Photo Credit: Kevin Cunningham | Giant Futures
Spring has sprung. Blossoms have bloomed. And Opening Day has opened!
The 2024 season is officially underway — not quite so far underway that I’m inclined to start putting my Stats Reviews posts up just yet, but far enough underway that I know you have questions about it!
Indeed, we’re far enough into the season that leagues have begun handing out Player of the Week awards, so let’s begin today’s post with a big round of applause for Mason Black and Dylan Carmouche, who took home their league’s respective Pitcher of the Week honors. Nice going, guys!
My mailbag filled to bursting in just a couple of days — I can see you folks stockpiling questions on me! So let’s get into the new year’s new mailbag and see what’s on the minds of There R Giants’ readers. And if, by chance, you decide you’d like to read even more There R Giants content than just the weekly (or almost weekly, see below) mailbags….well, I’ve got you covered there.
And with that behind us, what are you folks thinking about today?
Ken Gregory
Why do the Giants seem to have given up on Heliot Ramos?
Does Casey Schmitt’s upside suggest that he could be a starting big league third baseman? What is his path with the Giants?
Now that Hunter Bishop is healthy, what are your thoughts on his potential. He’s lost a lot of time but the tools that made him a first rounder presumably haven’t changed. Do you believe he still could develop into an impact player at the major league level? Do you have any idea how Giants’ management views him?
Thanks for your great reporting and analysis!
One more...why isn't Walker Martin on the San Jose roster?
That’s quite a few questions, Ken! Let’s see if we can start the new year out with a leaner, less wordy Roger and bust right through them.
On Ramos, I would say it’s a combination of various evaluation tools. For one, he hasn’t ever looked particularly good in any of his major league appearances, which matters. Sometimes a couple days is all you get, as unfair as that may seem — and sometimes it’s all that good evaluators really need to know that something is amiss (I’m thinking back to the John Bowker or Jaylin Davis days here). And then, under Farhan Zaidi, the Giants have really prioritized good swing decisions and contact ability and I don’t think Ramos has ever really graded out well by those measures. And it’s entirely possible that point #2 has something to do with point #1.
As many strides as Ramos has made the last couple of years, we’re still very far from knowing if he can be as reliably productive a major leaguer as Austin Slater has been over his career. Let’s put it this way: the Giants have a large phalanx of analysts and they’re looking at much more data than merely a standard slash line to model their projections. They’re looking at quality of contact, quality of swing decisions, response to specific pitch types and more.
Just a final thought — I wrote earlier in the week that I thought Ramos had earned a real look, but I want to clarify that I’m not suggesting the team should jettison players like Mike Yastrzemski or Slater, who have established long track records of being useful major leaguers in order to wade into the unknown potential of Ramos. I think he has, however, worked his way into being the first outfield call up when need, or IL stint, arises. The Giants under Farhan Zaidi have established a culture of meritocracy where, as Zaidi has long said, they like to give players who have succeeded in Triple-A a chance. That’s why players like Yaz and Thairo Estrada and Tyler Rogers and Ryan Walker are on the club today (in fairness, it’s also why we’ve seen Davis, Joe McCarthy, Isan Diaz, and others float through the roster over the years). At this point, Ramos would seem to have cleared that bar and should be next man up.
His home run rampage this weekend notwithstanding, I think a best case outcome for Schmitt might be something like what Pittsburgh has gotten from Ke’Bryan Hayes the last few years: a 3b whose value comes primarily from an outstanding glove combined with a league averagish bat. That’s a very tricky path to trod — there’s a reason why there aren’t a bunch of Hayes types starting around the major leagues — and it’s entirely possible that a better team than the Pirates wouldn’t have had the patience to slog through Hayes’ long, slow path to averagish offensive production.
I’ve never been a real believer in Schmitt’s potential to be a 25 HR power guy, and below that you start getting to “under average power” pretty quickly for a corner bat. That means the glove at 3b would have to be more than just “really good” — it needs to be closer to a “platinum glove” truly special player. With the Giants at this point, I’d say his best path might be as a UT infielder who moves around 2b/SS/3b, although it’s possible that a year from now Matt Chapman will opt out of his deal and the Giants will be stuck looking around for a 3b again.
Before they can think about looking at Schmitt, however, he needs to figure out his plate discipline issues, which, as I’ve written about some this week, have reverted to the highly aggressive approach we saw cause him problems last year in the majors. I posted this in one of the regular daily posts this week, but this graphic from Tyler Warren (you can follow Tyler’s work on Patreon at Prospect Alchemist) suggests that there’s still work to be done on Casey’s approach at the plate (this data is a few days old at this time, but it helps illustrate the point very well). He’s been particularly in “Swing” mode so far whenever he identifies fastballs, whether they’re close to the plate or not:
Jim Callis and I talk a bit about Schmitt (and many other players) on this week’s podcast, which hit your feeds yesterday.
Bishop looks really good so far. I’ve been impressed by how athletic he looks and the balance he’s shown at the plate, especially given how long he’s been off. He needs to stay healthy and get reps, and then we’ll see where he is. Obviously, time is not a friend of the prospect who is losing seasons to injury. In recent seasons, most value for major league clubs has been coming from 26-28 year-olds, and Bishop is just entering that envelope this year.
Still, we’ve seen with Yaz, to take one obvious example, that being a little behind in development doesn’t have to be the end of the story for a player. Every Giants’ fan should light whatever it is they personally light to grant Bishop a little good health luck this year. The Giants remain very high on his abilities and his chances — and certainly they think very, very highly of the person. As Hunter himself said on last week’s podcast, every time his development starts and stops, it’s a little like starting over. Let’s hope that the false starts are done for a while and he can start to get in a groove.
Martin will be starting his career in the ACL, it looks like. As for why, the answer, as I’ve been told, is that they believe that’s the best place for his development right now. That sounds like circular reasoning when I explain it that way — but really it just means that the org isn’t terribly interested in explaining their real reasoning. Let’s assume that they’ve decided some aspect of his game isn’t ready for full-season competition just yet. I suspect we’ll be seeing him in San Jose sometime before the season ends. I plan on making a quick trip out to the complex league once the season begins and will get you some reporting from there on how he looks.
Oh, and thank you! It’s my pleasure. And let me take your compliment as impetus to thank all of my subscribers, who enable me to do the work I do.
Update on less wordy Rog: not looking good so far.
Kent Iverson
Hi Roger,
I have a simple question: is it too early to be really excited about Jonah Cox?
Any early thoughts on Jonah Cox and where he fits in the top 50 (if at all)?
I’m not going to police your excitement level, Kent! Go ahead and be as excited as you want. He’s a fun player! Not really sure why the A’s decided they wanted to pay $10 million to be rid of him.
I think the big question with Cox will be how his swing plays in pro ball. He seems to have a slightly downward bat path that doesn’t seem built to generate air power. But he’s fast, athletic, and has a good amount of twitchiness about him. He looks like he can cover real ground in CF, and seems at least capable at 2b. It’s a fun profile!
As for Joseph’s question, I’d definitely have him in there somewhere, probably in that 30-35 range, somewhere close to Cole Foster maybe?
Richmond has some players we used to be really excited about, like Will Wilson and Logan Wyatt. What is the outlook for players in their situation? Prospects that are getting older and have fallen from the top prospect lists?
In my media day access with Richmond Manager Dennis Pelfrey, I asked him what his message was to players who were repeating the level (like Wyatt) or even being pushed back down a level (like Wilson and few others in the Giants’ organization this year). His answer was to focus on the work. And I think that’s really the answer to your questions as well.
Whether players were ever on top of the prospect lists or they’re anonymous 20th rounders or Indy ball vets, the answer is always to focus on the work and let that drive them. I sat down with long time Indy vet Tanner Kiest this week to talk about his journey, and that’s basically the lesson he delivered, as well. He’s kept at it for more than a decade because it was what he wanted to be doing and believed in himself, so he kept after it, trying to find the improvements that would push him forward. Players keep trying to get better, analyze what can be improved upon, and put in the sweat equity to raise their game to the next level — and from there hope that opportunities open up.
And I guess finally, it’s important that players make sure they’re still getting joy from playing the game and don’t grind so hard that they lose the thing that made them want to invest so much of themselves in the first place. So long as all of that is true, there are still rewards to be had. In this day and age, we’ve seen players of all stripes find the improvement they need to make their dreams come true, even if for just a moment (remember the Jason Krizan story?). Hopefully that will be the case for both Wilson and Wyatt (both of whom I enjoy interacting with tremendously) — and any others who fit into your question. But it all starts with players getting their game to the point where they can compete at the highest levels. It’s an incredibly high bar to cross.
What’s up with Reggie Crawford? He came with a lot of hype when he was drafted and has a huge upside. The Giants were incredibly cautious with him last year coming out of Tommy John but it seems like he’s just made no progress at all. Currently he’s not even on a minor league team that I can see. Is he hurt again? Where are they planning on playing him this year? Hopefully he can be one of their starters in the future.
As is the case for a few people we’ve already discussed (Bishop, Wyatt, and more), Crawford has really had trouble staying healthy and on the field. Most of that, in his time with the Giants, has been small, nagging stuff — a lot of oblique strains and other such soft tissue issues, along with a case of mono that knocked him out for a bit last year.
Still, he’s been throwing in extended spring lately after missing most of spring training, and he’s looked fantastic by all reports. I’ve heard he’s been touching 100 mph with his fastball, sitting in the upper 90s, and has been busting out a slider that makes the batters in extended weak in the knees.
A close perusal of the Richmond dugout on Sunday suggests that there’s a high likelihood that Crawford has officially been assigned to the Squirrels by the time you read this mailbag, and it would seem that he was the TBD missing 5th starter from the Richmond rotation whom Matt Frisbee filled in for this weekend.
Crawford is another player I discuss with Callis in this week’s podcast, and one thing we talk about is whether, at some point, the temptation to see how quickly he can make an impact as a dominant late-inning reliever will be too much to overcome, especially since they’re having trouble putting innings on his arm. With his stuff, the jump from Richmond to San Francisco really isn’t all that far.
The Giants OF is in a state of flux, so to speak. Austin Slater and Yaz are aging and unproductive veterans, Michael Conforto is on a one-year audition, and the other OFs are two IFs (LaMonte Wade, Jr. and Tyler Fitzgerald, who can play anywhere). Only Jung Hoo Lee can be considered a long-term piece. Given this scenario, who are the next wave of potential MLB OFs? Luis Matos is likely the next one up, but who would come after him? Heliot Ramos seems to have played his way out of the picture. We had high hopes for Vaun Brown and Grant McCray, but they seem to have stalled a bit. Victor Bericoto? Wade Meckler? Is Bryce Eldridge locked in at 1B vs. OF at this point?
Given that the Giants haven’t developed a starting OF of any stripe since Marvin Benard, and haven’t developed an All Star OF since Chili Davis, I blanched a little at your use of the term “next wave,” which seems overly ambitious. But you did at least keep things grounded with the modifier “potential.”
You definitely have named all the right candidates totalfan. I would say the group of names you have here, and let’s toss Bishop in as well, are the players who can potentially work themselves into productive big leaguers of some stripe. Though obviously it’s highly unlikely that most of them will, both because that’s how things tend to work out and because all of them have aspects of their game that could trip them up.
One thing I’ve said a few times this winter is that the conversation I keep having with scouts who are covering the Giants come back over and over to the question: how many potential starters are there in this organization. That’s true in general, but it’s mega-true when you shift over to the position player side. If I had to guess, I would say that Matos is the most likely to reach the level of a solid starting player in the majors — though as I say above, I do think Ramos has earned the right to be the first one called upon at this point. If you can get a Slater-esque role player or two from the rest of the group, you’ve done well — and if there’s a second legitimate starting OF, then the PD folks have hit the lotto.
Of course, there is a younger wave just starting to form, led by Rayner Arias but also including Carlos Gutiérrez and Lisbel Diaz. We’ll see what the future has in store of them. Eldridge is being moved strictly as a 1b for now, so I think that you’ve adequately answered your own question there.
Are there some OF prospects with elite defensive skills (arm strength/speed)?
Certainly the most elite defender in the system is McCray, who combines elite speed with incredible reads, routes, and instincts. McCray is one of the best defenders I’ve seen going straight back on balls, but he can really clamp down on the power alley as well. McCray’s glove is where well-hit balls go to die — which makes this a pretty good place to plug a short video interview I did with McCray on his defensive skills. This full video will be hitting Inboxes later today or tomorrow:
After McCray, I would say that I’ve been very impressed by what I’ve seen of Cox — another speedy player who can really go get ‘em in center field. Carter Howell is an athletic outfielder who can really cover ground — he’s more of a UT outfielder than a true CF, but he can go get ‘em. Bo Davidson has been sticking to the corner, but the former football player did show me some real ball hawking skills in spring camp, with an outstanding back-to-the-infield catch he made in Wide Receiver form.
The best arms in the system in my opinion belong to Bericoto, McCray, Brown, and Arias. Bericoto might have the lead in that category for now, but I believe the 17-year-old Arias could have something to say about that as he matures a bit.
Hi Roger - love the mailbags and appreciate all your insight! Wanted to see if you had any updated thoughts on Diego Velasquez? If he continues to rake, where does he fit in with all the young talent the Giants have drafted at SS?
Nice of you to say, Nick! Nothing really updated from this winter I wouldn’t say. If you read my Top 50 blurb on him, I’d say it still holds up pretty well (as it should, barely a week into the new season).
But certainly if Velasquez continues to pound out hits at the rate he has over the last year, he will continue to rise up the system. He has a level advantage on some other players, which could be meaningful in the long run — a certain pecking order does tend to get established for prospects at the major league level, and he’s likely to beat most of the San Jose group up to the upper minors. So as long as he succeeds, he’s likely to get opportunities to advance.
I will say that scouts I’ve talked to (and even some internal sources within the Giants) don’t really believe Velasquez is a true shortstop in the long run. He’s much more likely to end up at 2b — and even that will require him to stay on top of his quickness and explosiveness as he ages. If he can improve his physicality, he has a good chance to turn into an offensive-minded 2b, but it’ll take some advances in his strength and quickness to stay on that path.
Thoughts on Rayner Arias? Does he make it to San Jose this year?
Assuming he keeps his wrist (and other body parts) intact, and continues to perform at the level he’s shown he’s capable of, then: Yes, I believe he should make it to San Jose at some point this year.
Hey Roger. Long time listener, first time caller.
I am a big SF Giants fan, and UC Irvine Anteater fan. As a result, the trade for Christian Koss pleased me greatly.
Is there any chance of a big league future for Mr. Koss?
Ah, the Anteater demographic weighs in! There’s an interesting coincidence here. The last UC Irvine player to be in the Giants’ system was RHP Taylor Rashi, who flummoxed hitters with a low-velo fastball that came out of his hand with the movement profile of a left-hander.
As it happened, Rashi and Koss were teammates together at Irvine and, somewhat amazingly, it was Koss — then playing for the Portland Sea Dogs — whom Rashi was facing when he threw the pitch that blew up his shoulder. That injury led the Giants to leave Rashi exposed to the minor league portion of the Rule 5 draft back in December, 2022, where he was picked up by the Diamondbacks. Rashi, by the way, did make his way back from shoulder surgery and pitched at the end of the 2023 season. He’s pitching this year for Arizona’s Double-A team in Amarillo (Texas League).
Anyway, that little double helix of coincidental timing makes Koss the perfect replacement for Rashi to fill the Giants’ Anteater absence. As to your question, Koss is a smooth operator at short, which always gives a player a leg up towards a potential big league call up. Offensively, he struggled in his time in the upper minors while in the Red Sox org — he posted an OBP of just .284 split across Double- and Triple-A in Boston’s system last year. However, there seem to be some “under the hood” numbers that suggest he could have another gear to reach offensively. In particular, his hard hit numbers have been solid even while others have waned. He doesn’t have much power, though he proved he could clear the fence in Somerset.
For the time being, however, we have to table talk of his development, as Koss hit the IL this weekend. He appeared to hit 3b wrong in the game last Tuesday and went down in a heap, and hasn’t played since then (though he did walk off by himself). Hopefully, we’ll see him back soon. He was fun to watch!
When the likes of Luke Jackson, Sean Hjelle, and Alex Cobb are fit do you see Landen Roupp staying around? Do you see him returning to starting or have the Giants got him pegged for relief now?
Hey Roger! It’s great to get the in-season mailbag rolling. Many thanks. Let’s say the brass thinks Carson Whisenhunt is MLB-ready later this season but there isn’t a spot in the Giants rotation. Would they promote him and install him in the bullpen even if they view him as a starter long term? If that’s the case, Wiz (and Mason Black for that matter) would seem to be competing with natural relievers, such as Randy Rodriguez, to be called up to the SF bullpen. I see that as an intriguing subplot in Sacramento. The Giants bullpen is already ticketed to include more current or recent starters when the injured vets return. Promotions will really need to be earned!
Sportswriters will tend to answer these kinds of questions with the ol’ reliable: “these things tend to work themselves out.” I’m a big believer in the catch-all value of that phrase as well, but another one that I like to bring up when talking about getting prospects opportunities is an old classic from Dusty Baker: “I’m not in the giving it away business, I’m in the making you prove it business.”
Which is to say that I think Roupp, and anybody else who you’d want to put in the same category, is going to stick around as long as he continues to prove himself an asset to the pitching staff. Yes, last year we did see a brief period where Tristan Beck had to go down despite having proved valuable. But this year there do appear to be plenty of slots open for competition in the bullpen, which started the year with just five players with guaranteed contracts and, essentially, guaranteed playing time (Jackson, Walker, the Rogers Brothers, and Camilo Doval).
Right now, the Giants have four different optionable relievers who are in that “up and down” bucket, I’d say: Roupp, Nick Avila, Erik Miller, and Kai-Wei Teng. That’s plenty enough slack for the time being that the Giants don’t really have to worry about forcing a player who is performing well off the roster. It’s easy enough to imagine Keaton Winn moving into that group and out of the rotation when Cobb returns, but even so, there’s still plenty of room for guys who are getting outs.
The long term question could become complicated, as Scott notes, by various starters pressing their cases: Black, Whisenhunt, Hayden Birdsong, or even Crawford. I would say that the Giants aren’t likely to turn to any of these non-40-man pitchers unless, or until, they are convinced that the players they currently have on the roster aren’t going to get the job done. Those players are potential options down the stretch — but it’s always a risk to bring inexperienced players into the stretch drive, so that kind of move is often more of a desperation play forced by exigencies than a planned strategy.
Still, it’s good to be in a place where, as Scott says, promotions really have to be earned. Also, these things tend to work themselves out.
Do you have any update on the long-term injured - Liam Simon, Spencer Miles, Nick Zwack, William Kempner? Appreciate it’s not always easy to get info on these.
It definitely is difficult to get injury news on minor leaguers. The Giants will rightly point out that the players have a right to their medical privacy and that laws prevent too much disclosure of some situations. Beyond that, teams are always hesitant to put any specific time table out in the public sphere, because set backs are a frequent occurrence in all rehabs, and as soon as a player misses a publicly stated goal, the team has created a “story” that didn’t need to exist. If you listened to Carson Ragsdale’s interview last week, talking about the process of coming back from thoracic outlet surgery, you can see how little value there is in putting a rehab timetable out in public. It can make natural processes seem like they’ve gone dramatically off course, and that’s not really beneficial to anybody.
And with that caveat, I have a little information I can offer here, but not a ton.
Simon underwent Tommy John surgery last year right around the end of May. That means he should be hitting the 12-month mark somewhere around Memorial Day time. The standard rehab for TJ gets guys back on the mound in the 12 to 14-month range, so we should see Simon pitch this year if things go well for him. My guess would be that he’ll show up in some ACL games, perhaps sometime before the end of June, and then the Giants will see how it goes from there.
Miles’ case is turning into a very similar one to Will Bednar: it’s mysterious and frustrating and ongoing. Both right-handers have been suffering from back issues that have mostly kept them off the mound for some time now, and, like Bednar, there’s no real way of knowing when Miles will be able to return. Backs are tricky things, and they don’t tend to come with blueprints or roadmaps. You’re just out until they stop hurting. There are treatments that both are, I’m sure, undergoing, but there aren’t cures. It just hurts until it doesn’t hurt anymore, and, as Kyle Haines has said to me before about other players, there isn’t that much that a player can do to better themself when suffering from a bad back. It’s really debilitating.
I unfortunately don’t have any information on Zwack, except that he’s been placed on the Injured-Full Season list which, true to its name, means we won’t be seeing him in 2024. It’s funny, the first time I saw Zwack at Papago Park this spring, he was doing dynamic stretching in a group that included Bednar, and I immediately thought to myself, huh Zwack must be in with the rehab players. Little did I know.
Kempner is only on the 7-day list currently, which suggests that the Giants don’t anticipate him being gone too much longer. If his ailment made it likely for him to miss April and May, they probably would have placed him on the 60-day IL (as they did Simon), so that he wouldn’t be counting against the 165-domestic reserve limit. This is a wild (and perhaps inappropriately speculative) guess, but 7-day IL as opposed to 60-day tends to put me in mind of something in the muscle strain family of ailments, rather than an arm issue. But again, that’s speculation rather than informed update.
Early thoughts on the River Cats? Any surprises? How do Luciano, Matos, Meckler, etc. look?
I’ve been quite pleased with their competitiveness so far. I mentioned in the team preview that the Giants should be at a place in their player development where there’s enough depth of talent to stop being a Triple-A doormat. So far, they’ve shown that to be true! So pleasantly surprised on that score.
The team should be good, as it includes three of the system’s Top 10 prospects (Luciano, Whisenhunt, and Black) as well as several top five prospects from previous years. They also have a well-stocked bullpen with a lot of talented arms who have worked their way to the top of the system (and weak bullpens are often where PCL team’s graves are dug).
I don’t think I can be particularly surprised by anything in the first two weeks of the year — everything is just small sample sized noise at this point in any season. I will say that Luciano’s progress has been enjoyable to watch. He is turning into an extremely disciplined hitter who stays within the strike zone very well. Since I showed Tyler Warren’s graphic on Schmitt above, it’s worth sharing this one for Luciano as well.
You can see he’s having some trouble with splitters going down out of the bottom of the zone, but he controls the outside quite well. His chase rate has been well below 20%, which is outstanding. He’s also hitting the ball extremely hard on average (his 90th percentile Exit Velocity is currently 105.6 mph, which is well above average). The last step is to start getting that hard contact up in the air a little more often. But on the whole, his time with Sacramento so far has been continued forward progress on the offensive side. The defense has been a little more questionable, and that will probably be the more important element with regards to his eventual call up.
Matos, on the other hand, has been going through a bit of a struggle. After homering twice in his season debut in Reno, he’s gone just 6 for 36 with only two extra-base hits. He’s once again not hitting the ball particularly hard, or not much harder than what we saw in San Francisco last year, and he’s been chasing a bit more outside the zone than we saw last year. This might be a slight case of Triple-A-itis, or just a temporary slump.
Meckler, by the way, was hit in the hand by a pitch from Ragsdale during the Giants-River Cats exhibition game and was placed on the IL shortly after. He has yet to make his season debut.
Rev Barnaby Feder
Hi Roger, I don't recall you mentioning it in all the other pieces you've written about the fascinating ways the training staff tries to maximize the potential of the young talent flowing into the system, but eyesight has always struck me as a fascinating subject and such a crucial one in pitch identification or tracking balls on defense. You used to read stories about players getting vision corrections and then taking off but that seems to have disappeared as a niche genre of reporting. How much time does our medical support staff spend monitoring eyesight in the minors, are there any innovations in vision correction or strengthening eye muscles, and which players if any have you heard about who have worked on their vision since 2023? Any rumors in the minors of Eclipse vision injuries?
Oh, I’ve got one for you Rev. Barnaby. Last year, I had a fascinating conversation with a hitting coach in the Giants’ organization, who told me about experiments with wearing ear plugs while hitting. It seems that there is some data that suggests that limiting sensory flow from other senses (e.g., hearing) will help enhance the brain’s capacity to interpret data from another (in this case sight).
The coach explained this to me using the analogy of traffic congestion. If a major artery is merging into the road you’re on, then the natural result is congestion and frustrating slowdowns. Eliminate that merge and you can drive freely and quickly to your destination. So then, cutting down the amount of aural information that the brain is receiving allows it to focus on the visual data and process that information more quickly and efficiently.
I asked if the ear plugs thing was just for cage work and batting practice and was told that, in fact, if you watch youth tournaments, particularly in the international sphere, you will see players wearing them in games, and this coach predicted that it’s possible this habit becomes normalized in games at all levels in the coming years.
Science is cool!
Gary Coover
Hey Roger! Love the coverage - this is my go to newsletter every AM - thank you!
Question: I am very happy to be wrong on this, but it seems like the least likely skill to improve for a player is broadly in the bucket of in-zone coverage (I may be using the wrong terminology here). Specifically, while we've seen many examples of players improve strike zone coverage and become less "hacky", do we really see improvement from players who have a ton of miss in the strike zone? I assume we'd be willing to tolerate that in a huge power player (Luciano, Eldridge), but when I see the results from McCray, Vaun Brown (powerful but HUGE swing and miss), Schmitt, etc., I feel like we should have them ranked in the 30s because the odds of significant improvement are so low. For example, I'd much rather bet on Meckler vs. McCray because it seems that high contact players can grow some power as they age. While I love McCray's package, if you can't keep from hacking, there's no real future there is there?
Thanks, Gary!
Here we delve into the “Black Box” of the brain that determines the quality of a player’s hit tool. Which is the more correctable flaw: chasing too much outside the zone, or missing too much inside it. The former is what we generally refer to as “approach,” while the latter gets at that most mysterious of all baseball-related elements, “the hit tool.”
I do think that a lot of evaluators might side with your view of things, however, in-zone contact isn’t simply a “you’re born with it or you’re not” thing. There are many mechanical changes that help players get their bat paths more efficiently through the zone. We saw a remarkable instance of this just last year, when Ronald Acuña, Jr. rather amazingly cut his strikeout rate in half — and nearly all of that improvement came from better in-zone contact. Cody Bellinger went through a similar metamorphosis last year. In his case, a hitting instructor suggested to me that, following his shoulder injury, he had gotten into the habit of an upper-body lean that forced him to swing at pitches up in the zone with an extremely steep bat path, and focusing on sitting back in the zone cleaned some of that swing and miss up.
Almost every hitter has a portion of their strike zone that is a weakness — even Barry Bonds, for many years, struggled with the pitch on the inside corner above the hands. To take another example, it was well known for years that Mike Trout struggled with pitches high in the zone, and early in his career, pitchers had their best success (if “best” is the word for it in Trout’s case) at getting him to swing and miss at high fastballs, while trying to stay away from the bottom half of the zone, where he simply destroyed pitches. Ultimately, Trout fixed that hole first through abstinence — he just stopped swinging at those pitches — and later through some subtle changes in his swing.
The best hitters either whittle those zone coverage weaknesses down to their minimum or they attack their strengths so effectively that they can still survive with a known area of weakness. So I guess the answer is that I don’t believe this issue is “unfixable,” but certainly most players in the minor leagues will have some weakness in their game that prevents them from rising to the top, and hit tools failures certainly account for a lot of that attrition along the way.
Sad the spring game was cancelled. What do you think the starting lineup was going to be?
Ah, this is a fun one to end on. Before I give my answer, let me use this to hype this week’s podcast with MLB’s Jim Callis one more time. We actually talked a good bit about the Spring Breakout series, its origins and where it could possibly be heading in the future. Jim surprised me with some ideas that seem to be circulating around MLB that would be absolutely fantastic! Can you imagine a full Spring Breakout tournament, somewhat akin to the World Baseball Classic? It could be coming in the future! Jim’s always a great guest, so you don’t want to miss his appearances on the pod regardless, even if you might not be that interested in our shared connection to Oakton High School.
And with that little promotional housework done, let’s take a crack at this. I’ll go with this for the ideal Spring Breakout lineup (that we never got to see):
C Onil Perez
1b Bryce Eldridge
2b Diego Velasquez
SS Martin Walker
3b Maui Ahuna
LF Hunter Bishop
CF Grant McCray
RF Rayner Arias
DH Victor Bericoto
SP Hayden Birdsong
That sure would have been fun! Hopefully next year.
For those of you who are full subscribers, my next KROG podcast, which I promised for today, got a slight delay, but it should be up by tomorrow. I also want to get the short McCray video out, which will be a return to the old “In the Dugout” video series. Hopefully later today or tomorrow as well.
In the meanwhile, it’s time for the games to begin again!