Browsing: Zach

The Detroit Tigers are one win closer to their first ALCS trip in 12 years.

Zach McKinstry’s RBI single in the 11th frame Saturday night lifted the Tigers to a 3-2 extra-innings win over the Seattle Mariners in Game 1 of the ALDS.

McKinstry had gone 0-for-17 at the plate prior to his clutch hit. He was the first Tigers batter to record a go-ahead extra innings hit in the postseason since 2012, per Underdog’s Justin Havens.

The Mariners got in trouble early in the 11th inning when Spencer Torkelson reached second on a walk and wild pitch from Carlos Vargas.

Vargas struck out consecutive batters but was unable to get the final out before McKinstry sent Torkelson home with an RBI single. Tigers closer Keider Montero then stepped up to close out the win in the bottom of the 11th.

Earlier in the evening, Tigers starter Troy Melton was able to keep the Mariners off the board until the fourth inning. That’s when Julio Rodríguez hit the first postseason home run of his career.

The hit also marked the first time the Mariners sent a postseason runner home since Game 2 of the 2001 ALCS.

The Tigers answered in the top of the fifth, starting with a Parker Meadows single. Kerry Carpenter then hit a homer off George Kirby to give Detroit its first lead of the game.

The hit improved Kirby’s career record against Carpenter to 5-for-11 with five home runs, per MLB.

Rodríguez stepped up again for the Mariners in the bottom of the sixth inning with an RBI single to tie the game at 2-2.

Meadows looked like he might have gotten the game-deciding hit when he connected again in the top of the ninth, but Mariners reliever Andrés Muñoz snagged the ball to keep the game tied.

The Mariners got one final shot in extra innings when Rodríguez singled in the bottom of the 11th frame. Montero then forced Josh Naylor into a ground out to seal the win.

The Tigers will now have the chance to take a 2-0 series lead when Tarik Skubal takes the mount to start Game 2 of the ALDS on Sunday night at 8:03 p.m. ET in Seattle.

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This is a harsh blow to start the season for a Memphis team needing to prove it can make noise in a deep Western Conference.

Jaren Jackson Jr. and Zach Edey — the teamâ€s starting power forward and center — as well as backup center Brandon Clarke are all going to miss training camp and the start of the season recovering from surgeries, the team announced Friday.

An All-Star last season and a former Defensive Player of the Year, Jackson had surgery to help deal with a turf toe injury back in July. Last season he averaged 22.2 points per game, shooting 37.5% from beyond the arc, while playing elite defense. Because of his two-way play as well as Ja Morant being in and out of the lineup in recent seasons, Jackson has become the Grizzlies†best player and losing him is a huge blow. Santi Aldama will move into the starting lineup in his place.

Edey made First-Team All-Rookie last season, averaging 9.2 points and 8.3 rebounds a game, while blocking 1.3 shots a night.

Clarke has recovered from the knee sprain that slowed him at the end of last season but now suffers from right knee synovitis — an inflammation of the synovial membrane that surrounds and helps lubricate the knee — and that required his knee to be scoped. While there is no timeline on Clarkeâ€s return, he is going to be re-evaluated in six weeks, reports Shams Charania of ESPN. That likely pushes his return into November.

All these frontcourt injuries will put a lot more pressure on Ja Morant to keep the Grizzlies afloat to start the season until everyone gets healthy. In a West with a minimum of 13 teams thinking playoffs, that will be a big ask.

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Brooklyn Nets restricted free agent guard Cam Thomas didn’t take kindly to remarks made by NBA analyst Zach Lowe regarding consensus thoughts about his game last year, and the former ESPN commentator offered a response.

On Tuesday, Thomas was asked about Lowe’s response and provided his remarks.

On July 14, Lowe led a discussion on key restricted free agents during his podcast. He made these remarks on Thomas, citing consensus around the league.

“The consensus on Cam Thomas — if there is one, and he’s got some fans, and he’s got some mega-detractors — but the consensus is kind of like empty calories, ball hog.”

Lowe responded on his July 21 podcast (52:53).

“If Cam Thomas had listened to the subsequent 12 minutes — I don’t think he did, but I don’t know — he would have heard me deep dive into his game and talk about career-high in assists, certain kind of passes he’s gotten meaningfully better at. Nic Claxton lobs, little dump-offs, and stuff like that,” Lowe said, per Erik Slater of ClutchPoints.

“I have said consistently for two years about Cam Thomas: the guy can straight up get buckets, and there is a place for him in the NBA. To me, that place is most likely a sixth-man, scoring burst guy, which is what I said in that 12-minute segment. Nekias Duncan on that segment went and got numbers about how good the Cam Thomas–Claxton pick-and-roll was. And then I talked about how a lot of Cam’s passes are like, ‘I’m-in-jail, last-resort’ passes.

“And what does he look like as an off-ball player? I’m not sure that anyone really knows that yet, or we’ve seen a lot of evidence of it. My only rebuttal would be: it was a fair [segment]. No one else in national media is going into 200 Cam Thomas pick-and-rolls before a podcast to really dissect it. And I offered my own opinion. He probably still doesn’t like my own opinion that he’s probably best as a sixth- or seventh-man scorer, and I’m not sure he has the vision or the mindset. And, frankly, I do think sometimes he plays like a ball hog, and that’s OK. Because he can score and he plays on a terrible team. But I don’t think anything I said was unfair.”

Now, a few months later, Thomas provided his thoughts at the Nets’ media day.

Thomas, a former LSU star selected No. 27 overall in the NBA draft, averaged 24.0 points on 43.8 percent shooting (34.9 percent from three), 3.8 rebounds and 3.3 assists last season. Unfortunately, his season was cut short to 25 games due to a left hamstring strain.

Thomas best showcased his talents scoring and passing near the end of last season, notably amassing a career-high 10 assists in his final regular season game of the year to go along with 24 points. He also averaged 5.8 assists per game over his final five matchups overall.

He signed a one-year, $6 million qualifying offer with the team on Sept. 6, and he’ll be an unrestricted free agent after this season. So the 2025-26 season is obviously a big one for him as he looks for a big deal next year.

Thomas and the Nets open this season on Oct. 22 with a road game at the Charlotte Hornets.

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Each Monday morning, we highlight 10 players who stood out to us based on their underlying Statcast metrics. Data will usually be through Saturday of that week, but may include some data from Sunday games. These are not full scouting reports, but often serve as good early indicators of prospects who might be ready to break out or are demonstrating MLB-ready skills.

Last week, we discussed Nelson Rada’s path to success in the major leagues and discussed how Joe Mack’s combination of elite defense and optimized batting approach projects him as a very valuable player. For the final week of the regular season, we’ll discuss:

10 Statcast Standout

Daniel Espino, RHP, Guardians

I often get asked fantasy baseball questions, as people erroneously assume I am a fantasy baseball expert. A while back, I received a query about Espino. I replied: “I will be shocked if he ever pitches again. And if he does, I’ll be even more shocked if he’s anywhere close to the guy he was.”

I’ve never been more delighted to be wrong.

1,241 days between strikeouts.

Cleveland #Guardians 24yr old RHP prospect Daniel Espino picked up his 1st strikeout since 4/29/2022 while with Double-A Akron for Triple-A Columbus today vs St. Paul.

Espino’s fastball topped out at 98.3 mph in the outing. #GuardsBall pic.twitter.com/Rkt9w0p5Ze

— Guardians Prospective (@CleGuardPro) September 20, 2025

Back in 2022, Espino looked like one of the best pure-stuff pitchers we’d seen in a long time. He was blowing hitters away at Double-A and looking like he was months or maybe weeks away from doing the same on a major league mound. Then he stopped pitching. There were rumblings about knee soreness. Espino disappeared, with no clear explanation. Much later in the season, it was announced that he also had shoulder soreness—always ominous for a pitcher.

Early in 2023, Espino was diagnosed with a shoulder muscle tear, which would require surgery and a lengthy 12-14 month recovery window. Then in 2024, Espino re-injured his shoulder, this time requiring rotator cuff surgery. Most pitchers struggle to come back from one major shoulder injury, let alone two.

It takes a special kind of athlete to grind back from that kind of injury history. If you want to be great at any endeavor, it’s usually not enough to just be supremely talented. You also need to embrace the grind of boring work. Compared to playing in real games, there aren’t many things less interesting than rehab—especially three years of it—and it comes with all the doubts and fears that maybe you won’t ever get back to the player you were before you got hurt.

Let’s take a look at what Espino’s first inning back on the mound in three years—he gave up three earned runs on three hits with a strikeout in what is an extremely small sample size—looked like under the hood:

Espino’s fastball shape isn’t all the way back, as he was getting about average ride given his arm slot. His velocity, however, which averaged 98 mph and touched 99, was extremely encouraging. If we assume he’ll ramp up a little as he settles back in, this is looking like a potential plus-plus pitch again. Most importantly, the command of the pitch looked very on point:

That’s a lot of zoned fastballs, mostly in the top third of the zone.

Espino’s slider looks to be a plus-plus pitch, with premium velocity and huge vertical separation off the fastball. His huge two-plane curveball looks promising, as well. He flashed a changeup, but it didn’t impress from a shape standpoint.

If Espino’s velocity and command have returned, it suggests he might not be far off from the electric pitcher he was before his three-year injury hiatus. I, for one, am very excited to be able to cover him again and look forward to seeing him in action in the Arizona Fall League.

Zach Cole, OF, Astros

There is a cognitive bias in baseball prospecting that results in “old” prospects tending to get overlooked. Generally speaking, once a player demonstrates who they are as a player, they very rarely break out of that mould. This is especially true the older the player gets.

Baseball America’s scouting report on Cole had him with 55 power, 60 run, 60 field and 70 arm, but he’s ranked 22nd on the Astros’ Top 30 due to questions about his hit tool, is graded as 30. He was also recently ranked 30th in the Astros organization by FanGraphs.

A lot of this was due to an abysmal season in Double-A last year in which Cole struck out 38% of the time as a 24-year-old. He repeated Double-A to start this season and was still striking out at a 36% clip, justifying the concerns about his hit tool.

However, the Astros saw enough improvement that they promoted him to Triple-A:

The result was a spectacular 240-pitch sample, with a plus-plus damage on contact profile, a potentially average hit tool and elite patience. Cole was so good in Triple-A that he was promoted to the majors, where he has just kept on mashing:

That’s elite raw power from an exit velocity standpoint, with potentially elite game power if the flyball exit velocities hold up in a larger sample. The zone contact has held up, as have the swing decisions, though. they’ve leveled out as closer to average.

You may be tempted to be skeptical about the power—don’t be. Cole’s 76.2 mph average bat speed would rank 12th among qualified batters, sandwiched between Julio Rodriguez and James Wood. He’s also showing plus-plus or better foot speed, with an average sprint speed of 29 feet/second.

What’s the moral of the story here? Don’t necessarily write off an athlete because he’s old for a level. Sometimes a player is a simply a tweak away from fully tapping into his potential. No player embodies this more than Cole, who has transformed himself from a fringe prospect into the Astros’ 2025 MiLB Player of the Year and a legitimate candidate for 2026 rookie of the year in the American League.

Luis Perales, RHP, Red Sox

Perales’ fastball averages 99 mph with more than two inches of ride above expected. That’s an easy plus-plus pitch that will play up because of his arsenal. All of Perales’ pitches operate within a 12-to-14 inch horizontal space. That means batters have very little information on what pitch type they are seeing based on horizontal movement. He prefers his 90-92 mph cutter to the fastball, using it as his primary weapon in the early going. Both the cutter and slider (the cluster around the 0 vertical movement line) grade out as plus-plus or better pitches.

The changeup should tunnel well with the fastball, and it has unicorn traits given the lack of horizontal movement. This makes it a potential fourth weapon for Perales, though I’m concerned the velocity separation from the fastball might be too large. We’ll need to see how it plays against major league competition.

Perales’ combination of tight horizontal tunneling and a plus-plus fastball looks like the stuff of nightmares. This could be a special arm for the Red Sox.

Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz, RHP, Yankees

The Yankees are arguably the premier organization for developing supinators. Supinators, generally speaking, excel at creating east/west movement and usually struggle to create a fastball with plus shape. Rodriguez-Cruz looks to be a prime example of this. Whereas Perales had a very narrow band of horizontal movement, Rodriguez-Cruz has a very narrow band of vertical movement, but a huge spread of horizontal movement.

The sinker has a ton of movement, making it effective against righties and lefties. When he executes the sinker well, it gets a ton of seam-shifted wake depth. As he gets more consistent with the pitch, it should be a groundball weapon, no matter the matchup.

The key to success for pitchers of this archetype often rests on the shoulders of a bridge cutter, splitting the arsenal. It’s highly encouraging to see this present, and Rodriguez-Cruz uses it primarily against lefties, against whom his power sinker will be somewhat less effective.

Rodriguez-Cruz’s splitter/changeup looks like a potential plus-plus weapon, with ideal velocity separation and a ton of fade and depth. His sweeper doesn’t get elite horizontal movement, but it has a lot of seam-shifted wake lift that should add to its deception, especially in that velocity band. There’s likely room for refinement there as he figures out what shapes he can produce and which ones work for him.

There’s a lot to like with Rodriguez-Cruz’s arsenal, and he’s in the right organization to help him maximize it.

Jhancarlos Lara, RHP, Braves

Lara’s cutter/slider might be a true 80-grade pitch given the shape and performance. In Triple-A this season, he’s thrown it around 56% of the time. When batters swing at the pitch, he’s getting whiffs 51.4% of the time, good for an excellent 19.7% whiff/pitch. The fastball has great velocity but has well below-average shape, and his sinker has a similar velo/shape divergence. However, due to his great velo, both pitches should play as at least average.

Lara’s command has been spotty, but the raw stuff is enormous. He should be a weapon out of the bullpen, where he can overwhelm hitters who aren’t familiar with him.

Deyvison De Los Santos, 1B/3B/DH, Marlins

What happened to De Los Santos? The underlying data suggests something has gone wrong after coming over to the Marlins from the Diamondbacks in a trade last year.

Let’s start at the beginning. Here’s what De Los Santos looked like before the trade:

That’s a plus-plus damage-on-contact profile, with better contact in the air, decent contact rates and an aggressive approach that would likely be easily exploited at the major league level. Then he got traded to the Marlins and everything fell apart (note that the 90th EV is computed for the entire season, not the stint):

One might be tempted to point to the change from the Pacific Coast League to the International League. While that may have been part of the issue, there’s a substantial change that isn’t reflected in the charts above: Spray angle.

Specifically, the horizontal direction of batted balls:

STINT/METRIC2024 Arizona2024 Miami2025 MiamiSpray Angle-1 Degrees+10 Degrees (oppo)+8 Degrees (oppo)Fly Ball EV93.6 mph93.0 mph87.9 mphHard Hit Launch Angle11.4 degrees10.3 degrees6.4 degreesSwing %57.0%58.3%51.5%Chase Swing%45.5%49.1%36.7%

The data suggests the Marlins thought they needed to fix De Los Santos, as he’s made two significant changes. First, they had him wait on the ball just a tick, going from an approach that was mostly up the middle to one that was significantly oppo-heavy. The assumption here is that the two are correlated and that this was an intentional change. This season, they’ve had him focus on fixing his chase rates, with which he has made substantial progress:

However, being more patient and selective has taken away the key to his success—aggressive, damage-on-contact swings. We see that in the abysmal contact quality on fly balls, which is critical for hitting home runs.

I’m of two minds here. On the one hand, De Los Santos looks “broken”. On the other hand, he’s made substantial progress in improving his swing decisions. If he can maintain that while getting back to his old ways, he might be a substantially better version of the batter he was before he landed with the Marlins. For some players, leaning into their strengths is often superior to fixing their weaknesses and taking away what made them great in the first place.

Hopefully, De Los Santos can blend his new-found improved selectivity with his 2024 swing for improved results.

Kemp Alderman, OF, Marlins

We took an early look at Alderman a couple weeks ago. And while his zone contact rate has come down as expected, he still looks like a future masher:

While the Marlins potentially did a poor job with De Los Santos, they’ve done an incredible job with Alderman, who has a what could be a 70-to-75 grade damage-on-contact profile. Alderman possesses 80-grade raw power, which he combines with good launch angles. No matter which way you slice it, it’s at least plus-plus raw and game power, with a direct path to 75-or-better game power.

What could this profile look like in the majors? One possible answer is Kyle Schwarber, if everything breaks right:

Eduardo Valencia, C/DH, Tigers

Baseball is a crazy sport. Occasionally, we see a player go from looking like he has absolutely no chance at making it to looking like a solid bet to be at least an average player or better at the highest level of the sport. Valencia’s rise has been nothing short of meteoric.

Last season, Valencia repeated A ball for the third time at the age of 24 after spending most of 2023 injured. That was not to be the end of Valencia’s story. With a healthy offseason, he came into 2025 a completely different ballplayer. We often attribute player successes to their team, and in this case, that may be warranted, as the Tigers started him off in Double-A despite Valencia not having found success during his brief experience in High-A.

Valencia hit .304/.359/.500 (149 wRC+) in Double-A. After his promotion to Triple-A, he did even better—.315/.400/.613 (164 wRC+) through Saturday. That slash line is fully supported by the metrics, which suggest something like a 45 hit/60 power combination with strong swing decisions.

I’m not sure I’ve seen anything quite like this. Valencia has never graced any top prospect lists, and he looked to be on the verge of being out of baseball at the end of last season. Now, he’s on the cusp of cracking the big leagues and looks poised to stay for a while.

Luis Campusano, C, Padres

You may have forgotten about Campusano—and we wouldn’t blame you.

Last season, he hit a woeful .227/.281/.361 in the majors. You will also be forgiven if his .319/.356/.491 line in 2023 has been forgotten. This year in Triple-A, though? A spectacular .336/.441/.595 line, good for a 148 wRC+.

If you’re reading this series, you probably aren’t too keen on slash line propaganda. So, let’s take a look at Campusano via a Statcast lens:

That’s easily plus-plus raw power that will play closer to a 55 grade with those launch angles. He doesn’t chase and make a lot of contact, especially against in-zone fastballs. Campusano’s top-end exit velocities are higher than he’s ever shown, and he’s married that to the plus contact rates he was showing during his successful 2023 campaign.

Liomar Martinez, RHP, Marlins

It’s rare to see a pitcher this young with such a diverse arsenal. Martinez is the rare specimen who can get plus vertical ride on his fastball, while executing a wide supination-bias east/west arsenal. The sweeper is probably the best secondary, with strong spin rates and the ability to hit 20 inches of horizontal break. The curveball should play well with the sweeper, and it gives him a pair of high-potential breaking balls.

The changeup needs work, as it doesn’t get the results or shape you’d like to see from the pitch. The splitter is likely a cutter. He’s showing what looks like a cutter and a gyro slider, but it’s a little messy.

Given Martinez’s age, this is a profile that looks primed for a massive leap forward. Baseball is a game of small adjustments, and small improvements to all of Martinez’s pitches, along with an overhaul on the changeup, could all work together to make him a top-tier pitcher.

If you’re looking for a “pick to click” in 2026, look no further than Martinez. His combination of command, pitch mix and youth suggest a breakout is right around the corner.

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HOUSTON — Four games into his Major League career, Zach Cole has become a master of the pick-me-up.

After entering Tuesday nightâ€s game in place of the injured Yordan Alvarez, Cole hit a go-ahead two-run homer and added an RBI single as the Astros defeated the Rangers, 6-3, in the opener of a three-game series at Daikin Park.

Cole, whose MLB debut on Friday included a home run and two other hits in a victory at Atlanta, entered Tuesdayâ€s game after Alvarez sprained his left ankle while scoring a first-inning run. In his second at-bat against Rangers starter Jack Leiter, Cole hit a two-out, fifth-inning blast to right field to put the Astros up, 4-3.

“That was a fastball well-executed,†Astros manager Joe Espada said of the pitch Cole hammered. “Leiter put that pitch where he wanted to, and this kid just put an ‘A†swing on it. He continues to do things that show heâ€s well prepared. The stage is not fazing him. And Iâ€ve got to give him credit, because weâ€re in the middle of a race, and this kid is showing up.â€

Cole fouled off three two-strike pitches — two changeups and a slider — before getting a 95.9 mph four-seamer from Leiter, whom he never faced in the Minors.

“Just trying to be competitive,†Cole said. “That guyâ€s really good. Heâ€s got a lot of good pitches. Just trying to do my best to foul off anything close just to get another pitch.â€

Espada admitted the Astros†dugout was initially subdued as Alvarez gingerly made his way through it after hurting himself in the bottom of the first.

“Silence in the dugout,†the manager said after the game. “What I do have to say is that once he went to the tunnel, you could hear the guys saying, ‘Letâ€s go. Weâ€ve got to pick him up.†And that was very encouraging – how the players recognized that weâ€re in the middle of a fight. One of our big boys just went down, but instead of using that as. ‘Here we go. Another injury,†they went, ‘Somebody needs to pick him up.†I thought that was a big moment.

“And then Zach Cole goes out there and goes off. Thatâ€s good managing not putting that guy in the lineup, huh? Heâ€s playing [Tuesday].â€

Espada made what turned out to be another deft move by inserting Cole in right field and shifting Jesús Sánchez from right to left. It paid off big when Sánchez prevented the Rangers from tying the game by throwing out Jonah Heim at home plate to end the Texas seventh. Heim was trying to score from second on a single by Wyatt Langford.

“Itâ€s the familiarity of this ballpark for Sánchez,†Espada said. “Heâ€s played here. Cole has played more right field in the Minor Leagues, so I just wanted to take the [left-field] wall element out of there.â€

Cole came through again in the seventh. After Jeremy Peñaâ€s RBI double off Leiter made it 5-3, Cole drove Peña home with a single off Jacob Webb. That made Cole 6-for-13 (.462) in the Majors, with an early-career OPS of 1.456.

“Looks like heâ€s the greatest player in the world,†said Peña, who contributed two hits and three runs. “Should have called him up sooner.â€

When he returned to right field for the eighth inning, Cole drew a huge ovation to make his Daikin debut even more memorable.

“It was an amazing experience,†said Cole, who was selected by the Astros in the 10th round of the 2022 Draft. “Obviously, my first game out there, kind of a new face. They were very warm and welcoming. They were great.â€

The 25-year-old admitted his first four days of Major League service were quite the whirlwind.

“An unreal experience,†Cole said. “Itâ€s been a rush. Itâ€s been a lot of here-and-there, a lot of sleepless nights, and losing some weight ‘cause I canâ€t eat too much. I have so much adrenaline.â€

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