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Eric Longenhagen Prospects Chat: 11/8/24

12:16
Eric A Longenhagen: Howdy from sunny Tempe, Arizona where last weekend I went people watching up by the college to see some Halloween craziness, and instead the lady sitting next to me at the bar had a seizure or a stroke or something and I got to play paramedic in front of like 24 people. Sometimes things don’t go the way you plan.

12:16
AN1: How are you feeling on Creed Willems? He has smoked some balls out west. Doesn’t K a ton either and is 21 for the first half of 2025. Anything there?

12:18
Eric A Longenhagen: I’ll take the under. He has power but chases a ton for a 1B and I’m not sure how long he’s going to be athletically viable. Some model-driven team would probably take him in a deal, though.

12:18
Dk: Would you trade Tong, Williams and Gilbert for Crochet? Would it be enough?

12:20
Eric A Longenhagen: I’d be trying to do better than that (I’d rather have Sproat than either Tong or Gilbert by kind of a lot, and I’d need to pry away at least one of Baty or Ronny Mo) but I appreciate you including Jett, who I think is gonna be good.

12:20
Scott M.: What do you make of Josue Briceno and Thayron Liranzo’s AFL performances so far? And what’s the likelihood either will stick at catcher?

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Locally Sourced Arizona Fall League Notes: Grant Taylor and Connor Phillips Are Nasty

Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports

We’ve reached the point in the Arizona Fall League calendar when the weather has officially shifted toward autumn, which makes being at the ballpark during the day about as close to heaven as one can get. The return of great weather also means the return of the Valley’s snowbirds, the (usually retired) folks who only live here during the pleasant time of year. The highways are suddenly very full again, and I’ve become a crabby baby about driving all the way to the West Valley for day games that then force me to drive home in rush hour traffic made more harrowing by the uptick in people. Opportunities to double up at East Valley stadiums are now golden, and I’ll be at Salt River and then Mesa each of the next couple of days.

We’re now deep enough into the AFL schedule that I’m starting to shift my in-person scouting focus toward hitters, especially when pitchers I’ve already seen a couple of times are in the game. It means spending more time down the baselines rather than behind home plate and (probably) more hitter-focused pieces like this for the next couple of weeks. But for now… Read the rest of this entry »


Locally Sourced Arizona Fall League Notes: Tre’ Morgan’s Skills, Caleb Durbin Branches Out

Gary Cosby Jr.-Tuscaloosa News-USA TODAY NETWORK

Travis Ice and I have begun early work on the Los Angeles Angels and Sacramento Athletics prospect lists, and because both franchises’ prospects are on the Mesa Solar Sox roster, I spent most of last week seeing whatever game they were playing.

At this point in the Fall League, the leaders in games played have laced up their spikes only eight or nine times. Anything you’ve read about this year’s AFL so far has encompassed just two weeks of part-time play for any given player. Remember this is a hitter-friendly league for a number of both developmental and environmental reasons, and that triple slash lines in this league are not a reliable proxy for talent.

Tre’ Morgan, 1B, Tampa Bay Rays

Offensive standards at first base are quite high, and even though the collective performance of this year’s group was down relative to recent norms (by kind of a lot), it’s still a position from which we expect good players and prospects to provide impact power. Morgan has been a relevant prospect since high school, but a relative lack of power has tended to cap his projection into more of a part-time first base/outfield role.

During the 2024 regular season it looked like Morgan was more often taking max-effort swings and selling out for power. He reached Double-A and slugged .483 across three levels, but his middling raw strength and opposite-field tendency as a hitter (plus elevated chase rates relative to his career norms) suggested this was maybe not the best approach for him. In the Fall League, Morgan has been more balanced, really taking enormous hacks only in favorable counts. He’s still stinging the ball in a way that indicates he’ll be a doubles machine, and he seems less vulnerable to fastballs up and away than he did during the summer. We don’t have a way of truly knowing how Morgan will handle elevated big league fastballs until he faces them, but a more balanced, contact-oriented style of hitting is going to give him a much better chance of covering the top of the zone and being a more complete hitter. (An aside: Watch A’s prospect Denzel Clarke go first-to-third at the video’s 1:55 mark.)

I think the absolute ceiling for his production looks something like Brandon Belt’s or Daniel Murphy’s pre-Juiced Ball era statline. More likely Morgan’s output will look something like Ji Man Choi’s or LaMonte Wade Jr.’s. Morgan is not a guy who is going to hit 20 homers per year, but a heady, well-rounded offensive skillset coupled with his excellent, profile-seasoning first base defense make him better than the 40 FV grade player I evaluated him as during the year. He is making a case to be elevated into the back of this offseason’s Top 100 list.

Caleb Durbin, UTIL, New York Yankees

I gave Durbin short shrift last year even after his .353/.456/.588 line in the 2023 Fall League. He had a good 2024 at Triple-A Scranton, including a strong second half after he returned from a fractured wrist. Durbin is short — really short, he’s 5-foot-6 — but he’s not small; he’s built like a little tank. His compact, stocky build helps keep his swing short and consistently on time to pull the baseball. His quality of contact in 2024 was commensurate with a guy who slugs under .400 at the big league level, but he was dealing with an injury that typically impacts contact quality for a while after recovery.

Perhaps most importantly, Durbin looks fine at both second and third base and has also been playing all over the outfield. Defensive versatility might be his key to being rostered consistently. Durbin ran a jailbreak 4.10 for me last week, but his home-to-first times have been close to 4.4 seconds on normal swings. That’s not blazing and slower than what’s typical of a decent center fielder, but any kind of outfield viability would help the former Division-III standout become an improbable big leaguer. Durbin has played sparingly in center field during his career, and it’s going to be very difficult to evaluate him there this Fall League unless he starts getting reps there every day, which I think is unlikely. It’s more of a thing to watch develop into next spring.

Kemp Alderman, OF, Miami Marlins

Alderman, a 2023 second round pick out of Ole Miss who had some of the best exit velocities in that draft class, is currently leading the AFL with six home runs. He hit one on Friday at a whopping 119.5 mph. It went out on a line, ricocheting off the side of the batter’s eye, which you can see in this frame:

Like Durbin, Alderman missed time in 2024 with a broken hand. It’s good to see Alderman hitting with elite peak power coming off of this particular injury, but I’d advise everyone to pump the breaks on his overall prospectdom at this time. He loads his hands so deep, high, and late that I worry he’ll struggle against better velocity as he climbs the minors. Though Alderman’s regular-season strikeout rates don’t raise alarm, I don’t think 30-ish games at each A-ball level is a meaningful sample, especially for a draft pick out of an SEC school. It’s fine to be hopeful that I’m wrong or that Alderman will make necessary adjustments once better stuff starts beating him, and he clearly has the power to clear the offensive bar at a corner outfield spot. But even though he’s raking out here, he does not have an opinion-altering look. I know Marlins fans have gone through this a lot lately, where they have a minor leaguer with elite power but an insufficient hit tool to profile (Peyton Burdick, Griffin Conine, Jerar Encarnacion), and I worry Alderman is another of this ilk.

Devin Kirby, RHP, Minnesota Twins

Alert Ben Lindbergh, we have a knuckler. The 25-year-old Kirby was an undrafted free agent out of UConn in 2023 and spent most of 2024 in Fort Myers either on the Complex or FSL roster. His knuckleball needs to be more consistent for him to be considered a prospect at all, but for now it’s a lot of fun to watch a guy whose primary pitch is his knuckler.

Board Additions

Ryan Birchard, RHP, Milwaukee Brewers
Henry Bolte, OF, Oakland Athletics

These players have had their scouting reports added to the Fall League tab on The Board. Head over there to check out their tool grades and scouting reports.


Eric Longenhagen Prospects Chat- 10/18

12:11
Eric A Longenhagen: Good morning from beautiful Tempe where the temps have finally dipped after something like 20 days in a row of record highs.

12:12
Eric A Longenhagen: I’m going to the two east valley Fall League games today and want to put the bow on another dispatch of notes so I’ll likely keep this chat tight to the top of the hour.

12:13
Eric A Longenhagen: OKay let’s boogie…

12:13
Sox fan: Hey Eric – thanks for all your prospects content. Wondering when you’ll have any updates on the upcoming international signing periods. Particularly interested in any Red Sox related intel. Thanks!

12:14
Eric A Longenhagen: Yes, I’ve got a bunch of big $ names and team for the next couple of years in my notes and I’ll be building out the $1mil+ version of The Board for publication in the next few weeks…

12:15
Eric A Longenhagen: I don’t have any Boston guys for ’25 in my notes, they’ve tended to spread out medium sized bonuses across their entire class rather than spend $2mil+ on any one guy and I imagine that’s the case again

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Locally Sourced Fall League Notes: Andrew Painter, Ethan Salas, Zyhir Hope

Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

This past Saturday, the Arizona Fall League played host to a tripleheader, with start times staggered enough to see at least most of all three contests at the various ballparks in the eastern part of the Phoenix metro area. My notes and thoughts on the standouts from that day, as well as Monday’s solo game in Peoria, are below. You can find the end-of-year reports and grades on the 2024 Fall Leaguers on the Fall League tab of The Board. Read the rest of this entry »


Treinen, Dodgers Bullpen Carry Los Angeles to Game 1 Win (Oh, and Shohei Homered Too)

Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images

Three of the best handful of hitters on the planet were on the same field at Yankee Stadium yesterday, and the Phillies/Mets rivalry is as venomous as any in baseball, but take a straw poll of the real sickos and they’ll tell you the marquee Division Series tilt is the one between the Dodgers and Padres. It’s not only a bitter intradivisional matchup, it marks the MLB playoff debut of the Face of Baseball and features so many of the game’s stars that this paragraph would need to cup its hands together to carry all of their names. Game 1 absolutely delivered on the hype, as the teams traded haymakers every other inning for the first half of an incredibly tense contest before the Dodgers’ relievers snuffed out whatever embers of a rally the Padres could muster from the fifth inning on. Los Angeles won 7-5 to take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-five series. Read the rest of this entry »


A.J. Hinch Successfully Plays Bullpen Minesweeper, Tigers Advance to ALDS

Thomas Shea-Imagn Images

The Detroit Tigers continue to ride their wave of jubilation into October.

The most surprising playoff team beat the Houston Astros 5–2 in Game 2 of the best-of-three Wild Card round on Wednesday to advance to the American League Division Series. Manager A.J. Hinch successfully navigated a bullpen game that included only two turbulent innings. Tyler Holton, who threw just two pitches in Detroit’s Game 1 victory, acted as a left-handed opener to ensure the hard-hitting heart of Houston’s order (Kyle Tucker and Yordan Alvarez) would be forced to take an at-bat against a lefty.

After a clean first from Holton, sinkerballer Brenan Hanifee entered the game and narrowly escaped a scoreless second inning that featured two heart-stopping foul balls off the bat of Jason Heyward, either of which would’ve been a one- or two-run double with two outs. Hanifee gave the Tigers five outs, wrapping up his day against Jose Altuve before another lefty, this time Brant Hurter, entered to face Tucker and Alvarez. Hinch’s shrewd matchups and the Tigers’ pitching staff held Tucker hitless in the series.

Every bullpen game comes with a sort of Russian Roulette-ish risk that any one of the pitchers might have a bad day and cough up the game on their own. Hurter, who had a microscopic 3% walk rate in his 45 big league innings this year, looked for a minute like he might be that guy. He surrendered four baserunners and four hard-hit balls across 1 2/3 innings, exiting when Houston’s lineup turned over to Altuve with one out and two runners on in the bottom of the fifth.

At that moment, Hinch called on high-leverage reliever Beau Brieske, who closed Tuesday’s Game 1, to face Altuve and the heavy-hitting part of the Astros order. After getting both Altuve and Tucker out to escape extreme danger in the fifth, Brieske became the pitcher of record in the next half inning when Parker Meadows broke the scoreless tie with a solo home run off of Hunter Brown, who had been dealing to that point. Brown’s pitch to Meadows wasn’t bad; it was so far inside that most hitters would’ve at best been jammed by it, but somehow Meadows tucked his hands in, steered it fair, and doinked it off the right field foul pole.

This was the lone blemish in an otherwise stellar day for Brown, who allowed just four baserunners and struck out nine across 5 2/3 innings. Brieske, who as a former soft-tossing starter turned fire-breathing reliever looks like he might be a Liam Hendriks sequel of sorts, navigated the rest of the top half of Houston’s order in the bottom of the sixth.

Then for a couple innings all hell broke loose. Hinch called upon 22-year-old Jackson Jobe, one of baseball’s best pitching prospects, to work the bottom of the seventh. Jobe, who entered the game with four innings of Major League experience, nearly had a nuclear meltdown as he plunked Victor Caratini, narrowly avoided a pitch clock violation, couldn’t hear the PitchCom through the Houstonian crowd noise, and allowed consecutive singles to Jeremy Peña and Mauricio Dubón to load the bases. Astros manager Joe Espada then pulled his bench’s power-hitting lever by pinch hitting Jon Singleton for Chas McCormick with the bags full and nobody out. After Singleton took a very healthy rip at an early-count pitch, which he fouled back, he hit a well-struck grounder to a diving Spencer Torkelson whose on-target, one-hop throw to the plate was bobbled by the usually sure-handed catcher Jake Rogers.

Not only had the Astros scored, but the Tigers had failed to notch an out, and suddenly the top of Houston’s order was due to hit with the bases still juiced. Altuve hit a fairly shallow fly ball into foul territory along the right field line, where Matt Vierling caught it. The right fielder seemed surprised that Peña made an aggressive attempt to score, and his rather lackadaisical throw home was barely too late to snare Peña. Houston took a 2–1 lead.

With the Tigers seemingly flailing and Tucker and Alvarez due up, Hinch removed Jobe (who seemed miffed at Vierling’s effort on the prior play as he left the field) in favor of sinker/slider lefty Sean Guenther, who got Tucker to ground into an inning-ending double play to keep the Tigers within single-swing striking distance.

To say the Tigers responded to the lead change in the eighth would be an understatement. Houston bullpen fixture Ryan Pressly came in to relieve Bryan Abreu, who bussed Brown’s table in the sixth and worked an easy seventh. Pressly quickly surrendered two singles, threw a wild pitch that allowed the tying run to score, and then walked Colt Keith. Espada then pulled the ripcord on Pressly and inserted closer Josh Hader. Hader walked Torkelson to load the bases and then Andy Ibáñez — pinch-hitting for Zach McKinstry — cleared them with a three-run double hooked into the left field corner.

The Tigers were back on top, 5–2, and they didn’t look back. Guenther worked the eighth and Will Vest, who ripped the sleeves off the bottom of Houston’s lineup across 1 2/3 dominant innings in Game 1, shut the door in the ninth to send the Tigers to the ALDS.

This postseason series win is the Tigers’ first since 2013, when the team was managed by Hall of Famer Jim Leyland and a carton of cigarettes. They have two off days before Saturday’s Game 1 tilt with the division rival Guardians in Cleveland. Right-hander Tanner Bibee, who has a 4.50 ERA and a 1.04 WHIP across 22 innings in his four starts against the Tigers this year, will start for the Guardians. Reese Olson, who was rostered for the Wild Card series but did not pitch, is the presumptive Game 1 starter for Detroit.

Houston’s season ends earlier than it has in any year since 2016, the last time the team failed to make the playoffs. The Astros had advanced to the ALCS in each of the past seven seasons, a borderline dynastic stretch for the franchise. Through that perspective, getting knocked out by the Tigers in the Wild Card Series is a major disappointment. However, at a certain point earlier this year, it would have been considered a miracle for this team to make the postseason at all. The Astros got here despite a glacial start to their season and several key injuries to their pitching staff. Those injuries may impact next year, too, as the timing of Cristian Javier’s and Luis Garcia’s Tommy John surgeries have them on pace for a mid- to late-season return rather than in early 2025.

Additionally, third baseman Alex Bregman, who was Houston’s best player in these two playoff games, hits free agency this offseason. With several highly paid Astros coming off the books (most notably Justin Verlander who didn’t pitch enough for his $40 million option to vest), the team has room to sign Bregman. That said, Tucker and Framber Valdez are both entering their third year of arbitration, and their futures with the club might be impacted by what happens with Bregman. Whatever happens, the Astros may not look the same for too much longer.


National League Wild Card Preview: New York Mets vs Milwaukee Brewers

Jeff Hanisch and Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images

It would be unfair to the New York Mets to reduce their regular season to its triumphant climax, an epic, whiplash-inducing, decisive two-run homer by a hobbled Francisco Lindor during a de-facto postseason game necessitated by a hurricane. The Mets clinched a postseason berth and a trip back to Milwaukee for a Wild Card date with the NL Central champion Brewers.

These organizations share some history and DNA that makes for heightened intrigue, and in one case quite literally. Recall that these teams played each other a couple of days ago as the Mets fought for their playoff lives. They also squared off on Opening Day and nearly came to blows as (currently injured) Mets second baseman Jeff McNeil took exception to a Rhys Hoskins slide. Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns was once a young upstart Brewers GM and (later) POBO who was hired away in a very telegraphed, long-rumored move at the end of last season. Each team has a Megill brother (Tylor or Trevor) on its pitching staff.

Aside from these features, the teams are quite different. Monday was not the first time the Mets had stared down the potential death of their season. They were comfortably under .500 for most of the first half of the year and hit their nadir in early-June when they were 11 games under and sporting playoff odds below 10%. From the start of the season through the end of August, New York’s playoff odds were above 50% for only six days in total. A September surge coupled with the Diamondbacks’ collapse allowed the Mets to eek into the tournament, and now a team that began the 2023 season with the biggest payroll in baseball by a sizeable margin enters the 2024 playoffs as a plucky underdog that has developed a battle-tested edge during the last two months of play.

The Brewers, on the other hand, have been coasting since June. They were the first team in the league to clinch a playoff spot, and they tout the third-best run differential (+136) in all of baseball, behind only the Dodgers and Yankees. Almost exactly a year ago, it was announced that front-end starter Brandon Woodruff would require shoulder surgery. His loss and the pre-season trade of Corbin Burnes made the NL Central feel like it was up for grabs. Instead, Milwaukee’s young core of hitters carried it to a cozy division title despite a season-ending injury to All-Star outfielder Christian Yelich.

At an average age of 26.4 years old, the Brewers position player group was the second youngest in the National League, behind only the rebuilding Washington Nationals. The Brewers ranked fourth in the league in position player WAR this year despite comfortably having the lowest slugging percentage among the other clubs in the top 10. While Milwaukee has a few dangerous power hitters (most notably catcher William Contreras, shortstop Willy Adames, and tooled-up prodigy Jackson Chourio), the group has largely succeeded via secondary skills like speed, defense, and plate discipline. The Brewers were second in baseball in team walk rate, second in team stolen bases (second baseman Brice Turang led Milwaukee with 50 bags), first in Base Runs (by a lot), and third in defensive Outs Above Average. The Brewers have three shortstop-quality defenders manning their non-first base infield positions and arguably boast the best all-around defense of any playoff team.

The Mets, on the other hand, succeed with power. Though not exceptional or dominant (they did barely sneak into the playoffs, after all) they ranked in the league-wide top 10 of most measures of power talent and production (SLG, ISO, HardHit%, and Barrel%). Lindor had an MVP-caliber season, young corner infielder Mark Vientos hit 27 home runs in just 110 games, Pete Alonso notched yet another 30-homer season, Brandon Nimmo smacked 22 dingers, and despite middling homer totals on the season, both Francisco Alvarez and J.D. Martinez are powerful, dangerous hitters.

And then there’s 34-year-old second baseman (and pop star) Jose Iglesias, who is entering the postseason on an epic heater. He had a hit in each of Monday’s games against Atlanta and is riding a 22-game hitting streak. He slashed .341/.387/.456 this season, having played pretty regularly since June. McNeil’s broken wrist put more pressure on Iglesias to perform down the stretch, and he has delivered well above what anyone could’ve expected.

Game 1’s pitching matchup features Brewers “ace” Freddy Peralta against Mets righty Luis Severino, who was a shrewd and effective reclamation pickup by the Mets during the offseason after their high-profile Scherzer/Verlander staff flopped the year before. The 2024 season was Severino’s first fully healthy one since 2018. Peralta just completed his second straight 30-plus start campaign, and he set a career-high for innings pitched (173 2/3). All four of Peralta’s pitches garnered above-average whiff rates.

Neither team has a particularly strong rotation, and both will likely rely heavily upon their respective bullpen if they’re going to make a deep run into October. The Mets begin the Wild Card round on their back foot in this regard, having just taxed their bullpen across 18 innings in Monday’s doubleheader. Huascar Brazobán and Adam Ottavino pitched in both of Monday’s games. Mets closer Edwin Díaz threw 40 pitches Monday and 26 pitches the day before. All three of them may be unavailable — or at least fatigued — in the first two games of this series.

Contrast that with the Brewers bullpen. Only DL Hall and Hoby Milner pitched on Sunday, giving the rest of Milwaukee’s bullpen at least two days to rest. That includes closer Devin Williams, who has been utterly dominant since his return from multiple stress fractures in his back. Since he was activated just before the trade deadline, Williams has the second-highest K/9 rate (15.78) among relievers, behind only Edwin Díaz, and has posted a 1.25 ERA. He has not allowed a run since August 21. The Mets may be able to counter some of the funky-looking deliveries that the Brewers run out of their bullpen with Jesse Winker, Harrison Bader, or Tyrone Taylor coming off the bench, depending on who starts. But, if only due to the circumstances caused by Hurricane Helene that forced the Mets to cover two games the day before the start of this series, Milwaukee’s bullpen would seem to have a big advantage.

In this series, we have a narrative reversal of the two franchises and markets involved. The Mets — a financial juggernaut that snuck into the playoffs in a year that was supposed to be a “step back” — now feel like they’re playing with house money, while the Brewers, who performed during the regular season like one of the sport’s best teams, check many of the boxes of a typical postseason contender, especially the defense and bullpen ones. The winner will earn the right to tango with the Phillies.


Eric Longenhagen Prospects Chat: 9/27

12:04
Eric A Longenhagen: Good morning from Tempe, where it is somehow still 100 degrees every day. I’ve got an instructs game today at 11 so we’ll keep today’s chat pretty tight to the hour so I can prep my gear and drive there. I have a cat draped over one forearm right now, this is a very popular chat.

12:04
James: Always appreciate that chats, Eric! SD system has thinned quite a bit, who is the next potential dude behind De Vries

12:05
Eric A Longenhagen: I think Humberto Cruz has a shot to be a big deal. Super smooth and projectable, could have premium command and a couple plus pitches.

12:06
Eric A Longenhagen: Sounds like he’s been shut down for the year, but the HS kids from the draft class throw this weekend here in AZ so I’m hoping to see Mayfield then. He could also be an answer to your question.

12:06
Guest: how much does TJ knock Christian Scott down, FV-wise and future role-wise?

12:06
Eric A Longenhagen: Still think he’ll start and be a mid-rotation guy (provided the rehab goes well, etc.).

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Let’s Ballpark Roki Sasaki’s Market

Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sports

The Yankees’ acquisition of $750,000 worth of 2024 international bonus pool space at the trade deadline got my gears turning around the seemingly looming Roki Sasaki posting. There has been considerable reporting (such as this Chelsea Janes Washington Post jawn) to suggest that teams expect, or at least are planning for, Sasaki to be posted this offseason, and my sources tend to agree (though not universally). In this piece, I’m going to talk about how Sasaki looks (spoiler: not his best), how his posting will be different than that of most other Japanese players if he indeed comes over this offseason or next, the way teams have been behaving and preparing for his potential posting, and what shenanigans they might get up to as they continue to do so.

For those unfamiliar…

Sasaki has been the LeBron James of Japanese baseball since his junior year, a known generational high school talent who has gone on to deliver on and perhaps exceed expectations at the highest level of Japanese baseball. Sasaki turns 23 in November and his feats of strength are already legendary. He touched 101 in high school and once threw nearly 500 pitches in an eight-day span, including a 12-inning, 194-pitch complete game during which he also hit the game-winning two-run homer. He was the first pick in the 2019 NPB Draft by the Chiba Lotte Marines, had a sub-2.00 ERA in his 2021 rookie season, and then transcended the sport in 2022 when he threw 17 consecutive perfect innings that April. Read the rest of this entry »