If there’s anything as inevitable as the Tampa Bay Rays trading away a top starting pitcher, typically for salary reasons, it’s their development of the next one. Shane McClanahan looks a lot like their next one. The Baltimore native was highly effective in his rookie season, putting up a 3.34 ERA and 3.31 FIP with 10 strikeouts per nine over 25 starts in 2021. Even more impressive, he did it with minimal professional experience, with only four games in the high minors before becoming the first pitcher to make his major league debut in a playoff game.

2021 was a fine rookie season for McClanahan, but 2022 is looking like something special. In seven starts, his ERA stands at 2.52, and with a FIP of 2.67, it’s not a BABIP-fueled mirage. His strikeout percentage has jumped by about 40% year-on-year, from 27% to 38%, a notable improvement even in a very pitcher-friendly season. Batters are making both less contact than last year (dipping from 70.4% to 63.6%) and worse contact — their average exit velocity declined from 91.7 mph to 89.3, while their Statcast sweet spot percentage dipped from 36.8% to 26.5%. Among all pitchers with at least 20 innings thrown this season, only Corbin Burnes and Michael King have lower contact rates.

One of the primary differences between this season and last season for McClanahan has been the development of his changeup. Despite a fastball that can hit the high-90s with some nasty late break, McClanahan does not use his heat to finish off batters the way pitchers like Brandon Woodruff or Lance Lynn tend to. In fact, when batters get to him, it’s usually on the fastball, with a batting average well over .300 and 12 of his 19 career home runs allowed coming on the heater. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

In a Seattle Mariners system that features a number of high-profile prospects, Zach DeLoach flies under the radar. His skill set suggests that he would. Selected in the second round of the 2020 draft out of Texas A&M University, the 23-year-old outfielder doesn’t possess flashy tools. What he does possess is a well-rounded game that helped propel him to Double-A in his first full professional season. In 501 plate appearances split between High-A Everett and Double-A Arkansas, DeLoach slashed .277/.373/.468 with 14 home runs and a 126 wRC+.

DeLoach — back with Arkansas to begin the current campaign, and No. 24 on our newly released Mariners Top Prospects list — discussed his game during the Arizona Fall League season.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with your 2021 season. How satisfied were you with it?

Zach DeLoach: “On a scale of one to 10, probably about a six. Maybe a seven. I definitely have some things to work on, and being here in the Fall League is exposing some of the weak points I had throughout the season. It’s really good that I was able to come here to participate, and to continue to grow as a player. I’ll continue to get after it in the offseason.”

Laurila: Were you asked to come here to work on something specific? Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t you just love the first pitch of a ballgame? I do! It’s a weird little world of its own, separate from the rest of a game in how both sides agree to approach it. Sam Miller wrote about it. I wrote about it. It’s remarkable: the pitch is almost always a fastball. This year, 97% of the first pitches of a game – by the home or road starter – have been fastballs. 95% have been fastballs dating back to 2008, the first year of the pitch tracking era.

Not only is it usually a fastball, it’s usually a medium-effort fastball. 71% of first pitch fastballs in the last two years have been slower than a pitcher’s average velocity for that game. 88% have been either slower than average or within half a tick of average.

Only a select few pitchers come out firing. That list includes Matt Brash, the king of maximum effort, who throws every pitch like it’s his last, which might explain why his five game-opening fastballs have been, on average, 1.1 mph faster than his overall fastball velocity. It’s not just him, though: Logan Webb has a little extra (0.9 mph, to be exact) on his first pitch. Logan Allen throws a ton of four-seamers, and throws 0.8 mph harder on his game-opening pitches. Zach Eflin has a bonus three-quarters of a tick. Pretty much every opener comes out throwing hard. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Seattle Mariners. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the second 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.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details 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 »

Episode 974

On this week’s FanGraphs Audio, David Laurila talks to a major league general manager before introducing one of the game’s new radio voices.

• In the first half, David welcomes Ben Cherington, general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. We hear about how the Pirates are focusing on building instead of rebuilding, including how they are willing to innovate and try things while also studying other successful clubs. We also get insight on players like Daniel Vogelbach, David Bednar, Henry Davis, and Oneil Cruz, and manager Derek Shelton. Cherington also reflects on his Red Sox years, including when he and David spoke a decade ago, as well as some of the trades he made and challenges he faced. [2:42]
• In the second segment, David welcomes Jake Eisenberg, radio voice for the Triple-A Omaha Stormchasers, who has also called games for the Mets and Royals this season. We hear about his fast-moving career and the opportunities he has felt lucky enough to seize, as well as some of his adventures along the way. Eisenberg tells us about players like Brady Singer, Nick Pratto, and Vinnie Pasquantino before sharing stories about covering the Mets/Cardinals drama and getting lost at his own major league debut. [29:59]

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 57 minute play time.)

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about which is more impressive, Reid Detmers throwing a two-strikeout no-hitter or right-handed hitter Anthony Rendon homering from the left side against a position-player pitcher, recount (11:50) the surprisingly long, largely forgotten history of the 20-seconds-between-pitches rule and the pitch clock in pro ball and the big leagues, and assess whether the upcoming introduction of the pitch clock to MLB will work better than a short-lived attempt in 1969, then Stat Blast (58:12) about the hitters and pitchers who performed best against future Hall of Famers, and (1:21:42) cold call 96-year-old Yankees/Athletics legend Bobby Shantz to discuss his incredible life and career.

Audio intro: Genesis, “Counting Out Time”
Audio outro: ABBA, “Me and Bobby and Bobby’s Brother”

Link to article on Detmers and strikeouts
Link to stats on CGs with fewer than 3 Ks
Link to MLB.com article on Rendon
Link to Ben Clemens on Rendon and Detmers
Link to Manfred’s pitch clock comments
Link to John Thorn on speeding up play
Link to doc with collected pitch clock sources
Link to average pace by season
Link to SI on Charlie Finley’s clock
Link to Ben on Bill Veeck
Link to The Hustler’s Handbook
Link to The Hustler’s Handbook excerpt 1
Link to The Hustler’s Handbook excerpt 2
Link to 1975 story on Veeck’s Pitchometer
Link to Ben on pace and defense
Link to Orioles program page
Link to Stathead
Link to Stat Blast vs. HoFers data
Link to Rob Arthur on pitchers vs. hitters
Link to Mike Fast on pitchers vs. hitters
Link to Jim Albert on pitchers vs. hitters
Link to Cyril Morong on pitchers vs. hitters
Link to list of oldest living players
Link to Shantz’s SABR bio
Link to John Hiller EW episode
Link to Shantz vs. HoFers data
Link to MLB-average heights by year
Link to Stathead short-pitchers leaderboard
Link to Stathead light-pitchers leaderboard
Link to Stathead P/CF games
Link to 1957 WS G2 broadcast
Link to 1960 WS G7 video
Link to Colt 45s opener video
Link to Shantz stem-cell-treatment video
Link to SABRCast Kaat episode
Link to MLB.com story on Kaat and Shantz
Link to pics of Shantz on Shantz Day
Link to more pics of Shantz on Shantz Day
Link to even more pics of Shantz on Shantz Day
Link to photo of Shantz and Bender
Link to story on Shantz’s CF appearance
Link to SABR on Shantz’s no-hit relief game
Link to 14-inning-game article
Link to info on estimated pitch counts
Link to Shantz vs. Maxwell results
Link to Stathead pitcher-hitting leaders
Link to article about Shantz and Dykes
Link to retrospective on Shantz’s career
Link to info on Shantz-Gibson almost-trade
Link to list of EW cold call episodes

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The Yankees swept the Blue Jays in a quick two-game series in the Bronx this week on the strength of the long ball. More specifically, they sandwiched a pair of shots into Yankee Stadium’s infamous short porch in right field around a towering, no-doubt walk-off homer by Aaron Judge on Monday night, with all three homers of the three-run variety. In a year where home run and scoring rates have plummeted, the Bronx Bombers are 22-8, off to their best start since 2003 in large part because they’ve handily outhomered their opponents — an achievement that owes something to their pitchers as well as their hitters.

In Tuesday night’s game, the Yankees trailed 3-0 in the bottom of the sixth inning but put two on base with one out to bring Giancarlo Stanton to the plate against Yimi Garcia. The righty left a slider to the slugger on the outer third of the plate, and Stanton poked it to right field. Tie ballgame.

This was not a standard Stanton special. While it sped off the bat at 105.1 mph, its 33 degree launch angle gave it an estimated distance of just 335 feet, still more than enough to get out when hit into the right field corner of Yankee Stadium, where the distance is just 314 feet at the foul pole. It was Stanton’s shortest home run since at least 2015, and according to the Statcast Home Run Tracker leaderboard would not have gone out at any other major league park (though the @would_it_dong Twitter account and its Dinger Machine web page — both of which automatically pull from Statcast data — calculated that Stanton’s drive would have been out at Target Field, which is 328 feet down the right field line, as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Winning a batting title was long a prestigious accomplishment. If you led your league in hitting, you were generally viewed as one of the best in the game for that reason alone. That’s no longer the case, though, and while batting average still has meaning — like every other stat, it paints part of the picture — it only tells you so much. Metrics such as wOBA and wRC+ provide far better snapshots of a hitter’s value.

Which isn’t to say that hitting for a high average, particularly the highest average among your peers, doesn’t matter to many players. Ditto to others who make baseball their profession. As Minnesota Twins manager Rocco Baldelli put it, “I think it does matter, and it should matter. If you have a player who is getting a crap ton of hits, that’s a nice way to bring value. I’ll take a bunch of guys with a .320 batting average… who are getting on base all the time.”

Luis Arraez is that type of player. Since he debuted in 2019, no one on Baldelli’s club boasts a higher batting average, and only the now-departed Nelson Cruz has a higher OBP. A .312/.374/.400 hitter in 1,048 big-league plate appearances, Arraez profiles as a potential batting champion.

“Luis Arraez” was Jayce Tingler’s immediate response when I asked Minnesota’s bench coach which Twins player would be most likely to capture a batting title. “He’s got great judgment of the strike zone, great hand-eye [coordination], he hits the ball from chalk line to chalk line. He’s one of the best line-drive hitters in the game.” Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Tess Taruskin. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

Cade Cavalli, RHP, Washington Nationals
Level & Affiliate: Triple-A Rochester Age: 23 Overall Rank: 78 FV: 50
Line: 5.2 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 6 K, BB, HBP

Notes
Cavalli was dominant over his first few frames on Wednesday, dealing first-pitch strikes to most of his opposing batters and sending them down in order until a weak, bloop single in the fourth. His command faltered later in the game, and he allowed the opposing lineup to string together a few hits, then issued a couple of free passes (one walk, one HBP) and was pulled before he could get himself out of the sixth inning.

You might think that he plowed his way through the order the first couple of times by way of a whirlwind of whiffs – he did, after all, lead the minors in strikeouts in 2021. But many of those Ks were accrued in the early part of last season, as Cavalli began his rapid ascent through the Nationals system. He had a whopping 44.9% strikeout rate in his seven High-A games, then made 11 Double-A starts and fanned 32.9% of those opponents. But when he reached Triple-A for a six-start stint to close out the season, his strikeout rate dipped significantly, with the more advanced batters keying in on heaters that would’ve blown by bats at the lower levels. Read the rest of this entry »