Spring training numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt, but there’s no denying that Ryan McMahon has been a monster in the month of March. In 59 Cactus League at bats, the Colorado Rockies infielder banged out 25 hits while slashing a behemothic .424/.470/.763. His 1.233 OPS led the leaderboards in Arizona and Florida alike.

No, he isn’t about to approach those numbers in games that count — this isn’t Ty Cobb we’re talking about — but the 24-year-old is being counted on to provide value to the Rockies lineup. Three games into the regular season, he’s done just that. McMahon has four hits, including a pair of doubles, plus two walks, in a dozen plate appearances. Lilliputian sample size? Sure, but it’s nonetheless a nice start for the 2013 second-round pick.

His 2018 rookie season was a disappointment. In 202 big-league PAS, he fanned 64 times, and logged a .683 OPS. That came on the heels of spring training numbers which, while not as heady as this year’s, suggested he was ready to rake at the highest level. Instead, he scuffled.

McMahon is self-aware enough not to have forgotten last year. Asked a few weeks ago about his scorching spring, he reminded reporters that it had only been a few dozen at bats — spring training at bats, no less — and that “Baseball is a very humbling game. You never have it all the way figured out.” Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Jon Gray, Mark Gubicza, and Garrett Richards — on how they learned and developed their sliders.

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Jon Gray, Colorado Rockies

“I started throwing a slider in probably 2012. I first learned how to throw a slurve, and that taught me how to throw a slider. I remember my uncle teaching me to throw one. He was like, ‘Don’t be throwing curves. You need to throw slurves and cutters, so you don’t mess up your arm.’ He didn’t want any action on my wrist.

“I learned how to throw that, a slurve, which is kind of the basics of a slider. In high school, I didn’t really have a grip. I didn’t know how to hold one, I guess. I just kind of made up my own grip and went with it. I didn’t watch baseball growing up — I watched none — so it was kind of hard. Read the rest of this entry »

Chuck Cottier made his MLB debut in a star-studded environment. Playing second base, he was in the Milwaukee Braves lineup alongside the likes of Hank Aaron, Del Crandall and Eddie Mathews. The first ground ball he fielded on that April 1959 afternoon came off the bat of Roberto Clemente, on a pitch thrown by Warren Spahn. Harvey Haddix, who a month later would take a a perfect game into the 13th inning against the Braves, was on the mound for Pittsburgh.

Cottier’s first professional game was also memorable. Just 18 years old at the time — he’d signed at 17 out of a Grand Junction, Colorado high school — Cottier was playing for the Americus-Cordele Orioles in the Georgia-Florida League. It was 1954, and the minor league landscape was different than it is today.

“The lowest league was class D,” explained Cottier, who is now 83 years old and a special assistant to the general manager with the Washington Nationals. “From there it went to C, B, A, Double-A, Triple-A, and many of the organizations had two teams in each classification. We had three Triple-A teams at one time.”

Displaying a sharp-as-a-tack memory, the venerable baseball lifer told me that his first-ever game was played in Fitzgerald, Georgia, in a ballpark with a skinned infield. One play in particular stood out. Cottier remembers a “big left-handed hitter named Thompson” smashing a one-hop line drive that hit him just above the wrist, caromed over his shoulder, and rolled all the way to the fence.

Several hours later, his ride stopped rolling. Read the rest of this entry »

Nolan Arenado is one of the best hitters in the game. The 27-year-old third baseman has won four consecutive Silver Slugger awards, averaging a a 127 wRC+, 40 doubles, and 40 home runs over that stretch. Ensconced in the heart of the Colorado Rockies batting order, he’s driven in 503 runs, the most in MLB by a comfortable margin.

Like many players, Arenado has evolved. Unlike one of his new teammates, he’s done so in a more traditional —less nerdy, if you will — manner. On Tuesday we heard from Daniel Murphy on how he transformed himself into an elite hitter. Today we hear from Arenado.

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David Laurila: We first talked during your 2013 rookie season. How have you most changed as a hitter since that time?

Nolan Arenado: “When I’m going well, I’m good at staying on my back leg. I didn’t do that back then. I was a front-leg hitter. That’s why I wasn’t driving the ball out of the ballpark. I was good at putting bat to ball in 2013, but that’s it. I was just slapping the ball for a knock.

“I had to learn how to be quicker without jumping at the ball. I had to learn to control the middle-inside pitch, because they were beating me there. I was kind of drifting, and I was getting jammed. In 2014, I started focusing on getting the head out. Read the rest of this entry »

Daniel Murphy can rake. Since breaking into the big leagues in 2008, the 33-year-old infielder has slashed .299/.344/.458. Moreover, he’s become a better hitter — a more dangerous hitter — in recent seasons. While a knee injury limited him last year, Murphy’s left-handed stroke produced 146 extra-base hits and a 144 wRC+ between 2016-2017. And now he’ll get to play his home games in Coors Field. The Colorado Rockies signed him to a free agent deal back in December.

Murphy, who could accurately be described as a hitting nerd, talked about the art and science of his craft this past weekend at Colorado’s spring training facility in Scottsdale, Arizona.

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David Laurila: Hitting analytics are becoming an important part of the game. To what extent can they translate into improved performance? I’m referring primarily to the swing.

Daniel Murphy: “I think we were doing that even before there was a measure for it. If you talk to any hitting coach, he’s going to say, ‘I want you to get a good pitch to hit. I want you to hit it hard.’ — that’s exit velocity — ‘and I want you to impact it in the gap.’ — that’s measurable by launch angle. What’s really changed is that we can quantify, and measure, exactly what hitting coaches have always been telling us to do: Hit the ball hard, in the gap.”

Laurila: Basically, what Ted Williams was preaching 50 years ago.

Murphy: “That, and it’s measurable. If you talked to Ted, he would probably say, ‘I don’t want the infielders to catch my batted balls.’ Maybe I’d be putting words in his mouth, but that’s something I strive to do. I don’t ever want the infielders to catch my batted balls. No strikeouts, no popups, no ground balls. I want to hit line drives and fly balls. Line drives would be Position A, and if I miss, I want to miss in the air, over the infielders’ heads. Read the rest of this entry »

Kyle Freeland isn’t satisfied with last year’s breakout season. That’s bad news for opposing hitters. The 25-year-old Colorado Rockies southpaw is coming off a 2018 campaign where he finished fourth in the NL Cy Young Award voting after going 17-7 with a 2.85 ERA and a 3.67 FIP. His 202.1 innings pitched — a workhorse total by today’s standards — were fifth-most in the senior circuit.

Continuing to get better is every player’s goal, so while Freeland isn’t looking to reinvent himself — that would be senseless— he does have a few new tricks up his sleeve. While his repertoire will remain static, where his talented left arm aims those offerings will have more variance than in the past.

“I’ve been working on new locations for pitches, kind of different ways to attack hitters,” explained Freeland. “I’m working on getting comfortable throwing left-on-left changeups, and on throwing a two-seamer inside to righties — that front hip shot. Throwing those two pitches will expand my arsenal a little more.”

The Denver native spoke primarily of his same-sided approach when describing the planned changes: “If you look at video from last year, you’re going to see a heavy amount of fastballs and sliders down and away to lefties. That’s the book on me. We feel that giving them another look won’t allow them to sit on that so much.” Read the rest of this entry »

Scott Oberg had a breakout season in 2018. The 28-year-old right-hander came out of the Colorado bullpen 56 times and put up a 2.45 ERA and a 2.87 FIP. Working primarily in a set-up role — 45 of his appearances were in the seventh or eighth inning — he was on the winning side of all but one of his nine decisions.

His signature pitch is a slider. Oberg threw the late-breaker 37.4% of the time last year, often flummoxing opposing hitters who mistakenly read fastball out of his hand. According to the University of Connecticut product, that has been the key to his success. Oberg’s slider has emerged as a lethal weapon not just because he’s learned to manipulate it better — he’s also improved his fastball command.

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Oberg on learning his slider: “I was introduced to a slider in 2014, when I was in Double-A. I’d always been more of a curveball guy. At an earlier age, I guess it was easier to spin the ball that way, versus being very fine with a slider. It took a few years of maturing to get it to the point where it is now.

“As it was progressing, I started realizing that my slider and curveball were kind of morphing into each other a little bit. As a result, we ended up putting the curveball on the shelf and focusing solely on the slider. This was two seasons ago.

“In theory, you throw [sliders and curveballs] differently. There are different arm motions, different hand placements on the ball. With different finger placements, there isn’t as much confusion. That’s a problem I was having. The grips on my slider and my curveball were very similar. There wasn’t enough distinction between the two pitches in my hand. Read the rest of this entry »

The Rockies have made the postseason in back-to-back years for the first time in the 26-year history of the franchise. They’ve done so despite regularly playing Ian Desmond, a two-time All-Star whose decline at the plate and shift away from shortstop has rendered him one of the majors’ least valuable players over the past couple of years, both in terms of WAR and on a dollar-for-dollar basis. If the Rockies are to continue their run of success, they need better results from the 33-year-old outfielder.

Once upon a time, Desmond was a very solid everyday shortstop. A former third-round pick by the Expos (!) out of Sarasota High School in 2004, he spent 2010-15 as the Nationals’ regular shortstop, maturing into a potent hitter with a solid glove. From 2012-2014, he averaged 4.2 WAR, hitting .275/.326/.462 (116 wRC+) with an average of 23 homers and 22 steals, and playing more or less average defense (1.9 UZR) while helping the Nationals win two NL East titles. But after spurning a reported seven-year, $107 million extension following the 2013 season in favor of a two-year, $17.5 million deal to cover the remainder of his arbitration years, he flopped miserably in 2015 (83 wRC+, 1.4 WAR), his final year before free agency. Like so many other free agents, he was adversely affected by the qualifying offer system, and settled for a one-year, $8 million deal from the Rangers that required him to learn the outfield, where he had just 7.1 innings of previous major league experience.

That move actually paid off, as Desmond spent most of 2016 in center field, made the American League All-Star team on the strength of a 15-homer first half, and despite a second-half slump, finished with 3.4 WAR and a 103 wRC+. He parlayed that into a five-year, $70 million free agent deal with the Rockies, who misunderstood his skill set and decided, despite three years of evidence that his bat was more or less league average (98 wRC+), that he would be their new first baseman. After a fractured metacarpal in his left hand cost him the first month of the 2017 season and Mark Reynolds started strongly in his stead, the team reversed course and sent Desmond to left field. He made two further trips to the IL for a right calf strain, and hit just .274/.326/.375 with seven homers, a 69 wRC+, and -0.8 WAR in 95 games. Even so, the Rockies apparently decided he was a much better option at first base than 23-year-old prospect Ryan McMahon, and while Desmond ultimately dabbled at both outfield corners, his overall performance (.236/.307/.422, 81 wRC+, -0.7 WAR) was quite dreadful, his 22 homers and 88 RBI notwithstanding. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this month, I made the case for the Rockies to sign Nolan Arenado to an extension that could rival Miguel Cabrera’s eight-year, $248 million deal for the largest average annual value of any position player contract. My suggestion wasn’t coming out of left field, as the going-on-28-year-old third baseman had just set a record for an arbitration-eligible player by agreeing to a $26 million salary for 2019, and had reportedly indicated a willingness to work out a long-term deal. That willingness has resulted in the completion of an eight-year contract reportedly worth $260 million, the fourth-largest guaranteed salary in MLB history.

The exact breakdown of Arenado’s contract has not been reported at this writing, but the deal replaces or incorporates the aforementioned $26 million salary for this year and runs through 2026, for a $32.5 million AAV, the highest of any player besides Zack Greinke ($34.17 million). The dollar value currently trails only those of Giancarlo Stanton (13 years, $325 million), Manny Machado (10 years, $300 million), and Alex Rodriguez (10 years, $275 million) in terms of overall value, though according to Craig Edwards’ inflation-adjusted conversions of MLB’s biggest deals into 2019 dollars, the amount would place just 19th. Taking account of Rockies history, that’s three spots behind the current $277 million valuation of Todd Helton‘s nine-year, $141.5 million extension, which covered 2003-11, and six spots ahead of the current $248 million valuation of Troy Tulowitzki’s 10-year, $157.75 million extension covering 2011-20. Arenado’s contract includes an opt-out after 2021, which would allow him to become a free agent after his age-30 season, and also gets him full no-trade protection now instead of waiting until the point in early 2023 when his 10-and-5 rights would kick in. Read the rest of this entry »

Boston Globe sportswriter Nick Cafardo died tragically on Thursday at the age of 62. He was a friend — Nick had countless friends throughout the baseball community — and his Sunday Baseball Notes has long been a must-read. This column is dedicated to his memory.

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Aaron Loup has forged a solid career since being drafted by the Blue Jays out of Tulane University in 2009. The 31-year-old southpaw has made 378 relief appearances — all but four with Toronto — and put together a 3.49 ERA and a 3.49 FIP. Seven years after making his MLB debut, he’s now a member of the San Diego Padres.

Had he not changed his arm slot, he probably wouldn’t have made it to the big leagues.

“I wasn’t getting it done over the top,” admitted Loup, who dropped down in high-A. “For whatever reason, my stuff went away. It kind of sucked. My sinker flattened out. My breaking ball became a dud.”

When you’re getting hit around in the Florida State League, you listen to suggestions. Especially strong suggestions. The lefty recalls being told by then pitching coordinator Dane Johnson, “Give it a chance, because what you’re doing now isn’t working.”

Sidearm worked. Not only that, it worked right away. Read the rest of this entry »