“Already a physical presence as a teenager, Veen has big power potential and a pretty left-handed swing to go with a plus arm that should serve him well in right field.”

Those words, written by Eric Longenhagen, lead Zac Veen’s profile in our recently-released 2021 Top 100 Prospects list. The 19-year-old outfielder came in at No. 70, which is especially impressive when you consider that he’s yet to play a game — Fall Instructional League notwithstanding — at the professional level. A Port Orange, Florida native, Veen was drafted ninth overall last year by the Colorado Rockies.

Another quote from Longenhagen’s writeup bears noting: “His in-the-box actions are quiet and smooth up until the moment he decides to unleash hell on the baseball.” In short, the 6-foot-5, 210-pound Veen profiles as a middle-of-the-order slugger if he approaches his full potential.

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David Laurila: I’ll start with a question I’ve asked several hitters over the years: Do you see hitting as more of an art, or more of a science?

Zac Veen: “For me, it’s more of an art. I’m more of a feel hitter and don’t really get into a lot of the analytics. Guys who look at a lot of video… I’d say it’s more of a science to them, but I like to stay away from a lot of that stuff. It can be helpful, but for the most part I’m more of a feel, see how the ball comes off the bat kind of guy.”

Laurila: It’s pretty common for young hitters to go into a cage and use technology when working to fine-tune their swings. Have you done that at all?

Veen: “I’ve tried it, my junior year of high school, but that caused me to overthink things a little bit. I’d take a really good swing, then I’d look at the video and be like, ‘Oh, wow, I can do this differently,’ instead of just being happy with a line drive to centerfield. That’s not something I want to do. When I take a good swing, I want to just be happy with it, and not be too picky about anything.”

Laurila: Is the swing you have right now, at age 19, essentially the same swing you had a few years ago, or has it evolved? Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re left-handed and can throw strikes, you have a chance to pitch forever. That appears to be Oliver Pérez’s plan. The 39-year-old southpaw agreed to a minor league deal with Cleveland last week, returning to the fold of the team for whom he’s pitched in the last three seasons. His contract includes an invitation to spring training, a clear path to being the bullpen’s top (and perhaps only) lefty, as well as appearance-based incentives.

Speaking from experience, if you want to catch casual baseball fans off guard, tell them that Pérez is still kicking around the majors. Particularly in New York, where he occasionally excited and often exasperated fans during his four-and-a-half year run with the Mets from 2006-10, the notion that he’s still plying his craft a decade and a half after his near-heroic effort in Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS went for naught can get quite a reaction. “Get the —- out of here,” is the usual response.

It’s been quite a journey for Pérez, who debuted in the majors with the Padres in 2002, was traded to the Pirates in the Jason Bay–Brian Giles blockbuster about 14 months later, and spent a few seasons in Pittsburgh, most notably striking out 239 batters in 196 innings at age 22, a point at which the sky appeared to be the limit. Dealt to the Mets in the Xavier Nady deal in 2006 — seriously, his transaction log is a chance to Remember Some Guys — he generally pitched well before patellar tendinitis turned his three-year, $36 million return via free agency into a sub-replacement level disaster that culminated with his being released in March 2011 while being owed $12 million. Down but not out, he remade himself as a reliever, evolved into a respected elder statesman, and is now heading into his 10th major league season as a lefty specialist, and his 19th overall, the most by any Mexican-born player. In that second life, he spent time with the Mariners, Diamondbacks, Astros and Nationals — and additionally toiled for the Reds in spring training and the Yankees in exotic Scranton/Wilkes-Barre — before resurfacing in Cleveland in mid-2018.

Since then, Pérez has had his year-to-year ups and downs, but he’s been generally quite effective, pitching to a 2.67 ERA and 2.83 FIP in 91 innings while striking out 28.8% of hitters and holding batters to a .256 xwOBA, the majors’ fourth-lowest mark among lefties who’ve thrown at least 500 pitches in that span, behind only José Castillo, Josh Hader, and Aroldis Chapman. Read the rest of this entry »

It was a matter of great fanfare when, in June of 1951, Sick’s Capilano Stadium had its grand opening in Vancouver. Replacing the old Athletic Park, full-page spreads in local papers boasted of the stadium design (an exact replica of Sick’s Stadium in Seattle, which would briefly be the home of the Pilots); the electric scoreboard; the location, a green space underneath the hill known as Little Mountain, which was considered to be in the exact center of Vancouver; and the amenities for fans, which included hotplates for hot dogs and aspirin available for any headaches — “ideal for when the team is losing,” as the Vancouver Province noted.

The stadium was named for the team, the Vancouver Capilanos, who played in the Western International League. The league’s history, as was the case for most leagues in the Northwest, was chaotic, marked by false starts and stops. And, it turned out, the chaos would continue. The Western International League, in 1955, became the Northwest League; the Capilanos made way for a Pacific Coast League team, the Mounties, in 1956. When the Mounties folded after the 1967 season, having sustained losses of over $90,000 in their final year, Capilano Stadium spent a decade without a professional baseball team. When the PCL returned to Vancouver in 1978, in the form of the Canadians, the stadium was renamed in honor of local restaurateur Nat Bailey, who, as the story goes, got his start in the stands of the old Athletic Park, hocking peanuts and chocolates to fans, a megaphone projecting his voice up through the bleachers. And when the PCL left Vancouver again after 1999, the stadium — and the team that played in it — came full circle, beginning the new millennium as a part of the league that began, in 1922, as the Western International League. Read the rest of this entry »

Christian Yelich had a rough 2020. That’s true of all of us, of course — global pandemics have that effect. You might even argue that his year wasn’t so bad in the grand scheme of things. He got paid $4.6 million dollars, didn’t suffer any catastrophic injuries, and made the playoffs. On the baseball field, however, he had his worst year as a big leaguer. Was it small sample theater, or something more worrisome? Let’s dig into his brief season and hunt for signs.

The first thing that jumps out at me when looking at Yelich’s 247 plate appearances is the strikeouts. The magic of his game has always been in his ability to smash the ball — increasingly into the air as time has gone on — without disastrous contact numbers. His previous high for strikeout rate was 24.2%, as a rookie in 2013. Since then, he’d consistently kept that rate around 20% while incrementally improving his quality of contact every year. Voila — an MVP.

Let’s dig in a little more, because strikeout rate is the composite result of many inputs. First, there’s swinging and missing. Yelich has historically lived around league average when it comes to connecting on swings. Last year? Not so much:

Yes, it’s a small sample. But Yelich swung at 381 pitches in 2020, enough that we can’t completely dismiss it. He swung at 112 pitches out of the zone, again enough to worry. And let me tell you, you don’t want to be near the top of this list:

There are good hitters here, sure. The ones who are doing well are doing so on the back of their power on contact, though, and there are no MVP candidates on the list. If you’re missing that often when you chase, you’ll be striking out a ton, likely too much to make up for it elsewhere. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball Twitter was abuzz last Wednesday when Tim Tebow announced his retirement … wait, strike that; the subject changed drastically that same evening when Fernando Tatis Jr. inked a 14-year extension worth a reported $340 million. You could argue that Tatis actually left money on the table, as he was potentially lined up to be one of the best free agents in baseball history due to his age and talent. But “potentially” is carrying a ton of water in that statement, and it’s either bad or dishonest logic to fault a 21-year-old for taking close to record-breaking money as security when it’s presented to him.

The Tatis extension isn’t the largest in baseball history, eclipsed as it is by those of Mookie Betts and Mike Trout, but it is larger than the free-agent record of $330 million held by Bryce Harper. All of these numbers, though, left me wondering: Who will be the first to top the $400 million mark? We’ve already seen the first $40 million-plus AAV this offseason in Trevor Bauer, and that number combined with double-digit years could get us there. So who are the top candidates?

Let’s get one technicality out of the way. You could say, and would be correct in spirit, that Trout has already topped the $400 million mark with the extension he signed prior to the 2019 season. While that deal created a commitment of more than $400 million ($426.5 million to be exact) over 12 years, contractually, it was 10 years tacked on to an existing deal. Still, if you want to answer “Who’s The Next $400 Million Player?” with “Mike Trout,” I’m not going to argue semantics. Let’s have fun with this anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

Two days after pitchers and catchers officially reported to spring training, the Mets augmented their rotation — which they’d already upgraded significantly this winter — by landing one of the top remaining free agents, Taijuan Walker. The 28-year-old righty agreed to a two-year, $20 million deal that carries a player option for a third year, making him just the fourth free agent starter this winter to secure a multiyear contract.

A former supplemental first-round pick (2010) and consensus top-20 prospect (2012-14) while with the Mariners, Walker has been beset by injuries for most of his major league career. Shoulder woes wiped out much of his 2014 season, while ankle, foot, and blister problems limited him to an average of 27 starts from 2015-17 with Seattle (the first two of those seasons) and Arizona. He made just three starts in 2018 before needing Tommy John surgery, and then sprained his shoulder capsule in May ’19 while rehabbing; he threw a single inning that year in a start on the final day of the season.

Given that litany, it rated as quite the pleasant surprise that Walker was healthy enough to make 11 starts totaling 53 innings in 2020; he did that while splitting his season between a return to the Mariners and an August 27 trade to the Blue Jays. His 2.70 ERA was outstanding, 38% better than league average; after posting a 4.00 mark through his five starts with Seattle, he delivered a 1.37 mark in six starts for the Blue Jays, who won five of those six games while qualifying for the expanded playoffs, though he did not get a chance to pitch in the Wild Card Series.

Alas, that sterling ERA was something of a mirage. Not only did it conceal seven unearned runs, for a still-respectable RA-9 of 3.88, but his 4.56 FIP was actually six percent worse than league average. Relative to the major league averages for starting pitchers, both Walker’s 22.2% strikeout rate and 8.4% walk rate were slightly subpar, while his 1.35 homers per nine, for as gaudy as it was, was slightly better than average.

Statcast-wise, Walker’s 88.4 mph average exit velocity and 7.2% barrel rate were both similarly middling, ranking in the 50th and 48th percentiles, respectively. His 32.9% hard-hit rate was up in the 74th percentile, his .325 xwOBA down in the 29th percentile. Just as his 1.86 gap between his ERA and FIP placed him second among the 71 pitchers with at least 50 innings last year, his 39-point gap between his xwOBA and .286 wOBA placed him in the 91st percentile among pitchers who threw at least 500 pitches last year, all of which suggests some amount of regression ahead. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, the Yankees and Brett Gardner came to a one-year, $4 million agreement. The deal includes a player option for 2022 and a team option if Gardner declines it. The contract solidifies the outfielder’s plan to spend his entire career in New York. Nominally, his return had been up in the air: The Yankees declined to exercise his $10 million option last fall and announced that Clint Frazier would be the club’s starting left fielder in 2021. But Gardner wanted to stay in New York, and he was willing to sign on for part-time duty in lieu of other options.

Had Gardner wanted a starting gig, he probably could have found it, as he seems to have plenty left in the tank. Prior to 2020, he had accrued 2.5 WAR or better every year since 2012. Last season, he posted a 110 wRC+ and 0.6 WAR in 49 games, numbers that probably undersell his ability. He got off to a dreadful start, batting just .165/.293/.299 through his first 36 games. In most years, that’s a bad April, but in 2020 that was his batting line when he woke up on September 10. He hit nearly .400 the rest of the way though, and then mashed in October to alleviate concerns that age had eaten into his offensive ability.

On the contrary, Gardner has aged spectacularly well. Just about the only thing that seems to have changed in his 13 years in the majors is the size of his neck, and even that’s been pretty subtle. Last year, Gardner posted a career-best walk rate, and also his highest average exit velocity since Statcast started tracking that metric. He did strike out and whiff more often than normal, but also raised his launch angle; sometimes there’s a bit of a tradeoff there. Perhaps most encouragingly, the Yankees still saw fit to use him in center field several times, and while his wheels may not spin quite as fast these days, he’s still a plus runner. ZiPS projects 1.8 WAR for him in 118 games, which would make him a 2-3 win player in an everyday role. For Aaron Boone, that’s a hell of an option to have on the bench. Read the rest of this entry »

There were so many concerning and reprehensible elements to Kevin Mather’s address to the Bellevue Breakfast Rotary Club — given earlier this month, but unearthed, in YouTube form, by commenters on Lookout Landing yesterday — that it would be beyond the scope of a single post to adequately address them all. Mather, still the President and CEO of the Mariners at this writing and even after the Seattle Times reported his history of alleged workplace harassment in 2018, managed in the course of 45 minutes to offend on a multitude of different levels, none of which were mentioned specifically in his apology statement. Here, though, I will specifically address the element of his speech that I have the most knowledge and experience with — the one that, as a result, was the most infuriating to me. In the course of his question period, Mather, twice and entirely unprompted, denigrated his players’ ability to speak English.

The video has since been deleted from the Bellevue Breakfast Rotary Club’s channel, where it was originally updated, but it has been uploaded elsewhere; Lookout Landing also posted a full transcript here. The quotes below are pulled from the Lookout Landing transcript. First, Mather was asked by one of the members of the Club to “tell [them] about Julio Rodríguez.” Mather’s answer began like this:

Julio Rodríguez has got a personality bigger than all of you combined. He is loud, his English is not tremendous.

Later, another member asked about what support the Mariners offered to players who don’t speak English as their first language. Mather described the improvement in such supports over the last 20 years, before deciding to illustrate his point with this example:

As far as Korea, Japan, Taiwan, those players are typically older. They don’t come over as 16- or 18-year-olds, they come over as 28, 30, 32 year olds. We typically…it frustrates me…For instance, we just re-hired Iwakuma, he was a pitcher with us for a number of years. Wonderful human being, his English was terrible. He wanted to get back into the game, he came to us, we quite frankly want him as our Asian scout, interpreter, what’s going on with the Japanese league. He’s coming to spring training. And I’m going to say, I’m tired of paying his interpreter. When he was a player, we’d pay Iwakuma X, but we’d also have to pay $75,000 a year to have an interpreter with him. His English suddenly got better, his English got better when we told him that! For the older players from the Far East, we have an interpreter that travels with them. For the younger Dominicans, Venezuelans, Caribbean players, we really invest in them at a young age before they get here. Good question! It’s important.

Read the rest of this entry »