As JD Martinez was developing in the minors, a Triple-A manager for the New York Mets asked him how he felt at the plate.
“Okay,” Martinez replied. “But I didn’t see any speed.”
For Martinez, a 14-year veteran who signed with the Mets in late March and missed almost all of spring training, the lack of quality arms at Triple-A was instructive, if not alarming.
The difference between the quality of pitching at Triple-A and the majors is nothing new — Cleveland Guardians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti recalls former manager Terry Francona telling him about it a decade ago years. But as the struggles of several top prospects this season demonstrate, the transition to the highest level could be more difficult than ever.
Consider Kyle Manzardo, who made his major league debut Monday after hitting eight homers in his last 13 games at Triple A. Manzardo, 23, started his career with the Guardians 0 for 7 with five strikeouts before getting his first major league game. hit like a pinch hitter on Wednesday. A small sample size, to be sure, but also an indication of the challenges Manzardo and other young hitters face.
“It’s difficult to replicate what’s happening here. That’s why you see so many of these kids getting called out and struggling,” Martinez said. “That’s where the guys come. It’s the big boys’ league.
So while service time manipulation isn’t entirely a thing of the past, even under new collectively negotiated rules designed to discourage the practice, some teams simply prefer their prospects get extra reps in the minors. Early success at the majors can be elusive. And this season, it seems like the top prospects are being particularly humiliated.
Jackson Holliday of the Baltimore Orioles, the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2022, returned to Triple-A after starting his major league career 2-for-34. Henry Davis of the Pittsburgh Pirates, the No. 1 pick in 2021, is also returned to Triple A after hitting .162 with a .486 OPS.
Colt Keith of the Detroit Tigers has a low OPS of .414 in the major leagues. Jackson Chourio of the Milwaukee Brewers is at .609. Wyatt Langford of the Texas Rangers, a first-round pick last July who worked his way onto the defending World Series Opening Day champions’ roster, had a .588 average before landing on the roster injured due to right hamstring strain.
These rookies had varying levels of experience at Triple A. Some will likely return to the same path as the Orioles’ Gunnar Henderson did last season, winning the American League Rookie of the Year award after producing an OPS of .651 until May 12. Jackson Merrill of the San Diego Padres, who not only jumped to the majors straight from Double A but also did so playing a new position, center, could follow Henderson’s path after coming out of a recent crisis of 0 out of 20.
Here again, the linear progression of prospects is hardly assured, especially when the major league pitchers are much better than at Triple A. Tips+a metric that judges throws based on their physical characteristics (spin, speed, movement), describes the difference starkly.
Through Monday, the average Stuff+ of each pitch in the majors was 100. At Triple A, it was 86, up from 95 last season. Among major league starting pitchers, it’s about the difference between Mitch Keller and Griffin Canning. Only 29 major league starters had pitched 50 innings with a Stuff+ rating of 86 or worse.
“You go from a place where there are a few guys who have played in the major leagues, people who might one day, to every single person is a major league player and there’s no break, there’s no There are no easy hitters,” 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 throws in situations you’ve never seen before. A lot of people misrepresent this. They don’t understand what a real leap it is.
Beyond the most obvious reason: major league pitchers are mean! — players and club officials offer various theories as to why this jump seems to be becoming more and more problematic:
Improvements to pre-screening
Minor league parks are equipped with devices such as Rapsodo and Trackman, which provide real-time information on the speed, spin and movement of a baseball. Yet Orioles general manager Mike Elias likened the move from the minors to the majors to “going from advanced scouting to every laser pointed at you imaginable.”
“If there is a larger gap than normal, my strongest guess would probably be that the research and planning beforehand becomes so robust and so technically focused,” Elias said. “You start out doing a little bit of that in the minors with lower quality information and less intensity, and then all of a sudden you have 29 advanced teams and pitchers who are able to execute those plans much better. The impact of this situation has worsened or accelerated in recent years.
Six-game series in minors
Matt Carpenter of the St. Louis Cardinals was surprised by the minor league schedule when he spent the first part of the 2022 season in Triple-A with the Texas Rangers. Teams at all levels now play six-game series, a format the sport implemented in 2021 to reduce travel during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“If the major leagues adopted this schedule, the offense would explode,” Carpenter said. “When you play the same guys all the time, the advantage goes to the hitter.”
Carpenter might be on to something, as evidenced by OPS and per-game numbers at Triple-A in a series of six or more games since 2021, according to STATS Perform.
Games 1-4: .778 OPS, 5.35 RPG
Games 5-7: 0.787 OPS, 5.47 RPG
The gaps, in smaller samples, are even wider this season. Hitters, once they reach the majors, don’t always get multiple looks at a reliever during a three- or four-game series. And they never get two looks at just one starter.
Minor League Roster Limits
The Guardians’ Antonetti sees only one potential difference from the past: this season’s reduction in the number of minor league players an organization can put under contract from 180 to 165. Double-A and Triple-A teams are went from 36 players on their squad to 33, including 28 active.
Major League Baseball and its owners reduce the size of the workforce in an effort to keep costs relatively stable after agreeing to raise minor league salaries, guarantee them housing during the season and pay them during spring training and other times they work in the team facilities outside of the regular season.
“Some of the players (who) have been cut are the Triple-A veteran or the guy who has two or three years of major league service but hasn’t really established himself,” Antonetti said. “Maybe some of these positions that were filled by veterans with major league experience are now filled by prospects.”
Carpenter, who was drafted in 2009 and made his major league debut in 2011, recalled his struggles as a young hitter facing such veterans at Triple A. Hopes are generally less bright, although Paul Skenes of the Pirates, who will make their major-league debut on Saturday, were an obvious exception.
Teams use internal projections to predict how their prospects will perform in the majors. These projections don’t always turn out to be accurate — the Orioles, for example, surely didn’t expect Holliday to go 2 for 34. But in addition to determining where a player is in his development, teams must also evaluate how he might fit into their roster. “Those two things have to align for guys to get to the major league level,” Antonetti said.
Manzardo certainly looked the part after topping OPS above .900 during the Arizona Fall League and major league spring training. But the Guardians had an accomplished left-handed hitter, Josh Naylor, at first base, and two other lefties, Will Brennan and Estevan Florial, taking some of the bats at DH. It was only after an injury to Steven Kwan that they saw an opportunity for Manzardo, knowing they would need Brennan and Florial more in the outfield.
The Guardians kept Manzardo in the minors long enough to secure an extra year of club control over him, but probably not long enough to keep him from earning an extra year of arbitration. Could he still be at Triple A if Kwan was healthy? Of course. But the team didn’t fiddle with service time when it named Kwan to its opening roster as a rookie in 2022, or when it promoted pitcher Tanner Bibee last season in late April, when he was still likely to qualify for Super Two status. Bibee ended up earning a full year of service by finishing second in the AL Rookie of the Year voting.
The Tampa Bay Rays have their own version of Manzardo – infielder Junior Caminero, who hits .315 with six home runs and a 1.005 OPS at Triple A. Wander Franco reached the majors at the same age, 20, and excelled. But Caminero isn’t considered as advanced a prospect as Franco, especially on the defensive end, and the Rays don’t have an obvious place to play him.
“It feels like the gap between Triple A and the major leagues is greater than ever, and it’s even more difficult to assess a hitter’s readiness,” the president said. Rays baseball operations, Erik Neander.
“Speaking primarily from our own experiences, when we offer a young hitter an opportunity in the major leagues, we have to be sure that they are well prepared to take a step back before taking two steps forward, and that your team major league is able to support this trip as well.
The journey doesn’t get any easier. Orioles rookie Colton Cowser, who won AL Player of the Week in early April, was in a 4-for-35 slump before improving to 2-for-4 with a double and a sacrifice fly Wednesday night. The good ones always come out. But the task is more difficult in the majors than in the minors, where a pitcher who dominates at one level is promoted to another.
“If it was 1999 and you played Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson, they’d be in another league if they could,” said Elias of the Orioles. “But in the big leagues, these guys have nowhere to go.”
— AthleticismZack Meisel and Eno Sarris contributed to this story.
(Top photo by Jackson Holliday: Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)