The Phillies and Tigers are at it again. After a five-player swap back in January, Dave Dombrowski is making another trade with his former club. With the top five teams in the NL wild card race currently separated by a grand total of one game in the loss column, the Phillies, currently in command of the second wild card spot by a whopping half a game, decided to grab a reinforcement for the rotation and bullpen, trading prospect Hao-Yu Lee to the Tigers in exchange for right-hander Michael Lorenzen. They also designated veteran utility man Josh Harrison for assignment to make room for Lorenzen on the 40-man roster. And at least one Phillies player is very excited about this trade:

Brandon Marsh, who played with Michael Lorenzen in 2022 with the Angels, says he is a “great pitcher, an incredible teammate, and has big biceps.”

“He’s gonna be a great fit here. I’m super excited to see him again and give him a hug. I hope he picks me up. He’s strong.”

— Alex Coffey (@byalexcoffey) August 1, 2023

The 31-year-old Lorenzen, who will be a free agent this winter, is in the midst of his best season since 2020, running a 3.58 ERA and a 3.88 FIP. That improvement has largely come via limiting walks: after averaging a 9.9% walk rate from 2017 to ’19, he’s at 6.5% this season. He’s done that not by increasing his chase rate, but simply by throwing more pitches in the zone, with his zone rate rising from 39.8% in 2022 to 45.7% this year. Lorenzen throws four pitches more than 10% of the time — four-seamer, slider, changeup, and sinker — and is throwing all of them in the zone more often this season than last. In doing so, he traded some whiffs for some called strikes, a swap that has so far paid off. He’s also improved dramatically against lefties, with a .279 wOBA against them this year, down from a career mark of .323.

There’s a troubling trend worth noting, though. Lorenzen’s 4.80 DRA is higher than his 2022 mark of 4.32. His average exit velocity and barrel rate are at career highs, and while his .323 wOBAcon is right in line with last year’s .329 mark, his .362 xwOBAcon is the highest since his rookie season in 2015. Lorenzen might be getting a little lucky on balls in play or getting a little extra help from his defense. Both of those tricks will be harder to pull off at Citizens Bank Park than they were at Comerica Park. Still, it might help your wOBAcon just a bit when the center fielder is willing to run through a brick wall for you. Read the rest of this entry »

Trevor May is a Miguel Cabrera fan. Moreover, he has some favorite Miggy moments. I learned as much when I caught up to the always-engaging 33-year-old right-hander on the Sunday leading into the All-Star break.

“I got my first jersey from another player in our last series,” said May, who broke into the big leagues with the Minnesota Twins in 2014 and now plays for the Oakland Athletics. “We were in Detroit and I got a Miggy Cabrera jersey signed. I’m not a huge memorabilia guy, but he was my first, ‘Oh wow, I’m in The Show.’ It was like, ‘That’s Miguel Cabrera in the box!’ He’s one of the greatest of this generation.”

Nine years later, both players are nearing the end of the line. Cabrera, whose career has him Cooperstown-bound, is set to retire after this season. May, whose accomplishments have been far more humble, faces an uncertain near-term future. He has a 5.32 ERA in the current campaign, as well as a career-low 17.0% K rate.

May’s post-playing-days future is media-focused, and he’s already begun establishing himself in that realm. The Longview, Washington native has been an active podcaster and streamer — gaming is a noteworthy interest, Pat McAfee a notable influence — and just this past week he was part of MLBNetwork Radio’s All-Star Game coverage. His newly-signed jersey is ticketed for his home studio. As May explained, “the background has been kind of sparse, and I wanted to make sure that baseball has a spot there, along with all the nerdy stuff I’m into, whenever I’m in front of the camera.”

May has pitched in front of ballpark cameras many times, and while that includes more than two dozen appearances against the Detroit Tigers, a few of his Miggy moments likely weren’t captured. Even if they were, they went unnoticed by the vast majority of viewers. Read the rest of this entry »

Grant Anderson had an especially-memorable MLB debut earlier this season. Pitching in Detroit on May 30, the 26-year-old Texas Rangers right-hander entered the game in the fifth inning and promptly fanned Zach McKinstry to strand an inherited runner at second base. He then returned to the mound in the sixth and struck out the side. In the seventh, he induced a line-out followed by a pair of punch-outs. In the eighth, yet another strikeout was followed by a Miguel Cabrera single that ended his evening. All told, the sidearming rookie had faced nine batters and fanned seven of them. He was credited with the win in Texas’s 10-6 victory.

He could have been working in a rubber plant instead. On two occasions — one of them as recently as this spring — Anderson seriously considered giving up baseball. More on that in a moment.

Five years ago, Anderson was at home in Beaumont, Texas following the draft with his father and twin brother Aidan [who now pitches in the Rangers system] when the Seattle Mariners took him in the 21st round with the 628th-overall pick. A half dozen or so calls and texts had come earlier. The Brewers, Mets, and a few other teams had reached out to say, “Hey, what do you think about this number and this round?” That none of them actually pulled the trigger wasn’t a matter of high demands. As Anderson put it, “I was coming from a small place and just wanted to play pro ball, so it didn’t really matter to me what the money was. I guess they all just found a better guy for those spots.”

Seattle and Colorado had shown the most interest prior to draft day, and had the former not drafted him, the latter presumably would have. The Rockies called to say they were planning to take him in the 21st round, only to have the Mariners do so a handful of picks in front of their own. Read the rest of this entry »

Across a career in baseball that spanned over 40 years, Roger Craig was at various points a hotshot rookie who helped the Dodgers win their only championship in Brooklyn, the first and best pitcher on an historically awful Mets team, the answer to a trivia question linking the Dodgers and Mets, a well-traveled pitching coach who shaped a championship-winning Tigers staff, and a culture-changing, pennant-winning manager of the Giants. He was particularly beloved within the Giants family for his positive demeanor and the way he shook the franchise out of the doldrums, though it was via his role as a teacher and evangelist of the split-fingered fastball — the pitch of the 1980s, as Sports Illustrated and others often called it — that he left his greatest mark on the game.

Craig didn’t invent the splitter, which owed its lineage to the forkball, a pitch that was popular in the 1940s and ’50s, but he proved exceptionally adept at teaching it to anyone eager to learn, regardless of team. For the pitch, a pitcher splits his index and middle fingers parallel to the seams, as in a forkball grip, but holds the ball further away from the palm, and throws with the arm action of a fastball. The resulting pitch “drops down in front of the batter so fast he don’t know where it’s goin’,” Craig told Playboy in 1988. “To put it in layman’s terms, it’s a fastball that’s also got the extra spin of a curveball.”

Given its sudden drop, the pitch was often mistaken for a spitball, so much so that it was sometimes referred to as “a dry spitter.” It baffled hitters and helped turn journeymen into stars, and stars into superstars. After pioneering reliever Bruce Sutter rode the pitch to the NL Cy Young Award in 1979, pitchers such as Mike Scott, Mark Davis, Orel Hershiser, and Bob Welch either learned the pitch directly from Craig, or from someone Craig taught, and themselves took home Cy Youngs in the 1980s. Jack Morris, Ron Darling, and Dave Stewart won championships with the pitch, as did Hershiser. Years later, the likes of Roger Clemens, David Cone, Curt Schilling, and John Smoltz would find similar success with the pitch, though it eventually fell out of vogue due to a belief that it caused arm problems, an allegation that Craig hotly refuted.

Not that Craig was a hothead. Indeed, he was even-keeled, revered within the game for his positivity. Such traits were reflected in the tributes paid to him after he died on Sunday at the age of 93, after what his family said was a short illness. “We have lost a legendary member of our Giants family.” Giants CEO Larry Baer said in a statement. “Roger was beloved by players, coaches, front-office staff and fans. He was a father figure to many and his optimism and wisdom resulted in some of the most memorable seasons in our history.” Read the rest of this entry »

May was a successful month for the Tigers, a franchise which in recent years has been lacking in happily remembered calendar pages. Detroit’s .577 winning percentage in May (15–11) is its best full month since a .615 mark (16–10) all the way back in July 2016. And while it would be a stretch to say that everything has been coming up bengal, given that the team’s run differential is still slightly in the negative for the month, the bleakness of the AL Central has allowed the Tigers to come within a game of the division lead. Even Spencer Torkelson, whose bat disappeared in 2022, has been playing better baseball, putting up a 119 wRC+ in May. Unfortunately, fate wasn’t even kind enough to give Detroit the whole month; a couple of days before the calendar flip, injuries to Eduardo Rodriguez and Riley Greene have ended May on a decidedly sour note.

These Tigers certainly aren’t strangers to injury. Every team faces injuries sooner or later, but Detroit managed to win in May despite an entire rotation’s worth of promising pitchers — Tarik Skubal, Matt Manning, Spencer Turnbull, Casey Mize, and Beau Brieske — out with injuries. The contributions of Rodriguez and Greene had a lot to do with that. The former’s hot April start continued in May with a 2.03 ERA/2.61 FIP over five outings; the latter hit a star-level .365/.435/.573 for the month. That came crashing down on Tuesday with two bits of very unwelcome news. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Detroit Tigers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the third 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. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but I use that as a rule of thumb.

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

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) 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 »

There’s no disputing that Spencer Torkelson had a disappointing rookie season. Drafted first overall by the Detroit Tigers in 2020 out of Arizona State University, the 23-year-old first baseman went into last year with sky-high expectations only to finish with a 76 wRC+ and just eight home runs in 404 plate appearances. Moreover, he was demoted to Triple-A in mid-July and proceeded to put up a middling .738 OPS with the Toledo Mud Hens before returning to Motown for the final month of the campaign.

Last February, our lead prospect analyst, Eric Longenhagen, had written that “Torkelson’s bat is his ticket to the big leagues, and it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t think he’ll be a terrifying presence in the box for years to come.” Despite his abysmal debut, the potential for Torkelson to become that terrifying presence remains strong. Rejuvenated after an offseason of reflection, the confident slugger logged an impressive hard-hit rate during spring training — my colleague Davy Andrews wrote about it in late March — and he’s continued to scorch a fair number of balls in April, albeit without much to show for it; of the 12 balls he’s hit with an exit velocity of at least 98.2 mph, seven have gone for outs. Belying his slash line — a hard-luck .235/.250/.353 that seems bound to improve once squared-up balls start falling — his average exit velocity ranks in the 74th percentile, his max exit velocity in the 90th. Last Tuesday, Torkelson torched a 424-foot home run off of a 98.9-mph Ryne Stanek heater when the Tigers played in Houston.

Torkelson talked about his history as a hitter, and the keep-it-simple approach that comes with it, during spring training.

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David Laurila: When did you learn to hit?

Spencer Torkelson: “Gosh. I learned at a pretty young age. I kind of just fell in love with hitting the ball over my backyard fence when I was two. I’d walk around asking everybody to throw to me. I’d say that my uncle and my dad had the biggest influence on my hitting. My dad always preached to use the whole field, and my uncle always preached quick hands, quick hips. I had a lot of repetitions with both of them and those things kind of clicked.” Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Vierling’s 2022 with the Phillies was a mixed bag. He started off slowly enough to merit an option to Triple-A Lehigh Valley in May before rejoining the club with a bang in June in the form of a game-winning pinch-hit home run off Josh Hader in Milwaukee. Over the rest of the regular season, he struggled to develop much of a pattern of offensive production while splitting center field duties with first Odúbel Herrera and then Brandon Marsh, and filling in in the corner outfield – and even in limited action at first, second, and third – as needed.

When all was said and done, the righty managed only a .246/.297/.351 batting line, good for a meager .285 wOBA and 81 wRC+; Vierling’s 110 wRC+ off lefties was negated by a 63 mark against same-handed pitchers. The defensive metrics don’t agree entirely, but he graded as below average – to different degrees – by DRS, UZR, and OAA. He ultimately came in at -0.1 WAR. His versatility, 97th-percentile sprint speed, success against lefties, and ability to defend more capably than Kyle Schwarber or Nick Castellanos, though, did not go unappreciated, and Vierling earned himself a spot on each of the Phillies’ postseason rosters, eventually even starting two World Series games. Read the rest of this entry »

The ribbon has been cut on the 2023 season and I wanted to push a few prospect updates live to The Board, including a few tweaks to the Top 100 list. This update also includes publication of scouting reports such that every rookie currently on an active roster now has a current record on The Board, and a few additions the farm systems I’ve already audited during this cycle based on things I saw during spring training.

Let’s start with injury-related updates to the Top 100. Phillies top prospect Andrew Painter has a partially torn UCL and is approaching the end of his four-week shutdown period. Rule of thumb: Among a similarly talented group of players, you’d most want to have the healthy guys. Painter slides from fifth overall to 12th, right behind newly minted big leaguers Anthony Volpe and Jordan Walker, who are comparably talented, healthy, and making a big league impact right now. This is just a cosmetic change to the list; Painter’s evaluation hasn’t changed. If it turns out he needs Tommy John, whether or not I slide him any further will depend on its timing. If rest doesn’t work and his surgery is timed such that he also misses all of 2024, that’s the worst case scenario for Painter and the Phillies. We know for sure that Nationals pitching prospect Cade Cavalli needs Tommy John, so in a similar fashion he falls within the 50 FV player tier, sliding from 63rd overall to 99th, right next to Mason Miller of the A’s, with whom he now shares injury-related relief risk.

Tigers prospect Jackson Jobe, the third overall pick in 2021, is going to miss three to six months due to lumbar spine inflammation. This injury is more novel than a TJ, and Jobe isn’t exactly coming off a great 2022. Unfortunately, this situation merits a more meaningful shift, but I still want to reflect the upside of a healthy Jobe, so he downshifts to the 45+ FV tier, where the most talented of the young high-variance prospects reside. Assuming he comes back late this season, he’ll be one of the higher-priority evaluations in the minors. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Duffy is in camp with the Kansas City Royals on a minor-league contract, and as is common for veteran players in his situation, he has multiple opt-out clauses. Whether he ends up exercising any of them remains to be seen. The 32-year-old infielder is on the bubble with days left before the start of the regular season, and even if he doesn’t make the Opening Day roster, there is a chance that he would accept a Triple-A assignment with a call-up in mind. All Duffy knows for certain is that he wants to keep playing.

“I’ve kind of made the decision that they are going to have the rip the jersey off of me,” said Duffy, who has battled injuries throughout his seven big-league seasons. “If I were to call it a career at some point in the next five years, I would find myself saying, ‘Man, I wish I’d have played one more year.’ Life post-baseball is going to be so much longer than anything the grind can throw at me. At the end of the day, I really enjoy what this game does for me in terms of pushing me to learn something new.”

Duffy is 12-for-36 on the spring, and he can provide more-than-adequate defense at multiple positions. Assuming he can stay healthy, he can help a big-league team — be it the Royals or someone else — for the foreseeable future. Even so, he knows that the clock is ticking. While many players who are asked about their post-baseball plans deflect the question, Duffy is forthcoming on the subject. Read the rest of this entry »