Baseball America

Talk of an Evan Carter midseason callup seems far-fetched to me. Am I wrong about the Rangers outfielder?Ben from California It’s not all that crazy. The 20-year-old Carter began the year with Double-A Frisco, and his skills are of the type that can be pushed more than a player with louder tools but weaker pitch recognition. If you push a free-swinging power hitter with tons of home runs but few walks and a lot of strikeouts too fast, you run the risk of him being utterly exposed by higher-level pitching. Carter is the opposite of that. Texas can feel confident that he’ll work counts and put together good at-bats. Carter is unlikely to get to massive power early in his MLB career if he’s pushed too fast, but he’s unlikely…

Coaching was always in the cards for Amanda Kamekona. The former standout softball player held down the middle of the UCLA and Cal State Fullerton lineups for four years in college and knew she wanted to use her knowledge to help other hitters one day. After finishing her illustrious college career, one filled with numerous honors—including All-America status—Kamekona took a year off from softball. In 2010, Division II Limestone in South Carolina came calling with an assistant coaching job as a hitting coach. At the same time, she joined PFX, a barnstorming professional softball league—similar to Athletes Unlimited—that allowed its players to switch teams for each game in new cities. She then accepted the head coaching position at Brevard College, a Division III school in North Carolina, and would run…

At his Denver-area high school, two-sport star Darnell McDonald knew early on that feeling good meant playing good. Whether it was baseball or football, he had no reason not to feel good on the field. The Texas recruit was deemed the heir to Ricky Williams at running back for the Longhorns. On the diamond, McDonald was named the Gatorade national baseball player of the year in 1997. “I look back at my high school career, it was probably the most fun time of my life,” McDonald said. “Looking at high school sports now, some kids don’t even play high school sports—they go straight to the travel ball circuit. I don’t know what I would do without having that experience.” McDonald chose baseball when he signed with the Orioles for $1.9…

PICKING UP THE PACE Through the first three-plus weeks of the MLB season, the average time for a nine-inning game was nearly 30 minutes shorter than it was in 2022. Baseball-Reference.com has complete time of game data going back more than 100 years. From that data, we can see that MLB has not had average game times this short since 1984. The average game time crept up from 1984, reaching 2:45 in 1988 and steadily pushing north until eclipsing an average of three hours in 2014 and then setting an all-time record for slow pace at 3:10 in 2021. Just two seasons later, MLB’s initiatives to create action and shorten game times—especially the pitch clock that forces batters to stay in the box and pitchers to deliver pitches every 15…

An annual tradition at Baseball America is to build a team of projected breakout prospects before minor leauge Opening Day. To qualify for inclusion, a player must not have appeared on the preseason Top 100 Prospects ranking. This year, Matt Eddy, Geoff Pontes and Dylan White all compiled breakout prospect teams. These are a sampling of their favorite picks, presented in alphabetical order and listed with Opening Day assignment. MICHAEL ARROYO, SS, MARINERS Extended spring training • Age: 18 One of the highest-upside players in Seattle’s lower levels, Arroyo has earned praise from evaluators for his mature approach and polished baseball instincts. The Colombian teenager was in consideration for the team’s World Baseball Classic squad but ultimately didn’t make the final roster. Still, Arroyo is considered one of the more…

The year is some time in the distant—but not too distant—future. The general manager of the London Werewolves is working hard to bring the first World Series title to a team outside of North America. And utilizing artificial intelligence in a wide variety of ways is part of the GM’s plan to lead the expansion team to success. Every morning, the GM wakes up to a summary of all of the notable happenings from the organization’s minor league games. A program gleans the most pertinent information—both good and bad—from what happened the night before. And that isn’t just a recitation of the box scores. The summary is compiled by searching through all of the tracking and biomechanical information for every player in every moment of every game. It’s petabytes of…