GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Garrett Crochet has been asked about his future as either a starter or reliever with the White Sox so many times that his inner angst almost becomes visible whenever the question is put forth.
So how did I conclude my recent interview with the left-hander? By asking him if he still sees himself as a starter.
“I mean, with being out for so long, at this point, I’m just ready to fill in wherever I need to,” said Crochet, who has thrown 60 1/3 innings in his career.
For Crochet, the focus is more immediately on the upcoming season or even the next few months. The finish line is now in sight in his recovery from Tommy John surgery, which he underwent in the final week of Spring Training 2022.
Since the second week of December, Crochet has thrown two bullpens per week in Arizona, going 25 pitches on Tuesdays and then 35 to 40 pitches on Fridays. Though he won't pitch in any Cactus League games, per general manager Rick Hahn, Crochet will ramp up the intensity by moving to one bullpen per week at 40 pitches.
Crochet should see his first game action in extended spring camp, followed by a Minor League rehab assignment. His White Sox return is penciled in for mid-May if all goes well.
“I’m a lot more resilient than I thought,” Crochet said. “When I originally blew out, I remember bawling on Ryan Burr’s shoulder in the locker room. That was tough. I didn’t necessarily foresee what it would look like once I was recovered. But being here now, I’ve gained a considerable amount of muscle, and I feel very confident in my ability again.”
“He looks phenomenal physically. He’s gotten really strong,” White Sox pitching coach Ethan Katz said. “His legs are huge. It’s pretty impressive. Watching him throw his bullpens, he’s really commanding the zone nicely. As he’s building up, it’s really exciting to see where he’s kind of progressed through this whole time of his rebuild. He looks really good.”
Chicago's top pick in the 2020 Draft, the hard-throwing southpaw bypassed the Minors and struck out eight over six innings of relief that same year while also throwing the second-most pitches of at least 100 mph. Crochet remained in the bullpen in '21 and posted a 2.82 ERA over 54 games for the American League Central champions.
His 2022 season ended before it started in Goodyear, Ariz. But with the help of the White Sox training staff, his wife, Rachel, and his personal fortitude, Crochet is close to returning. There’s always been talk of Crochet taking his skill set to the rotation, but with his recovery in mind, he’ll return as a valuable bullpen component.
“Anything is possible,” Katz said when asked about Crochet eventually becoming a starter. “Right now, we are just trying to get him back onto the field, and we’ll kind of see how that all plays out.”
“It’s incredibly exciting,” Crochet said of the return. “I’ve been busting my [butt] for 11 months now. I’m excited to get back.”
(Thanks to Scott Merkin)
White Sox (2023) non-prospect News
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Re: White Sox non-prospect News
Bryan De La Cruz, OF, Miami
Overall, De La Cruz put up a good-not-great type of season that might leave some people cold. He struck out more than league average, walked less than league average, showed slightly above league average power, and wasn’t the best fit in center field. His projections — for around .260 with 15 homers and a handful of steals — reflect that reality. The 26-year-old De La Cruz has some flaws, and that’s why they were able to get him from Houston for a rental reliever at the trade deadline. But he finally got regular playing time, and there was improvement that came with that time: he was among the best Barrel rate improvers in the second half.
In the second half, De La Cruz hit .310/.342/.535, and of course that came with a high BABIP and likely some luck, and noise. But he also improved his underlying process with more hard hits and more barrels. Even if he gives some of that back, he should be able to retain a double-digit Barrel rate and provide power that the rest of the lineup suddenly lacks as the front office has prioritized contact rate over power. The power will have to come from somewhere in that lineup, and De La Cruz looks likely to provide it.
https://theathletic.com/4192015/2023/02 ... ign=601983
Overall, De La Cruz put up a good-not-great type of season that might leave some people cold. He struck out more than league average, walked less than league average, showed slightly above league average power, and wasn’t the best fit in center field. His projections — for around .260 with 15 homers and a handful of steals — reflect that reality. The 26-year-old De La Cruz has some flaws, and that’s why they were able to get him from Houston for a rental reliever at the trade deadline. But he finally got regular playing time, and there was improvement that came with that time: he was among the best Barrel rate improvers in the second half.
In the second half, De La Cruz hit .310/.342/.535, and of course that came with a high BABIP and likely some luck, and noise. But he also improved his underlying process with more hard hits and more barrels. Even if he gives some of that back, he should be able to retain a double-digit Barrel rate and provide power that the rest of the lineup suddenly lacks as the front office has prioritized contact rate over power. The power will have to come from somewhere in that lineup, and De La Cruz looks likely to provide it.
https://theathletic.com/4192015/2023/02 ... ign=601983
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Re: White Sox non-prospect News
Garrett Crochet (elbow) has progressed to throwing weekly bullpen sessions and has increased the intensity with which he's throwing.
The 23-year-old left-hander is in the process of working his way back from Tommy John surgery. The White Sox plan is to have him eventually pitch in live game action during extended spring training before heading out on a minor league rehab assignment. If all goes as planned and he avoids any setbacks along the way, Crochet is expected to rejoin the White Sox at some point in May.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... tt-crochet
The 23-year-old left-hander is in the process of working his way back from Tommy John surgery. The White Sox plan is to have him eventually pitch in live game action during extended spring training before heading out on a minor league rehab assignment. If all goes as planned and he avoids any setbacks along the way, Crochet is expected to rejoin the White Sox at some point in May.
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Re: White Sox non-prospect News
The team is acting like Jack Suwinski will be the starting center fielder.
The Pirates fielded an Opening Day caliber lineup Monday for their Grapefruit League game against the Phillies. It included a new and interesting outfield alignment — Bryan Reynolds in left field, Jack Suwinski in center and Andrew McCutchen in right.
It could be the dawn of Suwinski emerging as the everyday center fielder.
https://fantasy.fangraphs.com/mining-the-news-3-1-23/
On Saturday afternoon, Washington’s Josiah Gray pitched the first inning of his first spring training game of 2023. He threw nine pitches to mow down the Mets. Five of those pitches were cut fastballs, a new addition to his repertoire. If that doesn’t sound noteworthy to you, maybe you should ask Mark Canha, the player who faced Gray’s first cutter. After the pitch, he stared out at the mound for a long moment.
That is the face of a man who has just seen something he did not expect. Canha struck out (on a cutter), and on his way back to the dugout he stopped to tell Francisco Lindor a little secret. Want to guess what he said?
Gray isn’t the only pitcher with a shiny new cutter. SNY’s broadcast team noted both Gray’s new pitch and the league-wide trend:
Gary Cohen: So the last two pitches, Ronnie, Josiah Gray threw cutters, and I don’t think he’s ever thrown that pitch before.
Ron Darling: No, this is a new pitch for him. And if you notice from yesterday’s game—there’s always themes in spring training—almost every pitcher, yesterday’s game, was working on a cutter.
Keith Hernandez: Mmmm.
They’re not wrong. Pirates starter Mitch Keller dusted off his cutter after mothballing the pitch in 2022. You can read about it, watch him work on it in the offseason, and finally see him throw it in a spring training game. Clarke Schmidt has a new cutter, Matt Brash has a new cutter, Jose Butto has a new cutter, and none of this is new. Pitchers try things out in spring training all the time, and there’s no guarantee that Gray will stick with his cutter. Just in the past two years, plenty of players used a cutter in spring training only to ditch it once the regular season started.
Fleeting Spring Training Cutter Usage
Player Year Spring Training Regular Season
Lucas Gilbreath 2021 21% 0%
Chad Green 2021 5.2% 0%
Patrick Corbin 2021 8.6% 0.3%
Aaron Nola 2021 5.6% 1.5%
Jhoan Duran 2022 10.1% 0%
Jalen Beeks 2022 16.9% 1.2%
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
All the same, I think Gray’s cutter in particular is an important development, and I’ll be most curious to see how his turns out. He might not be the perfect candidate for a cutter, but he definitely needs a new weapon. As Ethan Rendon, Elijah Emery, Will Sugar, and Tieran Alexander explained at Prospects Live, cutters can tunnel with both fastballs and sliders. Even if the cutter itself isn’t particularly effective, it can allow those pitches to play up. Take a look at Gray’s pitch movement chart.
A cutter that averaged 20 inches of drop and four inches of break would slot nicely into Gray’s repertoire, giving batters two pitches to worry about whenever they saw his fastball or his slider. On Saturday, Gray’s cutter averaged to 25.2 inches and one inch, respectively — good enough for a first effort. The pitch itself averaged 90 mph, which would again allow it to overlap with both the fastball and the slider.
The Nationals also hope that Gray will be able to use the cutter against lefties in order to balance out his lopsided platoon splits. So at least on paper, it seems like it could help his fastball and slider play up. When batters see what looks like a fastball, they will now have to at least consider the possibility that it’s actually a cutter. That’s important because Gray’s fastball is, well, extremely bad.
I’ll try to keep this paragraph brief. Among pitchers who threw at least 100 innings, Gray’s fastball is dead last on our pitch value leaderboard. His four-seamer features above-average velocity, but he doesn’t control it well. It doesn’t generate enough chases or whiffs, and it gets hit hard and in the air: It has a 45% hard-hit rate, an average exit velocity of 91.3 mph, and an average launch angle of 28 degrees. Gray’s four-seamer had a 20.9% chase rate, compared to the league average of 24.5%. If the cutter does help create some more chase, it should earn him more whiffs and limit some of that hard contact.
Lamar Gibson noted over at Pitcher List that Gray tends to lean heavily on the four-seamer both with no count and when behind in the count. In other words, he throws a lot of fastballs in obvious fastball counts. There’s some gain to be had if he is willing to reduce his fastball usage even more, because his curveball grades out as solid, and his slider is excellent. It was worth 6.4 runs in 2022, good for 21st on our pitch value leaderboard. Last fall, Gray explained his curveball and slider grips in fascinating detail in Behind the Seams, the Nationals’ YouTube series. His fastball literally never comes up once in the video’s 10-minute runtime.
I mentioned earlier that Gray isn’t a perfect candidate for a cutter. When we talk about using a cutter to tunnel with a fastball and a slider, it’s usually with the hope of increasing the chase rate on the slider. Gray, Schmidt, and Keller all profile differently, and I’ll be interested to see who benefits the most from the addition of a cutter. Keller throws an average four-seamer, an underperforming slider, and an excellent sweeper; it’s easy to see why he hopes a cutter might slot in between the fastball and slider, elevating both. Schmidt’s issues are more similar to Gray’s, in that he throws a good slider, an excellent curve, and a poor four-seamer.
Gray is the real outlier. He really only needs help with the fastball. First of all, his slider is already excellent. It has a 34.4% chase rate, just above the league average of 32.7%, and a whiff rate of 38% in 2022, well over double the league average. He has a low release point and very different spin characteristics. His four-seamer has 100% active spin and above-average movement both vertically and horizontally, but his breaking balls have tons of gyro spin. There’s a lot less separation in his pitch movement chart than in Gray’s or Keller’s. His slider has below-average vertical and horizontal break, which is to say that it already has some cutter traits. The overlap in horizontal movement between his slider and his fastball could be one of the reasons for the slider’s success, which might mean the addition of the cutter doesn’t change all that much. Or it could just mean that the cutter needs a movement profile that’s much more similar to his four-seamer than the version he showcased on Saturday.
All the same, if Gray hopes to improve on his 5.02 ERA and 5.86 FIP, he’ll need to try something. He has other issues that have nothing to do with tunneling. He’s been working on his hip mobility, hoping to create a more consistent landing spot that’s more in line with the catcher and also introduce some deception into his delivery. “That helped him out a lot,” manager Dave Martinez told the Washington Post. “He says he feels a lot more mobile and agile so he doesn’t have to get so rotational. His direction is way better.” I’ve watched side-by-side video of Gray’s delivery on Saturday and his delivery from last year, and I just can’t see that he’s doing anything different with his hips.
Maybe you’ll see something that I didn’t, but to my eyes Gray’s delivery is still much more rotational than it is downhill, and he still lands with his foot pointed off to the left. That contributes to his short stride and the resultant gap between his actual and perceived velocity. Per Baseball Savant, 657 pitchers threw at least 100 four-seamers in 2022. Here’s where Gray ranks.
Josiah Gray – Extension
Velocity Extension Perceived Velocity wOBA
Measure 94.4 mph 5.6 feet 92.7 mph .479
Rank 268 632 435 582
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
The good news is that Gray certainly seems open to tinkering. His 15-game rolling averages may show someone who’s losing faith in their four-seamer, but they also tell the tale of someone who is willing to try new things and put in the work.
At the start of 2022, he was throwing the four-seamer 50% of the time, but by the end of the season it was down to 35%. He tried out a few sinkers in June, then added the pitch to his repertoire for good in September, using it roughly 17% of the time over his last three starts, largely to righties. Over that very short sample, the sinker wasn’t great, but it was still much better than the four-seamer. At the same time, Gray drastically increased his slider usage against left-handed batters, going against his usual game plan of sliders to righties and curves to lefties.
Gray has more than enough new wrinkles to work on this season: the cutter, the slider to lefties, the sinker, the possible reintroduction of a changeup. Barring injury, he’ll get every chance to test his new pitch mix. The Nationals have no plans to contend any time soon, and they didn’t seem to mind letting Gray start 28 games and lead the league in both home runs and walks in 2022.
The truth is that Gray’s cutter doesn’t need to be a great pitch, or even a good pitch. If it’s nothing special but its presence improves his fastball, that’s a huge win. But that’s not the bar it needs to clear. Even if Gray simply swaps out some horrendously bad fastballs with a cutter that’s merely a normal amount of bad, that would still represent a pretty big swing. Besides, if it doesn’t work, Gray seems like the kind of player who will keep working to find something that does.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/josiah-gray ... e-cutters/
The Pirates fielded an Opening Day caliber lineup Monday for their Grapefruit League game against the Phillies. It included a new and interesting outfield alignment — Bryan Reynolds in left field, Jack Suwinski in center and Andrew McCutchen in right.
It could be the dawn of Suwinski emerging as the everyday center fielder.
https://fantasy.fangraphs.com/mining-the-news-3-1-23/
On Saturday afternoon, Washington’s Josiah Gray pitched the first inning of his first spring training game of 2023. He threw nine pitches to mow down the Mets. Five of those pitches were cut fastballs, a new addition to his repertoire. If that doesn’t sound noteworthy to you, maybe you should ask Mark Canha, the player who faced Gray’s first cutter. After the pitch, he stared out at the mound for a long moment.
That is the face of a man who has just seen something he did not expect. Canha struck out (on a cutter), and on his way back to the dugout he stopped to tell Francisco Lindor a little secret. Want to guess what he said?
Gray isn’t the only pitcher with a shiny new cutter. SNY’s broadcast team noted both Gray’s new pitch and the league-wide trend:
Gary Cohen: So the last two pitches, Ronnie, Josiah Gray threw cutters, and I don’t think he’s ever thrown that pitch before.
Ron Darling: No, this is a new pitch for him. And if you notice from yesterday’s game—there’s always themes in spring training—almost every pitcher, yesterday’s game, was working on a cutter.
Keith Hernandez: Mmmm.
They’re not wrong. Pirates starter Mitch Keller dusted off his cutter after mothballing the pitch in 2022. You can read about it, watch him work on it in the offseason, and finally see him throw it in a spring training game. Clarke Schmidt has a new cutter, Matt Brash has a new cutter, Jose Butto has a new cutter, and none of this is new. Pitchers try things out in spring training all the time, and there’s no guarantee that Gray will stick with his cutter. Just in the past two years, plenty of players used a cutter in spring training only to ditch it once the regular season started.
Fleeting Spring Training Cutter Usage
Player Year Spring Training Regular Season
Lucas Gilbreath 2021 21% 0%
Chad Green 2021 5.2% 0%
Patrick Corbin 2021 8.6% 0.3%
Aaron Nola 2021 5.6% 1.5%
Jhoan Duran 2022 10.1% 0%
Jalen Beeks 2022 16.9% 1.2%
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
All the same, I think Gray’s cutter in particular is an important development, and I’ll be most curious to see how his turns out. He might not be the perfect candidate for a cutter, but he definitely needs a new weapon. As Ethan Rendon, Elijah Emery, Will Sugar, and Tieran Alexander explained at Prospects Live, cutters can tunnel with both fastballs and sliders. Even if the cutter itself isn’t particularly effective, it can allow those pitches to play up. Take a look at Gray’s pitch movement chart.
A cutter that averaged 20 inches of drop and four inches of break would slot nicely into Gray’s repertoire, giving batters two pitches to worry about whenever they saw his fastball or his slider. On Saturday, Gray’s cutter averaged to 25.2 inches and one inch, respectively — good enough for a first effort. The pitch itself averaged 90 mph, which would again allow it to overlap with both the fastball and the slider.
The Nationals also hope that Gray will be able to use the cutter against lefties in order to balance out his lopsided platoon splits. So at least on paper, it seems like it could help his fastball and slider play up. When batters see what looks like a fastball, they will now have to at least consider the possibility that it’s actually a cutter. That’s important because Gray’s fastball is, well, extremely bad.
I’ll try to keep this paragraph brief. Among pitchers who threw at least 100 innings, Gray’s fastball is dead last on our pitch value leaderboard. His four-seamer features above-average velocity, but he doesn’t control it well. It doesn’t generate enough chases or whiffs, and it gets hit hard and in the air: It has a 45% hard-hit rate, an average exit velocity of 91.3 mph, and an average launch angle of 28 degrees. Gray’s four-seamer had a 20.9% chase rate, compared to the league average of 24.5%. If the cutter does help create some more chase, it should earn him more whiffs and limit some of that hard contact.
Lamar Gibson noted over at Pitcher List that Gray tends to lean heavily on the four-seamer both with no count and when behind in the count. In other words, he throws a lot of fastballs in obvious fastball counts. There’s some gain to be had if he is willing to reduce his fastball usage even more, because his curveball grades out as solid, and his slider is excellent. It was worth 6.4 runs in 2022, good for 21st on our pitch value leaderboard. Last fall, Gray explained his curveball and slider grips in fascinating detail in Behind the Seams, the Nationals’ YouTube series. His fastball literally never comes up once in the video’s 10-minute runtime.
I mentioned earlier that Gray isn’t a perfect candidate for a cutter. When we talk about using a cutter to tunnel with a fastball and a slider, it’s usually with the hope of increasing the chase rate on the slider. Gray, Schmidt, and Keller all profile differently, and I’ll be interested to see who benefits the most from the addition of a cutter. Keller throws an average four-seamer, an underperforming slider, and an excellent sweeper; it’s easy to see why he hopes a cutter might slot in between the fastball and slider, elevating both. Schmidt’s issues are more similar to Gray’s, in that he throws a good slider, an excellent curve, and a poor four-seamer.
Gray is the real outlier. He really only needs help with the fastball. First of all, his slider is already excellent. It has a 34.4% chase rate, just above the league average of 32.7%, and a whiff rate of 38% in 2022, well over double the league average. He has a low release point and very different spin characteristics. His four-seamer has 100% active spin and above-average movement both vertically and horizontally, but his breaking balls have tons of gyro spin. There’s a lot less separation in his pitch movement chart than in Gray’s or Keller’s. His slider has below-average vertical and horizontal break, which is to say that it already has some cutter traits. The overlap in horizontal movement between his slider and his fastball could be one of the reasons for the slider’s success, which might mean the addition of the cutter doesn’t change all that much. Or it could just mean that the cutter needs a movement profile that’s much more similar to his four-seamer than the version he showcased on Saturday.
All the same, if Gray hopes to improve on his 5.02 ERA and 5.86 FIP, he’ll need to try something. He has other issues that have nothing to do with tunneling. He’s been working on his hip mobility, hoping to create a more consistent landing spot that’s more in line with the catcher and also introduce some deception into his delivery. “That helped him out a lot,” manager Dave Martinez told the Washington Post. “He says he feels a lot more mobile and agile so he doesn’t have to get so rotational. His direction is way better.” I’ve watched side-by-side video of Gray’s delivery on Saturday and his delivery from last year, and I just can’t see that he’s doing anything different with his hips.
Maybe you’ll see something that I didn’t, but to my eyes Gray’s delivery is still much more rotational than it is downhill, and he still lands with his foot pointed off to the left. That contributes to his short stride and the resultant gap between his actual and perceived velocity. Per Baseball Savant, 657 pitchers threw at least 100 four-seamers in 2022. Here’s where Gray ranks.
Josiah Gray – Extension
Velocity Extension Perceived Velocity wOBA
Measure 94.4 mph 5.6 feet 92.7 mph .479
Rank 268 632 435 582
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
The good news is that Gray certainly seems open to tinkering. His 15-game rolling averages may show someone who’s losing faith in their four-seamer, but they also tell the tale of someone who is willing to try new things and put in the work.
At the start of 2022, he was throwing the four-seamer 50% of the time, but by the end of the season it was down to 35%. He tried out a few sinkers in June, then added the pitch to his repertoire for good in September, using it roughly 17% of the time over his last three starts, largely to righties. Over that very short sample, the sinker wasn’t great, but it was still much better than the four-seamer. At the same time, Gray drastically increased his slider usage against left-handed batters, going against his usual game plan of sliders to righties and curves to lefties.
Gray has more than enough new wrinkles to work on this season: the cutter, the slider to lefties, the sinker, the possible reintroduction of a changeup. Barring injury, he’ll get every chance to test his new pitch mix. The Nationals have no plans to contend any time soon, and they didn’t seem to mind letting Gray start 28 games and lead the league in both home runs and walks in 2022.
The truth is that Gray’s cutter doesn’t need to be a great pitch, or even a good pitch. If it’s nothing special but its presence improves his fastball, that’s a huge win. But that’s not the bar it needs to clear. Even if Gray simply swaps out some horrendously bad fastballs with a cutter that’s merely a normal amount of bad, that would still represent a pretty big swing. Besides, if it doesn’t work, Gray seems like the kind of player who will keep working to find something that does.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/josiah-gray ... e-cutters/
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Re: White Sox non-prospect News
Let’s start with the pitching line from Josiah Gray. As I mentioned earlier this week, I made the painful decision to cut Gray for a chance to add Grayson Rodriguez in one of my Yahoo! leagues, and it came back to haunt me immediately. The thinking here was that Gray, who allowed three home runs in his first 2022 start after giving up 38 of them last season, was probably a poor streaming play in Coors Field.
The biggest culprit from Gray’s arsenal when it came to allowing long balls was his four-seamer last year. Home runs came from 24 of them in 2022, which made his fastball the Gladys Knight of his home run tendencies, with pitches like his slider and curveball merely Pips. Considering the difficulties most pitchers have locating off-speed stuff at Coors, it stood to reason that this would not go well for Gray.
(All of this isn’t to try and justify my Rodriguez move—it still worked out pretty well so far, and one game is, about the smallest possible sample size. But come with me, folks, and let’s get even smaller.)
In the first at-bat against C.J. Cron on Thursday, Gray fell behind 2-0 on a pair of four-seam fastballs. While Gray threw his four-seamer nearly 40% of the time last season no matter the count, he really relied on it behind 2-0, throwing it 57.8% of the time in those situations.
Not here. Gray came back with four straight sliders, to the surprise of the Nationals’ announcers, the final one forcing a chase from Cron for strike three. A few innings later, he fell behind Cron 2-0 again, and attacked him with his curveball and slider, inducing a groundout. In his third at-bat against Cron, he struck him out on back-to-back sliders.
To me, this isn’t at all about the results, though those are obviously encouraging; Cron had a terrible season against sliders last year, and that was doubtless on the scouting report. But Gray went after hitters all afternoon with his slider, throwing it 42% of the time, more than any other pitch. That his slider is excellent isn’t new. That he’s willing to use it that much very much is. And he had the confidence to even do that at Coors Field.
Gray’s slider (and to a significant extent his curveball) have been effective for some time. He just doesn’t stick with them when he falls behind. It’s long been stipulated that Gray will need to figure out how to make his fastball more effective to become a stalwart. I’ve long felt it is as simple as de-emphasizing the pitch. And this is merely the latest reason to think so; he, too, seems on board with this approach.
Gray is rostered in just 9% of Yahoo! leagues and 5.1% in ESPN leagues as I write this early Thursday evening. Expect those numbers to jump. While I won’t jettison Rodriguez for him, I’m certainly keeping my eye on him as well.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/fant ... z-edition/
The biggest culprit from Gray’s arsenal when it came to allowing long balls was his four-seamer last year. Home runs came from 24 of them in 2022, which made his fastball the Gladys Knight of his home run tendencies, with pitches like his slider and curveball merely Pips. Considering the difficulties most pitchers have locating off-speed stuff at Coors, it stood to reason that this would not go well for Gray.
(All of this isn’t to try and justify my Rodriguez move—it still worked out pretty well so far, and one game is, about the smallest possible sample size. But come with me, folks, and let’s get even smaller.)
In the first at-bat against C.J. Cron on Thursday, Gray fell behind 2-0 on a pair of four-seam fastballs. While Gray threw his four-seamer nearly 40% of the time last season no matter the count, he really relied on it behind 2-0, throwing it 57.8% of the time in those situations.
Not here. Gray came back with four straight sliders, to the surprise of the Nationals’ announcers, the final one forcing a chase from Cron for strike three. A few innings later, he fell behind Cron 2-0 again, and attacked him with his curveball and slider, inducing a groundout. In his third at-bat against Cron, he struck him out on back-to-back sliders.
To me, this isn’t at all about the results, though those are obviously encouraging; Cron had a terrible season against sliders last year, and that was doubtless on the scouting report. But Gray went after hitters all afternoon with his slider, throwing it 42% of the time, more than any other pitch. That his slider is excellent isn’t new. That he’s willing to use it that much very much is. And he had the confidence to even do that at Coors Field.
Gray’s slider (and to a significant extent his curveball) have been effective for some time. He just doesn’t stick with them when he falls behind. It’s long been stipulated that Gray will need to figure out how to make his fastball more effective to become a stalwart. I’ve long felt it is as simple as de-emphasizing the pitch. And this is merely the latest reason to think so; he, too, seems on board with this approach.
Gray is rostered in just 9% of Yahoo! leagues and 5.1% in ESPN leagues as I write this early Thursday evening. Expect those numbers to jump. While I won’t jettison Rodriguez for him, I’m certainly keeping my eye on him as well.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/fant ... z-edition/
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Re: White Sox non-prospect News
Dane Dunning is excelling in Texas. Now in his third season with the Texas Rangers after debuting with the Chicago White Sox in 2020, the 28-year-old right-hander is 8–2 with a 2.84 ERA over 92 innings. And though he’s fanned just 59 batters, but that suits him just fine. It’s not that he doesn’t like strikeouts; he very much does. It’s just that he lacks the power profile of your prototypical modern-day ace. Epitomizing the term “crafty righty,” he effectively limits damage by mixing and matching with one of baseball’s most expansive repertoires.
Dunning discussed his atypical approach, and the arsenal that goes along with it, when the Rangers visited Fenway Park prior to the All-Star break.
———
David Laurila: Let’s start with your repertoire. How many pitches do you throw?
Dane Dunning: “Sinker, four-seam, cutter, changeup, slider, curveball. So six. I guess you could say that I’m a jack of all trades, master of none.”
Laurila: How long have you had such a diverse repertoire?
Dunning: “Well, the four-seam is kind of new this year. I’ve thrown it on certain occasions, probably in my last four, five outings. The cutter I started focusing on last year, and this year it’s kind of come into its own. The sinker and slider I’ve had my entire life. The curveball has kind of been my entire life. I’ve always thrown a curveball, but it’s been like, ‘Let’s throw the curveball, let’s not throw the curveball.’ It’s sort of gone back and forth. I brought it back this season, because last year I was throwing two different sliders and they kept blending together. I had to get rid of that.”
Laurila: Can you elaborate on two different sliders?
Dunning: “So last year I threw like a sweeper, kind of what everyone started throwing, and then my normal slider. The problem was that at times I’d be trying to throw a normal slider and would throw the sweeper. Other times I’d try to throw a sweeper and it would be the normal slider. What I wanted was to have two distinct pitches. I wanted to have the slower one with a little bit bigger break, as well as my regular slider.
“One of the biggest things I worked on this year with the slider was trying to get more gyro and have it be a little bit harder. I felt like last year, because they blended together, it got a little humpy, a little bit curveball-y. So I brought back the curveball from, I guess, two years ago. It’s a comfortable pitch. It’s not an out-pitch or anything like that, but it’s definitely something that I can use in get-ahead accounts and against certain hitters in certain situations.”
Laurila: Basically, you shelved the sweeper.
Dunning: “Yes.”
Laurila: You used the word blend. Based on what you described, it seems like unpredictable might be a better word for it.
Dunning: “Yeah. I would have games where I was able to throw both and have good results from both, but there were also a lot of games where I didn’t. That’s why I’m throwing the curveball again. I wanted to create two distinct entities, and the curveball is slower with a bigger break, whereas the slider is sharper and harder. The slider has always been kind of my put-out pitch, so more than anything I was just trying to get back to my normal slider. That was probably the biggest goal.”
Laurila: How different are the movement profiles on your slider and your cutter?
Dunning: “When it comes to break, the biggest difference is that the cutter has a lot more vert. I’ve tried to average 10-plus vert on the cutter and then, whatever cut I do get on it, cut-ride… I mean, even if it doesn’t get as much as I’d like, it’s effective as long as I keep it up. That’s because it has so much separation from my sinker; it’s moving in a different direction. And the slider is more of a traditional slider, with just a little bit of depth action to it.”
Laurila: You’re somewhat of an outlier in that you rely on six pitches. A lot of your contemporaries are prioritizing their best two pitches, and maybe a third.
Dunning: “I don’t belong in that group, because most guys nowadays are throwing 97 [mph]. If you look at… Framber Valdez is a great example. He’s got a really good four-seam, a really good curveball, and a really good changeup. He does have a slider that he uses in certain situations, but for the most part, his put-out-pitch is his curveball. When you have pitchers that are dominant… like Chris Sale here [in Boston]. He’s always been known for his slider, and he’s going to throw his slider.
“For me, it’s different. I don’t have the velo, I’m 90–91, so I’ve got to locate more. I’ve got to mix more. It’s about utilizing all of my pitches as much as I can. I need to spread the zone out as much as possible with pitches going in different directions. I would love to be an overpowering pitcher, but I’m not. I need to use what I’m able to do as my advantage.”
Laurila: Which pitchers in the league would you bucket yourself with?
Dunning: “One of the people I learned a lot from last year was Martín Pérez. He obviously had a fantastic year, but it was his style of pitching, his being able to go backdoor cut, front-door sink, expand the zone. He used a lot of movements from side-to-side, up-to-down. Kyle Gibson is another one. Four-seams up, sinkers down, cutters up and away to a righty, front hip to a lefty. Again, it’s utilizing all of my pitches in certain scenarios. Sequencing is the biggest thing.”
Laurila: Is your game-to-game mix dictated more by scouting reports, or more by the feel you have for your pitches on a given day?
Dunning: “We have a plan going into each game, but for certain hitters… yesterday, for example. [Jarren] Duran had really good at-bats. I thought I pitched him decently well, but he was able to tag on some extra-base hits against me. First at-bat, I tried to go slider back-foot, and while I did leave it a little bit in the zone, it was still a quality pitch in the zone, He ended up hammering it for a triple.
“It took me two at-bats to figure it out. We tried different things. We had a scouting report going in, [and] first at-bat we went with the scouting report, but he put some really good swings on the ball. So you have to adjust with how the game goes. And if something’s not working, say I’m not landing my slider, then I might not be throwing my slider as much as ideally I want to. I’d have to figure out another way to get people out.”
Laurila: Do you care about strikeouts?
Dunning: “I mean, what pitcher doesn’t? I obviously like strikeouts, but I also know who I am. I wouldn’t say that I don’t try to get strikeouts. If you watch a lot of my games, you’ll see me throw quality pitches and get strikeouts. I’ll also get jam-shots. Against the Yankees, I had a check-swing ground ball to first base against [Giancarlo] Stanton on a pitch that would have bounced. Things like that.
“But no. I mean, I’m a sinkerballer. I try to work quick and get quick outs. I try to miss barrels and get the ball on the ground as much as possible, because I have a talented defense behind me. So yeah, I’d like to get more strikeouts, but for the most part I kind of just play with the cards that are dealt.”
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/crafty-and- ... een-dealt/
Dunning discussed his atypical approach, and the arsenal that goes along with it, when the Rangers visited Fenway Park prior to the All-Star break.
———
David Laurila: Let’s start with your repertoire. How many pitches do you throw?
Dane Dunning: “Sinker, four-seam, cutter, changeup, slider, curveball. So six. I guess you could say that I’m a jack of all trades, master of none.”
Laurila: How long have you had such a diverse repertoire?
Dunning: “Well, the four-seam is kind of new this year. I’ve thrown it on certain occasions, probably in my last four, five outings. The cutter I started focusing on last year, and this year it’s kind of come into its own. The sinker and slider I’ve had my entire life. The curveball has kind of been my entire life. I’ve always thrown a curveball, but it’s been like, ‘Let’s throw the curveball, let’s not throw the curveball.’ It’s sort of gone back and forth. I brought it back this season, because last year I was throwing two different sliders and they kept blending together. I had to get rid of that.”
Laurila: Can you elaborate on two different sliders?
Dunning: “So last year I threw like a sweeper, kind of what everyone started throwing, and then my normal slider. The problem was that at times I’d be trying to throw a normal slider and would throw the sweeper. Other times I’d try to throw a sweeper and it would be the normal slider. What I wanted was to have two distinct pitches. I wanted to have the slower one with a little bit bigger break, as well as my regular slider.
“One of the biggest things I worked on this year with the slider was trying to get more gyro and have it be a little bit harder. I felt like last year, because they blended together, it got a little humpy, a little bit curveball-y. So I brought back the curveball from, I guess, two years ago. It’s a comfortable pitch. It’s not an out-pitch or anything like that, but it’s definitely something that I can use in get-ahead accounts and against certain hitters in certain situations.”
Laurila: Basically, you shelved the sweeper.
Dunning: “Yes.”
Laurila: You used the word blend. Based on what you described, it seems like unpredictable might be a better word for it.
Dunning: “Yeah. I would have games where I was able to throw both and have good results from both, but there were also a lot of games where I didn’t. That’s why I’m throwing the curveball again. I wanted to create two distinct entities, and the curveball is slower with a bigger break, whereas the slider is sharper and harder. The slider has always been kind of my put-out pitch, so more than anything I was just trying to get back to my normal slider. That was probably the biggest goal.”
Laurila: How different are the movement profiles on your slider and your cutter?
Dunning: “When it comes to break, the biggest difference is that the cutter has a lot more vert. I’ve tried to average 10-plus vert on the cutter and then, whatever cut I do get on it, cut-ride… I mean, even if it doesn’t get as much as I’d like, it’s effective as long as I keep it up. That’s because it has so much separation from my sinker; it’s moving in a different direction. And the slider is more of a traditional slider, with just a little bit of depth action to it.”
Laurila: You’re somewhat of an outlier in that you rely on six pitches. A lot of your contemporaries are prioritizing their best two pitches, and maybe a third.
Dunning: “I don’t belong in that group, because most guys nowadays are throwing 97 [mph]. If you look at… Framber Valdez is a great example. He’s got a really good four-seam, a really good curveball, and a really good changeup. He does have a slider that he uses in certain situations, but for the most part, his put-out-pitch is his curveball. When you have pitchers that are dominant… like Chris Sale here [in Boston]. He’s always been known for his slider, and he’s going to throw his slider.
“For me, it’s different. I don’t have the velo, I’m 90–91, so I’ve got to locate more. I’ve got to mix more. It’s about utilizing all of my pitches as much as I can. I need to spread the zone out as much as possible with pitches going in different directions. I would love to be an overpowering pitcher, but I’m not. I need to use what I’m able to do as my advantage.”
Laurila: Which pitchers in the league would you bucket yourself with?
Dunning: “One of the people I learned a lot from last year was Martín Pérez. He obviously had a fantastic year, but it was his style of pitching, his being able to go backdoor cut, front-door sink, expand the zone. He used a lot of movements from side-to-side, up-to-down. Kyle Gibson is another one. Four-seams up, sinkers down, cutters up and away to a righty, front hip to a lefty. Again, it’s utilizing all of my pitches in certain scenarios. Sequencing is the biggest thing.”
Laurila: Is your game-to-game mix dictated more by scouting reports, or more by the feel you have for your pitches on a given day?
Dunning: “We have a plan going into each game, but for certain hitters… yesterday, for example. [Jarren] Duran had really good at-bats. I thought I pitched him decently well, but he was able to tag on some extra-base hits against me. First at-bat, I tried to go slider back-foot, and while I did leave it a little bit in the zone, it was still a quality pitch in the zone, He ended up hammering it for a triple.
“It took me two at-bats to figure it out. We tried different things. We had a scouting report going in, [and] first at-bat we went with the scouting report, but he put some really good swings on the ball. So you have to adjust with how the game goes. And if something’s not working, say I’m not landing my slider, then I might not be throwing my slider as much as ideally I want to. I’d have to figure out another way to get people out.”
Laurila: Do you care about strikeouts?
Dunning: “I mean, what pitcher doesn’t? I obviously like strikeouts, but I also know who I am. I wouldn’t say that I don’t try to get strikeouts. If you watch a lot of my games, you’ll see me throw quality pitches and get strikeouts. I’ll also get jam-shots. Against the Yankees, I had a check-swing ground ball to first base against [Giancarlo] Stanton on a pitch that would have bounced. Things like that.
“But no. I mean, I’m a sinkerballer. I try to work quick and get quick outs. I try to miss barrels and get the ball on the ground as much as possible, because I have a talented defense behind me. So yeah, I’d like to get more strikeouts, but for the most part I kind of just play with the cards that are dealt.”
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/crafty-and- ... een-dealt/
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Re: White Sox non-prospect News
Miguel Vargas homered Tuesday for the third time in his last four games with Triple-A Oklahoma City.
The Dodgers have to be happy with how Vargas is performing since his demotion; he’s hitting .313/.425/.597 with five homers in 16 games. It’s not likely to earn him another chance right away, but it’s still good news.
https://www.nbcsports.com/fantasy/baseb ... ff5d660000
The Dodgers have to be happy with how Vargas is performing since his demotion; he’s hitting .313/.425/.597 with five homers in 16 games. It’s not likely to earn him another chance right away, but it’s still good news.
https://www.nbcsports.com/fantasy/baseb ... ff5d660000
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Re: White Sox non-prospect News
No longer a prospect but probably my #5 SP next season:
Reese Olson was charged with four runs over five innings on Friday in a loss to the Rays.
Olson was tagged for a pair of runs in the first and second innings on five hits, including a two-run homer by Jose Siri, before settling in and keeping Tampa Bay off the scoreboard into the middle innings. He finished with three strikeouts and also issued three walks. The 24-year-old rookie right-hander will carry a respectable 4.94 ERA, 1.17 WHIP and 50/13 K/BB ratio across 54 2/3 innings (12 appearances, nine starts) into a home outing Wednesday against the division-rival Twins.
https://www.nbcsports.com/fantasy/baseb ... r-news?p=2
Reese Olson was charged with four runs over five innings on Friday in a loss to the Rays.
Olson was tagged for a pair of runs in the first and second innings on five hits, including a two-run homer by Jose Siri, before settling in and keeping Tampa Bay off the scoreboard into the middle innings. He finished with three strikeouts and also issued three walks. The 24-year-old rookie right-hander will carry a respectable 4.94 ERA, 1.17 WHIP and 50/13 K/BB ratio across 54 2/3 innings (12 appearances, nine starts) into a home outing Wednesday against the division-rival Twins.
https://www.nbcsports.com/fantasy/baseb ... r-news?p=2
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Re: White Sox non-prospect News
There was good reason to be skeptical of Jack Suwinski coming into the season. Too much nothing, not enough all in his Three True Outcomes game. A dime a dozen, even assuming full-time play, which was not a safe assumption. What happened?
Jack dramatically cut his O-zone swings, from a pretty good 27.4% to a great 20.5%, in line with his walks up to 14%. His hard hit rate is through the roof to 50%. Meanwhile his ground-ball rate is the lowest in baseball. Yes, he still strikes out way too much, and with that GB rate he cannot sustain even a mediocre BA, but long hot streaks are also likely and he’s quietly having a Kyle Schwarber season. And he just turned 25 with a Sw/Str of 10.7%. That’s pretty good for his kind of power, with a fair chance to improve.
And speaking of growth, he’s showing 86th % Sprint Speed and should have no trouble swiping a dozen bags. When his type starts to go next year, jump in.
Caveat Emptor: You know this, but the Three True Outcome hitters are slump-prone. Deep-slump-prone.
Jack dramatically cut his O-zone swings, from a pretty good 27.4% to a great 20.5%, in line with his walks up to 14%. His hard hit rate is through the roof to 50%. Meanwhile his ground-ball rate is the lowest in baseball. Yes, he still strikes out way too much, and with that GB rate he cannot sustain even a mediocre BA, but long hot streaks are also likely and he’s quietly having a Kyle Schwarber season. And he just turned 25 with a Sw/Str of 10.7%. That’s pretty good for his kind of power, with a fair chance to improve.
And speaking of growth, he’s showing 86th % Sprint Speed and should have no trouble swiping a dozen bags. When his type starts to go next year, jump in.
Caveat Emptor: You know this, but the Three True Outcome hitters are slump-prone. Deep-slump-prone.
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Re: White Sox non-prospect News
James Outman went 1-for-3 and slugged a two-run homer on Saturday night, propelling the Dodgers to a 4-1 victory over the Rockies.
The 26-year-old outfielder clobbered a go-ahead 387-foot blast off of Peter Lambert in the second inning, giving the Dodgers a 3-1 lead they would never relinquish. Outman has slowed his pace offensively since his hot start to the season, but he’s still hitting a respectable .257/.362/.439 to go with 14 homers and 51 RBI in what has been an impressive rookie campaign.
https://www.nbcsports.com/fantasy/baseb ... bb368e0000
The 26-year-old outfielder clobbered a go-ahead 387-foot blast off of Peter Lambert in the second inning, giving the Dodgers a 3-1 lead they would never relinquish. Outman has slowed his pace offensively since his hot start to the season, but he’s still hitting a respectable .257/.362/.439 to go with 14 homers and 51 RBI in what has been an impressive rookie campaign.
https://www.nbcsports.com/fantasy/baseb ... bb368e0000
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Re: White Sox non-prospect News
Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said Thursday that Casey Mize (elbow) is expected to face hitters “pretty soon.”
Hinch explained that Mize is still working through the bullpen phase of his rehab as he makes his way back from Tommy John surgery. He’s throwing at full effort and using his entire arsenal of pitches, so he’s not far off from facing hitters. The expectation is he’ll get there in the next 10-14 days. It’s unclear what the Tigers plan to do from there, but all signs point to him being at full strength to begin 2024.
https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/casey-mize/48685
Hinch explained that Mize is still working through the bullpen phase of his rehab as he makes his way back from Tommy John surgery. He’s throwing at full effort and using his entire arsenal of pitches, so he’s not far off from facing hitters. The expectation is he’ll get there in the next 10-14 days. It’s unclear what the Tigers plan to do from there, but all signs point to him being at full strength to begin 2024.
https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/casey-mize/48685
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Re: White Sox non-prospect News
And yet on my staff of walking wounded, he (and his 104 ERA+ projection) will likely be my ace for the remainder of the 2023 IBC season ...
Zack Grienke (elbow) is on track to return to the Royals rotation next week.
Grienke has been on the shelf since early August with right elbow soreness. Royals manager Matt Quatraro told reporters that the veteran has been throwing bullpen sessions in Arizona and will likely return to the team next week. The veteran posted a career-worst 5.53 ERA before the injury and isn’t relevant in most fantasy leagues at this point of his career.
https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/zack-greinke/49024
Zack Grienke (elbow) is on track to return to the Royals rotation next week.
Grienke has been on the shelf since early August with right elbow soreness. Royals manager Matt Quatraro told reporters that the veteran has been throwing bullpen sessions in Arizona and will likely return to the team next week. The veteran posted a career-worst 5.53 ERA before the injury and isn’t relevant in most fantasy leagues at this point of his career.
https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/zack-greinke/49024
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Re: White Sox non-prospect News
[Zack] Greinke allowed two hits and struck out five without walking a batter over four scoreless innings Tuesday versus the Athletics.
Greinke was also efficient, throwing 38 of 53 pitches for strikes in his first outing since Aug. 6. He was dealing with elbow soreness, but it looks like that's out of the way now. The veteran right-hander still sports an ugly 5.34 ERA, 1.25 WHIP and 78:15 K:BB through 114.2 innings over 23 outings this season. Greinke may still need a few more outings to build up his pitch count. He's projected for a home appearance versus the Pirates next week, but it's unclear if he'll start or work as a piggyback option again.
https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseb ... in-return/
Greinke was also efficient, throwing 38 of 53 pitches for strikes in his first outing since Aug. 6. He was dealing with elbow soreness, but it looks like that's out of the way now. The veteran right-hander still sports an ugly 5.34 ERA, 1.25 WHIP and 78:15 K:BB through 114.2 innings over 23 outings this season. Greinke may still need a few more outings to build up his pitch count. He's projected for a home appearance versus the Pirates next week, but it's unclear if he'll start or work as a piggyback option again.
https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseb ... in-return/
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Re: White Sox non-prospect News
Casey Mize (elbow) threw 20 pitches in a live batting practice session on Saturday.
Mize reportedly faced Parker Meadows and Carson Kelly in the throwing session. Chris McCosky of the Detroit News writes that his fastball sat around 95 mph and his breaking ball had some “sharp bite.” It’s unclear if Mize will throw another BP session before beginning an official rehab assignment, but either way he’s progressing well.
https://www.nbcsports.com/fantasy/baseb ... 2eba490000
Mize reportedly faced Parker Meadows and Carson Kelly in the throwing session. Chris McCosky of the Detroit News writes that his fastball sat around 95 mph and his breaking ball had some “sharp bite.” It’s unclear if Mize will throw another BP session before beginning an official rehab assignment, but either way he’s progressing well.
https://www.nbcsports.com/fantasy/baseb ... 2eba490000
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Re: White Sox non-prospect News
Garrett Crochet is alive, and well enough.
He pitched a 1-2-3 inning for the Birmingham Barons against Biloxi on Wednesday night with a pair of strikeouts, including a four-pitch strikeout of No. 2 overall prospect Jackson Chourio.
Crochet hadn’t pitched in more than two months, as his rehab stint from shoulder inflammation was cut short after just two appearances, the latter one on July 6. Crochet worked 95-97 with his fastball, mixing in his slider and his changeup. As long as you’re not expecting triple-digit heat anymore, he looked fine.
The Barons only have one series remaining after this week, but Charlotte’s season extends a week beyond that, so there’s plenty of time for Crochet to complete a rehab stint if his body is up to it. What that means for his role next season is less clear.
https://soxmachine.com/2023/09/white-so ... pt-6-2023/
He pitched a 1-2-3 inning for the Birmingham Barons against Biloxi on Wednesday night with a pair of strikeouts, including a four-pitch strikeout of No. 2 overall prospect Jackson Chourio.
Crochet hadn’t pitched in more than two months, as his rehab stint from shoulder inflammation was cut short after just two appearances, the latter one on July 6. Crochet worked 95-97 with his fastball, mixing in his slider and his changeup. As long as you’re not expecting triple-digit heat anymore, he looked fine.
The Barons only have one series remaining after this week, but Charlotte’s season extends a week beyond that, so there’s plenty of time for Crochet to complete a rehab stint if his body is up to it. What that means for his role next season is less clear.
https://soxmachine.com/2023/09/white-so ... pt-6-2023/
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Re: White Sox non-prospect News
Casey Mize (elbow) is scheduled to throw a bullpen session on Saturday.
It’s the first time that he’s done so since he was shut down on September 1 after experiencing fatigue following a live batting practice session. It seems unlikely that he’ll be able to make it back in time to pitch for the Tigers’ before season’s end — though they may want to get him back out there for an inning or two just so he has a good feeling heading into the off-season. Either way, Mize shouldn’t be relevant from a fantasy perspective until the 2024 campaign.
https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/casey-mize/48685
It’s the first time that he’s done so since he was shut down on September 1 after experiencing fatigue following a live batting practice session. It seems unlikely that he’ll be able to make it back in time to pitch for the Tigers’ before season’s end — though they may want to get him back out there for an inning or two just so he has a good feeling heading into the off-season. Either way, Mize shouldn’t be relevant from a fantasy perspective until the 2024 campaign.
https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/casey-mize/48685
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Re: White Sox (2023) non-prospect News
Kirby Yates had all but closed the door on the NL East, but he couldn’t quite get the latch to click. Tasked with preserving a 4–1 lead on the road against the Phillies, Yates set down Alec Bohm and Bryson Stott without much undue fuss, but Brandon Marsh just would not go away.
Yates has two punches to throw: a hard-fading four-seam fastball, and a splitter that drops out of the air like a goose that’s run into a power line. Down 2–0 to Marsh, he threw one blow after another: fastball up, splitter down. Marsh kept parrying the ball away — five foul balls in a row. Finally, the 36-year-old righthander ground the ball into his mitt and initiated the herky-jerky delivery that once made him one of the best relief pitchers in baseball, stabbing his arm down behind his right leg before bringing it up and around as he leapt forward off the rubber. Another splitter — and finally, Marsh swung over this one.
Yates picked up the save. The Braves, for the sixth year in a row, were NL East champions.
Four years ago, it would’ve only seemed natural that Yates would be the one to save a decisive game for the best team in baseball. In 2019, he was the All-Star closer for the Padres, and pointing out his accolades — he led the NL in saves and picked up some down-ballot Cy Young votes — understate how good he was that season. That year, Yates perfected that fastball-splitter combination and was close to unhittable. He struck out 41.3% of opponents, compared to a walk rate of just 5.3%. His eye-popping 1.19 ERA was backed up, thanks to that K/BB ratio and the fact that he allowed just two home runs all season, by an even more impressive 1.30 FIP.
It took Yates some time to refine his game to the point where he could close out big league games. An unsigned third-day pick out of high school, he missed what would have been his first two pro seasons after having Tommy John surgery, then became a workhorse reliever at Yavapai College, an Arizona community college that’s produced some 21 big leaguers, including Curt Schilling, Ken Giles, and Kole Calhoun. Yates went undrafted out of Yavapai and signed with the Rays as an amateur free agent in June 2009. It took him until 2014 to reach the majors, and within two and a half years of his debut, he had bounced from Tampa Bay to Cleveland to the Yankees to the Angels. Finally, in April 2017, the Padres claimed him off waivers.
His first year in San Diego, Yates started showing the hellacious arm-side movement that would make him an All-Star, but opponents slugged .656 off his slider. So in 2018, he essentially junked it, throwing either his fastball or splitter about 95% of the time. By the season’s end, he was closing games for the Padres. A year after that, he was the best closer in baseball.
“I think [the fastball and splitter] complement each other really well,” he told me before Wednesday’s game. “I think with my low arm slot, when I throw a four-seamer, it has carry and rides a little bit, so there’s a separation between the two. When they’re both on, hitters have to pick one and try to go hit that. If they’re caught in between, it’s usually a tough path for them. It’s a cat-and-mouse game, so if I throw the right pitch, usually it’s going to work.”
Yates’ reign at the top of the game was short-lived. In 2020, he made just six mostly ineffective appearances, allowing nearly as many earned runs in 4 1/3 innings (six) as he had the previous year in 60 2/3 innings (eight). On August 14, 2020, pitching for the first time in a week, Yates struck out Daulton Varsho, his first batter of the game, on a wild pitch. He then left the game with elbow discomfort and missed the rest of the season with bone chips in his elbow.
That winter, Yates signed an incentive-laden contract with the Blue Jays, but he never threw a meaningful pitch for Toronto, undergoing his second Tommy John surgery just before Opening Day, the day before he turned 34. “I spent my 34th birthday walking through the airport in a sling and cast,” he said.
Another creative contract — two years, backloaded, with a team option for a third — brought him to Atlanta, where he rehabbed for most of the 2022 season before finally getting back into game action last August.
“I made it back last year, but to be completely honest, the way I felt last year pitching, I didn’t know what this year would hold, how effective I’d be, or how long I’d be able to pitch,” he said. “Just based on the way the elbow was… obviously I had to go back on the IL. So that’s a telltale sign I didn’t feel great. Even at the beginning of [2023], it was still kind of a question mark.”
That 2019 campaign doesn’t seem like it’s particularly far in the past. Yates’ last All-Star appearance was the same year as Cody Bellinger’s, and teams were still tripping over themselves this past offseason to give the former MVP a chance to return to form. Yates’ actual layoff, in terms of regular-season action, was a hair under two years. But he doesn’t count his brief attempts to pitch in 2020 and ’22 as particularly meaningful, and his matter-of-fact appraisal of his injury layoff shows how treacherous his road back to the top really was.
“I didn’t pitch for three years, really,” he said. “I had bits and pieces of it, but last year I wasn’t ever myself. This is the first time where I felt like myself.
“The best analogy I can use is: If you’ve read a book that you know, and three years later you get asked questions about that book, you understand the premise and what the book’s about, but there’s a lot of little details that you probably need to read the book again to figure out,” he said. “So I think I’m in the process of reading that book again.”
Yates says he spent the first part of the season building up arm strength, and he took the mound hoping merely to get through each performance. But in the past six or seven weeks, he feels like he’s finally been able to execute a game plan.
Kirby Yates in 2023
G IP SO BB ERA AVG OBP SLG WPA
Through 7/26 38 38 1/3 52 22 3.52 .188 .307 .370 -0.38
Since 7/28 19 18 1/3 24 12 0.98 .088 .268 .140 0.42
Once Yates got back to re-reading his book, it’s remarkable how closely his repertoire now maps onto what he was doing in 2019, even after three lost seasons plus a couple more months of getting comfortable in his own skin again. He’s throwing his fastball and splitter in just about the same proportions, with the same movement and velocity to within an inch of break and a couple tenths of a mile per hour.
Kirby Yates’ Repertoire, Before and After Injury
Fastball Splitter
Year Usage Velo V-Mov (in.) H-Mov (in.) wOBA Usage Velo V-Mov (in.) H-Mov (in.) wOBA
2019 57.0 93.5 17.3 14.2 .294 42.1 86.3 37.6 13.6 .200
2023 53.4 93.6 17.5 13.6 .307 44.9 86.1 37.4 12.5 .236
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
“I think the stuff has been there,” Yates said. “I won’t say the entire time, but especially in the second half of the season, the stuff has definitely been there. I honestly think I’m throwing a little harder this year than I have in the past.”
There’s one chapter left for Yates to rewrite before he returns to his full 2019 form, and he’s fully aware of it.
“When I was really good, what separated me was my command,” he says. “I didn’t walk guys. I rarely put myself into bad counts, and even when I did, I could get myself right back in the count with either pitch. Honestly, I think that’s the only thing that hasn’t truly come back.”
Kirby Yates’ Command, Before and After Injury
Year BB% Rank Zone% Rank Z-Contact% Rank O-Swing% Rank
2019 5.3 17th 48.1 105th 76.0 11th 32.8 35th
2023 14.5 156th 45.4 151st 81.6 56th 29.3 83rd
Rank out of 158 qualified relievers in 2019 and 161 in 2023
Sure enough, Yates’ command, once one of his greatest strengths, is now a relative weakness. His walk rate is the most concerning number (incidentally, it’s also tanking his FIP), but Yates is also giving up more contact on pitches inside the strike zone and getting fewer hitters to chase outside it. He is confident his command will return as well.
“I just think it’s time off,” he said. “It’s that book, it’s really trying to get the little details that made you so good in the past and trying to relearn those. And the only way, honestly, is to go out there and suck and kind of re-evaluate yourself.”
That constant self-evaluation is particularly important to Yates because his out pitch, his splitter, isn’t the kind of thing he can just grip and rip.
“My mechanics have to be pretty good for it to be good,” he said. “When I have sloppy mechanics or I can’t repeat my delivery, it gets flat and doesn’t have the same sharp bite. Early in the year, I was throwing splits like I’d never really thrown before. They didn’t do anything. So I had to go out there and suck a few times so I could make the necessary adjustments.
“It’s still a battle,” he added. “I’m not sitting here saying that I’m 100% a finished product and I’m back to where I was or as good as I think I can be coming back to this yet. It’s still a work in progress. But I think I’m in a good spot now. I’m confident that I can go out every night and put up a zero or help us win.”
Throughout our conversation, I kept thinking that Yates seemed very patient and forbearing for someone who made his major league debut at 27, didn’t peak until he was in his early 30s, and (for all intents and purposes) missed his age-33–35 seasons recovering from his second Tommy John surgery. Ballplayers live such unusual lives that it’s sometimes hard to empathize with them, but what Yates has gone through the past four years is all too familiar. I wanted to talk to him not just because I enjoyed watching him when he was at his best with the Padres, but because I was curious how he’d processed that three-year rebuilding process at an age when most pitchers are starting to contemplate retirement.
“Maybe missing three years puts three years on the back end of it, so I have a chance to pitch until I’m 40,” he said. “If I had been pitching these three years, that’s a lot more games, a lot more wear and tear. I don’t feel any different than I did four years ago. I’m older, but I don’t necessarily feel older, you know what I mean? I’m still able to do this at the same level.”
As he’s rounded into form, Yates has found himself taking on a larger role, spelling Raisel Iglesias and A.J. Minter for occasional lower-pressure save opportunities. He has five saves on the year, three of which have come in September and two in the past week. All of that — the injury rehab, relearning himself, pitching through uncertain mechanics and flat splitters — is in the pursuit of one end that is now startlingly proximate. Yates has suited up in the regular season for two playoff teams (the 2020 Padres and last year’s Braves) but still, at age 36, has yet to throw a pitch in October. That postseason debut is now a near-certainty.
“There’s definitely high expectations. They demand a lot out of you,” he said of the Braves. “But in return, this is what you get, right? You get a team that’s really good and has a chance to win the World Series. And as a guy in my position, a guy my age, that’s pretty important to me right now.”
About 20 minutes after Yates struck out Marsh to clinch the division title, I went to see him again. The visiting clubhouse at Citizens Bank Park isn’t very big to begin with, and the screens erected to protect the lockers from champagne spray had pushed the Braves’ players, coaches and support staff, along with reporters and cameramen on hand to record the event — a few dozen people in all — into a claustrophobic corridor that ran through the middle third of the room. The air was so thick with champagne spray and cigar smoke it was hard to breathe without coughing.
Yates is only 5-foot-10, so I was worried I’d have trouble finding him in the forest of identically dressed ballplayers. But there he was, standing in the middle of the room by a tub of ice and beer, holding an unopened bottle of champagne in his fist. His clothes, hair, and beard were soaked. Not wanting to intrude too much more on the moment, I asked him only one question: How did it feel to be the one to get that last out?
“It’s weird how everything works out,” Yates responded. He paused for a moment and looked away. “Like we talked about earlier, the last three years have been odd and weird and difficult. But to just have the ball, to have the opportunity to go out and experience this, made it all worth it.”
I excused myself, and Yates went back to unscrewing the muselet from his champagne bottle. In three weeks, he’ll pitch in the postseason for the first time, finally feeling like himself again.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-second- ... rby-yates/
Yates has two punches to throw: a hard-fading four-seam fastball, and a splitter that drops out of the air like a goose that’s run into a power line. Down 2–0 to Marsh, he threw one blow after another: fastball up, splitter down. Marsh kept parrying the ball away — five foul balls in a row. Finally, the 36-year-old righthander ground the ball into his mitt and initiated the herky-jerky delivery that once made him one of the best relief pitchers in baseball, stabbing his arm down behind his right leg before bringing it up and around as he leapt forward off the rubber. Another splitter — and finally, Marsh swung over this one.
Yates picked up the save. The Braves, for the sixth year in a row, were NL East champions.
Four years ago, it would’ve only seemed natural that Yates would be the one to save a decisive game for the best team in baseball. In 2019, he was the All-Star closer for the Padres, and pointing out his accolades — he led the NL in saves and picked up some down-ballot Cy Young votes — understate how good he was that season. That year, Yates perfected that fastball-splitter combination and was close to unhittable. He struck out 41.3% of opponents, compared to a walk rate of just 5.3%. His eye-popping 1.19 ERA was backed up, thanks to that K/BB ratio and the fact that he allowed just two home runs all season, by an even more impressive 1.30 FIP.
It took Yates some time to refine his game to the point where he could close out big league games. An unsigned third-day pick out of high school, he missed what would have been his first two pro seasons after having Tommy John surgery, then became a workhorse reliever at Yavapai College, an Arizona community college that’s produced some 21 big leaguers, including Curt Schilling, Ken Giles, and Kole Calhoun. Yates went undrafted out of Yavapai and signed with the Rays as an amateur free agent in June 2009. It took him until 2014 to reach the majors, and within two and a half years of his debut, he had bounced from Tampa Bay to Cleveland to the Yankees to the Angels. Finally, in April 2017, the Padres claimed him off waivers.
His first year in San Diego, Yates started showing the hellacious arm-side movement that would make him an All-Star, but opponents slugged .656 off his slider. So in 2018, he essentially junked it, throwing either his fastball or splitter about 95% of the time. By the season’s end, he was closing games for the Padres. A year after that, he was the best closer in baseball.
“I think [the fastball and splitter] complement each other really well,” he told me before Wednesday’s game. “I think with my low arm slot, when I throw a four-seamer, it has carry and rides a little bit, so there’s a separation between the two. When they’re both on, hitters have to pick one and try to go hit that. If they’re caught in between, it’s usually a tough path for them. It’s a cat-and-mouse game, so if I throw the right pitch, usually it’s going to work.”
Yates’ reign at the top of the game was short-lived. In 2020, he made just six mostly ineffective appearances, allowing nearly as many earned runs in 4 1/3 innings (six) as he had the previous year in 60 2/3 innings (eight). On August 14, 2020, pitching for the first time in a week, Yates struck out Daulton Varsho, his first batter of the game, on a wild pitch. He then left the game with elbow discomfort and missed the rest of the season with bone chips in his elbow.
That winter, Yates signed an incentive-laden contract with the Blue Jays, but he never threw a meaningful pitch for Toronto, undergoing his second Tommy John surgery just before Opening Day, the day before he turned 34. “I spent my 34th birthday walking through the airport in a sling and cast,” he said.
Another creative contract — two years, backloaded, with a team option for a third — brought him to Atlanta, where he rehabbed for most of the 2022 season before finally getting back into game action last August.
“I made it back last year, but to be completely honest, the way I felt last year pitching, I didn’t know what this year would hold, how effective I’d be, or how long I’d be able to pitch,” he said. “Just based on the way the elbow was… obviously I had to go back on the IL. So that’s a telltale sign I didn’t feel great. Even at the beginning of [2023], it was still kind of a question mark.”
That 2019 campaign doesn’t seem like it’s particularly far in the past. Yates’ last All-Star appearance was the same year as Cody Bellinger’s, and teams were still tripping over themselves this past offseason to give the former MVP a chance to return to form. Yates’ actual layoff, in terms of regular-season action, was a hair under two years. But he doesn’t count his brief attempts to pitch in 2020 and ’22 as particularly meaningful, and his matter-of-fact appraisal of his injury layoff shows how treacherous his road back to the top really was.
“I didn’t pitch for three years, really,” he said. “I had bits and pieces of it, but last year I wasn’t ever myself. This is the first time where I felt like myself.
“The best analogy I can use is: If you’ve read a book that you know, and three years later you get asked questions about that book, you understand the premise and what the book’s about, but there’s a lot of little details that you probably need to read the book again to figure out,” he said. “So I think I’m in the process of reading that book again.”
Yates says he spent the first part of the season building up arm strength, and he took the mound hoping merely to get through each performance. But in the past six or seven weeks, he feels like he’s finally been able to execute a game plan.
Kirby Yates in 2023
G IP SO BB ERA AVG OBP SLG WPA
Through 7/26 38 38 1/3 52 22 3.52 .188 .307 .370 -0.38
Since 7/28 19 18 1/3 24 12 0.98 .088 .268 .140 0.42
Once Yates got back to re-reading his book, it’s remarkable how closely his repertoire now maps onto what he was doing in 2019, even after three lost seasons plus a couple more months of getting comfortable in his own skin again. He’s throwing his fastball and splitter in just about the same proportions, with the same movement and velocity to within an inch of break and a couple tenths of a mile per hour.
Kirby Yates’ Repertoire, Before and After Injury
Fastball Splitter
Year Usage Velo V-Mov (in.) H-Mov (in.) wOBA Usage Velo V-Mov (in.) H-Mov (in.) wOBA
2019 57.0 93.5 17.3 14.2 .294 42.1 86.3 37.6 13.6 .200
2023 53.4 93.6 17.5 13.6 .307 44.9 86.1 37.4 12.5 .236
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
“I think the stuff has been there,” Yates said. “I won’t say the entire time, but especially in the second half of the season, the stuff has definitely been there. I honestly think I’m throwing a little harder this year than I have in the past.”
There’s one chapter left for Yates to rewrite before he returns to his full 2019 form, and he’s fully aware of it.
“When I was really good, what separated me was my command,” he says. “I didn’t walk guys. I rarely put myself into bad counts, and even when I did, I could get myself right back in the count with either pitch. Honestly, I think that’s the only thing that hasn’t truly come back.”
Kirby Yates’ Command, Before and After Injury
Year BB% Rank Zone% Rank Z-Contact% Rank O-Swing% Rank
2019 5.3 17th 48.1 105th 76.0 11th 32.8 35th
2023 14.5 156th 45.4 151st 81.6 56th 29.3 83rd
Rank out of 158 qualified relievers in 2019 and 161 in 2023
Sure enough, Yates’ command, once one of his greatest strengths, is now a relative weakness. His walk rate is the most concerning number (incidentally, it’s also tanking his FIP), but Yates is also giving up more contact on pitches inside the strike zone and getting fewer hitters to chase outside it. He is confident his command will return as well.
“I just think it’s time off,” he said. “It’s that book, it’s really trying to get the little details that made you so good in the past and trying to relearn those. And the only way, honestly, is to go out there and suck and kind of re-evaluate yourself.”
That constant self-evaluation is particularly important to Yates because his out pitch, his splitter, isn’t the kind of thing he can just grip and rip.
“My mechanics have to be pretty good for it to be good,” he said. “When I have sloppy mechanics or I can’t repeat my delivery, it gets flat and doesn’t have the same sharp bite. Early in the year, I was throwing splits like I’d never really thrown before. They didn’t do anything. So I had to go out there and suck a few times so I could make the necessary adjustments.
“It’s still a battle,” he added. “I’m not sitting here saying that I’m 100% a finished product and I’m back to where I was or as good as I think I can be coming back to this yet. It’s still a work in progress. But I think I’m in a good spot now. I’m confident that I can go out every night and put up a zero or help us win.”
Throughout our conversation, I kept thinking that Yates seemed very patient and forbearing for someone who made his major league debut at 27, didn’t peak until he was in his early 30s, and (for all intents and purposes) missed his age-33–35 seasons recovering from his second Tommy John surgery. Ballplayers live such unusual lives that it’s sometimes hard to empathize with them, but what Yates has gone through the past four years is all too familiar. I wanted to talk to him not just because I enjoyed watching him when he was at his best with the Padres, but because I was curious how he’d processed that three-year rebuilding process at an age when most pitchers are starting to contemplate retirement.
“Maybe missing three years puts three years on the back end of it, so I have a chance to pitch until I’m 40,” he said. “If I had been pitching these three years, that’s a lot more games, a lot more wear and tear. I don’t feel any different than I did four years ago. I’m older, but I don’t necessarily feel older, you know what I mean? I’m still able to do this at the same level.”
As he’s rounded into form, Yates has found himself taking on a larger role, spelling Raisel Iglesias and A.J. Minter for occasional lower-pressure save opportunities. He has five saves on the year, three of which have come in September and two in the past week. All of that — the injury rehab, relearning himself, pitching through uncertain mechanics and flat splitters — is in the pursuit of one end that is now startlingly proximate. Yates has suited up in the regular season for two playoff teams (the 2020 Padres and last year’s Braves) but still, at age 36, has yet to throw a pitch in October. That postseason debut is now a near-certainty.
“There’s definitely high expectations. They demand a lot out of you,” he said of the Braves. “But in return, this is what you get, right? You get a team that’s really good and has a chance to win the World Series. And as a guy in my position, a guy my age, that’s pretty important to me right now.”
About 20 minutes after Yates struck out Marsh to clinch the division title, I went to see him again. The visiting clubhouse at Citizens Bank Park isn’t very big to begin with, and the screens erected to protect the lockers from champagne spray had pushed the Braves’ players, coaches and support staff, along with reporters and cameramen on hand to record the event — a few dozen people in all — into a claustrophobic corridor that ran through the middle third of the room. The air was so thick with champagne spray and cigar smoke it was hard to breathe without coughing.
Yates is only 5-foot-10, so I was worried I’d have trouble finding him in the forest of identically dressed ballplayers. But there he was, standing in the middle of the room by a tub of ice and beer, holding an unopened bottle of champagne in his fist. His clothes, hair, and beard were soaked. Not wanting to intrude too much more on the moment, I asked him only one question: How did it feel to be the one to get that last out?
“It’s weird how everything works out,” Yates responded. He paused for a moment and looked away. “Like we talked about earlier, the last three years have been odd and weird and difficult. But to just have the ball, to have the opportunity to go out and experience this, made it all worth it.”
I excused myself, and Yates went back to unscrewing the muselet from his champagne bottle. In three weeks, he’ll pitch in the postseason for the first time, finally feeling like himself again.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-second- ... rby-yates/
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Padres
- Site Admin
- Posts: 4397
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- Name: Jim Berger
Re: White Sox (2023) non-prospect News
Garret Crochet (shoulder) is likely to be activated this week.
Crochet has reeled off four scoreless innings over four rehab appearances in the upper levels of Chicago’s minor league system on a recent rehab assignment and is scheduled to throw a bullpen session on Tuesday that will determine whether he’ll rejoin the White Sox’ pitching staff. The 24-year-old southpaw has been on the shelf since late June with left shoulder inflammation. He figures to make a couple appearances in the final week of the regular season and should be healthy entering the offseason.
https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/garrett-crochet/49213
Crochet has reeled off four scoreless innings over four rehab appearances in the upper levels of Chicago’s minor league system on a recent rehab assignment and is scheduled to throw a bullpen session on Tuesday that will determine whether he’ll rejoin the White Sox’ pitching staff. The 24-year-old southpaw has been on the shelf since late June with left shoulder inflammation. He figures to make a couple appearances in the final week of the regular season and should be healthy entering the offseason.
https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/garrett-crochet/49213
-
Padres
- Site Admin
- Posts: 4397
- Joined: Sat May 13, 2006 1:00 am
- Location: Wells, Maine
- Name: Jim Berger
Re: White Sox (2023) non-prospect News
Casey Mize (elbow) has been throwing bullpens at the Tigers’ spring training complex in Lakeland, Florida and will be a full go for the start of spring training.
The 26-year-old right-hander missed the entire 2023 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery. He nearly made it back in September though and will be 21 months removed from the surgery by the time March rolls around. Mize is likely to have some sort of innings limitation, but he’s still a highly intriguing talent and could shoot up fantasy draft boards depending on how he looks in Grapefruit League action.
https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/casey-mize/48685
The 26-year-old right-hander missed the entire 2023 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery. He nearly made it back in September though and will be 21 months removed from the surgery by the time March rolls around. Mize is likely to have some sort of innings limitation, but he’s still a highly intriguing talent and could shoot up fantasy draft boards depending on how he looks in Grapefruit League action.
https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/casey-mize/48685
