I didn’t come close to an answer, because while watching Baz pitch, I was struck by the sparseness of the young right-hander’s uniform. Only three letters in his name; two digits in his uniform number, but represented by skinny numerals. It stood out on the Rays’ classy blue-on-white uniforms. (Some say it’s boring and/or derivative, but I disagree — it’s a color scheme that’ll never steer you wrong in baseball.)
Then I lost the plot a little. The Rays don’t have a jersey sponsor, and their sleeve patch doesn’t contain any script. Their team name is only four letters long. How close does Baz come to having the fewest characters on his uniform of any major league player? Read the rest of this entry »
Randal Grichuk was ranked seventh when our 2015 St. Louis Cardinals Top Prospects list was published in March of that year. Acquired by the NL Central club in trade 16 months earlier, the then-22-year-old outfielder had been drafted 24th overall by the Los Angeles Angels out of a Rosenberg, Texas high school in 2009. The selection is a well-known part of his story. Grichuk was the first of back-to-back Angels’ picks that summer, the second being Mike Trout.
Grichuk has gone on to have a good career. Now in his 13th major league season, and his second with the Arizona Diamondbacks, the right-handed-hitting slugger has propelled 203 home runs while logging a 102 wRC+. Moreover, none of the 23 players drafted in front of him (in what was admittedly a pitcher-heavy first round) have homered as many times, nor have they recorded as many hits. AJ Pollock is the only position player with a higher WAR.
What did Grichuk’s 2015 scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think of it a full decade later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what our then-lead prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel wrote, and asked Grichuk to respond to it.
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“Grichuk was the Angels first rounder that they took one pick ahead of Mike Trout in 2009, though Grichuk has turned into a solid prospect in his own right.”
“That’s accurate,” replied Grichuk. “I was taken one pick before Trout, and I played well enough in the minor leagues to be looked at as a prospect.”
It’s April, which means that here at FanGraphs we’re contractually forbidden from overreacting to small sample sizes. Overreacting to defensive metrics, which require especially large samples before they stabilize, is an even graver offense, grounds for a written reprimand and public shaming. According to Statcast’s Fielding Run Values, the best non-catcher was worth 16 runs on defense last year. On the other hand, according to Weighted Runs Above Average, the best hitter in baseball was worth 93.8 runs. The sample sizes on defense are a lot smaller and most of the chances are routine, which limits the impact even the best or worst defender can have on the game. However, we’re not forbidden from having fun. Although the small sample sizes make it dangerous for us to draw sweeping conclusions, they make it easy for us to get granular, and nothing says fun like statistical granularity. Today, we’re looking for one thing in particular: specific moments in which we can see a player’s defensive metrics jump or fall by an integer in real time.
Oneil Cruz has already been the most impactful defender according to DRS, racking up a shocking -8 runs over 126 1/3 innings. How did he fall into this abyss? You’d have to dig through every play he’s made this season. It would take a whole article. Maybe I will write that article soon enough, but for now, I’m interested in the other side of the spectrum. Welcome, once again, to Small Sample Size Theater. Read the rest of this entry »
Have you seen all the technological advances taking over pitching in recent years? High-speed cameras, pitching labs, weighted ball training, wind tunnels – maybe the reason we haven’t sent anyone to the moon for decades is that we’re using all the technology to strike batters out instead. Clearly, the arms race (get it?) favors technological savvy and complicated, inscrutable mathematical modeling.
Here’s a counterpoint, though: Maybe you should just throw a fastball and a slider and laugh as batters flail at both. Case in point: Randy Rodríguez has been the best reliever in baseball this year, and there’s nothing fancy about his game. He throws a 98-mph fastball. He throws a tight slider. That’s it – and that’s really all he needs anyway. Through eight appearances this year, he has 13 strikeouts, zero walks, and zero runs allowed.
Oh, two paragraphs don’t make an article? Well then, I guess we should expand on everything a bit. First, his backstory: Rodríguez signed with the Giants in 2017 out of the Dominican Republic and then slowly climbed the minor league ranks. He was a reliever right from the jump, with only occasional dalliances with short-burst starts, and he got a taste of Triple-A in 2022, where he got shelled. He tried it again in 2023 with better results, and by 2024 he looked like he belonged. That was his first year in the upper minors with a single-digit walk rate, and that’s all the Giants were waiting for; they called him up midseason and plugged him into the bullpen. Read the rest of this entry »
Ella Black was the first woman to write about baseball for a national publication—if her name was Ella Black, and if she was a woman. On Ella Black: Lost and Found, a three-part scripted series from Effectively Wild, Ben Lindbergh explores what we know about the enigmatic trailblazer and tries to solve some of the mysteries that have surrounded her ever since she debuted—and, just as suddenly, disappeared—in 1890. On Part 2, “Ella’s Season,” Ben chronicles Ella’s coverage of baseball’s civil war, explores her own disputes with skeptics, and explains how both conflicts ended.
While the Twins continue to stumble, the Tigers are in first place in the AL Central, having recently won nine out of 11 games. Spencer Torkelson played a big part in that surge, homering four times over that span and five times so far this season, putting him halfway to last year’s total before tax day rolled around. As he’s done on and off throughout his brief career, the top pick of the 2020 draft is raking, but given his ups and downs since reaching the majors in ’22, it will take more than a few strong weeks to convince anyone he’s truly turned a corner. Still, the adjustments he’s made suggest this is more than just a random hot streak.
Through 156 games, the 25-year-old Torkelson is hitting an impressive .288/.380/.627. His slugging percentage ranks sixth in the American League, while his 184 wRC+ ranks eighth; he was second behind only Aaron Judge in both categories until Monday’s 0-for-4 against the Brewers. Admittedly, he hasn’t exactly been beating up on Cy Young Award hopefuls, as his homers have come at the expense of the Dodgers’ Alex Vesia, the White Sox’s Davis Martin, the Yankees’ Carlos Carrasco, and the Twins’ Kody Funderburk and Simeon Woods Richardson. But Tork and his teammates are part of the reason that list looks inauspicious, as the Tigers — who are 10-6 thus far, their best start since 2015 — have beaten up opposing pitchers, scoring 5.0 runs per game (tied for second in the AL) with a 116 wRC+ (third). Read the rest of this entry »
For the past half decade, Logan Webb has been one of the game’s premier starters. He churns out 30-start seasons with ERAs in the 3s like clockwork; that’s almost exactly his seasonal average since switching to a full-time sinkerballer in 2021. In that span, he’s averaging 4.4 WAR per year, and he’s topped 200 innings in each of the past two seasons. This year, he’s atop the leaderboards again, with a 2.63 ERA and 2.25 FIP through four starts. But there’s something new to see here, and it’s a change I thought Webb would make for years before he actually did, so I think an updated look is in order.
Webb’s approach was simple and yet effective. He threw three pitches to righties: sinker, sweeper, changeup. Against lefties, he threw fewer sweepers and more changeups, and he also mixed in a few four-seamers in lieu of sinkers. For the most part, though, he alternated his three best pitches, weighted to suit the batter he was facing. Here’s a great graphic, courtesy of Baseball Savant’s player pages, that shows Webb’s movement profile. I picked 2023 for reasons that will become obvious shortly:
This shows a few things about Webb’s game in one image. His sinker and changeup move very differently from the league-average versions of those pitches. His four-seamer, rarely thrown, is effective not because of inherent shape, but because it’s different from his primary fastball. His sweeper is the only thing he throws that breaks glove side, and it breaks that way by quite a lot. If you’re facing Webb, you’re either going to see something that tails hard arm side (sinker or changeup) or something that shoots hard glove side (sweeper). It’s like facing Clay Holmes or Blake Treinen for 100 pitches at a time. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve gotten prematurely excited aboutNick Lodolo before. This is not that. I’ve consulted my physician and I’m working on the problem. But he’s such a weird pitcher I can’t completely forget him.
What’s he up to now? Well, believe it or not, El Cóndor del Río Ohio is not walking anyone. Maybe that’ll change when he starts against the Mariners tonight, but through his first three starts, Lodolo has faced 71 batters and walked only one. And while he suffers the same predilection for hitting batters that plagues many long-levered sidearmers, Lodolo has plunked just one opponent in 2025. Read the rest of this entry »
Erick Fedde returned stateside in 2024 and had a career-best major league season. One year after going 20-6 with a 2.00 ERA for the KBO’s NC Dinos, the 32-year-old right-hander logged a 3.30 ERA and a 3.86 FIP over 31 starts between the Chicago White Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals. His previous big league campaigns had been relatively rocky. From 2017-2022, Fedde fashioned a 5.41 ERA and a 5.17 FIP with the Washington Nationals.
Fedde, whom St. Louis acquired at last summer’s trade deadline as part of an eight-player, three-team swap, entered professional baseball with high expectations. He was drafted 18th overall in 2014 despite having undergone Tommy John surgery during his junior season at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. When our 2017 Washington Nationals Top Prospects list was published in March of that year, Fedde was ranked third in the system, behind Victor Robles and Juan Soto.
What did Fedde’s 2017 scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think of it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen wrote, and asked Fedde to respond to it.
———
“As a junior at UNLV, Fedde was a potential top-10 pick until he blew out in May.”
“Pretty accurate,” Fedde said. “Going into my junior year, I was projected to go at the end of the first round, and just kind of kept climbing as the year went. Unfortunately, I was hurt just before the draft. I think I had TJ two days prior. But it all worked out. I was still able to go in the first round, which was really cool.
“Jeff Hoffman, who was drafted [ninth overall] by the Blue Jays, was kind of the big right-hander ahead of me. He blew out earlier in the year. I think he was kind of up there with me and Aaron Nola at one point. We were looking at possibly top 10, although I don’t know if there was a specific team.”
“Fedde’s fastball mostly sits 90-94 and will touch 96 with a bit of sink and run.”
“I’d say that’s pretty spot on,” Fedde replied. “I didn’t really start throwing hard until that sophomore-to-junior summer; that’s when I started getting up there. I was a consistent 92-93, but the big thing I remember was that I would hold velocity, if not gain it, as the game went on. That’s something I think scouts enjoyed.”
“Fedde’s out pitch is a slider, mostly 81-84 mph, that flashes plus but can get slurvy and lose bite when he doesn’t get on top of it.”
“Yeah, 100%,” he acknowledged. “I think I was throwing a sweeper before I knew what a sweeper was. A couple of years ago that became the total rave — it became the belle of the ball in the sense of pitching — and it’s kind of what I threw. At that time we would call it slurvy, but in today’s world it’s a sweeper.”
“His arm slot can get slingy and low, making it hard for him to drive the ball down.”
“I mean, at that point my life all I did was throw the ball down in the zone,” Fedde countered. “At least mentally, that’s what I was trying to do.”
“Not all scouts are enamored of Fedde’s delivery. His lower half is frail, often unbalanced, and at times plays no role in his delivery at all.”
“I was a thin guy,” recalled Fedde, who now stands 6-foot-4 and weighs 205 pounds. “I think I left for the draft at like 175 pounds. So, I guess I probably relied on whip and quickness instead of strength. I don’t know. Maybe that came into the idea of my having a lack of leg use.”
“If Fedde can improve his currently fringy, mid-80s changeup, he’ll have a viable three-pitch mix and above-average command of it.”
“Yeah, I feel like I’ve always been pretty good with command,” he said. “It’s something that I’ve leaned on throughout my career. The changeup really stunk all the way up until a couple of years ago. So that’s very true. I finally feel like I have a decent changeup. And then, as I got into pro baseball, I learned a cutter to add to my mix. Now it’s a four-pitch mix.”
“He projects as a sinker/slider mid-rotation arm.”
“I think it’s been kind of east-to-west that way,” Fedde said. “I’ve been in the middle of rotations. I definitely would never say that I’ve been a number one. But yeah, just keep growing and hopefully push to the top end of rotations. Last season was my best so far, for sure. I had a lot of struggles early, a lot of learning. But like [the scouting report] said, if I can get a good changeup… I mean, I think the changeup really changed my career.”
This spring, the Angels banned the use of cell phones in their clubhouse. I read that news with great interest, since like so many people these days, I have a love/hate relationship with the little screen in my pocket. I really do feel like looking at it less often could help me out. What better laboratory to test the wholesome effects of less screen time than a high stakes sport?
Then I thought a bit more about the situation and laughed. Could cell phone usage bring the Angels to the playoffs? Signing Shohei Ohtani for a pittance couldn’t bring the Angels to the playoffs. Drafting Mike Trout, one of the greatest players in the 21st century, and then twice signing him to contract extensions has only taken the team to October once in Trout’s career. Maybe this was the wrong team to pin my hopes to. But fast forward three weeks, and who sits atop the AL West but the Los Angeles Angels, in the first year where they banned cell phones. Coincidence?
I mean, yeah. Thanks for bearing with me for that extended introduction, but this isn’t an article about the evils of technology. Instead, it’s about what’s gone right in Anaheim so far this year, and whether that should change our view of the team going forward. Read the rest of this entry »
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