This is a bounce-back season for Yandy Díaz, and not in a good way. After two straight seasons with a wRC+ above 145, the Rays first baseman is at 106 so far in 2024. When Jay Jaffe checked in on him on June 13, Díaz had just climbed out of a hole. Through May 10, Díaz was running a wRC+ of just 77 with a 90.9 mph average exit velocity. Since that date, he’s been at 128, and his exit velocity has jumped all the way to 93.7 mph. Even more important, he was running a 60.3% groundball rate on May 10, but has run a 53.3% groundball rate after that point. For the season, that still leaves him at 56.4%, highest among all qualified players, but for Díaz, that handful of percentage points has always been the difference between being a good hitter and being one of the best in baseball. When his groundball rate is up, his wRC+ is down, and vice versa. The relationship is plain to see:

MLB’s new bat tracking data put the issue in stark relief. Blasts are a combination of two metrics: fast swings and squared up swings. The official definitions are here, but if you swing hard and you barrel the ball up, you’ll end up with a blast. That’s a good thing, because so far this season, blasts have a wOBA of .731, and a barrel rate of 27.7%. For Díaz, however, those numbers are .423 and 16.0%. He’s tied with Gunnar Henderson for fourth in baseball with 100 blasts, but just five of those blasts have turned into home runs. Of the 260 players who have hit at least 25 blasts this season, that 5.0% home run rate puts him in 248th place. Why? You know why. He has a launch angle of 1 on his blasts, tied for 259th out of 260. On the left, with the infield dirt almost completely obscured by dots, is Díaz’s spray chart on blasts. On the right, with home runs sprinkled liberally on top, is Henderson’s. Read the rest of this entry »

Last summer, I wrote about how Aaron Civale “King Ralph-ed” his way into an exciting postseason race. The Rays entered the 2023 season with five playoff-caliber starting pitchers at the top of their depth chart and a star pitching prospect waiting in the wings. Yet after several major elbow injuries, they were forced to send a Top 100 prospect to Cleveland in exchange for Civale at the deadline. By August, the right-hander was Tampa Bay’s no. 3 starter. The beneficiary of so many others’ misfortunes, Civale went from a scuffling Guardians club to one of the best teams in the league.

Conversely, Civale probably would have preferred to be back in Cleveland this season. As of today, it’s the Guardians, not the Rays, who are competing with the Orioles for the best record in the American League. Meanwhile, it’s the Rays, not the Guardians, who are struggling to stay above .500 with the trade deadline fast approaching. Thus, I have no choice but to go back to the King Ralph parallel. At the end of the movie, Ralph decides he’d rather return to his old life and abdicates the throne. However, when Ralph abdicates, his aging and childless successor, Sir Cedric, warns him that he might have to be king again once Cedric dies, leaving open the possibility for a sequel. King Ralph never got a second chapter, but as luck would have it, Civale just King Ralph-ed all over again. The rules of the CBA prevent him from simply packing up and heading back to Cleveland, but he’s just taken his place in a new Midwestern court. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2020s have been a quiet time for the Boston Red Sox. Since winning the 2018 World Series, their fourth in a 15-year period, Boston hasn’t looked much like one of the titans, ready to throw down with the Yankees or Astros in brutal warfare for baseball supremacy. Instead, as an organization, the Red Sox have taken on the character of a genial, pastorale retiree, gently reclining on the porch of an American Craftsman house, as if they were in a 1980s lemonade commercial.

On Independence Day in 2022, Boston was second in the AL East with the junior circuit’s third-best record, but in the space of a month, it had lost Nathan Eovaldi, Garrett Whitlock, Michael Wacha, and Rich Hill to injuries. It was the prime time to make trades, but the Red Sox did basically nothing that would have helped them maintain their playoff relevance; their pitching staff’s 6.30 ERA for July dropped them below .500 by the time the Sox made their pointless acquisition of Eric Hosmer at the trade deadline. At last year’s deadline, when they were just 3.5 games out of the final wild card spot, they decided the day was intolerably hot and they were content to sip the last of their sweet tea as they watched and waited for the fireflies to come out at the dying of the day. Once again, Boston is in contention during trade season, a half-game up on the Royals for the last AL playoff spot, and it’s time for them to get up off the porch. Read the rest of this entry »

Spencer Horwitz is hoping to show that what he did in the minors can be replicated in the majors, and so far, he’s off to a strong start. Displaying what my colleagues Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin called “a patient, contact-driven approach at the plate,” the lefty-hitting Blue Jays utilityman has slashed .310/.430/.479 with an equal amount of walks and strikeouts over 86 plate appearances since being called up from Triple-A in early June. By comparison, his numbers down on the farm include a .307/.413/.471 slash line and roughly the same number of strikeouts and free passes over parts of five professional seasons. The extent to which Horwitz can continue having this level of success against major league pitching remains to be seen — last season’s 15-game cup of coffee yielded lesser results — but his skillset and upside are promising.

In the latest installment of our Talks Hitting series, the 26-year-old Horwitz discussed how he’s learned and evolved as a hitter over the years, from watching Manny Machado flicking the barrel to challenging himself with high velocity off of machines.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with one of my favorite ice-breaker questions in this series: Do you view hitting as more of an art or as more of a science?

Spencer Horwitz: “Oh, good question. I would say a blend of both. I’ve been blessed in a lot of ways with some hitter-ish things that I can’t explain, but I’ve also learned a lot through the science of hitting.”

Laurila: When did that learning start?

Horwitz: “I think it started when I was in high school, not really knowing what I was looking at, but watching really good hitters and trying to emulate them. Later, I was able to put some true numbers to the data that I was collecting in my mind.” Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

With less than four weeks to go until the July 30 trade deadline, now’s a great time to start taking a lay of the land and determining which teams will be buying, which will be selling, and which are caught in the middle. I looked at the AL teams on Tuesday, so today, let’s cover the NL clubs. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Tampa Bay Rays. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our 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 Phillies reliever José Ruiz threatening Ryan Webb’s career record for games finished without a save, Aaron Judge’s Hall of Fame case, the Mariners having a .540 winning percentage, just as Jerry Dipoto foretold (sort of), Dallas Keuchel being back in the big leagues, the White Sox, weirdly, dictating the trade deadline, and the collective performance of the Boras Four (or Five), then (54:27) answer a listener email about catchers fooling pitchers into issuing bad challenges under the challenge system, and (1:01:13) meet major leaguers Spencer Bivens, Jake Bloss, and Jacob Bosiokovic.

Audio intro: Ted O., “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Alex Glossman and Ali Breneman, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to GF with no saves leaders
Link to Webb/Albers wiki
Link to Ben on Webb/Albers
Link to Webb/Albers on EW
Link to Triple Crown redundancy EW
Link to EW on Dipoto and .540
Link to Dipoto clip
Link to Dipoto follow-up
Link to .540 spreadsheet
Link to MLBTR on Montgomery
Link to MLBTR on Luzardo
Link to MLBTR on Flaherty
Link to 2023 ABS article 1
Link to 2023 ABS article 2
Link to 2024 ABS article
Link to MaML wiki
Link to B-Ref’s new debuts
Link to Buchanan on Bivens
Link to Bivens on Twitter
Link to Bivens on Insta
Link to Bloss call-up article
Link to Eric’s Astros prospects
Link to Georgetown major leaguers
Link to “The” OSU explainer
Link to “Hoya Saxa” explainer
Link to Cronin on EW
Link to MLBTR on Bosiokovic
Link to MLB.com on Bosiokovic
Link to Dispatch on Bosiokovic
Link to ballpark meetup forms
Link to meetup organizer form

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We’re going to start with a little quiz. Here’s how it works. I’ll show you a short video clip. There’s something weird about the clip. Don’t make it full screen, at least on your first viewing. I just want you to see whether you can spot what exactly that weird thing is. Maybe you’ll catch it the first time you watch. Maybe it’ll take a few more views. Don’t scroll down too far or you’ll see the answer in the paragraph after the video, and that would defeat the point of our little exercise.

Ready? Here we go.

Did you see it? Did you not see it? Am I just vamping for two more paragraphs in order to give you a better chance of watching the video without spoiling the surprise?

Maaaaaybeeeee. Read the rest of this entry »

Jackson Merrill has been powering up for the Padres. Over his last 18 games, the 21-year-old rookie outfielder has homered nine times while slashing a robust .343/.371/.791 with a 228 wRC+. His seasonal numbers aren’t nearly as stellar — the second coming of Barry Bonds he’s not — but they are good enough to have him firmly in contention for NL Rookie of the Year honors at the halfway mark. San Diego’s hot-hitting youngster has a dozen dingers to go with a 125 wRC+ and a .291/.325/.459 slash line. Moreover, his 2.5 WAR is tied for tops (along with Milwaukee’s Joey Ortiz) among first-year players in the senior circuit.

For a few years now, one of Merrill’s goals — and expectations — has been to hit for more power than many people projected he would when he was drafted 27th overall in 2021. When I talked to him for Sunday Notes during the 2022 Arizona Fall League season, the Baltimore native told me that he could “definitely drive the ball,” adding that he was looking to get stronger and produce more pop going forward. When the Padres visited Fenway Park last weekend, I asked Merrill how he feels he’s progressed in that area.

“It’s not trying to force extra power, it’s just kind of getting adjusted to the pitching and letting it come naturally,” said Merrill, who proceeded to punish Red Sox pitching to the tune of 15 total bases over three games. “When I first got up here, I was still getting accustomed to everything, and getting my timing and my pitch selection right. The power comes naturally when you get your swing feeling good and are putting the barrel on the ball more.” Read the rest of this entry »

Willie Mays was already a superstar by the time the Giants moved across the country following the 1957 season, yet the denizens of San Francisco did not exactly embrace him. They took much more quickly to Orlando Cepeda, who homered against the Dodgers in his major league debut on April 15, 1958, the team’s first game at Seals Stadium, its temporary new home. The slugging 20-year-old first baseman, nicknamed “The Baby Bull” — in deference to his father Pedro “The Bull” Cepeda, a star player in his own right in their native Puerto Rico — was a perfect fit for San Francisco and its culture. He helped to infuse excitement into what had been a sixth-place team the year before, winning NL Rookie of the Year honors in 1958 and kicking off a 17-year career that included an MVP award, a World Series championship, and an induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, not to mention a statue outside Oracle Park.

Sadly, 10 days after Mays’ death at the age of 93, the 86-year-old Cepeda passed away as well. The Giants and the Cepeda family announced his death on Friday night — fittingly, during a game against the Dodgers; fans at Oracle Park stood to observe a moment of silence. “Our beloved Orlando passed away peacefully at home this evening, listening to his favorite music and surrounded by his loved ones,” said Nydia Fernandez, his second of three wives, in the statement. No cause of death was provided.

As the second Black Puerto Rican to play in the AL or NL, after Roberto Clemente, Cepeda became a hero in his homeland as well as a favorite of Giants fans. He spent nine seasons with the Giants (1958-66) before trades to the Cardinals (1966–68) and Braves (1969–72), followed by brief stints with the A’s (1972), Red Sox (1973), and Royals (1974) at the tail end of his career. The 6-foot-2, 210-pound righty was a middle-of-the-lineup force on three pennant winners, including the 1967 champion Cardinals, and was selected for an All-Star team 11 times, including two per year from 1959–62; he was the first Puerto Rican player to start an All-Star Game in the first of those seasons. He was the first player to win both the Rookie of the Year and MVP awards unanimously; Albert Pujols is the only one to replicate that feat. Cepeda finished his career with 2,351 hits, 379 homers, 142 steals, and a lifetime batting line of .297/.350/.499 (133 OPS+).

Not everything came easily for Cepeda. If not for the pitcher-friendliness of the Giants’ home ballparks — first Seals Stadium and then Candlestick Park — as well as a series of knee injuries that led to 10 surgeries, he might have hit at least 500 home runs. His path to the Hall of Fame took an extreme detour due to a conviction for smuggling marijuana, which resulted in a 10-month stint in federal prison as well as a humiliating fall from grace in Puerto Rico. Only after his release and his conversion to Buddhism was he able to rehabilitate his image and work his way back into the game’s good graces, a process that culminated with his election to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1999, 25 years after his final game. He was the second Puerto Rican player inducted, preceded only by Clemente. Read the rest of this entry »