Archive for Houston Astros

On Friday, shortly before it was reported that the low-arm-angle righty would be signing with the Marlins, Dave Cameron wrote that Brad Ziegler is a Freak. Not only does Miami’s new bullpen piece induce worm-killers with an 84-mph fastball, he gets hitters to swing at a high number of changeups below the zone.

Ziegler doesn’t consider himself totally unique, but he does recognize what sets him apart.

“I don’t think I’m much different than other submariners,” Ziegler told me in September. “My sinker and slider are pretty similar to (Darren) O’Day’s. I’d say the movement is pretty standard from where I throw them. But I am different in that I have a changeup — a lot of submariners don’t have one.”

Ziegler throws “a standard circle change” from his down-under slot. It’s a pitch he’s worked diligently to perfect — primarily as a weapon against lefties — and gripping and ripping isn’t an option. Precision is essential. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Smith has a 21.21 ERA in three appearances for the Tri-City Valley Cats. All told, the 23-year-old southpaw has allowed 19 base-runners and 15 runs in 4.2 innings for Houston’s short-season affiliate.

There’s a lot more to his story than numbers.

Smith will be watching this week’s College World Series with interest. The school out of which he was drafted in 2014, Coastal Carolina, is a surprise participant in the championship round. Several of the Chanticleers are former teammates, and he expects to be “sneaking into the locker room a couple of times” each night to follow their fairy-tale quest for a title.

The fact that the lanky left-hander is playing baseball is a real-life success story of its own.

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Dylan Bundy felt like he was throwing with someone else’s arm. The Orioles right-hander didn’t word it that way, but that’s how it sounded when I spoke to him earlier this week. It’s not unlike an out-of-body experience when the radar gun is at odds with your senses, in both directions.

Bundy had Tommy John surgery in 2013, and the road back wasn’t always smooth. Along with arduous rehab, there were sensory blips.

“I felt out of whack when I started throwing again,” said Bundy.” Something just felt off. It was like my arm was perfectly fine, but I was trying to throw the ball 70 mph and it was coming out 55. It was a weird feeling.

“Even when I got all the way up to 92, when I was rehabbing in the minors, I would have games where my arm felt perfectly fine, my body felt fine, mechanically I was fine, but it felt like the ball was coming out 85 mph and it was really coming out 91-92. That was even weirder. I wondered if the feeling was ever going to go away.” Read the rest of this entry »

Casey Meisner is having a fairly decent season. The 21-year-old Oakland A’s prospect has allowed three or fewer earned runs in nine of his 12 starts. That’s even more impressive when you consider that he’s pitching in the hitter-friendly California League.

His W-L record is 0-10.

Fortunately for his sanity, the righty understands that wins and losses are largely out of a pitcher’s control.

“It’s obviously really bad to be (0-10), but I can’t do anything about that,” said Meisner, who has been taking the mound for the Stockton Ports. “I’ve deserved a few of the losses, but we’ve scored more than two runs in only two of my starts. As a team, we’re not having a very good season.”

Meisner projects to have a good career. A third-round pick by the Mets in 2013, he came to Oakland two years later in exchange for Tyler Clippard. Six-foot-seven with a fastball-changeup-curveball mix, he went 13-5 with a 2.45 ERA last season between two levels.

The Cypress, Texas product is satisfied with the quality of his pitches — “Everything is good on that end” — but he’s not pleased with his 4.9 walk rate. He attributes the free passes to two things, only one of which he can control. Read the rest of this entry »

Lance McCullers puts a lot of thought into his craft. The 22-year-old right-hander fashions himself a bulldog — understandably so; his father was a big-league closer — but in between starts he puts on his pitching-theorist hat. In many respects, he fits the analytic Astros’ paradigm to a tee.

Selected 41st overall by Houston in the 2012 draft, McCullers features a mid-90s fastball and a killer curveball. His lack of a consistent changeup has been a cause for concern, but to this point he’s thrived with the two plus pitches. Twenty-six games into his big-league career, McCullers has a 3.44 ERA and has averaged over a strikeout per inning.

McCullers talked about his pitching approach, which focuses more on spin than location, following a mid-May outing in Boston.

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McCullers on his adaptive approach: “I don’t like putting labels on people, like, ‘He’s a finesse guy’ or ‘He’s a power guy.’ The game will dictate how I pitch. If a team is trying to jump on my heater early — they’re really hunting fastballs — I have no problem throwing 60-70% offspeed and using my fastball for effect.

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Like many of you, I grew up listening to baseball on the radio. And while I’m now at a ballpark over 100 times each season, and see many games on TV, listening to pictures being painted over the airways remains a wonderful way to follow the action. To me, baseball’s best radio play-by-play broadcasters are gems.

To coincide with the broadcaster rankings currently being released at the site, I asked a cross section of players, coaches, and managers who they enjoyed listening to growing up. I asked some broadcasters as well, for the simple reason that they chose to follow in the footsteps of the voices who helped shape their love of the game.

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Vince Cotroneo, Athletics broadcaster: “My experience was different. I saw Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek on the Game of the Week. I saw Al Michaels doing games on Monday night. I watched a little bit of the Braves on weekends when they were on TV in Orlando. But in terms of sitting in the car, or having a transistor under my bed, I didn’t have that luxury. I didn’t have Bill King or Vin Scully or Jack Buck or Harry Caray.

“My first full-time job was in 1984, in Lynchburg, Virginia, and that’s when I could hear Jon Miller doing the Orioles. When I got to the big leagues in 1991, all of a sudden I’m around Ernie Harwell and Vin Scully, and I was working with Milo (Hamilton).

“My first year, I went into the press room in Lakeland during spring training. Ernie Harwell was there with Paul Carey and he introduced himself to me. It should have been the other way around. Instead, this grand Southern gentleman was coming over to me. It was surreal. I met Vin at Vero Beach. It was the whole nine yards, where I was seeing greatness in front of me. When Vin goes to work, he paints pictures.”

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Sean Manaea got shelled at Fenway Park on Tuesday night. Making just his third big-league appearance, the Oakland A’s southpaw allowed eight runs on 10 hits in just two-and-two-third innings.

The following day, I asked the promising young hurler what it feels like to stand on the mound in front of 35,000 people and get hit as hard as he did.

“It’s… I’ve never been in this situation before,” responded Manaea. “I had a really bad game n Myrtle Beach two years ago, but there were only a couple thousand people in the stands. To be here at Fenway and do that bad, and hear the hometown crowd as I walked off the field… it sucked. But it is what it is. All I can do is acknowledge that it happened and move on.”

Acknowledging what happened used to be an issue. Back when he allowed seven runs over two innings against Myrtle Beach — “The worst I’d done up until last night” — Manaea had trouble owning up to adversity. Read the rest of this entry »

Kirby Yates is beginning his third big-league season, and his first as a New York Yankee. That qualifies him as a success story. In his own words, “This was really close to never happening.”

Thanks to dogged determination, it is.

Yates went undrafted out of Yavapai (Community) College in 2009. It was a slap in the face. His resume was admittedly spotty — Tommy John surgery had limited his post-high-school looks — but not having his name called was nonetheless rough. He was “pretty bummed.”

Three days after the draft, with a scholarship offer from Division II Mesa State on the table, he got a call from “The one scout who liked me.” That was Jayson Durocher, who subsequently inked Yates to a contract with the Tampa Bay Rays.

“Teams weren’t exactly chomping at the bit to sign me, but the Rays needed a pitcher in rookie ball,” said Yates. “I ended up being that guy. The next thing I knew, I was on a plane to the Appalachian League.”

Yates pitched well, and he proceeded to do so at each step as he climbed the minor-league ladder. He had a chip on his shoulder. Read the rest of this entry »

Luke Gregerson isn’t as slider-heavy as he was once was. The Astros reliever threw his signature pitch 41% of the time last season. Since he broke into the big leagues in 2009, his 54.4% slider rate is the highest among pitchers who’ve recorded at least 350 innings.

He’s been effective. Gregerson boasts a 2.79 ERA and 2.97 FIP in 500 career appearances. He notched 31 saves last year, and while he’s more about ground balls than punch outs, his K/9 is a more than respectable 8.81.

Most of the questions the 31-year-old righty has fielded this spring have revolved around Houston’s offseason acquisition of Ken Giles — a closer with the Phillies — and their roles going forward. On Wednesday, I approached Gregerson with a different subject in mind: his hard-to-square-up slider.

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Gregerson on what he considers ideal fastball-slider speed differential: “That’s a good question. I’ve never really thought about that too much. I just want it to move. That’s the biggest key for me. For guys who throw really hard, having a straight change that’s a slower speed is definitely a good thing. But for somebody like myself who’s not very overpowering… I’d say I’m looking more for late, hard movement, not a change of speed from my fastball.”

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The Astros vaulted themselves into the playoff hunt on the backs of their young talent and smart free agent buys. Now that many of those players will be staying with the major league club, you might expect the system to be relatively barren. In fact, however, it is littered with mid- to upper-range prospects that could help as soon as this year. Though Houston has decent quality and quantity of prospects, the most interesting thing about this system is how much turnover it has seen since last offseason. Only five of the top-15 prospects from Kiley’s list last year remain eligible for this year’s list, the rest gone via trade or promotion.

One of the joys of scouting Astros prospects is the run environments of their High-A and Triple-A affiliates. Many of the top prospects in the system – AJ Reed, Derek Fisher, JD Davis, Francis Martes, etc. – spent all or or part of their 2015 seasons in High-A Lancaster, quite possibly the most hitter-friendly park in the country. That fact makes it a fun task to figure out whose skills have improved versus whose have been artificially elevated by an extreme run environment. For many of them, evaluators almost have to ignore their High-A production and wait to see them in Double-A. I have to admit, Fisher fits into that category for me somewhat. It also makes Martes’ stat line look even more impressive.

For these rankings, there aren’t too many eye-opening choices for the upper spots on the list. I have AJ Reed in the number-one spot, believing his offensive ability to be strong enough to make him a more productive big-league player despite his defensive position. Besides Tyler White and Jon Kemmer jumping up this list for their potential at the plate, there’s Kyle Tucker and Derek Fisher sliding down just outside of the 50+ FV group. I don’t feel completely confident in my evaluation of Fisher yet, and Tucker is too young and raw for me to be comfortable ranking him ahead of the others above him.

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