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The 33rd Arizona Fall League season opened last night with a single game in Scottsdale. There are future stars in the Fall League every year, as well as many more workmanlike players who are competing for a 40-man roster spot on next year’s club. It’s a wonderful league for teams to develop and scout prospects because of the cross section of talent it tends to include (there are usually lots of good position player prospects), its timing (which allows players who were injured during the regular season to catch up on reps), and its structure (which allows for six weeks of steady looks). Teams almost always take the AFL seriously and send players here who they want to see more of, or who they want to test. Being on the roster is, on its own, a flare. It’s an indication that a player is worth paying attention to from a scouting standpoint even if I didn’t know the guy’s name until I saw a roster.

Previewing this league with prospects’ scouting reports risks putting the cart before the horse because the scouting part has yet to happen. I want to give you the reports I already have, to play the hits and make sure you have Kevin McGonigle and Josue De Paula reports and tool grades in front of you (don’t worry, you will), but a huge part of the pro scouting exercise that is the Arizona Fall League is mining for the deeper cut prospects, and I can’t tell you who those guys are going to be just yet. But I can show you the initial steps I take to prepare to go to the field and try to systematically unearth these guys, give you the tools to do so on your own, and, in the process, let know you who it is I’m most curious and excited to learn more about for the next six weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

Favorable conditions for a dramatic and explosive era of the Cubs-Brewers I-94 rivalry have been percolating for a while. And now they come to a head as the two clubs meet each other in the playoffs for the first time ever, even though it’s been 27 years since the Brewers changed leagues. Fan friction invariably occurs when two sports-loving cities are proximate to one another (you can drive from Milwaukee to Chicago in roughly 90 minutes along the southwest shore of Lake Michigan), but tensions grew here when Cubs manager Craig Counsell decided to jump ship from Milwaukee to Chicago after the 2023 season.

Spurned and abandoned by Counsell (and David Stearns) even though the team has been consistently (and seemingly sustainably) competitive, Milwaukee has carried on as a scrappy throwback squad built on contact, speed, and defense. Despite dealing with an April blight of pitcher injuries so bad that it gave us a week of needless torpedo bat discourse, the Brewers finished with the best record in the majors, won the NL Central by five games, and made the postseason for the seventh time in the last eight years, though they have just one NLCS appearance in that mix. The Cubs are fresh off a down-to-the-wire Wild Card Series win in a decisive Game 3 against the Padres in which their deep lineup tallied 13 hits, many off of excellent (if taxed) San Diego relievers. Let’s examine the component parts of each team in greater detail to remind ourselves how each team was assembled, and how they arrived at this part of the postseason. Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s postseason off day provides a nice opportunity to push an update to my Top 100 Prospects list. This is a “low-hanging fruit” update, more of a polishing and augmentation of the current list than an omnibus analysis of the entirety of the minor leagues. I mainly focused on the players who are closest to graduation, players who got a cup of coffee in the big leagues (sometimes a big cup, close to the maximum roster days without losing 2026 rookie eligibility) and who we basically can’t know any more about than we currently do before they graduate next year. I took a pass at the guys who were already on the Top 100 in a variety of ways; the cement is dry on their season-long stats and their underlying performance data, so everyone got a checkup in this regard, as well as via a TrackMan data check-in. I also watched all of these players swing and play defense at least a little bit just to re-establish an end-of-season visual understanding of their look.

Immediately below, you’ll see the updated list along with trend arrows indicating if a player’s FV grade has changed on this update, and then below that my thoughts on the clusters of players that formed throughout this process. The number of players on whom I have a grade of 50 or better is currently a little below 100, and the number of healthy players is even lower than that. As the offseason list-making process gets underway, there will probably be more players added to this tier, and any player’s grade is potentially subject to change as the down time allows for deeper analysis. Read the rest of this entry »

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Wrigley Field and its patrons are accustomed to day baseball, as the club still honors its once electricity-free history by playing Friday home games in the afternoon rather than at night. And so despite having not hosted playoff baseball since 2020 (and a playoff win since 2017), the scene on Wild Card Tuesday, a day that saw Chicago bathed in gorgeously clear fall light while still enjoying lovely late-summer temperatures, was a familiar one, as the Cubs dispatched the visiting Padres 3-1 in a brisk Game 1. The afternoon’s action was headlined by back-to-back home runs by Seiya Suzuki and Carson Kelly, as well as the perfect 4 2/3 innings worked by the Chicago bullpen.

Much like ABC’s broadcast, both offenses struggled to make sustained noise (was anyone else’s volume constantly fluctuating?) in this game. The teams combined for just 10 total hits, and the Cubs didn’t have a single hit with a runner in scoring position all afternoon. Under the hood, it was the Padres who made more frequent, high-quality contact, even though they managed just four hits. San Diego was responsible for 14 of the game’s 21 hard-hit (95 mph or more off the bat) balls in play, many of which were struck right at Cubs defenders. Read the rest of this entry »

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Now that the lower minor leagues’ regular seasons are over, teams have commenced with instructional league activity in a traditional sense, with a select group of players from several of their affiliates working out and scrimmaging at their spring training complexes. While “Bridge League” (the unofficial period of scrimmage activity that occurs after the late-July conclusion of the Complex Level schedule) frequently includes some newly drafted players, most of the rosters are made up of the guys who have been on the complex all year. But once “instructs” begin, the talent and quality of play of these games ascends to a different level as teams test their most interesting young players or get an intimate look at prospects who might be up for a 40-man roster spot during the winter. The snowbirds haven’t returned in full because the weather here in Arizona is still pretty gross, so driving across the metro is easier now than it will be in a few weeks (and during next year’s spring training). For that reason, I decided to focus my early looks on teams based in the western half of the Phoenix metro, farther from the house. Read the rest of this entry »

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