Mason Barnett doesn’t profile as a front-of-the-rotation starter, but he does project to provide solid innings for a major league staff. A 25-year-old right-hander who made his MLB debut with the Athletics at the end of August, Barnett is currently viewed by Eric Longenhagen as “a big league starter who has demonstrated durability [and] is a no. 4/5 on a good team.” Our lead prospect evaluator anticipates assigning him a 45 FV when our 2026 A’s list is published in the not-too-distant future.

The Kennesaw, Georgia native was originally in the Kansas City system. Drafted 87th overall by the Royals in 2022 out of Auburn University, Barnett was subsequently traded to his current club in the 2024 deadline deal that sent Lucas Erceg to America’s Heartland. With his time down on the farm now mostly complete, Barnett will head into the forthcoming campaign having logged a 6.85 ERA and a 4.88 FIP over five starts comprising 22 1/3 innings in his initial major league opportunity.

Longenhagen has assigned a 40/45 on the righty’s command, and it was that aspect of his game that Scott Emerson emphasized when I asked him about Barnett toward the tail end of last season.

“Barnett, interesting guy,” said the longtime Athletics pitching coach. “Very good competitor. Throws strikes with his fastball, which has some cut-ride. He’s got a good developing changeup. He spins the ball really well and has both the sweeper and the curveball. For me, a lot of it with Barnett is his being able to execute his pitches inside the strike zone when he needs to, and then being able to make them chase outside of the strike zone when he’s ahead in the count. He’s one of our guys who needs to learn to command the ball better.”

The numbers back that up. Barnett had a 10.8% walk rate (as well as a 17.3% strikeout rate) in his big league cameo, while in Triple-A those numbers were 11.9% and 22.8%. But, while concerning, it’s not as though he can’t throw strikes or miss bats. In 2024, he punched out Double-A batters at a 28.5% clip, and walked them at a more-acceptable (albeit still not great) 8.7% over 133 innings of work. Like Longenhagen and Emerson, Barnett also recognizes the need to improve his strike-throwing. Read the rest of this entry »

Franklin Arias has a bright future in Boston. Signed out of Venezuela in 2023, the 20-year-old shortstop is the top position-player prospect in the Red Sox system thanks to plus tools on both sides of the ball. A slick-fielder — Eric Longenhagen has described him as an incredibly polished defender for his age” — Arias possesses a line-drive stroke that produced a 109 wRC+ across three levels last season. And while that number may not jump off the page, it stands out when put into context: the Caracas native not only played the entire year as a teenager, he finished it in Double-A.

The degree to which he can boost his power profile will go a long way toward determining his ceiling. Currently more contact than pop, Arias went deep just eight times in 526 plate appearances. At a listed 5-foot-11, 170 pounds, he is by no means built like a bopper.

Red Sox farm director Brian Abraham brought up that aspect of Arias’s game when I asked him about the young infielder earlier this week.

“He’s a guy who makes really good swing decisions,” Abraham said of Arias, who posted a 10.1% strikeout rate and a 5.3% swinging-strike rate in 2025. “He puts the bat on the ball and can drive it to all fields. We’re looking to see him add size and strength so that he can really impact the ball pull-side in the air.

“It’s definitely in there,” added Abraham. “We’ve seen flashes of it, it’s just a matter of him being able to do that on a consistent basis. As a young player who is continuing to grow and get bigger, I think it will come out the more he is able to hit the ball out front and drive it to the pull side. Right now I would say that he is a contact hitter with occasional power, and that the power can be more consistent than it has been.”

Not surprisingly, Arias echoed Abraham’s thoughts when addressing his near-term development goals. Read the rest of this entry »

Seaver King will head into the 2026 season looking to improve on a 2025 campaign that saw him fail to impress at the plate. Across 551 plate appearances split between High-A Wilmington and Double-A Harrisburg, the 22-year-old shortstop slashed a lackluster .244/.294/.337 with six home runs and an 88 wRC+. There is certainly more in the tank. Drafted 10th overall by the Washington Nationals out of Wake Forest University in 2024, King has both the résumé and the raw tools to profile as a solid hitter at the big league level.

He flashed some of that promise in the admittedly hitter-friendly Arizona Fall League. As our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen put it, King “rebounded in a big way,” raking to the tune of a 1.031 OPS and eight extra-base hits over 79 plate appearances with the Scottsdale Scorpions. Just as importantly, he displayed the smooth right-handed stroke that allows him to shoot balls to all parts of the field, which is what he does when he’s at the top of his game.

He isn’t lacking in confidence, nor is he afraid of some honest self-assessment. Reportedly selling out for power early last season, the Athens, Georgia native has come around to realizing that staying true to himself is what will produce the best results.

“I feel like I bring a lot to the table,” King told me early in his AFL stint. “Defense. Leadership. I am still finding my way in the box, obviously. It’s tough playing against elite competition, so I have to go out there and play my game. That’s hitting line drives. I’ll maybe mix in a couple of home runs with the right launch angle, but mostly I’m trying to get on base and move around them as fast as possible.” Read the rest of this entry »

Not so many years ago, a tongue-in-cheek refrain went like this: “Great trade for the Rays. Who did they get?” With that in mind…

… a few days before the July 30, 2024 deadline, the Tampa Bay Rays dealt Randy Arozarena to the Seattle Mariners in exchange for prospects Brody Hopkins and Aidan Smith. I asked Erik Neander to look back at the transaction when I talked to him during November’s GM Meetings.

“It was a decision that was pretty clear,” Tampa Bay’s president of baseball operations told me. “That deal was about timing. Seattle was getting someone to make an immediate contribution — they’ve gotten that — and from our side it was a deal that was probably going to take years to realize the full potential of.

“With Brody Hopkins, we think the world of the arm talent,” continued Neander. “He was a two-way guy, highly athletic, and he is continuing to make strides and find the command. We believe that he’s someone who can pitch in the middle of a rotation, if not higher. I’m a little surprised that he doesn’t get more attention than he does.”

Hopkins, a 23-year-old right-hander who was taken in the sixth round of the 2023 draft out of Winthrop University, logged a 2.72 ERA, a 3.33 FIP, and a 28.7% strikeout rate over 116 innings with Double-A Montgomery this past season.

Smith, a 21-year-old outfielder who was drafted out of a Lucas, Texas high school the same year, slashed .237/.331/.388 with 14 home runs and a 114 wRC+ over 459 plate appearances — he also swiped 41 bases in 47 attempts — with High-A Bowling Green. Read the rest of this entry »

On December 28, Sunday Notes led with a look at how seven of the nine position players projected to start for the Minnesota Twins this coming season were drafted by the club in either the first or second round. (The column also cited homegrown numbers for several other organizations.) Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey was quoted extensively within the piece, offering perspective on how the current roster came together.

Today we’ll hear from Twins GM Jeremy Zoll, as well as from Falvey, on a quartet of first- and second-round picks who have yet to reach Minnesota. One is a middle infielder, three are pitchers, and all rank among the team’s top prospects. I asked about each of them when the executives met with members of the media during the Winter Meetings.

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“It was Kaelen’s first full season, and he had an awesome year,” Zoll said of 23-year-old shortstop Kaelen Culpepper, whom the Twins drafted 21st overall in 2024 out of Kansas State University. “He was between High-A and Double-A, and we couldn’t have asked for it go much better. We’re really pleased. He had the opportunity to go to the Futures Game.

“He’s primarily playing shortstop, but he’s also getting some early work at second base and third base, as well as a little bit of game exposure at both spots. We’ll continue to let that play out as we get through spring training and into the season. We’ll figure it out exactly in terms of placement and proximity. We always kind of let the player dictate that with his performance, but he’s put just about as much pressure on us [as anyone] in terms of us wanting to keep moving him, and keeping him challenged.” Read the rest of this entry »

Cole Henry could close out games for the Nationals next season. Paul Toboni was noncommittal when I brought up that possibility during the Winter Meetings, yet there are no currently clear favorites to fill the role — not since Washington’s new president of baseball operations swapped southpaw Jose Ferrer to the Seattle Mariners in exchange for Harry Ford and Isaac Lyon in early December. And while the 26-year-old right-hander admittedly lacks ninth-inning experience — just two professional saves — he has attributes suggestive of late-inning effectiveness.

Henry’s 2025 numbers serve as an argument both for and against his assuming the closer responsibilities that Ferrer had inherited when Kyle Finnegan was dealt to Detroit at July’s trade deadline. Over 57 relief outings comprising 52-and-two-thirds innings, he held opposing batters to a .213 xBA while logging a better-than-league-average 25.6% whiff rate. Less encouraging were the 5.34 FIP that accompanied his 4.27 ERA, and the 13.3% walk rate that accompanied his 21.6% strikeout rate. Also notable was his .259 BABIP, but is that a red flag, or is it actually a sign that the Nationals might have stumbled upon their next Tyler Clippard?

Pitching for Washington from 2008-2014, Clippard crafted a 2.68 ERA, a notably higher 3.46 FIP, an 15.8% infield-fly rate, and a .233 BABIP (he also had 34 saves and 150 holds during that seven-year span). Henry’s infield-fly rate this past season was 21.4%, the third-highest mark in MLB among pitchers to throw at least 50 innings. Only Jordan Leasure (26.0%) and Alex Vesia (22.1%) induced a higher percentage of pop-ups.

Henry’s arm slot differs from Clippard’s, but his delivery nonetheless plays a role in his ability to miss barrels. Moreover, his slot has dropped since he was drafted 55th overall in 2020 out of LSU. Eric Longenhagen pointed that out earlier this summer: Read the rest of this entry »

In 2025, I once again had an opportunity to interview numerous people within the game. Many of their words were shared in my Sunday Notes column, while others came via an assortment of Q&As, feature stories, and my Old Scouting Reports Revisited series. Here is a selection of the best quotes from this year’s conversations, with the bolded lines linking to the pieces they were excerpted from.

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“Guys are thinking about the game in totally different ways now, and sometimes we lack the art. We lack focusing on the art. We’re thinking like robots instead of thinking like a human, and trying to make decisions based on another human being in a box. That’s the challenge of pitching.” — Max Scherzer, Toronto Blue Jays pitcher

“You see a lot of guys trying to chase that perfect swing. That’s hard to do when you have a guy throwing 99 and it’s running 20 inches, or sinking 20 inches. My thought is just, ‘Go up there and get the bat to the ball.’ Keep it that simple. Don’t try to chase the perfect swing.” — Kevin McGonigle, Detroit Tigers infield prospect

“We can measure the swing — most, if not all of it — and because we can measure it, we can track it. We can see if it is changing. What we can’t measure… actually, we can, but we’re not allowed to put eye-tracking glasses on players in-game. You don’t know what’s actually happening in the brain when it comes to decision-making.” — Dillon Lawson, Boston Red Sox hitting coach

“I remember Bill James saying that a player’s value is in his uniqueness. How unique is he to the pool of players? The decision-making process in today’s game, with the variety of different tools we have, allows us to better identify that uniqueness. Instead of looking at a pitcher and simply saying, ‘He’s a small righty,’ we can know why he is so effective. We can identify the valuable qualities within that uniqueness.” — Jerry Dipoto, Seattle Mariners, president of baseball operations Read the rest of this entry »

The composition of the Minnesota Twins’ projected starting lineup caught my eye while I was perusing Roster Resource during the Winter Meetings. Not only were all but two of the nine position players homegrown: each of those seven was drafted in either the first or second round. Byron Buxton (first round in 2012) is the oldest of the bunch, while Luke Keaschall (second round in 2023) is the youngest and most recent.

Where do the Twins rank among MLB clubs in terms of homegrown position-player starters taken in the first two rounds? According to Jon Becker, who along with Jason Martinez keeps Roster Resource running like a well-oiled machine, the Minnesotans top the list. Moreover, while the Baltimore Orioles have six, and three other clubs have five, the rest have notably fewer. Fully half of the 30 teams have no more than three, including the Houston Astros, Miami Marlins, and Toronto Blue Jays, who have none.

My colleague provided me with some other roster-construction breakdowns as well, but before we get to those, let’s hear from Minnesota’s president of baseball operations. I asked Derek Falvey what the aforementioned seven-of-nine says about his organization. Read the rest of this entry »

Some rough edges need to be smoothed out, but Cam Collier could be contributing to the Cincinnati Reds offense in the not-too-distant future. Assigned a 45 FV by Eric Longenhagen, the 21-year-old corner infielder is coming off of a 2025 campaign in which he put up a 123 wRC+ over 396 plate appearances across three levels (primarily Double-A). Among the few downsides was a dearth of dingers — he went yard just four times — but that presents as a blip as opposed to a barometer. Our lead prospect analyst grades Collier’s raw power as above average.

I broached the power outage when I talked to Collier during his stint in the Arizona Fall League, where he concluded his campaign with the Peoria Javelinas. He’d hammered 20 homers with the High-A Dayton Dragons in 2024, so why so few of them in his third full professional season?

“I’ve tried to not think about it too much,” replied Collier, whom the Reds drafted 18th overall in 2022 out of Chipola College. “This year, I wanted to really get back to being a hitter. I wanted to have consistent good at-bats, and while that didn’t produce as many homers, it produced a lot more base hits. I was happy with that.”

The stat sheet reflects some of his targeted strides. After batting .248 with a 25.0% strikeout rate in 2024, Collier improved to .279 with an only-incrementally-higher 26.3% K-rate against a higher level of competition. Moreover, the exit velocities he produced when he squared up the baseball were impressive — which remained the case in the desert. At 113.1 mph, Collier had the hardest-hit ball in the Fall Stars Game.

I had read reports that his exit velos and hard-hit rates were plus, so I brought that up as well. Was it perhaps a little counterintuitive that his slugging percentage (.384) and home run totals were as low as they were? Read the rest of this entry »

World Baseball Classic managers were made available to the media during the Winter Meetings, and I took that opportunity to ask Chinese Taipei’s Hao-Jiu Tseng about some of the best arms in Taiwan. I had specific pitchers in mind, but opted to begin with an open-ended question rather than cite any names. The response I got was likewise non-specific.

“I hope all pitchers from our team can be known by all baseball fans,” Tseng told me via an interpreter. “There are so many young pitchers. Most of them are still playing at the minor league level, but this tournament can help them improve their skills and experience, and someday grow into great players at a top level.”

The first pitcher he mentioned when I followed up was Wei-En Lin, a 20-year-old left-hander in the Athletics system who was featured here at FanGraphs back in August. The second was the hurler I was most interested in hearing about
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“Jo Hsi Hsu pitches in the [Chinese Professional Baseball League], ”Tseng said of the recently-turned-25-year-old right-hander, who had a 2.05 ERA and 120 strikeouts, with just 78 hits allowed, over 114 innings for the Wei Chuan Dragons. “He is a posted player this offseason. Right now he is eligible to negotiate with foreign clubs. He possibly will transfer his contract to Japan or America. He is the ace of the CPBL. Read the rest of this entry »