NEW YORK — After living up to the hype and the history for the better part of the season’s first three months — capped by an extension of his recent home run spree with three in his first two games in the Bronx — Shohei Ohtani made a rare misstep on Wednesday. On a night where he doubled as both the Angels’ leadoff hitter and their starting pitcher, Ohtani allowed the first five Yankees he faced to reach base, failed to escape the first inning, and was charged with a career-high seven runs. Rather than send him out to right field after his start as planned, manager Joe Maddon had little choice but to pull his two-way superstar from the game entirely.

Not that many in the Yankee Stadium crowd of 30,714 complained. Quite the contrary. For as happy as they might have been to get a glimpse of the eighth wonder of the world, the sight of the Yankees’ recently-dormant offense continuing the previous night’s 11-run onslaught — one more run than they’d scored during their four-game losing streak — was even more welcome… at least until the plot twisted.

“Frustrating. Disappointing. Terrible,” said Yankees manager Aaron Boone afterwards. Boone wasn’t referring to Ohtani’s outing, but rather the similar lapse of control from closer Aroldis Chapman. On a sweltering night that saw a temperature of 92 degrees at first pitch before a pair of rain delays cooled things off while adding a couple of extra hours at the ballpark, the Yankees frittered away their 7-2 first-inning lead, with Chapman ultimately walking the bases loaded in the ninth inning and serving up a game-tying grand slam to Jared Walsh. The Angels added three more runs against Lucas Luetge and escaped with a surreal 11-8 victory that Maddon called, “probably the craziest, best result we’ve had” during his two-season tenure. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Juan Corniel, SS, Arizona Diamondbacks
Level & Affiliate: Complex Level Age: 18 Org Rank: TBD FV: TBD
Line: 3-for-5, 3 RBI, R

Notes
Corniel has been one of the Extended Spring standouts in Arizona. At a projectable 6-foot-1 or so, he’s an amalgam of twitch, athleticism, and body projection right now. He has the athleticism and actions to play shortstop but doesn’t yet have sentient control of his body. Offensively, the switch-hitting Corniel has swings that are fairly short to the ball but still explosive. Read the rest of this entry »

On hiatus since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, FanGraphs’ Learning and Developing a Pitch series returns with three pitchers — Michael King, Lucas Luetge, and Jordan Romano — telling the stories behind their sliders.

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Michael King, New York Yankees

“I’ve been developing a slider since my freshman year of college. I was always bigger curveball, and then I had like seven different grips in college. I could never get consistent with anything — not consistent movement, not consistent location — and it just never felt comfortable. So I always used to say that I was a sinker/slider guy that didn’t have a slider.

“Once I got drafted in 2016, I said, ‘I don’t care what it does, I’m sticking with this grip so I can at least locate it.’ In 2018 is when I finally felt like I was consistent with the shape and the location. Then we got a new pitching director, Sam Briend, and he said, ‘Your slider is terrible. It’s located well, but it doesn’t have a good movement profile. Let’s fix it.’

“In 2019, I got hurt, and then it was the whole process of trying to change the movement profile. I wanted it to be more horizontal, more sweepy, like [Corey] Kluber’s, rather than the slider I had, which just had a little bit of depth. This year I’m finally figuring it out. Having Kluber on my team, I could talk to him about his grip, what his mentality is, what he’s trying to do at release.

“A big thing for me was, because I wanted to get that sweep and horizontal, I would get really rotational with my body to try to pull it sideways. [Kluber] said that’s the opposite of what you want to do. He said to just let the grip do the work. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Nolan Jones, 3B, Cleveland
Level & Affiliate: Triple-A Columbus Age: 23 Org Rank: 2 (66 over) FV: 50
Line: 2-for-4, HR, SB

Notes
Jones got off to a poor start and his overall line hasn’t yet recovered (he’s slugging just .405 on the season, the lowest since his first pro summer back in 2016), but he’s hit .253/.374/.495 over the last month, which is enough to quell overall concerns about him right now. He is a three true outcomes type of player and there may be long stretches where his average is hovering close to the Mendoza line but he’s going to walk a ton and hit for power while playing poor defense at several positions. Jones can be beaten with well-located fastballs at the top of the zone and he’s swung through a lot of them this year, but his swing decisions are typically very good. Per Synergy Sports, he has just a 19% O-Swing% so far this year, which would put him in the top five of qualified big leaguers. There’s real, elite plate discipline here and 70-grade power, but also a clearly exploitable hole in the swing at the top of the strike zone. How those things will interact at the big league level I truly don’t know, though it feels like that hole in the swing is a load-bearing Jenga block against big league pitchers who throw hard and often work at the top of the zone. Read the rest of this entry »

After hitting 62 home runs over his first two seasons in the big leagues — his age-21 and age-22 seasons, no less — Gleyber Torres was hailed as baseball’s next superstar. Even in lineups featuring Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and Gary Sánchez, no Yankees player hit more homers over the 2018 and ’19 seasons than Torres. And while subpar defense limited his overall ceiling, his 5.6 WAR over that stretch still represented an impressive output for a player that young.

In 2020, however, the power that defined Torres’ offensive production all but disappeared. Torres, who posted a .235 ISO in 1,088 plate appearances over his first two seasons, slashed just .243/.356/.368 last season, good for a .125 ISO. He homered just three times in 160 plate appearances, but improved plate discipline — his walk rate jumped 5.5 points compared to his career averages, while his strikeout rate fell 5.6 — drove what remained above-average offensive output. Torres still posted a 106 wRC+, but he couldn’t outhit his defense like he had the two years prior and posted just 0.2 WAR.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mitchell Kilkenny is quietly having a stupendous season. A second-round pick by the Colorado Rockies in 2018 out of Texas A&M, the 24-year-old right-hander boasts a 1.47 ERA over eight starts with the Low-A Fresno Grizzlies and the Spokane Indians. Moreover, he’s fanned 54 batters and issued just five free passes in 43 innings.

His plus command is a much-needed asset. Kilkenny is more finesse than power, his fastball ranging from the upper 80s to the low 90s. At least for now. Kilkenny threw harder as a collegian, but then came Tommy John surgery shortly after he was drafted, and last year’s cancelled minor-league season only muddied the waters. No matter. He fully expects his velocity to tick back up in time, and even if that doesn’t happen, his ability to mix, match and tunnel two- and four-seam fastballs, a slider, a curveball, and a changeup has proven to be plenty effective. As Kilkenny put it, “I might not be bright and flashy, but I’m having success.”

Prior to matriculating at Texas A&M where he double-majored in Renewable Natural Resources and Forestry, he excelled in English class at Houston Christian High School.

“My one fun fact is that I won two awards in creative writing contests,” Kilkenny told me. “One was for a class project where we were to write to a favorite author of ours. I picked Bill Watterson, for Calvin and Hobbes, because that was my favorite comic growing up, I love Calvin and Hobbes. Anyway, it was just a little piece about what the author had given me, which was some of the insights you can get out of a simple comic.” Read the rest of this entry »

The first time I saw a triple play, I was keeping score for one of my brother’s All-Star games. I don’t remember exactly how old I was, but for some reason 14 sounds about right, so let’s go with that. My exact age at the time is less important than the fact that I was old enough to have scored hundreds of baseball games. I had spent countless afternoons at practices with my dad and my brother. I had seen a lot of baseball and I knew enough to be momentarily confused by what had just happened.

The thing about a triple play is that even if you are paying complete attention to the game, there is a really good chance you are going to miss something. Maybe you catch one or two of the outs, but the play develops so quickly that if you are even remotely distracted when the ball is hit, it’s probably going to take a second for your brain to register that an ideal scoring situation for one team has been erased in mere seconds by the other.

You can spend your whole life watching your favorite team and never see them turn a triple play. I’ve been a Cubs fan for over 30 years, and in that time, the Cubs have turned just four triple plays. The only one I caught live was this disputed triple play from 2020, which many people rightly pointed out would have been overturned if the Reds had been able to review it. It was the first triple play the Cubs had turned in 23 years. It’s the only triple play I’ve ever seen them turn in real time and even though it’s on the record books, it didn’t really happen. There is a very real chance I could spend another decade or two waiting to cross “saw the Cubs turn a triple play” off my list. Read the rest of this entry »

Kevin Goldstein and I have updated the pro portion of the Top 100, which means we quickly reviewed the placement of players in the 50 FV tier and above, and considered who was not yet in those tiers but should be based on how they’ve looked during the first month of the 2021 season. I still have three total org audits to do — Milwaukee, Oakland and the Cubs — before I start peeling graduates off the list. Those will be completed shortly. You can find the updated list here.

Also, if you missed it, Kevin and I updated our draft rankings and posted a Mock Draft on Monday.

The lone change up near the top of the 100 is Riley Greene moving into the top 20; he’s in the mix with several other similarly-aged players with the talent to be consistent All-Stars, like Bobby Witt Jr., Julio Rodríguez, and Corbin Carroll.

DL Hall moved into the 55 FV tier on the strength of his stuff. He’s still walking a fairly high rate of opposing batters but just on the strength of his three plus pitches, could be a Haderesque relief weapon even if he can’t start. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Ethan Small, LHP, Milwaukee Brewers
Level & Affiliate: Double-A Biloxi  Age: 24   Org Rank: TBD   FV: 45
Line: 5.2 IP, 2 H, 2 BB, 0 R, 8 K

Notes
Small had a sketchy spring with the big club and has walked an uncharacteristically high number of hitters early on this year, but his last couple of starts have been more in line with expectations as he blows his low-90s fastball (which has big time carry) past opposing hitters. Small’s best secondary pitch remains his changeup and there were doubts about him ever finding a competent breaking ball when he was drafted. So far, his slider and curveball remain below average but that there are now two distinct breakers here is meaningful. He still projects as a No. 4/5 starter with a shot to make the back of the Top 100 as a 50 FV if the command and/or breaking balls tighten up. Read the rest of this entry »

Like many of you, I spent a good portion of Memorial Day watching baseball. I started with the Rays and Yankees, and was watching the YES Network feed when rookie shortstop Taylor Walls stepped to the plate. Immediately, the broadcast went to a graphic of who the Rays elected not to call up after they traded Willy Adames to the Brewers: Wander Franco, universally seen as the best prospect in the game, and the red-hot Vidal Bruján. It was a nice little troll, but while so much attention is deservedly paid to the Franco and Jarred Kelenic types before and after they debut, not every rookie has the same kind of prospect pedigree. With that in mind, here are nine prospects who aren’t getting the same kind of hype but are performing at a level that might earn them a big-league look this year. Read the rest of this entry »