers. The deal also has a $7 million mutual option for 2027 with a $1 million buyout, which means Higashioka is guaranteed to make $13.5 million.
One very disappointing year removed from a World Series championship, the Rangers are hoping that the 34-year-old’s consistency can help them bounce back into contention. Higashioka has now strung together three consecutive seasons in which he’s played at least 83 games and put up at least 1.3 WAR. Texas would love to see him make it four. Read the rest of this entry »
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 Hall of Fame ballot. It was initially written for The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books, and subsequently adapted for SI.com and then FanGraphs. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
It happened so quickly. Freshly anointed the game’s top prospect by Baseball America in the spring of 1996, the soon-to-be-19-year-old Andruw Jones was sent to play for the Durham Bulls, the Braves’ High-A affiliate. By mid-August, he blazed through the Carolina League, the Double-A Southern League, and the Triple-A International League, then debuted for the defending world champions. By October 20, with just 31 regular-season games under his belt, he was a household name, having become the youngest player ever to homer in a World Series game, breaking Mickey Mantle’s record — and doing so twice at Yankee Stadium to boot.
Jones was no flash in the pan. The Braves didn’t win the 1996 World Series, and he didn’t win the ’97 NL Rookie of the Year award, but along with Chipper Jones (no relation) and the big three of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz, he became a pillar of a franchise that won a remarkable 14 division titles from 1991 to 2005 (all but the 1994 strike season, with ’91–93 in the NL West and ’95–05 in the revamped NL East). From 1998 to 2007, Jones won 10 straight Gold Gloves, more than any center fielder except Willie Mays. Read the rest of this entry »
Technically, there wasn’t much at stake. Even though Mason Miller was looking to protect a one-run lead with two outs in the 10th inning of an early September clash, the A’s and Rangers were playing out the string, battling for wins in a lost season. For Wyatt Langford, however, it meant something more.
On the first pitch, Miller fired 101 mph down the middle. Langford was aggressive, fouling it straight back for strike one. He watched 102 mph sail high, then flicked his bat to foul off an up-and-in 101-mph heater to fall into a 1-2 hole. A slider sailed outside before he fouled off pitches at 102 mph and 103 mph to stay alive, and then he laid off two wicked sliders to secure the base on balls. Langford faced down some of the best stuff in baseball, and emerged the victor.
It was just a walk, but it sparked a resurgence. After a dismal five months, Langford exploded in September, posting a 180 wRC+ and leading the American League in WAR. In the series following his successful encounter with Miller, he blasted titanic tanks off Luke Weaver and Clay Holmes, catching up to heaters at the top of the zone and depositing hanging sweepers deep into the left field bleachers.
It led to a question: Was September reflective of Langford’s new level? The answer, in part, was conditional on prior expectations.
And the expectations were certainly high heading into the season. After landing in Texas with the fourth overall pick in the 2023 draft, Langford incinerated the high minors, posting a .360/.480/.677 line across four levels and 200 plate appearances. ZiPS pegged Langford’s 50th percentile outcome above three wins, reasonably confident that Langford would go from the SEC to an above-average regular in the span of a year. As Cactus League play began, the hype train picked up steam; Langford hit .365 with six homers, leaving no doubt as to whether he’d start the year on the big league roster.
It turns out hitting in the majors is hard. No longer was Langford tasked with fending off the pitching staff of Mississippi State or the El Paso Chihuahuas; instead, he had to deal with Chris Sale sliders, Hunter Greene fastballs, and Tarik Skubal changeups.
Fittingly, he looked like a rookie. The plate discipline was there early on; his walk and strikeout rates hovered around league average, suggesting that Langford was not completely overmatched like his rookie counterpart Jackson Chourio, who struck out over 32% of the time in March and April. But Langford’s batted ball quality was lacking. He slugged just .314 in April, lifting heaps of lazy fly balls into outfield gloves.
Whereas Chourio found his footing in the summer months, logging a 144 wRC+ in June and never looking back, Langford’s line remained stubbornly subpar — until the final month of the season. Finally, as the Rangers slogged through their September schedule, Langford went bananas. His .300/.386/.610 line and excellent baserunning led to 1.6 WAR in that month alone, trailing only the infernal Shohei Ohtani.
There are a few potential stories to tell about the Langford rookie campaign. One is that he ran into a few poorly located pitches across a small sample. Another is that Langford made his adjustments, just as Chourio clearly did, accumulating enough experience against major league stuff to leverage his immense tools.
ZiPS, as always, splits the difference. The projection system sees Langford as a 3.8 WAR, 128 OPS+ guy next year, baking in Langford’s transcendent minor league results with a slight skill bump as he heads into his age-23 season.
But splitting the difference is no fun. This approach, applied to players across the league, will lead to more accurate projections. There is no good empirical reason to weigh September results more heavily in the next season’s forecast. But there is a temptation, at least on my end, to believe that Langford is going to be the player we saw in September moving forward.
In this version of the narrative, the expectation for Langford’s sophomore campaign isn’t just an All-Star 4-WAR season, as ZiPS forecasts; it’s something more like 5 WAR as the 50th percentile expectation, mirroring the age-23 projections for recent breakouts Corbin Carroll and Julio Rodríguez.
To make that argument persuasively, it would require evidence that Langford identified and then fixed the flaws that held him back across his first 400 or so plate appearances. And there is at least some reason to believe he did.
There is no one culprit for a hitter’s poor performance. The reasons are layered and complex; it could be an issue with certain pitch types or certain locations, for example. In Langford’s case, it seemed like at least one of the issues was structural, tied to his hitting mechanics. Both he and Rangers offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker believed his swing was too vertical.
Even two weeks into the season, it was clear that Langford needed to adjust. There was one clear potential area of improvement: His distribution of weight on his swing. In a story written by Steve Kornacki (no, not that Steve Kornacki) at MLB.com, Ecker was quoted as saying that Langford’s mechanical tendencies needed a reboot.
“[Langford] came from college and regularly has not faced breaking balls that are breaking 18 to 20 inches,” Ecker told Kornacki. “So, some of the body position he was in in college is now starting to evolve. If you look where the pressure is at, maybe in college it was on his back side. All of the best hitters in the big leagues, their pressure, when they land [on swings], is in the middle of their body. So, he’s slowly evolving from a guy that’s back, to having to get over the center that’s in the middle of our body.”
Esteban Rivera, FanGraphs’ resident hitting mechanics expert, explained to me that loading up weight on the backside makes it easier for hitters to whip their barrel under the ball and therefore generate power. This approach works well in college, where hitters aren’t generally exposed to high velocity and see a lot of mistake pitches. It works less well when Brandon Pfaadt is spinning sweepers that teleport across the width of the plate. Esteban also pointed out that fastballs on the inner half or sliders off the plate could trouble a hitter with a swing oriented toward crushing middle-middle mistakes.
Langford, for his part, appeared well aware of the problem.
“We’re working on getting back to that center mass, and not staying back too much,” Langford said in April. “It’s caused me to swing a little more up than I wanted, and I’m leveling out my swing. That’s helping me see the ball better.”
The early results were not favorable. Langford’s average launch angle climbed each month, from 16 degrees in April all the way to 23 degrees in August. Perhaps as a result, he was flummoxed by sweepers and sliders thrown by same-handed pitchers; through August, his wOBA was .234 on these pitches. He was even worse on hard inside fastballs; his .205 wOBA on high-velocity sinkers and four-seamers thrown on the inner half ranked among the worst in the league.
But in September, the swing leveled out. Langford’s average launch angle in September — 11 degrees — was the lowest of any month in the 2024 season. And the results — perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not — followed.
On inside heat, Langford never really adjusted. But he started crushing fastballs left out over the plate as well as hanging breaking balls, staying back long enough to identify spin and punishing mistakes. A good portion of his damage came on swings like this double against Marcus Stroman, lasering sliders at the knees into the right-center field gap:
These improvements coincided with a change to his setup. In April, he was hunched at the moment of the pitcher’s foot strike, looking to my amateur eye more like a slap hitter:
But during his month of destruction, Langford stood much more upright, ready to attack balls at any depth or width.
Langford’s apparent mechanical adjustments, prospect pedigree, and chronologically convenient damage distribution leads to questions about the nature of projections. Prospect evaluators, including our own Eric Longenhangen, were unbothered by his slow start. In his Top 100 Prospects Update in May, as Langford sat sidelined with a hamstring injury, Eric wrote that he expected Langford would “be an offensive star upon his return, and probably pretty quickly,” noting that the “huge tools and plate coverage” remained intact. It was just a matter of adjusting.
In his final month of the season, Langford looked like the offensive star Eric expected. In most cases, a huge month should not be cause for altering a projection. Langford, though, could be an exception.
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
For the past few election cycles, as a means of completing my coverage of the major candidates before the December 31 voting deadline, I’ve been grouping together some candidates into a single overview, inviting readers wishing to (re)familiarize themselves with the specifics of their cases to check out older profiles that don’t require a full re-working, because very little has changed, even with regards to their voting shares. Today, I offer the first such batch for this cycle, a pair of elite hitters who would already be enshrined if not for their links to performance-enhancing drugs: Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez.
Like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, both sluggers have transgressions that predate the introduction of drug testing and penalties in 2004. Via The New York Times (Ramirez) and Sports Illustrated (Rodriguez), both reportedly failed the supposedly anonymous 2003 survey test that determined whether such testing would be introduced. Had they not pressed their luck further, both might already be in Cooperstown alongside 2022 honoree David Ortiz, who also reportedly failed the survey test. Alas, Ramirez was actually suspended twice, in 2009 and ’11; the latter ended his major league career, though he traveled the globe making comeback attempts. Rodriguez was suspended only once, but it was for the entire 2014 season due to his involvement in the Biogenesis scandal and his scorched-earth attempt to evade punishment — a sequence of events unparalleled among baseball’s PED-linked players.
As I’ve noted more times than I can count over the past decade and a half, my own policy with regards to such candidates is to differentiate between pre-2004 transgressions and the rest; while I included the likes of Bonds, Clemens, Gary Sheffield, and Sammy Sosa on my virtual and actual ballots, I have yet to do so for any player who earned a suspension for PEDs, including this pair — two players who at their best were a thrill to watch, but who also did some of the most cringeworthy stuff of any players in their era. They and the other suspended players were well aware of the consequences for crossing the line, yet did so anyway. While this personal policy began as a ballot-management tool at a time when I felt more than 10 candidates were worthy of a vote, I’ve found it to be a reasonable midpoint between total agnosticism on the subject and a complete hard-line stance. My sympathies tend more towards the former group — those who refuse to play cop for MLB and the Hall, reasoning such players have not been declared ineligible à la Pete Rose — than the latter, but I respect both positions.
Anyway, Ramirez debuted with 23.8% on the 2017 ballot, didn’t surpass that mark until ’20 (28.2%), didn’t top 30% until ’23 (33.2%), and fell back a fraction of a point on the ’24 ballot (32.5%). That’s eight years to gain less than 10 percentage points, meaning that he’ll fall off the ballot after his 10th year (the 2026 ballot).
Rodriguez debuted with 34.3% in 2022, barely inched up in ’23 (35.7%), and receded slightly in ’24 (34.8%). Given that Bonds and Clemens topped out in the 65–66% range in 2022 and then were passed over by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee the following year, nobody should be holding their breaths for either of these two to get elected anytime soon, though it will be awhile before we stop hearing about them. Read the rest of this entry »
For the 21st consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Texas Rangers.
Batters
If you were looking to assign blame for the Rangers going from being World Series champions to having a 78-84 season, you’d have a bounty of targets. From a Pythagorean standpoint, the collapse from one year to the next was even worse; the 2024 Rangers bled 12 wins compared to 2023, but in terms of run differential, they dropped an impressive 21 wins. Given the widespread nature of their disappointing season, the latter number is probably closer to the “true” decline.
The offense’s contribution dropped in half, from 34.1 WAR in 2023 to 16.9 WAR in 2024. And unlike the 2014 squad, the last Texas team to so dramatically underachieve, the 2024 Rangers can’t really put the lion’s share of the blame on injuries, at least on the run-scoring side of the equation. Evan Carter missed most of the season with a back injury, but he also only played in 23 regular season games in 2023. Corey Seager typically misses a couple dozen games a year, and while Josh Jung’s fractured wrist was a stroke of bad luck, Josh Smith was a very good replacement. A lot of the lost performance came from healthy, established players, and even worse, a good number of those players are veterans on the back end of their respective career trajectories. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been working at FanGraphs long enough — more than two full years now — that I’ve started to build a track record. By that I mean that when I get something right, I can go back and gloat about it.
In February 2023, I wrote about Rangers outfielder Adolis García: A power-over-hit player who struggled to get on base and did not play a premium position. Some years ago, I was at a Starbucks a couple blocks from my house when I saw someone who looked like an ex-girlfriend of mine a few tables away. On further reflection, I don’t think it was really her, but I packed up my computer, downed my macchiato, went home, and never came back. You can never be too careful.
I would ordinarily avoid players like García with even greater alacrity. Nevertheless, I reasoned that the Rangers, having invested much more heavily in pitching than hitting, needed their right fielder to be at his best if they hoped to achieve anything in 2023. And García had made very good contact the previous season, but had not been rewarded accordingly. So despite my trepidation regarding his overall skill set, I predicted that García would take a step forward. Read the rest of this entry »
Hitting coaches and swing coaches aren’t the same thing.
I heard those exact words, or variations thereof, a number of times this season while talking to coaches. More often that not, the words were accompanied by an opinion that too many hitters — especially young hitters — are overly focused on honing a perfect swing, whereas what they should primarily be focusing on is… well, actually hitting the baseball. That’s not to discount the importance of good swings — every hitting coach understands their value — but much more goes into squaring up pitches within a game environment. As San Diego Padres special assistant Mark Loretta put it in yesterday’s Talks Hitting interview, “Obviously, you have to swing to hit the ball, but swinging isn’t hitting.”
Here is what three MLB general managers had to say on the subject, primarily as it relates to player development.
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Ross Fenstermaker, Texas Rangers GM
The Texas Rangers named a new general manager on November 4, promoting Ross Fenstermaker from assistant GM/player development and international scouting, a role he’d held since October 2021. A University of California Davis graduate, Fenstermaker has been with the organization since 2010, initially coming on board as a baseball operations intern.
Given his PD experience — and with swings in mind — I asked Fenstermaker about the advancements the Rangers made in that area over recent seasons. Read the rest of this entry »
The Detroit Tigers have been baseball’s hottest team, rattling off 31 wins in 43 games to go from eight games under .500 to 11 games over and into the postseason for the first time in a decade. That they’ve done so is nothing short of remarkable. Not only were most outside expectations relatively low coming into the campaign, the A.J. Hinch-led team has dominated September with a starting staff largely comprising of Tarik Skubal, unheralded rookie Keider Montero, and an array of openers. On the season, Detroit Tigers starters have thrown 748-and-a-third innings, the fewest in the majors (notably with a 3.66 ERA, fourth best in the majors).
There is obviously more to why the Tigers have emerged as a surprise team — not to mention a legitimate postseason contender — than the presence of an ace left-hander and Hinch’s expertise in mixing and matching starters and relievers. That is a deeper dive than fits here in Sunday Notes, but I did ask the “Why are the Tigers good?” question to three people who saw them sweep a series just this past week. I asked a second question as well: “What was the atmosphere like at Comerica Park?”
“From an atmosphere standpoint it was one of the best we’ve seen this year,” said Tampa Bay Rays broadcaster Andy Freed. “What impressed me most is that our first game there was supposed to be a night game, and because of rain coming in it was moved to the day. We thought, ‘What are they going to get, 5,000 people?’ It was a Tuesday and school was in session, but they got a great crowd. People decided they were still going to come to the baseball game. It reminded me how great of a sports town Detroit is. And they were into every pitch. It was the closest I’ve felt to a postseason atmosphere all year, except for maybe Philadelphia. Read the rest of this entry »
The Texas Rangers are seeking multiple apprentices in Player Development. Each Apprentice will work with one of the Rangers’ minor league affiliates and report to the Minor League Video Coordinator. Apprentices will operate as an extension of the coaching staff and be a resource for both players and coaches. They are expected to manage the collection and application of data and technology at their respective affiliate and will gain experience across multiple areas of Baseball Operations.
Job Responsibilities:
Operate all technology for practice and games
Capture game video and manage upload process
Manage data and collection process and assist with interpretation to coaches and players
Collaborate with coaching staff and player development staff to monitor player goals and player progress
Conduct research and analysis, both at the request of staff and independently
Communicate research in a simple and concise manner to Minor League coaches, players, and Player Development staff
Organize and distribute advance scouting materials to staff
Support field staff and players with coach education and various administration tasks
Support field staff by throwing batting practice, hitting fungoes, and aiding with other on-field tasks.
Troubleshoot video/technology related issues at your affiliate
Preferred Qualifications:
Bachelor’s degree
Strong written and verbal communication skills
Proficiency with Microsoft Office
Demonstrated passion and understanding for biomechanics, pitching or hitting analysis or sports science.
Ability to work seamlessly in teams
Working knowledge of advanced baseball statistics and publicly available research
Colton Cowser is a leading contender for American League Rookie of the Year honors, and his power numbers are among the reasons why. The 24-year-old Baltimore Orioles outfielder has 20 home runs to go with a .240/.321/.431 slash line and a 115 wRC+. San Diego’s Jackson Merrill (23) is the only rookie in either league to have left the yard more times.
That Cowser is clearing fences with some regularity is in many ways unsurprising. At a listed 6-foot-2, 220 pounds, his build is that of a basher. That said, his profile going forward wasn’t entirely clear when he was first featured here at FanGraphs in February 2022. Drafted fifth overall the previous summer out of Sam Houston State University, Cowser had propelled just a pair of baseballs over outfield barriers in 149 low-level plate appearances. Moreover, as I related to him in our offseason conversation, Baseball America had recently cited his “impressive walk-to-strikeout ratio,” adding that his swing path is “presently more geared toward contact versus power.”
The numbers suggest that Cowser is no longer the same style of hitter. After having more free passes than Ks in college and in his first taste of professional action, the left-handed-swinging slugger has fanned a team-worst 157 times this season with a 30.5% strikeout rate and a 9.5% walk rate. He’s also hitting more balls in the air, as evidenced by his 38.2 FB%. That number was just 26.9 in his two-plus years down on the farm.
Cowser’s thoughts on making less contact as he settles in to what promises to be a productive MLB career? Read the rest of this entry »
