Dan Szymborski: TIMEFORADANCHAT AH CN ADAR OF EMIT
12:01
the person who asks the lunch question: what’s for lunch?
12:01
Dan Szymborski: Some stir-fried chicken I made on Tuesday.
12:01
v2micca: Braves appear to be testing their depth early. Are their losses going to be enough to give Philly a reasonable window of opportunity to take the division?
12:01
Dan Szymborski: I’m writing on this for tomorrow!
12:03
Angels firstbaseman: Nolan schanuel could obviously use some work at AAA but why don’t they call up a gold glove first base man named evan white to replace him?
I feel pretty confident in saying that I wasn’t alone in my excitement about the Cardinals starting the year with Victor Scott II on the roster. Good center field defense is incredibly fun. Stolen bases are incredibly fun. Scott stole 94 bases in the minors last year and looks like he might be a truly special defender thanks to his blazing footspeed (first in the majors, narrowly ahead of Trea Turner). Sure, he’d only gotten as far as Double-A, but injuries made his call-up at least defensible, and I wanted to see what he could do.
The results are now in: Scott isn’t ready for the majors just yet. The Cardinals have played 19 games, and Scott has appeared in all of them, three times as a defensive replacement, including yesterday. He’s racked up 62 plate appearances. He’s been quite bad in those plate appearances. That’s no knock on Scott, just to be clear. He’s a 23-year-old entering his third professional season. He’s only on the squad in the first place because a number of things went wrong higher up the depth chart. But the way the Cards have managed his playing time is so strange that I feel compelled to look into what’s gone wrong and why nothing has changed.
Scott’s speed has been exactly as advertised — he’s swiped two bags without getting caught — but the rest of his game hasn’t worked. He’s hitting a ghastly .089/.145/.143, good for a -15 wRC+ that’s comfortably last in baseball. He hasn’t made up for it with otherworldly defense; it’s too early for these metrics to stabilize, but every advanced system thinks he’s been below average. Statcast credits it to his below-average reaction time, which makes sense given how fast he is underway. Read the rest of this entry »
In the ninth inning of Monday night’s game against the Phillies, Rockies catcher Elias Díaz doubled off Jeff Hoffman with two outs, nobody on, and the game tied 1-1. That put Rockies manager Bud Black in a bit of a pickle. With a runner on second, a single would score the go-ahead run, and Colorado’s best hitter — Nolan Jones — was at the plate. If a single were ever going to come, it would come now.
Rather, a single would score a normal runner from second. Unfortunately, Díaz is slow. He’s in the first percentile for sprint speed. He’s so slow, when he puts a pork shoulder in the crockpot it’s done cooking by the time he comes back from the pantry with the barbecue sauce.
If Black wanted to get that run in from second with a single, he had one of two options. First, call a cab. Second, call for a pinch-runner. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Colorado Rockies. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Carlos Correa’s nerdiness, the Pirates pulling phenom Jared Jones after 59 effective pitches, the zombie runner, what Jontay Porter’s lifetime NBA ban portends for MLB, Shohei/Ippei conspiracy theories and Shohei Ohtani’s hitting and tax loophole, Michael Busch and the Dodgers’ outfield offense, the legacy of Whitey Herzog’s “Whiteyball,” and the power and prospects of two-way college star Jac Caglianone, plus follow-ups on MLB Blazes, IMG Academy, and Reynaldo López, then (1:13:48) answer listener emails about unsigned pitchers ramping up for the start of the season, whether all of the A’s could be traded to other teams, pitcher arm injuries in Japan, foul tips with fewer than two strikes, and MLB attendance/finances vs. NFL attendance/finances.
For more than a decade now, the Dodgers have reigned over Major League Baseball through a combination of top-end talent and robust depth. Versatile role players like Enrique Hernández and Chris Taylor have complemented stars like Clayton Kershaw, Corey Seager, and Mookie Betts, while excellent scouting and player development departments have meant that the team has never had to scrounge for spare parts. That mix has usually kept Los Angeles clear of our Replacement-Level Killers series. This season, however, the Dodgers have a giant hole: the entire outfield. Dodgers outfielders have accrued -0.5 WAR, tied with the Phillies for dead last in baseball. Next time someone tells you to imagine trading Mookie Betts, take a moment to feel sorry for the Los Angeles outfielders, which didn’t even get to trade Betts to the infield; they just gave him away without getting so much as a Jeter Downs in return. Let’s take a look at what’s going on out there, courtesy of our the shiny new splits on our leaderboard.
Dodgers Outfield Ranks
Stat
Actual
MLB Rank
wRC+
64
T-29
wOBA
.263
28
xwOBA
.284
27
BSR
-0.9
28
Def
-1.9
21
Mookie Betts
0
T-30
Well, that’s simple enough. The offense has been terrible, the defense has been not great, and Mookie Betts is a shortstop now. Before we go any further, it is time for me to shout the word April a few times. The stats above are based on just 239 plate appearances. Lots of things are going to change. In fact, one thing has already changed: On Tuesday, the Dodgers called up prospect Andy Pages and started him in center (presumably because they hacked the FanGraphs Slack and knew I was writing about their outfield needs). He knocked an RBI single on his first pitch.
That said, it’s not too early to look at what’s going on and ask some questions. First of all, Jason Heyward is on the IL with lower back tightness. He hasn’t played since March 30, which means the Dodgers have only gotten to run out their preferred outfield lineup five times. According to Dave Roberts, Heyward’s injury is not improving enough for there to be a firm timetable on his return. Following the injury, the Dodgers claimed Taylor Trammell off waivers from the Mariners, but have only given him six plate appearances. With Heyward gone, Teoscar Hernández has been the everyday right fielder. James Outman and Enrique Hernández have platooned in center. Chris Taylor has started in left, with Enrique Hernández also getting a few starts there against righties. With none of that working, Roberts said on Tuesday that Pages will likely see significant playing time against both righties and lefties.
This seems like the right place to acknowledge how confusing the landscape is in terms of names. There are two Hernándezes, a first-name Taylor and a last-name Taylor, and an Outman who is suddenly living up to his name after all.
Dodgers Outfielders
Name
PA
BB%
K%
wRC+
BsR
Def
WAR
Teoscar Hernández
83
7.2
32.5
138
0.2
-1.9
0.5
James Outman
63
11.1
31.7
73
-0.4
0.5
0
Enrique Hernández
43
4.7
23.3
42
-0.1
0.1
-0.2
Chris Taylor
42
14.3
42.9
-25
-0.1
-0.8
-0.6
Jason Heyward
15
0
6.7
11
0
0.3
-0.1
Taylor Trammell
6
0
50
-100
0
0
-0.1
Andy Pages
4
0
50
40
0
0
0
Let’s start with the good. Teoscar Hernández is crushing it right now. After a down year in Seattle — possibly the result of having trouble seeing the ball at T-Mobile Park — Hernández signed a one-year deal in January, and is off to a running start. However, it’s early and he has a .314 xwOBA, which would be his worst mark since 2019. So far, Hernández is chasing much less, making a lot more contact, and not sacrificing any contact quality. He may not stay lucky forever, but those underlying numbers are encouraging.
In 2023, James Outman put up a four-win rookie season by doing what we nerds so often ask of hitters: making the most of his hard contact by pulling the ball in the air. As a result, he launched 23 homers and ran a great barrel rate despite below-average contact quality and lots of strikeouts. That also made him a likely regression candidate. Despite a 118 wRC+, he ran a DRC+ of 84. The D stands for Deserved, and this season, his DRC+ is 81. However, it’s way too early to assume that Outman can’t replicate his 2024 performance or find ways to get better in his sophomore campaign. So far this season, he’s hitting the ball a bit harder and his contact rate has improved from infinitesimally small to merely microscopic. Outman isn’t going to run a .242 BABIP all year, and it’s too early to panic about him. However, he needs a platoon partner, and right now, he really doesn’t have one.
Chris Taylor isn’t going to keep running a hilariously low .069 BABIP or a not at all funny -25 wRC+. Even over a short sample size, those are astoundingly unlucky numbers. He’s been extremely aggressive on pitches in the strike zone. That should be a good thing, but he’s made contact with them just 67.7% of the time, leading to a 42.9% strikeout rate. Because he’s walking and striking out like Joey Gallo, Taylor has put only 18 balls in play. That’s a tiny sample size, so it’s too early to do anything more than note that his contact quality has been dreadful. Taylor is coming off a 104 wRC+ in 2023, and he’s only been below 100 once in the last eight seasons.
Enrique Hernández hit his first homer of the season Tuesday night. Maybe the Dodgers can help him find his swing; after all, he hit much better following the trade that sent him from Boston to Los Angeles in 2023. But please understand how big a reclamation project that would be. From 2022 to 2024, Hernández has run a 72 wRC+, making him the sixth-worst hitter in all of baseball (minimum 700 PAs). The players below him could all be more or less described as defensive specialists; they’ve all put up positive WAR totals thanks to good defensive marks (with the exception of Martín Maldonado, whose defensive value is invisible to defensive metrics and quite possibly visible only to MLB managers). But Hernández has been worth -8.9 runs in the field, and -0.9 WAR overall, making the seventh-worst position player overall. That’s not just a replacement-level killer. His ugly defensive numbers at shortstop in 2023 were eye-opening, and if he doesn’t have the glove for center or the bat for left, that’s a big problem.
Lastly, there’s Pages (pronounced PA-hez), who was called up Tuesday. The 23-year-old Cuban missed most of the 2023 season due to surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right shoulder, but he’s already hit five homers at Triple-A this season. We have him ranked seventh in the Dodgers system. MLB Pipeline has him ranked higher: third in the system and 96th overall. After discussing Outman and Teoscar Hernández, Pages’ profile might sound familiar. His swing is designed to generate lift, allowing him to do plenty of damage even though he doesn’t boast tons of raw power. Like Outman and Hernández, that also means he’s going to strike out quite a bit. He started in center on Wednesday and has played there some in the minors, but he’s destined for a corner spot long-term, with a big arm that makes right field most likely.
Pages brings one more thing that the Los Angeles outfield sorely needs: youth. Until the arrival of Pages, Outman was the baby, but he’ll turn 27 in a week. Prorated by plate appearances, Dodgers outfielders are 30.5 years old, making them the third-oldest outfield in baseball. The oldest players are also the ones with the biggest question marks. Can Heyward stay healthy, and if he does, can he repeat his 2023 breakout? Are Taylor and Enrique Hernández still useful pieces at this stage of their careers? The overall strength of their roster means that the Dodgers can likely coast to the playoffs even if they keep getting absolutely nothing from their outfield, but that’s not usually how they operate.
Coming up through the Dodgers system, Michael Busch gained a reputation as “a bat-only prospect,” a player whose offensive skills far outpaced his defensive ones. So when the Dodgers landed Shohei Ohtani in December, it closed the door on the team finding room for Busch as a DH, and they were already set at first base — Busch’s main position in college — with Freddie Freeman in the fold. Busch needed a trade to clear his path, and in January he got one, a four-player deal with the Cubs. So far, the 26-year-old rookie is off to a flying start, ranking high on the leaderboards after reeling off a streak of five consecutive games with a home run.
Busch’s streak, which ended on Tuesday night in Arizona, took place during the Cubs’ nine-game western road trip, beginning with a game-tying two-run homer off the Padres’ Dylan Cease at Petco Park on April 10. Two days later in Seattle, he went deep off the Mariners’ Ryne Stanek. The Cubs lost both of those games, but he helped them win three straight, starting with a solo shot off Tyson Miller in the seventh inning of a 4-1 win Saturday night, then a two-run homer off Luis Castillo in the fourth inning of a 3-2 win on Sunday. Moving on to Arizona, he didn’t waste any time, connecting off Merrill Kelly in his first plate appearance of Monday’s game, an 11-inning, 3-2 win. Read the rest of this entry »
Anthony Volpe had a rough rookie season at the plate. He hit just .209/.282/.383, which amounted to an 84 wRC+ despite his 21 home runs. Neither his mechanics nor swing decisions looked viable. A swing tailored to consistently lifting the ball propelled his minor league success, but it was also a key reason why he struggled in 2023. He never showed the requisite discipline or contact skills on low and away breaking balls to rely on this swing style, and he failed to make up for that deficiency with plus performance in other parts of the zone.
Volpe’s .142 wOBA against same-handed breaking balls low and away was among the worst in the game. A big part of adapting to major league pitching is proving you can perform against breaking balls. Volpe never did that, so pitchers spammed him with them. Out of the 267 hitters who saw at least 1,250 pitches in 2023, he saw the 22nd-highest breaking ball percentage. He got the classic rookie treatment and couldn’t handle it. So instead of trying to make his existing swing work, he flattened out his bat path with the hope of creating strengths in other areas of the zone while mitigating his big weakness.
I’m going to offer my own video analysis here, but there already has been a lot of great work done on Volpe’s swing change. The Athletic’s Chris Kirschner spoke with Volpe during spring training about how and why flattening his swing path was an offseason priority. Daniel R. Epstein of Baseball Prospectusjust provided an analysis on the swing decision part of this and how it has paired with improved contact. Volpe’s adjustments have resulted in an increase of 11 percentage points in Z-Contact%, and he has chased and whiffed significantly less often as well. Entering play Wednesday, he is batting .349/.438/.508 with a 183 wRC+ in 74 plate appearances. And while it is early and small sample caveats apply, his adjustments, as I’ll detail below, are fueling a hot start that has the juice for a real breakout.
Volpe is already showing his new swing and mindset can handle breaking balls; he has a .345 xwOBA against them, and his chase rate against them (15.7%) has decreased by over 14 percentage points compared to 2023. Given his immense struggles last season, just laying off the pitch more often would do him wonders. On top of that, having a flatter entry into the zone makes it more difficult to get to same-handed breaking balls low and away, making it even more important he lay off the pitch as much as he can. He’s off to a good start as far as that’s concerned.
This spring, Volpe told Kirschner, “… if I can still be late and shoot the ball to right field or when I’m early and out in front, still have enough to do something with the pitch, that’s the goal.” Flattening your bat path isn’t the answer for everybody, but if it helps you create more depth (positive bat angle at different depths in the hitting zone) in your points of contact relative to your previous swing, then you can create more room for error because your barrel is on plane for a longer period of time. Here’s how it works for Volpe: Against high heat, he can still be on plane to shoot the ball to right; against a back-foot breaker from a lefty pitcher, he can be early and still make flush contact in the air.
This approach doesn’t work as well for a hitter with a steep swing. If your bat head is pointing up, you have to turn your barrel over to point it down. The steeper your bat angle, the more you have to turn the barrel. It’s much easier to get your bat flat deep into the zone if you start with your bat relatively flat and rotate from there. It takes less time and less movement, hence there being a better chance at making contact more consistently. There is more nuance to it, but that is generally how the process goes. But remember, this doesn’t work for every hitter. Creating bat speed in deeper parts of the zone while maintaining an upward slope with your swing isn’t easy. Luckily that has always been a skill for Volpe.
In the shortstop’s prospect report, Eric Longenhagen said, “His swing is like a right-handed version of Juan Soto’s, capable of getting underneath the baseball in basically every part of the zone, in part because of the flexibility and athleticism in his lower half.” Soto has one of the flattest swings in baseball, but he can still elevate a variety of pitches because of the combination of his torso bend and lower-half maneuverability. In layman’s terms, he can rely on body adjustments to do the work of creating lift while keeping his bat flatter through the zone than most hitters can. Volpe can do the same: The lift will happen even with his flatter swing because he can combine body adjustments with a barrel that is on plane through most of the hitting zone.
Eric also pointed out that Volpe worked with a private instructor to re-engineer his swing before his prospect breakout. That is not an exaggeration. Volpe literally made his swing in a hitting lab with the help of biomechanical data. That process is probably a big reason why over this offseason he was able to remake his swing again, this time to flatten out his entry into the zone while maintaining the key strength of his swing: lower half maneuverability. So let’s explore how Volpe did this, going step by step through it.
Setup Into Load
First thing: Volpe isn’t a big guy. He can naturally create a flat entry into the zone just with an upright stance and high hands. Even last year, it’s not as if he had an extremely steep swing, just steeper than was ideal for him. By standing more upright, he immediately sets himself up for a flatter entry because his shoulders and torso are neutral relative to the ground.
Peak Leg Kick Into Foot Plant
Volpe’s leg kick was a bit all over the place last year, but he ended up with a relatively closed stance. That complicated things for him against inner-third pitches because opening his front hip while maintaining a deep path was a strength of his. Closing out may have put more pressure on his backside to hold his stability. He went back to a neutral start this year and now looks more like he did as a prospect. As he plants his foot, he is still able to hold his posture and start his flatter entry into the zone without putting pressure on any particular part of his body to do the work.
Swing and Follow Through
The differences here may be tough to discern at first glance, but there are two things that are important to pay attention to. First, in the 2023 clip, Volpe’s back leg starts to collapse before contact. That alters his timing and path to the point that he catches the ball off the end of the bat and skies it for a fly ball out. This year, that leg is staying strong through the swing and only dips after the point of contact. That is much more stable and controlled. It’s the difference between a fly ball and a line drive over the wall.
Also notice how his front foot withstands and then transfers energy. Against Patrick Corbin in 2023, that foot peels over and eventually needs another step to the side to catch the energy transfer, whereas against Jesús Luzardo from last week, it has the initial peel but transfers back toward the midpoint of his body without needing that extra sidestep. That indicates better weight transfer. If you can make tight turns around the midpoint of your body, you’ll always be in a better position to adjust. This swing is one example of that.
Small sample aside, Volpe looks like a completely different hitter this year. This piece mostly focused on his mechanics, but he is also showing tremendous poise and conviction in his swing decisions. His swing rate in the Shadow Zone has dropped 12 percentage points. He is taking borderline pitches off the plate with no hesitation whatsoever. Combine that with a drastically improved swing process and you have what we’ve seen so far. At some point, pitchers will adjust and Volpe will need to do the same, but a more versatile swing should help him do that.
The Orioles’ talented young hitter, a former top-five pick, was just named AL Player of the Week. No, not that one. Or that one. Or the other one. Colton Cowser, the no. 5 overall pick in 2021 out of Sam Houston State, went 10-for-23 with four home runs during the six games in question, and in the process became the first Oriole to drive in 10 runs in a single series at Fenway Park.
That’s a pretty solid week at the office, if you ask me. The Orioles have been playing series at Fenway Park for more than 70 years, and in that time nobody had ever driven in 10 runs in one series — a three-game series, no less! Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about MLB jerseys as Fremen stillsuits, an update on Blake Snell the self-perceived strike-thrower, Brent Suter and being the “best teammate,” which MLB team is last in the league in vibes, the struggling Marlins demoting the not-struggling Max Meyer, whether teams are working minor league pitchers (such as Paul Skenes) too lightly, and (1:02:49) the career and retirement of Yankees radio voice John Sterling and fan affection for long-lasting local broadcasters, then (1:29:31) meet major leaguers Spencer Arrighetti, Blaze Alexander, and Jorge Barrosa, plus postscript follow-ups (1:51:25).
Dan Szymborski: TIMEFORADANCHAT AH CN ADAR OF EMIT
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