Mike Redmond has been up close and personal with a lot of high-profile players, some of whom arrived on the scene at a young age. As a big league backstop from 1998-2010, Redmond caught the likes of Josh Beckett, Johan Santana, and Dontrelle Willis, and he played alongside Miguel Cabrera. As the manager of the Miami Marlins from 2013-2015, he helped oversee the blossoming careers of José Fernández, Giancarlo Stanton, and Christian Yelich. With the exception of Santana, who was by then a comparative graybeard at age 26, the septet of stalwarts were barely into their 20s when they began playing with, and for, Redmond.

Now the bench coach of the Colorado Rockies, Redmond looked back at his experiences with the aforementioned All-Stars when the Rockies visited Fenway Park last summer.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with José Fernández, who was just 20 years old when he debuted. Just how good was he?

Mike Redmond: “I mean, yeah, he was a phenom. The plan was for him to be in the minor leagues for one more year, but because we were so thin pitching wise we had to bring him to the big leagues. We didn’t have anybody else that year.

“I’d seen José, because I’d managed in the Florida State League when he was there the year before. Christian Yelich and J.T. Realmuto were on that team, as well. I was with Toronto, managing Dunedin, so I got to see all of those guys in the minor leagues. With José, you could just tell. The stuff, the confidence, the mound presence… it was just different. It was different than the other guys in that league, man.

“I got the manager’s job with the Marlins, and I remember being in spring training that first year. [President of Baseball Operations] Larry Beinfest and I were talking about José, and he goes, ‘Hey, don’t get too excited. You’re not going to get him just yet.’ I was like, ‘OK, whatever.’ Sure enough, José ended up breaking camp with us because of injuries. We had him on a pitch count, and he’d always give me a hard time about it, because he wanted to throw more. I would be like, ‘Hey, listen, you have 100 pitches. How you use those 100 pitches is up to you.’ I would say that he used them pretty effectively. He was nasty. Great slider. And again, he was very confident in his abilities. He was a competitor. I mean, he reminded me of some of the great pitchers I’d caught in the big leagues, like Josh Beckett and Johan Santana. Guys who just dominated.” Read the rest of this entry »

For the 20th 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 Minnesota Twins.

Batters

This set of batters probably looks familiar because, well, apart from the Luis Arraez trade to the Marlins, this is pretty much the same collection of hitters the Twins have had available the last several years. Edouard Julien isn’t the exact same type of player as Arraez, but he more or less fulfills Arraez’s role of “interesting offensive talent who the Twins can play at second base, but would prefer not to.”

Can Byron Buxton stay healthy? Just sticking him at DH isn’t a satisfactory answer — one of the reasons a healthy Buxton is so valuable is because he has played a transcendent center field when he’s been able to. Playing DH, he’s basically just Jorge Soler, which has value, but not that star-level sizzle. Read the rest of this entry »

Kala’i Rosario won the Arizona Fall League’s Home Run Derby this past November, and he did so in impressive fashion. Not only did the 21-year-old Minnesota Twins outfield prospect pummel a total of 25 baseballs over the fence at Mesa’s Sloan Park, the longest of them traveled a power hitter-ish 465 feet. By and large, that is what Rosario’s game is all about. As Eric Longenhagen pointed out last summer, the 6-foot, 212-pound Papaikou, Hawaii native had previously won the 2019 Area Code Games Home Run Derby and he “swings with incredible force and has big raw power for his age.”

Rosario’s setup in the box stood out to me as much as his ability to bludgeon baseballs when I watched him capture the AFL’s derby crown. The right-handed hitter not only had his feet spread wide, he had next to no stride. I asked him about that following his finals victory over Toronto Blue Jays infield prospect Damiano Palmegiani.

“Tonight my setup was a little different, but in games I usually do a small stride, so it wasn’t a big difference,” Rosario told me. “I have power already, so I don’t lock into my coil too much. When I get into the box I kind of preset everything, and from there it’s just letting my hands do the work.”

Improving his contact skills is both a goal and a necessity for the slugger. Rosario had a 29.6% strikeout rate to go with his .252/.364/.467 slash line and 21 home runs in 530 plate appearances with High-A Cedar Rapids. As Longenhagen also opined in his midseason writeup, Rosario’s “high-effort swing has zero precision.” Widening out and shortening up have been part of his effort to alleviate that issue. Read the rest of this entry »

Craig Breslow is restructuring the Red Sox pitching program. Hired in October to replace Chaim Bloom as Boston’s Chief Baseball Officer, the 43-year-old erstwhile reliever is doing so in multiple ways, and that includes having effectively cloned himself with a Twin. Earlier this month, Boston’s new top executive lured Justin Willard away from Minnesota to be the team’s Director of Pitching — the same role Breslow held in Chicago when he worked to revamp the Cubs’ pitching development process just a few years ago.

That Breslow’s approach is largely data-driven and comes with an adherence to bat-missing qualities is a big reason why Willard was brought on board. Much like the Yale graduate who hired him, Willard — a former college hurler with an MBA from Radford University — is both well-versed in analytics and an advocate of arsenals rife with plus raw stuff. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Before Joe Mauer began starring for the Twins, there was Torii Hunter, and before Chase Utley began starring for the Phillies, there was Jimmy Rollins. Hunter, a rangy, acrobatic center fielder who eventually won nine Gold Gloves and made five All-Star teams, debuted with Minnesota in 1997 and emerged as a star in 2001, the same year the Twins chose Mauer with the number one pick of the draft. The pair would play together from 2004 to ’07, making the playoffs twice before Hunter departed via free agency. Rollins, a compact shortstop who carried himself with a swagger, debuted in 2001 and made two All-Star teams by the time he and Utley began an 11-year run (2004–14) as the Phillies’ regular double play combination. The pair helped Philadelphia to five NL East titles, two pennants, and a championship, with Rollins winning NL MVP honors in 2007 and taking home four Gold Gloves.

Hunter and Rollins both enjoyed lengthy and impressive careers, racking up over 2,400 hits apiece with substantial home run and stolen base totals. From a Hall of Fame perspective, both have credentials that appeal more to traditionally-minded voters than to statheads. But in their time on the ballot, they’ve gotten little traction, with Hunter topping out at 9.5% in his 2021 debut and Rollins only breaking into double digits in ’23. Not much has changed regarding their electoral outlooks this time around; both are likely to be far outdistanced by their former teammates, whose advanced statistics are much stronger despite comparatively short careers. Still, these two may persist on the ballot, with enough support for us to keep reliving their careers and discussing their merits on an annual basis. There are far worse fates for Hall of Fame candidates. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Joe Mauer was one of baseball’s greatest hometown-boy-makes-good stories. A former No. 1 overall pick out of Cretin-Derham Hall High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2001, he spent the entirety of his 15-year career with the Twins. Despite a listed height of 6-foot-5, he excelled at catching and was also an elite left-handed hitter, with a quick, compact stroke and impeccable judgment of the strike zone. Between his outstanding two-way performances, his handsome good looks, and his wholesome public persona, he was an ideal face-of-the-franchise player. He played a central role in helping the Twins, who were targeted for contraction just five months after he was drafted, to four postseason appearances. Along the way he made six All-Star teams and won three Gold Gloves and three batting titles apiece, not to mention the 2009 AL MVP award.

Alas, the Twins were swept in each of their playoff series, and for all of Mauer’s accomplishments, his career was punctuated by injuries, starting with a meniscus tear in the second game of his rookie season. Post-concussion problems forced him to hang up the tools of ignorance and shift to first base; his power, which had only intermittently shown up even in the best of times, with one season of more than 13 homers, dissipated upon moving to the team’s beautiful new ballpark; and some segment of the fan base blamed his eight-year, $184 million contract extension for the team’s apparent financial limitations. Ultimately, he chose to retire at age 35 due to continued concussion-related complications.

All of that is proof that Mauer’s story wasn’t a fairy tale, but even so, it was a great career. So great, in fact, that Mauer ranks seventh in JAWS among catchers despite its limitations, and that’s without accounting for his above-average pitch framing, a factor that will become increasingly important to grapple with in upcoming Hall of Fame debates. Even without a bonus for his upstanding character (the original intent of the infamous clause in the voting rules), he’s eminently worthy of a spot in the Hall of Fame. Whether he’ll get there on the first try is another question, however, particularly amid a crowded field and an electorate that has not only become much less generous lately but also has rarely treated even the most obvious honorees among catchers with appropriate respect. Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s 40-man roster deadline was less eventful than usual (we only had one trade on deadline day), but as always, a number of young players became big leaguers in a certain sense, and teams had no choice but to indicate what they think of lots of fringe prospects who they either did or did not choose to roster. This day of clerical activity is the culmination of the efforts of the players themselves, the people in player development who have helped turn them into big leaguers, and the scouting and decision-making portions of each org that put their stamp of approval on the prospects. Is any one move here as impactful as signing a Yoshinobu Yamamoto or a Matt Chapman? No, but when your favorite team experiences a rash of injuries in June, whether or not they have the depth to scrap and compete is often dictated by the people and processes that surround this day. I’m more focused on analyzing roster depth, fit and flexibility in this space than on scouting players (especially when they’re star prospects you already know well). I’ll have a separate post on the National League. Read the rest of this entry »

Reese Olson has a chance to be a top-of-the-rotation starter in Detroit, and it is notable that the Tigers acquired him via trade. On July 30, 2021, then-general manager Al Avila dealt Daniel Norris to the Milwaukee Brewers in exchange for the now-24-year-old right-hander, who at the time had a 4.30 ERA in High-A and was flying below most prospect radar. Talented but raw, he ranked seventh in a system that wasn’t particularly well-regarded.

Olson made his MLB debut this past June, and by season’s end he was showing signs that he could emerge as a No. 1 or a No. 2.on a promising young staff. Over his last six starts, the plain-spoken Gainesville, Georgia native allowed just 18 hits and six earned runs in 35-and-two-thirds innings. On the year, he had a 3.99 ERA and a 4.01 FIP to go with a 24.4% strikeout rate and a .214 BAA. He fanned 102 batters in 103-and-two-thirds innings.

Scott Harris doesn’t believe in labels like No. 1 starter or No. 2 starter. He does believe in the fast-rising righty.

“Reese has three distinct secondary pitches that miss bats,” Detroit’s President of Baseball Operations told me at this week’s GM meetings. “That’s really hard to find. He also has two different fastballs that reach the upper 90s. I also think he did some things this summer that reminded me of what other really good pitchers do in their first year in the big leagues. I’m not going to throw those expectations on him, but his ceiling is as high as anyone’s.” Read the rest of this entry »

As the professional baseball career of Nelson Cruz flashes before my eyes, no single image emerges to define his legacy. He served as a leader in the clubhouse, was devoted to off-the-field humanitarian efforts, proudly represented his Dominican homeland, consistently hit the baseball so hard that he earned the nickname Boomstick, and did all of it at a high level for more years than any aging curve would have dared to predict.

Last week, after 19 seasons in majors, Cruz announced his retirement on The Adam Jones Podcast. He also addressed the second-most important topic pertaining to his career: the origin of his nickname. Back in 2009, while playing as himself in a video game for some sort of promo event, Cruz hit a home run and referred to his bat as the Boomstick. The name circulated amongst fans and stuck. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve done for the past few years, I’m going to be grading each eliminated postseason manager on their decision-making. We spend the year mostly ignoring managers’ on-field contributions, because to be honest, they’re pretty small. Using the wrong reliever in the eighth inning just doesn’t feel that bad on June 22; there are so many more games still coming, and the regular season is more about managing the grind than getting every possible edge every day. The playoffs aren’t like that; with so few games to separate wheat from chaff, every last ounce of win probability matters, and managers make personnel decisions accordingly. What better time to grade them?

My goal is to evaluate each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things – getting team buy-in for new strategies and unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable – but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but Evan Carter and the entire Diamondbacks roster have been great too. Forget trusting your veterans – the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Carlos Correa is important because he’s a great player, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process. I’ve already covered the losing managers of the Wild Card round, as well as Brandon Hyde’s efforts. Today, it’s Rocco Baldelli’s turn. Read the rest of this entry »