Mining the News (2/24/26)

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• A solid article from Pitcher List on hitters who will add a new position.

American League

Astros

• The team wants Mike Burrows to throw his sinker and changeup more.

Burrows relied mostly on four pitches last year — four-seamer, changeup, slider and curveball — but the Astros are hoping he can throw his sinking two-seamer more and give him a weapon to right-handers, similar to what Hunter Brown did in 2024. Burrows threw the pitch just 5.6% of the time last season.

“We think it could be really even more effective to right-handers,” Brown said. “He’s got the good changeup. We’ll have him throw his changeup more to righties too at times. So there’s some things that we thought that we could do with him that could even get him to take another step forward.”

Athletics

• Luis Severino adjusted his windup and changeup.

Even as he enters year 11 as a big leaguer, Severino still utilizes spring as a time to experiment with things as a pitcher. On Sunday, he showed off a slightly different delivery after making an adjustment to his windup. He’s also tweaked his changeup, which he threw four times, generating one whiff.

“I’ve been working on a different [changeup] grip,” Severino said. “So far, it’s doing good. My arm action is better than last year. Also, my mechanics, just trying to stay back and not rush to the plate. I’m getting used to doing something different. Hopefully, by the end of Spring Training, I’ll be more familiar and more have more confidence in what I’m doing.”

• Lawrence Butler’s knee was so bad last year that he could barely run or swing a bat.

Butler’s knee issues lingered over the past year, worsening over the final month as he finished the season playing through the partial tear. He ended up with 21 home runs and 22 stolen bases to become the first A’s player with a 20-homer, 20-steal season since Coco Crisp in 2013. The overall numbers, however, a .234 batting average with a .710 OPS and 179 strikeouts in 152 games, fell below the high expectations Butler set for himself after signing a seven-year, $65.5 million contract extension with the A’s in March 2025.

“There were a lot of times where I wanted to steal [a base], but I just wanted to finish the game and not do anything major to [the knee], so I would just stay at first,” Butler said. “I wouldn’t be able to get into my legs as much during my swing in certain games. It feels completely better this year.”

• J.T. Ginn is now using a windup, throwing harder, and added a four-seam fastball.

“It just helps me get into a rhythm early,” Ginn said of his new windup. “Just find that athleticism instead of starting out in the stretch and being there the whole game. It felt good.”
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Pitching out of the windup is not a totally new concept for Ginn. He pitched exclusively out of the stretch last season, but prior to that, the right-hander had been working out of a modified windup throughout different points of his Minor League career.
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Velocity was also way up on all of Ginn’s pitches, including his sinker, which averaged 96.5 mph Monday (93.4 mph average in 2025) and topped out at 98 mph.
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If he’s going to land a spot in the rotation, he’ll need to have better success against lefties. The A’s believe he can do so with a better mix of his pitches to keep hitters off balance, and Ginn has worked on that by adding a four-seam fastball to his current arsenal, which features a sinker, a cutter, a changeup and a slider.

Rangers

• The team plans on being more aggressive on the base paths.

Jankowski — who is in his first year as a coach — and third-base coach Corey Ragsdale spend hours creating a scouting report on opposing pitchers and catchers. The pitchers’ times to the plate, the catchers’ pop time, a leg kick, a twitch, the type of pitch — every little detail is mapped out for Rangers baserunners before they even step into the box.

In 2025, Wyatt Langford led the Rangers with 22 stolen bases. Evan Carter was second with 14 in just 63 games. The goal for ‘26 is to increase stolen bases, not only for those two, but for the “second tier” basestealers like Josh Smith and Sam Haggerty.

Rays

• Cedric Mullins worked on not getting beaten by inside pitches.

As for his struggles at the plate, Mullins called it a “timing thing” that he has worked in the offseason to correct.

“It was pretty obvious I was getting beat inside consistently towards the second half of the season,” Mullins said. “Made some adjustments to make sure the body is in a good place to be in a power position to hit.”

Red Sox

• Brayan Bello wants to bring back one of his changeups.

Instead of just sticking with what has gotten him to this point, Bello has not only resurrected his changeup but added a curveball with some grip tutelage from Suárez.

“Last year I was battling with two, three pitches,” Bello said. “I was able to have the season that I had. But I feel like this year for me, coming into camp feeling healthy, adding in the curveball and having the changeup back — which is one of my best pitches — I feel like I’m going to have a better season. Also, I’m more experienced, more mature, so having that repertoire and adding that experience again is going to be a recipe for a good season.”

Royals

• Michael Massey went full nerd this offseason while trying to improve his plate approach.

As Massey fully let his left ankle, right hand and back — all injuries he sustained last year — heal, he hit the books, studied articles online, talked with players who have experience with swing changes and even met with a former pilot who helped him understand the physics behind the way his bat moves.

“I thought that was interesting because it takes out the bias of someone who’s been in the game for a long time,” Massey said. “There’s really no denying it: How the object moves through space is how the object moves through space. Trying to learn that and then use my baseball experience to interpret it is what I tried to do.”
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“As nerdy as it sounds, physics is part of it,” Massey said. “That’s really all I tried to get into. It’s why I got out of the baseball world. I don’t want feels. I want what’s real, and I’ll find the feel based on my experience.”

Tigers

• Keider Montero’s fastball velocity is up (2.4 mph), and he is fine being in the bullpen as long as he can stay in the majors.

The command wasn’t smooth in Montero’s first spring outing, but the velocity was up on all his pitches. Montero was useful for the Tigers as a spot starter last season and even more useful out of the bullpen in the playoffs. As we mentioned with Melton, the Tigers historically prefer their young starters to stay stretched out in Triple A rather than move to the major-league bullpen. But if Montero is one of their best 13 pitchers, would they find a way to get him on the roster?

“My preference is to be on the big-league team, regardless of the role,” Montero said last week.

Yankees

• Jose Caballero tried to increase his bat speed this offseason.

Much of Caballero’s offseason training was focused on increasing his bat speed. He also spent some time working at Driveline Baseball in Tampa.

He said his goal is to improve his average bat speed to 71 mph this season, which would have been a shade under last year’s MLB average (71.7 mph) but much higher than Caballero’s 2025 mark (69.1 mph), according to Baseball Savant. His average exit velocity (86 mph) last year was among the lowest in MLB, but much better than it was in 2024 (83.7 mph).

National League

Braves

• Ronald Acuña Jr. will hit leadoff.

Speaking of Acuña, manager Walt Weiss confirmed the 2023 National League MVP will be back in the leadoff spot this season. Braves ace Chris Sale, the 2024 NL Cy Young Award winner, appreciates the fact he won’t have to deal with facing Acuña at the start of a game this year.

• Bryce Elder and Joey Wentz could both be in the team’s rotation to start the season.

The Braves will play a game on 13 consecutive days to begin the regular season. So, it would make sense to utilize a six-man rotation, right?

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Sale, Spencer Strider, Reynaldo López and Grant Holmes are slated to fill four rotation spots. The next two candidates are Bryce Elder and Joey Wentz, both of whom are out of options. We can say they’re battling for the fifth spot. But as things currently stand, both would be on the Opening Day roster.

Brewers

• Logan Henderson added a curveball.

Henderson threw fastballs and changeups for 88.8 percent of his pitches in his five big league starts earlier in the season before going down with an injury. It worked, but he and Hook both knew that to survive as a starter for the long term, he would need another offspeed pitch. Hook asked if he’d ever thrown a curveball. Henderson said he had, but not for a few years.

So, they went to work on it.

“He tried it all offseason, and it looks like a pitch that can work with his stuff,” Hook said. “I don’t know how it’s going to play. We’ll see.”

• The manager does not want to name a closer just yet.

As well as Megill has pitched in the ninth-inning role over the last two seasons, however, manager Pat Murphy was non-committal on the topic of who his closer will be in 2026.

“I feel like we’ll look at the matchups and see what’s best. We’ll look at the health of the pitcher. You might see other guys in that mix too,” Murphy told Todd Rosiak of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. While noting that it is still early in Spring Training for such decisions, Murphy hinted at more of a committee approach by saying “I mean, that’s kind of like the message to the whole Milwaukee Brewers team, right? You have to be uncommon. That’s an uncommon mindset for us to thread the needle the way we want to.”

Cubs

• Jaxon Wiggins’s fastball was sitting 96 mph after averaging 97.7 mph last season.

Watching prospects on the backfields may be the most fun part of spring training. The Cubs’ top pitching prospect, Jaxon Wiggins, has put on a few shows early in camp. Already sitting 96 and touching 97, Wiggins has shown why he has one of the best fastballs in the minors. The pitch has induced vertical break of around 19 inches, which is elite and would be among the best in baseball.

He’s also got a nasty gyro slider that he’s developed with the Cubs, ditching a more slurvy, slower slider he used as an amateur. Along with that is a changeup that flashes plus and sits in the 88-90 mph range. At one point, in a three-pitch at-bat against Pete Crow-Armstrong, Wiggins unleashed a nasty changeup to get the young center fielder swinging.

Giants

• Willy Adames reworked his batting stance.

He spent the offseason working to make some tweaks to his batting stance that he hopes will help him lock in his timing and find more consistency at the plate moving forward.

Adames used to have a more crouched setup in the box, but he’s now standing more upright and doesn’t have as pronounced of a leg kick as he did last year.

• Hayden Birdsong made some mechanical adjustments and is working on “cutter/slider”.

Birdsong focused on making some mechanical tweaks to his delivery over the offseason, but he’s also been working on dialing in his cutter/slider, which he hopes will give him more glove-side movement this year. He said the pitch has been “finicky” up to now, but he’s continued throwing it at the request of new assistant pitching coach Christian Wonders.

Nationals

• Jake Irvin added a sweeper.

Irvin added a sweeper to complement his repertoire. He threw a mix of four-seamer (32%), curveball (29.6%), sinker (22.2%), changeup (7.7%), slider (4.3%) and cutter (4.2%) last season.

With a focus on sequencing his arsenal, Irvin believes he can be more effective with runners on base and in high-leverage situations.

Padres

• Joe Musgrove’s fastball is sitting 92-94 mph.

RHP Joe Musgrove
Injury: Tommy John surgery (torn right UCL)
Expected return: Opening Day roster
Status: Musgrove said he had a “normal offseason” after missing the 2025 season while rehabbing. He resumed throwing bullpen sessions in late December. On Feb. 21, he pitched two scoreless innings against Mariners Minor Leaguers in a back-field sim game, sitting 92-94 mph with his fastball. (Last updated: Feb. 21)

Phillies

• Andrew Painter adjusted his arm angle to a previous value.

Late last season and this winter, the Phillies’ pitching braintrust dug into Painter’s issues and found that his arm angle was slightly lower than it had been pre-surgery. In wintertime workouts and this spring, Painter has made an adjustment to his previous arm angle. Manager Rob Thomson says he’s seen improved command from the pitcher.

Rockies

• The team is going to recommend that its pitchers add new pitches.

Whether on the field or elsewhere, the analysis and communication should lead to one of the principles the Rockies are pushing — an expanded pitch mix. The staff, expanded by one on-field coach and Daniels off the field, has encouraged adding pitches or adding new wrinkles to existing. Diversifying repertoires is a staple of modern pitching, but an area in which the Rockies had fallen behind after having success with four-seam fastball-based approaches.

“If you have more pitches, you have more weapons to go to when you’re facing Shohei Ohtani,” Leichman said. “If you have three pitches, everything is pretty easy for him. If you have more pitches, he needs to make more decisions. The more decisions a hitter has to make, the tougher.”
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Feltner and Freeland have long tinkered and experimented. Senzatela, successful early in his career pumping fastballs but not as much in recent years, is adding a sweeper and sinker, and Gordon has added a sinker. Freeland said small actions, like experimenting with grips and foot positioning while playing catch, make it easier because the pitcher is prepared to be “more athletic and less robotic.”

I can’t believe this is news in the year 2026. The Rockies were so far behind the times.