Arizona Fall League Position Player Scouting Notebook

I watched eight Arizona Fall League games over the last week, and today’s a good time to empty the notebook on some of the position players I saw. I’ve got a mix of updates on top prospects and notes on a couple off-the-radar names who impressed me. Let’s get to it, starting with perhaps the best player in the league.

Dax Kilby, SS, Yankees

Kilby looks great as a hitter. He’s quick and direct to the ball, he doesn’t leak early, his swing stays on plane forever, he adjusts well off the fastball, and he can use the whole field. He can seemingly get his hands everywhere, and the way he’s able to pull them in and turn around velocity is in a class with the Max Clarks and Kevin McGonigles of the world.

Kilby is also smooth and balanced at shortstop, rangy with a good internal clock. His throwing stroke looks pushy when he has time, but he can let it rip when he needs to get rid of the ball quickly. He looked like the best player on the field, and his stock surged for both Eric and me during my time in Arizona.

Arjun Nimmala, SS, Angels

At the plate, this was a hold-serve look for Nimmala. He swung and missed several times, but also made plenty of hard contact, including an opposite field homer against a slider that stood out because he made an adjustment on a pitch he’d swung and missed on earlier in the at-bat. He’s grown into more bat speed as he’s matured, which has helped him get more out of his long, lofted swing. Additional strength going forward would do wonders here.

Defensively, Nimmala didn’t look as spry as some of the other shortstop prospects in the league. He has great hands and a strong arm, but he’s a below-average runner, his approach to the ball looks labored, and his footwork isn’t clean. While it isn’t time to give up on him at short, I’m starting to think it’s more likely than not that he’ll need to slide over to third, and sooner rather than later.

Caleb Bonemer, OF, White Sox

Bonemer’s swing doesn’t light me up. His hands fire from a dead stop, and his swing path is long and stiff. But while it isn’t pretty, he squares the ball up an awful lot, hitting three balls 104 mph or harder across the few games I watched him. He could have plus-plus raw at maturity, and even if he winds up being a flawed hitter, he has enough power and barrel feel to be dangerous.

Defensively, Bonemer is seeing time in center field this fall, and as is the case for just about every infielder introduced to center, he’s going through some growing pains. Most notably, he misplayed a line drive at him, first breaking in, then trying to recover back before it kicked off his glove. I’m skeptical he’ll stick up the middle in the long run, though more because his speed and athleticism will be stretched in center than because of a few bad reads in his first exposure to the position. A corner seems like a better fit; we’ll see if he plays out there as the AFL progresses.

Wyatt Sanford, SS, Pirates

Sanford is a plus athlete with plus wheels. That speed shows up in all facets, from a 4.15 time down the line, to a quick first step on a sinking liner over his head, to aggressive tendencies on the bases. That last part is perhaps a little raw — I saw him thrown out twice, including a time when he tried to take second on a sleeping outfielder after a single, only to get cold feet and wind up in a rundown — but his quickness stands out. Defensively, the aforementioned catch was his only highlight-reel play, but he otherwise moved well in both directions on grounders. He has enough arm for short and has a shot to grow into a plus defender there.

At the plate, Sanford does some things well. He’s gotten significantly stronger in recent years, which has lifted his power from a 45 projection out of high school to plus right now. He can turn on a ball, particularly on pitches down and in. That said, the way he goes about his business is a little unusual. He starts by leaning out on his front foot with a high back side, and while he looked balanced after a small hand load this week, that hasn’t always been the case. There’s also a lot of swing-and-miss risk in his game, as he’s vulnerable upstairs and isn’t a guy who makes a lot of mid-flight adjustments on spin. Taken together, he looks like a toolsy, risk-reward shortstop profile.

Charles Davalan, UTIL, Dodgers

After playing outfield exclusively at Arkansas and as a Dodgers farmhand, Davalan is playing second base in the AFL. It looks like he’ll have the range for it, as he moves pretty well to both sides — he speared one ball with a full-extension dive up the middle that I didn’t think he’d be able to reach — and has plenty of arm. The finer points will take more time. On one occasion, he nearly turned a routine 4-3 grounder into a single by giving ground when the right play was to charge. We’ll see if those reads get easier with time, or if that play was a clue as to why Davalan has spent most of his career on the grass.

At the plate, Davalan has good barrel feel, particularly for a player who swings as hard as he does. He’s also got sneaky, fringe-average pop.

Eduardo Quintero, OF, Dodgers

Quintero is a twitchy, bendy athlete with big bat speed. His swing is a tale in two parts. The upper half is pretty, with quick hands, a natural load, a smooth and direct swing path, late loft when he gets off his A swing, and a head that usually stays on the ball through contact. The lower half is busier. He drifts away from the plate, leaks early, tends to flinch at front-door spin, and generates some of his power with a big scissor kick. He was able to get the bat on pitches on the outer half in this look, which speaks to his barrel feel, but those swings tended to be off balance, and he wasn’t able to hit those balls with any authority. I came away wondering if he’ll be vulnerable both on the outer half and to front-side breaking balls.

Braylon Payne, CF, Brewers

Payne is the best athlete in the AFL. He’s twitchy, he’s an 80 runner underway, and he’s a short-levered kid with strong wrists. He gets his bat into the zone fast and already has plus power. Still, the swing itself isn’t pretty. From an upright and slightly closed start, his front hip swivels open, and he has a funky, at times downhill swing path. It’s not how you’d normally draw it up, but I’m encouraged that Payne hasn’t made any less contact as he’s sprinted through Milwaukee’s system. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are speed bumps ahead, and it’s worth staying patient as he tries to harness his unusual swing.

Defensively, Payne’s speed is playing down a little in center right now. On one play over his head, he turned the wrong way and tried to track the ball the whole time instead of running toward the spot and adjusting, which ultimately cost him. In the long run, he’s so fast that even if his reads and routes are just fair, he’ll get to enough balls to stick up the middle, and there’s obviously upside from there. Ultimately, he’s raw, but if there was ever a guy to stay patient with, it’s Payne.

Tai Peete, CF, Cardinals

As has long been the case, Peete is one of the most entertaining players to watch in all of the minor leagues. This is true on tools, as he’s a plus runner with plus power, and he’s learned how to really go get it in center field. He’s also just a good watch. He’s a high-energy guy — a necessity on every AFL team, as the league can be a bit of a slog — and that shows up everywhere: fast run times in an otherwise lethargic setting, wild and perhaps ill-advised challenges, and feats of athleticism you don’t often see at a baseball game. When a teammate lost his glove trying to steal a homer, of course it was Peete who vaulted over the wall to retrieve the leather.

Peete also found the barrel a whole bunch in my looks at him this week. Spin has been a problem for him throughout his career, and while that’s still the case, I was encouraged to see him belt a hanging breaking ball for a homer. He also lined a couple of fastballs hard the other way. Like Payne, Peete has managed to keep his contact rates in the “scary but viable” range as he’s ascended to Double-A. And like Milwaukee’s center fielder, he’s the kind of great athlete who deserves all the runway in the world to figure things out.

Nathan Hall, OF, Diamondbacks

Hall is perhaps the AFL player who grew on me the most over my time down there. He’s a tall, wiry outfielder with surprising strength — he has above-average bat speed and golfed one ball 109 mph off the bat — and a good eye. He took several walks, and I was just as impressed with the way he was able to adjust off the fastball and get the bat on a couple of decent breaking balls.

That said, I came away with more questions than answers on his defense. He played center a couple of times and read the ball well off the bat on routine flies. He looked less comfortable in left, possibly just because he needed to start from an unfamiliar part of the outfield (see Eric’s reporting on the MLB-mandated defensive alignments at Salt River Field this year). Hall is fast enough to cover center, but this is a part of his game I’ll have to follow up on when it comes time to write Arizona’s list.

Vance Honeycutt, CF, Orioles

Honeycutt has plus power and bat speed. While he made more contact at Double-A than he did at the lower levels, there’s still a lot of swing and miss in his game. Like a lot of guys with a high leg kick, he’s often ahead of the soft stuff, and he has a grooved, uphill swing that leaves him vulnerable in the upper third of the zone.

The fielder positioning rules that MLB is piloting, which require outfielders to play significantly closer to the plate than normal, meant that I got to see Honeycutt track several long fly balls and run about seven miles over the course of the game. He looked good doing it, too, with good directional instincts and crisp routes; his throws were mostly short and off line.

Mason White, INF, Red Sox

White bounced between second base and shortstop in my look. He can handle routine plays at the latter and has enough arm for the job, but the game seems to slow down for him at the keystone. He made a nice play to his right at second, and the extra beat he had to transfer and release the ball presented a contrast to some of the hurried work he showed at short.

Jake Munroe, 3B, Angels

I like Munroe a little more every time I see him. While he isn’t particularly toolsy (he has below-average raw, 40 wheels, and an average arm), his barrel feel and pitch recognition are pretty good. He also has an approach, as he tends to line fastballs hard the other way and does a lot of his pull-side damage on off-speed pitches out over the plate. He’s a fair third baseman, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the Angels start to broaden his defensive responsibilities in preparation for some kind of multipositional role. If you’re only going to have one standout trait, it might as well be the hit tool.

Quick Hitters

A few quick thoughts to close here. First, if Bryce Rainer doesn’t have the fastest bat I’ve ever seen on a minor leaguer, he’s certainly in the top five. Andy Perez swings at everything — one Royals scout behind me remarked “this guy swings more often than Salvy!” — and it might be time to see if he can dial that back. I’m less worried about a young player’s approach and swing tendencies than I used to be, but even I have my limits, and his expansiveness is eating into the utility of his bat-to-ball skills. While we’re on swing tendencies, Core Jackson really struggled with spin this week and was constantly off balance or out front against it. I only saw Julian Brock once, but Salt River decided to run on him seven times, which gave me plenty of chances to confirm that his control of the running game looks pretty good. He was consistently in the 1.90-1.95 second range, and while he one-hopped a couple of throws, the ball was generally in the right spot.