“You can never have too much pitching” is an adage that predates the bombing of Pearl Harbor and a notion that’s at least as old as Old Hoss Radbourn’s sore right arm. Every team goes into the season expecting that its rotation will need far more than five starters, and one pitcher’s absence is another’s opportunity to step up, but that doesn’t make the inevitable rash of spring injuries any more bearable. This week, we’ve got a handful of prominent ones worth noting, with All-Stars Carlos Rodón and Tony Gonsolin likely to miss a few regular season turns, top prospect Andrew Painter targeting a May return, and José Quintana potentially out for longer than that.

The latest-breaking injury involves Painter, the freshest face among this group. The fast-rising 19-year-old Phillies phenom placed fifth on our Top 100 list. Moreover, the 6-foot-7 righty, who sports four potentially plus pitches, had already turned heads this camp, reaching 99 mph with his fastball in his spring debut on March 1 (Davy Andrews broke down his encounter with Carlos Correa here). While he topped out at Double-A Reading last year after two A-level stops, he was considered to be in competition with Bailey Falter for the fifth starter’s job, and had a legitimate shot at debuting as a teenager, though his 20th birthday on April 10 didn’t leave much leeway.

Alas — there’s always an alas in these stories — two days after Painter’s outing, manager Rob Thomson told reporters that he was experiencing tenderness in his right elbow, and several subsequent days without updates suggested there was more to the story. Indeed, an MRI taken on March 3 revealed a sprained ulnar collateral ligament, with the finding subsequently confirmed via a second opinion from Dr. Neal ElAttrache, hence the delay. The Phillies termed the injury “a mild sprain” that isn’t severe enough to require surgery. The team plans to rest Painter for four weeks from the date of injury (so, March 29) and then begin a light throwing program that under a best-case scenario would have him back in games in May. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m happy to announce that we now have two pitch quality models, PitchingBot and Stuff+, available for your perusal on the FanGraphs Leaderboards.

PitchingBot is the brainchild of Cameron Grove. We worked with Cameron to be able to run and maintain his model in-house at FanGraphs; he has since joined an MLB front office. You can read all about PitchingBot in the FanGraphs Library here.

In short, PitchingBot takes inputs such as pitcher handedness, batter handedness, strike zone height, count, velocity, spin rate, movement, release point, extension, and location to determine the quality of a pitch, as well as its possible outcomes. Those outcomes are then aggregated and normalized on a 20-80 scouting scale, which is what is displayed on the leaderboards. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve reached the point in the offseason when it’s time for one of my favorite/most hated preseason traditions: my attempt to predict breakouts and busts. Since any breakouts or busts beyond what a projection system suggests are naturally going to be low-probability outcomes, there’s a high probability of me looking pretty silly — something writers try to avoid. Let’s start by looking back at how smart I was last year…or how foolish:

First, the bad news. Kelenic and Adell were both just awful, and I would definitely call 2022 a giant miss for both players as they enter their post-prospect period. I suspect there’s more hope to still be had for Kelenic than Adell, but I wouldn’t exactly call myself prescient about either. Kepler’s breakout didn’t happen at all, and his power all but disappeared. Anderson I’ll call an incomplete because of injury, and while Higashioka did match his entire previous career in WAR, that was largely due to defense, which I can hardly claim credit for predicting. Hiura did hit far better than he had recently, but he also didn’t exactly get a ton of playing time with the Brewers, who appeared to have lost interest in him. There were a few triumphs, however: Kwan and Lux both had excellent seasons, especially the former. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 1015

This week’s episode is a bittersweet one, as your favorite podcast producer (that’s me!) tells his story before saying goodbye.

Dialing in from the snowy slopes of France, Ben Clemens interviews me, Dylan Higgins, for the latest edition of FanGraphs Backstories. Ben and I talk about the gateway drug that was Moneyball, how I hopped from internship to internship, and the summer I spent in an office with Branch Rickey III. I also tell Ben about my adventures working in the Australian Baseball League, finding myself in a sticky championship celebration, and eventually finding my people at FanGraphs.

To purchase a FanGraphs membership for yourself or as a gift, click here.

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Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @dhhiggins on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximate 51 minute play time.)

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the exciting beginning of the WBC, early indications in spring training that MLB’s rules changes are having the intended effects, and a classic unprecedented occurrence in a baseball game, then continue their 2023 season preview series by discussing the Houston Astros (17:49) with Chandler Rome of The Houston Chronicle, and the Pittsburgh Pirates (59:39) with Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, plus a Past Blast from 1979 (1:30:38), preview trivia answers (1:37:36), and a farewell to editor Dylan Higgins.

Audio intro: Sloan, “So Far So Good”
Audio interstitial 1: The Black Crowes, “Houston Don’t Dream About Me”
Audio interstitial 2: Mason Jennings, “Pittsburgh”
Audio outro: Hockey Dad, “Dylan’s Place”

Link to Castillo catch
Link to runner’s celebration mistake
Link to last play of Australia-Korea
Link to Nootbaar catch
Link to Ohtani highlights
Link to story on Ohtani
Link to Passan tweet
Link to Lewie Pollis on the shift
Link to Tom Tango on stolen bases
Link to Cooper on game times
Link to Johnson’s bird snuff film
Link to You’re Wrong About on snuff films
Link to FanGraphs playoff odds
Link to FG payroll breakdown
Link to Astros offseason tracker
Link to Astros depth chart
Link to Passan on Click and Crane
Link to Chandler on Brown
Link to Chandler’s spring preview
Link to Chandler’s author archive
Link to Baumann on Brown
Link to Pirates offseason tracker
Link to Pirates depth chart
Link to Jason’s spring Pirates preview
Link to Jason on Keller
Link to Jason on catching prospects
Link to Jason on strike-throwing
Link to Jason’s author archive
Link to 1979 article source
Link to Belgium gambling news
Link to David Lewis’s Twitter
Link to David Lewis’s Substack
Link to Ryan Nelson’s Twitter
Link to Dylan’s last FGA episode

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In a winter that didn’t lack for shocking free agent moves — and even more shocking plot twists — the Rangers’ signing of Jacob deGrom was as eye-opening as any of them. After opting out despite two injury-shortened seasons, the 34-year-old righty left the Mets to sign a five-year, $185 million deal with the Rangers. The move was surprising not only because deGrom bolted from the team with which he’d spent his entire professional career, but also because he chose a club that won 68 games in 2022 over one that won 101.

The Rangers didn’t stop at adding deGrom when it came to addressing a rotation that was among the majors’ worst last year, ranking among the bottom seven in ERA, FIP, and WAR. In addition to retaining All-Star Martín Pérez and trading for Jake Odorizzi, they added both Nathan Eovaldi and Andrew Heaney via two-year free agent deals of $30 million and $20 million, respectively. Thanks to those additions plus holdovers Pérez and Jon Gray, Texas’ rotation ranks second in projected WAR via our Depth Charts, behind only the Yankees (who got some bad news on Thursday, as Carlos Rodón has suffered a mild forearm strain, cutting into the depth already compromised by Montas’ injury). The Rangers lead the majors when I compare the actual production of last year’s rotations to the projected production of this year’s units — though not without some caveats. Read the rest of this entry »

Anthony Volpe has a chance to be a star, and his bat is one of the reasons why. No. 11 on our Top 100, and No. 1 on our New York Yankees list, the 21-year-old infield prospect is on the doorstep of the big leagues thanks in part to a re-engineered swing that our own Eric Longenhagen has described as being like a right-handed version of Juan Soto’s. Playing at Double-A Somerset and Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre last year, Volpe slugged 21 home runs while logging a 117 wRC+.

Volpe discussed his evolution as a hitter at Yankees camp earlier this week.

———

David Laurila: How do you approach hitting? Are you a hitting nerd or more of a keep-it-simple guy?

Anthony Volpe: “Probably a little bit of both. During the season I definitely try to keep it simple. We have a great hitting department here with the Yankees that helps us set our routines so that during games we can just go out there and play. There is obviously a lot that goes into it, but at the end of the day it’s about staying simple and performing in the game.” Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an evaluation of the prospects in the Colorado Rockies farm system who readers should consider “imminent big leaguers,” players who might reasonably be expected to play in the majors at some point this year. This includes all prospects on the 40-man roster as well as those who have already established themselves in the upper levels of the minors but aren’t yet rostered. Any Top 100 prospects, regardless of their ETA, are also included on this list. Reports, tool grades, and scouting information for all of the prospects below can also be found on The Board.

This is not a top-to-bottom evaluation of the Rockies farm system. I like to include what’s happening in minor league and extended spring training in my reports as much as possible, since scouting high concentrations of players in Arizona and Florida allows me to incorporate real-time, first-person information into the org lists. However, this approach has led to some situations where outdated analysis (or no analysis at all) was all that existed for players who had already debuted in the majors. Skimming the imminent big leaguers off the top of a farm system will allow this time-sensitive information to make its way onto the site more quickly, better preparing readers for the upcoming season, helping fantasy players as they draft, and building site literature on relevant prospects to facilitate transaction analysis in the event that trades or injuries foist these players into major league roles. There will still be a Rockies prospect list that includes Pick to Click Jordy Vargas, Yanquiel Fernandez, and all of the other prospects in the system who appear to be at least another season away. As such, today’s list includes no ordinal rankings. Readers are instead encouraged to focus on the players’ Future Value (FV) grades. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley welcome back former co-host Sam Miller to banter about his return to public baseball writing, his current relationship with baseball, and his new Substack, Pebble Hunting. Then (17:10) Ben, Meg, and Sam talk about a 1913 article about unprecedented events at the ballpark, the cliché about seeing something new at every game, the supreme examples of that phenomenon from any point in baseball history, games they attended, and games they paid attention to, and examples they hope to see in 2023. After that (1:18:27), Ben and Meg talk to WBC Central host Shawn Spradling about the biggest storylines of the World Baseball Classic, including the format and schedule, the favorites and dark horses, the surprising players, the challenge of putting on an international baseball tournament, how and when to watch, and more, followed by (1:56:57) a Past Blast from 1978.

Audio intro: May Erlewine, “Song for Sam”
Audio interstitial: Supergrass, “The Return Of…”
Audio outro: Field Medic, “Tournament Horseshoe”

Link to Sam’s Substack
Link to first Substack story
Link to 1913 Phelon article
Link to Sam on seeing new things
Link to Sam on pitching lines
Link to Craig Wright on Caldwell
Link to three-pickoff inning
Link to Mariners triple play
Link to Clemens-Piazza article
Link to article on ALDS G2
Link to Ben’s ALDS G2 oral history
Link to video of Martin-Choo play
Link to EW ALDS G2 draft
Link to Dale Scott EW episode
Link to Ben on “Strategy”
Link to Dario email episode
Link to Shawn’s team infographics
Link to Shawn’s power rankings graphic
Link to Shawn’s power rankings
Link to Shawn’s YouTube channel
Link to Shawn’s podcast feed
Link to Zach Kram’s WBC primer
Link to Cliff Corcoran’s WBC primer
Link to 1978 Past Blast source
Link to David Lewis’s Twitter
Link to David Lewis’s Substack

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Monday offered a rare sighting, as Chris Sale took the mound in a game for the first time since last July 17 — even if it was only a Grapefruit League game against the Tigers. Limited to just 11 starts over the past three seasons due to injuries, the soon-to-be-34-year-old lefty took his first step towards both reestablishing his spot among the game’s top pitchers and helping to support a promising but rickety rotation that may be the Red Sox’s best hope for respectability this year.

Once upon a time, Sale ranked among the game’s most durable pitchers. From 2012-17, only Max Scherzer, R.A. Dickey and Jeff Samardzija threw more innings than his 1,230. Sale was limited to 27 starts in 2018 due to left shoulder inflammation, though he wobbled through the postseason while helping the Red Sox win the World Series. It’s been downhill ever since, as he pitched to a 4.40 ERA and missed the last seven weeks of the 2019 season due to left shoulder inflammation, then tore his ulnar collateral ligament the following spring and had Tommy John surgery. The Red Sox took a slow, deliberate approach to his rehab. He didn’t return to the majors until August 14, 2021, nearly 17 months after his surgery and two years and a day since his last regular season outing.

Sale made nine starts with mostly good results in 2021, posting a 3.16 ERA and 3.69 FIP while striking out 28.4% of hitters, but hopes that that performance would carry over into 2022 didn’t last long. About a week after the lockout ended, the Red Sox revealed that Sale had suffered a stress fracture in his right rib cage while throwing batting practice at Florida Gulf Coast University in mid-February; he wasn’t allowed to tell the team until the lockout ended. He finally made his first of four rehab starts on June 20, and returned to the Sox after a frustrating five-walk outing that was capped by him destroying a television and other equipment in what he later called “a 7-year-old temper tantrum.” On July 12 he finally took the mound for Boston, throwing five shutout innings against the Rays, but five days later, he didn’t make it out of the first inning against the Yankees, as a 106.7-mph Aaron Hicks line drive hit his left hand, fracturing his pinky. Around three weeks later, while the pinky was still healing, he broke his right wrist in a bicycle accident and needed season-ending surgery. Woof. Read the rest of this entry »