Colton Cowser is a leading contender for American League Rookie of the Year honors, and his power numbers are among the reasons why. The 24-year-old Baltimore Orioles outfielder has 20 home runs to go with a .240/.321/.431 slash line and a 115 wRC+. San Diego’s Jackson Merrill (23) is the only rookie in either league to have left the yard more times.
That Cowser is clearing fences with some regularity is in many ways unsurprising. At a listed 6-foot-2, 220 pounds, his build is that of a basher. That said, his profile going forward wasn’t entirely clear when he was first featured here at FanGraphs in February 2022. Drafted fifth overall the previous summer out of Sam Houston State University, Cowser had propelled just a pair of baseballs over outfield barriers in 149 low-level plate appearances. Moreover, as I related to him in our offseason conversation, Baseball America had recently cited his “impressive walk-to-strikeout ratio,” adding that his swing path is “presently more geared toward contact versus power.”
The numbers suggest that Cowser is no longer the same style of hitter. After having more free passes than Ks in college and in his first taste of professional action, the left-handed-swinging slugger has fanned a team-worst 157 times this season with a 30.5% strikeout rate and a 9.5% walk rate. He’s also hitting more balls in the air, as evidenced by his 38.2 FB%. That number was just 26.9 in his two-plus years down on the farm.
Cowser’s thoughts on making less contact as he settles in to what promises to be a productive MLB career?
“I’d like to still be bat-to-ball,” Cowser told me last week when the Orioles visited Fenway Park. “But I also like to take my chances every once in awhile. I don’t think I’ve necessarily tried to change anything, it’s more that some adjustments have happened here and there.”
Asked to elaborate, Cowser explained that he is getting into his legs better — “that allows for more adjustability” — and isn’t as tall in his stance. Another meaningful tweak, which came over the offseason, has been where he positions his hands.
“They would kind of get stuck back here,” said Cowser, imaginarily gripping a bat with his hands toward the back of his left shoulder. “We made it a point to try to keep them in front of me. I guess technically that was a swing change, but I didn’t really feel like it was. But yeah, I think the big thing was keeping my hands in a consistent position. That’s helped allow me to sync up my legs and my upper body.”
Which brings us back to his increased strikeout numbers. Increased power is an obvious plus, but is he concerned with the Ks?
“They’re the same as ground-outs, but I do hope to dial them back,” said Cowser. “I’m also still learning a lot at this level. Sometimes when I’m moving really efficiently I think that I can hit every pitch. In reality, that’s not the case. Dialing them back will be an offseason project for me. Right now I’m just trying to finish strong and get through the year.”
For Cowser and the Orioles, the year could very well last until the end of October. His contributions are one of the reasons they are where they are.
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RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS
Craig Biggio went 2 for 15 against Brandon Duckworth.
Norm Siebern went 2 for 15 against Jim Duckworth.
Duke Kenworthy went 2 for 4 against Ducky Yount.
Ducky Detweiler went 2 for 7 against Carl Hubbell.
Ducky Holmes went 2 for 26 against Addie Joss.
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Tarik Skubal is 16-4 with a 2.53 ERA and a 2.54 FIP over 174 innings. Emmanuel Clase has 43 saves to go with a 0.68 ERA and a 2.27 FIP over 66 innings. Which of them would get your AL Cy Young Award vote?
I asked that question in a Twitter poll earlier this week (both hurlers have since taken the mound) and the result was a landslide. The Detroit Tigers starter garnered a hefty 83.1% of the votes cast, while the Guardians closer received a paltry 16.9%.
How do their respective numbers compare with those of 2003 NL Cy Young Award winner Eric Gagne and runner-up Jason Schmidt? Glad you asked.
Gagne, who received 28 of the 32 first-place votes that year, had 55 saves to go with a 1.20 ERA and a 0.86 FIP over 82-and-a-third innings. Schmidt went 17-5 with a 2.34 ERA and a 2.64 FIP over 207-and-two-thirds innings.
By no means am I suggesting that 2003’s NL voting should have any bearing on this year’s AL voting. It is also worth noting that two weeks remain in the current campaign. Those things said, I find the comparison interesting.
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A.J. Hinch fielded questions about Jim Leyland when the Hall of Fame manager was feted at Comerica Park last month, and while doing so he brought up how he enjoys discussing, after the fact, in-game moves with the erstwhile skipper. I asked Hinch how that dynamic typically plays out.
“Part of the fraternity of managers and ex-managers is knowing that we have more information [than they do] at the time we make decisions,” he replied. “We have to explain those decisions based on the results. That could be the dilemma last night of sending Tarik back out at 90 pitches. There are pre-scenarios. If I take Tarik out and an implosion happens, the questions are going to be, ‘Why didn’t I send Tarik out?’ You send Tarik out, he gets into trouble, then I take him out… that’s the question I got last night. You send Tarik back out and he punches out three, the stadium erupts, and we come back and win that game, the questions are different.
“You have to sit in this chair to really appreciate the dilemmas that go into decisions that impact the game, that impact the players. The followup conversations are way more fascinating than the questions that I have to answer from [the media]. And the conversations with Tarik go to a whole other level.”
Being a fly on the wall for Hinch’s conversations with Skubal and Leyland alike would be indeed be fascinating.
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A quiz:
Which player holds the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals franchise record for stolen bases in a single season? (A hint: he led the Detroit Tigers in steals six times.)
The answer can be found below.
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NEWS NOTES
Ed Kranepool, a member of the New York Mets for the team’s first 18 seasons (1962-1979) died last Sunday at age 79. A first baseman/outfielder who logged 1,419 hits, including 119 home runs, Kranepool played in 1,853 games, the most in franchise history.
Worcester Red Sox broadcaster Tyler Murray has been hired as the new radio play-by-play voice of the NBA’s New York Knicks. The 34-year-old Murray is the latest in what was once the Pawtucket pipeline, with Boston’s former Triple-A affiliate having graduated a baker’s dozen broadcasters — Gary Cohen, Andy Freed, and Don Orsillo are among the notables — to MLB and the NFL The affiliate was relocated following the 2019 season.
SABR will host a live oral history interview, via Zoom, with Ken Singleton this coming Wednesday, September 18, at 7:30 EST. More information can be found here.
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The answer to the quiz is Ron LeFlore, who swiped 97 bases with the Expos in 1980, his only season with Montreal. The speedy outfielder led Detroit in steals each year from 1974-1979.
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Yan Gomes was released by the Chicago Cubs in late June and hasn’t since caught on with another team. At age 37, his 13-year MLB career could well be over. If so, Gomes has a lot to be proud of. Not only has the veteran backstop played in 1,118 big-league games and won a World Series ring with the Washington Nationals in 2019, he never had expectations of reaching the pinnacle of his profession. When the Toronto Blue Jays selected him in the 10th round of the 2009 draft out of Miami, Florida’s Barry University, the native of São Paulo, Brazil had scant idea of what the future might hold.
“It wasn’t until probably a year before that that I even thought I would play pro baseball,” Gomes told me earlier this season. “I grew up in a different country and didn’t even know what that looked like. I came [to the United States] when I was 12 and baseball was a game I just played. I didn’t know a lot about it. I didn’t know what the trajectory was supposed to look like when I got drafted. My first year was in the New York-Penn League and I had no idea that’s what the stepping stones were supposed to be like.”
All these years later, is he at all surprised to still be playing?
“No,” Gomes said in our late-April conversation. “It’s something where you learn to hang around and enjoy the game, being grateful for the opportunities to be here. You just keep working hard. I’m proud of winning a World Series, catching some guys who won Cy Young awards. Playing a long time isn’t something I imagined being in the picture, but doing so, and being able to provide for my family, has been great. This game has treated me well. I’m going to keep playing for as long as the game keeps calling me back.”
Whether another call comes remains to be seen. Either way, Gomes is by far the best of the five Brazilian-born players in MLB history.
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FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Taylor Hearn has made 29 relief appearances for Hiroshima Carp and has allowed 14 hits and four runs over 29 innings. The 30-year-old left-hander is in his first NPB season after pitching for the Texas Rangers and, briefly, the Atlanta Braves and Kansas City Royals.
Hiroto Takahashi has allowed just one home run this season, that to Yakult Swallows slugger Munetaka Murakami. The 22-year-old Chunichi Dragons right-hander is 12-3 with a 1.14 ERA and 125 strikeouts in 134-and-two-thirds innings.
Tokyo-based baseball scribe Jim Allen recently wrote the following in his newsletter about 23-year-old Orix Buffaloes southpaw Hiroya Miyagi: “Miyagi’s four-seamer on Sunday was a carbon copy of Shota Imanaga’s. Coming from a lefty with a good splitter, changeup and curve, that fastball was a thing of beauty.”
Norichika Aoki will reportedly retire at the end of the season. The 42-year-old Yakult Swallows outfielder has 2,765 professional hits, including 1,949 in NPB and 774 in MLB.
Chris Carter has slashed .260/.399/.537 with 17 home runs for a pair of Mexican League teams this season. The 37-year-old former A’s, Astros, Brewers, and Yankees first baseman has 488 professional home runs, including 158 in MLB.
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A random obscure player snapshot:
Miguel Diloné was a speedster who had one big season. A switch-hitting outfielder who played in 800 games and had 2,000 at-bats from 1974-1985, he logged 180 of his 530 career hits for the Cleveland Indians in 1980 while slashing .341/.375/.432. He also accumulated 61 of his 267 stolen bases that year, third-most in the junior circuit behind Rickey Henderson (100) and Willie Wilson (79). Counting his minor league numbers — Diloné had 399 thefts down on the farm — he finished his professional career with 666 stolen bases.
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A Dwight Evans autobiography came out this summer, and not surprisingly Dewey: Behind the Gold Glove (co-written by Erik Sherman) is a good read. An early tidbit in the book tells how the erstwhile Boston Red Sox stalwart got his nickname. It was given to him in the minor leagues by Don Lock, a former outfielder who was his manager in the Carolina League.
“He started calling me Dewey because we had a pitcher named Don Newhauser whom he already called Newey,” explained Evans, who has a good Hall of Fame argument. “And we had a Latin player whom he nicknamed Louie. So, it was Newey, Louie, and Dewey.”
As readers of a certain age know, Huey, Dewey, and Louie were the cartoon character nephews of Donald Duck.
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FARM NOTES
Daniel Flames slashed .329/.529/.400 with a 171 wRC+ over 245 plate appearances in the Dominican Summer League. The 17-year-old shortstop was signed by the Texas Rangers out of Venezuela in February.
Nick Morabito led all New York Mets farmhands in batting average (.312), OBP (.403), wRC+ (135), and stolen bases (59). A second-round pick in the 2022 draft out of a Washington DC high school, the 21-year-old outfielder homered four times over 528 PAs between Low-A St. Lucie and High-A Brooklyn.
Rikuu Nishida is slashing .304/.418/.362 with one home run over 587 plate appearances across Low-A Kannapolis, High-A Winston Salem, and most recently Double-A Birmingham (six games). An 11th-round pick last year out of the University of Oregon, the 23-year-old native of Osaka, Japan has swiped 49 bases.
Edgardo Henriquez has a 39.3% strikeout rate to go with a 2.77 ERA and a 2.69 FIP over 52 innings across four levels in the Los Angeles Dodgers system. Currently in Triple-A. the 22-year-old right-hander missed last season after undergoing Tommy John surgery.
Isaac Coffey is 11-4 with a 3.17 ERA, a 3.82 FIP, and a 30.0% strikeout rate over 113-and-two-thirds innings for the Double-A Portland Sea Dogs. The 24-year-old right-hander in the Boston Red Sox system has 23 HBPs, second-most in the minors.
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Matt Hicks shared a good story here in Sunday Notes a handful of weeks ago. Looking back at his days as a minor league broadcaster, the now radio voice of the Texas Rangers told of how in 1991 a Carolina League pitcher threw a no-hitter, then gave up home runs to the first four batters he faced in his next outing.
Today we’ll hear from Hicks on two other games he was behind the mic for.
“I was broadcasting in El Paso and we played a game in Midland at their old ballpark, which was an outdated facility,” recalled Hicks. “I don’t remember the exact year — it was 1996 or 1997, or maybe 1998 — but we were beating Midland 16-4 when they came up to bat in the bottom of the eighth. They scored 13 runs to take a 17-16 lead., then we scored twice in the ninth to go up 18-17. We hung on to win by that score. Giving up 13 runs in the eighth and still winning the game was insane.”
“Another time I called a game in Corpus Christi that went 20 innings. It was 2-2 after nine and it stayed 2-2 all the way to the 20th inning. I think the other team was Wichita. They scored five runs in the top of the 20th and we lost 7-2. By the end we had position players pitching. The pitcher for Wichita was their first baseman, who tossed two shutout innings.”
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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE
David Neft played a primary role in the creation of The Baseball Encyclopedia. John Thorn has the story in his Pioneers Series at Our Game.
The Athletic’s Tyler Kepner wrote about MLB’s unfortunate and embarrassing decision to place an ad on batting helmets during the forthcoming postseason (subscription required)
MLB.com’s Michael Claire introduced us to Pittsburgh Pirates pitching prospect Alessandro Ercolani, who hails from San Marino, one of the smallest nations in the world.
The number 18 is significant to Japanese pitchers. Travis Sawchik explained why at The Score.
Kiwoom Heroes closer Seung Woo Ju is thriving against NPB hitters thanks to added confidence and a new pitch. Jeeho Yoo wrote about the 24-year-old right-hander for the Yonhap News Agency.
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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS
Luis Arraez and Matt Olson have 627 and 625 plate appearances respectively. Arraez has 158 singles, 32 extra-base hits, and 26 strikeouts. Olson has 70 singles, 62 extra-base hits, and 159 strikeouts.
The Washington Nationals have had 23 different players steal a base this season. That is the most for a team since the 1917 Pittsburgh Pirates.
Manny Machado hit his 164th home run as a San Diego Padre earlier this week, passing Nate Colbert for the most in franchise history. An original Padre — the expansion club joined the NL in 1969 — Colbert played six seasons in San Diego and made three All-Star teams.
Not including the franchise’s inaugural 1969 season as the Seattle Pilots, the Milwaukee Brewers have won 2,136 games as an American League team and 2,101 games as a National League team. This is is the club’s 27th season in the senior circuit. They played 28 seasons (as the Brewers) in the junior circuit.
The Cleveland Spiders infamously went 20-134 in 1899. They had winning records in each of the seven previous seasons.
In 1968, Bob Gibson had a 1.12 ERA over 304-and-two-thirds innings, and 8.6 WAR. In 1970, he had a 3.12 ERA over 294 innings, and 9.8 WAR.
On today’s date in 1969, Steve Carlton fanned a career-best 19 batters but took the loss as the St. Louis Cardinals fell to the New York Mets by a count of 4-3. Ron Swoboda’s two-run homer in the eighth inning was the difference.
On today’s date in 1977, the Kansas City Royals stretched their winning streak to a franchise record 16 game with a double-header sweep of the Oakland Athletics. Al Cowens’s 10th-inning, walk-off home run settled the nightcap.
Players born on today’s date include Frank Linzy, a right-hander who appeared in 516 games and was credited with 62 wins and 110 saves while pitching for four teams, primarily the San Francisco Giants, from 1963-1974. Notable among the Fort Gibson, Oklahoma native’s wins was a five-inning effort in relief of another pitcher who was born on today’s date. Gaylord Perry worked the first 16 innings as the Giants beat the Cincinnati Reds 1-0 on September 1, 1967.
Also born on today’s date was Henry Peploski, a native of Garlin, Poland whose career comprised six games and two hits in 10 at-bats for the Boston Braves in 1929. The second of six Polish-born players in MLB history — Moe Drabowsky, who pitched from 1956-1972, is the most recent — Peploski singled off of Pittsburgh’s Burleigh Grimes in his first-ever plate appearance.
