Brandon Brown
It’s funny how baseball works. Follow the game closely enough for long enough and certain players will become intertwined in your mind. Take Baltimore Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson and Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder Corbin Carroll. They entered last season ranked No. 1 and No. 2 on our overall prospect list. They later validated those rankings, winning their respective Rookie of the Year awards and helping their clubs reach the postseason.
Entering this season, it seemed reasonable to think that Henderson and Carroll would continue to perform at equally high levels. However, so far this year, the two have followed divergent paths. While Henderson is living up to predictions that he would compete for the Most Valuable Player Award by making loud contacts at an unrealistic frequency, Carroll is mired in a season-long slump fueled by a bloated pop-up rate. Opponents spammed him with pitches in the zone, and he responded by hitting many of them at once.
We are not yet ready to provide Henderson with the hardware, nor are we ready to sound the alarm about Carroll. However, his departures led us to sign some other notable young players. Below, we talk about how four of them are progressing this season.
There was a lot of talk during spring training about how Volpe was moving away from a pass-happy approach and how he was prioritizing using the entire field again. We’re here to tell you that unlike most springtime narratives, this one had legs.
Volpe found early success by reshaping his batted ball profile. He’s hitting more grounders and line drives and pulling the ball much less often than he did in 2023. Let’s put it this way: He entered Sunday with 22 opposite-field hits on the year; he was 32 all last season.
We feel compelled to note that this is not a return to form for Volpe as some have portrayed him. He pulled the ball at least 39% of the time throughout his minor league career and clearly had a lot of success with that approach. This would then be by far the lowest attraction rate of your career – and what’s more, it would represent one of the lowest attraction rates in all major companies.
Volpe’s philosophical shift at the plate is working for him so far. Combine that with his abundant secondary value — he’s a good defensive shortstop and an efficient basestealer — and the Yankees should be pleased with their young infielder’s season to date.
The Brewers have distinguished themselves this season by getting more production from some hitters than could reasonably be expected at the start of the year. That includes Turang, who suffered a dismal rookie season last year that saw him hit .218/.300/.300 in 137 games.
Turang, who we think can reasonably be described as one of the best second basemen in the majors, increased his OPS by nearly 200 points. On average, he hits the ball harder, but what catches our attention are the gains he made in contact. Last season, he came up empty on nearly 22% of his shots; this season he reduced that rate to 12.7%. That’s roughly the difference between a league average contact rate and competing for a top five contact rate in the league.
There are a few other noteworthy changes to Turang’s game. He’s hitting significantly more ground balls, and while that’s usually accompanied by an increase in pull rate, Turang has actually increased his share of batted balls that are thrown in the opposite direction. Here are some examples him to stay inside fastballs and hitting them to left field for singles.
In fact, Turang entered Sunday tied for second in the majors in opposite-field base hits at launch angles of five degrees or less. Do you know who came first in that category? His Brewers teammate William Contreras. The Brewers may have a type and it’s clearly working well.
Coming off a 31 home run campaign, this was supposed to be the season that Torkelson put it all together, the way the Tigers envisioned when they took him No. 1 overall in the 2020 draft. So much for that one. He opened the season with 37 consecutive games without a home run and only recently showed signs of regaining his power. What’s going on here?
Our read on the situation is that Torkelson may need to rework his swing. Based on the above statistic, you probably wouldn’t expect to know that he entered Sunday with one of the top 10 highest average launch angles in baseball. Torkelson has had no problem putting the ball in the air consistently this season; he just had trouble making aerial contact matter.
To get an idea why, let’s compare Torkelson to some other members of the top 10 in one notable category: percentage of balls that were hit between 10 and 30 degrees.
Did you notice anything? Torkelson has the lowest proportion of balls hit between 10 and 30 degrees – and it’s not close, as he ranks last by more than five percentage points. That, plus his average launch angle, tells us he’s getting way under the ball. You don’t have to take our word for it: Torkelson, entering Sunday, ranked fifth in the majors in balls hit with a launch angle of 50 degrees or greater. For reference, the league hit .015 (that’s not a typo) on balls thrown in that range.
We’re not suggesting that Torkelson needs to avoid throwing the ball – him being strong enough that hitting the ball out of the air often is a good idea to maximize his stroke – but clearly something is wrong with his depth or plane of contact.
One strange thing about last year’s Rockies team is that they had some brilliant young outfielders who would be top-notch players if they could hit – this despite playing half their schedule at Coors Field. So far this season, that has changed: center fielder Brenton Doyle and – who else? – Tovar is on the right side of the league midline. (As for the rest of the schedule… the less said, the better.)
From a broad perspective, it would be fair to write that Tovar’s overall profile, a positive defender with double-digit home runs and stealing ability, gives him the chance to have incredible seasons. Dig a little and you’ll notice there’s a lot of room for fluctuation.
We’ll start with his fielding because that’s his true north star. He is capable of making highlight plays when necessary, but the best way to describe his glove is that he always seems to be in control, even when he has to correct course. There is an inner peace in Tovar’s performance.
All of that balance goes out the window when Tovar steps on base, because he is one of the most aggressive hitters in the major leagues. Lest you think that’s an overzealous statement, consider that he entered this week with the highest bid rate in the majors at 62.5%. His chase rate is also, predictably, near the top of the leaderboards. Some hitters, like Bo Bichette or Anthony Santander, hit everything because they know they can hit everything; Tovar is not one of those hitters.
Instead, Tovar’s game features a worrying amount of swings and misses. He’s making contact at the same rate as hitters like Elly De La Cruz, Nolan Gorman and Giancarlo Stanton — or, you know, middle order hitters. Tovar simply doesn’t have that kind of energy capacity. He also won’t walk as often as those scouts.
In our opinion, this puts the current Tovar in trouble: he he has achieve a high average to maintain a respectable cut line. We’re simply not convinced of his ability to do so long-term, not without a better approach at the plate. The good news is that his youth (he’ll be 23 in August) and the glove will give him a long runway to figure things out.
