When outfielder Dylan Crews and pitcher Paul Skenes are selected in Sunday’s Major League Baseball draft – quite possibly within the first two picks – it will set them on a path that draft analysts believe will very quickly lead to big league stardom.
It will also illustrate the game’s whirlwind innovation in just a decade.
Crews and Skenes were teammates this past season at LSU, which won the men’s College World Series thanks in part to cutting-edge facilities that include three TrackMan devices and Rapsodo cameras, all logging a trove of batted-ball and pitch data from workouts and games.
The Tigers duo will kick off a draft in which virtually every prospect experienced baseball’s optimization revolution, be it through their college programs, exposure to data at elite travel ball tournaments or specialized coaching designed to leverage the information and add strength, power and velocity.
And it is a startling contrast to the environment that greeted top draft prospects just 10 years ago.
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“You wouldn’t imagine the game the way it is now, how elite it is,” says Washington Nationals first baseman Dominic Smith, the 11th overall pick by the New York Mets in the 2013 draft. “So many athletes who can do different things at younger ages.
“These kids – young men – have had great trainers, or similar training to big leaguers. They could play in the big leagues right now. Obviously, they have to learn and go through struggles and learn themselves.
“But skill-wise – they can play in the big leagues right now.”
Smith’s draft classmates have experienced perhaps the most disruptive 10-year span in the game, from the rise of technology to weed out or uplift players, to the emphasis on defensive shifts and their eventual banning, and perhaps most significantly the evolution toward a game faster than it’s ever been – certainly when it comes to a ball out of a pitcher’s hands.
In that sense, members of the Class of ’13 are also survivors of the game’s natural selection.
“You have to adjust. Or you get out of the game,” says Los Angeles Angels outfielder Hunter Renfroe, chosen 13th in 2013 by the San Diego Padres and now in his eighth major league season.
Renfroe and Smith know they can’t stop the inexorable march of mega-talents like Crews and Skenes to the big leagues. And they realize younger players in their physical primes will be better-prepared to dominate than they were. Skenes’ fastball, for instance, topped out at 103 mph this season, and he threw 46 pitches at least 100 mph in his first CWS start.
Crews, his college teammate, enters the draft with an astonishing average exit velocity of 95.4 mph, which, albeit against inferior pitching, would place him second between Aaron Judge and Ronald Acuña Jr. on the major league leaderboard.
“The next generation,” says Detroit Tigers All-Star pitcher Michael Lorenzen, picked 38th overall by the Cincinnati Reds in 2013, “is going to be next-level.”
As the latest group of tooled-up Trackman Babies prepares for its draft day next week, there’s plenty to learn about how far the game has come – and where it’s going – from the Class of ’13:
‘It’s night and day’
To understand baseball’s evolution, it’s instructive to know the game players were drafted into a decade ago – and the one Sunday’s draftees will inherit.
- In 2013, 34 starting pitchers threw 200 or more innings.
- In 2022, just eight pitchers threw at least 200 innings.
- In 2013, the league-wide batting average was .253, with 7.55 strikeouts per team each game.
- In 2023, those numbers are .248 and 8.59 punch-outs per team per game – and until defensive shifts were regulated this season, the league batting average plunged to .243 in 2022.
- And most notably, in 2013, just nine pitchers averaged 97 mph on their fastball, and 55 averaged at least 95 mph, according to FanGraphs’ Pitch Info data based on at least 10 innings pitched.
- In 2023, 41 pitchers are averaging at least 97 mph on their fastball or sinker, and 144 average at least 95 mph, according to Statcast data based on at least 250 pitches thrown.
“When I first came into the league,” says Renfroe, who debuted in 2016, “it was something to see 97 in the back end of the bullpen. Now, everybody throws 100. It’s kind of crazy.”
Yes, velocity is everywhere, in part because clubs are coaxing fewer pitches per outing from their pitchers. But the constant feedback technology provides – instant spin rates, pitch shapes and movement profiles – makes for far nastier pitches.
And it makes the previous generation feel like they were throwing in the Dark Ages.
“When I was drafted,” says Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Dylan Covey, the 14th overall pick in 2013, “you go in and throw a bullpen in the offseason and it was like, ‘Let’s hit our spots,’ and make sure our accuracy is good.
“Now, it’s like, ‘Let’s make sure our pitch shape and profile is doing what we want it to do,’ and then we’ll worry about getting it to the spot we want it.
“It’s totally different, but I think you’re seeing pitching better than it’s ever been.”
Those still around certainly had to re-train their muscle memory.
Jon Gray, the third overall pick by the Colorado Rockies in 2013, says it probably took him longer than it should to get comfortable pitching up in the strike zone. For as long as he could grip a ball, it was down, down, down.
“All we ever heard was, ‘Down at the knees, and we’re safe,’” he says.
But hitters had their countermove, which can loosely and somewhat inaccurately be described as the launch angle revolution. Relying on their own hit doctors and swing labs, the game’s record-setting home run binges in 2017 and 2019 (aided at least in part by hoppy baseballs) were rooted in hitting the ball in the air.
Hence, the pitchers’ counter-counter move: Hard four-seam fastballs up in the strike zone.
Gray had his struggles, pitching to a 5.12 ERA and giving up 27 home runs in 2018, but trimmed that to 3.84 a year later. Engaging in baseball’s Cold War eventually landed him a $56 million contract with the Texas Rangers.
Yet it still sometimes feels counterintuitive.
“I think about it a lot,” says Gray. “I think it feels completely different to me. The feel of the game, the way we pitch now, the way hitters hit, the way the approach has changed.
“It’s night and day, it feels like.”
It begs the question: Where do we go from here?
Can pitchers safely throw heat over several innings?
Short relievers are certainly velocity outliers, but they can at least frame the arm’s physical limits. Minnesota Twins reliever Jhoan Duran has clocked the fastest pitch in 2023 – 104.6 mph – and, like fellow relievers Jordan Hicks and Aroldis Chapman, pops 103 mph with some regularity.
Angels reliever Ben Joyce was clocked at 105 mph at the University of Tennessee and rode his velo to a major league debut less than a year after getting drafted in 2022.
“I feel like we gotta be hitting that human limit,” says Nationals right-hander Hunter Harvey, drafted 22nd overall as a starter by Baltimore in 2013, but now a reliever averaging 98 mph on his fastball. “It takes a pretty good toll on the body throwing that hard.
“You might get some guys who will pop a 106, but the guy in Minnesota (Duran) has kind of capped it out.”
Yet for all the strategic optimization, pitching staffs can’t be filled with one-inning flamethrowers who break the radar gun. The eternal questions: Can a pitcher maintain 100-mph stuff for several innings – and 30-plus starts – and can he do it safely?
Lorenzen believes they can – and that his generation will be the transition.
“There’s a lot of people that think, ‘The days of throwing 200 innings are over,’” he says. “I think we’re the bridge to velocity throwing 200 innings. You look at any extreme sports and how fast they evolve, they constantly push the limits and evolve faster than any sport you’ll see. You go from surfing four-foot waves to these giants, because people are pushing the limits.
“It turns into us being the standard and these kids now grow up training it. Their bodies are going to be in better shape. They’re going to be higher-quality athletes.
“I think we’re going to see a lot of guys sitting 99 (mph) and throwing 210 innings.”
Covey can see the future almost every day in the offseason, when he works out at a baseball facility in Southern California and sees kids training in opposite lanes. They don’t gravitate toward a batting tee or fielding drill.
“A lot of kids immediately see the Trackman and they’re like, ‘Oh, let’s get on that and see what we got,’” he says. “And it’s like, ‘No, there’s a lot of steps you gotta take before you reach that point.’
“Having a 10-year-old throw on a Trackman isn’t going to tell him anything. But you come in and see a bunch of pro guys working out and throwing onto a Trackman and instantly looking at their pitches and talking about it. They come in and they want to do that.”
Eventually, that 10-year-old will mature physically and leverage the tools at his disposal. And sometimes it makes the Class of ’13 wonder what might have been.
‘I was a little early’
Smith has carved out a decent career as a first baseman and outfielder, once a prospect Mets fans dreamed on, only for Pete Alonso to overtake him on the depth chart.
He wonders if his ceiling would have been higher with access to today’s tools. And, although still just 28, pines for a younger version of his physical self.
“I think at a younger age, if I knew more about mobility, how my body should move, how my swing should work, it would help me be a little more explosive,” he says. “The older you get, you kind of lose range of motion. You see a lot of athletes training properly at a younger age, and that’s why you’re seeing a lot of elite-level competition.”
Smith also worries that the game’s socioeconomic divide will deprive athletes of opportunity. He has attempted to close the gap, helping run a lower-cost camp and player development opportunity in Los Angeles, and hosting an all-star game that’s counted MLB’s Youth Academy and USC as host sites.
MLB, in conjunction with the Players’ Association, is hosting the HBCU Swingman Classic on Friday in Seattle as part of All-Star Game festivities, and has several initiatives aimed at exposing underprivileged players to the game’s modern trappings.
Smith is confident the number of Black players in MLB (just 6.1% in 2023) will rise in time.
“MLB is doing a better job trying to promote baseball in these areas where we don’t have the same playing field, but we have the same level of talent,” he says. “We’re trying to shine light on the talent.”
Lorenzen also wonders what could have been had he come along later. A two-way player at Cal State Fullerton, he was drafted by the Reds with designs on trying both and, in 2019, played 29 games in the outfield. But the COVID-19 pandemic and a hamstring injury in his first baserunning appearance of 2021 convinced his employers to keep him exclusively on the mound.
And then Shohei Ohtani won the AL MVP in 2021.
“I was a little early,” he says of preceding Ohtani. “I think for sure, there would have been better evaluation of me and what to do with me. Especially if Shohei was here already and it was known that being a two-way player was possible.”
Now, a generation will emerge with no perceived limits. Sunday, Virginia prep right-hander Bryce Eldridge should hear his name called in the first round, if a team feels it can sign the 6-7, 222-pounder away from Alabama. He already throws 97 mph with raw power as a hitter.
His talent is the sort that could only be imagined 10 years ago. And it only makes the future more mind-boggling for the Class of ’13, a group that unknowingly bridged the gap to a different era.
“The game is only going to get better,” says Smith. “And it’s crazy to think what it’s going to be in the next 10 years.”
