American League

Astros

• In an interview, Justin Verlander points to why he changed his delivery and what can be expected going forward. First from The Athletic’s take.

If he planned on playing only a couple more years, Verlander thinks he could’ve stuck with his 2019 mechanics and withstood the strain they put on his body. But that, of course, has never been his plan. He set out to fix the issue. “It was almost like plugging holes in a roof when it’s raining,” he said. “I would fix one thing and another thing would pop up.” On Thursday, he pitched three no-hit innings on 43 pitches in an intrasquad game at Minute Maid Park. As he spoke to reporters on a Zoom call shortly afterward, he described the outing as a culmination of a two-to-three month process. He also noted that his mechanics aren’t exactly where he wants them yet, but they are close.

“I changed a lot of stuff that some people would think was unnecessary,” he said. “But I thought it was necessary, especially if I want to play eight, 10 more years.”

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General Notes

• I’m not going to publish any COVID reports or speculation. It’s not that they aren’t important, it’s just that I’m trying to dig a little deeper for information. And the news seems to change every hour.

• I’m continuing to collect Summer Training fastball velocity reports and hopefully, I can clean up the information later today.

• To maintain the COVID protocols, teams will have limited access to video rooms.

With the Brewers and other clubs adopting what manager Craig Counsell called an “outside is better than inside” approach to avoid the spread of COVID-19, players’ access to the tight quarters of the video room will be closely controlled or outright prohibited this season, Haines expects. That will require an adjustment for those who jog the 30 yards or so from the dugout to the video room to watch an at-bat that may have just concluded moments ago.

“We’ve talked a lot about how that will challenge them in a good way — more discussion with teammates, more time watching from the dugout, just being more engaged,” Haines said. “I don’t know if they’re going to be in the dugout. They may be in the stands. I don’t know. … We’re just going to have to do it differently.

Putting aside all the Astros jokes, I wonder if certain players will be affected more than others by not being able to immediately review their swings.
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General

• I’m back to collecting fastball velocities. I’ve created a tab for Spring Training and one for Summer Training.

• Jon Becker has created a spreadsheet with all the COVID Cases and players who have opted out. Just remember that he’s one person donating his time, so always check the news for the latest updates. And thank him.

• The Cubs are trying to have several options in place for the season’s starter.

“We’re trying to front-load all our starters,” Hottovy explained. “In a normal Spring Training, you’d be lining guys up. This guy would be your Opening Day starter. Ideally, here’s Day 2. Right now, in my mind we have seven Opening Day starters, because [we want to] get everybody healthy through a Spring Training like this. You can’t space them out too much, in my opinion, just because we can’t take that chance.”

I could see teams have two to three potential starters for each game in case a pitcher can’t go for some reason.
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American League

Angels

• Sounds like there is a slim chance Jo Adell makes the Opening Day roster.

It seemed in March that Adell’s chances of making the opening day roster were slim. Returning to triple-A to iron out his approach might have been the more prudent move.

After months of speculation, the minor league season officially was canceled Tuesday, so Adell won’t have the luxury of closing gaps in his development in a normal game setting. But the Angels hope the competitions they organize within their player pool provide Adell the opportunity to make strides.

“That’s what we’re hopeful for … There’s some upside to the intrasquad format,” Eppler said. “We’ll just have to keep getting him at-bats. There’s going to be talented pitchers over there for him to face and we’ll go from there.”

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While this article is a little shorter than normal, I combed through all the recent articles and got caught up. I’m out the first part of the week but will see how much information is available for a mid-week article.

General

• Hitters could struggle without the needed reps against pitching.

Shelton said the Pirates are more concerned with transitioning their position players back into game-type activity, as it could be a shock to their systems to face live pitching for the first time in three months.

American League

Indians

• The starters will be ahead of a normal Spring Training schedule with one pitcher up to five innings back in May.

Indians pitchers pledged months ago to arrive at Spring Training Part 2 — Summer Training? 2 Spring 2 Training? — more prepared than they would be for a traditional spring ramp-up period. By the end of May, one Indians starter had already built up to a five-inning workload. But with an abbreviated schedule and expanded rosters, will teams even deploy pitchers in a customary fashion? The Indians could get creative, given their depth. Before injuries intervened, they had three starting pitchers — Plesac, Plutko and Aaron Civale — jockeying for the final two rotation spots.

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Some random ideas to think about.

• Normally, I don’t care about the opening day starters, they could give owners an edge with the league having an opening weekend. The top-three starters will be the only pitchers getting starts to give some owners a head start.

• Managers with playoff bullpen experience could be at an advantage.

”Managers who have managed in playoff situations probably have a little bit more advantage with how to use their bullpens and things like that,” Shelton said.

American League

Angels

• Shohei Ohtani will throw just once a week and never be a two-start pitcher.

Shohei Ohtani will be utilized similar to how he would in a regular 162-game season. He'll still pitch once a week. Maddon said he expects as a six-man rotation as a result.

— Rhett Bollinger (@RhettBollinger) June 24, 2020

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I’m cleaning up any news I have a backlog because I’m off on vacation next week and hopefully when I return, a decision will exist on an MLB season. As a reminder, the focus of this article is to dive deeper than the headline news like Chris Archer’s surgery.

General information

The effects of a concussion can still be felt two years later.

Interesting nugget on #concussions. Remember this when you have an athlete that suffered a concussion less than 2 years ago… pic.twitter.com/y70wfYiuPt

— Jesse Morse, MD (@DrJesseMorse) May 1, 2020

Here is a list of players who have been on the IL for a concussion over the past two years.
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Once Spring Training was shut down, MLB.com must have ordered their writer to publish articles on “Roster Battles” and “What We Learned” since each team got one. I ground through all 60 of them and here is what I learned.

American League

Astros

• Bryan Abreu might be one of the team’s starters.

As camp progressed, rookie Bryan Abreu emerged as a legitimate candidate for the fifth spot as well.

I’m intrigued by the news. Abreu has always been a high-strikeout pitcher (11.9 K/9 in AAA, 13.5 K/9 in majors in 2019). His fastball sat at 95 mph last year. His slider and curve graded above average. His problem was fastball control and has always posted high walk rates. He’s starting to show some control. In the majors, he had a 3.1 BB/9. In spring training, it was 3.0 BB/9. While most prospect reports place him in the bullpen, I can see why the Astros have fallen for him.
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I’ve been sitting on a ton of possibly useful information since Spring Training was cut short. I was just going to sort through it once MLB tries to start up but it was becoming too much. I’m going to purge all the information in two to three articles and try to write Mining the News on a regular basis.

Here several quotes from several team officials and coaches on how long they think it’ll take to get pitchers ready.

• Jon Daniels says the Rangers are “idling”.

Daniels said the Rangers want their pitchers “idling their engines.” That means not shutting it down completely, but also not going at full intensity without knowing when they will be called back to work.

“Until the league tells us otherwise, we are going to try and keep guys in some sort of state of readiness,” Daniels said. “That’s going to vary with each guy based on what they can do safely. We don’t want anybody to do anything that will jeopardize their health or the public’s health.”

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Today’s edition is abbreviated but I felt I needed to draw a line from the first Spring Training to the second one whenever it occurs. A few tidbits snuck through before everything came to a halt.

For the next few articles, I’m going to grind through the velocity gainers and losers next, cross-check those with Jason Collette’s new pitch tracker, and find some possible breakouts.
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