How Jairo Pomares escaped Cuba and is becoming the Giants’ next great hitting prospect
By Andrew Baggarly Mar 8, 2022
PHOENIX — Jairo Pomares jogged from the clubhouse to the hitting tunnel at the Giants’ new $70 million minor-league complex. Something jangling around his neck caught a glinting reflection in the Arizona sunshine.
It was a gold medallion. It was a gift from his mother, Yaremis. It depicts Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre — the icon of Our Lady of Charity, a 16-inch statuette with an ornate halo and flowing robes that is enshrined in a minor basilica in the Cuban mining town of El Cobre.
Just as the Virgin of Guadalupe is a cultural touchstone throughout Mexico, the ancient icon colloquially known as La Cachita has become a national symbol for the Cuban people.
According to the 400-year-old legend, three men of modest means were making a salt run off the Cuban coast when their small boat encountered a storm. As they listed and lashed in the waves, they prayed fervently to the Virgin Mary for her protection. The skies cleared and as they surveyed the smooth ocean surface, they miraculously spotted a clay statue of Mary, dry and unstained by saltwater, floating on a scrap of wood. It instantly became a venerated icon, and in 1916, the Catholic church declared Our Lady of El Cobre the Patroness of Cuba.
Most images of La Cachita depict a banner above her halo with the Latin words, Mater Caritatis Fluctibus Maris Ambulavit, or, “Mother of Charity who walked on the road of stormy seas.” As Pope Francis stated when he visited Cuba in 2015, La Cachita “has accompanied the history of the Cuban people, sustaining the hope which preserves people’s dignity in the most difficult situations and championing the promotion of all that gives dignity to the human person. The growing devotion to the Virgin is a visible testimony of her presence in the soul of the Cuban people.”
Pomares, one of the most talented hitters in the Giants’ minor-league system, does not tuck the medallion into his jersey when he takes the field. It did not catch the sun by accident.
“I want to represent my island,” the 21-year-old outfielder said through Spanish interpreter Erwin Higueros. “That’s what I’m working for. It would be an honor to represent my country as a Giant.”
His presence here, through so many difficulties and dangers, is a visible testimony in its own right.
Pomares was an up-and-coming talent from the colonial-era city of Trinidad who had played on Cuba’s under-15 national team when he and his family began to consider taking a life-altering risk in 2016. He could have stayed and finished his degree from EIDE Lino Salabarría Pupo — one of Cuba’s top educational and sports institutes, which also produced Houston Astros first baseman Yuli Gurriel. But he learned that a highly regarded member of Cuba’s under-18 national team, Andy Pages, had arranged to be smuggled out of the country. The traffickers were talked into taking Pomares, too, once they became convinced he also might command a six-figure signing bonus.
So Pages and Pomares prayed for their own deliverance. They began a precarious path across four international borders, beginning with a legal flight to Guyana — one of the few countries where Cuban citizens are permitted to enter without a visa. From there, they took an off-the-books flight to Curaçao. They hid out there for three days with people they did not know, then used falsified documents to fly to Haiti. After a week in another stranger’s safe house, they made an illegal land crossing into the Dominican Republic, where they could establish residency.
All the while, Pomares trusted that there would be clear skies ahead. And while he declined to say how much of his signing bonus he had promised to his traffickers, or what, if any, percentage of his future earnings he pledged to them, he considers himself fortunate that he wasn’t detained or harmed at any point.
“I had to leave my family, go to Haiti and stay with people I didn’t know,” he said. “That wasn’t easy. But at the same time, it’s a relief when it’s over.”
Giants international scouting director Joe Salermo couldn’t remember which tournament he was attending the first time he saw Pomares swing a bat. But he knew it was for Cuba’s under-15 team. And he knew it was a swing he’d follow every chance he got.
“He wasn’t the star but he was always an above-average player,” Salermo said. “The skills were there. You just had to watch.”
The Giants continued to track Pomares after he established himself in the Dominican. A year after he arrived in the country, his parents left their hotel housekeeping jobs in Cuba behind, and along with Jairo’s younger brother, Dairon, they successfully made their own escape to join him. His father, Jordani, embraced a new career. He became a full-time batting practice pitcher to his sons.
Pomares continued to gain strength and hone his bat-to-ball skills in the Dominican, and as the Giants prepared to make a sizable ripple in the international market again in 2018, they made signing him a priority. Salermo was encouraged that the reports on Pomares kept getting better and better. Beyond that, Salermo had made inroads with the family.
“Getting to know him, getting to know his parents, that made us really go after Jairo,” said Salermo, whose own family escaped Cuba when he was 11. “Being Cuban, I understand this: You’ve seen some flashy Cuban players at the big-league level. That’s just an expression of confidence in the way they approach the game. Jairo is like that, too. But it’s a quiet confidence. It has to do with the way he was brought up and educated.
“I’m not sure I’d describe it as one of the good things about communism, but they pour money into social programs, into sports education. It’s well organized. The skills you can obtain at a young age are incredible.”
Salermo knows this because he also was enrolled in a sports academy before he left Cuba. He was training to become a chess prodigy. He still sets up a board whenever he gets a chance.
He knew that signing Pomares would be a move the Giants wouldn’t regret. But first, they had to wait for Major League Baseball to certify him.
The league certified Pages in 2017 and the power-hitting outfielder signed for $300,000 with the Los Angeles Dodgers — the most the club could offer an international player as a consequence for exceeding their bonus pool in past seasons. The Giants were under an identical bonus restraint during that signing period, so it worked to their great fortune that Pomares wasn’t certified until 2018. Although he was 18 by then, he had become one of the best pure hitters available in his international class. The only reason his signing for $975,000 didn’t attract more attention at the time was because the Giants’ class was headlined by top-ranked shortstop Marco Luciano, who received $2.6 million. They signed head-turning Venezuelan outfielder Luis Matos for $750,000 in that class, too.
It has the potential to become the Giants’ greatest haul of international talent since Juan Marichal and Orlando Cepeda.
It was July 6 of last season and the late-afternoon shadows stretched across the infield in San Jose when Pomares batted against the Fresno Grizzlies in the first inning. He took a measured, left-handed swing, stayed with the outside pitch and drove a home run the opposite way. In his next at-bat, he flared a single to left field. Then he yanked an inside pitch for a double down the right-field line. He finished the night with a line single that nearly took off the pitcher’s head.
The next afternoon, Pomares laced a breaking ball to left field for a single in his first at-bat. He drilled a no-doubt home run to right-center to which the Fresno outfielders reacted with a perfunctory jog. He hit a ground-ball single past the second baseman. He went with the pitch again and barreled a fastball off the left-field fence for a double.
“Oh, we had fun with it. We enjoyed it,” Matos said. “As teammates, we were all happy for him. When he goes to an at-bat, we all expect he’s going to hit. He just makes it seem so easy.
“He’s a ballplayer who was born to hit.”
Luciano is one of the most hyped prospects in baseball, a potential 40-home run hitter in the major leagues, and he destroyed pitching in the Low-A West for San Jose last season. Matos is a consensus top-100 prospect whose contact skills and overall game draw raves from scouts and executives.
But if you really want to see a Giants coach or scout make a face, mention Pomares to them. His teammates qualify, too.
“Oh man,” left-handed pitching prospect Chris Wright said. “I played with him in the Arizona (Rookie) League in 2019 and he was hitting line drives all around the field. But now? His power is impressive. His bat-to-ball skills are so impressive. He has an impressive approach for such a young guy. So yep. He’s … yeah. He’s a force to be reckoned with.”
Because of a strained muscle in his lower back last season sustained in spring training, Pomares was brought along slowly in extended spring and he didn’t join San Jose until mid-June. He proceeded to hit .372/.429/.694 with 14 home runs in 199 plate appearances for the Giants. He made a quicker adjustment than Luciano when both were promoted to High-A Eugene, hitting .262 with six home runs in 103 plate appearances. He also drew just one walk against 33 strikeouts.
Pomares never went more than two games without a hit, but it’s the power that most surprised Giants officials and coaches, who point out that the left-handed-hitting 21-year-old also led all players in extended spring with six homers.
Baseball America named him the Giants’ minor-league player of the year.
“Ever since I was little, it seems like hitting has come very easy to me,” Pomares said. “I don’t know if I was born to hit. However, in 2019 I noticed my swing was a little too level. Then during the pandemic, I realized that maybe I should change my approach a little and lift the bat to hit a few more home runs. So I think that helped. And then my conditioning, getting myself stronger — that’s what I’ve been working on.
“However, when I go to bat, I really don’t think too much. During batting practice, you go through your drills and think about what you’re going to do. But during the game, I think I’m better off reacting.
“The only thing that I had a problem with was the high fastball. That’s about it.”
And what about ocho por ocho? Were teammates fanning him with towels in the dugout?
“I wasn’t even aware of it,” he said. “I wasn’t even thinking about it. It wasn’t until my teammates told me, ‘Hey, you’re 8-for-8. The record is 10.’ So when I started thinking about it, that’s when I made an out.”
Here is another thought exercise: of Luciano, Matos and Pomares, who profiles as the best overall hitter?
“Ohhh,” Pomares said. “It’s hard to choose. When it comes to power, I think Luciano. But Matos is a good, good hitter. It doesn’t matter where the ball is. When he makes contact, he’ll hit it right back up the middle. Me? … I’ll stay out of it.”
Salermo laughs at the question.
“First of all, can we just say it’s a nice problem to have?” he said. “Three guys in the same class with all these tools and skills, it’s a nice problem, right? If I have to compare, I’d say Pomares is more like Matos than Luciano. But Pomares has the best baseball skills out of all of them. He knows how to play the game. His aptitude and the way he sees the game is probably the most advanced.”
Pomares is behind in terms of professional experience, but he’s a .330 hitter in 128 games over four levels. With a bit more zone awareness, a scouting comp to a hitter like Houston’s Michael Brantley isn’t out of the question.
“Jairo is going to profile as an offensive guy wherever you put him, and I still give him a chance to play center field, too,” Salermo said. “He’s aggressive and he’ll have to calm down the first-pitch swinging as he moves up. But he’s a middle-of-the-order bat and a special one.”
In December 2018, more than two years after Pomares was trafficked out of Cuba and just a few months after he signed with the Giants, Major League Baseball and the Cuban Baseball Federation announced an agreement that would allow Cuban players to sign contracts with MLB teams without defecting and establishing residency in another country. The agreement was lauded as a solution to address the dangerous influence of illegal traffickers.
“Words cannot fully express my heartfelt joy,” Chicago White Sox All-Star first baseman José Abreu said in a statement. “Dealing with the exploitation of smugglers and unscrupulous agencies will finally come to an end for the Cuban baseball player. To this date, I am still harassed.”
The agreement never came into force. The Trump administration, in its efforts to undo nearly all the bridge-building that the Obama administration had made toward reestablishing Cuban relations, effectively scuttled the agreement.
So the trafficking continues. Just a few months ago, 12 members of Cuba’s under-23 team — nearly half the roster — defected while playing a tournament in Mexico. It was the largest desertion in Cuban baseball history.
Other loopholes are closing, though. Last year, officials in Guyana ramped up efforts to require visas for Cuban travelers. And does this sound familiar? Last month, Dominican president Luis Abinader staged an inauguration ceremony and pushed a ceremonial button to begin pouring concrete into foundations of a wall that will straddle most of the border between Dominican Republic and Haiti.
If Pomares had not made his escape as a 16-year-old, it’s possible he could have been among the players who slipped away in Mexico last year. The same might have been true for Pages as well.
Instead, the two players who traveled together as teenagers in 2016 and were smuggled across four international borders might soon find themselves on opposite sides of one of baseball’s most heated rivalries.
Pages was nearly dealt to the Angels along with Joc Pederson in an earlier version of the Mookie Betts trade prior to the 2020 season, so the Dodgers have to be relieved that part of the deal was scuttled. Pages has become one of the best prospects in one of baseball’s most loaded systems. He led the High-A Central League last season with 31 home runs, 95 runs, 56 extra-base hits and a .945 OPS.
“Yes, we are playing for rival teams, but at the end of the day, Cuba is the one who wins,” Pomares said. “Because that’s what you want: to represent your country at the highest level and see what happens.”
In 1954, after Ernest Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature for “The Old Man and the Sea,” he decided that the prize belonged to the Cuban people. His protagonist, the old fisherman, Santiago, prayed for the intercession of La Cachita. So the medal for Hemingway’s Nobel Prize is not kept in a museum or under palace guard. It’s adjacent to the shrine in the basilica in El Cobre.
Perhaps when the sun is angled just right, there are days when it catches the light.
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2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
Moderator: Padres
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
Righthander Colby White covered a lot of ground last year.
The 2019 sixth-rounder from Mississippi State pitched his way through four levels to reach Triple-A Durham. Along the way, the 23-year-old reliever posted 10 saves and a 1.52 ERA while striking out 99 in 59.1 innings.
Now, White looks to take the next step to Tampa Bay.
The Rays didn’t know exactly what they had initially. White looked ordinary in his pro debut with short-season Hudson Valley in 2019, and then like most minor leaguers he sat out 2020.
“He came into spring training last year, and the stuff he was featuring on the back fields really separated from his peers,’’ said Kevin Ibach, the Rays' senior director of pro personnel and pro scouting.
“I think the last time we had (coaches and staff) gravitate to see a reliever on the back fields who was a little bit under the radar . . . was when Diego Castillo was in the minor leagues.
“That was a pretty good indicator early on that his stuff was in place, his velocity was really good, the slider was pretty interesting.’’
White combined his dynamic repertoire with an aggressive and fearless approach, trying to create what he calls “a guessing game” for the hitters by throwing all three of his pitches with the same arm speed, and usually making it work.
White had to adapt as he moved up. He was able to use his fastball to dominate at Low-A Charleston but had to use his slider more at High-A Bowling Green. Hemixed in his splitter more when he got to Double-A Montgomery.
“He was forced to evolve as a pitcher,’’ Ibach said. “Sometimes that process takes years to happen. You just ride your fastball for a whole season, then it’s the next year before you start involving your other pitches.’’
White was in the pool of potential candidates if the Rays needed a fresh arm during the 2021 postseason. That didn’t happen, but he is positioned and poised to make the jump this year.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... ays-radar/
The 2019 sixth-rounder from Mississippi State pitched his way through four levels to reach Triple-A Durham. Along the way, the 23-year-old reliever posted 10 saves and a 1.52 ERA while striking out 99 in 59.1 innings.
Now, White looks to take the next step to Tampa Bay.
The Rays didn’t know exactly what they had initially. White looked ordinary in his pro debut with short-season Hudson Valley in 2019, and then like most minor leaguers he sat out 2020.
“He came into spring training last year, and the stuff he was featuring on the back fields really separated from his peers,’’ said Kevin Ibach, the Rays' senior director of pro personnel and pro scouting.
“I think the last time we had (coaches and staff) gravitate to see a reliever on the back fields who was a little bit under the radar . . . was when Diego Castillo was in the minor leagues.
“That was a pretty good indicator early on that his stuff was in place, his velocity was really good, the slider was pretty interesting.’’
White combined his dynamic repertoire with an aggressive and fearless approach, trying to create what he calls “a guessing game” for the hitters by throwing all three of his pitches with the same arm speed, and usually making it work.
White had to adapt as he moved up. He was able to use his fastball to dominate at Low-A Charleston but had to use his slider more at High-A Bowling Green. Hemixed in his splitter more when he got to Double-A Montgomery.
“He was forced to evolve as a pitcher,’’ Ibach said. “Sometimes that process takes years to happen. You just ride your fastball for a whole season, then it’s the next year before you start involving your other pitches.’’
White was in the pool of potential candidates if the Rays needed a fresh arm during the 2021 postseason. That didn’t happen, but he is positioned and poised to make the jump this year.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... ays-radar/
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
The Chicago Cubs are in agreement with Japanese outfielder Seiya Suzuki on a five-year, $85 million deal, pending a physical, sources told The Athletic on Wednesday. Suzuki will reportedly get a full no-trade clause in the deal.
Suzuki immediately helps raise the profile of the retooling Cubs, who went 71-91 last season. The team traded away most of its core at last year’s trade deadline but added Marcus Stroman prior to the lockout. With the Pirates and Reds on a downswing, Suzuki certainly bolsters the Cubs’ chances against the Brewers and Cardinals in the NL Central.
Arguably the best all-around player in Nippon Professional Baseball, Suzuki broke in with the Hiroshima Carp as a 19-year-old in 2013. He had a .315/.414/.570 line with 182 homers in nine seasons with the Carp.
Hiroshima posted Suzuki’s rights to major-league teams on Nov. 22, after what was perhaps the best season of his career — Suzuki, 27, hit 38 home runs with a 1.069 OPS in 2021. His 30-day posting window was postponed due to the lockout, but even after games were canceled, he was determined to sign with a major-league team in 2022.
The Athletic’s panel of experts weighs in on what this deal means for the Cubs, Suzuki and the NL Central picture.
Sahadev Sharma, Cubs beat writer
Suzuki is reportedly a five-tool outfielder with Gold Glove-caliber defense who could really fit any roster. But it’s the age and the price tag — one that’s well below what it would have cost to bid for Nick Castellanos or Kris Bryant, the former of whom would have cost the Cubs a draft pick — that really make this a perfect marriage.
The Cubs don’t expect to head into 2022 as obvious playoff contenders, let alone World Series favorites, but they do want to try to compete. Suzuki fits into that plan while also potentially being in the middle of his peak years come 2024 when they hope some of their young, high-upside prospects are knocking on the big-league door. The Cubs needed power and Suzuki, assuming his NPB numbers translate even partly to MLB, provides that.
Eno Sarris, national writer
“That should be the best free-agent deal of the offseason by a good ways,” said one executive about this five-year pact with Suzuki. The right-handed outfielder has been a “monster” in Japan, as that executive put it, hitting for a .317 average and slamming 177 homers in the six years since he broke out as a regular there. Combining great pull power with a 16 percent strikeout rate and a 14 percent walk rate speaks to his completeness as a hitter.
“The thing that stands out about Suzuki is that he’s been consistently good throughout his career,” says Patrick Newman, proprietor of NPBTracker, a website about the Japanese leagues. “Good power, good contact, good plate discipline, the total package.”
It’s very rare to pair discipline, contact and power the way that Suzuki might. Only 13 hitters last year had a strikeout rate under 20 percent, a walk rate over 10 percent, and above-average power, and it’s an impressive list filled with the stars of today that was, on average, 35 percent better than league average with the stick. That’s the kind of upside we’re talking about.
Over at FanGraphs, Dan Szymborski projected Suzuki to be a .287/.351/.480 hitter in his first year in America, with 23 homers and 12 stolen bases, nearly an exact match to Kris Bryant’s 2021 season. The difference is that Suzuki is three years younger than Bryant, and there’s a touch of the exciting unknown about Suzuki. If more of the power translates, he’ll be better than the slightly above league-average player Szymborski projects.
Another question is the defense, which Szymborski has as average or below. An infielder that moved to the outfield, Suzuki has the speed to be above-average defensively, but, other than his cannon of an arm, his defensive metrics in Japan have been good, not great. The guess here is that he’s an asset in the field and will suppress some of the running game of opponents even if he misses a few balls.
Szymborski almost exactly nailed the deal that Suzuki signed, so it’s one of those ideal situations that rarely arises because most free agents are older than the 27-year-old Suzuki. The Cubs just paid what the market should have paid, for sober projections, for an above-average outfielder who has a well-rounded game and is in his peak age range. The magic is in the upside beyond, if Suzuki truly has the skills to translate even more of his star-sized game.
Jon Greenberg, columnist
Back in the winter of 2011, when the Cubs were last rebuilding, the front office made a bid for Yoenis Céspedes, the Cuban slugger. As now-president Jed Hoyer told me years later, they probably would’ve tried harder to out-bid the Oakland A’s for Céspedes’ services if they were sure he could go right to the majors. (They thought he would need a half-season of conditioning at the Triple-A level after a layoff and Céspedes only wanted a four-year deal.) The idea was that Céspedes would be a cost-effective contributor for the major-league club as the front office tried to figure out how long it would take to return to respectability. A decade later, the Cubs are starting over again and they’re doing it with an international star in Suzuki, the Japanese outfielder who has signed a five-year, $85 million deal.
While the first Cubs rebuild started with two painful seasons (three depending on how you remember 2014), it really went quickly if you think about it. By 2015, the Cubs were a 97-win team. My guess is Hoyer wants the Cubs to be a playoff contender by 2023, which requires more aggressive moves. He’s already accomplished the sell-off-for-prospects part of his plan and the Cubs have little payroll left to dump. With the additions of Suzuki and Stroman, along with holdovers like Kyle Hendricks and Willson Contreras, the Cubs should be modestly competitive in 2022, if not actually good. Suzuki doesn’t have MLB experience, but he’s not an unknown as he comes with a big-league reputation as an exciting hitter and outfielder. He’s hit .315 with 182 homers in nine seasons with the Hiroshima Carp.
Suzuki is already helping boost enthusiasm for a team that has plenty of good seats available. I can’t be the only person who sat outside on a warm Wednesday morning watching NPB highlights on their computer. Can I interest you in six minutes of him hitting dingers?
Stephen Nesbitt, national writer
If the Cubs adding Stroman didn’t sound alarms around the NL Central, the Suzuki signing should. Seven months after dismantling their World Series core — trading away Javy Báez, Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo and several others — the Cubs already are making significant moves to climb back into contention. Suzuki alone doesn’t get the Cubs all the way back, but it’s a big step in that direction. With the Pirates at the bottom of a rebuild and the Reds steering into one, this is not one of the stronger divisions in baseball, and the Cubs know it. So, rather than gut the roster further after a 71-91 season, they have their sights on joining the Cardinals and Brewers in the division race. The question now is: Will they continue adding after Suzuki?
There is inherent risk in giving someone who has never played in the majors a five-year deal, but evaluators I’ve spoken with this offseason suggest Suzuki’s floor is solid, and his upside is huge. The power is real, even if his batting average is lower against MLB pitching, and the Gold Glove potential will carry over. The Cubs outfield is significantly better now than it was yesterday.
Andrew Baggarly, Giants beat writer
Prior to Suzuki, the last accomplished NPB position player to sign a significant multiyear MLB contract was Kosuke Fukudome in 2007. Like Fukudome, Suzuki has chosen to wear a Cubs uniform. But expectations for Suzuki should be much higher. He’s 27 and in the prime of his career, not the downslope. He’s a complete player who patterns his game after Mike Trout and was the nearest analog to him in Japan while starring for Hiroshima. His zone awareness and plate discipline should serve him just as well in the NL Central. The only question is how much of his power will translate against major league pitching, so perhaps it’s not surprising that he chose to play home games in one of the league’s cozier ballparks. Suzuki is a serious and ambitious player who is driven to be an All-Star performer but he’s also a big personality who should be a marketing department’s dream. A lot of other fan bases — Giants, Mariners, Red Sox, Padres — got their hopes up and woke up to sad news today.
Jim Bowden, national writer
Suzuki had a monster 2021 season for the Hiroshima Carp, slashing .317/.433/.639 with 38 home runs, 88 RBIs and nine stolen bases. He’s a patient hitter who can work a count and has a strong speed-power combination. It’s always difficult to project how a Japanese hitter will translate to major league pitching as we’ve seen our share of success stories like Ichiro Suzuki and Hideki Matsui, but also our share of failures like Yoshi Tsutsugo and Shogo Akiyama. However, most evaluators believe that Suzuki will translate somewhere between those two groups. Most projections have him being an average major league hitter with 20-25 home run power.
The reason it’s so difficult to predict any Japanese hitter is that they’ve rarely if at all faced major league-caliber aces like Jacob deGrom, Corbin Burnes or Max Scherzer, so it’s hard to gauge how they will handle that level of pitching. However, Suzuki has proven he can hit high velocity, work a count, stay back on breaking balls, draw walks and handle the entire inside of the strike zone. Therefore, in theory, there is a pretty good shot he lives up to this contract. However, there is risk.
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Suzuki immediately helps raise the profile of the retooling Cubs, who went 71-91 last season. The team traded away most of its core at last year’s trade deadline but added Marcus Stroman prior to the lockout. With the Pirates and Reds on a downswing, Suzuki certainly bolsters the Cubs’ chances against the Brewers and Cardinals in the NL Central.
Arguably the best all-around player in Nippon Professional Baseball, Suzuki broke in with the Hiroshima Carp as a 19-year-old in 2013. He had a .315/.414/.570 line with 182 homers in nine seasons with the Carp.
Hiroshima posted Suzuki’s rights to major-league teams on Nov. 22, after what was perhaps the best season of his career — Suzuki, 27, hit 38 home runs with a 1.069 OPS in 2021. His 30-day posting window was postponed due to the lockout, but even after games were canceled, he was determined to sign with a major-league team in 2022.
The Athletic’s panel of experts weighs in on what this deal means for the Cubs, Suzuki and the NL Central picture.
Sahadev Sharma, Cubs beat writer
Suzuki is reportedly a five-tool outfielder with Gold Glove-caliber defense who could really fit any roster. But it’s the age and the price tag — one that’s well below what it would have cost to bid for Nick Castellanos or Kris Bryant, the former of whom would have cost the Cubs a draft pick — that really make this a perfect marriage.
The Cubs don’t expect to head into 2022 as obvious playoff contenders, let alone World Series favorites, but they do want to try to compete. Suzuki fits into that plan while also potentially being in the middle of his peak years come 2024 when they hope some of their young, high-upside prospects are knocking on the big-league door. The Cubs needed power and Suzuki, assuming his NPB numbers translate even partly to MLB, provides that.
Eno Sarris, national writer
“That should be the best free-agent deal of the offseason by a good ways,” said one executive about this five-year pact with Suzuki. The right-handed outfielder has been a “monster” in Japan, as that executive put it, hitting for a .317 average and slamming 177 homers in the six years since he broke out as a regular there. Combining great pull power with a 16 percent strikeout rate and a 14 percent walk rate speaks to his completeness as a hitter.
“The thing that stands out about Suzuki is that he’s been consistently good throughout his career,” says Patrick Newman, proprietor of NPBTracker, a website about the Japanese leagues. “Good power, good contact, good plate discipline, the total package.”
It’s very rare to pair discipline, contact and power the way that Suzuki might. Only 13 hitters last year had a strikeout rate under 20 percent, a walk rate over 10 percent, and above-average power, and it’s an impressive list filled with the stars of today that was, on average, 35 percent better than league average with the stick. That’s the kind of upside we’re talking about.
Over at FanGraphs, Dan Szymborski projected Suzuki to be a .287/.351/.480 hitter in his first year in America, with 23 homers and 12 stolen bases, nearly an exact match to Kris Bryant’s 2021 season. The difference is that Suzuki is three years younger than Bryant, and there’s a touch of the exciting unknown about Suzuki. If more of the power translates, he’ll be better than the slightly above league-average player Szymborski projects.
Another question is the defense, which Szymborski has as average or below. An infielder that moved to the outfield, Suzuki has the speed to be above-average defensively, but, other than his cannon of an arm, his defensive metrics in Japan have been good, not great. The guess here is that he’s an asset in the field and will suppress some of the running game of opponents even if he misses a few balls.
Szymborski almost exactly nailed the deal that Suzuki signed, so it’s one of those ideal situations that rarely arises because most free agents are older than the 27-year-old Suzuki. The Cubs just paid what the market should have paid, for sober projections, for an above-average outfielder who has a well-rounded game and is in his peak age range. The magic is in the upside beyond, if Suzuki truly has the skills to translate even more of his star-sized game.
Jon Greenberg, columnist
Back in the winter of 2011, when the Cubs were last rebuilding, the front office made a bid for Yoenis Céspedes, the Cuban slugger. As now-president Jed Hoyer told me years later, they probably would’ve tried harder to out-bid the Oakland A’s for Céspedes’ services if they were sure he could go right to the majors. (They thought he would need a half-season of conditioning at the Triple-A level after a layoff and Céspedes only wanted a four-year deal.) The idea was that Céspedes would be a cost-effective contributor for the major-league club as the front office tried to figure out how long it would take to return to respectability. A decade later, the Cubs are starting over again and they’re doing it with an international star in Suzuki, the Japanese outfielder who has signed a five-year, $85 million deal.
While the first Cubs rebuild started with two painful seasons (three depending on how you remember 2014), it really went quickly if you think about it. By 2015, the Cubs were a 97-win team. My guess is Hoyer wants the Cubs to be a playoff contender by 2023, which requires more aggressive moves. He’s already accomplished the sell-off-for-prospects part of his plan and the Cubs have little payroll left to dump. With the additions of Suzuki and Stroman, along with holdovers like Kyle Hendricks and Willson Contreras, the Cubs should be modestly competitive in 2022, if not actually good. Suzuki doesn’t have MLB experience, but he’s not an unknown as he comes with a big-league reputation as an exciting hitter and outfielder. He’s hit .315 with 182 homers in nine seasons with the Hiroshima Carp.
Suzuki is already helping boost enthusiasm for a team that has plenty of good seats available. I can’t be the only person who sat outside on a warm Wednesday morning watching NPB highlights on their computer. Can I interest you in six minutes of him hitting dingers?
Stephen Nesbitt, national writer
If the Cubs adding Stroman didn’t sound alarms around the NL Central, the Suzuki signing should. Seven months after dismantling their World Series core — trading away Javy Báez, Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo and several others — the Cubs already are making significant moves to climb back into contention. Suzuki alone doesn’t get the Cubs all the way back, but it’s a big step in that direction. With the Pirates at the bottom of a rebuild and the Reds steering into one, this is not one of the stronger divisions in baseball, and the Cubs know it. So, rather than gut the roster further after a 71-91 season, they have their sights on joining the Cardinals and Brewers in the division race. The question now is: Will they continue adding after Suzuki?
There is inherent risk in giving someone who has never played in the majors a five-year deal, but evaluators I’ve spoken with this offseason suggest Suzuki’s floor is solid, and his upside is huge. The power is real, even if his batting average is lower against MLB pitching, and the Gold Glove potential will carry over. The Cubs outfield is significantly better now than it was yesterday.
Andrew Baggarly, Giants beat writer
Prior to Suzuki, the last accomplished NPB position player to sign a significant multiyear MLB contract was Kosuke Fukudome in 2007. Like Fukudome, Suzuki has chosen to wear a Cubs uniform. But expectations for Suzuki should be much higher. He’s 27 and in the prime of his career, not the downslope. He’s a complete player who patterns his game after Mike Trout and was the nearest analog to him in Japan while starring for Hiroshima. His zone awareness and plate discipline should serve him just as well in the NL Central. The only question is how much of his power will translate against major league pitching, so perhaps it’s not surprising that he chose to play home games in one of the league’s cozier ballparks. Suzuki is a serious and ambitious player who is driven to be an All-Star performer but he’s also a big personality who should be a marketing department’s dream. A lot of other fan bases — Giants, Mariners, Red Sox, Padres — got their hopes up and woke up to sad news today.
Jim Bowden, national writer
Suzuki had a monster 2021 season for the Hiroshima Carp, slashing .317/.433/.639 with 38 home runs, 88 RBIs and nine stolen bases. He’s a patient hitter who can work a count and has a strong speed-power combination. It’s always difficult to project how a Japanese hitter will translate to major league pitching as we’ve seen our share of success stories like Ichiro Suzuki and Hideki Matsui, but also our share of failures like Yoshi Tsutsugo and Shogo Akiyama. However, most evaluators believe that Suzuki will translate somewhere between those two groups. Most projections have him being an average major league hitter with 20-25 home run power.
The reason it’s so difficult to predict any Japanese hitter is that they’ve rarely if at all faced major league-caliber aces like Jacob deGrom, Corbin Burnes or Max Scherzer, so it’s hard to gauge how they will handle that level of pitching. However, Suzuki has proven he can hit high velocity, work a count, stay back on breaking balls, draw walks and handle the entire inside of the strike zone. Therefore, in theory, there is a pretty good shot he lives up to this contract. However, there is risk.
https://theathletic.com/3189351/2022/03 ... b-writers/
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
Atlanta Braves
Freddy Tarnok, RHP (No.
Following the Braves' trade for Matt Olson in which they parted with three of their top nine prospects, Tarnok moved from No. 11 to No. 8 in the system. The righthander impressed at Double-A as a 22-year-old in 2021 thanks to a potent fastball/curveball combination. Tarnok has the ingredients to start, with a changeup and slider rounding out his four-pitch mix.
Chicago White Sox
Bryan Ramos, 3B (No. 11)
Ramos held his own during his full-season debut as a 19-year-old in Low-A, showcasing all-fields power while walking at a decent clip (10.1%). In a White Sox system devoid of high-level talent, Ramos could quickly move up the ranks thanks to his bat speed, power and solid defense at third base.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... -30-teams/
6. Kyren Paris, 2B/SS, Angels
Low-A Inland Empire (West)
78 PA: .297/.423/.516 (182 OPS+), 0 HR (154 XB+), 10 SB (307 SB+)
Paris was the youngest player at the Angels’ alternate training site last year, and while he struggled initially against older competition, he later found a groove. That adaptability helped the 2019 second-rounder jump from a three-game pro debut in the Arizona League to Low-A this season. Paris could grow into power in his 20s, but for now his game is centered on speed, gap power and a disciplined hitting approach. He is a good bet to stick as a middle infielder. Age: 19
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... -baseball/
Freddy Tarnok, RHP (No.
Following the Braves' trade for Matt Olson in which they parted with three of their top nine prospects, Tarnok moved from No. 11 to No. 8 in the system. The righthander impressed at Double-A as a 22-year-old in 2021 thanks to a potent fastball/curveball combination. Tarnok has the ingredients to start, with a changeup and slider rounding out his four-pitch mix.
Chicago White Sox
Bryan Ramos, 3B (No. 11)
Ramos held his own during his full-season debut as a 19-year-old in Low-A, showcasing all-fields power while walking at a decent clip (10.1%). In a White Sox system devoid of high-level talent, Ramos could quickly move up the ranks thanks to his bat speed, power and solid defense at third base.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... -30-teams/
6. Kyren Paris, 2B/SS, Angels
Low-A Inland Empire (West)
78 PA: .297/.423/.516 (182 OPS+), 0 HR (154 XB+), 10 SB (307 SB+)
Paris was the youngest player at the Angels’ alternate training site last year, and while he struggled initially against older competition, he later found a groove. That adaptability helped the 2019 second-rounder jump from a three-game pro debut in the Arizona League to Low-A this season. Paris could grow into power in his 20s, but for now his game is centered on speed, gap power and a disciplined hitting approach. He is a good bet to stick as a middle infielder. Age: 19
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... -baseball/
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
Righthander Freddy Tarnok is sticking with what works.
Drafted in the third round in 2017 out of Riverview (Fla.) High, he earned a spot on the Braves’ 40-man roster last November following a breakthrough season in which he reached Double-A Mississippi for nine starts.
Getting up to speed on technology helped pave the way for Tarnok’s 2021 success, which included a 3.44 ERA with 109 strikeouts and 28 walks in 73.1 innings.
The 23-year-old credits his success in part to offseason work with Kinetic Pro Performance in Tampa. His mid-90s fastball tops out at 98 mph and has plus riding life that generates whiffs.
“The great fastball shape was from training at Kinetic,” Tarnok said. “Fixing my mechanics allowed everything to play up. I added velocity and everything really worked well off of it.”
Tarnok’s mechanical adjustments included improving his timing. He said his arm slot was out of place at foot-plant, thus his arm and shoulder weren’t where they ideally should be.
“Looking at the numbers allowed me to get more consistent without having to think about it,” he said.
Among the tech that Tarnok relied on was an Edgertronic super slow-motion camera and the mobile app ProPlayAI.
“It breaks down the kinetic chain,” Tarnok said of the latter. “If I’m on time and synced up, you’ll see a lot of green, but when I’m leaking energy you’ll see a lot of red. It’s super helpful.”
Tarnok entered pro ball with an outstanding curveball. The pitch is the best of its type in Atlanta’s system—a true 12-to-6 with downer action—which combined with his plus fastball gives him a strong foundation.
In order to reach a higher upside, Tarnok set to work on expanding his repertoire.
He said he developed and then lowered the spin efficiency on a slider while training at Kinetic. He initially sat 84-85 mph with his slider but was able to up his average velocity closer to 87-88 this offseason.
Among Tarnok’s goals for 2022 are improving his first-pitch strike percentage to stay ahead of hitters, refining his changeup to tame lefthanded batters and remaining healthy.
“A full healthy season is definitely my primary goal,” he said.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... echnology/
Drafted in the third round in 2017 out of Riverview (Fla.) High, he earned a spot on the Braves’ 40-man roster last November following a breakthrough season in which he reached Double-A Mississippi for nine starts.
Getting up to speed on technology helped pave the way for Tarnok’s 2021 success, which included a 3.44 ERA with 109 strikeouts and 28 walks in 73.1 innings.
The 23-year-old credits his success in part to offseason work with Kinetic Pro Performance in Tampa. His mid-90s fastball tops out at 98 mph and has plus riding life that generates whiffs.
“The great fastball shape was from training at Kinetic,” Tarnok said. “Fixing my mechanics allowed everything to play up. I added velocity and everything really worked well off of it.”
Tarnok’s mechanical adjustments included improving his timing. He said his arm slot was out of place at foot-plant, thus his arm and shoulder weren’t where they ideally should be.
“Looking at the numbers allowed me to get more consistent without having to think about it,” he said.
Among the tech that Tarnok relied on was an Edgertronic super slow-motion camera and the mobile app ProPlayAI.
“It breaks down the kinetic chain,” Tarnok said of the latter. “If I’m on time and synced up, you’ll see a lot of green, but when I’m leaking energy you’ll see a lot of red. It’s super helpful.”
Tarnok entered pro ball with an outstanding curveball. The pitch is the best of its type in Atlanta’s system—a true 12-to-6 with downer action—which combined with his plus fastball gives him a strong foundation.
In order to reach a higher upside, Tarnok set to work on expanding his repertoire.
He said he developed and then lowered the spin efficiency on a slider while training at Kinetic. He initially sat 84-85 mph with his slider but was able to up his average velocity closer to 87-88 this offseason.
Among Tarnok’s goals for 2022 are improving his first-pitch strike percentage to stay ahead of hitters, refining his changeup to tame lefthanded batters and remaining healthy.
“A full healthy season is definitely my primary goal,” he said.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... echnology/
Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
Jim, these prospect notes are great, but can you give me your best ice fishing spots in Maine for next ice season?
Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
Specifically for Pike
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
Sometimes the best trades are the ones you don't make.
In February 2020, the Dodgers and Angels had a trade in the works that would have sent Joc Pederson, Ross Stripling and prospect Andy Pages to the Angels. But the deal was held up as the Dodgers worked out their acquisition of Mookie Betts from the Red Sox.
Impatient Angels owner Arte Moreno nixed the deal.
All Pages has done since then is develop into one of the best power prospects in baseball.
Pages hit a Midwest League-leading 31 homers for High-A Great Lakes in 2021, even after last playing in Rookie ball because of the canceled 2020 minor league season.
"I think what was impressive was his ability to cut his strikeout rate—while being up two levels—and to close down some holes on fastballs, particularly up in the zone," Dodgers farm director Will Rhymes said. "His ability to handle right-on-right spin is unique for a young player . . . At his age, it's just an impressive ability to be adaptable."
The 21-year-old Pages earned an invitation to big league camp this spring.
"It's obviously impressive to see him play," Rhymes said. "But it's almost more impressive to talk to him—his understanding of hitting, just the intuition about it, how much he observes about other players. We just haven't had very many players come through with that kind of baseball IQ."
The next challenge for Pages, Rhymes said, is to show he can make adjustments to improve against lefthanders.
"He had pretty big reverse splits last year, which we think kind of pointed out a few things in his swing, just posture-wise and hand position getting a little too far out over the plate," Rhymes said. "We thought it was creating a little too easy an attack plane for lefties. So he's worked really hard to stabilize his posture.
"A lot of this is self-driven by Andy. He's incredibly sharp. He's trying to simplify his swing a little bit, minimize the high leg kick, so his timing can be a little more consistent, then stabilize his posture a little bit to create less windows for angles."
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... justments/
In February 2020, the Dodgers and Angels had a trade in the works that would have sent Joc Pederson, Ross Stripling and prospect Andy Pages to the Angels. But the deal was held up as the Dodgers worked out their acquisition of Mookie Betts from the Red Sox.
Impatient Angels owner Arte Moreno nixed the deal.
All Pages has done since then is develop into one of the best power prospects in baseball.
Pages hit a Midwest League-leading 31 homers for High-A Great Lakes in 2021, even after last playing in Rookie ball because of the canceled 2020 minor league season.
"I think what was impressive was his ability to cut his strikeout rate—while being up two levels—and to close down some holes on fastballs, particularly up in the zone," Dodgers farm director Will Rhymes said. "His ability to handle right-on-right spin is unique for a young player . . . At his age, it's just an impressive ability to be adaptable."
The 21-year-old Pages earned an invitation to big league camp this spring.
"It's obviously impressive to see him play," Rhymes said. "But it's almost more impressive to talk to him—his understanding of hitting, just the intuition about it, how much he observes about other players. We just haven't had very many players come through with that kind of baseball IQ."
The next challenge for Pages, Rhymes said, is to show he can make adjustments to improve against lefthanders.
"He had pretty big reverse splits last year, which we think kind of pointed out a few things in his swing, just posture-wise and hand position getting a little too far out over the plate," Rhymes said. "We thought it was creating a little too easy an attack plane for lefties. So he's worked really hard to stabilize his posture.
"A lot of this is self-driven by Andy. He's incredibly sharp. He's trying to simplify his swing a little bit, minimize the high leg kick, so his timing can be a little more consistent, then stabilize his posture a little bit to create less windows for angles."
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... justments/
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
Cubs LHP prospect Jordan Wicks hurled 3 2/3 scoreless innings on Thursday for High-A South Bend.
Wicks, 22, was making his professional debut after being drafted with the 21st pick in July. It was a good one. The former Kansas State hurler struck out five while allowing just three hits and issuing one walk. A 6-foot-3 southpaw, Wicks doesn't have elite stuff, but his change grades out as a plus pitch -- sometimes higher -- and he has an above-average fastball with a slider that gets similar grades, too. He throws all of those pitches for strikes, and the command isn't far behind the control. Wicks should move quickly through the system, and could help the Chicago rotation by the end of next season.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... rdan-wicks
Wicks, 22, was making his professional debut after being drafted with the 21st pick in July. It was a good one. The former Kansas State hurler struck out five while allowing just three hits and issuing one walk. A 6-foot-3 southpaw, Wicks doesn't have elite stuff, but his change grades out as a plus pitch -- sometimes higher -- and he has an above-average fastball with a slider that gets similar grades, too. He throws all of those pitches for strikes, and the command isn't far behind the control. Wicks should move quickly through the system, and could help the Chicago rotation by the end of next season.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... rdan-wicks
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
MacKenzie Gore allowed two runs over 5 1/3 innings Friday in a no-decision against the Braves.
Gore pitched well in his major-league debut Friday evening, recording three strikeouts and issuing only two walks against a tough Braves lineup. He surrendered the first run of the game on a solo home run by Ozzie Albies in the third inning. A double and a base hit to start the fourth brought the second run home for Atlanta before Gore induced a pair of grounders to get out of the inning. The 23-year-old left-hander struck out Albies to start the sixth before walking Matt Olson. That would be it for Gore at 73 pitches -- 44 for strikes. A good start overall for the promising prospect. He's in line for a better matchup against the Reds in San Diego next week.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... enzie-gore
Nearly five years ago, when the Padres drafted a skinny 18-year-old out of Whiteville High School in North Carolina, they envisioned nights like this one -- nights where MacKenzie Gore blew upper-90s fastballs past the defending champs and strutted coolly around the Petco Park mound like he owned it. They just couldn't have envisioned the path it would take for Gore to get here.
Once the sport's top overall pitching prospect, Gore was as heralded as any young pitcher in baseball in 2019. He won MLB Pipeline's Pitcher of the Year and he entered the '20 season seemingly on the precipice of a big league breakthrough.
For two grueling summers, that breakthrough remained tantalizingly out of reach. 2020 was a strange year for everyone. It was around then that Gore's mechanics deserted him. He struggled to throw strikes at the team's alternate training site. Those struggles lingered into '21, as Gore plummeted in the prospect rankings.
And then, Gore showed up to Padres camp in 2022 looking very much like the mega prospect he'd once been. In his first backfield sim game, Gore’s fastball hit 99 mph, and he blew away certifiable big league hitters. Quickly, it became apparent that this new-look Gore was not a mirage. Gore had tirelessly worked through those mechanical tweaks during the offseason. He dominated the Cactus League. At long last, he had earned that breakthrough.
“You never want to go through it when you’re going through it,” Gore would say, after making his long-awaited big league debut on Friday night. “But now that we’ve gotten through it, today was awesome. It makes it where all that work and that time -- it was worth it.”
Gore’s first start was a memorable one. He was sharp over 5 1/3 innings in the Padres’ 5-2 loss to Atlanta at Petco Park. Gore allowed two runs on three hits and two walks, leaving to a standing ovation with the game tied in the sixth before the Braves ultimately won a battle of the bullpens.
“You can’t draw it up any better, other than a win,” Gore said. “But walking off the field with an ovation like that, in front of the home crowd -- it was awesome.”
Gore boasts a legitimate four-pitch mix, with three offspeed offerings that he can generally count on as out pitches. But in his big league debut, it was all about the fastball. Gore threw heaters with 53 of his 73 pitches, to much success.
The first batter Gore faced was Ozzie Albies, and he blew a 96 mph fastball past him to record his first career strikeout. In the second inning, Gore dotted 97 mph paint on the outside corner to retire Adam Duvall.
MacKenzie Gore's first MLB K
Eventually, the Braves' hitters began to sit on Gore’s fastball, and a few of them managed to square it up. Albies took Gore deep with two outs in the third. Austin Riley doubled and scored on a Marcell Ozuna single in the fourth. But Gore just kept attacking. It’s been his M.O. lately.
“That’s what you look for in a young pitcher,” said Padres manager Bob Melvin. “When you get some guys out there, how he responds to that. Pretty similar stuff to what we saw all spring.”
So, what’s next for Gore? It stands to reason that Gore would receive at least one more big league start with Mike Clevinger and Blake Snell on the injured list. Clevinger will make at least one more rehab appearance before he rejoins the Padres.
“We’ll just take it how it goes,” Melvin said prior to Gore’s start. “In the big leagues, performance plays. If you perform, you find a way to stay in the rotation.”
If that’s the case, Gore certainly made a strong case. In fact, he’s been making a strong rotation case all spring -- ever since that fabled sim game on the first day of camp.
“It was like night and day different from what we’d seen the year before,” said Joe Musgrove, who was in attendance. “And not only the stuff. The way he carries himself, and the confidence he has this year that it seemed like he was lacking last year is very noticeable.”
Manny Machado's diving grab
Gore likely would’ve been a part of the Padres’ season-opening rotation, if not for the last-minute Sean Manaea trade. Instead, he was the next man up. When Snell landed on the injured list, Gore got the call he’d long been waiting for.
The Padres, of course, could’ve called up Gore last season. Lord knows, they needed starting pitching. They scraped the bottom of the barrel for it, finding starts for castoff free agents and fringe roster players. Externally, there was a clamor for Gore. He was, after all, the Padres’ best pitching prospect. Internally, there was a common refrain: Gore hadn’t quite earned it yet.
https://www.mlb.com/news/mackenzie-gore ... -mlb-debut
Gore pitched well in his major-league debut Friday evening, recording three strikeouts and issuing only two walks against a tough Braves lineup. He surrendered the first run of the game on a solo home run by Ozzie Albies in the third inning. A double and a base hit to start the fourth brought the second run home for Atlanta before Gore induced a pair of grounders to get out of the inning. The 23-year-old left-hander struck out Albies to start the sixth before walking Matt Olson. That would be it for Gore at 73 pitches -- 44 for strikes. A good start overall for the promising prospect. He's in line for a better matchup against the Reds in San Diego next week.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... enzie-gore
Nearly five years ago, when the Padres drafted a skinny 18-year-old out of Whiteville High School in North Carolina, they envisioned nights like this one -- nights where MacKenzie Gore blew upper-90s fastballs past the defending champs and strutted coolly around the Petco Park mound like he owned it. They just couldn't have envisioned the path it would take for Gore to get here.
Once the sport's top overall pitching prospect, Gore was as heralded as any young pitcher in baseball in 2019. He won MLB Pipeline's Pitcher of the Year and he entered the '20 season seemingly on the precipice of a big league breakthrough.
For two grueling summers, that breakthrough remained tantalizingly out of reach. 2020 was a strange year for everyone. It was around then that Gore's mechanics deserted him. He struggled to throw strikes at the team's alternate training site. Those struggles lingered into '21, as Gore plummeted in the prospect rankings.
And then, Gore showed up to Padres camp in 2022 looking very much like the mega prospect he'd once been. In his first backfield sim game, Gore’s fastball hit 99 mph, and he blew away certifiable big league hitters. Quickly, it became apparent that this new-look Gore was not a mirage. Gore had tirelessly worked through those mechanical tweaks during the offseason. He dominated the Cactus League. At long last, he had earned that breakthrough.
“You never want to go through it when you’re going through it,” Gore would say, after making his long-awaited big league debut on Friday night. “But now that we’ve gotten through it, today was awesome. It makes it where all that work and that time -- it was worth it.”
Gore’s first start was a memorable one. He was sharp over 5 1/3 innings in the Padres’ 5-2 loss to Atlanta at Petco Park. Gore allowed two runs on three hits and two walks, leaving to a standing ovation with the game tied in the sixth before the Braves ultimately won a battle of the bullpens.
“You can’t draw it up any better, other than a win,” Gore said. “But walking off the field with an ovation like that, in front of the home crowd -- it was awesome.”
Gore boasts a legitimate four-pitch mix, with three offspeed offerings that he can generally count on as out pitches. But in his big league debut, it was all about the fastball. Gore threw heaters with 53 of his 73 pitches, to much success.
The first batter Gore faced was Ozzie Albies, and he blew a 96 mph fastball past him to record his first career strikeout. In the second inning, Gore dotted 97 mph paint on the outside corner to retire Adam Duvall.
MacKenzie Gore's first MLB K
Eventually, the Braves' hitters began to sit on Gore’s fastball, and a few of them managed to square it up. Albies took Gore deep with two outs in the third. Austin Riley doubled and scored on a Marcell Ozuna single in the fourth. But Gore just kept attacking. It’s been his M.O. lately.
“That’s what you look for in a young pitcher,” said Padres manager Bob Melvin. “When you get some guys out there, how he responds to that. Pretty similar stuff to what we saw all spring.”
So, what’s next for Gore? It stands to reason that Gore would receive at least one more big league start with Mike Clevinger and Blake Snell on the injured list. Clevinger will make at least one more rehab appearance before he rejoins the Padres.
“We’ll just take it how it goes,” Melvin said prior to Gore’s start. “In the big leagues, performance plays. If you perform, you find a way to stay in the rotation.”
If that’s the case, Gore certainly made a strong case. In fact, he’s been making a strong rotation case all spring -- ever since that fabled sim game on the first day of camp.
“It was like night and day different from what we’d seen the year before,” said Joe Musgrove, who was in attendance. “And not only the stuff. The way he carries himself, and the confidence he has this year that it seemed like he was lacking last year is very noticeable.”
Manny Machado's diving grab
Gore likely would’ve been a part of the Padres’ season-opening rotation, if not for the last-minute Sean Manaea trade. Instead, he was the next man up. When Snell landed on the injured list, Gore got the call he’d long been waiting for.
The Padres, of course, could’ve called up Gore last season. Lord knows, they needed starting pitching. They scraped the bottom of the barrel for it, finding starts for castoff free agents and fringe roster players. Externally, there was a clamor for Gore. He was, after all, the Padres’ best pitching prospect. Internally, there was a common refrain: Gore hadn’t quite earned it yet.
https://www.mlb.com/news/mackenzie-gore ... -mlb-debut
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
Welcome to KwanGraphs, your source for everything… wait, no, that’s not right. Welcome to FanKwan, your … no, still not it. This part is definitely true, though: today I’m here to talk about Steven Kwan, the Guardians phenom who swung for our hearts and didn’t miss. He was our No. 57 prospect heading into the season, and ZiPS concurred, calling him its No. 62 prospect. He’s been better than that so far — a top 10 hitter in baseball, more or less. Can he keep it going? Will he bat .330 with more walks than strikeouts? I crunched data and watched film to come up with some educated speculation.
Let’s start with the great news: Kwan’s phenomenal bat control is as real as it gets. He’s swung and missed either one or two times (and hey, good news for pedants everywhere, I’ve even thrown in a special postscript at the end of this post so everyone can whinge about foul tips in the comments) in his major league career so far, which is obviously great. Even better, this isn’t something new. In 2021, he was the best contact hitter in the minors, bar none.
Over 1,388 pitches I captured, Kwan swung 551 times. He swung and missed 39 times, and had another seven foul tips. That’s a swinging strike rate of either 2.8% or 3.3% depending on your definition, both of which are otherworldly. The contact rate is no joke, either: he made contact on more than 90% of his swings, which led the high minors and would have placed him in a dead heat with David Fletcher for best in the big leagues.
Combine an extremely parsimonious approach – only five major leaguers swung less frequently than Kwan in the 2021 season – and high contact rates, and it’s no wonder he never swings and misses. That approach wasn’t without its costs – he took called strikes on 20% of the pitches he saw – but it was a huge success overall. He struck out only 9.1% of the time, walked more often than that, and ran a near-.400 OBP overall. That will definitely play, at any level.
The secret to running low strikeout rates despite a bunch of called strikes? Get more aggressive with two strikes. As we already covered, Kwan only swung 40% of the time overall. But with two strikes, he swung 61.5% of the time, defending the plate aggressively. His contact rate remained stable, and there you have it: he’s impossible to strike out.
Further great news: this approach can work at the major league level. Fletcher did the low-swing/high-contact/low-power dance in 2019 and ’20, combining a league-best contact rate with a league-low swing rate on his way to excellent walk and strikeout numbers. That said, Kwan’s walk numbers are in for a precipitous drop.
I can’t stress this enough: the plan pitchers are using to attack him is silly and bad. In his 29 plate appearances, he’s seen 11 first pitches in the strike zone. What? Like, what? How can this make sense? He has exactly one first-pitch swing this year – and why should he swing more than that? Jackson Kowar is a fun prospect, and I’m a believer overall, but this plan is not sound:
So yeah, the walks are going to come down. They can’t help but come down; Kwan is walking 27.6% of the time! Let’s put it this way: across the majors, pitchers throw in the strike zone on roughly half of first pitches. Against low-power hitters – more on that later – they’re more aggressive than that. I simply don’t believe that pitchers will let Kwan take his way into favorable counts much longer.
Last year, the lowest first-pitch zone rate for a batter with 300 or more plate appearances was 43.9%, and that was for Yasmani Grandal. Everyone below 48% was either a profligate swinger, a huge power threat, or both (yes, Javier Báez made an appearance). Kwan is neither of those things, and he’s at 38% right now. In the long run, he’ll likely end up in the upper 50s, like Fletcher, Adam Frazier, and hitters of similar persuasion.
If pitchers start to make Kwan swing, he’ll have plenty of opportunity to show off his high-contact ways. And hey, he’s been great there so far this year! He has 19 batted balls, and he’s batting .556 on them. That won’t continue, but his xBA, which Statcast estimates based on exit velocity and launch angle, is a robust .420. He has a .445 xwOBA on those balls, and while that’s a lot of letters all in a row, think of it this way: that mark would be in the top 15 percent of major league hitters last year.
Sounds pretty good, right? Expected statistics are useful early in the season because they bulk up data; you can look at what tends to happen on similar batted balls rather than what actually happened to those particular ones. But Statcast’s x-stats aren’t intended to be predictive. For example, here’s a montage of the five hits to which Statcast assigned the highest hit probabilities. Preemptive apologies for the abbreviated end; I ran into some technical difficulties, but it fell for a hit:
Hit the ball like that, and you’re probably reaching base! Only a nice catch by Tommy Pham kept Kwan from going five-for-five on those balls. But you can’t just keep dumping soft liners and fly balls into the shallow outfield forever. Kwan is hitting that kind of ball – classified by Baseball Savant as a flare/burner – on 47% of his batted balls in his brief major league career. That’s simply not going to hold true in the long run.
The highest career flare/burner rate for anyone with 200 batted balls in the Statcast era is 32.9%; the league average is 24.5%. Flares and burners are valuable – they’ve produced a wOBA of .619 over 200,000 batted balls. But they’re not something you can build your entire game around. Hitting them is great, but even if you’re the best in the world at producing them (that’d be Harold Castro), you’ll need something else to hang your hat on.
Luckily for Kwan, he doesn’t only hit flares. Take a look at his best swing of the season:
That’s just good hitting. Slightly more loft and it might have left the park. But Kwan doesn’t need to have a home run swing to prosper; when he’s making solid contact like that, all he needs to do is keep it off the ground. He’s mashed two batted balls over 100 mph already this year, and while that’s not a lot – it’s tied for seventh among Guardians, for example – it’s enough to make me believe that he’ll rack up some doubles and homers when pitchers inevitably flood the zone on him.
Last year in the minors, Kwan topped out at a 102.8 mph exit velocity. That’s not great! But he’s already eclipsed that in the majors, in only 19 batted balls: he hit a 103 mph grounder for a single against the Royals. The odds of him turning into a power threat aren’t high, but you don’t need to be worried that he’s Billy Hamilton out there.
That’s not the only thing to like about Kwan’s batted ball distribution. First, I like his odds of continuing to produce an above-average rate of line drives. It won’t be all line drives – we already talked about the flares, which line drives are a key part of – but hitters exert some control over line drive rates, and Kwan’s swing looks geared for it. That’s a nice tailwind for someone with limited top-end power; line drives are the batted ball type that least needs exit velocity, because they mostly land in places on the field that no one can get to. Turning an extra 3% of his batted balls from grounders or fly balls into line drives might not sound like a big deal, but over the long run that’s quite valuable, particularly for someone like Kwan who puts a lot of balls in play.
While we’re on the topic of batted balls, I have to mention one possible headwind: teams aren’t shifting against Kwan yet, but they might. In the minors last year, he pulled roughly 60% of his grounders, above the 54.5% that left-handed hitters produced as a whole. That’s probably a number worth shifting against, or at least doing one of those pinch-third-and-shade-everyone-else deals if you’re worried about bunts. But per Baseball Savant, his opponents have only been in a shift of any type – either “strategic” or a full overshift – for 16 of the 143 pitches he’s seen. A lot of that is just that the Royals, who he’s played against in four of his six games, don’t shift much. Ready for another supercut? Here are his four groundball singles:
The last one is likely a single against any defense, but the other three are classic shift victims. If he hits around .230 on grounders, like he did in the minors last year, that’ll be a further drag on his results on balls in play.
It sounds like I’m raining on Kwan’s parade, and I am a little bit, but there’s plenty of room to do worse than his .526/.655/.737 line and still be excellent. This is a guy we projected to hit .282/.345/.434 before the season even started. He’s already hit a batted ball harder than he did the entirety of last year. He’s shown that his carrying tool – boundless contact ability – works in the big leagues. I’ll take the under on our preseason projection of a 12% strikeout rate.
If Kwan hits those preseason projections the rest of the way and puts up the 559 PAs we have him down for, the hot start he’s already banked will result in a .291/.360/.445 seasonal line, good for a .349 wOBA. I’d shade up from that; as I said, the early strikeout numbers are an encouraging sign. That’s a great rookie season, particularly if he plays an above-average outfield (Outs Above Average thinks he does).
So I come here to bury Steven Kwan, but also to praise him. The .500-hitting, walk-taking, triple-stroking on-base machine you know and love is probably a mirage. But the plus hitter and solid outfielder who came out of nowhere (well, not if you read our Top 100) to be one of the best position players on a major league team? He’s alive and well.
Postscript
Whether you count a foul tip as a whiff comes down to personal preference, but I’ll tell you how I view it so you can tell me how wrong I am in the comments. When I’m doing analysis, I always lump them together, because a foul tip is indistinguishable from a swinging strike for game results. If I told you a batter had no swings and misses but three swinging strikeouts, you’d be confused. And if you wanted to know how often a pitcher induces his opponent to swing and come up empty, getting a strike for his troubles, foul tips count for that, too. If you’re talking about some potential record, or whether a foul tip should “count” as contact in some hypothetical “who’s the best contact hitter” debate, I can’t help you. That’s not what I’m here for. But for analysis? I’m in the foul-tips-are-whiffs camp, and I’m unlikely to change my mind about it.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/curb-your-k ... ittle-bit/
Let’s start with the great news: Kwan’s phenomenal bat control is as real as it gets. He’s swung and missed either one or two times (and hey, good news for pedants everywhere, I’ve even thrown in a special postscript at the end of this post so everyone can whinge about foul tips in the comments) in his major league career so far, which is obviously great. Even better, this isn’t something new. In 2021, he was the best contact hitter in the minors, bar none.
Over 1,388 pitches I captured, Kwan swung 551 times. He swung and missed 39 times, and had another seven foul tips. That’s a swinging strike rate of either 2.8% or 3.3% depending on your definition, both of which are otherworldly. The contact rate is no joke, either: he made contact on more than 90% of his swings, which led the high minors and would have placed him in a dead heat with David Fletcher for best in the big leagues.
Combine an extremely parsimonious approach – only five major leaguers swung less frequently than Kwan in the 2021 season – and high contact rates, and it’s no wonder he never swings and misses. That approach wasn’t without its costs – he took called strikes on 20% of the pitches he saw – but it was a huge success overall. He struck out only 9.1% of the time, walked more often than that, and ran a near-.400 OBP overall. That will definitely play, at any level.
The secret to running low strikeout rates despite a bunch of called strikes? Get more aggressive with two strikes. As we already covered, Kwan only swung 40% of the time overall. But with two strikes, he swung 61.5% of the time, defending the plate aggressively. His contact rate remained stable, and there you have it: he’s impossible to strike out.
Further great news: this approach can work at the major league level. Fletcher did the low-swing/high-contact/low-power dance in 2019 and ’20, combining a league-best contact rate with a league-low swing rate on his way to excellent walk and strikeout numbers. That said, Kwan’s walk numbers are in for a precipitous drop.
I can’t stress this enough: the plan pitchers are using to attack him is silly and bad. In his 29 plate appearances, he’s seen 11 first pitches in the strike zone. What? Like, what? How can this make sense? He has exactly one first-pitch swing this year – and why should he swing more than that? Jackson Kowar is a fun prospect, and I’m a believer overall, but this plan is not sound:
So yeah, the walks are going to come down. They can’t help but come down; Kwan is walking 27.6% of the time! Let’s put it this way: across the majors, pitchers throw in the strike zone on roughly half of first pitches. Against low-power hitters – more on that later – they’re more aggressive than that. I simply don’t believe that pitchers will let Kwan take his way into favorable counts much longer.
Last year, the lowest first-pitch zone rate for a batter with 300 or more plate appearances was 43.9%, and that was for Yasmani Grandal. Everyone below 48% was either a profligate swinger, a huge power threat, or both (yes, Javier Báez made an appearance). Kwan is neither of those things, and he’s at 38% right now. In the long run, he’ll likely end up in the upper 50s, like Fletcher, Adam Frazier, and hitters of similar persuasion.
If pitchers start to make Kwan swing, he’ll have plenty of opportunity to show off his high-contact ways. And hey, he’s been great there so far this year! He has 19 batted balls, and he’s batting .556 on them. That won’t continue, but his xBA, which Statcast estimates based on exit velocity and launch angle, is a robust .420. He has a .445 xwOBA on those balls, and while that’s a lot of letters all in a row, think of it this way: that mark would be in the top 15 percent of major league hitters last year.
Sounds pretty good, right? Expected statistics are useful early in the season because they bulk up data; you can look at what tends to happen on similar batted balls rather than what actually happened to those particular ones. But Statcast’s x-stats aren’t intended to be predictive. For example, here’s a montage of the five hits to which Statcast assigned the highest hit probabilities. Preemptive apologies for the abbreviated end; I ran into some technical difficulties, but it fell for a hit:
Hit the ball like that, and you’re probably reaching base! Only a nice catch by Tommy Pham kept Kwan from going five-for-five on those balls. But you can’t just keep dumping soft liners and fly balls into the shallow outfield forever. Kwan is hitting that kind of ball – classified by Baseball Savant as a flare/burner – on 47% of his batted balls in his brief major league career. That’s simply not going to hold true in the long run.
The highest career flare/burner rate for anyone with 200 batted balls in the Statcast era is 32.9%; the league average is 24.5%. Flares and burners are valuable – they’ve produced a wOBA of .619 over 200,000 batted balls. But they’re not something you can build your entire game around. Hitting them is great, but even if you’re the best in the world at producing them (that’d be Harold Castro), you’ll need something else to hang your hat on.
Luckily for Kwan, he doesn’t only hit flares. Take a look at his best swing of the season:
That’s just good hitting. Slightly more loft and it might have left the park. But Kwan doesn’t need to have a home run swing to prosper; when he’s making solid contact like that, all he needs to do is keep it off the ground. He’s mashed two batted balls over 100 mph already this year, and while that’s not a lot – it’s tied for seventh among Guardians, for example – it’s enough to make me believe that he’ll rack up some doubles and homers when pitchers inevitably flood the zone on him.
Last year in the minors, Kwan topped out at a 102.8 mph exit velocity. That’s not great! But he’s already eclipsed that in the majors, in only 19 batted balls: he hit a 103 mph grounder for a single against the Royals. The odds of him turning into a power threat aren’t high, but you don’t need to be worried that he’s Billy Hamilton out there.
That’s not the only thing to like about Kwan’s batted ball distribution. First, I like his odds of continuing to produce an above-average rate of line drives. It won’t be all line drives – we already talked about the flares, which line drives are a key part of – but hitters exert some control over line drive rates, and Kwan’s swing looks geared for it. That’s a nice tailwind for someone with limited top-end power; line drives are the batted ball type that least needs exit velocity, because they mostly land in places on the field that no one can get to. Turning an extra 3% of his batted balls from grounders or fly balls into line drives might not sound like a big deal, but over the long run that’s quite valuable, particularly for someone like Kwan who puts a lot of balls in play.
While we’re on the topic of batted balls, I have to mention one possible headwind: teams aren’t shifting against Kwan yet, but they might. In the minors last year, he pulled roughly 60% of his grounders, above the 54.5% that left-handed hitters produced as a whole. That’s probably a number worth shifting against, or at least doing one of those pinch-third-and-shade-everyone-else deals if you’re worried about bunts. But per Baseball Savant, his opponents have only been in a shift of any type – either “strategic” or a full overshift – for 16 of the 143 pitches he’s seen. A lot of that is just that the Royals, who he’s played against in four of his six games, don’t shift much. Ready for another supercut? Here are his four groundball singles:
The last one is likely a single against any defense, but the other three are classic shift victims. If he hits around .230 on grounders, like he did in the minors last year, that’ll be a further drag on his results on balls in play.
It sounds like I’m raining on Kwan’s parade, and I am a little bit, but there’s plenty of room to do worse than his .526/.655/.737 line and still be excellent. This is a guy we projected to hit .282/.345/.434 before the season even started. He’s already hit a batted ball harder than he did the entirety of last year. He’s shown that his carrying tool – boundless contact ability – works in the big leagues. I’ll take the under on our preseason projection of a 12% strikeout rate.
If Kwan hits those preseason projections the rest of the way and puts up the 559 PAs we have him down for, the hot start he’s already banked will result in a .291/.360/.445 seasonal line, good for a .349 wOBA. I’d shade up from that; as I said, the early strikeout numbers are an encouraging sign. That’s a great rookie season, particularly if he plays an above-average outfield (Outs Above Average thinks he does).
So I come here to bury Steven Kwan, but also to praise him. The .500-hitting, walk-taking, triple-stroking on-base machine you know and love is probably a mirage. But the plus hitter and solid outfielder who came out of nowhere (well, not if you read our Top 100) to be one of the best position players on a major league team? He’s alive and well.
Postscript
Whether you count a foul tip as a whiff comes down to personal preference, but I’ll tell you how I view it so you can tell me how wrong I am in the comments. When I’m doing analysis, I always lump them together, because a foul tip is indistinguishable from a swinging strike for game results. If I told you a batter had no swings and misses but three swinging strikeouts, you’d be confused. And if you wanted to know how often a pitcher induces his opponent to swing and come up empty, getting a strike for his troubles, foul tips count for that, too. If you’re talking about some potential record, or whether a foul tip should “count” as contact in some hypothetical “who’s the best contact hitter” debate, I can’t help you. That’s not what I’m here for. But for analysis? I’m in the foul-tips-are-whiffs camp, and I’m unlikely to change my mind about it.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/curb-your-k ... ittle-bit/
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
Yoelqui Céspedes, OF, White Sox (Double-A Birmingham): 2-5, 2 HR, 2 K.
The younger brother of Yoenis, Céspedes is smaller and has struggled to carve out a balanced offensive profile at times. Sunday’s outburst, however, is an encouraging stride towards getting a crack at a higher level. His free-swinging style is only sustainable if the contact is potent.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news ... 4-15-4-17/
Looking more and more like his big (half) brother, Yoelqui Céspedes enjoyed the first multihomer game of his professional career, slamming his first two long balls of the season in Double-A Birmingham's 7-6 loss to Charlotte. The No. 4 White Sox prospect drove in a personal-best four runs with his solo and three-run jacks.
Céspedes opened the scoring with a long home run off the scoreboard in left field and with the Barons trailing, 7-3, in the eighth, brought them to within a run with his three-run shot to left-center. The home runs pushed the 24-year-old's OPS to an impressive .814 over his first nine games. Along with his two homers, Céspedes has three doubles, six RBIs and six runs in 37 at-bats to begin 2022.
The Cuba-born slugger put together an impressive professional debut last year, batting .285/.350/.463 with 30 extra-base hits, eight roundtrippers, 27 RBIs and 18 stolen bases in 72 games with High-A Winston-Salem and Birmingham. -- Michael Avallone
https://www.mlb.com/news/chicago-white- ... e-coverage
Yoelqui Céspedes, OF, Chicago White Sox
Level & Affiliate: Double-A Birmingham Age: 24 Org Rank: TBD FV: 35+
Weekend Line: 4-for-13, 2 HR, 1 BB, 2 K
Notes
While I continue to be skeptical of Céspedes because of his approach at the plate, his stock is absolutely up this spring because he is running much faster than last year and has given himself a chance to stay in center field. He has viable range out there now, and was posting average run times during the spring and looked plus under way. Céspedes does tend to get himself out by offering at early-count junk, but if he can stay in center, even for a little while, he has enough power to support some kind of part-time role despite what is likely to be a very low OBP. His All-World arm gives him another way to impact the game. Maybe the ball/strike recognition piece will still come; because of his defection and the pandemic, Céspedes barely saw pro-quality pitching in his early-20s, not really until last year.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/monday-pros ... 4-18-2022/
The younger brother of Yoenis, Céspedes is smaller and has struggled to carve out a balanced offensive profile at times. Sunday’s outburst, however, is an encouraging stride towards getting a crack at a higher level. His free-swinging style is only sustainable if the contact is potent.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news ... 4-15-4-17/
Looking more and more like his big (half) brother, Yoelqui Céspedes enjoyed the first multihomer game of his professional career, slamming his first two long balls of the season in Double-A Birmingham's 7-6 loss to Charlotte. The No. 4 White Sox prospect drove in a personal-best four runs with his solo and three-run jacks.
Céspedes opened the scoring with a long home run off the scoreboard in left field and with the Barons trailing, 7-3, in the eighth, brought them to within a run with his three-run shot to left-center. The home runs pushed the 24-year-old's OPS to an impressive .814 over his first nine games. Along with his two homers, Céspedes has three doubles, six RBIs and six runs in 37 at-bats to begin 2022.
The Cuba-born slugger put together an impressive professional debut last year, batting .285/.350/.463 with 30 extra-base hits, eight roundtrippers, 27 RBIs and 18 stolen bases in 72 games with High-A Winston-Salem and Birmingham. -- Michael Avallone
https://www.mlb.com/news/chicago-white- ... e-coverage
Yoelqui Céspedes, OF, Chicago White Sox
Level & Affiliate: Double-A Birmingham Age: 24 Org Rank: TBD FV: 35+
Weekend Line: 4-for-13, 2 HR, 1 BB, 2 K
Notes
While I continue to be skeptical of Céspedes because of his approach at the plate, his stock is absolutely up this spring because he is running much faster than last year and has given himself a chance to stay in center field. He has viable range out there now, and was posting average run times during the spring and looked plus under way. Céspedes does tend to get himself out by offering at early-count junk, but if he can stay in center, even for a little while, he has enough power to support some kind of part-time role despite what is likely to be a very low OBP. His All-World arm gives him another way to impact the game. Maybe the ball/strike recognition piece will still come; because of his defection and the pandemic, Céspedes barely saw pro-quality pitching in his early-20s, not really until last year.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/monday-pros ... 4-18-2022/
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
LHP: Brandon Walter, Portland Sea Dogs (Double-A) Red Sox No. 9
0-0, 0.00 ERA, 2 G, 2 GS, 11 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 12 K, 0.36 WHIP
Neither New Hampshire nor Harrisburg could touch Walter in his first two Double-A outings. The 25-year-old southpaw, who boasts a 92-94 sinking fastball and plus slider, struck out seven over five scoreless frames against the Fisher Cats in his debut on April 10 and followed that up with a six-inning scoreless gem six days later on the road against the Senators. He is one of four Double-A pitchers without an earned run through at least 10 innings to begin the season, and he’s the only member of the quartet yet to walk a batter.
https://www.mlb.com/news/prospect-team- ... il-18-2022
0-0, 0.00 ERA, 2 G, 2 GS, 11 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 12 K, 0.36 WHIP
Neither New Hampshire nor Harrisburg could touch Walter in his first two Double-A outings. The 25-year-old southpaw, who boasts a 92-94 sinking fastball and plus slider, struck out seven over five scoreless frames against the Fisher Cats in his debut on April 10 and followed that up with a six-inning scoreless gem six days later on the road against the Senators. He is one of four Double-A pitchers without an earned run through at least 10 innings to begin the season, and he’s the only member of the quartet yet to walk a batter.
https://www.mlb.com/news/prospect-team- ... il-18-2022
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
12. Adam Macko, LHP, Mariners
Team: High-A Everett (Northwest)
Age: 21
Why He’s Here: 0-0, 3.60, 10 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 BB, 19 SO, 2 HR
The Scoop: Armed with one of the best curveballs in the minor leagues, Macko has had no trouble jumping to High-A. The Slovakian-Canadian lefthander struck out 11 batters over five innings in his season debut against Eugene on April 9 and followed up with another impressive outing April 15. He pitched five innings, gave up two hits and one run, walked one and struck out eight at Hillsboro, arguably the best start of his young career. (KG)
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... eek-41922/
Team: High-A Everett (Northwest)
Age: 21
Why He’s Here: 0-0, 3.60, 10 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 BB, 19 SO, 2 HR
The Scoop: Armed with one of the best curveballs in the minor leagues, Macko has had no trouble jumping to High-A. The Slovakian-Canadian lefthander struck out 11 batters over five innings in his season debut against Eugene on April 9 and followed up with another impressive outing April 15. He pitched five innings, gave up two hits and one run, walked one and struck out eight at Hillsboro, arguably the best start of his young career. (KG)
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... eek-41922/
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
(2) Max Meyer, SP, Miami Marlins; Previous (NR)
Honestly, looking back, not including Meyer on the inaugural 2022 Stash List is one of the biggest regrets I’ve ever had in my entire life. After tossing 101 stellar innings in Double-A last season, the Marlins promoted Meyer to Triple-A for a pair of outings to close the campaign. He has made two more starts in Jacksonville to start the 2022 season. All told, the former number-three pick has a 1.42 ERA in his four starts, striking out 30 batters in 19 innings, while issuing only three free passes. I am firmly in the camp that Rodriguez is the best pitching prospect in baseball, but if you wanted to plant your flag on Meyer, I wouldn’t begrudge you too much. With teammates Sixto Sánchez and Edward Cabrera currently on the mend, Meyer could be the next impact arm in line for starts in South Beach.
(3) Gabriel Moreno, C, Toronto Blue Jays; Previous (7)
It’s never a great sign when the first line of an article about a dude’s health is some variation of “the team isn’t expecting him back anytime soon.” But such is the case with Danny Jansen’s bleak oblique tweak. Since Jansen’s trip to the IL, backstops in Toronto have slashed .243/.349/.378 in 14 games. That’s honestly not terrible for catchers, but it’s also not good. Moreno has a .921 OPS in Triple-A this year, and he’s also hitting .389 while striking out less than 11 percent of the time. He’s on the 40-man roster, too, so it wouldn’t necessitate a DFA from the Jays. It’s really hard sometimes to acclimate a rookie catcher in the middle of the season, but Moreno’s bat might be worth the risk.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/fant ... st-week-2/
Tommy Henry, LHP, Arizona Diamondbacks (Triple-A Reno): 5.1 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 4 BB, 7 K.
Despite not allowing a run, the control still remains an issue for Henry. It wavered last year in Double-A and through three starts this season he’s walked 9 in his 13 innings of work. There’s a potential backend starter in the profile, but he will need to fill up the strike zone more consistently if he’s going to reach that ceiling.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... s-of-4-18/
2. Steven Kwan, OF, Guardians (Cleveland No. 15 prospect)
Kwan was one of the best stories of the season’s first couple of weeks, showing otherworldly plate discipline with his streak of 116 consecutive pitches seen without a swing-and-miss. Kwan has yet to homer in the big leagues, but when you have a 4:1 walk to strikeout ratio, and a .541 on-base percentage, it’s hard to worry too much about power.
8. Seth Beer, OF, Diamondbacks (Arizona No. 12 prospect)
There’s a bit of a logjam with some of the hitters down at the bottom of the list here, but these are subjective rankings. And when your name is Beer, and you hit a walkoff homer on National Beer Day, you get a bump. Them’s the rules. Beer has hit, well, everywhere – dating all the way back to his freshman year at Clemson. So it’s not surprising he’s hitting in the Majors. He boasts a .381/.435/.571 line through eight games, with the aforementioned walkoff draft – er, blast.
https://www.mlb.com/news/2022-mlb-hotte ... e-coverage
Honestly, looking back, not including Meyer on the inaugural 2022 Stash List is one of the biggest regrets I’ve ever had in my entire life. After tossing 101 stellar innings in Double-A last season, the Marlins promoted Meyer to Triple-A for a pair of outings to close the campaign. He has made two more starts in Jacksonville to start the 2022 season. All told, the former number-three pick has a 1.42 ERA in his four starts, striking out 30 batters in 19 innings, while issuing only three free passes. I am firmly in the camp that Rodriguez is the best pitching prospect in baseball, but if you wanted to plant your flag on Meyer, I wouldn’t begrudge you too much. With teammates Sixto Sánchez and Edward Cabrera currently on the mend, Meyer could be the next impact arm in line for starts in South Beach.
(3) Gabriel Moreno, C, Toronto Blue Jays; Previous (7)
It’s never a great sign when the first line of an article about a dude’s health is some variation of “the team isn’t expecting him back anytime soon.” But such is the case with Danny Jansen’s bleak oblique tweak. Since Jansen’s trip to the IL, backstops in Toronto have slashed .243/.349/.378 in 14 games. That’s honestly not terrible for catchers, but it’s also not good. Moreno has a .921 OPS in Triple-A this year, and he’s also hitting .389 while striking out less than 11 percent of the time. He’s on the 40-man roster, too, so it wouldn’t necessitate a DFA from the Jays. It’s really hard sometimes to acclimate a rookie catcher in the middle of the season, but Moreno’s bat might be worth the risk.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/fant ... st-week-2/
Tommy Henry, LHP, Arizona Diamondbacks (Triple-A Reno): 5.1 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 4 BB, 7 K.
Despite not allowing a run, the control still remains an issue for Henry. It wavered last year in Double-A and through three starts this season he’s walked 9 in his 13 innings of work. There’s a potential backend starter in the profile, but he will need to fill up the strike zone more consistently if he’s going to reach that ceiling.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... s-of-4-18/
2. Steven Kwan, OF, Guardians (Cleveland No. 15 prospect)
Kwan was one of the best stories of the season’s first couple of weeks, showing otherworldly plate discipline with his streak of 116 consecutive pitches seen without a swing-and-miss. Kwan has yet to homer in the big leagues, but when you have a 4:1 walk to strikeout ratio, and a .541 on-base percentage, it’s hard to worry too much about power.
8. Seth Beer, OF, Diamondbacks (Arizona No. 12 prospect)
There’s a bit of a logjam with some of the hitters down at the bottom of the list here, but these are subjective rankings. And when your name is Beer, and you hit a walkoff homer on National Beer Day, you get a bump. Them’s the rules. Beer has hit, well, everywhere – dating all the way back to his freshman year at Clemson. So it’s not surprising he’s hitting in the Majors. He boasts a .381/.435/.571 line through eight games, with the aforementioned walkoff draft – er, blast.
https://www.mlb.com/news/2022-mlb-hotte ... e-coverage
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
MacKenzie Gore pitched five dominant innings and picked up his first career win on Wednesday afternoon. Meanwhile, Jurickson Profar homered and threw Joey Votto out at the plate as the Padres improved to 9-5 with a 6-0 victory. After 14 games in 14 days to start the season, there are plenty of good vibes to carry into the Padres’ first off-day.
Here are a few takeaways from the series finale:
Is Gore earning his rotation spot?
The Padres might have a tricky decision on their hands in the very near future. Mike Clevinger threw three solid innings in a rehab start with Triple-A El Paso on Tuesday night and could be pushing for a return to the rotation by the end of the month.
So where, exactly, does that leave Gore?
Well, at this point, it’d be hard to send him down, considering how well he has pitched in his first two starts. Gore struck out seven Reds across five innings, allowing four hits and two walks. He used a similar fastball-heavy mix to the one he used in his first start against Atlanta. But this time, Gore’s two breaking pitches were a bit more effective, particularly in the later innings.
Congratulations to @Mgore181 on his first @MLB win!
pic.twitter.com/SwEf9gqual
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) April 21, 2022
“It looked like they were hunting his heater pretty much the entire game,” said manager Bob Melvin. “So I think the adjustment that he and [catcher Jorge] Alfaro made was good with his repertoire today.”
The Padres, of course, have some time before they have to sort out their Clevinger/Gore conundrum. (Heck, Blake Snell just threw his first bullpen since he was scratched due to an adductor injury, and soon enough, he’ll enter the fray.)
They’re convinced the situation will sort itself out. If the problem this season is that they have too much starting-pitching depth, well, that’s a problem they’re happy to work through. Gore doesn’t seem to mind.
“Look, I have a job to do while I’m here, and that’s to give us a chance to help us win any time I’m out there,” Gore said. “We have a lot of great pitchers. That’s a good problem.”
https://www.mlb.com/news/mackenzie-gore ... -reds-2022
Here are a few takeaways from the series finale:
Is Gore earning his rotation spot?
The Padres might have a tricky decision on their hands in the very near future. Mike Clevinger threw three solid innings in a rehab start with Triple-A El Paso on Tuesday night and could be pushing for a return to the rotation by the end of the month.
So where, exactly, does that leave Gore?
Well, at this point, it’d be hard to send him down, considering how well he has pitched in his first two starts. Gore struck out seven Reds across five innings, allowing four hits and two walks. He used a similar fastball-heavy mix to the one he used in his first start against Atlanta. But this time, Gore’s two breaking pitches were a bit more effective, particularly in the later innings.
Congratulations to @Mgore181 on his first @MLB win!
pic.twitter.com/SwEf9gqual— San Diego Padres (@Padres) April 21, 2022
“It looked like they were hunting his heater pretty much the entire game,” said manager Bob Melvin. “So I think the adjustment that he and [catcher Jorge] Alfaro made was good with his repertoire today.”
The Padres, of course, have some time before they have to sort out their Clevinger/Gore conundrum. (Heck, Blake Snell just threw his first bullpen since he was scratched due to an adductor injury, and soon enough, he’ll enter the fray.)
They’re convinced the situation will sort itself out. If the problem this season is that they have too much starting-pitching depth, well, that’s a problem they’re happy to work through. Gore doesn’t seem to mind.
“Look, I have a job to do while I’m here, and that’s to give us a chance to help us win any time I’m out there,” Gore said. “We have a lot of great pitchers. That’s a good problem.”
https://www.mlb.com/news/mackenzie-gore ... -reds-2022
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
Tigers RHP prospect Beau Brieske will be called up to make his MLB debut in a start Saturday against the Rockies.
It should be noted that the game is at Comerica Park in Detroit, not Coors Field in Colorado. Brieske was a 27th-round pick in the 2019 MLB Draft but built himself some hype after pitching to a sharp 3.12 ERA, 1.01 WHIP, and 116/23 K/BB ratio in 106 2/3 innings last summer between High-A West Michigan and Double-A Erie.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... au-brieske
It should be noted that the game is at Comerica Park in Detroit, not Coors Field in Colorado. Brieske was a 27th-round pick in the 2019 MLB Draft but built himself some hype after pitching to a sharp 3.12 ERA, 1.01 WHIP, and 116/23 K/BB ratio in 106 2/3 innings last summer between High-A West Michigan and Double-A Erie.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... au-brieske
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
Adam Macko, LHP, Seattle Mariners (High-A Everett): 6 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 0 BB, 10 K.
Slovakian born Macko racked up 56 strikeouts last year despite being limited to just 33 innings due to shoulder soreness. Most of the swings and misses were generated by a double-plus breaking ball and a fastball that jumped in velocity. If the command can be tightened up and he can stay healthy, Macko could be poised for a 2022 breakout.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... -pitching/
Rays: Colby White, RHP (No. 25)
White appeared for all four Tampa Bay full-season affiliates in 2021, finishing with a 1.44 ERA, 0.66 WHIP and 104 strikeouts over 62 1/3 innings. The right-hander leaned on his 95-98 mph fastball and above-average slider to get those results, and the arsenal had him on the cusp of the Majors to open 2022. Unfortunately, he underwent Tommy John surgery in April before the season began, but if his stuff comes back as expected in 2023, White still has the best chance to close or at least work high-leverage innings for the Rays in the future.
https://www.mlb.com/news/each-team-s-po ... e-coverage
Max Meyer, SP, Miami Marlins
2021 minors: 6-4, 2.27 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, 111 IP, 42 BB, 130 K
2022 minors: 1-0, 1.23 ERA, 0.55 WHIP, 14 2/3 IP, 3 BB, 20 K
Turns out the calf injury that ended Meyer's previous start was just a cramp, and he picked up where he left off with 5 2/3 shutout innings Tuesday. He did give up a double to a rehabbing Ronald Acuna, but it's one of only five hits he's allowed in 19 2/3 innings all year (which don't even account for his four no-hit innings in spring training). The Marlins are known for developing changeups and seem to have worked their magic on the 2020 first-rounder, whose fastball and slider are so good that they may have been enough on their own. An opening will develop sooner than later, and it's possible Meyer leapfrogs Edward Cabrera to fill it.
https://nlfantasybaseballleague.basebal ... 03fc718aba
Slovakian born Macko racked up 56 strikeouts last year despite being limited to just 33 innings due to shoulder soreness. Most of the swings and misses were generated by a double-plus breaking ball and a fastball that jumped in velocity. If the command can be tightened up and he can stay healthy, Macko could be poised for a 2022 breakout.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... -pitching/
Rays: Colby White, RHP (No. 25)
White appeared for all four Tampa Bay full-season affiliates in 2021, finishing with a 1.44 ERA, 0.66 WHIP and 104 strikeouts over 62 1/3 innings. The right-hander leaned on his 95-98 mph fastball and above-average slider to get those results, and the arsenal had him on the cusp of the Majors to open 2022. Unfortunately, he underwent Tommy John surgery in April before the season began, but if his stuff comes back as expected in 2023, White still has the best chance to close or at least work high-leverage innings for the Rays in the future.
https://www.mlb.com/news/each-team-s-po ... e-coverage
Max Meyer, SP, Miami Marlins
2021 minors: 6-4, 2.27 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, 111 IP, 42 BB, 130 K
2022 minors: 1-0, 1.23 ERA, 0.55 WHIP, 14 2/3 IP, 3 BB, 20 K
Turns out the calf injury that ended Meyer's previous start was just a cramp, and he picked up where he left off with 5 2/3 shutout innings Tuesday. He did give up a double to a rehabbing Ronald Acuna, but it's one of only five hits he's allowed in 19 2/3 innings all year (which don't even account for his four no-hit innings in spring training). The Marlins are known for developing changeups and seem to have worked their magic on the 2020 first-rounder, whose fastball and slider are so good that they may have been enough on their own. An opening will develop sooner than later, and it's possible Meyer leapfrogs Edward Cabrera to fill it.
https://nlfantasybaseballleague.basebal ... 03fc718aba
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
Beau Brieske is scheduled to start the second game of Saturday's doubleheader against the Rockies.
The twin-billing works out nicely for the Tigers as they won't have to make an official 40-man roster move to call up Brieske on Saturday evening to make his major-league debut against the Rockies. The 24-year-old righty is considered one of the top pitching prospects in the Tigers' system and has allowed five runs on nine hits with a 9/3 K/BB ratio across 10 innings (two starts) at Triple-A Toledo this season.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... au-brieske
The twin-billing works out nicely for the Tigers as they won't have to make an official 40-man roster move to call up Brieske on Saturday evening to make his major-league debut against the Rockies. The 24-year-old righty is considered one of the top pitching prospects in the Tigers' system and has allowed five runs on nine hits with a 9/3 K/BB ratio across 10 innings (two starts) at Triple-A Toledo this season.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... au-brieske
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
In the moments before Travis Demeritte ripped a low line drive into left field Friday night, the parents of the Braves outfielder stood at the top of a seating section at Truist Park with their cellphones ready. An usher took one glance at them and, with a knowing smile, asked, “Is that ya’ll’s son?”
Demeritte’s parents, who are from nearby Winder, Ga., each wore a white Braves jersey with his last name on the back. It was almost too easy to draw the right conclusion. But the usher almost certainly would have been able to recognize the proud parents if they’d worn other attire; they were focusing their phones on Demeritte’s every move, after all.
“Not many kids make it,” Demeritte’s mother, Felecia Rodgers, said after her son hit that earlier double and flashed the Braves’ signature sword-slashing gesture at the home dugout. “(For him) to be one of those, yeah. I’m very proud of him. … You gotta think about it. As a parent, you’re supporting their dreams and you’re giving up a lot. When they make it, it’s like you’ve done something.”
Demeritte, 27, has logged thousands of miles in his pursuit to wear the major-league uniform of his hometown team. Most recently, he crisscrossed the country within 24 hours, taking a flight from Jacksonville, Fla., where he was playing with the Braves’ Triple-A affiliate Tuesday, to Los Angeles, where the major-league team needed him by Wednesday morning. He hopped on the Braves’ charter flight back to Atlanta something like eight hours after touching down at LAX.
Hectic schedules are old hat for Demeritte. He didn’t waste his first opportunity to show the Braves they made the right 1 a.m. call-up earlier this week. The two-out, line-drive double in his first at-bat of Friday’s 3-0 win over the Marlins didn’t bring home the runner who had been on first base. But it did serve to push Marlins lefty starter Trevor Rogers over the 50-pitch mark in just the second inning. Demeritte worked an eight-pitch at-bat his next time up. He was 1-for-2 when manager Brian Snitker sat him and sent up the slow-starting Eddie Rosario to face right-handed reliever Cole Sulser.
Before Friday’s game, Snitker said that Demeritte’s Triple-A numbers against left-handers (.307 average with 17 doubles and 12 home runs since 2019) merited testing out at the major-league level for the first time since 2020. Demeritte’s line drive vindicated the Braves’ decision to start the young journeyman against a left-hander in place of Rosario.
“I’m very impressed,” Snitker said of Demeritte. “I admire the hell out of Travis, what he’s been through. He’s made himself a really good player. It’s good to have a guy like that in your arsenal.”
One encouraging night from Demeritte won’t take away playing time from Rosario, who Snitker said wouldn’t stay in a platoon indefinitely. But it just might help Demeritte lay the framework for more opportunities.
That’s what the 2013 first-rounder has been trying to do since he last found himself this close to seeing action with the Braves. In 2019, he was a well-regarded Braves prospect who was performing well in Triple A before the trade deadline, but he didn’t figure into the team’s outfield plans. The Braves wound up packaging him with Joey Wentz, another first-rounder, to pry reliever Shane Greene from the Tigers for Atlanta’s playoff push.
Demeritte immediately received a chance with the rebuilding Tigers, but he couldn’t find his footing over the next two seasons, one of which was shortened by COVID-19. He batted .217 with 77 strikeouts in 219 plate appearances across 66 major-league games. When the Tigers were in a roster bind days before the start of spring training in 2021, they designated Demeritte for assignment.
Demeritte was claimed off waivers by the Braves. He then spent the entire season — minus 33 games missed because of an oblique injury — tearing up Triple-A competition. He ended the year with an encouraging .282/.363/.575 slash line. He compiled a highlight reel chock full of no-doubt home runs. The most glaring issue in his hitting profile was his 33 percent strikeout rate, something he had struggled to get under control since being drafted by the Rangers out of Winder-Barrow High (Ga.).
The Braves saw enough improvement to reward Demeritte with a spot on the 40-man roster during the offseason. And Demeritte validated their decision with a hot start for Gwinnett this year. He collected 13 hits in his first 12 games. His strikeout rate also improved by 10 percentage points. The key, he said in an interview last week, was simply “honing in on my pitch to hit and focusing on each pitch during every at-bat.”
“He just knew that if he kept doing what he was doing, (another opportunity to play in the big leagues) would have to come,” said Trent, Demeritte’s father. “He is here to show that.”
https://theathletic.com/3267024/2022/04 ... -and-more/
Demeritte’s parents, who are from nearby Winder, Ga., each wore a white Braves jersey with his last name on the back. It was almost too easy to draw the right conclusion. But the usher almost certainly would have been able to recognize the proud parents if they’d worn other attire; they were focusing their phones on Demeritte’s every move, after all.
“Not many kids make it,” Demeritte’s mother, Felecia Rodgers, said after her son hit that earlier double and flashed the Braves’ signature sword-slashing gesture at the home dugout. “(For him) to be one of those, yeah. I’m very proud of him. … You gotta think about it. As a parent, you’re supporting their dreams and you’re giving up a lot. When they make it, it’s like you’ve done something.”
Demeritte, 27, has logged thousands of miles in his pursuit to wear the major-league uniform of his hometown team. Most recently, he crisscrossed the country within 24 hours, taking a flight from Jacksonville, Fla., where he was playing with the Braves’ Triple-A affiliate Tuesday, to Los Angeles, where the major-league team needed him by Wednesday morning. He hopped on the Braves’ charter flight back to Atlanta something like eight hours after touching down at LAX.
Hectic schedules are old hat for Demeritte. He didn’t waste his first opportunity to show the Braves they made the right 1 a.m. call-up earlier this week. The two-out, line-drive double in his first at-bat of Friday’s 3-0 win over the Marlins didn’t bring home the runner who had been on first base. But it did serve to push Marlins lefty starter Trevor Rogers over the 50-pitch mark in just the second inning. Demeritte worked an eight-pitch at-bat his next time up. He was 1-for-2 when manager Brian Snitker sat him and sent up the slow-starting Eddie Rosario to face right-handed reliever Cole Sulser.
Before Friday’s game, Snitker said that Demeritte’s Triple-A numbers against left-handers (.307 average with 17 doubles and 12 home runs since 2019) merited testing out at the major-league level for the first time since 2020. Demeritte’s line drive vindicated the Braves’ decision to start the young journeyman against a left-hander in place of Rosario.
“I’m very impressed,” Snitker said of Demeritte. “I admire the hell out of Travis, what he’s been through. He’s made himself a really good player. It’s good to have a guy like that in your arsenal.”
One encouraging night from Demeritte won’t take away playing time from Rosario, who Snitker said wouldn’t stay in a platoon indefinitely. But it just might help Demeritte lay the framework for more opportunities.
That’s what the 2013 first-rounder has been trying to do since he last found himself this close to seeing action with the Braves. In 2019, he was a well-regarded Braves prospect who was performing well in Triple A before the trade deadline, but he didn’t figure into the team’s outfield plans. The Braves wound up packaging him with Joey Wentz, another first-rounder, to pry reliever Shane Greene from the Tigers for Atlanta’s playoff push.
Demeritte immediately received a chance with the rebuilding Tigers, but he couldn’t find his footing over the next two seasons, one of which was shortened by COVID-19. He batted .217 with 77 strikeouts in 219 plate appearances across 66 major-league games. When the Tigers were in a roster bind days before the start of spring training in 2021, they designated Demeritte for assignment.
Demeritte was claimed off waivers by the Braves. He then spent the entire season — minus 33 games missed because of an oblique injury — tearing up Triple-A competition. He ended the year with an encouraging .282/.363/.575 slash line. He compiled a highlight reel chock full of no-doubt home runs. The most glaring issue in his hitting profile was his 33 percent strikeout rate, something he had struggled to get under control since being drafted by the Rangers out of Winder-Barrow High (Ga.).
The Braves saw enough improvement to reward Demeritte with a spot on the 40-man roster during the offseason. And Demeritte validated their decision with a hot start for Gwinnett this year. He collected 13 hits in his first 12 games. His strikeout rate also improved by 10 percentage points. The key, he said in an interview last week, was simply “honing in on my pitch to hit and focusing on each pitch during every at-bat.”
“He just knew that if he kept doing what he was doing, (another opportunity to play in the big leagues) would have to come,” said Trent, Demeritte’s father. “He is here to show that.”
https://theathletic.com/3267024/2022/04 ... -and-more/
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
Bryan Ramos, 3B, Chicago White Sox (High-A Winston-Salem)
This past summer I wrote Ramos up in the midst of his pro debut as a teenager at Low-A Kannapolis, and over the winter we wrote him up as a prospect “on the rise” who just missed the organizational top ten. On each of those occasions I noted latent ability both as a hitter and as a defender at third base, along with a more obvious power projection. Early on in this season, Ramos seems to have already made significant progress towards actualizing these talents. He has been off to a scalding start against more advanced and older pitching, consistently making very hard contact all over the park. Ramos is a large-framed, broad-shouldered guy who can comfortably be assigned a plus power projection. What separates him from that general cohort is a surprisingly nimble swing that can handle pitches in all four quadrants, stay on decent breaking stuff, and hit everything where it is pitched. The other aspects of his game have moved forward, as well. While he looks closer to average than plus on defense and may eventually trend more below-average on the bases, overall Ramos appears more athletic and dynamic than he has in the past. Much more than your garden variety lumbering slugger archetype, I expect Ramos to draw additional ink around the industry as we sink into summertime. —Ben Spanier
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... ony-volpe/
This past summer I wrote Ramos up in the midst of his pro debut as a teenager at Low-A Kannapolis, and over the winter we wrote him up as a prospect “on the rise” who just missed the organizational top ten. On each of those occasions I noted latent ability both as a hitter and as a defender at third base, along with a more obvious power projection. Early on in this season, Ramos seems to have already made significant progress towards actualizing these talents. He has been off to a scalding start against more advanced and older pitching, consistently making very hard contact all over the park. Ramos is a large-framed, broad-shouldered guy who can comfortably be assigned a plus power projection. What separates him from that general cohort is a surprisingly nimble swing that can handle pitches in all four quadrants, stay on decent breaking stuff, and hit everything where it is pitched. The other aspects of his game have moved forward, as well. While he looks closer to average than plus on defense and may eventually trend more below-average on the bases, overall Ramos appears more athletic and dynamic than he has in the past. Much more than your garden variety lumbering slugger archetype, I expect Ramos to draw additional ink around the industry as we sink into summertime. —Ben Spanier
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... ony-volpe/
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
MacKenzie Gore impressed again Wednesday in Cincinnati, striking out 10 over five innings of one-run ball in the Padres' 8-5 win.
Things started off rocky, as Gore had to pitch out of a bases-loaded jam in the first inning. He settled in after that, although he didn't have his first clean inning until his final frame in the fifth. While he needed 102 pitches to cover his five innings, that was obviously due in part to the career-high 10 punchouts. Gore also induced 17 swinging strikes on the night, with 11 coming on his fastball and five on his slider. It's helped that he's faced the Reds in two of his three outings, but Gore has been awfully impressive nonetheless, holding a 1.76 ERA and 20/6 K/BB ratio over 15 1/3 innings. The Padres will have decision to make with their rotation when Blake Snell (groin) and Mike Clevinger (knee) return, but Gore certainly looks like he belongs. He's lined up to face the Guardians on the road next.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... enzie-gore
The Padres have a problem … a good problem if you ask manager Bob Melvin.
San Diego has one too many quality starting pitchers on the roster. Rookie left-hander MacKenzie Gore, who has stepped up in the absence of injured starters Blake Snell and Mike Clevinger, continued to strengthen his case to remain a rotation regular in the Padres’ 8-5 series-clinching victory over the Reds on Wednesday night at Great American Ball Park.
Gore, ranked as baseball's No. 85 prospect by MLB Pipeline, logged a career-high 10 strikeouts over five innings as he yielded just one run on five hits and two walks. He also navigated through several high-stress situations, working in and out of danger. He stranded six runners as the Reds’ lineup went 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position. He also put San Diego in position for a second three-game sweep of Cincinnati this season in Thursday’s matinee finale.
After a long, strung-out first inning, when the Reds loaded the bases and looked primed for a big frame, the former first-round pick in the 2017 MLB Draft buckled down to exit unscathed. From there, Gore settled in and only grew stronger as the game progressed.
While Melvin knew the effectiveness of Gore’s four-seam fastball, it was the slider that caught his attention. Gore still threw his four-seam fastball the most -- 59% of the time, with a whiff rate of 32% -- but he mixed in his slider 14 times – with an even higher whiff rate of 36%, keeping hitters off-balance.
“I think that’s one of those things you feel out a little bit as the game goes along,” Melvin said. “His fastball’s been there, curve [ball] sometimes better than slider, today slider really good … He and [Austin Nola] did a good job identifying what was working.”
"[With the slider] we made another step in the right direction, which is what we wanted to do," Gore said. Threw some good ones tonight, so overall I thought the stuff was pretty good."
Gore believes finishing off hitters in fewer pitches and cutting down on his misses are the next steps that he needs to take as a big league pitcher.
“The stuff was good, but there was definitely some things that could be cleaned up so we can get deeper into games,” Gore said. “That’s kind of the next step.”
“He’s putting them away, just maybe not in the last couple games as quickly as he would like,” Melvin said of Gore’s rising pitch count. “It’s not something you think about a whole lot, so I think maybe that comes with some maturity. I think he’s just trying to go out there and string together good outings, and he’s definitely done that.”
Gore has given Melvin plenty to think about in the coming weeks while the others return from injuries. Clevinger, who’s posted double-digit wins in three seasons, could be nearing a return in the coming week, while Snell, a former American League Cy Young Award winner, is just a couple weeks away himself. The other pitchers in the current rotation are Yu Darvish, Sean Manaea, Joe Musgrove and Nick Martinez.
Since his Major League debut on April 15 against the Braves, Gore has pitched to a 1.76 ERA through 15 1/3 innings to go with 20 strikeouts across his three outings. He also beat the Reds for a second straight start, as he went five scoreless frames with seven strikeouts in the Padres’ 6-0 victory at home on April 20.
https://www.mlb.com/news/mackenzie-gore ... ainst-reds
MacKenzie Gore is scheduled to make his third start of the season today. He’s been excellent, if low on stamina, in his first two starts: 10.1 innings, 10 strikeouts, four walks, and two earned runs. In a year of low offense and young pitching, this would be an unexceptional beginning – if he weren’t MacKenzie Gore, erstwhile top pitching prospect in baseball.
Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen has written about Gore extensively. If you’re looking for a deep, nuanced look at all the mechanical changes that have sent Gore from can’t-miss to passed over in favor of Jake Arrieta, Eric has you covered. If you’re looking for some data-driven speculation based on his first two big league starts, on the other hand, boy do I have what you’re looking for.
Let’s start the same way Gore does: with his fastball, which he’s thrown 60% of the time in his first two starts. You don’t have to be a genius to understand why it’s effective. Here are the fastest lefty fastballs in baseball this year, minimum 100 thrown:
High-Velocity Lefties
Pitcher Velo (mph)
Jesús Luzardo 97.3
Shane McClanahan 96.8
Carlos Rodón 96.4
Aaron Ashby 95.4
MacKenzie Gore 95.4
Okay, sure, that’s great. The movement profile is excellent as well. Here are those same pitchers, with total drop including gravity and total horizontal movement on each four-seamer’s path to the plate, per Statcast:
High-Velocity Lefties
Pitcher Velo (mph) Drop (in.) Run (in.)
Jesús Luzardo 97.3 13.4 12.7
Shane McClanahan 96.8 11.9 10.9
Carlos Rodón 96.4 10.1 6.5
Aaron Ashby 95.4 16.1 8.3
MacKenzie Gore 95.4 12.7 5.3
Ashby lives with his sinker and rarely throws a four-seamer, so he’s a strange case, but Gore looks roughly like the rest of them. He doesn’t quite have Rodón’s backspin monster, but purely in terms of vertical movement, Gore excels. He’s getting less horizontal movement, sure, but his ball drops less on its path to the plate than Luzardo’s, and basically the same amount as McClanahan’s, despite being slower. That’s a recipe for missed bats at the top of the zone; despite unimpressive raw spin rates, Gore gets the most out of his pitch by getting nearly perfect backspin.
Fine, let’s throw one more data point on there: vertical approach angle. Gore releases the ball lower than these other southpaw fireballers, and induces more pure vertical break; that’s how his ball drops by so much less than you’d expect. Here are those same five pitchers by release point and VAA:
High-Velocity Lefties (VAA)
Pitcher Release Height (ft.) VAA (degrees)
Jesús Luzardo 5.99 -4.90
Shane McClanahan 6.26 -4.93
Carlos Rodón 6.67 -4.73
Aaron Ashby 6.42 -4.64
MacKenzie Gore 5.81 -4.40
Gore has a tremendous fastball, no two ways about it. When he’s locating at the top of the zone, hitters are at a double disadvantage: the pitch is faster than pretty much anything they see from the left side, and it’s also a dang optical illusion. When he locates his fastball in the upper third of the strike zone, it’s either a called or swinging strike 43% of the time.
There’s just one problem: Gore isn’t great about hitting the top of the zone. Here’s a location map of the 110 fastballs he’s thrown so far in the big leagues this year:
That’s just too much of the plate. There’s a cascading problem here, too. The lower Gore throws his fastball, the more negative the approach angle, particularly given that he releases the ball from a relatively high arm slot. Add that to the fact that his pitch is mostly deceptive vertically, and you get a 10% whiff rate when he throws the ball over the heart of the plate. That’s significantly below league average, despite his stuff playing well above average at the top of the zone.
Want an example? I took pitchers with similar induced horizontal and vertical break on their fastballs to get an idea of how much location matters for Gore. This time, I threw out velocity and handedness, because there’s just no other way of getting a similar cohort; his fastball doesn’t have close comps otherwise.
The five pitchers with VAA, horizontal movement, and vertical movement closest to Gore were better than league average up in the zone, whether you care about whiff rate or run value per 100 pitches. When they located over the heart of the plate, they were worse than average in whiff rate and roughly average in run value. Think Robbie Ray, if you want a single name to focus on: elite at the top of the zone, closer to ordinary down the middle. Visually, that top-of-the-zone part looks excellent:
If you’re looking for a culprit in Gore’s fastball inconsistency, you might think his mechanics have something to do with it. They probably do! There’s a reason the Padres held him down last year, and there’s a reason that Eric’s reports focus so much on it. But in terms of measuring those mechanics, there isn’t much to say. Gore has more deviation from his average release point than average – but not by an absurd amount. Walker Buehler, Liam Hendriks, and Sandy Alcantara all have release points that move around more than Gore’s so far. So does paragon of precision Zack Greinke. So do McClanahan, Luzardo, and Ray.
In other words, it’s too soon to tell on Gore’s fastball, but if he can keep locating it up in the zone, it’ll be a weapon. It’s been his best pitch so far, which is why he’s throwing it so often; the fact that it can still get better speaks to his potential.
From a pure movement standpoint, you might think Gore’s curveball was his best pitch. Talk about a knee buckler: it’s a pure 12-6 rainbow that drops 58 inches on its way to home plate, and comes out of his hand almost perfectly offset with his fastball. That’s a ton of movement, six inches more than average for similar-velocity curves. You don’t need to read Thomas Pynchon to appreciate gravity’s rainbow when Gore is on the mound:
Bad news, though. That’s the only swing and miss Gore has garnered with his curveball this season. Some of that is in Gore’s usage of the pitch – he loves it early in the count, and six of his 21 curves have gone for called strikes – but some of it is because he can’t locate the thing. A third of them have been down the heart of the plate. Another third have been too far out of the zone to induce swings, either in the “waste” zone as defined by Baseball Savant or in the “chase” zone before two strikes. He rarely uses the curve as an out pitch; he’s only thrown two in two-strike counts so far and undercooked both of them, leaving them above the zone.
In fact, more than half of his curves have been on the first pitch, which suggests to me that he doesn’t trust the pitch in later counts and wants to show it early so that he can change off of it late. Given his below-average command of the pitch, I can understand staying away from it, but from a long-term view of things, I think he’d be well served to figure it out. High-spin four-seamers and lollipop curves can play well together, but not when you almost never pair them.
When Gore wants to use a secondary to end an at-bat, he turns to his slider. He’s thrown exactly as many sliders as curveballs, and 15 of the 21 have been in two-strike counts. When he’s locating it well, it’s another excellent complement to his fastball. It looks similar out of his hand, then dips and bears in on righties:
When Gore is spotting it like that, the pitch gives me Clayton Kershaw vibes, and indeed Kershaw’s slider is among the top comps in Alex Chamberlain’s pitch similarity tool. Just like the best slider of our generation, Gore’s version looks good paired with a four-seamer and is more of a hard slider or hybrid cutter than a big horizontal number. Unlike Kershaw, though, Gore locates it inconsistently, attacking the fringes of the zone at a far-below-average rate in a small sample so far. Opponents are only swinging at 25% of his out-of-zone sliders; he’s mostly been either in the zone or far outside, an awkward combination.
As a perhaps-inevitable conclusion, the pitch-level data tell a similar story that scouting looks have told so far. Gore’s pure stuff is great. All three of his main pitches look excellent – scouts also like his changeup, but he’s only thrown nine in the big leagues, so I’m not analyzing it today. He also benefits from his delivery; that leg kick and arm action give hitters less chance of picking up the ball early. But despite his many gifts, he’s not missing many bats, and he’s walking 10% of the batters he faces.
Could MacKenzie Gore be awesome? Of course he could. The fact that he was the best pitching prospect in baseball two years ago could have told you that. His early major league returns, however, suggest that he doesn’t have the command to get by yet. I do like his approach – given how scattershot he’s been with his secondaries, leaning on a good fastball seems like a smart approach to me. But that won’t work forever, and even though he’s arrived in the majors, it’s plain to me that Gore is still a work in progress.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/an-early-lo ... itch-data/
Things started off rocky, as Gore had to pitch out of a bases-loaded jam in the first inning. He settled in after that, although he didn't have his first clean inning until his final frame in the fifth. While he needed 102 pitches to cover his five innings, that was obviously due in part to the career-high 10 punchouts. Gore also induced 17 swinging strikes on the night, with 11 coming on his fastball and five on his slider. It's helped that he's faced the Reds in two of his three outings, but Gore has been awfully impressive nonetheless, holding a 1.76 ERA and 20/6 K/BB ratio over 15 1/3 innings. The Padres will have decision to make with their rotation when Blake Snell (groin) and Mike Clevinger (knee) return, but Gore certainly looks like he belongs. He's lined up to face the Guardians on the road next.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... enzie-gore
The Padres have a problem … a good problem if you ask manager Bob Melvin.
San Diego has one too many quality starting pitchers on the roster. Rookie left-hander MacKenzie Gore, who has stepped up in the absence of injured starters Blake Snell and Mike Clevinger, continued to strengthen his case to remain a rotation regular in the Padres’ 8-5 series-clinching victory over the Reds on Wednesday night at Great American Ball Park.
Gore, ranked as baseball's No. 85 prospect by MLB Pipeline, logged a career-high 10 strikeouts over five innings as he yielded just one run on five hits and two walks. He also navigated through several high-stress situations, working in and out of danger. He stranded six runners as the Reds’ lineup went 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position. He also put San Diego in position for a second three-game sweep of Cincinnati this season in Thursday’s matinee finale.
After a long, strung-out first inning, when the Reds loaded the bases and looked primed for a big frame, the former first-round pick in the 2017 MLB Draft buckled down to exit unscathed. From there, Gore settled in and only grew stronger as the game progressed.
While Melvin knew the effectiveness of Gore’s four-seam fastball, it was the slider that caught his attention. Gore still threw his four-seam fastball the most -- 59% of the time, with a whiff rate of 32% -- but he mixed in his slider 14 times – with an even higher whiff rate of 36%, keeping hitters off-balance.
“I think that’s one of those things you feel out a little bit as the game goes along,” Melvin said. “His fastball’s been there, curve [ball] sometimes better than slider, today slider really good … He and [Austin Nola] did a good job identifying what was working.”
"[With the slider] we made another step in the right direction, which is what we wanted to do," Gore said. Threw some good ones tonight, so overall I thought the stuff was pretty good."
Gore believes finishing off hitters in fewer pitches and cutting down on his misses are the next steps that he needs to take as a big league pitcher.
“The stuff was good, but there was definitely some things that could be cleaned up so we can get deeper into games,” Gore said. “That’s kind of the next step.”
“He’s putting them away, just maybe not in the last couple games as quickly as he would like,” Melvin said of Gore’s rising pitch count. “It’s not something you think about a whole lot, so I think maybe that comes with some maturity. I think he’s just trying to go out there and string together good outings, and he’s definitely done that.”
Gore has given Melvin plenty to think about in the coming weeks while the others return from injuries. Clevinger, who’s posted double-digit wins in three seasons, could be nearing a return in the coming week, while Snell, a former American League Cy Young Award winner, is just a couple weeks away himself. The other pitchers in the current rotation are Yu Darvish, Sean Manaea, Joe Musgrove and Nick Martinez.
Since his Major League debut on April 15 against the Braves, Gore has pitched to a 1.76 ERA through 15 1/3 innings to go with 20 strikeouts across his three outings. He also beat the Reds for a second straight start, as he went five scoreless frames with seven strikeouts in the Padres’ 6-0 victory at home on April 20.
https://www.mlb.com/news/mackenzie-gore ... ainst-reds
MacKenzie Gore is scheduled to make his third start of the season today. He’s been excellent, if low on stamina, in his first two starts: 10.1 innings, 10 strikeouts, four walks, and two earned runs. In a year of low offense and young pitching, this would be an unexceptional beginning – if he weren’t MacKenzie Gore, erstwhile top pitching prospect in baseball.
Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen has written about Gore extensively. If you’re looking for a deep, nuanced look at all the mechanical changes that have sent Gore from can’t-miss to passed over in favor of Jake Arrieta, Eric has you covered. If you’re looking for some data-driven speculation based on his first two big league starts, on the other hand, boy do I have what you’re looking for.
Let’s start the same way Gore does: with his fastball, which he’s thrown 60% of the time in his first two starts. You don’t have to be a genius to understand why it’s effective. Here are the fastest lefty fastballs in baseball this year, minimum 100 thrown:
High-Velocity Lefties
Pitcher Velo (mph)
Jesús Luzardo 97.3
Shane McClanahan 96.8
Carlos Rodón 96.4
Aaron Ashby 95.4
MacKenzie Gore 95.4
Okay, sure, that’s great. The movement profile is excellent as well. Here are those same pitchers, with total drop including gravity and total horizontal movement on each four-seamer’s path to the plate, per Statcast:
High-Velocity Lefties
Pitcher Velo (mph) Drop (in.) Run (in.)
Jesús Luzardo 97.3 13.4 12.7
Shane McClanahan 96.8 11.9 10.9
Carlos Rodón 96.4 10.1 6.5
Aaron Ashby 95.4 16.1 8.3
MacKenzie Gore 95.4 12.7 5.3
Ashby lives with his sinker and rarely throws a four-seamer, so he’s a strange case, but Gore looks roughly like the rest of them. He doesn’t quite have Rodón’s backspin monster, but purely in terms of vertical movement, Gore excels. He’s getting less horizontal movement, sure, but his ball drops less on its path to the plate than Luzardo’s, and basically the same amount as McClanahan’s, despite being slower. That’s a recipe for missed bats at the top of the zone; despite unimpressive raw spin rates, Gore gets the most out of his pitch by getting nearly perfect backspin.
Fine, let’s throw one more data point on there: vertical approach angle. Gore releases the ball lower than these other southpaw fireballers, and induces more pure vertical break; that’s how his ball drops by so much less than you’d expect. Here are those same five pitchers by release point and VAA:
High-Velocity Lefties (VAA)
Pitcher Release Height (ft.) VAA (degrees)
Jesús Luzardo 5.99 -4.90
Shane McClanahan 6.26 -4.93
Carlos Rodón 6.67 -4.73
Aaron Ashby 6.42 -4.64
MacKenzie Gore 5.81 -4.40
Gore has a tremendous fastball, no two ways about it. When he’s locating at the top of the zone, hitters are at a double disadvantage: the pitch is faster than pretty much anything they see from the left side, and it’s also a dang optical illusion. When he locates his fastball in the upper third of the strike zone, it’s either a called or swinging strike 43% of the time.
There’s just one problem: Gore isn’t great about hitting the top of the zone. Here’s a location map of the 110 fastballs he’s thrown so far in the big leagues this year:
That’s just too much of the plate. There’s a cascading problem here, too. The lower Gore throws his fastball, the more negative the approach angle, particularly given that he releases the ball from a relatively high arm slot. Add that to the fact that his pitch is mostly deceptive vertically, and you get a 10% whiff rate when he throws the ball over the heart of the plate. That’s significantly below league average, despite his stuff playing well above average at the top of the zone.
Want an example? I took pitchers with similar induced horizontal and vertical break on their fastballs to get an idea of how much location matters for Gore. This time, I threw out velocity and handedness, because there’s just no other way of getting a similar cohort; his fastball doesn’t have close comps otherwise.
The five pitchers with VAA, horizontal movement, and vertical movement closest to Gore were better than league average up in the zone, whether you care about whiff rate or run value per 100 pitches. When they located over the heart of the plate, they were worse than average in whiff rate and roughly average in run value. Think Robbie Ray, if you want a single name to focus on: elite at the top of the zone, closer to ordinary down the middle. Visually, that top-of-the-zone part looks excellent:
If you’re looking for a culprit in Gore’s fastball inconsistency, you might think his mechanics have something to do with it. They probably do! There’s a reason the Padres held him down last year, and there’s a reason that Eric’s reports focus so much on it. But in terms of measuring those mechanics, there isn’t much to say. Gore has more deviation from his average release point than average – but not by an absurd amount. Walker Buehler, Liam Hendriks, and Sandy Alcantara all have release points that move around more than Gore’s so far. So does paragon of precision Zack Greinke. So do McClanahan, Luzardo, and Ray.
In other words, it’s too soon to tell on Gore’s fastball, but if he can keep locating it up in the zone, it’ll be a weapon. It’s been his best pitch so far, which is why he’s throwing it so often; the fact that it can still get better speaks to his potential.
From a pure movement standpoint, you might think Gore’s curveball was his best pitch. Talk about a knee buckler: it’s a pure 12-6 rainbow that drops 58 inches on its way to home plate, and comes out of his hand almost perfectly offset with his fastball. That’s a ton of movement, six inches more than average for similar-velocity curves. You don’t need to read Thomas Pynchon to appreciate gravity’s rainbow when Gore is on the mound:
Bad news, though. That’s the only swing and miss Gore has garnered with his curveball this season. Some of that is in Gore’s usage of the pitch – he loves it early in the count, and six of his 21 curves have gone for called strikes – but some of it is because he can’t locate the thing. A third of them have been down the heart of the plate. Another third have been too far out of the zone to induce swings, either in the “waste” zone as defined by Baseball Savant or in the “chase” zone before two strikes. He rarely uses the curve as an out pitch; he’s only thrown two in two-strike counts so far and undercooked both of them, leaving them above the zone.
In fact, more than half of his curves have been on the first pitch, which suggests to me that he doesn’t trust the pitch in later counts and wants to show it early so that he can change off of it late. Given his below-average command of the pitch, I can understand staying away from it, but from a long-term view of things, I think he’d be well served to figure it out. High-spin four-seamers and lollipop curves can play well together, but not when you almost never pair them.
When Gore wants to use a secondary to end an at-bat, he turns to his slider. He’s thrown exactly as many sliders as curveballs, and 15 of the 21 have been in two-strike counts. When he’s locating it well, it’s another excellent complement to his fastball. It looks similar out of his hand, then dips and bears in on righties:
When Gore is spotting it like that, the pitch gives me Clayton Kershaw vibes, and indeed Kershaw’s slider is among the top comps in Alex Chamberlain’s pitch similarity tool. Just like the best slider of our generation, Gore’s version looks good paired with a four-seamer and is more of a hard slider or hybrid cutter than a big horizontal number. Unlike Kershaw, though, Gore locates it inconsistently, attacking the fringes of the zone at a far-below-average rate in a small sample so far. Opponents are only swinging at 25% of his out-of-zone sliders; he’s mostly been either in the zone or far outside, an awkward combination.
As a perhaps-inevitable conclusion, the pitch-level data tell a similar story that scouting looks have told so far. Gore’s pure stuff is great. All three of his main pitches look excellent – scouts also like his changeup, but he’s only thrown nine in the big leagues, so I’m not analyzing it today. He also benefits from his delivery; that leg kick and arm action give hitters less chance of picking up the ball early. But despite his many gifts, he’s not missing many bats, and he’s walking 10% of the batters he faces.
Could MacKenzie Gore be awesome? Of course he could. The fact that he was the best pitching prospect in baseball two years ago could have told you that. His early major league returns, however, suggest that he doesn’t have the command to get by yet. I do like his approach – given how scattershot he’s been with his secondaries, leaning on a good fastball seems like a smart approach to me. But that won’t work forever, and even though he’s arrived in the majors, it’s plain to me that Gore is still a work in progress.
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Padres
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
Phillies INF prospect Bryson Stott doubled twice for Triple-A Lehigh Valley on Thursday while driving in a run.
It’s the first two hits for Stott at the Triple-A level, but keep in mind he’s only played in two games for the IronPigs after being sent down by the Phillies. The 24-year-old didn’t have much success in his nine games with Philadelphia, but it’d be foolish to make a judgment on Stott based on 30 at-bats. This is still an infielder who shows the tools to hit for a high average with speed that can help him steal bases, and he is beginning to tape into power from his 6-foot-3, 200-pound frame. Stott has played shortstop in both games with Lehigh Valley, and that should be his long-term position. He can still help this year, but the long-term future is even brighter. Don’t give up.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... yson-stott
It’s the first two hits for Stott at the Triple-A level, but keep in mind he’s only played in two games for the IronPigs after being sent down by the Phillies. The 24-year-old didn’t have much success in his nine games with Philadelphia, but it’d be foolish to make a judgment on Stott based on 30 at-bats. This is still an infielder who shows the tools to hit for a high average with speed that can help him steal bases, and he is beginning to tape into power from his 6-foot-3, 200-pound frame. Stott has played shortstop in both games with Lehigh Valley, and that should be his long-term position. He can still help this year, but the long-term future is even brighter. Don’t give up.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... yson-stott
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- Name: Jim Berger
Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
Beau Brieske pitched well in a no-decision against the Dodgers on Saturday night, allowing just one run on three hits over his five innings of work.
The rookie right-hander walked two and struck out three on the evening. He served up a solo homer to Mookie Betts on the second pitch of the ballgame, but settled in nicely afterwards and kept a dangerous Dodgers offense off the scoreboard for the remainder of his five innings. With Casey Mize and Matt Manning still shelved, Brieske should have an opportunity to stick in the Tigers rotation for a while. He'll carry a 3.60 ERA and 1.00 WHIP into Friday's matchup against the Astros in Houston.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... au-brieske
LOS ANGELES — Beau Brieske spun around and gazed toward center field.
The second pitch of his second MLB start, a changeup to Los Angeles Dodgers leadoff hitter Mookie Betts, soared over the center-field wall for a solo home run.
"I got to stop giving up leadoff homers," Brieske said.
The Detroit Tigers trailed from the get-go with Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw on the mound. But Brieske didn't allow another run in his five innings, and the Tigers grabbed the lead in the seventh on Javier Báez's RBI double en route to a 5-1 win Saturday at Dodger Stadium.
...
"Each guy is doing their job, and they're pulling for one another," Hinch said. "I think Joe was as excited as anybody when Michael comes in and gets a double play. They've got a little team within a team and a chemistry that's working. Really, they're thriving off of one another."
Go, go, Beau
The Dodgers and Tigers traded runs early in the game.
Brieske experienced déjà vu in the first on Betts' solo home run. His first-pitch fastball was fouled off before his second-pitch changeup was cranked to straightaway center field.
"That gets you right into the game," Brieske said. "You're like, 'Damn, I need to make a pitch right here.'"
In Brieske's MLB debut last Saturday in Detroit, he allowed a second-pitch homer to Colorado Rockies leadoff hitter Connor Joe on a slider.
Brieske settled in after Betts' home run, though.
"I went out there and didn't have my best stuff, but I found a way to grind," Brieske said. "I trusted my catcher. I trusted my defense. I felt like I made pitches when I needed to. I was happy that I gave the team a chance to win."
After walking Freddie Freeman, the 24-year-old retired the next seven batters. He struck out Justin Turner (looking, 94.9 mph fastball) in the first inning and Cody Bellinger (swinging, 94.7 mph fastball) and Chris Taylor (looking, 94.8 mph fastball) in the second inning.
Detroit Tigers starting pitcher Beau Brieske throws to the plate during the first inning against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Saturday, April 30, 2022, at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
The Dodgers made Brieske work hard throughout his start, forcing him to throw 31 pitches in the fourth inning and fouling off 25 pitches total. But the right-hander got through five innings, allowing one run on three hits and two walks with three strikeouts.
He won a 14-pitch battle with Turner in the fourth.
"I didn't want to back down," Brieske said. "I didn't want to be too fine and end up walking him because I know he has a great eye. It got to a point where it felt like he was literally just trying to foul pitches off to see if I would get too cute and make a mistake."
In the fifth, Brieske faced Betts and Freeman for a third time. He retired them to finish a perfect inning that lasted eight pitches.
Barnes replaced Brieske for the sixth.
For his 90 pitches (55 strikes), Brieske used 53 fastballs (59%), 20 changeups (22%), 13 sliders (14%) and four curveballs (4%). He generated three swings and misses — zero with his secondary pitches — and 12 called strikes: six fastballs, three changeups, two sliders, one curveball.
His fastball averaged 94.1 mph.
"His composure is remarkable," Hinch said. "Tonight's environment was as tough as he's going to face. ... Coming back and keeping his composure, he had some really long at-bats and continued to hang in there. All really positive steps and a momentum boost for him and for us."
https://www.freep.com/story/sports/mlb/ ... 604516002/
The rookie right-hander walked two and struck out three on the evening. He served up a solo homer to Mookie Betts on the second pitch of the ballgame, but settled in nicely afterwards and kept a dangerous Dodgers offense off the scoreboard for the remainder of his five innings. With Casey Mize and Matt Manning still shelved, Brieske should have an opportunity to stick in the Tigers rotation for a while. He'll carry a 3.60 ERA and 1.00 WHIP into Friday's matchup against the Astros in Houston.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... au-brieske
LOS ANGELES — Beau Brieske spun around and gazed toward center field.
The second pitch of his second MLB start, a changeup to Los Angeles Dodgers leadoff hitter Mookie Betts, soared over the center-field wall for a solo home run.
"I got to stop giving up leadoff homers," Brieske said.
The Detroit Tigers trailed from the get-go with Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw on the mound. But Brieske didn't allow another run in his five innings, and the Tigers grabbed the lead in the seventh on Javier Báez's RBI double en route to a 5-1 win Saturday at Dodger Stadium.
...
"Each guy is doing their job, and they're pulling for one another," Hinch said. "I think Joe was as excited as anybody when Michael comes in and gets a double play. They've got a little team within a team and a chemistry that's working. Really, they're thriving off of one another."
Go, go, Beau
The Dodgers and Tigers traded runs early in the game.
Brieske experienced déjà vu in the first on Betts' solo home run. His first-pitch fastball was fouled off before his second-pitch changeup was cranked to straightaway center field.
"That gets you right into the game," Brieske said. "You're like, 'Damn, I need to make a pitch right here.'"
In Brieske's MLB debut last Saturday in Detroit, he allowed a second-pitch homer to Colorado Rockies leadoff hitter Connor Joe on a slider.
Brieske settled in after Betts' home run, though.
"I went out there and didn't have my best stuff, but I found a way to grind," Brieske said. "I trusted my catcher. I trusted my defense. I felt like I made pitches when I needed to. I was happy that I gave the team a chance to win."
After walking Freddie Freeman, the 24-year-old retired the next seven batters. He struck out Justin Turner (looking, 94.9 mph fastball) in the first inning and Cody Bellinger (swinging, 94.7 mph fastball) and Chris Taylor (looking, 94.8 mph fastball) in the second inning.
Detroit Tigers starting pitcher Beau Brieske throws to the plate during the first inning against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Saturday, April 30, 2022, at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
The Dodgers made Brieske work hard throughout his start, forcing him to throw 31 pitches in the fourth inning and fouling off 25 pitches total. But the right-hander got through five innings, allowing one run on three hits and two walks with three strikeouts.
He won a 14-pitch battle with Turner in the fourth.
"I didn't want to back down," Brieske said. "I didn't want to be too fine and end up walking him because I know he has a great eye. It got to a point where it felt like he was literally just trying to foul pitches off to see if I would get too cute and make a mistake."
In the fifth, Brieske faced Betts and Freeman for a third time. He retired them to finish a perfect inning that lasted eight pitches.
Barnes replaced Brieske for the sixth.
For his 90 pitches (55 strikes), Brieske used 53 fastballs (59%), 20 changeups (22%), 13 sliders (14%) and four curveballs (4%). He generated three swings and misses — zero with his secondary pitches — and 12 called strikes: six fastballs, three changeups, two sliders, one curveball.
His fastball averaged 94.1 mph.
"His composure is remarkable," Hinch said. "Tonight's environment was as tough as he's going to face. ... Coming back and keeping his composure, he had some really long at-bats and continued to hang in there. All really positive steps and a momentum boost for him and for us."
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Re: 2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
Brandon Walter has 29 strikeouts and has yet to walk a batter in 23 innings with the Double-A Portland Sea Dogs. The 25-year-old left-hander — No. 10 on our Red Sox Top Prospects list — has allowed 14 hits, and has a 1.17 ERA to go with a 1.38 FIP.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/sunday-note ... ue-record/
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/sunday-note ... ue-record/
