Martin Cervenka is looking to join a select group of his countrymen. Currently the lone product of the Czech Republic in professional baseball, the 24-year-old native of Prague is hoping to follow John Stedronsky (1879), Frank Rooney (1914), and Carl Linhart (1952) as the only Czech-born players to see big-league action.

Cervenka has been climbing the ladder slowly, but surely. Signed by Cleveland when he was 16, he began playing stateside two years later — the Indians wanted him to finish high school first — and he’s currently strapping on his catcher’s gear in Lynchburg. He’s also swinging a much-improved bat. In 32 games with the high-A Hillcats, Cervenka is slashing .280/.328/.407.

Competition-wise, it’s a long way from Prague to pro ball.

“Back home, it’s a bunch of clubs playing on weekends only,” explained Cervenka, who estimated there are “five or six” baseball diamonds in Prague. “There are 10 teams in the top league, and something like 14 teams in the second league. In total, they play about 55 games a year. There are some really good players, though. We have one of the top four or five (national) teams in Europe.”

Outside of Czech baseball’s small inner circle, even the best players are largely anonymous. Despite his unique standing, Cervenka is basically John Doe. Read the rest of this entry »

Ian Happ made his MLB debut with the Cubs yesterday. He did so as a right fielder, which is one of four positions he’s played since Chicago drafted him ninth overall in 2015 out of the University of Cincinnati. But while versatility is handy, Happ’s bat is his calling card. The 22-year-old switch-hitter can mash.

Happ’s rapid ascent to the big leagues took him through Iowa, where he was slashing .298/.362/.615, with nine home runs, at the time of his call-up. And while he profiles more as a doubles machine than he does a home-run champion, his bombs aren’t anomalies. He has pop, and his approach is all about loft.

“I’m trying to hit balls in the air to center field,” explained Happ, who left the yard in his fourth big-league plate appearance. “If you get the ball in the air, you give yourself a chance to find some green and get on base. Ground balls are out. The instruction guys talk about trying to elevate, in order to produce. Your slugging percentage is in the air. You don’t slug on the ground.”

Happ doesn’t feel he’s markedly changed his approach, although he acknowledged that hitting the ball in the air wasn’t prioritized at the collegiate level. All in all, he’s pleased with how the Cubs organization has approached his development. Read the rest of this entry »

The fact that Parker Berberet has a 0.77 ERA and has struck out 10.8 batters per nine innings isn’t particularly meaningful. Not only has he thrown just 11-and-two-thirds frames, he is 27 years old and pitching in low-A. He’s a long shot to reach Milwaukee, or any other big-league city.

That doesn’t mean he hasn’t come a long way. The Oregon State product spent his first six professional seasons behind the plate, and while he’s been a fringe prospect, he’d reached Double-A and played a smattering of games in Triple-A. But the writing was on the wall, and Barberet could see it. The view is plain as day from a perch at the end of the bench.

“I went to the Brewers last year, at the All-Star break, and asked if I could do it,” Berberet said of his position switch. “I was on the phantom DL at the time, and I wasn’t getting into many games when I (was active), so I was like, ‘Let’s see if I can strengthen my arm and convert to the mound.’”

The Brewers decided to let him try. Berberet began by throwing bullpens, and he showed enough promise to be invited to instructional league, and then back to spring training. Had he not requested the move, he isn’t sure he’d be wearing a uniform.

“I was definitely close (to getting released),” opined Berberet. “I was barely getting to play, so who knows if I’d have gotten an opportunity this year?” Read the rest of this entry »

Jessica Mendoza’s ears perked up while she was conversing with Kyle Hendricks yesterday afternoon. The ESPN analyst was doing game prep for this evening’s Sunday Night Baseball broadcast when the Chicago Cubs right-hander mentioned effective velocity.

“I interrupted him,” Mendoza told me later. “I said, ‘Can we talk about that?’

If you read this Sunday Notes column from last August, that won’t surprise you. The Stanford-educated Mendoza is a baseball nerd. So is the Dartmouth-educated Hendricks, who was more than happy to oblige her request.

“It was refreshing, because that’s (the type of subject) we love talking about,” said Hendricks. “We started talking about bat paths, two- and four-seam fastballs, how to attack hitters. That was the first time I’d met her, and it was great to talk baseball with her. You can tell she’s very knowledgeable, especially about hitting.”

How Hendricks is avoiding bats is what Mendoza wanted to address when she approached him in the clubhouse. She was especially curious about his velocity, which has been down this year. That’s where the ear-perking subject came up. Read the rest of this entry »

Chase Whitley grew up playing good old country hardball in Alabama. More specifically, he played it in rural Alabama. The Tampa Bay Rays right-hander hails from Ranburne, which he affectionately described as “a small town with zero stoplights.” Fewer than 500 people call it home, so it’s no wonder he knows “literally every person there.”

In Hoosiers-like fashion, the close-knit community has captured sports glory.

“Growing up, my teams consisted of a bunch of close friends,” related Whitley. “There were 13 of us, and we played together from Little League and Dixie Youth all the way through high school. My junior year, we won the state championship.”

Whitley also played on some “really good” basketball teams, and he spent time on the gridiron as well. Kids in Ranburne are expected to participate in multiple sports because, well, it’s what you do in that neck of the woods. As for their athletic accomplishments, Whitley views them mostly as a byproduct of “buddies who hang out and play some pretty good ball.”

That’s when they’re not working. Growing up where they did, you earn your keep. Read the rest of this entry »

The first words out of Casey Kelly’s mouth surprised me. When I asked the former top prospect how he’d describe his career, I expected something along the lines of, “It’s been frustrating.”

He said “It’s been fun.”

That’s a glass-is-half-full attitude if there ever was one. Since being taken in the first round of the 2008 draft by the Red Sox, the 27-year-old right-hander has thrown just 640 professional innings, 62 of which have come at the highest level. They haven’t been pretty innings. Kelly’s big-league ERA is an unattractive 6.39.

His future look especially bright after he was acquired by San Diego in the Anthony Rizzo–Adrian Gonzalez trade. Heading into the 2011 season, Kelly was ranked by Baseball America as the Padres top prospect (Rizzo was right behind him). Displaying a power arsenal, he went on to hurl 142 quality frames as a 21-year-old in Double-A.

Clouds were looming on the horizon. Read the rest of this entry »

When I interviewed him in April 2013, Jason Hammel was a 30-year-old pitcher yet to hit his stride. Following his previous path, he went on to have a ho-hum season. In 26 appearances for the Orioles — 23 of them of them as a starter — Hammel had seven wins, a 4.97 ERA, and a 6.2 K/9. His two-seamer and slider showed signs of coming around, but for all intents and purposes, he was a run-of-the-mill, back-of-the-rotation righty.

That has changed. Since originally joining the Chicago Cubs prior to the 2014 season, Hammel has fashioned a 3.68 ERA and fanned 8.3 batters per nine innings. Last year, he won a career-high 15 games for the World Series champions. The cerebral 6-foot-6 hurler is now a 34-year-old Kansas City Royal, having inked a two-year, $16 million deal with the AL Central club over the offseason.

Hammel discussed his mid-career emergence, which was fueled by an improved slider and a subsequent confab with a sexagenarian guru, in the waning days of February.

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Hammel on what has changed since our 2013 conversation: “A big part of [becoming more successful] was throwing a slider for a strike. It was kind of the idea of pitching backwards. Before, I never had a breaking ball that I could start with. I was throwing a curveball more than a slider, and the curveball is more of a… I get a lot of takes on it, because it’s a bigger break. I had to find something else with spin that I could put in the zone. The two-seamer has been a big, big pitch for me, and the two-seamer and slider complement each other really well, because they’re going two separate directions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Harkey saw his career go south in 1991. Coming off a rookie year where he went 12-6, with a 3.26 ERA for the Cubs, the former fourth-overall pick suffered a shoulder injury that essentially squelched a promising future. He persevered after surgery, pitching parts of another six seasons, but he was never the same.

The what-could-have-been hurler doesn’t blame anyone for what happened.

“I think it’s one of those things where everybody is preordained,” said Harkey, who is now the bullpen coach for the Yankees. “X amount of pitchers are going to get hurt, and it was just my turn. I don’t feel I was ever overused. I threw every Friday night at Cal State Fullerton, and when I got to pro ball I pitched every fifth day.”

Four games into his 1991 campaign, he succumbed to the inevitable. His shoulder had begun barking the previous September, but thinking it was tendonitis — “I always had a high tolerance for pain” — he soldiered on. As he said when we spoke last summer, he didn’t know how bad it was until he couldn’t pitch anymore.

Harkey doesn’t begrudge his fate, but he does admit looking back. Read the rest of this entry »

Brett Anderson knows the numbers. Currently in camp with the Cubs, the 29-year-old southpaw was indoctrinated into the data game when he reached the big leagues with the Oakland A’s, in 2009.

“I came up in an organization that was at the forefront of it,” explained Anderson. “Then Brandon McCarthy came over [in 2011] and he was even more into it than most players. So I’ve been using it, although not to the extent I do now, since my rookie year.”

A player’s enthusiasm for analytics is relative. In Anderson’s case, practicality is the overriding factor. He’s data savvy, but wary of paralysis by analysis. He’s careful not to delve too deep.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Montgomery threw the pitch that ended 108 years of frustration for Cubs fans everywhere. Three-plus months later, he’s in camp competing for the fifth-starter spot in Chicago’s rotation. If that doesn’t come to fruition, the southpaw will settle for being a valuable bullpen arm on a juggernaut.

A lot has changed in 12 months. Montgomery was a Mariner at this time last year — he came to the Cubs in July — and his old club wasn’t expecting much from him.

“Seattle basically told me I wasn’t going to make the team,” Montgomery said during the World Series. “I bet on myself. I said I was going to show up and earn a spot, and that I was going to pitch well. I had some success — I had some failures, too — but it was kind of my breakthrough.”

Eight years after being drafted 36th overall the Kansas City Royals, the now 27-year-old lefty finally stepped up his game. He made 47 appearances between Seattle and Chicago — all but seven as a reliever — and fashioned a 2.52 ERA over 100 innings.

An improved curveball was the catalyst. The pitch was a primary focus going into the season, and it became an even bigger one once Montgomery got to Chicago. Pitching coach Chris Bosio played a major role. Read the rest of this entry »