Major League Baseball’s plans to test out various ideas for speeding up games in the Arizona Fall League this year have been, through a week of games, a complete flop.
The Saturday night game at Salt River Fields, the spring home of the Diamondbacks and Rockies, exemplifies the entire problem. The game used the automated strike zone, a variable pitch clock and a ban on shifts. The result was a game that was called after seven and a half innings over three excruciating hours because the teams ran out of pitchers. Why did they run out of pitchers in just seven and a half innings, you ask? Because the pitchers they did use walked 22 guys.
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I’m an advocate of moving away from a human-called strike zone, which is going to be biased by its very nature, to an automated one, but this year’s experiments in what was once the Florida State League, and now here in the AFL, have shown that simply turning on HAL 2021 isn’t going to be enough. It turns out that the real strike zone is a lot smaller than what umpires called, especially on the horizontal axis (inside or outside). A whole lot of pitches that were probably 1 to 3 inches off the outside corner and had some chance of being called strikes from a human were, of course, called balls — and while that wasn’t solely responsible for the game’s three-walks-per-inning pace, it didn’t help matters. (Some guys just couldn’t find the plate that night if you’d drawn an arrow from the mound right to the dish.)
Taking away the shift didn’t help matters, since the entire purpose of positioning defenders that way is to reduce the rate of balls in play that become hits, which in turn will make games longer. And then there’s the pitch clock, which at least two of the umpires — the one Saturday night and the one at the night game in Peoria on Friday — decided would allow them to have their Big Moment in the spotlight. They couldn’t wait to call balls or strikes the millisecond the pitch clock expired and let everyone in the park know that they had just rung up Spencer Torkelson. The AFL is a scouting and developmental league, and if you can tell me how any scouting or development purpose was served by Torkelson striking out rather than facing a two-strike pitch from Hans Crouse — who, to his great credit, said “he can hit!” to try to get the ump to allow the at-bat to continue — I would love to hear it.
The whole week had an air of fixing something that wasn’t quite broken. The history of the management of Major League Baseball, especially from the start of Bud Selig’s reign as commissioner and through the present day, is one of the unforeseen consequences. Moving to the automated strike zone without calibrating it to ensure we’re not just calling fewer strikes will make games longer and less enjoyable to watch. Banning the shift will mean more hits (good) and longer games (bad). The pitch clock was just a fiasco — it may work to make the game move faster, but at the cost of fan aggravation, not to mention playing havoc with the stat sheet. (Do we need new categories for strikeouts and walks due to pitch-clock violations? K-PC and BB-PC?) I’m open to some of these ideas if they’re executed in different ways, but this was clearly not it.
• As for Torkelson, he looks great, adjusting well to changing speeds and showing a solid two-strike approach. He’s still way below average at third base — that’s just wishful thinking at this point — but the bat is ready.
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• Brett Baty (Mets) was also impressive at the plate, going the other way well, putting the ball in the air more and displaying some great game awareness on the bases. He did show a little weakness against lefties and had one really bad whiff against a right-handed changeup. He also continued to show the potential for solid-average defense at third base, although he might end up pushed aside for a superior glove.
• Bobby Miller, the Dodgers’ first-round pick in 2020, was absolutely electric in his start Friday, working at 95-98 with a plus slider at 84-89 and two more above-average pitches in his curveball and changeup. That’s a quantum leap from where he was 16 months ago, when he was a two-pitch guy, and his delivery is cleaner as well. Hold your surprise, but it looks like the Dodgers have found another potential top-of-the-rotation starter prospect. (Oh, and there was a lot of chatter among scouts this week that their fourth-rounder from this year, Nick Nastrini, and their sixth-rounder, Emmet Sheehan, both pitched like they should have gone in the first round after signing.)
• The Dodgers’ second-round pick in 2020, Landon Knack, was notable as a hard-throwing senior with exceptional control, walking just one batter in 25 innings (91 batters faced) before the world ended that spring. He carried that over into 2021, walking 8 batters in 62 1/3 innings (246 batters faced) between High A and Double A. Pitching behind Miller on Thursday, Knack was 93-96, with an inconsistent slider at 86-87 and a changeup he’s willing to throw inside to right-handers. Both Knack and Miller had two stints on the injured list this year, but whereas Miller has the four-pitch mix to start, I didn’t see that from Knack.
• Tampa Bay third baseman Curtis Mead, whom the Rays acquired from the Phillies in November 2019 for Christopher Sanchez, was one of the hitting standouts of the week even as one of the league’s younger players (he’ll turn 21 before the AFL season ends). Mead hit everything except for the best velocity, showing power the other way and even showing some defensive chops at third base. His swing is very simple, with good plate coverage, and he has good hand acceleration so he can wait a little longer before making swing decisions. The Phillies are probably going to regret this trade very soon.
• Astros catcher Korey Lee had multiple pop times to second at 1.90 or better, and between that and some strong plate discipline, he looks like he’ll be no worse than a regular behind the plate. When the Astros took him in the first round in 2019, it seemed like a reach, but his defense has improved enough to justify the pick.
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• Phillies pitcher Hans Crouse was part of the trade that sent Kyle Gibson and Ian Kennedy to the Phillies and ended up making his major-league debut at the end of the season. Crouse still has a reliever’s delivery, and he’s down a tick in stuff from where he was before the pandemic, 93-96 now with a power changeup that’s ahead of his slider. I love his aggressiveness, but he has so much effort on every pitch that I can’t see him staying in the rotation.
• Cleveland sent infielder Jose Tena, one of the youngest players in the AFL at age 20, and he did look it, although his plus bat speed was also in evidence. He spent the year in High A and performed well, but he wasn’t ready for AFL pitchers who could throw hard and locate at least one other pitch. I’m still optimistic about his bat, though, given his youth and the couple of times he turned on velocity with hard contact, pulling a double to right field on a 94 mph fastball in the last at-bat I saw from him.
• Cleveland infielder Richie Palacios had a .404 OBP between Double A and Triple A this year, with just a 16 percent strikeout rate, and it’s legit — he hit all week, adjusting to wherever the ball was pitched, with singles and doubles to all fields. He’s small and probably not going to get stronger, so he might never hit more than 10 homers in a season, but his contact/patience skill set is going to play.
• Texas took right-hander Owen White in the second round in 2018, but he blew out shortly thereafter and didn’t throw a pitch in a regular-season game until this year, when he made eight starts in Low A. He showed a full four-pitch mix and strong velocity in his start Thursday, 93-96 with an above-average changeup and two fringy breaking pitches. He’s clearly gotten stronger since high school and the delivery works for a starter, but I’d like to see at least one of the curve and slider be consistently average or better.
• After seeing White, I went to the backfields in Surprise to see the Royals’ instructional league team and their three main high school arms from the 2021 draft, Frank Mozzicato, Ben Kudrna and Shane Panzini. Mozzicato was 90-92 with the same hammer curveball he had in the spring, but now he’s throwing his changeup substantially more often, part of the Royals’ plan to develop him as a starter since he didn’t need the pitch much in high school. Kudrna was electric, 94-97 with a plus slider at 83-88 with hard downward break and the makings of a solid changeup. Where Mozzicato is a projection guy, Kudrna has a now body, and it’s just about keeping him healthy and working on the finer points, such as command and sequencing, because this is the stuff you’d see in Double A and above. Panzini was 93-94 with two breaking balls and some deception but less command than Mozzicato.
• Everybody throws hard now — in one game I had velocities for seven relievers, five of whom hit 95 or better — but I’ll highlight two relievers who threw exceptionally hard. Giants right-hander Gregory Santos returned from an 80-game PED suspension to hit 103 on my gun once, pitching at 96-101 otherwise with a plus slider at 85-88 and a functional if not exactly average changeup at 89-90. He’s a straight-up reliever between his delivery and command, but he could easily see the majors next year. Milwaukee’s Abner Uribe was 97-100 with a slider at 88-90 on which he showed a little more effort, with a long arm action that he doesn’t repeat that well — although that’s two premium pitches that could make him an impact reliever if he gets to enough strikes.
• We had our first AFL player ever (I think) from the People’s Republic of China, Lun Zhao. The Brewers pitcher was also one of the youngest players in the league, just barely 20 years old, and was 85-88 with what looked like a two-seamer and a very impressive 74-76 mph curveball with tight rotation and 12/6 break. He’s just back from 2020 Tommy John surgery, throwing nine innings this summer, and still young and slender enough that you could project a little more velocity. The fastball may be light, but the curveball might carry him up to the high minors.
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• Pittsburgh’s Nick Gonzales struggled badly at second base and at the plate in my looks, whiffing repeatedly on fastballs in the zone or inside, with two doubles off non-prospect relievers, showing at least the hand strength to drive the ball to the opposite field. He made one nice play at shortstop, moving far to his left and making a stronger throw to first than I would have guessed based on his throws from second.
• Houston’s Pedro Léon actually looked OK at shortstop but had a rough go at the plate, striking out on average fastballs in the zone, sliders middle-away and (looking) on a curveball that broke in to hit the inside corner. I know there’s supposed to be plus power/plus speed there, but he kind of has to put the ball in play for us to see it.
• Some prospects really didn’t help their causes this week, unfortunately, even though most of the news was good. Dodgers third baseman Kody Hoese, their first-round pick in 2019, was getting blown away by fastballs and making weak contact on off-speed stuff whenever I saw him. Cubs right-hander Caleb Kilian, who was part of the return for Kris Bryant, faced seven batters Saturday night, and they all reached safely and scored, culminating in a home run for Rockies first baseman Michael Toglia (which I predicted — I have a witness). Kilian was just 91-93 with four pitches, getting hit hard, with no ability to finish his curveball and too little deception. He was followed by Cubs lefty Brendon Little, who was 93-96 but all over the place and left the game with the trainer.
(Photo of Brett Baty: Jill Weisleder / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
