While J.D. Martinez was building up in the minors, a Triple-A coach with the New York Mets asked him how he was feeling at the plate.
“OK,” Martinez replied. “But I haven’t seen any velocity.”
To Martinez, a 14-year-veteran who signed with the Mets in late March and missed nearly all of spring training, the lack of quality arms at Triple A was instructive, even alarming.
The difference between the quality of pitching at Triple A and in the majors is nothing new — Cleveland Guardians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti recalls former manager Terry Francona mentioning it to him a decade ago. But as the struggles of several top hitting prospects this season demonstrate, transitioning to the highest level might be more difficult than ever before.
Consider Kyle Manzardo, who made his major-league debut on Monday after hitting eight home runs in his last 13 games at Triple A. Manzardo, 23, began his Guardians career 0-for-7 with five strikeouts before getting his first major-league hit as a pinch-hitter on Wednesday. A small sample, to be sure, but also an indication of the challenges Manzardo and other young hitters face.
“It’s hard to replicate the stuff up here. That’s why you see so many of these kids get called up and struggle,” Martinez said. “This is where the dawgs come. This is the big boy league.”
So, while service-time manipulation is not entirely a thing of the past, even under new, collectively-bargained rules designed to discourage the practice, some teams simply prefer their prospects to get additional reps in the minors. Early success in the majors can be elusive. And this season, it seems, top hitting prospects are getting particularly humbled.
The Baltimore Orioles’ Jackson Holliday, the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2022, returned to Triple A after starting his major-league career 2-for-34. The Pittsburgh Pirates’ Henry Davis, the No. 1 pick in 2021, also is back at Triple A after batting .162 with a .486 OPS.
The Detroit Tigers’ Colt Keith has a major-league low .414 OPS. The Milwaukee Brewers’ Jackson Chourio is at .609. The Texas Rangers’ Wyatt Langford, a first-round pick last July who hit his way onto the defending World Series champions’ Opening Day roster, was at .588 before he landed on the injured list with a right hamstring strain.
Those rookies had varying levels of experience at Triple A. Some likely will recover the way the Orioles’ Gunnar Henderson did last season, winning American League Rookie of the Year after producing a .651 OPS through May 12. The San Diego Padres’ Jackson Merrill, who not only jumped to the majors straight from Double A, but also did it while playing a new position, center field, might follow Henderson’s path after breaking out of a recent 0-for-20 slump.
Then again, linear progression for prospects hardly is assured, especially when major-league pitching is so much better than it is at Triple A. Stuff+, a metric that judges pitches by their physical characteristics (spin, velocity, movement), portrays the difference vividly.
Through Monday, the average Stuff+ of every pitch in the majors was 100. At Triple A, it was 86, down from 95 last season. Among major-league starting pitchers, that’s roughly the difference between Mitch Keller and Griffin Canning. Only 29 starters out of 142 have thrown 20+ innings with a worse than 86 stuff.
“You’re going from a place where there’s a few guys who have played in the big leagues, some people who might one day, to every single person is a big-leaguer and there are no breaks, there are no easy at-bats,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. “You have the best defenders in the world trying to catch the ball and now all of a sudden you’re seeing pitches in situations that you’ve never seen before. A lot of people misrepresent that. They…
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