He just ran right into it.
The ball was coming. He chopped his steps to time it up.
And then he just ran right into it anyway
Like a child so focused on when to jump into a game of Double Dutch
That they forget the part where they have to actually jump.
It hit him in the shin, in both shins, bounced off toward the photographers’ well
And the inning was just over.
He’s going to have a bump for a while.
And a baseball right to the shinbone really hurts, even a weakly hit one
That ends the inning and makes everyone wonder what the hell you were thinking.
It sticks around forever and hurts far longer than it ought to.
Those high sanitary socks are no protection at all. They’re nearly nothing.
I remember peeling off my uniform after a particularly sunny game
And finding sunburns in a tiny checkerboard pattern on my calf.
If you didn’t know there were two outs, you’d think
It was a brilliant piece of baserunning. Bottom six, Jose Altuve leading off second. Runners on first and second. Bregman chops one to third and Altuve takes a bruise on the shin like a hero
Rather than allow the Blue Jays to turn a double play.
But there are two outs. Jose Altuve is positively — I don’t know what.
I got interrupted as I was writing that line and now I have no idea what
I was going to say that Jose Altuve positively was.
It didn’t actually cost the team very much. If the ball doesn’t hit him,
Then Clement scoops it up for a rushed but easy force out.
The inning’s over either way. Why not run some very literal interference?
Let it slip between your legs and maybe Ernie will do the same.
It’s just that he looked for all the world like he was planning something big,
The way he slowed down to get the timing right,
Spread his arms for balance, kicked his heels up as he ran:
Like he was going to leap dramatically over the bouncing ball;
Like he was going to tumble around it in a diving summersault
That somehow ended up with him hugging the bag safely;
Like he was going to convince the ball to skip between his ankles;
Like he was going to pirouette with such dazzling beauty as it whispered by
That the infielders would be too moved to pay it any mind whatsoever.
And then he just ran into it.
“That is amazing,” says Buck Martinez. “A player of his stature
Somehow lost sight of the baseball.” And, well, that’s pretty funny.
When he gets picked off third two innings later,
Killing his second two-on, two-out situation of the night,
It’s less forgivable, especially for a giant of his tiny stature,
But it’s also much easier to understand.
In the sixth inning, it’s unclear what exactly he’s trying to do,
And that’s why my first thought is to crank up the poetry machine
Where there’s no limit to what can be true at the same time.
Real events can be caused by endless permutations of factors
But those inputs always have to add up to a hundred percent,
Whereas on the page any possibility you raise can be
Equally valid: a hundred hundred-percent-true explanations.
Okay, that’s not true. My first thought is that he looks like Raccoon Mario
From Super Mario Bros. 3, sprinting with his hands out, ready to fly.
I just wish I knew for sure whether his plan failed
Or whether he never actually tried it out in the first place,
Whether all that preamble was ever post-ambled at all.
I was sick the entire month of March. I’m still coughing constantly at times,
Constantly clearing my throat although I have nothing to say.
A few nights ago I made a note to look up the mechanics of throat clearing,
the two-part how of the inhaled ah- and the exhaled -hem.
I tried to look it up, but I couldn’t find anything.
Spencer Arrighetti had just thrown a pair of impressive innings when I talked to him following a spring training start in Lakeland, Florida at the end of February. I admittedly didn’t know a ton about the 24-year-old at the time. I was aware that the Houston Astros had named him their 2023 Minor League Pitcher of the Year, and that he’d been taken in the sixth round of the 2021 draft out of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, but that was mostly it. The only other thing I knew about Arrighetti — this from my perch in the press box — is that he throws a sweeper.
What I learned about the 6-foot-1, 205-pound righty from our postgame conversation is that he is anything but old school with how he approaches his craft. Analytics is Arrighetti’s second language, and when it comes to talking pitching, they are pretty much his first language. Now on the doorstep of the big leagues — he tossed 4 1/3 scoreless innings with the Triple-A Sugar Land Space Cowboys this past Friday — Arrighetti is a bona fide pitching nerd.
———
David Laurila: Are you into pitching analytics?
Spencer Arrighetti: “Absolutely. I was taught the data by the Astros, and they obviously know their stuff really well. I love the model that we have. I’ve definitely fallen in love with that aspect, so while the game itself is still more important, I fully acknowledge that we have the ability to train analytically now. We can use data to get better.”
Laurila: What have you learned about yourself since coming to pro ball?
Arrighetti: “I’d summarize it by saying that vertical approach angle is kind of indicative of how a pitch will perform. Fastballs are especially vertical-approach-angle dependent on where you should throw them. I’ve learned about that. I’ve also made an effort to improve vertical approach on my fastball, as well as improve spin axis and spin rates on my other pitches.
“There is also the usage data. I’ve found a really good way to utilize my pitch mix efficiently and effectively. Obviously, we’re always trying to fine tune that — the more you climb the ladder, the more it matters — and at this stage it’s especially important for me to have a concept of what’s going to be good against big league hitters.”
Laurila: Can a pitcher meaningfully improve approach angle, or is more a matter of optimizing what you have?
Arrighetti: “It’s a nice mix of both. You get special athletes who do special things, and there are certain things about a guy you won’t want to change, like his delivery. At the same time, you can absolutely chase it. I think I had a pretty decent vertical approach in college, and after being made aware of it, I made more of an effort to get behind and under the ball.
“We look at hop, and it matters a lot, but I don’t have good hop. My four-seam performs like it has hop, but it actually doesn’t have it. I throw it from… I like to call it ‘throwing it from the basement’ as opposed to throwing from above your head. That’s where you find the vertical approach that is more down to up. So, I think that you can make an effort to refine it. Obviously, you’re not going to take a guy that throws 100 [mph] with a steep vertical approach and tell him, ‘Hey, let’s try to flatten it out a little bit.’ You’re going to tell him, ‘Hey, throw 100. You’re fine.”
Laurila: Hand positioning at release plays into what you’re looking to do…
Arrighetti: “Absolutely. Edgertronic is pretty popular within the data room. You can see exactly where the ball is coming out of your hand, which gives you an idea of the timing of it. You adjust your wrist position based on that; you find that point on the ball where you want to be letting it go.”
Laurila: Have you altered any of your grips as a result?
Arrighetti: “I don’t throw a single pitch the same way that I threw it in college; I actually don’t throw many pitches the same way that I threw them in Low-A. We’ve been really good about finding grips and cues that complement my arm and the way I want to throw the ball. Because of that, I’ve been able to develop an arsenal that I’m really confident in. So yeah, I’ve made a lot of drastic changes — even this offseason. I made a big adjustment with my changeup grip. Grips are great until they’re not, and cues are also great until they’re not. When it’s time to adjust, you adjust. Sometimes the adjustment is big, and that’s OK.”
Laurila: Are any of your grips unique?
Arrighetti: “I would say that they are iterations of other pitches that guys throw really well. In general, the more that analytics have come along, the more we have a good idea of which grip will do what to the ball, and from what slot, horizontal approach, and vertical approach. So, not necessarily unique, but tailored to me.”
Laurila: Do you chase certain movement profiles?
Arrighetti: “Absolutely. I think everybody does.”
Laurila: Some guys claim they don’t…
Arrighetti: “The guys that claim they don’t are most likely guys who don’t love the data. Which is fine. There are big crowds of both. There are guys who think it has no place, and there are guys who think it rules everything. For the most part, I think guys generally fall somewhere in the middle. Personally, I’m probably right in the middle, even with my reverence for the work done in research and development.
“Data is a great tool if you’re open to using it. For the guys that don’t need it, that’s awesome. If you naturally have great shapes, that’s awesome. But I’ve found it very useful to use TrackMan and Edgertronic to fine tune the pitches I’m throwing. Everybody wants more hop on their fastball. Everybody wants more sweep on their sweeper. Everybody wants to throw really nasty stuff. So yeah, I would say I’ve been chasing movement profiles for a little while.”
Laurila: You threw some good sweepers today. Is that your best pitch?
Arrighetti: “I would say it’s my most confident pitch with a right-handed hitter in the box. And there is more to it than how much it moves. The point in space where the ball starts to move matters, as does having the ability to disguise your pitches. But while those things are important, for me, when it’s bigger it’s better. I typically look mostly at the actual amount of movement. Velocity as well, because I’m pretty good at spinning the ball. When I throw at a high spin rate, at high velo, I’m going to get big movement. That’s usually what I’m looking for.”
Laurila: What are the metrics on your sweeper?
Arrighetti: ““I get anywhere from 16 to 26 inches of sweep. I’ve actually gotten reps at 28, and while TrackMan is a little faulty sometimes with its setup, I like to believe that I’m capable of making it move that much. Today it was probably around 18 to 20. You also have to be able to adjust your lines with how much it’s moving. If I’m trying to throw it at a righty’s hip, I want 16, 18, 20. If I’m trying to throw it behind them, bigger than that. It will be closer to 78-79 [mph] when it’s big, and usually 80-82 when it’s smaller.”
Laurila: How do you go about adding or subtracting movement?
Arrighetti: “It’s very intent and leverage-based for me. If I find good leverage with the middle finger, which to me is… I don’t know if you’ve watched Matt Brash throw his, but he’s got one of the best sweepers in baseball. He tries to leverage the ball in his hand with a slight bias towards the side. I’ve found that doing that has helped me a lot. If I can find a seam, have that leverage, and feel the leverage at release, it’s going to be really good.”
Laurila: Do you feel that you comp to Brash?
Arrighetti: “No. If I were to comp myself on that pitch, I’m probably closer to Joe Ryan’s. In terms of sweepers that I love to watch and would like to model mine after, a guy in our org who does really great is Cristian Javier. His is the invisiball sometimes. It’s moving 20 inches with a little bit of induced vertical break at about 80 [mph].”
Laurila: How has your repertoire (four-seamer, sweeper, cutter, curveball, changeup) evolved since you signed?
Arrighetti: “I threw a pretty average four-seam, a really slow loopy curveball, a pretty fringe changeup, and a rifle slider. Really, the only one that’s similar now would be the rifle-spin pitch I throw, which I like to call a cutter.
“My changeup grip has probably changed the most. When I was in college it was a pretty standard circle that didn’t really complement the way I throw. I’m not very good at pronating, so I’ve shifted to more of a low-spin split changeup. I’ve seen a lot of progress with that, because I can keep the supinated wrist and pull through the ball a little bit harder from the top. I don’t really have to worry about turning it over much.”
Laurila: You mentioned spinning the ball well. Is that primarily with your breaking stuff?
Arrighetti: “I spin the fastball well, too. I’ve been up to 2,400 rpm, which is good post-sticky stuff crackdown. When guys were using stick, the really good ones were 2,800, 2,900, 3,000, which is unbelievable. I can spin a breaking ball 3,000, but I’ve never come close with a four-seam. My arm action is pretty whippy, which is usually good for spin rates.”
Laurila: Which of your breaking balls gets the most spin?
Arrighetti: “My curveball, which is more seam efficient than my sweeper. My sweeper is actually very not seam efficient. I’m trying to basically throw a two-seam the other way, if you will. Seam-shifted wake is a hot topic right now. It’s kind of hard to explain, but essentially, I don’t need spin efficiency or spin rate on the slider — but it helps it makes the ball appear white, which is useful.”
Laurila: Any final thoughts?
Arrighetti: “I’ve heard some guys throw around the term fake hop. That’s what we like to call induced vertical break hop. We kind of touched on this earlier. Looking at the TrackMan, my four-seam doesn’t have a lot of hop, but you have to look at the release height and the angle you’re throwing from. For a long time, I didn’t think my four-seam was anything special, and the Astros have made it really clear to me that it’s going to be a great weapon at the upper levels. That’s held true so far. Sometimes the data is a little tricky. You have to look at other numbers that maybe don’t jump off the page.”
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Cleveland Guardians. 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 »
As I continue to meticulously make my way through the prospect lists (Cleveland and Cincinnati are next), I’ve pushed all the scouting reports for rookies who are currently on American League active rosters live to The Board. These reports often include updated notes from this spring. Those players are:
Mookie Betts is on fire right now. Last night, he led off the bottom of the first with a single, stole second base, and scored. He came back up in the third and lashed a game tying homer, which was also the 1,500th hit of his career — because of course it was. He was the catalyst for the Dodgers’ 5-4 win over the Giants. Also, his average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage all went down on the night, because he’s just that hot to start the season.
Through eight games, Betts is hitting an outrageous .500/.605/1.167. None of those numbers make sense. He’s on base more often than not. He’s walking twice as often as he strikes out. His isolated power is .667, a number that barely sounds like a baseball statistic.
To be fair, we’ve only played eight games. These numbers won’t hold up over a full season, obviously. He’s on a heater at the moment, and pretty much everything will tail off. But this season-starting rampage is an all-timer. Here are the top five eight-game starts to a season in the Wild Card era:
Of note, Martinez’s start wasn’t the start of the season; he missed the start of that year with an injury and returned in a blaze of glory. But these are the best performances of the last 30 years, and Betts fits squarely into them. The best seasons of Bonds’ and Walker’s careers started this way. Griffey and Edmonds put up near-peak years after their hot starts. Shelton and Alomar are fun reminders that wow, baseball is wild. Read the rest of this entry »
Back when the Orioles signed Craig Kimbrel in December, Michael Baumann wrote something that has been rattling around my brain ever since: “But there are pitchers you need to get you through the regular season, and then there are pitchers who can win in the playoffs. And there is less overlap between the two than you might think.” Michael’s got a point. These days, there are super teams, super terrible teams, and fewer teams than ever in between. A league-average starting pitcher will do just fine most of the time. They’ll beat up on the White Sox and get beat up on by the Dodgers, and the universe will remain balanced. But if you ask a pitching staff without any true standouts to spend a whole playoff series silencing a lineup that starts off Acuña-Albies-Riley-Olson, you’re going to end up scooping them off the mound with a shovel.
This isn’t just the age of stratification; it’s also the age of the arm injury. Last year, both the Dodgers and Braves featured rotations that were among the best in baseball on paper, but real-life injuries proved to be their kryptonite. That’s why the hot new trend among super teams is rotational depth. Here’s what Ben Clemens said when the Braves traded for Chris Sale a few weeks after the Kimbrel deal: “If you’re looking at it exclusively through the lens of how Atlanta will line up in the 2024 playoffs, adding Sale starts to make more sense. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a full season out of him. The Braves are surely aware of that, though, and they have plenty of fifth starter types to fill in for him in the regular season.” Over at Baseball Prospectus, Craig Goldstein had the exact same thought: “the Braves are looking to have Sale healthy and effective at the right time of year, how much he misses on the way there is unlikely to matter much to them.” Read the rest of this entry »
Last Friday, my colleague Michael Baumann (the one who doesn’t throw 97 mph) mused that the Orioles’ having an ace was a pretty sweet thing. I can’t help but concur with that thesis, considering I’ve long been saying that one of Baltimore’s missing ingredients was an inarguable no. 1 starter. Nor can I quibble with anything related to Corbin Burnes; I picked him to win the AL Cy Young, after all, and his debut with the O’s was a masterpiece of cruelty to hitters. But what if they already had an ace? Grayson Rodriguez spent a drizzly Saturday doing his best to show why that may be the case.
One can argue that I chickened out a bit about Grayson Rodriguez a few weeks ago when I did not pick him as one of my pitcher breakout choices. In truth, I kind of felt it was cheating since he’d already flashed some utter dominance late last year when he had a 2.58 ERA and a 2.76 FIP in 76 2/3 second-half innings, similar to the star-making stretch that Tarik Skubal enjoyed. ZiPS didn’t go all-in on Rodriguez in the preseason, mainly because there’s always a great deal of downside risk in a young pitcher (or an old pitcher or a pitcher in his prime or a pitcher in a box or with a fox or in a house or with a mouse).
After a rather middling spring, I was eager to watch Rodriguez in a regular season game this year to see how he continued to progress with the things that stymied him when he was first called up in 2023. The first few months of his rookie season, he had a kitchen sink approach, just throwing out all five of his pitches (fastball, changeup, curveball, slider, and cutter) with the apparent hope of baffling major league hitters with variety. Instead, hitters would wait him out, an effective strategy; he was throwing just over 50% first-pitch strikes at the time of his demotion in late May. The result was too many walks and too many at-bats that ended with a batter waiting for something to crush and then proceeding to do exactly that.
Upon returning to the majors after the All-Star break, Rodriguez’s portfolio had gotten another passthrough at the copy desk. The cutter, against which opposing hitters had slugged nearly .900 through May, was almost entirely edited out, and the focus was on primarily getting the fastball-change combination working before mixing in the curves and sliders. Rodriguez walked as many batters in the second half as he did in the first half despite throwing almost twice the innings. The culprit there was the reversal in his first-strike rate; he went from 54.5% in his first stint to 66.8% after his return. To contextualize the significance of that change, 54.5% would have been the second-worst seasonal number among the 44 ERA title qualifiers in 2023, while 66.8% would have been the sixth-best first-pitch strike percentage.
His first start of 2024 was a lot like his second-half starts last year. Rodriguez got off to 0-1 counts as if it were child’s play (77%) and heavily relied on his fastball and changeup. He enticed Angels hitters to swing at nearly two-thirds of his changeups — and they whiffed against 60% of them. The curveball had the identical contact percentage. The end result? Six innings, one run on four hits, one walk, one home runs, and nine strikeouts, matching his major-league high from a start last April against the Tigers.
The only real blemish to his record came in the fourth inning on Saturday, when he threw a first-pitch slider/cutter to Taylor Ward, who casually clubbed it for a solo home run. Rodriguez’s offering — which the broadcast tracked as a slider and Statcast deemed a cutter — did not have the sharpness of his main three pitches, and the fact that there was some disagreement about what pitch it actually was should tell us something about its ineffectiveness. Whatever you call it — and we won’t be combining the two names here — three of the seven he threw were put into play with exit velocities above 100 mph.
Now, the Angels are no doubt one of the weaker teams in baseball and Rodriguez’s start would have been more impressive against the Dodgers or Astros, but it was a continuation of what he accomplished in the second half last year.
So, what’s next for Rodriguez?
Compared to other low-payroll teams, the Orioles have not done a good job signing their best young players to long-term contracts. In fact, no player in Baltimore has a guaranteed deal beyond this season except for Félix Bautista, who’ll make $1 million in 2025. I’d argue that the two best starting pitchers the O’s have developed in the last 30 years were Mike Mussina and Kevin Gausman. The team low-balled Mussina after he had previously taken a hometown discount and the latter, well, they never really figured out what to do with him. Why not get serious about offering Rodriguez a long-term contract before he gets really expensive?
Let’s go back to the preseason projections. Even with ZiPS not fully on board with Rodriguez’s performance in the second half, the long-term projection and the projection percentiles were still about what you’d expect them to be for a talented young pitcher with massive upside.
ZiPS Projection – Grayson Rodriguez
Year
W
L
ERA
G
GS
IP
H
ER
HR
BB
SO
ERA+
WAR
2024
7
6
4.07
28
28
141.7
126
64
19
44
153
101
2.0
2025
7
6
3.98
28
28
142.3
125
63
18
42
149
103
2.1
2026
7
6
3.99
28
28
146.7
129
65
19
41
150
103
2.2
2027
7
7
4.02
29
29
147.7
129
66
19
41
149
102
2.2
2028
7
7
4.06
29
29
148.7
131
67
19
40
147
101
2.1
2029
7
7
4.15
28
28
145.3
130
67
19
39
140
99
1.9
2030
7
6
4.12
27
27
139.7
125
64
18
38
133
99
1.8
2031
6
6
4.19
26
26
133.3
119
62
17
37
126
98
1.7
ZiPS Percentiles – Grayson Rodriguez
Percentile
ERA+
ERA
WAR
95%
148
2.76
4.6
90%
134
3.06
3.9
80%
117
3.49
3.1
70%
110
3.74
2.7
60%
105
3.91
2.3
50%
101
4.07
2.0
40%
96
4.25
1.7
30%
91
4.49
1.3
20%
87
4.69
1.0
10%
81
5.03
0.5
5%
78
5.25
0.1
ZiPS suggests an eight-year, $57 million contract to buy out two years of free agency, and I think given the upside, you can certainly go higher than that. Just for fun, I took the ZiPS updated projection (with his first start) and the 70th percentile projection for the 2024 season and re-ran the long-term projection to get a not-too-aggressive estimate of what it could look like.
There’s a 30% chance that his projection next year will be as good as this or even better. A 3.6 WAR projection for a pitcher is nothing to scoff at; it would have ranked 11th in the ZiPS projections for pitchers this season.
The new O’s owner, David Rubinstein, has excited a lot of people in Baltimore with how he’s talked about the team. But even better than words would be action, and what better way to show a change from the late-stage Angelos era than to actually ensure that one of the team’s best young talents stays in Charm City past his free agent eligibility? It doesn’t necessarily have to be Grayson Rodriguez, but the team should consider him a serious option for an extension. If he develops like scouts and computers believe, he’ll surely be worth it.
On Monday night, I had the privilege of attending a game in which the Reds’ best left-handed starter, Andrew Abbott, faced the Phillies’ best left-handed hitter, Bryce Harper, three times. Abbott got the better of Harper, who went 0-for-3 with a strikeout against the Cincinnati starter and 0-for-5 overall. But the qualities of each player got me thinking.
When Harper swings the bat, one of two things happens. In scenario no. 1, he squares it up and hits it so hard it causes bruising on the deceased ancestors of the workers who stitched the ball together at the Rawlings factory. Sure enough, Harper tagged Abbott’s teammates for three home runs just 24 hours later.
Otherwise, Harper misses it. He can miss it by a lot, in which case he just swings through it, or he misses it by a little. Those swings manifest themselves either in balls fouled straight back to the screen, or in fly balls that go straight up in the air and stay there long enough for the outfielder to take out his phone, and queue up Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell,” so the ball lands right at the climax of the second chorus. You know the part: “Like a sinner / before / the gates of Heaven / I’ll come crawling on back to you.” The loud one, like five and a half minutes into the song. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
Fun with small samples: Bryce Harper entered Tuesday hitting .000/.154/.000 over his first 13 plate appearances of the season, with five strikeouts. After his second career three-homer game on Tuesday, he’s now at .200/.294/.800, good for a WRC+ increase of 198 points (from -34 to 164).
Harper put the Phillies on his back in a 9-4 win over the Reds, driving in six runs with the three homers — one a grand slam — that combined for 1,209 feet of distance and left the bat at 108, 103, and 108 mph. The grand slam, a left-on-left blast against Brent Suter, made the score at the time 8-1 and allowed the Phillies to cruise to a win using just two pitchers — an important reprieve for an overworked bullpen. Not a bad day on the job, and a much-needed good one for a Philadelphia team that entered the day 1-3 on the young season.
There’s just something so aesthetically appealing about watching Harper hit homers, especially into the raucous crowd at Citizens Bank Park. His long balls aren’t the hardest hit in baseball, nor do they travel the farthest. But seeing his ferocious swing unload and send a ball deep into the Philadelphia night is an unmatched view across the sport. It’s the antithesis of my favorite right-handed home runs to watch: the liners that Giancarlo Stanton smokes. Stanton suddenly turns his hips, flicks his wrists, and launches absolute rockets with what looks like no effort whatsoever. Harper puts his entire body into every swing, hurling his bat into the path of the incoming projectile, torquing what feels like the weight of multiple people to send a ball into flight.
Harper’s future Hall of Fame career has not been without its trials and tribulations. He’s always been a good or great hitter, but there have certainly been seasons where he was more the former than the latter. That’s an awfully high standard to hold him to, but when you’re a first-overall phenom, those are the breaks. Last year, two seasons removed from winning his second MVP award, it took him a few months to regain his power stroke after coming back from Tommy John surgery in record time, but once he did, we were privileged to watch him clobber 16 of his 21 dingers in August and September. And thankfully, this year we didn’t have to wait anywhere near as long for his thunderous bat to come alive.
…
Seeing a team like the Pirates come out of the gates hot is always refreshing, though there’s obviously the context of playing the Marlins and Nationals, not exactly powerhouses. I’m not really convinced that they’re even a .500 team; most teams will have a five-game winning streak over the course of the season, and starting the season with one is no more indicative of a team’s talent level than ending the season with one to avoid 100 losses.
But while I’ll need a lot more time to gather thoughts for the team as a whole, I’ve really liked what I’ve seen so far from catcher Henry Davis. The former first overall pick struggled mightily in his debut last year, with a 76 wRC+ and -1.0 WAR in 62 games, almost exclusively playing right field instead of behind the dish. He was worth -9 defensive runs saved, and to my eye, the look matched the metrics: He has a very strong arm, but his reads were rough and he often had to be bailed out by the second baseman when a not-particularly-shallow fly ball was hit his way.
Back at his natural position, Davis looks more comfortable, grading out (in the very early going) as a scratch defender by DRS and very slightly above average as a framer. I also like how well he’s controlled the strike zone through his first 21 plate appearances, with as many strikeouts as walks; both rates are vastly improved from last season. Of course, all of that comes with a small-sample caveat, but you can’t fake exit velocity as a hitter, so it’s worth mentioning that he’s already hit a ball harder (111.5 mph) this year than he did all of last year (109.9 mph).
Tuesday night’s acquisition of Joey Bart should do nothing to unseat Davis’ position as the starting catcher, though perhaps it’s a little more pedigree breathing down his neck than Jason Delay and the currently injured Yasmani Grandal. It is an interesting “ships passing in the night” moment though for two catchers who were taken within the first two picks of their respective drafts.
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It’s too simple to say that Taylor Trammell is in for a breakout just because the Dodgers claimed him off waivers and should have playing time to offer him with Jason Heyward’s back troubles, but at the same time, there’s probably not a better fit for him. Hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc revitalized J.D. Martinez’s career a decade ago and also helped Chris Taylor break out, and it’s not implausible to think Trammell could be his next turnaround.
Trammell has a wRC+ of just 83 in his 351 career big league plate appearances, and at 26 years old and out of options, he’s at something of a crossroads. But he was our 61st-ranked prospect at the end of 2020, so it’s not as if the Dodgers have nothing to work with here. They’re hoping to do what the Reds, Padres, and Mariners all couldn’t: Turn Trammell into a quality major leaguer before moving on.
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a grab of topics, including a team meeting after two games, early bad blood and benches-clearing incidents, the continued terribleness of the new uniforms, a Bryce Harper blooper, a missing first-base coach, an A’s conspiracy, Juan Soto as instant True Yankee, new lights at Chase Field, the Dairy Daddies and marketing, a Nelson Cruz one-day-contract comp, Oswaldo Cabrera’s selective switch-hitting, and more, followed by a Stat Blast (1:14:22) about first-time Opening Day starters, Jesse Chavez and pitchers who were much better with one team than they were overall, games in which both teams scored more runs than they had hits, and the lowest-WAR three-team trades.
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