Rosenthal: How the Astros experiment and collaborate to get the most out of their pitchers


By Ken Rosenthal May 22, 2019 62

Upon walking into the visiting clubhouse during the late innings, Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow came upon a remarkable scene Friday night: Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander engaged in a deep conversation about Cole’s just-completed five-inning outing at Fenway Park.

Cole had required 99 pitches to hold the Red Sox scoreless, and here he was replaying it all with Verlander moments later — his thought processes, his pitch selections, his sequencing. The discussion was so detailed, so intense, Luhnow had little doubt the two would continue exchanging ideas into the night, after the game was over.

The Astros’ success in transforming the usage patterns of their pitchers is well-documented. They advise virtually every starter and reliever they acquire to throw fewer sinking fastballs, more breaking balls, more four-seam fastballs in the upper part of the strike zone. Cole and Verlander were among those who embraced the data-driven adjustments to their repertoires, but both say analytics is not the sole reason for their excellence in Houston.

The reality is more complex than a simple paint-by-numbers exercise, involving a combination of analytics, coaching suggestions and the pitchers’ respective curiosities and skills. The common denominator is the Astros’ emphasis on maximizing strengths. But within that framework, the pitchers also are free to navigate their own journeys.

Verlander, acquired from the Tigers on the final day of August in 2017, continues to draw on his vast wealth of experience. Cole, who arrived from the Pirates in Jan. 2018, taps into the minds of Verlander and other veteran Astros teammates. Reliever Ryan Pressly, an import from the Twins at the 2018 non-waiver deadline, benefits not just from an increased use of his breaking pitches, but also a reduced workload.

“If it was one thing, we would give it to every minor leaguer we have and have an abundance of success stories,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch says. “But we experiment. And we allow the player to experiment. The feedback is both ways.

“When you have players like JV and Cole, established guys who are still learning — what do you think (rookie right-hander) Corbin Martin is going to do when he gets here? What do you think Pressly is going to do when he comes over? They build off that.”

Much of the conversation about the Astros and their major-league best 33-16 record revolves around their .506 slugging percentage, which would set an all-time record (as would the Twins’ .502 current mark). Yet, the Astros also rank second in the majors with a 3.31 ERA despite losing three of their starting pitchers from last season — lefty Dallas Keuchel and righty Charlie Morton, who left as free agents, and righty Lance McCullers, who underwent Tommy John surgery in November.

Rival clubs fear pitchers reaching new levels of performance with the Astros, levels that make trades look increasingly lopsided over time. Consider the Pirates’ haul for Cole: right-hander Joe Musgrove, third baseman Colin Moran, outfielder Jason Martin and reliever Michael Feliz. Not bad, but less than it might have been if Cole had been the potential $200 million free agent he is now, rather than the pitcher who produced a 4.26 ERA for Pittsburgh in 2017.

Luhnow chuckles as he deflects the notion that teams should stop trading with the Astros, noting that he sent left-hander Josh Hader to the Brewers as part of a four-player package for right-hander Mike Fiers and outfielder Carlos Gómez in 2015. Still, few clubs, if any, get as much out of their pitchers as the Astros. And it doesn’t hurt that their two aces, Verlander and Cole, draw the best out of each other, too.

Even before joining the Astros, Cole had started to evolve. Though the numbers don’t show him throwing the four-seam fastball more often in 2017, his final year with the Pirates, he had discussions with the team about making greater use of the pitch.

Club officials believed elevated four-seamers would help him produce better overall results as he changed eye levels with his curveball, slider and two-seam, or sinking, fastball. Yet even then, Cole says he did not fully grasp how much better of a pitch his four-seamer was than his two-seamer, or which locations he needed to hit to generate the best performance. The Astros gave him that information, and Cole’s former teammates in Pittsburgh have told him that the Pirates later made it available to players, as well.

“They don’t have a Justin Verlander, though. And they didn’t have Dallas Keuchel. And they didn’t have Brian McCann,” Cole says. “Those guys played just as big a role, if not a bigger role.”

Verlander, a former Cy Young award winner, spoke with Cole about perceived velocity — what fastball velocity looks like to the hitter, based on a pitcher’s extension, where he releases the ball. According to Statcast, Cole has improved his average perceived velocity from 95.92 mph in his final season with the Pirates to 96.13 in 2018 and 96.45 in ’19.

Keuchel, another former Cy winner, explained to Cole how to tunnel pitches as well as how to make hitters lose awareness of one side of the plate and get them to expand. Right-hander Charlie Morton advised Cole on the similar transition he made to more of a four-seam/curveball type with Houston. And McCann, whom Cole regards as “one of the better catchers of all time,” articulated what he saw in Cole’s stuff from behind the plate, sharing more of a hitter’s perspective.

“We’ve really opened his eyes, I think,” Verlander says. “Some of it’s the analytics. But a lot of it was some of the stuff I had learned through my career and Dallas had learned. All the idiosyncratic baseball knowledge of how to pitch and use your strengths. Just talking to him about his strengths.

“That’s one thing they do really well here — they show you your strengths. As easy as that seems, it’s not. Once you know your bread-and-butter, then you can really go down this deep path of how to use that to the best of your ability.”

Cole, like Verlander, is quite cerebral; during home games, he will sit at the same end of the dugout as Hinch and pitching coach Brent Strom, bantering with them over decisions and strategy. He does not simply rely on the Astros’ data; he continues to do his own preparation between starts, poring over scouting reports, game-planning with catcher Robinson Chirinos.

His evolution also includes another important aspect: The adjustments he made in his strength and conditioning toward the end of his injury-marred 2016 season in Pittsburgh, which marked the second time in three years he had gone on the injured list twice.

“I hired some new (specialists),” Cole says. “I put more effort into movement patterns and creating stability. I never had a problem creating horsepower. But stopping in a sustainable way (decelerating his arm), there was room to be desired.”

His physical changes helped him make mechanical adjustments resulting in a higher vertical release point and dramatically improved spin rate on his four-seam fastball. (The Athletic’s Eno Sarris wrote in May 2018 about spin and Trevor Bauer’s insinuations that the Astros were cheating).


“Some of that is me,” Cole says. “Some of it is learning some of those moves from Justin of watching other guys who have sustained it for a long time. It’s hard not to learn in that clubhouse. It’s such a unique environment.”

And its impact on Cole is clear.

He ranks eighth in the majors in pitching fWAR, and for the second straight season leads the majors in strikeout rate, averaging 13.8 per nine innings. His career ERA plus, strikeout rate and walk rate are now remarkably similar to what Max Scherzer’s were just before he became a free agent at the end of the 2014 season. Scherzer signed a seven-year, $210 million deal with the Nationals. Cole, who turns 29 on Sept. 8, might end up in the same range.

“He was just figuring out his needs, physical and mental,” Pirates pitching coach Ray Searage says, referring back to Cole’s time in Pittsburgh. “We had some issues to battle with health, but what he is doing now doesn’t surprise me. He’s a smart kid, and being with experienced pitchers only sped up the process. When A.J. Burnett was here, he helped him. Peers are so valuable.”

Verlander, after joining the Astros late in the 2017 season, reveled in the team’s data like a child indulging in chocolate. The team’s analysts joked that he was the first player to ever ask for more information than the club was providing. With the use of a super high-speed camera, Verlander even improved the hand position on his slider.

To Verlander, 36, the move from old-school Detroit to new-age Houston was energizing. He was more than happy to credit the Astros’ state-of-the-art approach as he produced a 2.21 ERA in 36 2/3 innings during the 2017 postseason, winning the ALCS MVP and helping the team to its first World Series title.

Yet, like Cole, Verlander already was heading in the proper direction. He had begun to explore analytics at the suggestion of his former Tigers manager, Brad Ausmus. In 2016, he finished a close second to Rick Porcello in the 2016 AL Cy Young voting. In ’17, he had a 4.96 ERA on July 2, but after correcting his mechanics produced a 2.31 ERA in his final 11 starts before the trade.

“The data they had here, it helps,” Verlander says. “But at the same time, I was kind of figuring it out.”

Which isn’t to say that Verlander, who ranks second in the AL with a 2.24 ERA, lacks appreciation for the boost the Astros provided to his career. Just the other day, he was talking to Cole about his days at Old Dominion, before the Tigers made him the second pick overall behind Matt Bush — Matt Bush! — in the 2004 draft. Back then, and even until very recently, he failed to grasp that he was best throwing riding four-seam fastballs, not bowling-ball sinkers.

“Even going back to college, I used to get so mad,” Verlander says. “Guys would throw a ‘heavy’ ball. You’d hear that — the catcher is catching some guy and he’s like, ‘Man, that’s heavy.’ And I’m throwing to him and asking, ‘Is that heavy?’ And he’s like, ‘No, that’s really light.’

“I’m like, ‘F—! How the f—- do I get this heavy ball?’ But I’ve come to find out, and what has probably made my whole career, is this riding fastball that is the opposite of a heavy ball. Back then, I was searching for that. And it’s like no, what has made me unique is my spin and the way I stay behind the ball.”

Nearly a decade-and-a-half later, the Astros saw the same thing.

“I do think shoving the two-seamer has had a major impact,” Verlander says. “The way they explained it to me, some guys have good two-seamers, some guys don’t, and your two-seamer is basically a lesser version of your four-seamer. It doesn’t have any real two-seam action.

“That was a pretty simple explanation for me. Why am I using it if it’s just doing the hitter a favor, which it was? It doesn’t have any extra sink. It doesn’t have much more run. And it just has less rise. What are we doing here?”

Verlander — now in his second full season with the team, with a two-year, $66-million extension starting next season — continues to take advantage of the information the Astros offer. He says he spends four hours between starts searching for the tendencies and weaknesses of his next opponent, including two hours in front of a computer on the day he pitches.

And yet, he is not about to ignore the lessons of his years, the experience he has gained since first stepping onto a major-league mound on July 4, 2005. His internal hard drive is comprised of nearly 3,000 innings in the majors, including 152 1/3 in the postseason.

“There are always the instincts you don’t want to shy away from. That’s my big thing. I’ve got all this information, all these scouting reports, all these numbers, but when I’m out there pitching, I’m going to trust this …”

He points to his head.

“… and these …”

He points to his eyes.

“… more than anything.”

Pressly, who has pitched a major-league record 40 consecutive scoreless appearances, offers a straightforward explanation for his stunning improvement with the Astros. He knew he needed to throw his curveball more, but did not know how much more.

The following chart from BrooksBaseball.net reveals the answers:

Period Four-Seam Sinker Slider Curve
2018 Twins 44% 5% 27% 24%
2018 Astros 34% 1% 28% 37%
2019 Astros 38% 0% 27% 35%
“It was always, ‘You have to throw your off-speed for strikes’ – everyone knows that,” Pressly says. “I just wasn’t able to do it until I had the freedom from (former Twins pitching coach) Garvin Alston to do it in (2018) spring training.

“He gave me the keys and the Astros pretty much just turned the car on.”

Another way to put is that the Twins understood what kind of car they had — Pressly’s elite four-seam and curveball spin rates led to him being coveted at last year’s non-waiver deadline — but perhaps had the wrong mechanics to maximize its performance.

Astros pitching coach Brent Strom recalls a conversation he had with Twins bullpen coach Jeremy Hefner, whom the Astros interviewed last November after their bullpen coach, Doug White, left to become pitching coach of the Angels.

“(Hefner) indicated their analytics people were talking about more of a (curveball) usage, but for some reason, there might have been a communication gap between their new analytics and whoever was on the field, I don’t know,” Strom says.

The Twins have not acknowledged such a gap, but they fired both Alston and bullpen coach Eddie Guardado at the end of the season and replaced them with two first-time major-league instructors who embrace data, pitching coach Wes Johnson and Hefner.

The difference in the Twins’ pitching is striking. After ranking ninth in the AL with a 4.50 ERA last season, they are fifth with a 3.82 ERA in 2019. The team’s 29-1 record when leading after six innings is further testament to its bullpen. But imagine where the Twins might be if they had not traded Pressly for Class A outfielder Gilberto Celestino, their No. 15 prospect according to MLBPipeline.com, and Double A right-hander Jorge Alcala, their No. 18 prospect.

Pressly, 30, only was under control through 2019 at the time (he later signed a two-year, $17.5 million extension with the Astros through ‘21). The other mitigating factor was that the Twins were on their way to a 78-84 finish, and had not yet hired manager Rocco Baldelli and constructed the roster that currently leads the AL Central by 6 1/2 games.

“I give Ryan and the Astros a ton of credit. He made some quality adjustments and really took another step forward,” Twins chief baseball officer Derek Falvey says. “While it’s never easy to trade away good major league players we felt like we got a starter in Double A with electric stuff and high upside and an everyday position player who was one of the best from his international signing class for a year and a half of control of a good major-league player. For us, at the time and still today, we feel that was the right level of return to make that trade.”

The Astros, though, did not simply ask Pressly to increase the use of his curveball. The strength of their bullpen, anchored by closer Roberto Osuna, another acquisition at the 2018 non-waiver deadline, also enabled them to limit Pressly’s workload, contributing to the uptick in his performance.

Maybe the Twins would have made the same adjustment with Pressly, but through 49 games under their previous staff last season he had worked 27 1/3 innings in 28 games. Through 49 games with this season, he has worked 21 innings in 19 games.

“He had a monstrous workload over with Minnesota, which then impacts the breaking ball,” Strom says. “Sandy Koufax once told me it takes more power to throw quality breaking balls than it does quality fastballs. It takes more energy, more effort.

“(Pressly) being a breaking-ball pitcher primarily with a very good fastball, and us being fortunate to have enough people around him who were quality, allowed him to fit into a role as opposed to being a jack-of-all-trades, pitching three runs down, three runs up.”

So, it was not just one thing with Pressly. It is never one thing when it comes to the Astros and their pitchers, never one number that screams, “gotcha!” The team’s process is both more subtle and more expansive, “not a secret sauce,” Hinch says, “as much as a combination.”

Those voices you hear in the clubhouse? Oh, that’s just Cole and Verlander, growing animated about some 2-2, one-out slider one of them threw with a runner on second in the sixth inning, trying to protect a one-run lead.

The information flows. The conversations continue. The Astros carry on.

Eno Sarris contributed to this story.

Sarris: How Paul DeJong turned into a superstar


By Eno Sarris May 22, 2019 27
Maybe you know who Paul DeJong is. You might remember a power breakout from the Cardinals shortstop, or maybe you remember that he hit a home run off Greg Holland on his first major-league swing. You might also remember that he had a flaw so big that he landed on a short list of young players with the worst plate discipline in the major leagues.

That Paul DeJong looks long gone.

Now walking at double his career rate coming into the season and striking out almost 40 percent less often, DeJong looks like a complete player, every bit of the kind that could be top three in the league in an overall stat. He walks, he makes contact, he hits for power and he’s a great defender — what more can you want?

The cynic might want to see if the discipline holds for a longer period of time. That’s what makes our deep dive into how this happened worthwhile.

How did DeJong make one of the more radical plate discipline improvements of our time? And it is radical. Look at the biggest two-year decreases in strikeout rate since 2002. DeJong is near the top of the list.


Name Year1 K%1 Year2 K%2 diffK
Javier Báez 2014 41.5% 2016 24.0% -17.5%
Matt Chapman 2017 28.2% 2019 15.8% -12.4%
Alex Bregman 2016 24.0% 2018 12.1% -11.9%
Paul DeJong 2017 28.0% 2019 16.5% -11.5%
Kris Bryant 2015 30.6% 2017 19.2% -11.4%
(minimum 200 plate appearances)

As you can see from the other names on this list, this kind of strikeout rate improvement looks like a proven method to stardom. Sixth on this list — and the only other player that cut his strikeout rate by double digits — was David Ortiz, noted batsman. But remember the third name on the list because that player will come up again.

The Cardinals signed a new hitting coach this year, Jeff Albert, and he’s been working to improve the contact rate of the team without killing the power. With the ball the way it is right now, anyone who can put the ball in play (preferably in the air) is going to get rewarded. He’s had success with the team as a group — they’re top 10 in both strikeout rate and groundball-per-fly-ball rate — but his work with DeJong might be the most impressive.

“I think it’s more about covering more pitches in the zone, especially that high fastball nowadays, the one a lot of guys are getting out on,” DeJong told The Athletic’s Mark Saxon about that work. “It’s a way to hit, not chopping down or swinging up at it, but almost that level swing no matter where it is in the zone. It’s more about the first move as opposed to thinking about the result early.”

This is part of it, but not the whole of it. You can see, for example, that DeJong has expanded his contact rate out and over the plate this year if you look at his FanGraphs heat maps for last year (left) versus this year (right).
In the top right quarter of the heat map, DeJong has improved in six of nine boxes. But obviously this is not the singular source of his improvement. While he’s improved his ability to make contact when he swings — perhaps by altering his mechanics some and raising his hands in his setup — DeJong has also improved at what he’s swinging at.

Pitch Swings 18 Swings 19 Diff
Four-seam 43.3% 43.7% 0.4%
Sinker 43.7% 53.0% 9.4%
Change 54.6% 41.7% -12.9%
Slider 48.9% 46.3% -2.6%
Curve 40.7% 35.2% -5.5%
Cutter 50.0% 45.2% -4.8%

Look at that increase in swinging at fastballs and decrease in swinging at everything bendy, it’s remarkable. His hitting coach once told local radio that this sort of selective aggression was important.

“If a guy has a wipeout breaking ball and he throws fastballs early in the count it might not be a great idea to let the fastball go by and get to the guy’s toughest pitch,” Albert said then.

We’re getting closer to seeing how this huge a change could happen for one hitter, but there’s one last piece of the puzzle, because not all fastballs are equally enticing. Maybe it isn’t surprising that, once you consider the fact that four of the five strikeout rate improvers we listed before also improved their reach rate and swung at fewer pitches outside of the zone, but DeJong is also on a list of that sort (minimum 200 plate appearances in year two, and 400 in year one).

Name Yr1 O-Swing1% Yr2 O-Swing2% Diff
Alex Bregman 2016 30.9% 2018 18.1% -12.8%
Edwin Encarnación 2007 37.4% 2009 25.1% -12.3%
Todd Frazier 2015 37.1% 2017 24.9% -12.3%
John Buck 2010 39.4% 2012 27.3% -12.1%
Jonny Gomes 2010 35.5% 2012 24.9% -10.6%
DJ LeMahieu 2013 36.9% 2015 26.7% -10.2%
Shane Victorino 2007 39.2% 2009 29.3% -9.9%
Edwin Encarnación 2010 31.1% 2012 21.4% -9.7%
Scooter Gennett 2015 44.2% 2017 34.8% -9.4%
Akinori Iwamura 2007 27.0% 2009 17.8% -9.2%
Ichiro Suzuki 2013 38.2% 2015 29.0% -9.2%
Nolan Arenado 2015 40.6% 2017 31.4% -9.2%
Paul DeJong 2017 34.1% 2019 24.9% -9.1%
Freddie Freeman 2017 35.5% 2019 26.5% -9.0%
Rougned Odor 2016 44.2% 2018 35.2% -9.0%

Since we started tracking reach rate, just 12 players have had a two-year decrease as large as DeJong’s. And Albert’s former client Bregman tops the list again. There are lot of parallels between the two infielders, and that seems to speak well to DeJong’s ability to retain his gains. So does the fact that, of the 15 biggest strikeout rate cutters since 2002, all but two kept most of their improvement, and one (Andruw Jones) was near the end of his career. Lastly, it’s also worth noting that strikeout rate has reached a decent enough sample size at this point in the year that a change like this is more believable.

But Bregman is not the name that comes to mind when I look at those heat maps. The name I think of is Adrián Beltré, who once cut his strikeout rate by nearly half in the middle of his career and had this to say about the epiphany he had at the plate that led to that improvement:

“I noticed that a lot of teams wanted to get me out with the high fastball,” the now-retired Rangers third baseman told me in 2015. “And that’s a good pitch to hit! All you have to do is touch it and it goes. So I learned to look for that pitch, and that helps me to not chase the low breaking ball because it looks too far away.”

It’s brilliant, and maybe even more brilliant if you take this approach and give it to a hitter that already does a decent job not swinging at pitches low and away like DeJong. The Cardinals shortstop is focusing on the high pitch, and that might help him not chase the slider down, as you can see from his slider swing heat maps for 2017 (left), 2018 (middle) and 2019 (right).
He’s doing better down off the plate, he’s doing better on the high fastball, he’s not swinging at changeups — it’s the total improvement package for DeJong, and it looks like it will stick. All it took was a little bit of the same advice that helped players like Bregman and Beltré make similar improvements in their plate skills. With a little help from his team, and a good finish to the season, DeJong could be in the mix for the MVP at the end of the season, and his (now) all-around game is perfect for that award.

Not bad for a player that was once striking out 10 times for every walk.

Since we're playing BoSox thought I'd share this interesting tid bit I read at USA Today.

Bill Buckner played 22 major league seasons. Finished shy of 3000 hits. The most he ever struck out in a season was 39 times.

Those sound like Ted Williams type stats. And all Buckner is remembered for is one defensive misplay

Tony Gwynn had a season where he struck out 40 times, but if you look at his career stats most of the time he struck out in the high teens or low 20's every year.

Looks like PEDoria is done ! Shocking !

WEll, looks like we will have the unique experience this year of being the underdog in the Central. So might as well take some looks in this otherwise underused folder to see what we are up against. It ain't over yet!

Jonathan Schoop’s bet on himself is paying off in a solid start with Twins


By Dan Hayes May 27, 2019 26
Rarely can you find a sure bet, but Jonathan Schoop’s decision last offseason to place a large wager on himself is looking pretty good now.

Rather than sign any of the several multiyear deals he was offered, the second baseman sought out a one-year deal in hopes that he could increase his value.

An All-Star in 2017, Schoop believed he would rebound this season from a rough 2018 campaign, thus improving his free-agent offers next winter. His health returned and solid footing underneath him, Schoop has gotten off to the start he needed after signing a one-year, $7.5-million deal with the Twins in December. Schoop went 1-for-4 with a ninth-inning walk in Monday night’s 5-4 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers at Target Field and is hitting .266/.321/.514 with 10 home runs and 29 RBIs in 187 plate appearances.

Even though he struggled in 2018 playing for Milwaukee and the Baltimore Orioles, Schoop, who hit 21 homers and finished with a .682 OPS, said he never lost confidence.

“It’s not my first year in the big leagues,” Schoop said. “I did it already. I did it. I know what I can do. Last year was a down season. But even last year, it wasn’t my best, but it wasn’t that bad. I still hit 21 (homers) and I missed a month-and-a-half. I tell myself that all the time. I’ve got some confidence in myself. I bet on myself all the time. I think I’m the best. I don’t know what they think. I think I’m the best. That’s why you’ve got to believe in yourself and go out there and help your team win.”

Schoop, who doesn’t turn 28 until October, has helped the Twins quite a bit. Nearly one-third of the way through the season, Fangraphs said Schoop has produced 1.2 Wins Above Replacement this season. At .352, his wOBA is back at 2017 levels after dipping to .290 in 2018. He’s also a plus defender at second base with one of the stronger arms in baseball.

Much of the belief is that Schoop’s 2018 woes were related to an oblique injury suffered in April that kept him out of the lineup for nearly a month combined with a midseason switch to the National League.

“His power and his overall performance was meaningfully impacted by the injury,” Twins general manager Thad Levine said. “I think that gave us some cause for some optimism that we’d see some bounce back. But what’s more is we really delved into his personality and makeup to understand the person and how much he was going to want to fight through this and reclaim his status as one of the more prolific offensive second basemen in the game. I think that’s where we gained a ton of confidence is in talking to teammates, coaches who had worked with him and scouts who had scouted him. Across the board, he was regarded as an exceptional teammate.”

Past teammates rave about Schoop. Nelson Cruz couldn’t wait to reunite with his one-time Orioles teammate after both chose the Twins this winter. During his introductory conference call, Cruz said Schoop acted as a “second agent” trying to convince him to join the Twins.


“This is not your average second baseman,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli says of Jonathan Schoop. “He can do some big things.” (Jennifer Buchanan / USA Today)
In December, Adam Jones, who played with Schoop from 2013-18, said he thought the second baseman would return to form with the Twins, describing it as a perfect landing spot.

“His passion for baseball is unbelievable,” Jones said. “He’s one of the friendliest teammates I’ve been around in terms of he talks to everybody. He wants to talk to everybody. He loves the team concept. He’s a big family guy. He treats the team like family. I think what they got is a guy whose presence is going to be felt on the field. But in that clubhouse, he’s going to be a very positive guy who enjoys the game. … He’s really going to flourish there.”

Jones said he wasn’t sure if there was any one reason Schoop struggled in 2018. Walking through the lobby of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Jones said he did suspect a nice comeback was in the making for Schoop.

“It’s baseball,” Jones said. “There’s no answer to why or how things happen. It’s just how and why things happen. But I think he’s poised for a bounce-back year because he’s that good. I think what he showed in ’17, that’s what he can. He’s 27. He’s still got room to grow as a baseball player and as a man.”

Former teammate Nick Hundley also was impressed by Schoop’s play.

“Around the bag, I don’t think anybody turns the double play quicker or better than him at second,” Hundley said. “His arm strength and actions are outstanding. Obviously last year wasn’t his best, but he’s extremely talented. He has the ability to do everything in the game and be a powerful second baseman that drives in runs, hits homers and has Gold Glove actions. There’s really not much more you can ask to have out of a player. Does he run like Dee Gordon? No. But who cares? He hits the ball out of the park and plays Gold Glove second base. He’s a huge addition to any team. … He’s a special talent.”

After seeing Schoop up close in the American League East for five seasons, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli felt like he had a good read on what the club had added. He has been particularly impressed with the way Schoop has lengthened the Twins lineup this season.

“This is not your average second baseman,” Baldelli said. “He can do some big things.

“He’s a very dangerous guy and it’s almost like a nice luxury to have such a talented hitter that has done this for a very long time, hitting in that part of the lineup because he could very easily be hitting higher in the lineup with the way he’s swinging.”

Schoop has proven to be a threat wherever the Twins have hit him. Lately, with Cruz and Mitch Garver on the injured list, Baldelli has batted Schoop second or third in the order. He spent the early part of the season batting sixth and seventh.

Schoop’s 88.6 mph exit velocity is up more than a mile per hour from his career mark of 87.4. Schoop’s xwOBA is a career-best .350, up from .267 last season.

All are signs that big bet Schoop placed could pay off come December.

“I feel good,” Schoop said. “I think the season last year was an experience. It was a lesson. I learned my lesson.

“I learned from last year. Last year wasn’t my best, but I take some positives out of it to be better this year.”

Brewers rally off Rogers to end Twins’ win streak
Orlando Arcia got a fastball on the inner half in the eighth inning on Monday and knew what to do with it. He ripped the Taylor Rogers fastball out to left for a go-ahead, two-run homer and catapulted Milwaukee to a come-from-behind victory to snap the Twins’ winning streak at six games.


The homer was only the second Rogers has allowed this season and gave the Twins just their second loss in 36 games when leading after seven innings. The homer raised Rogers’ ERA to 2.05.

“Off the bat I knew it was gone,” Rogers said. “It’s been awhile since this has happened, so good news. And I don’t have my head in the sand, I know it’s going to happen. Probably happen again. I guess as long as I can go in between, it was ideal.

“It’s the nature of the business. As soon as tomorrow comes, I’ll be ready to get in the game. And that’s what I’ll be ready for.”

The Twins didn’t produce against Milwaukee’s bullpen, which recorded 13 scoreless outs after starter Gio Gonzalez exited. The Twins had six base runners against the grouping of Jeremy Jeffress, Junior Guerra, Corbin Burnes and Josh Hader, including a pair in the ninth inning. But Hader retired Eddie Rosario on a fly out to shallow center and struck out Miguel Sanó to end it.

“(Hader’s) a good pitcher,” Rosario said. “He has good stuff. I missed the ball. Maybe if he throws a strike, maybe everything’s different, but it happens.”

“It’s more easy with him to hit early, when he has to throw a strike. We have good numbers when he has to throw a strike.”

Pineda shakes off bad inning to deliver another good start
Michael Pineda backed up a pair of solid turns on the road with another at home on Monday night. The right-hander yielded three third-inning runs as the bottom three in the Brewers order had consecutive hits, including an RBI double by Arcia.

But Pineda shut Milwaukee down from there, retiring the last 12 batters he faced. Working with a strong fastball and an improving slider, Pineda left with the lead, limiting the Brewers to three hits and striking out six in six innings.

It’s the fourth quality start in a row for Pineda.

“I consider this a very positive start,” Baldelli said. “That’s a tough lineup. They have a very good and dangerous lineup. You have to make a lot of good pitches to get through that lineup. Big Mike did that. He seriously did that. … He certainly pitched well enough to win that game. I think you play that out all over again and he pitches a game in which we win.”

Garver to start rehab assignment
Mitch Garver is headed to Double-A Pensacola to get started on a rehab assignment two weeks after he suffered a dramatic high-ankle sprain. On the IL since May 15, Garver said the plan calls for him to play in three games before returning to the Twins. The catcher will work out with Pensacola on Tuesday to acclimate and play five innings on Wednesday.

Garver has run in a straight line but has yet to run the bases. Working out in Florida will allow Garver to take the next step in a rather quick rehab. From there, Garver could rejoin the Twins during their four-game series in Tampa Bay or the following series in Cleveland.

“We’re getting into some nice weather, we’re acclimating to the heat,” Garver said. “There’s a lot of things going on (Tuesday) that we’re not able to do here, obviously, due to the rain and the weather and the scheduling and whatnot. The guys have an off day in Tampa that first day, so there’s a lot of benefits to going down to Pensacola early. I have caught a bullpen while I was here. I’ve passed every agility test that they’ve wanted me to pass. As far as I’m concerned, the training staff is concerned, my ankle is healthy and we’re ready to go.”

(Photo: Kelvin Kuo / USA Today)

Lol, the anti-Tribe. Their bullpen too rested because they score too much:

Too much rest? How the Twins bullpen is dealing with a good problem to have


By Dan Hayes May 30, 2019 3

Strange as it may seem, Twins fans aren’t the only ones who needed to readjust to a new reality where on a nightly basis the team’s offense seemingly bashes opposing pitchers into oblivion. Twins starting pitchers and relievers have needed a bit of a tune-up, too.

Before the Twins began to shatter every franchise record for long balls while pursuing major-league marks, too, pitchers were accustomed to appearing in tight contests where one mistake could alter the outcome. Now, José Berríos has had to sit for long periods in between innings while the bats blow up and high-leverage relievers pitch so infrequently you’d think they entered the Witness Protection Program. ( )

Nobody is complaining. This is a great problem to have. But it doesn’t mean it’s an easy adjustment, as Taylor Rogers discovered earlier this season. Having not pitched in days, Rogers opted to throw a bullpen before a game in which he was needed for two innings, which prevented him from pitching the next day.

With the top offense in baseball showing no signs of slowing down, Twins pitchers are figuring out ways to stay sharp without regular work.

“It’s new territory for me,” Rogers said. “Since I’ve been here, there really hasn’t been a point in time where I’d get that much time off. Usually I’m in there quite often. It’s kind of like a soft energy is building because you know it’s going to turn. You just tell yourself, ‘I’ll wait for the hard time to come and be prepared for that and rest up now.’”

Twins relievers aren’t out there in the bullpen in chaise lounge chairs, but they are well-rested. The group entered Thursday with the second-fewest innings pitched (165 1/3 innings) in the majors. The Los Angeles Angels lead the majors with 248 relief innings pitched.

Last season, the Twins bullpen pitched 610 1/3 innings, the sixth-most in the majors.

It caught up with that group, one that surrendered a major-league worst 89 homers and was on the mound for a major-league leading 15 walkoff losses.

But unlike 2018, the Twins have had great starting pitching and a historically good offense. The team’s 56 home runs in May are its most in any month in franchise history, and the 37-17 Twins have averaged six runs per game.
“(Pitching in) two out of three (games) is when I can get on a roll,” Trevor May says of the rhythm he likes. He’s had three days off between outings five times this season. (Jay Biggerstaff / USA Today)

“Baseball goes in trends,” assistant pitching coach Jeremy Hefner said. “We’re just riding that wave of our offense doing really good.”

Technically, only some of the Twins relievers have hopped on their surfboards of late.

Despite playing for a contender, Rogers is on pace to make nine fewer appearances than he did in 2018 when he set a career high with 72 games. Already Rogers has endured four stretches where he’s had five days off in between outings and another two with four days in between. Veteran Blake Parker has once gone five days in between outings and four times has had four days off. Only once has Trevor May gone four days in between but on five occasions he has missed three straight days.

May feels for Rogers, who surrendered homers in back-to-back games against Milwaukee, including allowing the game-winner on Monday. The left-hander didn’t have typical command of his slider, a pitch he’s ridden to becoming the team’s best reliever. Prior to pitching on Monday, Rogers had thrown four pitches in the previous six days.

“It’s hard to be like, ‘My slider’s great’ when you can’t remember the last time you threw one,” May said.

Whereas Rogers doesn’t like to throw side sessions in the bullpen because of the sport’s inherent unpredictability — “I just feel like if I throw one, Murphy’s Law will kick in and then I’ll be down for the next day,” he said — May favors throwing more often.

Perhaps it’s his because of his history as a starter, but May can handle throwing up to as many as four times in five days. If his body feels good enough, May doesn’t mind throwing up to 15 pitches off the mound in a bullpen and later appearing in the game that night.

“Whenever I’m (pitching in) two out of three (games) is when I can get on a roll,” May said. “I can string three or four. I threw four out of five earlier and it was my sharpest, most consistent in those outings. But then you need some rest. The wheels fall off pretty quick there. You’ve got to find ways to do it.

“It’s a weird problem to have because we score so many runs.”
“There’s no real good way to do it,” Taylor Rogers says. “You know the life of the bullpen. You’re either throwing too much or not enough. There’s just no getting around it.” (David Berding / USA Today)

The Twins are extremely aware of the issue. However, with four games in a row at Tampa Bay starting Thursday night and another three at the Cleveland Indians after that, manager Rocco Baldelli understands the “problem” could disappear in an instant.

If it doesn’t, the Twins will figure out how to work around it. That’s why Parker appeared with the Twins ahead by five runs on Tuesday night even though it wasn’t a high-leverage spot. With the day off Wednesday and Parker only having appeared in one prior game dating back to May 20, it was important he pitch. Parker allowed two runs before striking out Christian Yelich and getting Ryan Braun to ground out to escape a jam.

“We pay a lot of attention to their usage and how we intend to use them going forward with whatever the schedule looks like, so these are parts of the discussion every day,” Baldelli said. “It’s all part of the equation and there will be times where we get our guys out there for work, but that’s going to depend very specifically on each guy. Some guys need it more than others, and we’ll react accordingly.”

But the Twins also see the bright side here. Hefner has used this window of dominance to give Tyler Duffey a chance to work on his pitch-mix usage in games with large leads. Same for Matt Magill, Mike Morin and Ryne Harper. All have thrown the ball well of late and perhaps that will convince Baldelli to trust them in medium-to-high-leverage spots later in the season.

Beyond that, the Twins haven’t had to overwork their bullpen to build up their 9 1/2-game lead in the American League Central.

“As we get closer to September and we’re playing in very meaningful games, if those guys haven’t pitched as much as maybe Tampa’s relievers or as the Yankees relievers or Cleveland’s relievers, maybe that gives us a competitive advantage,” Hefner said. “We’re looking at it as an opportunity to rest them in hopes that it pays dividends later in the year.”

With no easy answer, Rogers, who all of a sudden has pitched in his team’s last three games, instead has decided to make it a mental challenge to stay sharp. It’s one of the few solutions he has to a really good problem to face.

“There’s no real good way to do it,” Rogers said. “You know the life of the bullpen. You’re either throwing too much or not enough. There’s just no getting around it. I think once you come to embrace that it becomes a little easier. Embrace the challenge of staying sharp or embrace the challenge of getting back out there.”

“I don’t need to get in the game. We have four months to go. One thing that keeps me sane is I’m not the only one. It’s not like the bullpen is worn out and I’m fresh.”

(Top photo of Blake Parker: Brace Hemmelgarn / Minnesota Twins / Getty Images)

MLB attendance down another 1.4%, 4th straight drop

Ronald Blum

ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK – The Tampa Bay Rays and Miami Marlins drew 12,653 Wednesday night – combined.

Baltimore, Cincinnati, Minnesota and Tampa Bay set stadium lows this year. Kansas City had its smallest home crowd since 2011, and Toronto and San Francisco since 2010. The Marlins’ average attendance is less than Triple-A Las Vegas.

Major League Baseball’s overall average of 26,854 through Wednesday is 1.4% below the 27,242 through the similar point last season, which wound up below 30,000 for the first time since 2003.

Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred attributes this year’s drop to fewer season tickets but emphasizes day-of-game sales are up 6%.

“Given the explosion of entertainment alternatives and the growth of the secondary market, it is not surprising that season ticket sales can be challenging,” he said. “The clubs are responding to this challenge with creative and effective approaches. For example, sales of subscription tickets are double what they were a year ago. And the Twins recently had a $5 flash sale that produced crowds of over 30,000 in three of four games, and the largest single-game attendance since 2016.”

Nineteen of the 30 teams have seen their average fall from a similar point last year, with the largest drops in Toronto (6,963), San Francisco (6,463), Baltimore (3,839) and Detroit (3,686).

Large rises have taken place for Philadelphia (10,383), Oakland (4,027), San Diego (3,465) and the Chicago White Sox (2,311). The Phillies signed Bryce Harper and the Padres added Manny Machado.

“A lot of it comes down to competition. Fans want to know their teams are doing everything they can to compete for a championship every year,” union head Tony Clark said. “I see every empty seat as a missed opportunity. Experiencing a game and seeing players perform in person creates a bond with baseball; our industry needs to find ways to convert those empty seats into lifelong fans.”

MLB’s average peaked at 32,785 in 2007 – the last year before the Great Recession and the next-to-last season before the New York Yankees and Mets moved to smaller stadiums. The average was at 30,517 in 2015 before sliding for three straight years, and last season’s final figure of 28,830 marked a 4% drop, the overall number hurt by unusually cold and wet weather early in the season.

Manfred points to other metrics that please MLB: Games top primetime cable ratings in 24 of 25 markets and MLB.tv streaming is up 8.5%. He views increases for the Phillies, Padres, Athletics and White Sox tied to team performance.

Florida remains a problem on both coasts.

Despite a sparkling, eight-seasonold ballpark with a retractable roof, Miami is averaging 9,554 in Derek Jeter’s second season as chief executive – below the 9,582 average for Triple-A Las Vegas in its first season at a new 10,000-capacity stadium.

Tampa Bay plays in one of the most outmoded facilities in the major leagues and drew 5,786 against the Blue Jays on Tuesday, the smallest home crowd for the Rays, who started play at Tropicana Field in 1998.

“The more people there are, the more energy there’s going to be,” Tampa Bay outfielder Kevin Kiermaier said. “No matter what crowd you’re playing in front of, you have to get motivated.”

A quartet of last-place teams have seen swaths of empty seats.

Miami is on track to have the lowest home attendance in the National League for the seventh straight season.

Wonder what Miami's attendance
be if they had a AA team
instead if what they have?
It would surely be an increase
over what they have now.

Inside the Astros’ cutting-edge approach to minor-league pitching development

Jake Kaplan May 30, 2019 49
Maybe it’s a byproduct of being undersized, but Brandon Bailey’s always been the type of athlete who craves more information.

Pitchers of Bailey’s profile, that of a 5-foot-9 right-hander, seldom reach the major leagues. Any little nugget of data could be the difference between him accomplishing his dream or stalling out in the high minors.

Like many others of his generation, Bailey was called to baseball’s analytics revolution. Five years ago, after his freshman year at Gonzaga University, he began training at Driveline Baseball in suburban Seattle, where he was first introduced to data-driven development. In January 2016, six months before he was drafted in the sixth round by the Athletics, he threw in front of a high-speed camera for the first time.


When Bailey was traded to the Astros ahead of the 2018 season, it was a perfect marriage of an intellectually curious athlete and a progressive organization. For years, Houston has been at the forefront of leveraging pitch-tracking data and technology to accentuate pitchers’ strengths. Bailey, now a 24-year-old starter in Double A, learned as much on his first day of spring training last year.

“When I got here, I was just blown away by how far advanced and ahead Houston was just in terms of combining technology along with the old-school style of player development,” Bailey said. “They merge them together and then morphed it into this really innovative way of thinking about how to develop pitchers.”

At the start of every spring training, the Astros present each pitcher in their system with an individualized development plan for the upcoming season. The team will have already analyzed all of the available information about a pitcher from TrackMan, a radar-based tracking system, and the coaches will come armed with suggestions for how the pitcher can better utilize his repertoire. They might recommend adding or dropping a particular pitch or altering the mechanics of his delivery. Take Bailey, for example. He came to the Astros on the heels of two successful seasons in the lower levels of the Athletics’ system. Because of his performance, the A’s more or less left him alone. His focus was the usual — fastball command.

But upon reporting in February 2018 to the Astros’ complex in West Palm Beach, Fla., Bailey was given a completely revamped plan of attack. His introduction to the Astros’ holistic approach came on Day 1 in a meeting with their two minor-league pitching coordinators at the time, Josh Miller and Chris Holt. Bailey learned he had a lot to refine.

Miller and Holt emphasized to Bailey that his four-seam fastball has an elite spin rate — the quality that creates the illusion to a hitter that the pitch is rising. His curveball, however, needed work so he could throw it out of the same tunnel as his fastball, a staple of Houston’s pitching philosophy. Bailey had developed his curveball the previous season with a grip that was essentially self-taught. He left his first day as an Astro with a new spike-curve grip and instructions on how to use all four laces to his advantage to create more depth.

Bailey’s experience is symbolic of the Astros’ cutting-edge processes in player development dating to about 2015.

“The coaches have done a really good job of identifying how to work with each individual athlete,” said Jeff Luhnow, who’s in his eighth season as the Astros’ general manager. “We’ve always said that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to player development. It’s especially so in today’s world because you really can customize a player development plan for each athlete, and that’s what we do and that’s what we’ve been doing for the past three or four years. And I think our (coaches) have enough experience doing it now and our players trust our coaches and are willing to go ahead and take the plunge and try something new.”

At the major-league level, the Astros, under pitching coach Brent Strom, have developed a reputation for unlocking pitchers whose repertoires weren’t maximized elsewhere. But for every Charlie Morton or Ryan Pressly, there are countless minor leaguers who can also stand to improve their deliveries and the qualities of their pitches or alter their pitch usage.

The Astros don’t wait for pitchers to reach the majors or even Double A before using data and technology to analyze the qualities of their pitches. The process begins as soon as they enter the system. And at every level of the organization, pitchers are trained to pitch to a game plan that’s based off TrackMan information that has been distilled by their internal interface.

“I think they gather the most information and do the best job of applying it where it needs to be applied,” Triple-A left-hander Kent Emanuel said. “It just gives the pitchers great attack plans. It lets us really have an advantage going into a mano-a-mano situation, where it’s pitcher against the batter.”

Their staggering system-wide strikeout totals from last season are no coincidence. Consider the following:

— Not only did the 2018 Astros lead the majors in total strikeouts and strikeouts per nine innings, but also their minor-league affiliates all the way from short-season Single A to Triple A led their leagues in the same categories. Their low-A affiliate, the Quad Cities River Bandits of the Midwest League, set a minor-league record for total strikeouts in a season with 1,514, surpassing the 2017 Triple-A Durham Bulls’ record by 93.

— Of the 53 minor leaguers who struck out at least 10 batters per nine last season (minimum 100 innings), 11 pitched in Houston’s system. That includes Héctor Pérez and Patrick Sandoval, who were traded in July. Josh James led the minors with 13.5 strikeouts per nine across stints in Double A and Triple A.

— The ’18 strikeout totals were built without much help from former first-round draft picks. Forrest Whitley, their 2016 first-rounder and top overall prospect, pitched only 26 1/3 innings in 2018 because of his 50-game suspension and lat and oblique injuries. J.B. Bukauskas, their 2017 first-rounder, logged only 59 innings because of a slipped disc in his back he suffered in a spring training car accident.

— Almost two months into the 2019 season, the Astros’ High-A and Low-A affiliates again lead their leagues in strikeouts per nine innings. High-A Fayetteville’s 11.4 per nine through Wednesday’s games was 1.7 better than the next-best team in the Carolina League. Double-A Corpus Christi came into Thursday tied for second in the Texas League with 9.8 per nine. Triple-A Round Rock was the lone straggler. The Express entered Thursday tied for seventh in the 16-team Pacific Coast League with 8.9 strikeouts per nine.

Detractors of the Astros around the industry — and they have many — will cite their lack of homegrown pitchers contributing in the majors. And it is true that of their current five starters, only rookie Corbin Martin was developed by the Astros. Their two best starters, Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole, and their two best relievers, Pressly and Roberto Osuna, were acquired via trade.

But that discounts the value they’ve added to pitchers who are still working their way through the minors or who have already been traded. The Astros have parlayed several of their intriguing minor-league arms into trade chips. Franklin Pérez was the centerpiece of the three-prospect package they sent the Tigers for Verlander and they turned Albert Abreu and Jorge Guzman into Brian McCann.

Last July alone, they moved Jorge Alcala in the Pressly deal, Hector Pérez as part of their package for Osuna and Sandoval for Martín Maldonado. In November, they flipped Trent Thornton for Aledmys Díaz. They have plenty more young power arms they could deal ahead of this summer’s trade deadline.

So what’s behind all of the strikeouts? The Astros are, not surprisingly, secretive about certain details of their player development processes. But conversations with more than 15 current and former Astros minor-league pitchers and catchers, as well as executives, coaches and scouts around the game paint a picture of how Houston has developed so much swing-and-miss ability in its farm system.

Whether or not they want to admit it, the Astros have a type. They love four-seam fastballs and they love high spin rates.

“You don’t see too many guys with two-seamers,” said Double-A catcher Chuckie Robinson, who’s been in their system since 2016. “And if they do have one it’s disgusting. It’s like abnormally good.”

If a pitcher comes into their system with both a four-seam and a two-seam fastball, there’s a good chance the Astros will have him ditch the latter. They have a vast majority of their pitchers focus on their four-seamers and strive to develop backspin, which is what creates the effect commonly referred to as “ride” or “hop.”

From instructional league through Triple A, their coaches work with pitchers to stay behind the ball and eliminate running or tailing action. TrackMan relays a pitcher’s spin axis by way of a clock face where 12 o’clock represents true backspin. Slow-motion video captured by high-speed cameras can show a pitcher when his ball features end-over-end rotation.

“I remember the first day I threw with Brandon Bielak when we got drafted, our balls were tailing, cutting,” said Corbin Martin, who the Astros drafted 56th overall in 2017 in part because of his TrackMan numbers at Texas A&M. “I wouldn’t say it was sloppy. It was just like we didn’t know any better. And like two weeks later, you start seeing changes.”

Like in the majors, the Astros encourage their minor-league pitchers to utilize the top of the strike zone with their fastballs and teach them how to throw their breaking balls out of the same tunnel. Their system is filled with pitchers with what you hear referred to as “hoppy four-seamers” and hammer breaking balls. In last year’s draft, all four of the pitchers they took in the first eight rounds fit this profile. The trend will likely continue with next week’s draft class.

“They take your strengths and they try to amplify (them) as much as possible,” said Double-A reliever Colin McKee, a former 18th-round pick who has translated his fastball-slider combo into 43 strikeouts in his first 27 1/3 innings this season. “They obviously draft you for a reason. They think you’re good at stuff and they try to make those all the more important in your repertoire and you just try to maximize that every day.”


Brandon Bailey was introduced to the Astros’ way of developing pitchers on his first day of spring training in 2018. (Olivia Rook/Corpus Christi Hooks)
Before games, the pitching coach at each Astros affiliate meets with that night’s starting pitcher and catcher for a game-planning meeting similar to how Strom operates in the majors. They will evaluate extensive hot and cold zones of the opposing hitters from TrackMan and mesh that data with the strengths of the pitcher. Some of the catchers wear wristbands that contain the information. Others have cheat sheets in the dugout they can refer to between innings.

Unpredictability is key, and the convention of establishing your fastball the first time through the order and working off that is ignored if it doesn’t suit the pitcher’s strengths. A pitcher might go kitchen sink from the get-go and throw all of his pitches to the first batter of the game. If any other organization throws a higher percentage of breaking balls this season, it would be a major upset.

“I think, honestly, it’s just like an organizational-wide mentality,” McKee said. “We know we have good stuff. You see home run rates are up and everything. What’s a way to beat home runs? Don’t let them hit the ball.”

Any pitcher drafted or signed into the Astros’ system in 2016 or later has never experienced pro ball without TrackMan. Those at affiliates in 2015 were formally introduced to it via a PowerPoint presentation. The emphasis on Trackman and understanding of its benefits increased as the team gained more experience with the technology.

Originally invented for the purpose of tracking golf swings, TrackMan has been prevalent in baseball for years. It’s used by MLB as a component of its Statcast system. Every ballpark is outfitted with a system, though MLB will soon switch to Hawk-Eye’s optical technology, as The Athletic’s Eno Sarris reported recently.

Every team has access to TrackMan numbers, and the Astros were far from the first team to invest in the technology, which expanded to baseball in 2008. It’s believed they were among the second wave of teams to get it into their ballpark. They installed it at Minute Maid Park in 2012, Luhnow’s first season as GM. In the subsequent two seasons, they rolled it out to their minor-league parks.

The Astros recognized early the value of having players work with it from rookie ball through Triple A. After they had collected a few seasons of data and better understood how to apply it, they began to base some of their instruction in the minors around the TrackMan numbers.

How the data is conveyed is instrumental. For pitchers, TrackMan is used to track velocities, spin rates, extension and much more. Early on, some pitchers considered the amount of information to be overwhelming. Now it’s almost like a second language.

Additionally, the Astros’ internal TrackMan interface is believed to be particularly advanced and navigable. They protect it like it’s classified government information. In the early years, pitchers weren’t allowed to take home the printouts coaches made for them. Even now, pitchers can access their data only with the direct assistance of a coach.

Three or four years of trial and error has taught the Astros a lot regarding best practices in applying TrackMan data. They’ve run down some dead ends that other teams probably have yet to encounter. It’s unclear how MLB’s switch to Hawk-Eye will impact their processes, but teams should be able to translate data from one system to the other.

“We tend to have a forward-looking front office that’s trying to take advantage of emerging technologies,” Luhnow said. “We will sometimes be on the bleeding edge, where we might try something before everybody else and it might not work and it might cause some pushback. But at the same time, because we tend to try things first, in some cases we do get the advantage.”

The Edgertronic high-speed cameras are a prime example. The Astros were the first team to realize the camera’s potential benefits in player development. Their investment dates to at least 2016, when they brought an Edgertronic to their affiliates for specific players of interest to use. In 2017, it became a staple of Astros player development.

The slow-motion video captured by the cameras shows a pitcher how the ball is coming out of his hand at release and its rotation as it spins toward the plate. A pitcher can use it to tweak his grip and wrist position in an effort to generate more efficient spin. When a pitcher is throwing a bullpen session, a coach can pair the camera with a portable unit like Rapsodo, which will give real-time spin measurements.


Triple-A starter Rogelio Armenteros throws a bullpen session in April at Dell Diamond in Round Rock as Triple-A pitching coach Drew French (left) observes and Astros director of player development Pete Putila (right) operates an Edgertronic camera. (Jake Kaplan/The Athletic)
Four or five hours before a game, the pitching coach at a given affiliate will lug one of these cameras on a tripod to the outfield, where the pitchers have their daily throwing program. Pitchers will throw not only their bullpen sessions in front of it, but some use it when tossing on flat ground. They can study video of their grip and wrist position when the pitch moved as they intended it to, and view it side by side with video of a pitch that didn’t.

The Astros also collect slow-motion video from game action. Since the 2017 season, they have had their minor-league ballparks decked out with Edgertronic cameras set up at roughly six to eight angles.

These cameras, priced at $6,495 a piece, have become so popular among major-league front offices that their inventor, Sanstreak Corp., now sends representatives to baseball’s winter meetings. Since the cameras were first shipped to customers in December 2013, Sanstreak Founder and CEO Mike Matter estimated that more than 25 percent of camera sales have been to baseball teams. More recently, according to Matter, that number has been 70 to 80 percent.

“We try to maintain a healthy level of paranoia and try to keep chasing new opportunities … which we know sometimes leads to bumps and bruises along the way in trying to integrate new technology or new processes,” Astros director of player development Pete Putila said. “We just try to keep pushing because the info gets proliferated at some point one way or another.”

Brent Strom’s influence on the Astros extends far beyond the dozens of pitchers he’s worked with in Houston over the last six seasons.

The septuagenarian pitching coach with seemingly boundless energy sets the tone for the entire organization’s pitching program. His philosophies about deliveries and his emphasis on four-seamers up and breaking balls down are imparted throughout the system.

With their minor-league pitching coaches, the Astros have essentially a small army of mini Stroms to spread his ideology from rookie ball to Triple A. Like Strom, these coaches are forward-thinking, open-minded and have a healthy appetite for new information. Unlike the 70-year-old Strom, the oldest pitching coach in the majors, the Astros minor-league pitching gurus aren’t much older than their pitchers.

The average age of the pitching coaches at the Astros’ four full-season affiliates is only 33. The oldest, Erick Abreu, the pitching coach for the low-A Quad Cities affiliate, is only 35 and is also the only one of the four who played professional baseball.

The other three full-season affiliate pitching coaches came to the Astros from the collegiate ranks — 33-year-old Drew French, in Triple A, from Division II Lee University (Tenn.), 34-year-old Graham Johnson, in Double A, from Morehead State University (Kent.) and 30-year-old Thomas Whitsett, in High A, from the University of Arizona.

Each reports to someone even younger — Bill Murphy, the organization’s minor-league pitching coordinator. At 29, Murphy has only a year on the oldest pitcher to appear in a minor-league game for the Astros this season, Brady Rodgers. He’s in his first season in his role, having replaced Josh Miller, now the Astros’ bullpen coach.

Murphy’s in only his fourth season working in professional baseball, all with the Astros. He joined their player development staff ahead of the 2016 season after a year and a half as the pitching coach at Brown University. He shot through their system, from rookie ball in 2016 to short-season Single A in 2017 to Double A in 2018 before his most recent promotion in the offseason.


Bill Murphy is in his first season as the Astros’ minor-league pitching coordinator after working last season as their pitching coach in Double-A Corpus Christi. (Charlie Blalock/Corpus Christi Hooks)
Like most of the coaches he oversees, Murphy didn’t pitch beyond the collegiate level. A New Jersey native, he has a psychology degree from Rutgers University and a masters degree in business management from Wagner College. His goal was to coach at the college ranks and see how far he could take it. Then he spotted a link to an interesting job posting while perusing Twitter and went for it.

Murphy exemplifies the profile of a coach the Astros seek in this data-driven age. He is tech savvy and fluent in TrackMan. If his lack of experience prompted any skepticism from his pitchers, the organization’s results and the changing times have alleviated it.

“Probably at first people were a little speculative, I would imagine, just because that’s human nature. But I think it comes back to the adage of ‘Do you care about the players?'” Murphy said. “And I think that the players understand that I am there to try to help them out the best I possibly can and my simple goal is to help them achieve their dream of getting to the big leagues. It’s as simple as that.”

If every team has access to TrackMan information, the trick to gaining an advantage is to communicate it to players better than the competition. The minor-league pitching coaches the Astros have hired are willing to push the organization’s philosophies, can help translate the X-Y graphs on TrackMan for the players and advertise to them the benefits of new-age tools.

Hours before a game, it’s not uncommon to see an Edgertronic camera or even a laptop stationed on the field just behind the stadium mound, where pitchers sometimes throw their between-outing bullpen sessions to get readings from the ballpark’s TrackMan system as opposed to a portable unit like Rapsodo or portable version of TrackMan.


Double-A pitching coach Graham Johnson (left) works with pitcher Brandon Bielak (right) before a game in April at Whataburger Field in Corpus Christi. (Jake Kaplan/The Athletic)
Every day, the pitching coach holds one-on-one review meetings with every pitcher who appeared in the previous game. They will analyze everything from pitch velocities and pitch shapes via the TrackMan data to the hand and wrist positions on their various pitches as captured by the Edgertronic cameras.

The shift toward this profile of Astros minor-league pitching coach dates to 2016, the year the organization first experimented with development coaches in the minors. These coaches were tech-savvy compliments to the manager, pitching and hitting coaches at the affiliates, helping both their colleagues on the staff and the players to understand and utilize TrackMan.

They employed two development coaches during that 2016 season, Aaron DelGiudice for Triple A and High A and Tommy Kawamura for Double A and Low A. It’s perhaps telling that both now work in baseball operations in Houston, DelGiudice as an amateur scouting analyst and Kawamura as part of the advance scouting crew that travels with the major-league team.

In 2017, the Astros expanded the model to include a development coach on the staff of every minor-league affiliate. They found it so valuable that while the position no longer exists, it spawned the profile the Astros now seek for their minor-league pitching and hitting coaches. Each is trained to be an expert in the data and technology the organization bases its instruction around.

While every day at various ballparks across the country they strive to emulate Strom’s quest to drive innovation, the Astros’ minor-league pitching coaches also pay homage to him on a regular basis.

Each has a T-shirt designed by Holt, the former Astros assistant pitching coordinator and now the Orioles’ minor-league pitching coordinator, that is telling of Strom’s stature in the organization. “The Stromfather,” it reads in orange font, with a photo of the pitching coach in place of Don Vito Corleone’s.


(Jake Kaplan/The Athletic)
The strikeout totals among Astros minor-league pitchers don’t reach the astronomical levels of 2018 without the top-to-bottom alignment Luhnow has built in the organization. Houston has achieved a level of continuity between amateur scouting and player development that their competitors envy.

Creating that synergy has been a gradual process that has taken years.

“It takes a while,” said Luhnow, who was hired to lead the Astros in December 2011. “My personal story was when I ran (amateur) scouting for the Cardinals, I was at times frustrated because the profile of the types of players that we were drafting weren’t exactly aligned with the profile of the types of players that the Cardinals were developing. Not that it led to any big crisis, but you just weren’t taking advantage of that.

“I ended up taking over the player development department over there, and so a lot of the work that was done was trying to create consistent methods across scouting and player development that would allow us to take athletes and turn them into major-league players as soon as possible. So that entire mindset has always been part of how I want to see things operate.”

The Astros’ alignment also allows their front office to push research findings quickly from their Houston-based analytics team to the coaches and players at their various affiliates and also to their amateur and international scouting staffs. Putila, the director of player development, is the middle man. The 30-year-old spends much of his season traveling to the affiliates and working with coaches and players to ensure their processes are running smoothly. He is also the man in charge of vetting potential new technologies for the team to use in player development. The only member of Luhnow’s front office who was hired by former GM Ed Wade, Putila has risen from the level of intern to assistant to coordinator to director.

“Pete has an incredible ability to get up to speed quickly on new technology and to try and appreciate whether or not it’s going to be practical to implement,” Luhnow said. “He leverages (the analytics team) to sort of do the regressions or do the study or whatever needs to be done to validate, but then he really is the key person to try to develop a program that we can roll out into the minor leagues.”

TrackMan has guided the Astros’ decisions in domestic and international scouting for several years now. Whitley was a TrackMan darling because of his combination of velocity and spin in his five-pitch arsenal, and Astros officials regard the 17th overall pick in 2016 as their “first TrackMan first-rounder.” The data on him was limited because he was a high school pitcher. But they managed to piece together some TrackMan information from various summer events and state tournament games that were played at ballparks outfitted with the technology. Their amateur scouting department also had in its toolbox by then an Edgertronic camera, from which spin rate can be reverse engineered. The department developed a proxy to measure Whitley’s spin, the accuracy of which it confirmed later.

The Astros’ understanding of the types of qualities in pitches to target was refined by their biggest draft blunder. After the failure of 2013 top overall pick Mark Appel, they were forced to take a look in the mirror and reevaluate their approach.

Appel could dial up his fastball to the upper 90s. But if the Astros understood TrackMan data in 2013 like they would a few years later, would the fact that Appel’s fastball was relatively flat have steered them away? It’s unclear, as his slider still would have graded out as a plus pitch and they couldn’t have predicted his changeup would regress as much as it did in pro ball, but it’s an interesting thought experiment.

“If we would re-do drafts (from) before we were using TrackMan to help guide decisions, we would’ve had some different choices along the way for sure,” Luhnow said. “I do think scouts are pretty good at identifying elite tools in amateurs, but the technology can actually give you valuable information that the scouts don’t necessarily have.

“I don’t want to focus on any one player. But when you’re able to get the technology in the amateur space, which wasn’t really available back then, you see differences that you might not have picked up with your traditional scouting approaches.”

As the Astros’ reliance on technology has increased, their number of scouts in the field has decreased. Their 2019 media guide lists only seven amateur area scouts, two cross-checkers and senior scouting advisor Charlie Gonzalez under domestic scouting supervisor Kris Gross. They have two Houston-based amateur scouting analysts plus one dedicated video technician tasked with collecting video of prospects around the country. Their international staff under department manager Eve Rosenbaum consists of an assistant director, two scouting supervisors, four traditional scouts and four video scouts.

“So many guys in the Astros’ organization have very similar stuff, I think that’s why they go out and draft those type of guys because they know what they’re looking for and they can enhance their repertoires,” said former Astros minor-leaguer Trent Thornton, now a starter for the Blue Jays.

“That’s why the Astros drafted me, because I have a good spin rate. You look at Whitley and Bukauskas and all the big-name guys, they all have good spin rates on all of their pitches. It’s worked for them.”

Brady Rodgers has witnessed the Astros’ evolution in pitcher development firsthand. The 28-year-old right-hander has pitched in parts of eight minor-league seasons for his hometown organization since he was drafted in the third round in 2012.

“When I was drafted, it was more of pitchers had their pitches and it was kind of just ‘do what you’ve been doing that’s gotten you drafted and why the Astros liked you,'” he said. “And then what I’ve noticed over the years is they’re more hands-on now than I feel like they used to be and developing not only just the pitchers but developing pitches for new pitchers.

“Some guys come here and they only throw a quality fastball. Then they develop a curveball and it turns out to be a banger. They’re really good at developing the pitchers to develop pitches, too.”

Bailey, again, is a good example. He’s spent much of his first two seasons in the Astros’ organization developing two breaking balls to complement his fastball and changeup, the combo that has been his bread and butter since college. Last season in High A and Double A, he focused on the spike curve. This season in Double A, it’s the slider. He’s been using video from the Edgertronic camera to study how the ball comes out of his hand as he searches for the right amount of sweeping movement.

“We use a tool like Rapsodo, which tells you some really good information about what the pitch is currently doing in terms of how it’s spinning, and then you can take that information and use the camera to try and figure out how you can make the ball spin even better,” he said.

“For me, it’s a process of not only feeling how it is coming out of my hand and what feels good versus what doesn’t feel so good but then also trying to look at video and see what my good reps were versus my bad ones, and then try and figure out how I can be as consistent as possible on the good ones.”

In the coming weeks, a new crop of pitchers from the draft will begin the process Bailey started last season. They will learn about TrackMan and Edgertronic cameras. Coaches will work with them to produce backspin and elevate their fastballs. The data will guide them, as will whatever new technology the Astros invest in next.

Twins' winning continues; AL Central foes are up next
Odorizzi, Buxton lift Twins to a series win over Rays.
By La Velle E. Neal III Star Tribune JUNE 3, 2019 — 7:05AM


ST. PETERSBURG, FLA. – The Twins have played only 14 games against American League Central division opponents, but that is about to change.

And division opponents might not be happy about it.

The Twins have 16 games this month within the division and enter the phase coming off a 9-7 win over Tampa Bay, a game in which they led 7-0 before the Rays scored five runs during a hair-raising seventh inning.

The Twins lead the division by 11½ games and visit Cleveland and Detroit this week.

“It feels like it’s time,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “You play so many games against your division, you play all these teams, what, 19 times? It’s time to start playing some of them.”


The Twins took three of the four games against the Rays, have won 10 of their past 12 games and 15 of 18. Mitch Garver was activated from the injured list and made an instant impact, going 1-for-3 with an RBI while guiding Jake Odorizzi to his eighth win — one more than he had all of last season.

Meanwhile, Nelson Cruz went 1-for-3 for Class A Fort Myers during a minor league rehabilitation stint and is expected to be activated from the injured list in time to face the Indians on Tuesday. Luis Arraez was sent to Class AAA Rochester after Sunday’s game.

Not only will the 40-18 Twins arrive in Cleveland with baseball’s best record — reaching 40 wins faster than any team in club history — they will be as healthy as they have been all season.

“It don’t change who we are,” said outfielder Byron Buxton. “We just have to go out there and play the ball that we have been playing. Keep being aggressive and keep having fun.”

Buxton was 2-for-3 with a double, scored on a safety squeeze, and made one of the defensive plays of the year with a man on in the third when he raced to the center field wall to catch Yandy Diaz’s drive and smacked into the wall with his back before uncorking a 97.1-miles-per-hour throw to first in time to double off Austin Meadows.

“You run out of superlatives for the guy because he can do so many things,” Baldelli said.
.
Odorizzi, in his first game at Tropicana Field for the Twins after playing four full seasons for the Rays, fired six shutout innings and lowered his American League-leading ERA to 1.96. And he did it by firing 84 fastballs among his 108 pitches. He saw how Rays hitters struggled with the pitch and kept throwing it.

“I’m human,” Odorizzi said. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t more excited for this game than maybe some of the other ones just because I spent so much time here and they were great to me while I was here.”

Odorizzi’s work of late has been superhuman. He has thrown 16⅓ scoreless innings over his past three outings and has a 0.65 ERA over his last seven. A season ago, Odorizzi was 7-10 in 32 starts.

Baseball’s best offense handed him a 3-0 lead through four innings, then appeared to blow the game open with a four-run fifth to put the Twins ahead 7-0, the big blow a bases-clearing double by C.J. Cron.

The one blemish on Sunday was that righthander Matt Magill replaced Odorizzi (8-2) for the seventh inning and gave up five runs. Jonathan Schoop made it 9-5 with a two-run homer in the eighth before the Rays’ Christian Arroyo hit a two-run shot off Blake Parker in the bottom of the inning.

“Normally at the end of the year, whoever plays best against their division is the one who is going to win it,” Twins righthander Kyle Gibson said. “We can’t get comfortable and we can’t get complacent.”

Stark: Jay Bruce’s Guide to Getting Traded


By Jayson Stark 1h ago 7
There might be 75 players who get traded between now and July 31. We figure they might need some advice.

That’s where Jay Bruce comes in. He’s happy to help.

Welcome to Jay Bruce’s Handy Dandy Guide to Getting Traded. Somebody has to dispense helpful perspective, travel tips and big-picture philosophizing to the future trade chips of America. And who better than him?

It’s the second week of June. He has already gotten his annual trade out of the way (going from Seattle to Philly on June 2). It’s the fourth consecutive calendar year he’s been traded – a claim to fame no other active position player can make, not for the years 2016-19 at least. So that makes him the perfect candidate to provide this sort of vital insight. And his spectacular five-homer, 13-RBI, 1.366 OPS stat line in his first week and a half as a Phillie doesn’t hurt, either.

Bruce laughs when we inform him he has become the greatest midseason acquisition of all time. But it’s kind of true … if you define it just right.

How many other midseason trade acquisitions in the live-ball era hit four home runs in their first four games with a new team? That would be none. How many other players in the National League have hit as many homers as he has since this trade? That would also be none.

So here’s some excellent advice for how to fit in with your brand new team: Just hit a home run every day. That works wonders.

“Yeah, either that or don’t give up any if you pitch,” Bruce says, with that veteran wisdom and good humor he’s known for. “So yeah, that would be good. But obviously, likely not the case.”

Right. So if you’re not going to hit a home run every day for that team you get traded to, how should you handle these next couple of months – and that critical post-trade transition itself? Here’s some awesome perspective from one of baseball’s classiest professionals, and a man who has definitely has been there, done this – and then been there and done it again.

MOST TEAMS SINCE 2016, ACTIVE POSITION PLAYERS

TEAMS PLAYER TIMES TRADED
6 Cameron Maybin 1
5 Jay Bruce 4
5 Jonathan Lucroy 2
5 Curtis Granderson 2
5 Adeiny Hechavarria 3
5 Phil Gosselin 1
Should you follow all those trade rumors?
Does Jay Bruce pay attention to the rumors?

“Oh, yeah,” he reports.

So would he recommend that every player follow the rumors? Not necessarily.

“You have to be who you are,” he says, knowingly.

So why does he keep clicking on MLB Trade Rumors? Why do you think? He’s just like us. That’s why.

“I’m a baseball fan,” he says. “I’m just a fan. I watch baseball. I keep up with it. Much less now that I have two kids … but I enjoy it. And it’s like anything else these days. It’s just constant news, and people like that. It’s just something to keep you going. And you wonder what’s going to happen.”

Here’s one more reason it can be helpful to pay attention: When Bruce got traded from the Reds to the Mets at the 2016 trade deadline, he found out by watching television. That news bulletin started scrolling across his TV screen – and he still hadn’t heard a word from a single proper authority.

“I was in my house, and it was down there, running across the bottom line,” he reminisces, though not real fondly. “So that’s how I found out … It was interesting. But it was hard to deal with, honestly. It was hard.”

What’s tougher – a midseason trade or an offseason trade?
That, he says, is easy. Offseason trades are way less nuts, “because you can reset without having to play the next day.”

Take his trade last December from the Mets to the Mariners, for instance. Mets GM Brodie Van Wagenen had been keeping him in the loop, letting him know his team was listening. Then came the fateful phone call.

“I was at my house, and we were going to barbecue or something,” Bruce recalls. “Then Brodie called me. And [after I hung up] we just kept on going, like, ‘All right, gotta find a [spring-training] house in [Arizona] now.’ So it wasn’t anything crazy. It was pretty nonchalant, actually.”

But those in-season trades? Sheer madness. Your entire life gets blown up in an instant. As Bruce paints the portrait of the first time he was traded, from the Reds to the Mets at the 2016 deadline, it’s safe to conclude there was nothing nonchalant about it.

“I remember we were sitting at home,” he says. “I had to leave pretty quick, and then I was playing the next night in New York. I left everything back. We didn’t know what we were going to do or how we were going to get there. [His then-pregnant wife] Hannah decided not to come because I was trying to find a place to live – and trying to find a place to live in New York that you can trust is like trying to find a needle in a haystack a lot of times because I had no guidance. I ended up living in six hotels from August to the end of the year, so it was definitely the most negative baseball experience I’ve had. Not the actual going to a different team. Just the [life impact of the] trade itself. That was definitely the hardest thing I’ve dealt with.”

Is July 31 the craziest time to get traded?
Think of how wild and crazy Trade Deadline Day is as a fan. Now imagine you’re a player – and you’ve just turned into an item in the season’s most voluminous Transactions column. Think that’s the most insane possible way to get your whole life disrupted?

“It is, because there’s anticipation,” Bruce says. “There’s like, `Where am I gonna go? Am I gonna go someplace?’ You try to get an idea what’s going to happen, but it’s all rumors. It’s all, ‘This guy said this … that guy said that … oh, it’s not true … oh, maybe … oh, this fell through.’”

Hmmm. You could almost get the impression the media’s ability to do play-by-play of all these deals isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. Who knew!

“Exactly,” he says. “So you can imagine.”

Should a guy in the rumor mill have his bags packed?
Adam Dunn once told us he kept two packed suitcases sitting by the door leading up to the deadline, so he’d be ready if the phone rang. Bruce says he has never been a believer in that seemingly brilliant preemptive-packing strategy.

“No, because you almost treat it like a road trip,” he says. “Fortunately, I have a wife who takes care of everything. [After his most recent trade to Philadelphia] she stayed back and finished packing. They were in Seattle. Next thing you know, you’re shipping two cars out … packing one car up … one car is going to be here tomorrow … we don’t know when the next car is going to be here … you know, there’s cribs in it …

“It’s just a lot,” he says, taking us behind the scenes of the oft-forgotten these-are-real-human-beings aspects to these deals. “So you have to definitely use Amazon and Target a lot. And you’ll have multiple Keurigs [coffee-makers] and extra pillows and stuff like that, stuff that you don’t need but you do need because you just moved across the country and you want to have a sense of normalcy, you know?”

How do you cope with almost getting traded?
What happens when you think you’re about to get traded, but then you don’t? Bruce has experienced that adrenaline rush, too – twice. In 2015 and then again in 2016, us always-helpful media geniuses reported, at different junctures, that the Reds had agreed to trade him to both the Mets and Blue Jays. Except that neither deal ever officially happened. So that wasn’t fun.

“I had people texting me,” Bruce says, “and saying, `Yeah it’s done. You’re a Blue Jay. So I call my agent, talk to the GM and they’re like, `No, it’s not done.’ So then you just go about your business. But then you also kind of feel like there is a finite time left in your current situation. Obviously, if they’re trying to do it, it’s going to get done sometime. And my whole thing is like, if a team wants to trade me, then I want to be traded.

“You don’t want to be somewhere where you’re not wanted,” he says. “It’s not like you’re not wanted for personal reasons. It’s just business. It’s just a part of it. They feel like they want to go in a different direction, and I respect that. I’ve never had any hard feelings against a team that traded me, because I understand what they’re trying to do.”

What’s the key to being ‘The New Guy?’
One day, you’re hanging out with a whole team full of people you’ve been around for at least weeks or months, often for years. The next, you’re wearing a new uniform in a new city, surrounded by new teammates and being scrutinized by everyone in town.

How should The New Guy handle that? Here’s that page in the Jay Bruce Guide Book.

“You know, I’m guessing I have a reputation just because it’s my 12th year,” he says. “So people know me. The degree of separation is very short. Everyone in here knows someone who knows me, and I know someone who knows them. Know what I mean? It’s not like it’s my third or fourth year in the big leagues and I got traded and I don’t know anybody. I’ve been everywhere. I’ve played against all these guys. I’ve been to all the stadiums. There’s no new stadiums for me….

“So I’m sure that people kind of have an idea of what they think I’m going to be like. But for me, I’ve just tried to go through my career and be super-even-keel, like vanilla – no frills, just play.

“For me personally, I just kind of survey the ground a little bit. Try and do your best to get to know people. Know names. Get a media guide. I grabbed a media guide [after arriving in Philadelphia] so I can learn the names of the coaches and the staff. If you try to learn them when you see them, you’re not going to do that. So that’s something I’ve learned. Don’t rock the boat. Just come in and be part of it.”

You might be surprised by how easy it can be to rock that boat, without even realizing you’re rocking it at first. So Jay Bruce has a simple mantra he tries to always keep in mind at times like this.

“I just want to be myself,” he says. “Myself has worked. Being myself is plenty. When I come to a new place, I want to respect people. I don’t [care] about baseball. I just want to respect them as human beings. And then I feel like if you do that, everything else kind of falls into place.”

Remember that anything can happen
Only a guy who gets traded every year can truly understand that the range of possible outcomes, when you drop out of the sky into a new team, can entail pretty much anything and everything. Jay Bruce has been there, done that, too.

In 2016, he got traded to the Mets, hit .174 over his next 42 games, “and everyone wanted to say that I couldn’t handle it, that it was a big market and I was a small-market guy, and that was just complete bullshit. It’s just not the case. I just played bad for a month.”

But then the next year, he got traded to the Indians. And that was like going from “the craziest situation possible into one of the easiest situations ever,” he says. Not to mention “we lost one game the first day I was there, and then we won 22 in a row. Awesome.”

His next trade was that offseason deal to Seattle, so it’s a different category. But then came Philadelphia, where he just hits a home run every day, people chant “Bruuuuccceee” every time he catches a fly ball and it took him like three days to become an instant folk hero.

“So I’ve basically had all three experiences,” he says. “Water finds its level. That’s how I feel. It’s all going to come out in the wash.”

How to control the narrative
So remember how we started this opus? Maybe 75 baseball players are about to get traded in the next two months. It might turn out great. It might turn out awful. It might be neither. It might be both.

But Jay Bruce’s ultimate advice for all of them is actually excellent life advice – for them, for us, for pretty much anybody who has to deal with an earthquake of change rattling the furniture in their living rooms.

“Control what you can control,” he says. “Don’t change. Don’t try harder. Don’t try to be different.”

Right. And also remember to hit a home run every day. If your goal is to control the narrative, that trick always works.

“Yeah, that’s been pretty good,” Bruce says, with a knowing laugh. “But baseball’s hard, man. That’s just what I’ve learned. Baseball is hard. And don’t ever forget it.”

Bowden: Five trades that American League contenders should make

By Jim Bowden Jun 14, 2019 200
With about six weeks left until the trade deadline, contending teams are already in heavy discussions with their GM counterparts in an attempt to improve their teams. The playoffs, and home-field advantage, could be decided on the transaction wire just as much as by on-field play.

Here are five trades I’d like to see AL contending teams make now:

Tampa Bay Rays
Trade partner: Seattle Mariners
Edwin Encarnación is having another banner year as the designated hitter for the Seattle Mariners, slashing .241/.356/.531 with 21 home runs, 49 runs batted in resulting in an OPS+ of 141 and a WAR of 2.0. The problem for the Mariners is that most of the American League’s contending teams don’t need a DH. The Yankees will have Giancarlo Stanton, once he returns from injury; the Red Sox have J.D. Martinez; the Twins have Nelson Cruz and the Astros have both Tyler White and rookie Yordan Álvarez. However, there is one perfect fit: the Rays. The Rays are ninth in the league in both runs scored and homers, and Encarnación would boost their offense.

The Mariners are rebuilding, and perhaps a trade for minor-league outfielder Jesús Sánchez would get a deal done. Sánchez, 21, is playing at Double-A Montgomery and slashing .302/.361/.460 with 10 doubles, eight home runs and 42 runs batted in. The Rays certainly have enough outfield depth at the major- and minor-league levels to make a deal of this magnitude. They would also control Encarnación through 2020, or have the option of taking his $20 million salary off the books with a $5 million buyout at season’s end.

New York Yankees
Trade partner: Toronto Blue Jays
With so many questions with their present rotation, the Yankees will need another starting pitcher if they are going to prevail in the AL East. Domingo Germán is on the IL with a left hip flexor strain, but he also will probably have limits on his starts and innings pitched because of his light workload last season (94 total innings pitched across the majors and minors). James Paxton has not pitched well since coming off the IL with a knee injury, and the same goes for CC Sabathia, who is fighting age and the possibility of decline. Luis Severino, the ace of the Yankees’ staff, is not expected back until at least July, and no one knows just how effective he’ll be when he does return. Their pitching depth is also risky because of injuries to Jonathan Loaisiga, who has right rotator cuff inflammation, and Jordan Montgomery, who’s still recovering from last June’s Tommy John surgery.

I think Madison Bumgarner or Trevor Bauer would be the best trade targets for the Yankees, but I’m not sure that GM Brian Cashman and the Yankees would be willing to pay the exorbitant prospect cost required for either one. He might, however, be able to pry Marcus Stroman from the Blue Jays. Stroman, 28, is controllable through 2020 and has pitched well this year, with a 3.31 ERA, 3.75 FIP and 1.6 WAR. A package centered on minor-league center fielder Everson Pereira and shortstop Thairo Estrada could possibly get it done. Pereira, 18, is several years away from being major-league ready and is behind both Aaron Hicks and Estevan Florial on the Yankees’ center-field depth chart. Pereira played in extended spring training and will soon be sent to a short-season league. Estrada, 23, opened evaluators’ eyes during an impressive cameo for the Yankees while Didi Gregorius was on the IL. Estrada slashed .280/.321/.520 with three home runs, 10 runs, 11 runs batted in and two stolen bases in 50 at-bats for the Bombers.

Boston Red Sox
Trade partner: Chicago White Sox
The Red Sox have a serious problem when it comes to closing games. They have notched a staggering 11 blown saves so far, which has played a big role in their inability to get closer to the Yankees or Rays in the standings. There are several closers who could be made available at the trade deadline, depending on what teams are still in the race: Sean Doolittle of the Nationals; Felipe Vázquez of the Pirates; Blake Treinin of the A’s or perhaps even Kirby Yates of the Padres. But I’m not sure the Red Sox can wait for those teams to make decisions on whether they should sell some key parts to retool for next year. Instead, the Red Sox should focus on the closers who are already available, such as left-handed pitcher Will Smith of the Giants, right-hander Shane Greene of the Tigers or closer Alex Colomé of the White Sox.

Red Sox president Dave Dombrowski has made several deals with the White Sox and going back to that well on a deal for Colomé probably makes sense because the prospect cost won’t be as high as the other alternatives. Colomé, 30, is having a solid year, converting all 14 of his save opportunities with an impressive WHIP of 0.722 and ERA of 2.39. In return, perhaps a package of the hard-throwing right-handers Durbin Feltman and Travis Lakins could be close to getting a trade done. It’s important that the White Sox continue to stockpile young, controllable arms, as they should be ready to contend as early as next year.

Minnesota Twins
Trade partner: San Francisco Giants
The Twins are for real. They are currently 44-22 and have a 11 game lead over Cleveland in the AL Central. They also have a run differential of +110, which is the best in MLB. They also lead the league with 130 home runs, 394 runs scored and an OPS of .856. They are going to walk away with this division whether they make trades or not. What they need to do is concentrate on the playoffs. Thanks to the easiest schedule of any AL contending team and an offense that can pound every night, it’s realistic to think they could hold home-field advantage throughout the AL playoffs. Therefore, with this unique window, they need to go all in. Some one-stop shopping with the Giants might help put them in the best possible position: They should be targeting the package of starting pitcher Madison Bumgarner and closer Will Smith. The Twins are not on Bumgarner’s no-trade list, so no approval would be required there. Of course, a deal of this magnitude will be painful and costly for the Twins’ farm system, but the time is now to make a splash and give Minnesota the best chance it has had of winning it all in almost three decades.

Minnesota will need to make it known that both shortstop Royce Lewis and outfielder Alex Kirilloff are off limits. However, the Giants will likely want to center the deal on the Twins’ top pitching prospect Brusdar Graterol, who (until a recent shoulder injury put him on the IL) was dominating at Double A, going 5-0 with a 1.89 ERA. It’s a huge cost but would be worth the price given the real opportunity the Twins have to win. The Giants would need a second decent prospect in the deal, and middle infielder Nick Gordon would probably make sense for them. Gordon, 23, was the Twins’ first-round pick (fifth overall) in the 2014 June draft. This year, he’s at Triple-A Rochester slashing .291/.328/.473 with 10 doubles, two home runs and two stolen bases.

Texas Rangers
Trade partner: Atlanta Braves
The Rangers have had a difficult time solving center field. Delino DeShields Jr. has never quite developed his bat and although Joey Gallo has done an adequate job, he’s still much better on a corner. Since the Rangers are legitimate wild-card contenders, they should try to improve the defense in center field and help the pitching staff with run prevention. Braves’ center fielder Ender Inciarte is presently on the injured list with a lumbar strain and although he’s still weeks away, he would be a wise trade target. The former Gold Glove winner has lost his job in the outfield as rookie sensation Austin Riley has taken over in left and Ronald Acuña Jr. has now been moved to center field full-time.

The Braves need bullpen help and depending on their latest scouting reports and analytics, perhaps either José Leclerc or Shawn Kelley (or both) would make sense for them in a swap. Leclerc, 25, was one of the game’s best closers last August and September but has struggled this year, as shown by his 5.28 ERA and 1.345 WHIP, but he has also punched out 46 in 29 innings. Kelley, 35, is having a terrific year, with a 2.66 ERA, 1.099 WHIP and seven saves. The Rangers get their defensive center fielder and the Braves improve their bullpen by once again holding on to all of their prospects. Done.

(Photo of Encarnación: Jason Miller / Getty Images)

EE going to the Skanks