Ty France went into last season trying to be something he’s not, and the results reflected that. Over 535 plate appearances split between the Seattle Mariners and Cincinnati Reds, he slashed .234/.305/.365 with 13 home runs and a 93 wRC+. Statistically speaking, it was the worst year of his career.

Now with the Minnesota Twins after inking a modest $1M free-agent deal in mid-February, France went into yesterday with numbers more in line with what he did from 2019-2023. A month-plus into the campaign, the 30-year-old first baseman has a 118 wRC+ and a .271/.341/.407 slash line.

How has he rediscovered the better version of himself?

“My swing is simple and compact right now,” France told me prior to an 0-for-4 Friday night that included his being robbed on a diving catch and lining an at-em ball at an infielder. “Instead of trying to do too much, I’m just trying to get in my best position and take a good swing.

“Guys are getting paid for homers and doing damage, so a lot of my training last offseason was geared toward trying to hit the ball in the air and drive the ball,” France added. “I kind of lost touch with what I was best at, which is using the right side of the field just collecting hits. This past offseason was about getting back to the basics and rediscovering who I am as a hitter.” Read the rest of this entry »

Sean Newcomb has thus far fallen short of the high expectations he’d set coming out of college and during his first years of pro ball. Drafted 15th overall by the Los Angeles Angels in 2014 out of the University of Hartford, the 31-year-old left-hander has a record of 28-28 to go with a 4.50 ERA and a 4.38 FIP over 454 1/3 career big league innings. He’s currently trying to revive his career. Now with his fifth organization after signing with the Boston Red Sox as a minor league free agent over the winter, Newcomb made the team out of spring training — injuries to multiple Red Sox hurlers played a role in his doing so — and he’s since taken the hill six times. Over five starts and one relief appearance, the Massachusetts native has a 4.24 ERA, a 2.61 FIP, and a 27.5% strikeout rate in 23 1/3 frames. All three of his decisions have been losses.

His second major league season suggested stardom was in his future. Traded from the Angels to the Atlanta Braves as part of the Andrelton Simmons deal in November 2015, Newcomb went on to make 30 starts in 2018 and log a 3.90 ERA over 164 innings. In June of that year he was featured here at FanGraphs, with yours truly writing that the hard-throwing southpaw was “rapidly establishing himself as one of the best pitchers in the National League.” A month later, he came within one strike of notching a no-hitter. Then things started going in the wrong direction. Newcomb not only landed in the Braves bullpen in 2019, he had a stint in Triple-A. From 2020-2024, he tossed just 98 2/3 big league innings while toiling for three different teams. His ERA over that span was 6.66 ERA.

Turn the clock back to March 2015, and Newcomb was ranked no. 2 on our Angels Top Prospects list, behind only Andrew Heaney. What did Newcomb’s FanGraphs scouting report look like at the time? Moreover, what does he think about it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what our then prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel wrote, and asked Newcomb to respond to it.

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“Newcomb was the Hunter Dozier of the 2014 draft, a player that clubs liked higher than the media consensus had them, partly because teams weren’t sure if they were the only team that had him so high, so they kept it pretty quiet.”

“I think a big part of it was my coming out of the Northeast,” Newcomb replied. “That made me a little more of an unknown, but I did kind of have an idea that I was going to be a first-rounder. I talked to all 30 clubs. I actually thought there was a chance that I was going with the fifth pick to Minnesota.”

“Sources have indicated that the Mariners probably would’ve taken Newcomb with the sixth pick if Alex Jackson wasn’t there.” Read the rest of this entry »

Brooks Baldwin doesn’t profile as a future star, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have a long and productive major league career. Versatility is a big reason why.
A poor man’s Ben Zobrist, the 24-year-old switch-hitter has played every defensive position besides first base, catcher, and pitcher since debuting with the Chicago White Sox last summer. It may be only a matter of time before those three are added to his résumé. Counting his days as a North Carolina prep and a UNC-Wilmington Seahawk, there isn’t anywhere he hasn’t played.

The versatility dates back to his formative years.

“I’ve been playing all over the field since I was 10 years old,” explained Baldwin, who was announced as a third baseman when the White Sox selected him in the 12th round of the 2022 draft. “It’s something my dad instilled in me, not restricting myself to one position. He played pro ball a little bit [in the Cleveland Guardians system], and before that in college at Clemson. He did the same thing.”

Chuck Baldwin’s son has seen time at first base in the minors, and the other two missing positions at the major league level are ones he’s well acquainted with. The chip off the old block caught “pretty often” in his freshman and sophomore years of high school, and pitched all four years. Primarily a starter, he had a fastball in the upper-80s as a senior.

Baldwin has been switch-hitting since he was eight or nine years old. His father’s high school coach, Linwood Hedgepeth, made the suggestion. After watching the naturally-left-handed hitter in the batting cage, the member of the North Carolina Baseball Hall of Fame told the elder Baldwin,’This kid can switch it.’” Read the rest of this entry »

Bryce Miller didn’t have an especially good start at Fenway Park on Tuesday. The Seattle Mariners right-hander allowed five hits, four walks, and four earned runs over 4 2/3 innings. He took the loss in an 8-3 Red Sox win.

Alex Bregman was responsible for much of the damage. Boston’s third baseman tagged Miller for a run-scoring double in the third inning, and he followed that up with a two-run double in the fifth. His track record against the 26-year-old hurler belied the success. Heading into the game, Bregman was 1-for-15 against Miller, the lone hit being an infield single last May.

Not surprisingly, Bregman ended up being a main focus when I spoke to Miller on Wednesday afternoon. I began our conversation by asking him which plate appearances he’s dwelled upon the most when looking back at his uneven performance the night before.

“Most of the thought has gone to the walks,” Miller replied. “I wanted to have a quick fifth inning, but after getting ahead of [Ceddanne] Rafaela 1-2, I didn’t execute a few pitches and ended up walking him. After that, I got [Jarren] Duran out on a groundball, but then I walked [Rafael] Devers. Pretty much, there went my chances of a quick inning. Read the rest of this entry »

Ceddanne Rafaela can jump. He can bound up and over a high outfield wall to rob a home run. He can leap forward to secure a ball that otherwise would have fallen out of his reach. He can spring up like a cat to turn a double play after laying out for a catch. But none of those jumps are the kind I’m referring to. I’m talking about this:

In the GIF you just watched, Rafaela travels more than 100 feet in less than five seconds to rob Bo Bichette of extra bases. It’s a stunning catch. It would have been a tough enough play for the Gold Glove winner in right field, let alone for Rafaela coming over from center. That ball had an expected batting average of .820 off the bat, and just look how far away Wilyer Abreu is when he realizes all he can do is back off and let his teammate work his magic. You don’t need Statcast to tell you that’s a five-star catch, and it stands out even among the nine five-star catches we’ve seen this year. It was one of only three with a catch probability of 5%.

Rafaela’s slide into the outfield wall, the way he raised his glove in triumph, and the fact that this happened on the first pitch of the game make this an endlessly rewatchable highlight. Yet, what really makes this catch so spectacular is the sheer amount of ground he had to cover before he could even consider reaching out for the ball. It’s not that he crashed into the Wasabi sign in right field, but that he was anywhere close to the sign to begin with. In other words, it’s all about his jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Penn Murfee was mentioned in the interview with Trent Blank that ran here at FanGraphs on Friday. Discussing pitch profiles, Seattle’s director of pitching strategy recalled the erstwhile Mariners reliever being “a guy who had cut-ride” on his four-seam fastball.

Murfee is now with the White Sox, and Chicago’s South Side club is in Boston for a weekend series, so I took the opportunity to get his own perspective on the offering. What I learned talking to him at my home base of Fenway Park is that the movement he gets on his heater is circumstantial. Moreover, it’s legal.

“Back in 2021, in [Triple-A] Sacramento, my pitch profile changed from a running arm-side fastball,” explained Murfee, who was in the Seattle system from 2018-2023, the last year-plus of that span in the majors. “For whatever reason, I started choking the ball a little tight, and began throwing what was classified as a cutter. It went to zero inches of horizontal movement. My pitching coach at the time said, ‘Whatever you changed, don’t change it back.’ He said that I went from having a very average fastball to something unique.”

The reason behind the movement change? He stopped using sticky. Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe Walker Buehler will be all right, after all. Through his first two starts with the Red Sox — his first two since nailing down the final three outs of the 2024 World Series with a surprise bullpen appearance on his throw day — the 30-year-old righty had been pummeled, allowing three homers and nine runs in 9 1/3 innings. On Thursday afternoon at Fenway Park, he turned the page, putting on a “pitchability clinic” opposite Toronto’s Chris Bassitt.

Buehler shut out the Blue Jays over his first six innings of work, allowing just four hits without a walk while striking out seven. Bassitt matched him with zeroes until the sixth, when Jarren Duran walked with one out, stole second base, advanced to third on a fly out, and scored on an Alex Bregman single. Buehler departed two batters into the seventh, after he’d walked rookie Will Wagner on four pitches to lead off the inning and retired Ernie Clement on a fly ball to center. When reliever Justin Wilson allowed two hits and shortstop Trevor Story made a throwing error on a potential inning-ending double play, Buehler could only watch from the dugout as the Blue Jays took a 2-1 lead. The Red Sox tied the game up in the eighth, and won 4-3 in 10 innings when Toronto second baseman Andrés Giménez bobbled Story’s grounder with the bases loaded — and, oddly, threw to first base for a meaningless out as David Hamilton crossed the plate.

This was the kind of start the Red Sox envisioned when they signed Buehler to a one-year, $21.05 million deal in January, hoping that he could build upon the great postseason run with the Dodgers that helped him salvage his first season back from his second Tommy John surgery. During the regular season, Buehler pitched to an ugly 5.38 ERA and 5.54 FIP in 16 starts covering 74 innings, and missed eight weeks due to inflammation in his right hip. He showed faint signs of improvement in September, allowing two or fewer runs in three of his five starts, compared to just once over his first 11. Still, had the Dodgers rotation not suffered a variety of injuries and collapses, he wouldn’t have been anyone’s first choice for a playoff start, even given the big-game reputation he’d earned while helping the Dodgers win a pennant in 2018 and a championship two years later. Read the rest of this entry »

During the course of my spring training coverage (especially right at the end), I ran into the Giants affiliates a couple of times as I trailed the Brewers and Dodgers farm systems. I saw enough to make a few tweaks to the Giants prospect list, which I have brief notes on below. You can see the complete updated list over on The Board. I’ve also included notes on a few recent trades.

Toolsy Outfielders With Strikeout Risk Who Have Moved Up

Dakota Jordan’s swing has changed (mostly his posture throughout the swing), and I think it gives him a better chance to hit. I was way out on him making any kind of viable contact before last year’s draft, but he has loud showcase tools (power/speed) and now we’ll see if the proactive changes make a difference for his contact ability. He has also looked good in center field, including highlight reel play in which he collided with the wall at Papago Park, but then forgot how many outs there were and spiked the baseball:

Read the rest of this entry »

Dylan Moore saw an ideal opportunity when he signed with the Seattle Mariners as a minor-league free agent in November 2018. Following a solid season split between Double-A and Triple-A in the Milwaukee Brewers organization, Moore had been discussing best scenarios with both his wife and his agent when Jerry Dipoto called. The Seattle GM told him, “Hey, we’ve got a spot you could win out of camp. What do you say?” Moore responded, “Let’s do it.”

Seattle’s Swiss Army Knife made a shrewd decision — as did Dipoto. In seven seasons with the Mariners, Moore has not only played every position besides catcher, he’s been slightly above-average with the bat. In just under 1,700 career plate appearances, the 32-year-old has swatted 54 home runs and logged a 104 wRC+. Moreover, he’s swiped 105 bases, including a team-high 32 last season.

Defensive versatility is arguably his greatest asset. Moore has already seen action at three infield positions this year, and his 2024 ledger includes 15 or more starts at four different positions. More than anything, it’s his ability to play all over the diamond that makes him the longest-tenured current Mariner. Moore understands that as well as anyone.

“I’ve gotten exponentially better since signing with Seattle,” the 2024 utility-position Gold Glove winner told me. “I’ve been really fortunate to have really good coaches, like Bone [renowned infield coach Perry Hill], who are making sure that I’m ready to go at any position. I work hard on my defense. I have a lot of pride in what I do, especially defensively. Versatility is what keeps my value up.”

Moore’s assessment of his offensive contributions stood out in our late-March conversation. Read the rest of this entry »

Kristian Campbell has come a long way in a short time. Less than two years after being drafted by the Red Sox out of Georgia Tech, with just 137 minor league games under his belt, he placed seventh on our Top 100 Prospects list in February, and won the starting second base job during spring training. Now, with just a week of major league service time under his belt, Campbell has agreed to an eight-year, $60 million extension that includes a pair of team options and escalator clauses that can push the contract’s value past the $100 million mark. It’s a deal that provides both security for Campbell and some opportunity for growth, though it’s not hard to notice the much more lucrative extension that the Padres announced for Jackson Merrill on Wednesday as well and wonder whether Campbell should have waited. Either way, the Red Sox have ensured that another talented youngster will be part of their foundation in the coming years.

The 22-year-old Campbell is raking at a .400/.500/.750 (258 wRC+) clip through the first week of his major league career. So far, five of his eight hits have been for extra bases, including a 431-foot homer off the Rangers’ Jacob Webb on Saturday. He celebrated the news of his extension on Wednesday night with a pair of opposite-field doubles off Orioles starter Zach Eflin.

While Campbell was a co-favorite to win AL Rookie of the Year honors in our annual staff poll, nobody expects him to continue at this breakneck pace. Still, buzz about an extension had been circulating in recent days, and while this move isn’t nearly as big as the six-year, $170 million extension the Red Sox announced on Monday for lefty Garrett Crochet, the team clearly views Campbell as an important piece of its future. Read the rest of this entry »