In the last week, over 300 MLB-affiliated players have started to leave camp to join their countries’ teams for the first World Baseball Classic in six years and the fifth in the tournament’s history. For some veterans and well-established big leaguers, a hiatus from Grapefruit or Cactus League action isn’t something to be concerned about. Playing in the Classic won’t cost them a chance to hit quality live pitching, or pitch to quality live hitters, and while any game action comes with some risk of injury, these types can afford a two-week sabbatical without jeopardizing their job security. Other players, though, are in the midst of big league roster battles, trying to distinguish themselves during camp and earn a spot come Opening Day. As much as we discount the stats generated in spring exhibitions, for some players, this time represents much more than a chance to get into game shape – it’s also an opportunity to change the course of their career.

For these players, the WBC is perhaps not ideally timed. If you’re trying to secure the final bench or bullpen spot, departing camp for a while isn’t exactly a surrender, but these are valuable weeks to make your abilities known. Tony Andracki of Marquee Sports Network has reported that a number of Chicago Cubs on the roster bubble are forgoing participation in the WBC in order to continue their efforts to make the club, and they likely aren’t alone. Here I’ll also note that the absence of some big league regulars opens the door for prospects and other fringe roster types to make a strong impression on their club with more trips to the plate and batters faced. Still, the WBC is a well-appreciated opportunity to represent one’s country, and that so many players jockeying for a roster spot choose to take the time to do so is a testament to what that opportunity means. Read the rest of this entry »

Japan has a long history of baseball in its popular culture. From the organized cheers for NPB players and teams to the summer Koshien high school tournament, baseball serves as not just a spectator sport but a way of life for many people. As a result, Japanese players put great emphasis on their national team’s success in international competitions to showcase the country’s best. In recent memory, Samurai Japan has dominated on the international stage, winning each of the first two World Baseball Classics in 2006 and 2009. Daisuke Matsuzaka claimed MVP in both tournaments, winning all six of his decisions, while hitters like Ichiro Suzuki and Kosuke Fukudome led the way offensively. In 2013 and 2017, they reached the semifinals before ultimately being eliminated, but they remain the only team to place in the top four in each iteration of the WBC. More recently, Japan claimed the gold medal at the 2020 Olympics, shutting out the United States in the championship game. Samurai Japan hopes to continue this run of international success, fielding a largely similar group of players from their Olympic title squad.

Much of Japan’s on-base skill comes from the outfield, led by current Red Sox outfielder Masataka Yoshida. Previously a member of the Orix Buffaloes, Yoshida has one of the best combinations of contact skills and plate discipline in recent memory. A two-time batting champion, Yoshida walked twice as much as he struck out over the past three years and just finished his best season to date with a 201 wRC+. While he doesn’t have monster exit velocities, he puts so many balls in play that eventually a good number go over the fence; he has averaged 23 homers over the past five seasons. Yoshida is a bit defensively limited in left field, but he won’t be able to spend time at DH in the WBC like he did with the Buffaloes because a little-known player on the Angels already has claim to that spot.

Another member of Samurai Japan who wears a red MLB uniform is Lars Nootbaar (who might have the coolest middle name of all time). A batted ball data darling, Nootbaar had a great rookie year with the Cardinals, producing plus exit velocities, a refined plate approach, and 2.7 WAR in just 347 plate appearances. Nootbaar will likely play center field for Japan despite being a corner guy in MLB, but his above-average speed and arm strength should make the transition to center relatively smooth. Nootbaar and Yoshida are joined by Kensuke Kondoh (whose Fukuoka Softbank Hawks don’t wear red, unfortunately). While he doesn’t have much thump in his bat, maxing out at 11 homers in a season, his plate discipline makes him one of the most talented offensive players in Japan. He’s consistently run chase rates in the 18-19% range (second best among NPB hitters), and just finished his sixth consecutive season with an OBP of .400 or higher. Read the rest of this entry »

I first learned about joint dislocation in 2003 after Derek Jeter slid into a nasty collision at third base. When I heard that Jeter had suffered a dislocated shoulder, my five-year-old brain naturally conjured up an image of a disembodied arm lying on the infield dirt. You can imagine my surprise when the Yankees shortstop returned six weeks later, both arms firmly secured in their sockets.

As horrifying as dislocation sounds, and as painful as I’m sure it is, a dislocated shoulder isn’t always a serious injury. Fernando Tatis Jr. dislocated his shoulder several times during the 2021 season and still managed to play 130 games and put up 7.3 WAR en route to a third-place finish for NL MVP. Brandon Inge once dislocated his shoulder mid-game and popped it back in place on the field; the very next inning, he smacked a go-ahead RBI single.

Thus, when Brendan Rodgers landed awkwardly on his shoulder last Tuesday, there was no cause for panic straight away. Manager Bud Black described the incident as “a pretty classic thing,” while Matthew Ritchie of MLB.com wrote that Rodgers might be “a tad delayed.” Unfortunately, the injury appears to be far more significant than your run-of-the-mill dislocation, with reports suggesting Rodgers might need surgery to repair the damage. If he goes under the knife, the Rockies second baseman could miss most, if not all, of the upcoming season. Read the rest of this entry »

Full disclosure, right up top: I’m rooting for Brett Baty to win the Mets’ starting third base job out of spring training. There are many reasons: First, all things being equal I’d prefer to see a young player get playing time rather than a veteran. Playing the kids shows an open-mindedness on the team’s part, as well as a level of faith in young players that allows them to go out on the field with a sense of freedom rather than a fear of failure. It’s forward-looking, which is an important consideration even for a club as well-resourced as the Mets.

But second, I’m a baseball writer who communicates mostly in puns, and to people like me, Baty is a divine blessing. As a general rule, baseball doesn’t do unit-based nicknames as much as hockey or even football, which is a pity. While other sports are rolling out the Legion of Doom or That 70s Line or Gang Green, baseball — a sport with an unparalleled literary and folkloric tradition, I might add — is resting on the laurels of the $100,000 Infield. It’s been more than 30 years since the Nasty Boys, for God’s sake.

So if the Mets end up having an infield of three multi-time All-Stars between the ages of 28 and 30, plus a rookie third baseman, we’re calling it the Three Men and a Baty infield. Agreed? Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about catcher Grayson Greiner’s height, Shohei Ohtani’s titanic homers, tight t-shirt, and pepper-grinding in WBC exhibitions, and a few preview-related trivia questions, then continue their 2023 season preview series by discussing the Toronto Blue Jays (15:02) with Kaitlyn McGrath of The Athletic, and the Kansas City Royals (55:25) with Anne Rogers of MLB.com, plus a Past Blast from 1977 (1:23:45) and trivia answers (1:32:46).

Audio intro: Yo La Tengo, “Shades of Blue”
Audio interstitial: The Joy Formidable, “Into the Blue”
Audio outro: Don Gibson, “Blue, Blue Day”

Link to tall-catchers EW episode
Link to Sam’s Substack
Link to first Ohtani dinger
Link to longer dinger video
Link to second Ohtani dinger
Link to side view of first swing
Link to side-by-side swings
Link to Japan News on homers
Link to MLB.com on the homer
Link to 2022 pepper-grinder story
Link to Nootbaar WBC story
Link to other Nootbaar story
Link to Ohtani’s tight t-shirt
Link to “Shoebae” account
Link to FanGraphs playoff odds
Link to FG payroll breakdown
Link to Blue Jays offseason tracker
Link to Blue Jays depth chart
Link to Kaitlyn’s spring preview
Link to Kaitlyn on the OF dimensions
Link to Travis on the OF dimensions
Link to Statcast park factors
Link to Kaitlyn’s author archive
Link to Royals offseason tracker
Link to Royals depth chart
Link to 2022 rookie PA by team
Link to profile of Quatraro
Link to story on throwing strikes
Link to Anne on “Raid the Zone”
Link to Anne on Royals pitchers
Link to story on KC ballpark sites
Link to 1977 article source
Link to Five Seasons on Goodreads
Link to David Lewis’s Twitter
Link to David Lewis’s Substack
Link to Ryan Nelson’s Twitter
Link to Ward on pitch-calling
Link to Richard Hershberger’s book

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Pitchers, hitters, and the rest of us have spent the first couple weeks of this exhibition season adapting to the new pitch clock, but few players have set out to test the boundaries of the rule the way that Max Scherzer has. The future Hall of Famer’s search for an advantage has called to mind the philosophy offered by a hurler he’ll eventually join in Cooperstown, Warren Spahn: “Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.” And the 38-year-old righty’s first two starts of the spring have demonstrated some ways in which a pitcher might weaponize the clock — and how such efforts might backfire.

Scherzer made his Grapefruit League debut on February 26 at the Mets’ Port St. Lucie Clover Park against the Nationals, throwing two innings and striking out five while allowing three hits and one run. At the outset of the SNY broadcast, Mets play-by-play announcer Gary Cohen foreshadowed the three-time Cy Young winner’s clock-testing efforts by telling viewers, “I think he’d going to love this pitch clock more than anybody else in baseball because he is fully capable of going old school on you, gettin’ it and throwing it.”

While fully capable of pulling the occasional fast one, Scherzer doesn’t particularly stand out in that regard according to Statcast’s new-ish Pitch Tempo metrics, which measure the median time between pitches that follow a take (called strike or ball). Last season, Scherzer averaged 16.6 seconds between such pitches with nobody on base, 1.5 seconds faster than the major league average but a full four seconds slower than major league leader Brent Suter’s 12.6 seconds, and 2.5 seconds slower than Cole Irvin, the fastest pitcher in this context among those who made at least 20 starts last year. Within that latter group, Scherzer ranked 54th-fastest out of 135. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a reader of this site, you probably know that spring training results don’t carry much weight. If you’re really invested in spring outcomes, try exploring them on a rate basis, as those metrics seem to provide the most signal. But what I’m most interested in during the spring are the underlying characteristics that drive outcomes, and often, those characteristics are much stickier than pure results.

Notching high exit velocities in-game, for example, can be thought of as a player tapping into their top-end strength. It can be tough to discern fact from fiction among the countless “best shape of his life” reports, but I figured there might be something to Brendan Donovan’s offseason adjustments when I saw him obliterate a home run to right field in his first spring plate appearance, 105.5 mph off the bat:

Now, 105.5 mph isn’t light-tower power, but it’s notable coming from the slap-hitting utilityman. After posting an ISO over .139 just once across the four minor league stops where he had at least 100 plate appearances, that mark dropped to a paltry .097 in Donovan’s big league debut. And he hit all of three balls harder than 105.5 mph in the majors last year, none of them going for homers, en route to posting an eighth-percentile barrel rate. Ouch. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the weekend, veteran left-hander Brad Hand agreed to a one-year, $2 million contract with the Colorado Rockies, according to Ken Rosenthal. That poor man. This being the offseason of creative contract structures, Hand will receive an additional $1 million if he starts the regular season on the major league roster or IL, and $500,000 of that $2 million guarantee comes in the form of a buyout of a $7 million club option for 2024. In other words, the Rockies are spending $2 million to find out if Hand is completely cooked, but if he’s not they can keep him in the fold for two seasons at a pretty reasonable rate.

Hand was last seen pitching in the colors of Colorado’s sometime postseason nemesis, the Philadelphia Phillies. There, Hand filled what one might call the 2019 Fernando Rodney role. In that scenario, a manager only has a couple relievers he trusts in the postseason, but more innings than he can fill using those arms alone. Enter a veteran — Rodney for the 2019 Nats, Hand for last year’s Phillies — whose stuff isn’t what it used to be but whose experience and guile might allow him to steal a medium-leverage inning or two. In the NLDS against the Braves, that worked quite well. The following series against the Padres, not so much.

That’s because Hand is no longer the elite high-volume reliever he was in San Diego and Cleveland in the late 2010s. If he were, he wouldn’t be signing for $2 million in March. So the question is — as is ever the case with this team — what do the Rockies see in Hand? Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the New York Yankees. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the third 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 I 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 »

Alejandro Kirk slashed a solid .285/.372/.415 with 14 home runs and a 129 wRC+ last year in his first full big-league season. Moreover, the 24-year-old Toronto Blue Jays catcher drew 63 free passes while going down by way of the K just 58 times. His 10.7% strikeout rate was third best in the junior circuit, behind only Steven Kwan’s 9.4% and Luis Arraez’s 7.1%.

How similar of a hitter is Kirk to Arraez? I asked that question to Blue Jays manager John Schneider prior to Thursday’s game in Dunedin.

“When you talk about contact, not a lot of swing-and-miss, yeah, they’re similar,” replied Schneider. “There’s a little more damage potential with Kirky. But more walks than strikeouts is tough to do at any level, [especially] the big leagues. So, I think when it’s just strike zone command, on-base, and contact-ability, they are pretty similar.”

Arraez, now a member of the Miami Marlins, won the American League batting title with the Minnesota Twins while slashing .316/.375/.420 with eight home runs and a 131 wRC+. Following up on my initial question, I asked Schneider if Kirk has the potential to capture a title of his own. Read the rest of this entry »