Mining the New (7/26/23)

American League

Astros

• The team refuses to update a player’s health information.

This season, two Astros players who’ve battled injuries in the past said Houston trainer Jeremiah Randall discouraged them from speaking to the media about their progress. Altuve — the face of the franchise — ran over to Randall to apparently receive permission before speaking to three reporters in Seattle during his recovery from thumb surgery.

Without insight from the injured players themselves, it is almost impossible to get accurate information about recoveries, leaving Baker in a difficult position every day. Sometimes he erroneously cites HIPAA laws in response to questions. Other times, he arrives and says he hasn’t yet spoken to Randall about the team’s injuries.

Baker has sometimes told reporters to ask Randall the questions he’s fielding. Despite numerous requests, the team has not made Randall available for interviews.

• Yainer Diaz is not catching more because of his inability to prepare for a game.

Diaz’s physical tools are obvious. How he prepares to use them remains his biggest hurdle to clear. Concerns about his inexperience preparing for and calling games still exist, even four months into the season. Coaches and teammates do sense progress, but veteran Martín Maldonado still retains everyday catching duties.

“He’s starting to realize how important it is to this pitching staff to be prepared,” Maldonado said. “I’ve seen him going in the right direction about that, being prepared a little more than in the beginning of the year. I feel like he still has to be able to communicate a little better with the pitchers between innings, between starts. But he has come a long, long, long way from spring training.”

Guardians

• Zack Meisel and Jason Lloyd of The Athletic speculate on the future rotation. Both acknowledge Triston McKenzie might need Tommy John surgery.

Predict the Guardians’ 2024 Opening Day starting rotation.

Jason: Gulp. Gavin Williams, Tanner Bibee, Civale, Cal Quantrill and Logan Allen. I just don’t have faith McKenzie will throw a pitch before 2025, but I hope I’m wrong. If Civale gets dealt this week, Curry becomes the fifth starter if McKenzie is still healing post-op, although Joey Cantillo might not be far behind.

Zack: They really, really need McKenzie to avoid Tommy John surgery. He’s expected to pick up a baseball later this week. I’ll say McKenzie, Bibee, Williams, Allen and Quantrill.

• Josh Naylor’s breakout has occurred because he’s healthy enough to do off-season work.

First, he rebounded from a devastating leg injury that could have altered the course of his career. He spent much of the winter ahead of the 2022 season lying in a bed, swatting balled-up socks his mother tossed to him to maintain his hand-eye coordination. He finally benefitted from a normal winter regimen prior to this season.

Second, he has silenced the motions to limit him to a platoon first baseman role. During this recent offseason, he worked on his approach to lefties, hitting off a machine that presented a variety of left-handed angles and spin.

Royals

• MJ Melendez worked on his swing over the All-Star Game break.

“It was a deeper dive into my swing,” Melendez said. “Obviously, the results weren’t great in the first half. It’s hard to try to fix that when you’re playing every day. You can only take so many swings a day before the game, even if you have a couple days off. So it was nice to work on some things and implement them into my game swing.”

Melendez altered his batting stance a bit so his hands are placed slightly farther away from his body. That’s allowed him to stay in line with the ball better instead of cutting off his swing.

“You want to hit the ball out front, but for me, when I was hitting the ball out front, my barrel was already coming out of the zone by the time I hit it,” Melendez said. “So I think that’s part of the reason I was a little bit late. I tried to adjust so I could hit a little deeper, keeping my hands more toward center field instead of toward the dugout.”

Twins

• Bailey Ober will have his workload managed without shutting him down.

Have there been any discussions from the Twins about limiting Bailey Ober’s innings in the second half? — Kavan K.

There’s no strict innings limit for Bailey Ober, but the Twins have talked about giving him extra time between starts when possible. It’s why he started the fifth game coming out of the All-Star break, for example.

Ober has been fantastic this season, and he has yet to show any signs of wearing down, but he also has a lengthy injury history and had never thrown more than 110 innings in any year dating back to college. He has already logged 112 innings this year between the minors and majors, so the Twins will be looking for subtle ways to manage his workload without shutting him down.

White Sox

• Michael Kopech made it a priority to attack the strike zone …

“[The Mets] are a patient club; they control the strike zone pretty well,” Grifol said prior to the finale. “The key for [Kopech’s] success is pounding the strike zone with his stuff. He’s got great stuff. If he does that, I think he’ll be fine.”

Though Kopech walked four batters, which Grifol had also cautioned could “run him into some trouble,” the 27-year-old was able to scatter them throughout his outing.

… and still walked four batters. WHIP killer.

Yankees

• Nestor Cortes plans on rejoining the MLB rotation in early August.

But Cortes believes that he could rejoin the Yankees when eligible to be activated from the 60-day IL, which would be in the first week of August — just in time, potentially, for big showdowns against the Rays and Astros.

• DJ LeMahieu is making some swing tweaks.

It felt good in the batter’s box because LeMahieu has made adjustments. He was reluctant to talk about the changes he made at the plate, saying he made tweaks in his upper body and lower half. Whatever he is doing, LeMahieu is more explosive in the hitting zone.

“I’m trying to simplify, also staying loose and aggressive. [I was working on] some stuff … right before the [All-Star] break. I took it into the break. I was kind of really excited to get back in after the break. I feel I’m on the right track.”

• Aaron Judge will need to manage his toe pain when he returns.

Judge said earlier this week that “it’s not going to be pain-free” when he returns, adding, “We’ll just get as close to manageable as we can.”

Boone said that he is not sure if Judge has run the bases at 100 percent yet, but the manager believes that Judge’s rehab has continued to move in an encouraging direction.

National League

Diamondbacks

• Brandon Pfaadt changed his position on the pitching rubber and his arm slot.

The reason for Pfaadt’s major bounceback goes back a few weeks. After his rough start to the year, Arizona pitching coach Brent Strom had decided a change was in order.

“A couple of weeks ago, I made what you might call an executive decision,” Strom said before the outing. “I looked at how his stuff was working at the big league level, and a major change was made. He was pitching from the far third-base side of the rubber.

“Today, he will be pitching for the far first-base side of the rubber. He has a lower arm slot, much like [Madison] Bumgarner does. I’m hoping this new angle will improve his fastball, especially in on right-handed hitters. [And] it’ll help his change-up, so there’s a lot to this. His last outing at Reno, it worked well.”

He has moved almost a foot on the mound.

Marlins

• Edward Cabrera’s role with the team could be a long reliever.

In what role might the Marlins use Soriano if he continues to put up zeros? Could he start if someone needs a break or isn’t producing? Might he be thrown into a leverage situation with Andrew Nardi and Matt Barnes sidelined?

“He’s building up like he could start, and the way he’s acting, his changeup was really good, the fastball was playing, he made some really good hitters not look real great on that slider,” manager Skip Schumaker said. “You can feel the confidence building also. I’m not thinking that this guy’s not going to be able to start one day, and it might even be this year. I’m not sure, but the way he’s been built up with his pitch count and four ups now, back to back, three or four off-days in between, it’s definitely something we have to take a look at.”

Mets

• Pete Alonso and the team don’t think (or admit) his wrist injury has anything to do with his recent struggles.

Since returning from the IL, however, Alonso has hit .137/.252/.295 with four home runs in 26 games — a 25-homer pace. He shrugs off the idea that his wrist injury caused his slump, and manager Buck Showalter corroborated that line of thinking. With Alonso, Showalter said, the issues may not be entirely physical.

Padres

• Jake Cronenworth played through a hip injury last season.

But, position change or not, an offensive uptick had been anticipated. Cronenworth, who played through a hip injury for most of 2022, impressed club officials and rival scouts with his health and his form in spring training.

The regular season has been a letdown. Cronenworth’s average launch angle has dipped after soaring last season, but so have his hard-hit and barrel rates. Pitchers have continued exploiting a familiar weakness: Against fastballs near the top edge of the strike zone, Cronenworth is slugging .282, according to Statcast. (His career percentage is .281.)

Historically, hitters have underperformed after playing through an injury. It looks Cronenworth is no exception. On average, hitters miss their projections by 20 points of OPS but Cronenworth might miss his by 100.

Additionally, he is a major tinkerer so it’s likely he will ever have a consistent output.

“He’s really hard on himself. He expects a lot out of himself,” Melvin said. “We haven’t seen the pull-side power maybe that we’ve seen before. Maybe he got a little bit steep (with his swing) at times last year. … This year, maybe trying to flatten it out a little bit. Sometimes when you make that adjustment, it takes some time.”

Cronenworth, for his part, downplayed his frequent tinkering inside the batting cage: “There’s days that, 100 percent, you don’t need to go in there as much. But there’s days that you need to get in there and work.”