Sunday Notes: Rhett Lowder Likes Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s Rocker Step
Rhett Lowder has his eyes on Yoshinobu Yamamoto as he works back from a pair of injuries that wreaked havoc on his 2025 campaign. Expected to be a part of the Cincinnati Reds’ starting rotation, the 23-year-old right-hander instead experienced a forearm issue in the spring, and that was followed by a more serious oblique strain. He ended up pitching just nine-a-third innings, all of them down on the farm.
Lowder is currently taking the mound for the Arizona Fall League’s Peoria Javelinas, and I caught up with him following a recent outing to learn what he’s been focusing on. Along with making up for lost innings, what is he doing to make himself a better pitcher?
“There are a couple things in the delivery, trying to take some pressure off the arm and the oblique, helping set myself up to be healthy,” replied Lowder, who’d logged a 1.17 ERA over six late-season starts with the Reds in 2024. “I’ve watched a little bit of Yamamoto and how he moves. Everything looks so effortless when he throws. I’ve tended to leak a little bit to the third base side, then compensate by over-rotating. That puts more pressure on the oblique, which is a rotational muscle, so I want to be more direct toward home plate with my delivery.”
Being direct to home plate is a common goal for pitchers. Appearance of effortlessness aside, what specifically made Yamamoto a point of study?
“It’s mainly his rocker step,” explained the 2023 first-round pick out of Wake Forest University. “My old rocker step was a lot toward the side — when I turned, my momentum went toward third base — and Yamamoto is straight backwards. He turns the back foot, and from there everything is just straight toward home plate. He’s very directional, so I figured, ‘All right, maybe I’ll give this a try.’”
Lowder began working on his more-direct delivery during his buildup process from the oblique injury, which put him out of action in mid-May while he was rehabbing his forearm strain with High-A Dayton. Prior to this year, he’d never landed on the shelf.
“This was the first time I’ve even missed a start, like ever since Little League,” Lowder told me. “It was definitely tough. You learn how much you truly value this game. When you can’t play, you’re thinking, ‘Man, I really wish I was back out there’ You go through ups and downs during a baseball season, and when you’re going bad it feels like the worst thing ever. Not playing is actually far worse.”
Lowder has made three appearances in the AFL and allowed two runs in six innings of work.
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RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS
Steve Garvey went 2 for 23 against Orel Hershiser.
Steve Sax went 2 for 20 against Bob Welch.
Mike Scioscia went 2 for 20 against Don Sutton.
Davey Lopes went 2 for 19 against Charlie Hough.
Shohei Ohtani went 0 for 11 against Clayton Kershaw.
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Payton Tolle threw a lot of quality pitches this past season. The 22-year-old left-hander in the Red Sox system logged a 3.04 ERA and a 36.5% strikeout rate down on the farm, then held his own over 16-and-a-third innings following a September call-up to Boston. Drafted 50th overall in 2024 out of Texas Christian University, Tolle possesses a power fastball and is ranked No. 58 on The Board, with a 50 FV.
The worst individual pitch Tolle threw over his 98 total innings this year?
“There are actually a bunch of them,” the gregarious 6-foot-6, 250-pound hurler replied with a smile. “One was a 2-0 pitch to… I think it was Geraldo Perdomo. No, it might have been their catcher. I forget. Obviously, I’m trying to do a good job of forgetting about bad pitches. But I do know that we were in Arizona. It was a basically a BP fastball, it was center cut, and it was crushed for a three-run homer. Everything about the pitch was what I didn’t want it to be.”
The homer Tolle surrendered to Perdomo — it was indeed the Diamondbacks shortstop who did the damage — was his first-ever big-league gopher. As for the first bomb he gave up in the 2025, season, that was hit by Houston Astros prospect Garret Guillemette.
“My first start of the year was with [High-A] Greenville, and I hung a slider for a three-run homer in the second inning,” recalled Tolle. “No idea who the hitter was, but I allowed six runs in an inning-and-a-third. The entire outing was aaaaghhh. [Greenville pitching coach] Bob Kipper and I sat down and talked about it. We were like, ‘You know, we did everything bad that we could have in this game. We’re just going to move on from it.’
And then there was the opposite-field shot he gave up to this season’s American League Rookie of the Year favorite in Sacramento.
“Another that comes to mind is an 0-2 pitch to Nick Kurtz,” Tolle told me. “I went away with the pitch and he clipped it out of the park. Major league hitters are going to make major league swings. You just tip your cap say, ‘You got me there, but I’m going to get you next time.’ But then there are others where you know that everything about it was wrong. Sometimes you make pitches that are really bad.”
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A quiz:
Stan Musial’s 3,026 games played are the most in St. Louis Cardinals history. Which Cardinal ranks second to “Stan The Man” in that category?
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A random obscure former player snapshot:
Bob Hegman is the most obscure player to suit up for the 1985 World Series champion Kansas City Royals. An infielder out of St. Cloud State University, Hegman appeared in only one game — that as a ninth-inning defensive replacement — in a 10-3 win over the Detroit Tigers. The August 8 sip of coffee amounted to the entirety of his major-league career.
His minor-league numbers exemplified his defense-first skillset. In seven seasons down on the farm, Hegman left the yard just once while logging a .586 OPS. He went on to serve as the Royals’ director of minor league operations from 1993-2002.
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NEWS NOTES
The nominees for the 2026 BBWAA Career Excellence Award are Paul Hoynes, Scott Miller, and Tom Verducci. The winner will be announced in December.
Rob Mallicoat, a left-hander who went 0-2 with one save and a 5.70 ERA while appearing in 51 games for the Houston Astros across the 1987-1992 seasons, died last weekend at age 60. The St. Helens, Oregon native had been battling cancer.
Jesus Montero, a catcher/first baseman who played for the New York Yankees in 2011, and for the Seattle Mariners from 2012-2015, died last weekend at age 35, two weeks after being critically injured in a motorcycle accident. The Guacara, Venezuela native logged 134 of his 204 hits, and 15 of his 28 home runs, in 2012.
Bernie Smith, an outfielder who played in 59 games for the Milwaukee Brewers across the 1970-1971 seasons, died on October 18 at age 84. The Ponchatoula, Louisiana native recorded 26 big-league hits, two of which left the yard. The first was a 10th-inning game-winner off of Cleveland’s Dennis Higgins. The second came against California’s Eddie Fisher.
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The answer to the quiz is Lou Brock, who played in 2,289 games with the Cardinals. Yadier Molina (2,224) and Ozzie Smith (1,990) have the next-highest totals.
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FOREIGN AFFAIRS
The Hanshin Tigers captured the opening game of this year’s Japan Series on Saturday, outscoring the Fukuoka SoftBanks Hawks 2-1. Shoki Murakami, who went 14-4 with a 2.10 ERA during the regular season, went seven innings for the win. Former Texas Rangers right-hander Kohei Arihara was tagged with the loss.
The Korean Series kicked off last night, with the LG Twins topping the Hanwha Eagles by a count of 8-2. Anders William Tolhurst, a 26-year-old right-hander who signed with LG in early August following four years in Toronto Blue Jays organization, was credited with the win.
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Chris Gimenez caught for six teams over parts of 10 big-league seasons, and thus was behind the plate for some pretty good hurlers. Which of them most stood out for having a unique pitch characteristic? I asked the now-42-year-old Cleveland Guardians broadcast analyst that question in the final week of the regular season.
“From a pure stuff standpoint, I would say Yu Darvish,” Gimenez told me. “A lot of his uniqueness came from his ability to throw multiple pitches. At one point, he was throwing 11 different variations. When I first started catching him in Texas [in 2014], I kind of joked, ‘Hey, I only have five fingers on each hand.’ He threw three different types of fastballs, so I told him, ‘I’ll just put a finger down. You throw whichever one you want, and I’ll catch it. Don’t worry about it.’
“He can spin the baseball as good as anybody I’ve ever seen,” Gimenez added. “How tight it is. Where he can make it move. The shapes he can make it move in. I mean, it was incredible.”
Asked who else stood out, the catcher-turned-analyst named one of the top curveball specialists of this generation.
“Rich Hill has an extremely unique profile,” said Gimenez. “His approach angle is very unique. He’s a tall, lanky guy who came from three-quarters, almost like a crossfire. He could spin a breaking ball from the left side as well as I’ve seen a lefty spin a breaking ball. It was sharp, tight, and then he’d run a fastball off of it. That combination — the angle and the spin — together made him extremely successful. If you can rely on two pitches and last 20 years in the big leagues, you’re doing something right.”
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FARM NOTES — ARIZONA FALL LEAGUE
Sam Antonacci is 16-for-44 with a pair of home runs and eight stolen bases in nine attempts for the Glendale Deserts Dogs. A fifth-round pick last year out of Coastal Carolina University, the 22-year-old infielder in the Chicago White Sox system posted a 155 wRC+ over 519 plate appearances between High-A and Double-A (and briefly the Arizona Complex League).
Parks Harber is 9-for-27 with three doubles and three home runs for the Scottsdale Scorpions. A non-drafted senior sign by the New York Yankees in 2024 out of the University of North Carolina, the 24-year-old corner infielder was acquired by the San Francisco Giants at this summer’s trade deadline as part of the Camilo Doval deal. He had 173 wRC+ over 343 plate appearances between Low-A and High-A.
Scottsdale’s James Hicks has thrown 11 scoreless innings with 14 strikeouts and just five hits and one walk allowed. A 13th-round pick in 2023 out of the University of South Carolina, the 24-year-old right-hander in the Houston Astros organization had a 5.59 ERA and a 22.3% strikeout rate over 46-and-two-thirds inning with Double-A Corpus Christi.
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Kevin McGonigle was featured in our Talks Hitting series earlier in the week, the high-profile Detroit Tigers prospect having sat down to discuss his craft prior to an Arizona Fall League game. As noted in the piece, McGonigle is in the desert primarily to work on his defense, and that subject was broached by both Baseball America’s Jesús Cano and yours truly prior my one-on-one conversation with the young infielder. McGonigle admitted that he’d “struggled a little bit this year on the defensive side of the baseball” and is “really trying to lock in on that and get better and better for next year.”
McGonigle had just been fielding ground balls under the watchful eye of Alan Trammell — the four-time Gold Glove winner is now a part-time infield instructor with his old club — and “Tram” was in his ear throughout the exercise. I asked McGonigle about the words of wisdom that were being passed along.
“He was telling me everything, but it was more about throwing from the backhand,” said the up-and-coming shortstop/third baseman. “On balls deep in the hole, if you’re going to miss, miss on the grass so the first baseman has a long hop or a short hop to field. And setting my feet. Using my legs to throw, and not just my upper body. If you’re in your legs, that will help the ball carry, even help you throw it a little harder. We’ll be working on more tomorrow.”
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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE
Chicago Cubs catching prospect Owen Ayers comes from a baseball family, and he’s currently learning more lessons in the Arizona Fall League. Kayla Gregoire has the story at MLB.com.
At The Atlantic, Keith O’Brien wrote about how sports can’t survive prop bets.
At The Guardian, Rich Tenorio told the forgotten story of the US soldiers who integrated baseball before Jackie Robinson.
What does Seattle Mariners manager Dan Wilson’s decision to use Eduard Bazardo versus George Springer say about optimal reliever usage? Eno Sarris explored that question at The Athletic.
The Athletic’s Chad Jennings wrote about how the Blue Jays were built.
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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS
Chicago Cubs pitchers combined for 27 pickoffs this year, the most of any team. Matthew Boyd led all pitchers with 11 pickoffs.
Miami Marlins pitchers picked off just three runners this year, all of them by Cal Quantrill.
Bill North went 3-for-59 in the postseason, including 2-for-25 in the World Series. A .261 hitter over 11 MLB seasons, the speedy outfielder played in the Fall Classic with the Oakland A’s in 1974, and the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1978.
Pepper Martin went 23-for-55 in the postseason, with all of his at-bats coming in the World Series. A .298 hitter over 13 MLB seasons, the outfielder/third baseman played in the Fall Classic with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1928, 1931, and 1934.
Don Mattingly had a .307 BA, 222 HR, a 124 wRC+, and 40.7 WAR.
Nomar Garciaparra had a .313 BA, 229 HR, a 124 wRC+, and 41.4 WAR.
The Boston Red Sox traded Reggie Smith and Ken Tatum to the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for Bernie Carbo and Rick Wise today’s date in 1973. Smith went on to excel with the Cardinals, and later the Los Angeles Dodgers — the erstwhile outfielder amassed 64.6 WAR and is a borderline Hall of Famer — while Boston’s acquisitions were especially notable in 1975’s epic World Series Gam 6. Wise was the winning pitcher in relief. Carbo’s two-out, pinch-hit three run homer tied the game in the eighth inning and made Carlton Fisk’s famous blast possible.
On today’s date in 2005, the Chicago White Sox completed a four-game sweep of the Houston Astros to capture the franchise’s first World Series championship since 1917, and their third overall. Jermaine Dye drove in the game’s lone run, Freddy Garcia went seven innings for the win, and Bobby Jenks earned the save.
Players born on today’s date include Harry Chappas, a switch-hitting infielder who played in 72 games for the White Sox across the 1978-1980 seasons. Listed by some sources as 5-foot-3, and by others at 5-foot-7, Chappas swatted 45 big-league hits, one of them a home run off of Milwaukee Brewers left-hander Bill Travers. Per his B-Ref bio page, he later became a fan and player of jai alai.
Also born on today’s date was Snuffy Stirnweiss, an infielder who played for three teams, primarily the New York Yankees, from 1943-1952. He had two noteworthy seasons. Stirnweiss led the junior circuit in runs scored, hits, triples, and stolen bases in both 1945 and 1946. He won the batting title in the latter of those seasons.
MLB history includes a pair of players who were born in the small town of Adair, Oklahoma. Jim Bluejacket pitched for the Federal League’s Brooklyn Tip-Tops in 1914-1915, and then for the Cincinnati Reds in 1916. Ben Tincup pitched for the Philadelphia Phillies across the 1914-1918 seasons, and later for the Chicago Cubs in 1928. Bluejacket and Tincup were both members of the Cherokee nation.
David Laurila grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and now writes about baseball from his home in Cambridge, Mass. He authored the Prospectus Q&A series at Baseball Prospectus from December 2006-May 2011 before being claimed off waivers by FanGraphs. He can be followed on Twitter @DavidLaurilaQA.
I went with Ozzie for the quiz. I know he played for the Padres for a few years but seems like he was a Cardinal forever.
I got it. Lou Brock played forever and he played virtually his entire career with the Cardinals.
Briefly considered Yadier Molina, but he was a catcher in the 21st century so I figured he played less per year and he lost time in 2020. Was surprised he was that close.
Yeah, I forgot about Brock because the bulk of his career was before my “baseball awareness”. And while I knew they both started their careers with other teams, I thought Smith made the majors around age 20-21. So I assume he was with the Cardinals around age 23, when it was actually age 27.
Same. I really thought he was younger when he went to STL.
Here’s a little trivia. Detroit actually drafted Ozzie in the 7th round of the 1976 draft, but, didn’t sign him. They drafted Alan Trammell in the 2nd round, Dan Petry in the 4th round, Jack Morris in the 5th round.
Helluva draft, but, if they had signed Ozzie, Tram & Whitaker would have been at 2B/3B (I think Lou would have played 3B, he did early in his minor league career).
That was a great draft and interesting that none of them were first round picks.
Their first round pick that year (#2 overall) was Pat Underwood, who pitched well his first two years. He then missed all of 1981 and was never the same. There was also Kip Young (drafted in the 23rd round), who had an excellent rookie season, but pitched poorly in his 2nd year (I’m assuming due to an injury), and never pitched in the majors again.
I remember those guys. I remember one of them had a no-hitter relatively deep into their 1st start.
In looking at game logs- Young had complete game 1 run outings in his 1st 4 starts (Hard to believe his arm blew out!) & Underwood pitched 8 1/3 of 3 hit shutout ball.
They had another guy named Bruce Robbins who looked decent, but, got hurt/flamed out, too.
That draft was an all-timer draft even if you just look at the 4th-7th round. Rickey Henderson and Wade Boggs were picked in the 4th and 7th round and those are two of the top 30 position players of all time, and top 20 if you exclude segregated baseball and steroid creations. And then on top of that you had Jack Morris and Dan Petry who were both excellent starters, and Willie McGee had a few years as a star too.
Those five players in those four rounds–not even high picks–I think put up over 290 fWAR all by themselves. I’m not sure how much fWAR a typical draft class puts up but I’m pretty sure there are several with less than 290 fWAR combined. Maybe even most of them? It probably depends if you set a minimum amount of playing time or fWAR in a career. And that’s only rounds 4-7, doing that excludes Trammell (63.7 fWAR), Floyd Bannister (30.9 fWAR), Mike Scott (28.6 fWAR), Mike Scioscia (28.5 fWAR), Rick Honeycutt (23.5 fWAR)…
There are other great draft classes–1971, 1973, and 1985 were all loaded. 1985 gets hit hard if you throw out known steroid users because Bonds and Palmeiro were in that class, but Randy Johnson, John Smoltz, and Barry Larkin are also all in that class, plus Will Clark and Mark Grace both topped 45 fWAR. That is still probably better than 1973 (Yount, Winfield, Eddie Murray, Jack Clark, Fred Lynn), which I think often tops these lists because Yount and Winfield were picked high and debuted early.
1971 is awfully good too (Schmidt, George Brett, Frank Tanana, Jim Rice, Keith Hernandez, and Ron Guidry).
2011 could have challenged them too if Trevor Story, Anthony Rendon, and Javier Baez didn’t all fall off a cliff at the same time and Jose Fernandez didn’t pass away, because the top of the class (Betts, Lindor, Gerrit Cole, George Springer, and Sonny Gray) is pretty amazing.
But unless you include pre-steroid Barry Bonds in 1985, it’s really hard to beat 1976. And most of the action happened after the first round.
Brett and Schmidt were picked back to back. Which has to me the only time two HOFs that played the same postion were picked back to back. And they were both one franchise players.
For really late picks by a team, it’s hard to beat the Yankees taking Pettitte (22nd round) and Posada (24th round) in the 1990 draft.
Ozzie Smith had a pretty dramatic contract dispute with the Padres. While I wasn’t sure about the timing I knew he was pretty well-known by the time it happened and might have even been an all-star by that point. That’s why I never seriously considered him because he would have had to have been in the league for a few years.
The Padres refusing to give Ozzie Smith a raise and publicly insulting him was a master class in how not to deal with your players. They swapped him with Garry Templeton who was busy giving the St. Louis crowd the giving the crowd the finger. Templeton almost immediately slid into irrelevance while Ozzie Smith learned to hit in St. Louis over the next few years. Which is why nobody remembers Ozzie Smith with the Padres. I have to believe that both Smith and the Padres prefer it that way.
But I had no knowledge of Brock’s time with the Cubs which made me think he would be even farther ahead than he was. But looking at his stats page on FG it makes sense I wouldn’t remember it. Not only was it a long time ago, he was not particularly good. Brock put up 1.6 fWAR in 1300+ PAs with the Cubs and was only a capable starter in one of them.
But he became a star immediately with the Cardinals. He put 4.7 fWAR in under 500 PAs with the Cardinals in his first partial season with him, on a rate basis that would have translated to almost 12 fWAR over 1300 PAs. His OBP with the Cardinals between 1964 and 1975 was over 45 points higher than it was with the Cubs, which was enough to raise his wRC+ by about 30 points. And the steals– he had only 50 steals in those 1300+ PAs with the Cubs and 33 with the Cardinals, which would have translated to something like 85 over 1300 PAs? Something like that? He completely transformed.
Hmmm…that’s not what their SABR bios say. Smith’s says that he was quite happy in San Diego and initially refused to report after the trade. He apparently had a no-trade clause but he eventually agreed to go.
Templeton was the one who fought several times over his contract. And yes, he did give the fans the finger and grab his crotch though he claims it was triggered by someone calling him the n-word. Anyway, that incident was likely the final straw in the Cardinals trading him away.
As for Brock, that’s generally considered one of the worst trades in the history of baseball.
So this article from 1982, does indicate that Smith was demanding more money from the Padres. But that he was also quite happy there and didn’t want to be traded. He preferred to work out a long-term contract with the Padres.
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/27/sports/ozzie-smith-spurns-deal.html
Another article I found said that he demanded a raise in exchange for waiving the no-trade clause. He eventually agreed to let an arbitrator decide – the arbitrator decided in favor of the Cardinals.
What I find strange is that he had a no-trade clause. Can’t believe they were very common back then, particularly for a young player like Smith.
I thought the no-trade was invoked out of spite because Ozzie Smith hated the Padres’ owners so much. It was a very ugly dispute. But maybe he really didn’t want to move?
I seem to recall the fans were pretty abusive to Templeton in St. Louis, but I didn’t recall the n-word. But it was the early 1980s, I probably should have expected that.
You don’t remember Brock on the Cubs? Maybe it’s just a Chicago thing, but I thought the phrase “Brock for Broglio” was universally recognized as shorthand for a lopsided trade. Like “Shaka, when the walls fell.”
I would have never guessed that Yady was 3rd because of the catcher thing. I would have guessed Pujols before him because I just can’t fathom a catcher playing that much.
I never seriously considered anyone other than Brock and Yadi, but I think I would have gone with Ozzie Smith before Pujols. Pretty much all of the players who “played the most games for a team” happened before the early 1990s, thanks to the collusion settlements and the shift from national to local TV deals.
You know who played in a lot of games for the Cardinals that I didn’t expect? Curt Flood. I don’t think I realized he played in over 500 games for the Cardinals before his age-24 season. Some weird usage patterns on his page in his early 20s, he played in 121 games in 1959 fro them but only had 226 PAs. Defensive replacement and pinch-runner, maybe. He wasn’t a full-time player until 1962.
That was my tie breaker. Figured it had to be close between Brock and Molina, but went with Brock because I knew he played almost every day for a very long time.
Ditto. Was between Ozzie & Brock, who both started elsewhere & were traded to St. Louis early in their careers & chose Ozzie.
Also considered Red Schoendienst.
Didn’t even think of Yadier Molina.
Oh well.
Me too. I didn’t realize Brock played so long and I discarded Molina for the same reason Sadtrombone and others did. No way a modern catcher could lead a team in career games played!
I guessed Yadi because I knew Brock had been traded from the Cubs, but I guess that was early enough in his career that it didn’t matter