The first weekend of the 2019 NCAA baseball season is in the books, and the two of us were out in Georgia and an uncharacteristically chilly Arizona to see players. Presented here is the first of what will be a periodic collection of notes from games we’ve seen, as well as some things we’ve learned over the phone. We plan on updating our draft rankings in a week, after we have two weeks of college games under our belts; many of the players whose stock has changed are noted below.

An Update on College Pitching
In last week’s pre-season draft ranking update, we maligned the depth of the college pitching in this year’s draft. While the first weekend wasn’t universally sunny for college hurlers (more on that below), there were some strong performances. The game most heavily-attended by scouts in Arizona was Stanford left-hander Erik Miller’s start on Sunday (5IP, 4H, 2BB, 9K). Miller was consistently in the mid-90s last summer on Cape Cod, but was walk-prone. Sunday, his fastball was 89-92 for the meat of his start, but he threw strikes and was reaching back for 93-95 when he wanted it, even in his final few innings. His vertical arm slot (if you were to imagine a clock face, Miller’s arm swings through the 1 o’clock position) generates efficient backspin direction on the baseball and also creates tough plane for hitters both at the top and bottom of the strike zone, and he can get outs simply by varying the vertical location of his heater.

Miller’s changeup is his best secondary. When trying to fade it away from right-handed hitters, it was fairly easy to identify out of his hand, but beneath the strike zone it was often plus. At 82-86 mph, it was just bottoming out beneath hitters’ barrels and into the dirt, garnering several ugly swings. The better of his two breaking balls is a firm, mid-80s cut-action slider. It doesn’t have the vertical depth typical of a bat-missing slider (again, if you imagine a clock face, his slider moves from the 2 to the 8), but Miller uses it in a variety of creative ways (for early-count strikes, back door vs. righties, away from lefties) and it’s consistently average, flashing above. His loopy, 80 mph curveball gives hitters a different look, and is best deployed as a first-pitch surprise to get ahead of hitters looking to cheat on his fastball.

As a quick comparison, Stanford lefty Kris Bubic was drafted 40th overall last year as a changeup-heavy lefty, and Miller is much better than Bubic was when Eric saw him last year. With a future plus change, above-average slider, and average everything else, Miller is off to a start befitting a first rounder.

Scouts indicated to us that Texas Christian LHP Nick Lodolo was throwing harder in the fall, and he was mostly 92-94 on Friday after sitting 88-92 in each of Eric’s looks last year. The fastball didn’t miss many bats, though, and while Lodolo held Cal State Fullerton in check for five innings, he only struck out two. His slurvy, upper-70s breaking ball was often plus and he has great feel for dotting it on the edge of the plate; otherwise his usage was fairly limited. He threw just two, maybe three changeups and all were below-average. Lodolo has a well-made frame similar to Tyler Glasnow’s. His delivery is very smooth, there’s a lot to like, and the lefty velo and spin combo is enticing, but there is more pitch development necessary here than is typical for a college arm.

Meanwhile, TCU lefty Brandon Williamson seems to have made the right decision by not signing as a 36th round junior college draftee last year. He struck out seven Vanderbilt hitters in 3.2 innings on Sunday, and utilized four good pitches to do so. He was up to 93 but mostly sat 89-90, and commanded all of his secondary stuff. It took him a while to get feel for his changeup but once he did, it was great, and Williamson sometimes threw it three times in a row without diminished effectiveness. It was 84-86 mph and had surprising tail given Williamson’s vertical arm slot. He has advanced command of an average, low-80s slider, gave hitters a different look with a slower curveball a few times, and threw any pitch in any count. He executed several unpredictable sequences, and fought back with secondary stuff a few times when he had fallen behind hitters. We don’t yet know if he can retain this kind of stuff deep into games, but what he showed Sunday was better than some of last year’s third round pitchability college arms.

West Virginia righty Alek Manoah started the season ranked 44th on our latest rankings but will be higher in the re-rank next week after a loud season debut vs. Kennesaw State. The report on Manoah coming into this game was that he didn’t have the starter traits needed to comfortably see him turning a lineup over multiple times, but flashed two plus pitches in his mid-90s heater and slider. There was also some thought that he may need to watch his weight. His body composition was strong and likely contributed to improved feel to go along with the same high octane stuff: he sat 95-97 mph and located a 65-grade slider, occasionally mixing in an average changeup over the first few innings.

Manoah still had some reliever tendencies but they didn’t seem like long-term issues. Kennesaw State couldn’t hit 94-97 mph up in the zone, so Manoah just kept throwing it there and getting results. In pro ball, he’ll need to mix it up more, but you can’t blame him for taking the shortest path to 13 K’s over 6 innings. He held his stuff, sitting 93-96 just before he exited the game, and while his fastball was more of a blunt instrument, he showed good feel for locating his slider for a strike on his arm side and burying it as a chase pitch to his glove side. His control was average to slightly above and you can project the command to average if you believe he can be more precise with his fastball when he needs to be. When Manoah got in trouble a couple times, he kept his composure and worked his way out of it. Chatting with scouts and comparing this new version of Manoah to other players we just ranked, it seems like he’ll move into the 20’s along with rising, massive college arms like Jackson Rutledge and Miller.

Ball State RHP Drey Jameson, a draft-eligible sophomore, didn’t allow a single hit over six innings against Stanford on opening night. He was up to 97, flashed a plus breaking ball, and threw a few good changeups in the 88-90mph range, including one that struck out possible first round outfielder Kyle Stowers. Jameson is wiry and a little undersized, but is very athletic, has feel for locating the breaking ball, and his delivery is pretty deceptive. He could go in the first round.

**Editor’s note: Drey Jameson was originally in the 2020 section of this article, but he is a 2019 Draft-eligible Sophomore due to his age (he’s 21 on draft day)**

2020s
Jameson was opposed by Stanford right-hander Brendan Beck, who arguably out-pitched Jameson with lesser stuff. Beck was a two-way player in high school and his velocity was in the mid-80s as a prep senior and during his freshman year at Stanford. It’s not 88-90, but he hides the ball well and has plus command of a late-breaking curveball. Some other arms to watch for 2020 are Cal State Fullerton righty Tanner Bibee (90-92, some above-average curveballs, unleashed a diving split change late in his start, threw a ton of strikes) Vanderbilt lefty Hugh Fisher (94-97 with cut action, some plus sliders), and Virginia righty Griff McGarry (was wild but 92-93, good arm action, flashed plus curveball, change, average slider).

2021s
We had first round grades on right-handers Kumar Rocker and Mike Vasil when they were draft-eligible high schoolers last year. Vasil ended up at Virginia, Rocker at Vanderbilt. They each had rocky first collegiate starts. Vasil pitched pretty well but his velocity is down. He was 88-92 with feel for locating several fringe secondaries. Rocker’s first bolt was 97, then he settled into the 93-95 range for the rest of the first inning, but got hit around. His breaking ball was also well-struck several times and his upper-80s changeup was well-below average. It’s too early to be down on either of them; this is just a snapshot of where each of their stuff is right now.

On the Phone
Arizona St. righty Alec Marsh was up to 94 and threw four pitches for strikes on Friday. Gonzaga righty Casey Legumina has had a velocity spike. He used to sit 88-90 but was up to 97 over the weekend. Baylor catcher Shea Langliers is 11th on THE BOARD, but will be out for weeks with an injury that usually impacts power for a season or more, which is a hole in Langliers’ profile currently. Our 10th 2019 draft prospect, Duke lefty Graeme Stinson, was 89-93 in his season debut, down a good bit from his best relief outings when he’s be into the upper-90s. Stinson is moving to the rotation this year and maintaining his stuff over longer outings and showing more starter traits is key, so this is a down first note on the season.

On the other hand, our 58th-ranked prospect, Elon righty George Kirby, had lots of preseason late first round buzz and will now move into that range when we update our rankings next week. This week, he was up to 96, showing three above average-to-plus pitches and starter traits. Fresno State righty Ryan Jensen (who just missed the Top 100) threw a solid five innings on Saturday and is on scouts’ radar after hitting 99 mph in the fall with plus sink; the velo was still there, with him sitting 96-98 mph in his first inning. 2020 draft-eligible LSU freshman righty Cole Henry was 94-97 mph in his college debut.

On the prep side, there’s been a lot of velo in Florida lately. Our 27th prospect, righty Matthew Allan, was 93-97 and flashed a plus breaking ball Monday night; one scout said he was in the top half of the first round for him now. Our 49th-ranked prospect, lefty Hunter Barco, was 90-95 with an above average breaker and changeup, throwing from a higher arm slot (a concern scouts had over the summer) that delivered a tighter slider. Further down the list, our 93rd-ranked prospect, righty Joseph Charles, was 92-95 mph with a plus-flashing curveball in his first start last week, which helps his profile as a prep righty who’s 19.2 years old on draft day. Lastly, prep righties with velo in Texas are like death and taxes, and Houston-area righty J.J. Goss (57th in the 2019 rankings) has been 93-95 mph with a plus slider in his early starts, including on Saturday against our 36th-ranked 2020 draft prospect, catcher Drew Romo.

Read the rest of this entry »

Remember Daisuke Matsuzaka? The right-hander was Boston’s big-ticket pickup back in 2006, with promises of a gyroball that never panned out. After his injury-plagued tenure in the majors ended, Dice-K went back to Japan and, after a brief, injury-induced hiatus, settled in as a decent mid-rotation starter for the Chunichi Dragons. His 2018 season earned him Comeback Player of the Year honors.

Then things took a turn.

If you’re at all familiar with Matsuzaka’s time with the Red Sox, you know that he wasn’t exactly a workhorse in Boston, with injuries ranging from Tommy John surgery to neck stiffness attenuating his MLB career. But the injury the 38-year-old suffered most recently can only be described as bizarre. Per the Japan Times:

Chunichi Dragons pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka took leave from his Central League club on Sunday in order to treat a right shoulder injury sustained when an overzealous fan pulled his arm last week.

Yes, that’s right – a fan of Dice-K thought it would be a swell idea to pull on the hurler’s right arm during a fan outreach event. The fan evidently pulled so hard that it caused inflammation in the right-hander’s shoulder, resulting in Chunichi shutting him down. Daisuke remains quite popular in Japan, however, leading some to speculate that Chunichi might actually sue the fan who pulled on the pitcher’s arm – and that the fan might even see jail time. Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for more than half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Chicago Cubs.

Batters

The outfield remains the primary weakness of the team, at least in ZiPS’ digital eyes. Consisting of Kyle Schwarber (.233/.343/.472, 1.6 WAR projection), a center field combo of Albert Almora Jr. (.271/.308/.383, 1.0 WAR) and Ian Happ (.236/.335/.435, 1.4 WAR), Jason Heyward (.260/.331/.389, 1.9 WAR), and the occasional appearances by Ben Zobrist (.261/.335/.386), the group is serviceable, but unimpressive. The spares (generally Happ and Zobrist) are at least adequate, and the outfield isn’t at the Darren Aronofsky-esque levels of bleakness as in San Francisco, which is something. Read the rest of this entry »

In an interview that ran here in March 2017, Dick Williams went in depth on innovation, infrastructure, and the rebuild his team had begun a year-and-a-half earlier. The Cincinnati Reds’ then GM — he’s now the President of Baseball Operations — told me, “In another couple of seasons, we expect to be competing again.”

The timeline was met. Baseball’s oldest professional franchise, as suggested by moves they made over the offseason (and confirmed by Williams), is no longer focusing primarily on the future. The focus is on the here and now.

Williams expounded on the moves the team has made, and on what it takes to build a sustainably strong organization, at the onset of spring training.

———

Williams on moving on from the rebuild: “We’re now in a period of payroll growth. A few years ago we stepped back and looked at which areas of the business we needed to invest in away from major league payroll, and we were able to accomplish a lot of those goals. We significantly increased the resources we were providing to player development. We added coaches. We added new roles in analytics. That had been the focus. Now we’re ready to really focus on the talent we’ve got at the major league level.

“We obviously have a lot of room for improvement coming off of last year, but we knew that we were going to have some payroll to spend, and the farm system is stronger. We anticipated going into this winter with a focus on adding talent to the major league level, to help us compete. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Manny Machado signing with the Padres and what the news means for the free-agent market and the futures of the NL West, the Phillies, and Bryce Harper, then preview the 2019 Los Angeles Angels (31:34) with The Athletic’s Angels beat writer, Fabian Ardaya, and the 2019 Milwaukee Brewers (1:02:42) with The Athletic’s Brewers beat writer, Robert Murray, plus a postscript on Machado and Don Newcombe.

Audio intro: The Frames, "Finally"
Audio interstitial 1: The Minus 5 (Feat. Ben Gibbard), "I See Angels"
Audio interstitial 2: Chip Taylor, "Why Milwaukee"
Audio outro: Led Zeppelin, "Ten Years Gone"

Link to Ben’s Machado piece
Link to Jeff’s Machado piece
Link to Padres celebration thread
Link to Ben’s Calhoun article
Link to Baseball Mogul offer
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

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According to those estimated franchise values at Forbes, the San Diego Padres are in the bottom half of baseball’s 30 organizations. Perhaps even more relevant, the Padres are routinely among baseball’s bottom ten spenders. The Padres have pretty much never behaved like a big-market team, and after long enough, that creates a pretty rigid impression. One thinks of the Padres the way one might think of, say, the Reds. When it comes to high-profile free agents, you feel comfortable ruling them out. Why would you think the Padres would be a player?

Of course, teams can choose to change. And as much as we might still think of free agency as directing players toward certain big spenders, you never know when someone might surprise you. One offseason ago, the biggest free-agent contract went to Eric Hosmer, and it was given by the Padres. And now this offseason, the biggest free-agent contract so far is going to Manny Machado, and it’s being given by the Padres. According to reports, the deal will be worth $300 million over ten years, with an opt-out after year five. It’s close enough to the contract we’ve always expected. I just don’t think anyone really expected the team.

The Padres read the market, and they chose to be aggressive, where other clubs were more cautious. Now the door could be open a year ahead of schedule.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives and careers. 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 — Ray Black, Tanner Scott, and Matt Strahm— on how they learned and developed their sliders.

———

Ray Black, San Francisco Giants

“When I was in high school, I had the privilege of working with Andy Ashby, who is pretty much a legend around Wilkes-Barre. We messed around a little bit with a slider at the time, but I really started developing it more coming back from my Tommy John surgery. I blew out my senior year.

“My curveball was too big, too loopy, and easy to distinguish. I think I was throwing it almost 20 mph slower than my fastball. When you’re younger, you see this big breaking ball, somebody is diving out of the way, and you’re like, ‘Man, that’s nasty.’ But when you get up to the higher levels, you realize it’s more deception; it’s not just movement. I tried to develop a slider like a cutter. That’s what I think when I throw my slider: cutter. If I don’t, I always end up trying to make it bigger than it should be. I need to try to keep it tight, keep it small. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a rare day when a player looks back on a championship-winning season with something approaching regret, but then, Dustin Pedroia didn’t get much chance to contribute to the Red Sox during their World Series-winning 2018 campaign. After being limited to 105 games in 2017, largely due to ongoing discomfort in his left knee, Pedroia underwent an experimental cartilage restoration procedure that was expected to cost him the first couple months of last season. He returned in late May, but played just three games before inflammation forced him back to the injured list, and he spent the rest of the season as a bystander as the Sox overcame his absence while romping to their fourth title in the last 15 seasons.

“I don’t regret doing it, but looking back and knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have done it,” Pedroia told reporters in Fort Myers last week, referring to the surgery, called osteochondral allograft transfer surgery, which involves grafting cartilage from a cadaver. While basketball and soccer players had undergone the procedure prior to Pedroia, teammate Steven Wright was the only baseball player who had done so.

The 35-year-old second baseman, who had previously undergone surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee in October 2016 (among his numerous other ailments), believes both that he pushed himself too hard and that some of the expectations with regards to recovery times were “a little off.” In retrospect, he believes that avoiding the surgery in favor of longer rest and rehab might have been a more productive route. “It’s a complicated surgery,” said Pedroia. “The cartilage in my knee is great now. The graft is the thing. You’re putting somebody else’s bone in your body. To get that to incorporate fully, there are so many things going into it that.”

For what it’s worth, Wright, who was limited to 53.2 innings last year by three separate trips to the injured list for left knee inflammation (as well as a 15-game suspension for violating the league’s domestic violence policy) and missed the entire postseason, is similarly less than enamored with the results of his cartilage restoration surgery, which took place on May 8, 2017, 5 1/2 months prior to Pedroia’s. “It’s been tougher mentally than physically,” he told reporters last week. “It’s a game where it’s tough on your body, but then when you’ve got a flat tire going out there trying to pitch, it makes it a little bit tougher.” Wright later said that his knee currently feels like it’s been from a flat tire to a spare.

In anticipation of Pedroia’s early-2018 absence, the Red Sox retained July 2017 acquisition Eduardo Núñez in free agency, but both he and utilityman Brock Holt struggled in the role, to the point of topping my Replacement Level Killers list in late July. To that point, Sox second sackers had combined for a sad-sack -0.7 WAR. On July 30, they traded for the Tigers’ Ian Kinsler, who was replacement-level as well, though he did represent a defensive upgrade. In all, the eight players Boston used at second base — a cast rounded out by Brandon Phillips, Tzu-Wei Lin, Mookie Betts (!), and Blake Swihart — combined to hit .252/.308/.350 for a 75 wRC+ and -0.3 WAR. Only the Giants and Tigers were worse in the last two categories.

All of the participants save for Phillips and Kinser (who signed with the Padres) remain on the Red Sox’s 40-man roster. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski told reporters last week that he’s not expecting Pedroia to play 150 games. “We’re hopeful that he’s a 125-game player at this point,” said Dombrowsk. “We do feel we have some people who are solid and can fill in. To fill in if [Pedroia] plays 120, guys like Holt, a guy like Nunez coming over there. Even some depth with Tzu-Wei Lin in our organization we like a great deal.”

Our current depth charts projections, which feature Pedroia getting 74% of the team’s plate appearances at second base, forecast him for a .272/.344/.390 line with 2.0 WAR, and for the group as a whole to return 2.5 WAR, good for 12th in the majors. While the Red Sox would probably be overjoyed if things unfold that way, history suggests there may be less reason for optimism. Along the lines of what I did for Troy Tulowitzki last August, I asked Dan Szymborski to put together a list of infielders who are over 30 — shortstops and third basemen as well as second basemen, in order to start with a larger pool than the Tulo study — and missed all or nearly all of a season, then returned to the majors. I used 100 plate appearances as the upper limit for the “missed” season (Pedroia had 13), and confirmed with a variety of resources that the players’ absences were due to injuries, not detours to foreign leagues or mere attrition. As before, I considered only players from 1980 onward. The resulting list of 18 players was less than encouraging, to say the least:

One can wave off individual results here and there on various grounds. Sports medicine has improved vastly over the past four decades, and in considering Pedroia, it’s debatable how much we can extrapolate from players’ failures to recover from injuries to other body parts, such as Jeter’s ankle, the shoulders of Burleson, Glaus, and Perry, or the elbows of Fernandez, Howe (who also underwent ankle surgery), and a quartet of Tommy John surgery recipients (Furcal, Izturis, Santana, and Velarde). We can also debate the propriety of comparing the fates of players who were 30 or 38 at the start of these sequences to that of a 34-year-old.

Even so, within the timeframe, I couldn’t find any examples of an over-30 infielder who was significantly above replacement level both before missing most or all of a season and then again in his return year. Gonzalez (the “Sea Bass” one) underwent microfracture surgery in his left knee in March 2008 and did post a big 3.0 WAR season in 2010; he’s in this table twice thanks to a 2012 torn ACL. And Velarde, who underwent Tommy John surgery, totaled about 10 WAR from 1999-2001, but both needed at least one more year to recover form.

That said, three players who had dreadful seasons pre-injury did rebound substantially upon returning. Lansford, the regular third baseman for the A’s from 1983-1990 (including their three pennant-winning teams from 1988-1990) was pretty lousy in the last of those seasons, then suffered serious right shoulder and left knee injuries while snowmobiling in Oregon in January 1991. A’s vice president Sandy Alderson said at the time, “Carney’s contract doesn’t say he can snowmobile and it doesn’t say he can’t,” adding that the team declined to pursue terminating his employment. Lansford played just five games in the 1991 season, but returned for a solid 1992 season before retiring.

Fernandez, who racked up 43.5 WAR in a career that spanned from 1983-2001, endured a career-worst season as the Yankees’ starting shortstop in 1995, then fractured his right elbow in March 1996. The Yankees turned to the 22-year-old Jeter, who went on to win AL Rookie of the Year honors while helping the team win its first championship in 18 years. Fernandez missed the entire season, then resurfaced with the Indians in 1997, hitting for a 93 wRC+ with 2.1 WAR; he spent three more years in the majors and accumulated 4.9 WAR.

Spezio, a useful infielder for the Angels (6.6 WAR from 2000-2003), struggled in the first year of a three-year, $9.15 million deal with the Mariners (67 wRC+ and -0.1 WAR in 415 PA) in 2004. Between being relegated to a backup role by the free agent signings of Adrian Beltre and Richie Sexson, missing 10 weeks due to an oblique strain, and then drawing his release in late August, he was limited to 51 PA in 2005. Divorce, depression, and substance abuse — the last two of which would further derail his career years later — were contributing factors to his 2005 struggles. Nonetheless, he played a significant role for the Cardinals’ 2006 championship team, posting a 123 wRC+ and 1.3 WAR in 321 PA.

Even with that trio in my quick-and-dirty study, the group of players I identified averaged a meager 83 wRC+ and 0.2 WAR in their returns. Limiting the player pool to those whose pre-injury seasons were worth at least 1.0 WAR, which clears out some light hitters whose careers were essentially on their last legs anyway, the averages are 81 wRC+ (down from 105 pre-injury) and 0.0 WAR (down from 2.4) — an even steeper drop that probably owed something to more complete players getting longer leashes.

All of which is to say that if history is a guide, the 2019 Red Sox may not get anything close to the Pedroia they’re used to, the one who has never really had a below-average season. Even in his most injury-wracked campaigns, when his bat has been about average (98 wRC+ in 2014, 101 in 2017), he’s played at a three-win pace, solidly above average if not up to the standard that helped him make four All-Star teams and win four Gold Gloves from 2008-14. That said, even a slog of a season is unlikely to mean the end of the line for Pedroia, given that he’s still owed $40 million through 2021 via the eight-year, $110 million extension he signed in July 2013.

If Pedroia can recover some semblance of form, the stakes are high; he still has a shot at a Hall of Fame berth. He’s got the hardware (AL MVP, AL Rookie of the Year, three World Series rings, two of them as starter), but with 1,803 hits, he needs two seasons worth of playing time to reach 2,000, a number that has functioned as a bright-line test for Hall voters when it comes to post-1960 players. Likewise he’s still short in JAWS. He’s 19th among second basemen at 47.3, 9.6 points below the standard, but he’s only 2.0 WAR below the seven-year peak standard (42.4 versus 44.4). Given Chase Utley’s retirement short of 2,000 hits, Kinsler’s fade, and the PED suspension of Robinson Cano, none of this era’s aging second baseman have clear paths to Cooperstown, but a functioning if not fully resurgent Pedrioa would be best positioned to change that.

Of course, talk of any resurgence is premature when discussing a player whose availability can’t yet be taken for granted. If he’s batting leadoff on Opening Day, per manager Alex Cora’s promise for when he’ll return, Pedroia will have hit the first big mark.