Baseball is back in our lives! Spring training games have started, and this weekend we had a slew of games all day Saturday and Sunday which was an amazing feeling. It also gave us some game action to talk about and that’s what we’re gonna do today.
This will be a quick article that I’ll try and put together every few days during spring training to share some of the tidbits I found most interesting. It’s important that we don’t overreact to small sample sizes, so we’re not going to make drastic changes to draft values based on a few innings of spring games. However, we don’t want to ignore changes that we’re seeing out of many of these players, so I’ll use this article to flag some things we want to keep watching this spring.
As with all the analysis we do, we want to look beyond the numbers. A pitcher throwing 97 mph is great and a hitter with a 112 mph double is exciting, but one number doesn’t mean much. Below, I’ll make note of what I saw, why it matters, and also what to keep looking for with that player or pitch, etc.
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MLB Spring Training Takeaways
Hitters
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Elly De La Cruz homered from both the right and left side in the same game on Saturday. We know he has plenty of power, so this isn’t really news, but it’s something to keep an eye on since Elly had a bit of a splits issue last year. Against lefties in 2024, Elly hit just .224 with a .661 OPS, compared to .275 with a .876 OPS against right-handed pitchers. If he keeps hitting lefties in the spring, that would be great.
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Ceddanne Rafaela has a new swing that includes lower hands pre-load and a more deliberate leg lift. He looks more balanced at the plate and has said that he spent a lot of time in the off-season working on his plate discipline. He struggled to start the season after playing only 48 career games at Triple-A and then wore down in September since he’d never played over 115 games in a season before. However, from May 1st to September 1st, Rafaela hit .273/.303/.417 with 12 home runs and 13 steals in 103 games while playing out of position at shortstop after Trevor Story’s injury. He’s likely the everyday CF in Boston this year due to his tremendous glove and is a potential value where he’s being drafted.
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Maikel Garcia also has a bit of a new swing. The bat rests on his shoulder now, and he…