Three weeks into spring training, the
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And though it’s easy to dismiss star players’ spring training stats, keep in mind that Carroll spent four months last season searching for answers before finally working out of a dreadful slump. With that version of Carroll, the Arizona Diamondbacks won 89 games in 2024 — five more than in 2023, when they advanced to the World Series — but still not enough to get into the playoffs.
D-backs officials watched Carroll recover after struggling for the first time, and they believe he’ll be much better for it. A big year is anticipated. If Carroll is unlocked, the D-backs’ offense will be a force. If that happens, and they pair it with what looks like a dominant starting rotation … well, maybe the Dodgers might have something to worry about.
Kiley McDaniel: 518 rpm, which was the average spin rate of Roki Sasaki’s 18 splitters in his debut outing. Those splitters averaged an induced vertical break (IVB) of -4.3 and an average velocity of 85.8 mph. For context, no splitter in the big leagues last year averaged a spin rate that low or had that much sink.
Due to the low spin, there’s an unpredictable knuckleball-like quality to Sasaki’s splitter, with a wide variance of vertical and horizontal movement from pitch to pitch. Some have five inches of glove-side cut, with the velocity and shape of a slider, and some have seven inches or arm-side run, like roughly an average splitter; the vertical break also ranged from +1 to -10. Sasaki threw 10 of 18 splitters for strikes and seven of eight swings against the pitch were misses, with the other swing producing a flyout from Jake Fraley that had an expected batting average of .000.
Sasaki’s splitter averaged over 90 mph and about 1,100 rpm in the World Baseball Classic in 2023. Scouts I spoke with this winter either put a 70- or 80-grade on the pitch (with 80 being the highest on the scouting scale) and now I’m leaning more toward the latter.
Buster Olney: 9-to-1. That’s the ratio of walks-to-strikeouts this spring for 30-year-old outfielder Alex Call, and these are numbers I’ve never seen. Nine walks and one strikeout in his first 27 plate appearances this spring. And he has an OPS of 1.056. We don’t think of plate discipline as a skill that improves significantly over a career, but it seems like that’s what has happened with Call, a third-round pick of the White Sox in 2016. He has bounced around the minor leagues for a while, accumulating 22 walks and 93 strikeouts over 81 games in Double-A in 2019. And in 30 games for the Nationals last year, he had a slash line of .343/.425/.525. He has figured out something.
“He’s always given us good at-bats,” Nationals GM Mike Rizzo wrote in a text. “He’s got a grinder-type approach at the plate that has served him well, and I think that with consistent at-bats, he’s seeing it well. Great guy to have.”
Jeff Passan: .696. The list of single-season spring training batting average leaders over the past half-decade is mostly a who’s who of “Who?” The top three: Max Schrock, Kevin Newman and Christian Encarnacion-Strand. So this is not to suggest that Curtis Mead — he of that otherworldly batting average above — is about to be a world-beater. But Mead gained 20 pounds of muscle and leaned up this winter, and the results have thrust the 24-year-old, once a top prospect, into contention for real at-bats on a Tampa Bay team teeming with talented young position players.
Mead started the spring 10-for-12, went into an 0-for-2 slump, uncorked a 4-for-4 afternoon and has tallied a hit in each of his last two games since. In total, he is 16-for-23. Only two of those hits are for extra bases, but who cares? Mead’s 1.611 OPS ranks sixth among players with at least 20 plate appearances this spring, and if he keeps hitting like this, the Rays will find those ABs one way or another.
Jesse Rogers: .309. It’s what the Chicago Cubs are hitting, 28 points higher than the next-best offense in either Arizona or Florida.
What’s behind the hot spring for so many Chicago hitters? An early start to the regular season, for one. The Cubs and Dodgers face off in Japan on March 18 so everyone is a little ahead of schedule. The team also turned over all its backups from last year’s roster so there’s fierce competition for playing time behind the regulars.
For example, Rule 5 pick Gage Workman is hitting .438 with three home runs while OF Greg Allen is 9-for-16. Meanwhile, young players such as Pete Crow-Armstrong and Miguel Amaya have picked up where they left off last season. Crow-Armstong looks like a star in the making. And the Cubs are doing this with newcomer Kyle Tucker struggling so far. Tucker was 0-for-20 before finally hitting a home run Sunday — yet the Cubs are the lone team hitting .300 this spring. It feels like the floor and ceiling have been raised at the plate for Chicago this year. Just how much remains to be seen.
David Schoenfield: 94.5 mph. That’s what Max Scherzer‘s fastball hit during Saturday’s dominant 10-out start against the Tigers, in which the new Blue Jays starter allowed just one hit and struck out six. His numbers through three spring appearances look like vintage Scherzer: 9 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 0 BB, 14 SO. Scherzer missed time last season after offseason back surgery followed by shoulder and hamstring injuries that limited him to nine starts and 43 innings while his fastball averaged just 92.5 mph.
He’s 40 years old and looks healthy. The Blue Jays’ one-year, $15.5 million deal could be one of the offseason’s biggest bargains.
