The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and once again we’ll be hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features a veteran left-hander, Jake Diekman, and a young right-hander, Griffin Jax, on their signature sliders.

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Jake Diekman, Boston Red Sox

“I learned a slider in my first year of college, or maybe in my senior year of high school. It was my breaking ball. If you’re under 16 years old, you should not throw a curveball or slider. That’s my opinion. You should just develop a heater — maybe a two-seamer — and a changeup.

“When I started [throwing a breaking ball], I threw it from over-the-top. It was curveball/slider-ish. When you’re 18 years old — this was back in 2005 — no one really gave a care if it was… I mean, we just saw it break. It was, ‘Oh yeah, that’s a breaking ball.’ Now they classify [pitches]. And there are sliders that look like curveballs, and sliders that look like cutters.

“My slider two years ago is different from any slider I’ve ever thrown. You just evolve. Sometimes you’ll keep the same slider for three, four years in a row, and then you start throwing it in spring training or in the offseason and you’re like, ‘I don’t know how to throw this thing anymore.’ You have to find a different seam, different thumb placement, a different whatever. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Tess Taruskin. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

George Kirby, SP, Seattle Mariners
Level & Affiliate: Double-A Arkansas Age: 24 Overall Rank: 29 FV: 55
Line: 5 IP, 2H, 0R, 0BB, 8K

Notes
Kirby’s fastball sat 96-98 mph on Wednesday night, but more noteworthy was how little he threw it. He leaned much more heavily on his slider, curveball, and changeup, all of which flashed above average throughout the evening.

His increased use of those secondaries resulted in him throwing more balls than is typical of the control-specialist, but while that may have inflated his pitch count, he still kept it in check, and didn’t issue any free passes. More often than not, Kirby hit his spots and he missed bats with every offering, retiring the last 12 batters he faced in order. Read the rest of this entry »

It arrived stressfully, chaotically, and slightly late, but the 2022 season is here. And that means it’s time for one last important sabermetric ritual: the final ZiPS projected standings that will surely come back and haunt me multiple times as the season progresses.

The methodology I’m using here isn’t identical to the one we use in our Projected Standings, so there will naturally be some important differences in the results. So how does ZiPS calculate the season? Stored within ZiPS are the first through 99th percentile projections for each player. I start by making a generalized depth chart, using our Depth Charts as an initial starting point. Since these are my curated projections, I make changes based on my personal feelings about who will receive playing time, as filtered by arbitrary whimsy my logic and reasoning. ZiPS then generates a million versions of each team in Monte Carlo fashion — the computational algorithms, that is (no one is dressing up in a tuxedo and playing baccarat like James Bond).

After that is done, ZiPS applies another set of algorithms with a generalized distribution of injury risk, which change the baseline PAs/IPs selected for each player. Of note is that higher-percentile projections already have more playing time than lower-percentile projections before this step. ZiPS then automatically “fills in” playing time from the next players on the list (proportionally) to get to a full slate of plate appearances and innings.

The result is a million different rosters for each team and an associated winning percentage for each of those million teams. After applying the new strength of schedule calculations based on the other 29 teams, I end up with the standings for each of the million seasons. This is actually much less complex than it sounds. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a topsy-turvy, fast-paced offseason, with the swirling vortex of signings and trades spitting out some of the more memorable moves in recent years. A series of trades sent Isiah Kiner-Falefa all the way to the Bronx. Kenley Jansen to Atlanta came out of nowhere, and Carlos Correa, the biggest name of the offseason, ended up at a surprising destination with an odd contract.

But as it turned out, this offseason had one last twist in store for us. After weeks of relative silence, Trevor Story agreed to a six-year, $140 million contract with the Red Sox that contains a player opt-out after four years — one which Boston can negate by picking up a seventh-year option worth $25 million, or pay a $5 million buyout, bringing the total amount involved to $160 million. The deal does not include a no-trade clause, per the New York Post’s Joel Sherman.

So, you’ve just signed Trevor Story. What are you getting out of him? The answer depends on how you think his former home affected his performance, the park which must not be named: Coors Field. On the surface, it’s easy to glance at his home/road splits and check out. Throughout his career, Story has been a 146 wRC+ hitter at home and a 98 wRC+ hitter on the road. Away from an elevated bastion, he walks less, strikes out more, and makes inferior contact. What a fraud! Read the rest of this entry »

I recently asked a pair of prospects which of their former teammates have the best wheels, and on each occasion a 24-year-old middle infielder in the Boston Red Sox system was on the short list. One had him numero uno. The other deemed the speedster in question as being a step behind his first choice.

“Corbin Carroll, for sure,” was Ryne Nelson’s response to my question, the top pitching prospect in the Arizona Diamondbacks system naming the organization’s top position player prospect. “That dude flies.”

While that answer was anything but unexpected, is Carroll truly faster than David Hamilton, whom Nelson played with in the Cape Cod League?

“I think so,” said the righty. “I’ve never seen them together, but I have watched Corbin get from home to third in what felt like three seconds. Hamilton is definitely up there, but it seems like Corbin is the fastest player I’ve ever seen in my life. He can really burn around the bases.”

So too can Hamilton, whom Kody Clemens played with at both the University of Texas and in the independent Constellation League during the 2020 shutdown. Prior to my conversation with Nelson, the Detroit Tigers prospect had told me that Hamilton is the swiftest he’s taken the field with. Read the rest of this entry »

So many relievers have found new homes recently that we’ve written not one, but two reliever roundups! You can find the first one from Luke Hooper here. This is part two, containing four additional relief arms who bring interesting backgrounds, stuff, and deception to the table. Without further ado, let’s get a closer look.

Brewers Sign Brad Boxberger

If you like weird, enigmatic relievers, then Brad Boxberger is the guy for you. He’s reuniting with the Brewers on a one-year, $2.5 million contract and looks to continue his success from last season. Let’s get into what makes Boxberger tick. Here’s a plot containing every reliever in 2021 who threw at least 50 innings. On the x-axis is chase rate, or how often batters swung against a reliever’s out-of-zone pitches. On the y-axis is overall strikeout rate:

That’s right. Boxberger, the point in yellow, generated an above-average strikeout rate for a reliever (31.2%) while having the fourth-lowest chase rate (20.6%). Not that more chases automatically equals more strikeouts, but this is still pleasantly odd. Boxberger doesn’t need to fish outside the zone to rack up strikeouts – he meets hitters in the middle, and more often than not, he emerges victorious. Read the rest of this entry »

Brandon Walter hasn’t come out of nowhere, but he has come a long way. A 26th-round pick in 2019 out of the University of Delaware, the 25-year-old southpaw went into last season a veritable unknown, and he left it as the fastest riser in the Red Sox system. Displaying elite movement from a low arm slot, Walter fanned 132 batters and allowed just 67 hits in 89.1 innings, between Low-A Salem and High-A Greenville. He’ll enter the 2022 campaign ranked No. 10 on our newly-released Red Sox Top Prospects list.

Walter discussed his repertoire, and his unexpected emergence in a steadily-improving system, last month.

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David Laurila: Your Baseball America writeup said, among other things, “His stuff and pitch data suggest reason to believe in a big ceiling.” What does that mean to you, particularly the reference to data?

Brandon Walter: “I’ve learned a lot over the last couple of years, especially since Chaim Bloom came into our organization. They’re big on analytics and pitch data [and] they’re preaching it to us. To me, it mostly means that my stuff is plus, so I can simplify and just throw it in the zone. I can make hitters deal with what I’m throwing instead of trying to hit corners and risk falling behind in the count. Basically, I can just try to get ahead with with my three pitches and compete that way. Getting that information and knowing that my stuff is above average allows me to just attack hitters.”

Laurila: Has the data reinforced things you kind of already knew, or has any of it actually come as a surprise? Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Boston Red Sox. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the second year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox have upped the quality of their farm system in recent years, and Paul Toboni has played a key role in that ascent. Boston’s director of amateur scouting since September 2019 — he was assistant director for three years prior — the 32-year-old University of Notre Dame MBA has helped facilitate drafting players such as Marcelo Mayer and Nick Yorke. Originally hired by the Red Sox as an intern, Toboni became an area scout in 2015 before climbing up the ranks to his current position.

On the road scouting when this conversation took place, Toboni talked about the process itself, the philosophies that shape an organization’s decision-making, and some of the notable draftees the Red Sox have brought on board.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with the basics. What exactly does an amateur scout do?

Paul Toboni: “It depends on your responsibility. We have a number of area scouts across the country who are responsible for areas ranging in geographical size, and also in player density. There are a lot of players coming out of Southern California, so maybe we have two scouts there. We also have a scout covering Arkansas, Oklahoma, and all the way through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. An area scout’s job, really, is to be at the grassroots level and get to know these players really well. They talk to coaches, turn in reports, and come up with their lists.

“It flows upward from there, to our regional cross checkers. I think teams around the league are organized pretty similarly in that [the cross checkers] cover four or five area scout’s areas. From there it goes to national cross checkers, who are responsible for covering the whole country. Then it’s the front office.”

Laurila: What goes into the reports that scouts turn in? Read the rest of this entry »

There’s no shutout this year — instead, there’s joy in Cooperstown. On Tuesday, the Baseball Hall of Fame announced the voting results for this year’s BBWAA ballot, and after a year in which no candidate was elected and featured a contentious election cycle in which it quickly became apparent that the four prominent 10th-year candidates wouldn’t gain entry in their final year of eligibility, David Ortiz broke through on his first try. The centerpiece of the Red Sox’s three championships from 2004-13 — the first of which broke an 86-year drought — and the record-holder among designated hitters in several key categories, Ortiz received 77.9% from among the 394 writers who cast a ballot.

Over a two-month span during which discussions of character-related issues — mainly pertaining to performance-enhancing drugs and domestic violence — at times loomed larger than those pertaining to traditional and advanced statistics and other credentials, Ortiz gained entry while Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Curt Schilling did not. That trio, all in the final year on the writers’ ballot, had the highest shares of the vote last year, but between Bonds’ and Clemens’ links to PEDs and Schilling’s long history of toxicity via his social media accounts, none was able to change the minds of enough voters this year. Schilling, in fact, requested to be removed from this year’s ballot after falling short last year, and while the Hall denied that request, so many voters obliged that his share of the vote dropped 12.5% from last year’s ballot-leading share of 71.1%. He ranked fifth from among the 30 candidates, while Bonds (66.0%) and Clemens (65.2%) ranked second and third respectively, with Scott Rolen (63.2%) fourth. Read the rest of this entry »