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Szymborski’s 2024 Booms and Busts: Hitters

Gregory Fisher-USA TODAY Sports

With the start of the season just two weeks away, it’s time for one of my most beloved/hated/dreaded annual traditions: making my picks for breakouts and busts. For those of you who haven’t read one of these pieces in the past, these are my picks for the players who are the most likely to change the general consensus about them over the course of the 2024 season. And since we’re talking about generally low-probability outcomes — this isn’t a list of players with better or worse projections than last year — there’s no exercise with more potential to make me look super smart… or dumb. For every J.P. Crawford or Steven Kwan triumph, there’s an instance of Andrew Vaughn-induced shame.

As usual, let’s start with a quick table of the triumphs and humiliations of last year’s picks:

Szymborski Breakout Hitters – 2023
Player BA OBP SLG wRC+ WAR
Bryson Stott .280 .329 .419 101 3.9
Gleyber Torres .273 .347 .453 123 3.2
Seiya Suzuki .285 .357 .485 126 3.2
Oneil Cruz .250 .375 .375 109 0.3
Jesús Sánchez .253 .327 .450 109 1.3
Jordan Walker .276 .342 .445 116 0.2
Riley Greene .288 .349 .447 119 2.3
Andrew Vaughn .258 .314 .429 103 0.3

Szymborski Bust Hitters – 2023
Player BA OBP SLG wRC+ WAR
Paul Goldschmidt .268 .363 .447 122 3.7
Joey Gallo .177 .301 .440 104 0.7
Nick Castellanos .272 .311 .476 109 1.0
Yasmani Grandal .234 .309 .339 80 -0.1
C.J. Cron .248 .295 .434 82 -0.5
Josh Donaldson .152 .249 .418 78 0.0
Salvador Perez .255 .292 .422 86 -0.3
Christian Walker .258 .333 .497 120 3.8

It was about an average year. Vaughn and Christian Walker were the biggest misses, and Jordan Walker’s lousy defense kept him from being a win. Now on to this year’s picks.

The Breakouts

Spencer Torkelson, Detroit Tigers
Spencer Torkelson’s .233/.313/.446 line certainly didn’t knock any socks off, but he was a (relative) beast over the last two months of the season, hitting .244/.329/.526 with 16 homers. Now, I always warn folks to not read too much into monthly splits because there’s a tendency to think that splits coinciding with a good explanation are enough to overcome the small sample size issues, and because the endpoints are selective. The two-month split, however, isn’t why Torkelson’s here. Rather, there was a lot of evidence to suggest that he was underperforming his peripherals for most of the season up until that point. From the beginning of the season through August 8, Torkelson was the biggest zStats underachiever with significant playing time. Using only Statcast data with no information as to actual results, ZiPS thought that in that span Tork should have been an .868 OPS hitter; his actual OPS was .688. His OPS after that day? .921! Remember, Torkelson was a top-five prospect in baseball entering his rookie season in 2022, so even though his first year was a disaster, he’s not some 31-year-old beer leaguer coming out of nowhere.

Patrick Bailey’s Bat, San Francisco Giants
I can’t really call it a full breakout since Patrick Bailey already had an overall breakout season, thanks to defense that crushed even the loftiest of expectations. What puts him here is that people may be sleeping on his bat. No, I don’t think there’s any chance he starts hitting like Buster Posey, but Bailey’s otherworldly defense and lackluster bat (wRC+ of 78) appears to have pigeonholed him as a typical no-hit, all-glove backstop. I think that would be a mistake. Catchers have really weird developmental curves and I can’t stress enough how difficult it is for a catcher to nearly skip the high minors; he only played 28 games above A-ball before debuting in San Francisco. He hit .251/.351/.424 in the minors – again, not star quality but far from a total zero – and even without full developmental time offensively, he wasn’t completely destroyed by MLB pitching. In fact, he showed surprisingly solid plate discipline and power for a prospect with so little experience with the bat. Both ZiPS and our Depth Charts project Bailey to have an 82 wRC+, but I would not be shocked if he finished the season with a mark between 95 and 100, which, if his defense holds up, would make him an elite catcher overall.

Wyatt Langford, Texas Rangers
I don’t have a formal rule about it, but when ZiPS projects a player with little or no MLB experience to lead in a significant stat, I should take it very seriously since ZiPS doesn’t often go nuts about minor leaguers. The last player I can think of is Luis Arraez, who had a 21% chance of hitting .300 for his rookie season, according to ZiPS, which also projected him to have the highest batting average in baseball by 2020. ZiPS thinks Wyatt Langford is going to lead the majors in doubles and be one of the best offensive rookies in recent years. He was one of the few college hitters that ZiPS saw as nearly ready for the majors in 2023, and it liked him more than similarly advanced hitters Nolan Schanuel and Dylan Crews. Since ZiPS is my sidekick – or maybe it’s the other way around – I gotta have its back!

Anthony Volpe, New York Yankees
Anthony Volpe had a solid rookie season, but given his elite prospect status, it was a mild disappointment that he was only league average. Because of this, I think people are now underselling his offensive upside. He hit for a lot of power for a 22-year-old shortstop (21 home runs, .174 ISO). He also stole 24 bases on 29 tries, including successfully swiping each of his first 15 attempts, and was worth 3.5 base running runs. Two of his biggest problems were that he didn’t get on base enough (.283 OBP, 8.7 BB%) and struck out too much (27.8 K%), but these weren’t issues for him in the minors, and some of his fundamentals here are promising — he actually gets off to fewer 0-1 counts than most players with his strikeout rate. All of this suggests that he should figure things out with more major league experience. ZiPS also thinks he should have had a .312 BABIP given his Statcast data, instead of his actual mark of .259, which indicates that some of his woes were likely do to bad luck.

Keibert Ruiz, Washington Nationals
As with Volpe, I think Keibert Ruiz’s low BABIP, especially his .223 BABIP in the first half, made his season look a lot weaker than it was. ZiPS saw a .270 BABIP as a more reasonable number for him as a hitter in the first half, and that number continued to rise in the second half; he had a .285 zBABIP by the end of the season. Giving Ruiz back some of the batting average makes his actual .226/.279/.360 first-half line look a lot less abysmal and his .300/.342/.467 one in the second half look less like a fluke. In fact, except for a bit more power, most of the difference between his first half and second half was BABIP, so the halves weren’t quite as different as they appeared. Overall, his zStats line of .274/.330/.445 reflects a much more advanced hitter than we saw overall in 2023.

As I reminded people with Bailey, catchers tend to have a weird developmental pattern, and Ruiz has been no exception. Ruiz was a top prospect for a long time before hitting the Double-A wall, and his standing fell quite a bit in the eyes of prospect watchers. But he re-established himself as a top prospect to a degree that he was a huge part of Washington’s return when it traded Max Scherzer and Trea Turner to the Dodgers in 2021. I think people forget how young he still is at 25, and being older is not as big of a deal for a catching prospect than for someone at any other position.

Elly De La Cruz, Cincinnati Reds
Elly De La Cruz is a common breakout pick for obvious reasons, but I’m including him here specifically because his plate discipline wasn’t as bad as it looks from the raw stats. ZiPS actually thought, from his plate discipline data, that his strikeout rate should have been more like 27% instead of nearly 34%, enough to knock off 27 strikeouts. And given that he should be a high BABIP player, because he was the fastest man in baseball last year, putting more balls in play would benefit him more than it would most players. Overall, his zStats line last year was .273/.323/.449, compared to his actual line of .235/.300/.410, meaning the holes in his game aren’t quite as deep as his reputation would suggest.

And if you don’t buy that, he did show better plate discipline as the season progressed. I’ll again warn of the dangers of storylines that coincide with splits, but things like offensive swing percentage stabilize very quickly, mitigating some of the sample size issues. I don’t think it’s a stretch to look at the graph below and conclude that De La Cruz got caught up in the hype of his initial success and became too aggressive. As a result, he started struggling before coming to realize that he had gotten away from the approach that made him such a dynamic player in the first place.

Dominic Canzone, Seattle Mariners
One should be suspicious of Pacific Coast League stats, but Dominic Canzone’s .354/.431/.634 line last year was good even by PCL standards, enough for a 151 wRC+ in the league. However, that success didn’t follow him to the majors. He probably doesn’t have a lot of upside, but the rate of his improvement over the last couple of years suggests that there’s a chance he could have a nice little Geronimo Berroa-esque run.

Tucupita Marcano, San Diego Padres
This one is kind of a stretch because I don’t see an obvious path for Tucupita Marcano to get much playing time. He hasn’t hit at all in the majors yet, but he’s also had a weird minor league career; he’s still just coming off his age-23 season and has made some progress at translating his minor league plate discipline to the majors. ZiPS isn’t in on him, but Steamer is, and if he can managed his 94 wRC+ Steamer projection, along with a decent glove (though more at second base than short) and his speed, he’ll at least be interesting. Gotta have one out there pick, no?

The Busts

Cody Bellinger, Chicago Cubs
I don’t think Cody Bellinger will fall anywhere near the depths of his brutal 2021 season, but there are reasons to be suspicious of last year’s resurgence. He changed some of his mechanics and altered his approach, especially in two-strike counts, to make more contact, and those adjustments should be sustainable. It’s the power numbers that are a bit preposterous, to the degree I can’t think of any comparable player who managed to maintain this amount of power with mediocre-at-best exit velocity numbers. Statcast’s expected slugging percentage knocks 88 points off his actual one, and the ZiPS version (zSLG) is 20 points meaner than that.

J.T. Realmuto, Philadelphia Phillies
This one hurts, especially for a player ZiPS was so excited about in 2015-2016 before his breakout. But the decline in J.T. Realmuto’s offensive numbers in 2023 is supported by the drop in his peripheral numbers; he was just a bit worse at everything last year. He’s also a catcher entering his mid 30s. This is a gut thing more than a projection thing, but I suspect any kind of a leg injury would be a bigger deal for a surprisingly quick player like Realmuto, whose offensive stats already reflect his speed, than for your typical catcher.

Isaac Paredes, Tampa Bay Rays
Isaac Paredes is a good hitter, but is he really a 140 wRC+ guy? In both Statcast and ZiPS, Paredes had an even larger disparity between his actual power numbers and his peripherals than Bellinger. That said, there’s some good news, because unlike Bellinger, Paredes has done this before. There were 20 hitters in 2022 that hit at least five more homers than zHR expected, and 18 of them went on to hit fewer home runs in 2023. Paredes was one of the two who hit more (the other was Pete Alonso). Because Paredes has such a low hard-hit percentage, I’m not completely on board yet.

Lane Thomas, Washington Nationals
One thing about Cinderella stories is that people tend to overrate them after the ball. Most of these stories don’t involve permanent stardom; Joey Meneses and Frank Schwindel are two example of people getting too excited about an older breakout guy. Unlike Schwindel, Lane Thomas is probably still a league-average player, on the level of his 2021 and 2022 seasons, but I’d be shocked to see him hit 30 homers again. He’s probably a stopgap center fielder/fourth outfielder type, and I’m seeing him surprisingly high in some fantasy rankings.

Dominic Fletcher, Chicago White Sox
I was pretty shocked to see the White Sox trade Cristian Mena for Dominic Fletcher, even with the assumption that ZiPS is being too exuberant about Mena in ranking him at the back of the top 50 prospects. If you evaluate him the way our prospect team does, a fourth outfielder for a 45 FV prospect is quite a rich gain. And it’s looking like the Sox will give Fletcher a pretty good chance at getting the majority of the playing time in right field. It’s not as bad as the team’s irrational excitement about Oscar Colás last year, but there’s just not a lot of support for Fletcher’s maintaining his .301/.350/.441 line from his brief stint in the majors. That’s ridiculously higher than his zStats slash line of .249/.290/.376, which works out to a difference of 125 OPS points.


Sunday Notes: Orion Kerkering Studies for a Doctorate in Sliders

Orion Kerkering enjoyed a meteoric rise to the big leagues last year. The 2022 fifth-round draft pick began the campaign in Low-A Clearwater, and when
October rolled around he was taking the mound for the Philadelphia Phillies in the postseason. His numbers along the way were eye-catching. Pitching out of the bullpen at four minor-league levels, the University of South Florida product logged a 1.51 ERA and a 38.9% strikeout rate over 53-and-two-thirds innings. Called up in late September, he proceeded to fan six batters and allow one run in three appearances comprising the same number of innings.

That Kerkering was then entrusted to take the ball in the playoffs was a testament to his talent — a big part of which is a bat-missing offering even more impressive than his 98.6-mph fastball.

“That’s hard for me to do,” Kerkering replied when asked to describe his signature pitch. “I call it a slider and everyone says it’s one of the best ones out there. To that, I’m kind of, ‘OK, whatever. That’s fine.’ I just trust it as much as I can.”

The 22-year-old right-hander started throwing a slider as a Venice, Florida prep. Velocity-wise, it was 78-81 mph early on, and from there it got “faster and faster” to where it is now a crisp 86-87. The shape is basically the same — “with maybe a little more movement” — as is the grip.

“It’s kind of like how you teach a 12-year-old a curveball,” he said of the grip. “But instead of spinning on top of it, I spin on the 1:20-2:00 o’clock axis. If you think of [Clayton] Kershaw’s curveball, it will spin and then drop. Mine is the same way. It has the gyro spin, then it takes off.” Read the rest of this entry »


Szymborski’s 2024 Booms and Busts: Pitchers

Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports

With the start of the season a little over two weeks away, it’s time for one of my most beloved/hated/dreaded annual traditions: making my picks for breakouts and busts. For those of you who haven’t read one of these pieces in the past, these are my picks for the players who are the most likely to change the general consensus about them over the course of the 2024 season. And since we’re talking about generally low-probability outcomes — this isn’t a list of players with better or worse projections than last year — there’s no exercise with more potential to make me look super smart… or dumb. For every Jordan Montgomery or Dylan Cease who makes the breakouts list, there’s a Yusei Kikuchi or Sam Howard pick that I definitely wish I could forget I made!

As usual, let’s start with a quick table of the triumphs and humiliations of last year’s picks.

Szymborski Breakout Pitchers – 2023
Pitcher K/9 BB/9 HR/9 FIP ERA ERA- WAR
Hunter Greene 12.2 3.9 1.5 4.25 4.82 105 2.0
Brandon Pfaadt 8.8 2.4 2.1 5.18 5.72 130 0.3
Graham Ashcraft 6.9 3.2 1.4 5.06 4.76 103 1.5
Tanner Scott 12.0 2.8 0.3 2.17 2.31 53 2.8
Josiah Gray 8.1 4.5 1.2 4.93 3.91 89 1.6
Roansy Contreras 7.2 4.2 1.4 5.19 6.59 148 0.1
Dustin May 6.4 3.0 0.2 3.23 2.63 62 1.2
Brayan Bello 7.6 2.6 1.4 4.54 4.24 93 1.6

Szymborski Bust Pitchers – 2023
Pitcher K/9 BB/9 HR/9 FIP ERA ERA- WAR
Sandy Alcantara 7.4 2.3 1.1 4.03 4.14 94 2.9
Robbie Ray 8.1 13.5 0.0 5.96 8.10 198 0.0
Corey Kluber 6.9 3.4 2.8 7.11 7.04 155 -0.8
Johnny Cueto 6.7 2.6 2.9 7.02 6.02 137 -0.7
Craig Kimbrel 12.3 3.7 1.3 3.81 3.26 74 1.1
Mike Clevinger 7.5 2.7 1.1 4.28 3.77 87 2.2
Chris Bassitt 8.4 2.7 1.3 4.28 3.60 85 2.6
Kyle Freeland 5.4 2.4 1.7 5.30 5.03 100 1.2

It wasn’t a great year for breakouts, as the only one I’d really call a true win was Tanner Scott, who was one of the elite relievers in baseball. While some of the pitchers that didn’t really break out had silver linings — Hunter Greene pitched better than his actual ERA and Brandon Pfaadt had a kick-ass postseason — I can’t say that our collective opinions of any of the other pitchers changed drastically in 2023. Except maybe Roansy Contreras, in the wrong direction. The busts went quite a bit better — for me, anyway — with arguably six of the eight considered disappointments for their teams in 2023. But it’s certainly less satisfying to have your pessimism be confirmed rather than your optimism.

The Breakouts

Edward Cabrera, Miami Marlins
The fact that Edward Cabrera walks a lot of batters is, of course, a Very Big Deal. But there’s so much talent bubbling underneath the surface that it’s hard to not feel that if something clicks, he could be one of the top 10 pitchers in the league. Despite his frequent command problems, Cabrera misses bats, and not just by blowing away batters with velocity. Sometimes, these inconsistent young pitchers with velocity have trouble getting strike three – Nathan Eovaldi was a classic example of this early in his career – or batters don’t actually chase them out of the strike zone. These aren’t Cabrera’s problems, and he isn’t getting hit hard, either. His biggest problem has been falling behind in the count; his first-strike percentages in the majors have been dismal, and that’s an important number in terms of predicting future walks. But at least both he and his team are quite aware of this. The fact that he’s missed a lot of time due to injuries could also explain his command issues. For all of this organization’s flaws in other areas, it has a strong record of developing pitchers with similar profiles to Cabrera. With more experience, he should be able to figure things out at the big league level.

Alas, Cabrera’s case is complicated by a shoulder impingement that was diagnosed recently following an MRI. It remains to be seen how much time he’ll miss, though it seems certain he’ll start the season the IL. I like him enough that I’m still keeping him on this list; hopefully, his prognosis won’t get worse upon further evaluation.

Griffin Canning, Los Angeles Angels
Aside from Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout, the 2023 Angels were rarely watchable. So you’ll be forgiven if you didn’t realize that Griffin Canning quietly had a successful return last season from a stress fracture in his back that had kept him out of action for nearly two years. Not only was he a competent mid-rotation starter, he actually added a tick to his fastball and had a career best strikeout rate. As the season went on, hitters chased him out of the strike zone more frequently than in previous years, which is necessary for a pitcher like Canning, who will never dazzle anyone with pure velocity.

Canning still has a tendency to leave a pitch hanging in the wrong place – especially with his curve – but in his second full season back, I’m hopeful he can make progress there. I think there’s a real shot he ends the season considered a solid no. 2 starter instead of an afterthought.

Graham Ashcraft and Hunter Greene, Cincinnati Reds
Screw it, I’m taking them again! Since I’m sort of cheating by having the same reasoning two years in a row, I’ll make them split a single breakout pick. Both still have two wipeout pitches, but each still has an issue holding him back. Greene had trouble at times last season when he left his four-seamer over the middle of the plate; despite his heater’s 98.3 mph average velocity, nine of the 19 home runs he allowed came on four-seamers in the heart zone. Meanwhile, Ashcraft struggled to strike batters out. Both pitchers have made significant tweaks to their repertoires. Ashcraft added a changeup, and Greene started throwing a curveball and a splitter in the offseason. They can’t both not break out again, right? If it doesn’t work out, I may take them for a third year simply out of stubbornness.

Nick Pivetta, Boston Red Sox
No name at the top of 2023 stuff leaderboard may be more surprising than Nick Pivetta’s, especially if, like most people, you didn’t pay a lot of attention to the Red Sox in the second half of last season. Pivetta lost his starting job in mid-May, went to the bullpen and added a sweeper. The new pitch turned his season around and he returned to the rotation for good in September, making five starts to close the season. In those final five outings, he recorded 38 strikeouts and just five walks across 30 innings. Most encouragingly, Pivetta pitched seven scoreless innings in each of his final two starts. He had the fourth-biggest jump in Stuff+ from the first half to the second half. And you can see it in the results.

ZiPS is less optimistic about Pivetta than I am. I’m going to call ZiPS wrong on this one, and hope I won’t have to eat those words in six months.

Hunter Brown, Houston Astros
With his six-pitch repertoire and top-prospect status, Hunter Brown was an exciting addition to the Astros rotation last year. At times, he looked worthy of the hype — he struck out more than 10 batters per nine innings — but overall he was a bit of a disappointment, as he posted a 5.09 ERA in 31 outings (29 starts). That said, there are signs that he was a bit unlucky: Opponents had a high BABIP against him, and he allowed home runs at a much higher rate (1.50 HR/9) than he had at any point as a professional. Additionally, considering he threw nearly 30 more innings (155.2) than in any previous season (126.1), he may have just been gassed at the end of the year. Through his first 23 games (22 starts), which spanned 125.1 innings, he had a 4.16 ERA and 3.92 FIP. Over his final eight games (seven starts), he posted an abysmal 8.90 ERA and 6.26 FIP, with more than a third of the home runs he gave up (nine of 26) coming during that final stretch.

MacKenzie Gore, Washington Nationals
Of the three true outcomes, home runs have always had a weird relationship with pitchers. Strikeout and walk rates tend to be stable numbers, so it’s typically meaningful whenever they fluctuate drastically, whereas home run rates are extremely volatile. So volatile, in fact, that xFIP, a stat that has one of the more bizarre central conceits — “Let’s just assume that every pitcher has the same ability to prevent homers.” — actually has predictive value relative to stats that take a pitcher’s home run rate as gospel. As a result, “Let’s look for a pitcher who is pretty good but allows too many damn homers,” has proven to be a sneaky good way to predict breakouts, such as Corbin Burnes and Dodgers-era Andrew Heaney. MacKenzie Gore misses bat and he’s made great strides in improving his command, so I’m betting that he’ll wrangle the round-trippers too.

Shintaro Fujinami, New York Mets
OK, it’s admittedly scary to put Mets in the breakout category, especially a Met who had an ERA above seven his first season in the majors. Shintaro Fujinami’s seven starts last year were an unmitigated disaster, but he pitched a good deal better from the bullpen. Now, his 5.14 ERA as a reliever isn’t exactly cause to hang the Mission Accomplished banner, but the .209/.319/.351 line he allowed in relief comes out to a fairly respectable runs created ERA of 3.70. Given that, his velocity, and his history in Japan, I’m willing to give him a mulligan for 2023. A good reclamation project for the Mets.

Kyle Nelson, Arizona Diamondbacks
Have you seen his slider? The double whammy of a very high home run rate (12 in 56 innings) and a high BABIP (.324) served to keep Kyle Nelson’s ERA relatively high in what could very well have been his breakout season. And even then, all it took was a brutal September to dive bomb his seasonal numbers. If Nelson finishes with an ERA above four in 2024 over at least 30 innings, I’ll eat a full order of Cincinnati chili, and as those that are familiar with my can attest, that’s not something I relish doing. No, I’m not promising something crazy like eating my hat or a 1995 Ford Taurus.

The Busts

Gerrit Cole, New York Yankees
Let’s get two things out of the way first: This has nothing to do with the sudden MRI for his elbow, and this doesn’t mean I think Gerrit Cole will be a lousy pitcher. But there are some warning signs in his 2023 profile, despite his winning the AL Cy Young, and I think all the projection systems have been picking up on it. A sudden drop in strikeout percentage is usually a blaring klaxon, and it was supported by a similar decline in his plate discipline stats; the contact rate against Cole was his highest since he played for the Pirates. And whereas he had a couple weirdly high home run seasons while pitching well, that metric was oddly low in 2023 and it was not matched with changes in exit velocity or fly ball/groundball tendencies. In other words, his low home run rate hid several indicators of a looming decline, and we can’t count on that coverup to continue. I still think Cole is a top 10 pitcher, but it’s hardly a guarantee that he’ll be a five-win pitcher again this season.

Blake Snell, Someone Eventually
Hey, if I’m going to pick one Cy Young winner, why not go for the pair? Blake Snell will keep striking out tons of guys, but he gives up a lot of free bases, and one of the key factors that kept his ERA so low was some fairly extreme splits with runners on vs. bases empty, and that isn’t a long-term characteristic. Also, his .256 BABIP allowed won’t be easily repeated. Sidestepping the WAR vs. RA9-WAR fights after about five months of them, Snell’s not likely to be the best pitcher in the league in 2024. And it doesn’t appear that teams are jumping at the opportunity to pay him as if that were the case, either; I doubt his agent, Scott Boras, would be publicly expressing Snell’s willingness to sign a short-term contract otherwise. Snell’s a very good pitcher, but he’s just not this good.

Bryan Woo, Seattle Mariners
I’m a fan of Bryan Woo, and he certainly had a terrific rookie season for a pitcher with almost no experience in the high minors. He advanced so quickly that I didn’t even have a preseason projection for him last year! But despite the success and little grumbling from any of the projection systems, I’m not quite sure he’s a finished product yet. One worry is how fastball reliant he was. Lefties absolutely torched Woo in the majors last year, and it’s easier to simply dismiss that when it’s not from a pitcher without a killer offering to fight against the platoon disadvantage. At least he’s certainly aware that he needs to develop his changeup more. If Bryce Miller’s splitter works out, maybe Woo should consider cribbing his notes.

Matt Manning, Detroit Tigers
I buy the Tarik Skubal dominance, but with Matt Manning, not so much. Low strikeout pitchers can survive in the majors, but the ones who do are generally the ones who keep the ball down and don’t get hit very hard. Manning doesn’t really do either at this point. The numbers ZiPS uses aren’t the same as Statcast’s xStats, but Manning’s 5.00 zFIP was nearly as bleak as the xERA that Statcast produced (5.48). I’d say “when in doubt, learn a splitter,” but that’s mostly because of my long-term stanning of Kevin Gausman. I’m generally optimistic about the Tigers this year, but I think Manning’s ceiling looks pretty low from here.

Emilio Pagán, Cincinnati Reds
I’ve already talked about Emilio Pagán this offseason, but it wouldn’t show a lot of guts if I didn’t put the pitcher I deemed “my least favorite signing of the offseason” on my busts lists, now would it? If anything Pagán is the exact reverse of the Burnes-Heaney rule I talked about in the breakouts. It’s true that last year, he set career worst marks in contact rate against, average exit velocity, and strikeout rate, but he also had the lowest home run rate of his career, allowing five homers instead of his normal baker’s dozen or so. And he’s going to play his home games in a bandbox (the Great American Ballpark) for the first time ever. Pagán had the fifth-lowest batting average against in the majors on barrels/solid contact hits last year, and compared to the four pitchers ahead of him (Alexis Díaz, Will Vest, Trevor May, and Devin Williams), Pagán allowed those types of contact at nearly twice the rate. As a whole big leaguers batted .614 on barrels and solid contact hits in 2023. Pagán is likable and generally popular with fans, and I’m certainly not rooting against him, but he has a history of being worse than Bill Murray at stopping gophers.


Sunday Notes: Orioles Prospect Coby Mayo Continues To Mash

Coby Mayo is No. 23 on our Top 100, and a power-packed stroke is a big reason why. Drafted by the Baltimore Orioles out of Parkland, Florida’s Stoneman Douglas High School in 2020, the 6-foot-5, 230-pound third baseman is coming off of a 2023 season where he bashed 29 home runs while logging a 156 wRC+ between Double-A Bowie and Triple-A Norfolk. Moreover, he did so as a 21-year-old.

His maturation as a hitter has been more nuanced than pronounced. When I talked to Mayo in March 2022, he told me that he doesn’t “like to think about hitting too much,” and has “always been a see-ball-hit-ball kind of guy.” For the most part, that hasn’t really changed.

“I try not to think too much when I get into the box,” Mayo said when reminded of those words. “That’s stayed the same. A lot of people will get into the box and start overthinking. They’ll try to manipulate their swings here and there. I just try to have a good approach, a game plan, and kind of let that take over.”

The promising slugger does feel like he has a better understanding of his swing than he did two years ago. When things are going well, he knows what he’s doing right. When things are going wrong, he understands why and can adjust accordingly. The swing itself has changed since we first spoke. Mayo explained that his load, hand placement, and bat path are all “a little bit different” — albeit in a subtle manner. As he put it, “You can’t really notice them with the naked eye.” Creating more loft and allowing him to better use the entire field have been the goals behind the tweaks.

One thing that hasn’t changed is what our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen has descried as a “sometimes ugly looking cut, which has a strange, choppy stride… an odd look, but it works for him.” Read the rest of this entry »


The Tigers Rotation Is Suddenly Flush with Options

Junfu Han/USA TODAY NETWORK

A funny thing happened in Detroit towards the end of the 2023 season: In September, the Tigers were tied with the Minnesota Twins for the best record in the American League. Tarik Skubal’s breakout and Spencer Torkelson’s second-half rampage helped them finish second in the AL Central, albeit nine games behind Minnesota. You may remember the excitement surrounding the team after their hot finish to the 2021 season and subsequent spending spree in free agency. With that false start in mind, it’s wise not to read too much into the final month of the 2023 season, but it does seem like the organization has actually progressed towards breaking out of their rebuilding phase. Read the rest of this entry »


Player’s View: Consuming Baseball, Then and Now

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Most professional baseball players were fans of the sport before it became their job. Much like the rest of us, they grew up following their favorite teams and players, watching them on TV and, to varying degrees, reading about them in print or online. Then things changed. With few exceptions, primarily due to new routines and responsibilities, the way they follow the game is now different — in many cases, drastically so. No longer fans, these players have found themselves consuming baseball in a whole new way.

So how does then compare to now? I put that question to 10 players. Here is what they had to say.

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Grayson Rodriguez, Baltimore Orioles pitcher: “As a kid growing up, I would just watch my favorite teams. I watched a lot of Astros and Rangers; I wouldn’t really watch a lot of other teams unless it was the playoffs or the World Series. Being in the game now, I try to watch everybody. I try to watch different pitchers. I watch their starts. Read the rest of this entry »


An Ace in the Making, Tarik Skubal Attacks With a Varied Arsenal

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Tarik Skubal is slated to take the mound for the Detroit Tigers on Opening Day when the season begins three weeks from Thursday. Four years into his big league career, the 27-year-old southpaw is emerging as one of the top left-handed starters in baseball. After missing the first three months of last season recovering from flexor tendon surgery, he was one of the best pitchers in baseball upon making his season debut, on July 4. Skubal fashioned a 2.80 ERA, a 2.00 FIP, and a 32.9% strikeout rate — as well as a stingy 4.5% walk rate and a .199 BAA — in 15 starts comprising 80 1/3 innings. His 3.3 WAR from July through the end of the season led all pitchers in that span. And there is reason to believe that he is still getting better, as he adds fastball velocity — he’s hit 99 mph this spring, up from his average of 95.8 mph last season — and fine tunes his five-pitch arsenal.

Skubal sat down to talk pitching at the Tigers’ spring training facility in Lakeland, Florida last week.

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David Laurila: Looking at your numbers, I saw that your ground ball rate (51.6% last year) keeps getting higher and higher, and your walk rate keeps getting lower and lower. How have you made those things happen?

Tarik Skubal: “I think it all kind of just stems from confidence and the complete arsenal. When you can throw five pitches over the plate, in the zone, and just go right after guys, you tend to get more uncomfortable at-bats. If you can throw different pitches in different counts, hitters have to be a little bit defensive and aren’t getting their A swings off as often. That’s kind of my approach, and I think it impacts the results I’m getting.”

Laurila: That makes sense, as you don’t throw a lot of sinkers… Read the rest of this entry »


Sunday Notes: Daulton Varsho Goes Pull-Side, Thinks Low and Hard

Daulton Varsho’s last two seasons were directionally different than his first two seasons.The left-handed-hitting outfielder put up a pedestrian 37.8% pull rate in 2020-2021, and in 2022-2023 that number climbed to a lofty 52.6%. Apprised of the marked jump by colleague Davy Andrews prior to my recent visit to Toronto Blue Jays camp, I asked Varsho if it was spurred by a purposeful change of approach. He claimed that it wasn’t.

“I think it’s just how teams are pitching me,” said Varsho, whose pull rate in the two-year span was the highest among qualified hitters. “You don’t want to force the ball to any certain field — it has to sort of naturally happen — and I’ve been getting pounded in. You also have to figure out the changeup away and righties throwing sliders in. You don’t really want to force those to left-center or left field, because they end up being fly outs.”

Davy had also informed me that Varsho’s pull-side results have been far better than his opposite-field results, which came as anything but news to the 27-year-old Marshfield, Wisconsin native. My mentioning it elicited a matter-of-fact response.

“That’s where success happens,” said Varsho. “It’s where my swing is the most successful, and where I can do the most damage.”

It’s no secret that catching pitches out front and driving them in the air goes a long way toward producing power numbers, and not only has Varsho gone yard 47 times over the past two campaigns, just one of the blasts was to the opposite field. My asking if he’s made a concerted effort to lift the ball led to the following exchange: Read the rest of this entry »


The Weakest Positions on American League Contenders, 2024 Edition

Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports

Even with an extra day in February this year, Matt Chapman remains unsigned, his free agency having lingered past the start of exhibition season. Admittedly, the soon-to-be-31-year-old third baseman is coming off of an uneven season marked by a late slump related to a finger injury, but he’s been reliably productive throughout his seven-year career, with good-to-great defense bolstering his value at the plate. Meanwhile, his former (?) team, the Blue Jays — who reportedly offered him a nine-figure extension before he hit free agency — have cobbled together an uninspiring solution at third base.

Chapman isn’t the only remaining free agent who could provide a significant upgrade, but he’s by far the best position player remaining on the shelves, and the combination of his absence and the Blue Jays’ needs stands out as I turn to the American League edition of my roundup of the most glaring holes on contending teams (the National League edition is here). For this exercise, I’ve highlighted the spots that per our projections — which combine ZiPS and Steamer as well as playing time estimates from RosterResource — fall below a combined 2.0 WAR on teams whose Playoff Odds sit at or above 25%.

Why 2.0 WAR? That’s the rough equivalent of average play across a full season, but because of the general tendency to overproject playing time and keep even the weakest teams with positive WARs at each position (in reality over 10% of them will finish in the red), our position player Depth Chart values at the team level are inflated by about 20%. That is, instead of having a total of 1,000 WAR projected across the 30 teams, and 57% of that (570 WAR) allocated to position players, our Depth Chart values currently add up to about 682 WAR. Thus, I am discounting the team values that you see on the Depth Chart pages by 20%, and focusing on the lowest-ranked contenders among those whose adjusted values fall below that 2.0 WAR threshold. The individual WAR values cited will remain as they are on the Depth Chart pages, however, and it’s worth noting that many of the players here — particularly youngsters with shorter track records, including some from our Top 100 Prospects list — don’t project particularly well but still have considerable upside. Read the rest of this entry »


Sunday Notes: Synced Up and Simplified, Mick Abel is Watching in a New Way

In terms of rankings and projection, Mick Abel is much the same pitcher he was 24 months ago. When the now-22-year-old right-hander was featured in February 2022 during our annual Prospect Week, he was No. 1 in the Philadelphia Phillies system and No. 20 on our Top 100. Fast forward to the present, and he is No. 2 in the Philadelphia Phillies system and No. 22 on our Top 100. As Eric Longenhagen explained in his recent writeup, “Abel didn’t have an especially good 2023… [but] still has most all of the ingredients needed to be an impact starter, he just isn’t totally baked yet.”

How has the 2019 first-rounder out of Beaverton, Oregon’s Jesuit High School matured the most since our conversation two years ago? I asked him that question at Philadelphia’s spring training facility in Clearwater, Florida on Friday.

“I’d say it’s the separation of over-the-rubber and over-the-plate mentality, knowing how to distinguish between the two,” replied Abel, who had a 27.5% strikeout rate but also a 13.5% walk rate in 108-and-two-third innings with Double-A Reading last year. “Whether it’s in the bullpen or on the game-mound, knowing when and how to make adjustments without getting too deep in my head about it.

“Staying more direct and knowing that if I get too long with my arm action in back I’m going to be a little later to the plate,“ Abel said when asked to elaborate on the actual mechanics. “I want to make sure that everything is on time going down the hill.” Read the rest of this entry »