Boston Red Sox Top 47 Prospects

Anthony has had a magmatic year and a half as a prospect leading to this mid-2024 update. Even though his early-2023 surface stats at Low-A Salem were mediocre, Anthony’s underlying metrics indicated he was about to breakout via a potent combination of burgeoning raw power, extreme (if perhaps unsustainable) patience, and better bat-to-ball performance than one might have anticipated given his high school track record. He was promoted to High-A Greenville and his strikeouts exploded, but so did Anthony’s power, and at age 19 he hit 12 homers in just 54 games before a brief Double-A stint to close the season. He also looked better in center field toward the end of 2023. Now 20 years old, Anthony has been at Double-A Portland all year and has kept walking a lot and hitting for power (despite a swing that isn’t effectively geared for it yet) while his strikeouts have remained elevated.

Anthony has filled out and become more physical in 2024, which has slowed him down enough to shift his defensive projection into a corner, though this was probably going to happen anyway given the presence of Jarren Duran and Ceddanne Rafaela in the org. The added strength has also manifested in bigger exit velocities. Anthony had average measurable raw last year (which is incredible for a 19-year-old) and now has pretty comfortably plus raw, maybe even plus-plus; his 55% hard-hit rate as of the date we sourced minor league Trackman data would slot in sixth among qualified big leaguers. Anthony’s swing is almost a carbon copy of Rafael Devers‘ cut, with violent effort and a mostly downward swooping bat path that relies on bend in his lower body to go down and scoop low pitches with power like Devers does. While Anthony has shown some ability to do this (it’s absolutely gorgeous when he does), he isn’t doing so consistently. Opposing pitchers can limit his ability to get to power by approaching him in the bottom half of the strike zone, as he tends to drive those pitches into the ground, and soft stuff precisely located down and away from him often eludes him entirely. Anthony slugged .466 at mostly Low- and High-A in 2023, but his expected slugging percentage based on his quality of contact was only .370, per a front office source. There’s been a little bit of a shift this year, with his average launch angle rising from six degrees to 10, but there isn’t consistent lift here yet.

Anthony’s plate discipline evokes a baked good that has too much food coloring in it; there’s an air of artificiality to it that makes it feel a bit unnatural. One team I source data from tracks players’ “cookie swing rate,” in essence the rate of swing when a pitch is right down the middle of the plate. Anthony’s was among the lowest in the minors last year, and I think it speaks to a narrow early-count approach that perhaps includes premeditated takes rather than actual selectivity. His big league plate discipline will probably be slightly better than average, but he likely won’t post the elite walk rates he’s shown in the minors so far. The effort in Anthony’s swing makes it likely that he’ll always strike out at a pretty good clip, but there are plenty of really good big league corner outfielders, such as Riley Greene and Fernando Tatis Jr., with this kind of contact profile (right around 82% in the zone, 76% overall); it’s just going to take continued swing adjustments for Anthony to get to star-level power in games. In the same way it took Duran a couple of years before everything clicked, it may also take Anthony a little time before he peaks as the All-Star power hitter he’s projected as here. His FV grade hasn’t changed, but I’ve repositioned Anthony somewhat on the top 100 list since it seems clearer he’s destined for a corner. He slides a few spots into a group of similarly talented mashers, most of whom are also in the upper levels of the minors.

My offseason report on Mayer was filled with apprehension about his issues against secondary pitches (which for a couple of years he had performed in spite of) and the way he was trending athletically on defense. It also acknowledged that some of Marcelo’s late 2023 dip could have been caused by the effects of a shoulder injury (which he tried playing through before it ultimately ended his season), and that a 21-year-old could pretty quickly remake his body and once again have the requisite athleticism to handle shortstop. Some of that has turned out to be true, and Mayer has raked at Double-A Portland during the first half of 2024, but I still think there are some underlying issues here. Clearly he’s graded as a 50 FV player and therefore projects to be an everyday shortstop, but I think these warts will stifle his production below the superstar level readers might expected of him.

The way Mayer’s swing works (his front side is very upright through contact, his hips tend to bail toward first base pretty early, and his bat path struggles to find pitches down and away from him) continues to leave him vulnerable against soft stuff. His issues haven’t been as stark in 2024 as they were in 2023 when he had a sub-.500 OPS against secondary pitches, but there’s still an enormous dip compared to the way he handles fastballs. Choirs of angels have blessed Mayer’s hitting hands, which are deft and drive contact explosive enough to remain excited about his overall offensive future, just not to the level of a Bobby Witt Jr. or Corey Seager in terms of impact. If we suddenly see more bend in his lower body, the way Max Muncy altered his swing before his huge breakout in LA, then there will be reason to re-evaluate.

Mayer has always been a bit boxier than the usual elite shortstop prospect, but his hands and actions are so skillful and polished that he seemed likely to play there despite middling range. Perhaps because his mobility was compromised from the general discomfort of his shoulder issue, Mayer’s range backed up in 2023 and his arm accuracy was sometimes poor. He definitely looks trimmer in 2024 and the Red Sox appear to be positioning him closer to the hole so he can make more plays moving right to left. It isn’t sexy, but it works. Mayer’s footwork and actions are still very polished and the Red Sox have found a way to mask his mediocre range and arm strength (for shortstop). Things feel much more stable here than they did at the end of 2023. Hopefully Mayer will keep hitting Eastern League pitching and merit a promotion so we can watch him face and adjust to junkballing Triple-A veterans who might force him to make relevant adjustments. He’s tracking like a late 2025 or early 2026 debut.

The emergence of Jarren Duran and injuries to Trevor Story and Vaughn Grissom have forced Rafaela into action at shortstop much more than I would have guessed at the start of the season. I’ve been of the mind that his elite center field defense would cause the Red Sox to deploy him out there regularly, but he looks quite good at short and the org has a much clearer need there than in the outfield, so perhaps we’ll see him do a mix of both for the long haul. His acrobatics are apparent at both positions, but especially in center, where Rafaela would be an all-world defender. Most super skinny SS/CF prospects wind up in the outfield due to a lack of arm strength, but Rafaela has improved enough in this area to feel more comfortable with him at shortstop regularly.

Even at 23, Rafaela still has a sinewy, projectable frame. He’s hit 20-21 bombs each of the last two seasons in the minors and is on pace to hit 15 in the big leagues this year, though you’re seeing his complete lack of plate discipline rear its ugly head in the majors as he walks at a paltry 3% clip. There is some risk of his offense totally bottoming out the way Cristian Pache‘s did, but here Rafaela is projected more like Kevin Pillar, though with peak years of superior power and greater defensive versatility.

Bleis signed for $1.5 million out of the Dominican Republic in January of 2021, and after a solid showing in the DSL that year, he created huge buzz on the complex in Fort Myers throughout 2022 because of his bat speed and power. He was on the short list of players who entered 2023 with a chance to “Chourio,” i.e. leap into the top 10 overall prospect mix within the next year. Instead, Bleis had a bad first month of full-season ball, subluxated his left shoulder during a swing at the end of May, and ended up needing season-ending surgery. Sent back to Low-A to start 2024, Bleis got off to a good start and was quickly promoted to Greenville, where the pace of play has been a bit of a rude awakening.

Bleis has all-world bat speed and rare rotational athleticism. His best swings produce shocking raw power for such a lithe young hitter, and he might still grow into more. He can go through stretches where his swing decisions are pretty terrible, but that has been much better so far in 2024. There’s some chase-related hit tool risk here, but if Bleis becomes more selective as he matures, he would have a complete (and very exciting) offensive skill set. He also has the speed and range to play center, but he’s procedurally raw when it comes to things like communicating with the other outfielders and where he decides to throw the baseball. That applies to pretty much every aspect of Bleis’ game — he’s fairly immature on the field in a way that evokes a young Jose Siri, as do his tools. In the days leading up to list publication, Bleis K’d on a pitch clock violation and misplayed multiple balls in play into extra base hits, one of the times half jogging to recover as the runner sprinted around the bases. At some point he’s going to need to grow up and iron that stuff out, but he’s too young and talented to exclude from this FV tier. A meteoric rise is unlikely as long as Bleis takes a somewhat unserious approach to this stuff, but over time, I believe his talent will shine in an everyday center field capacity.

Teel raked in high school, opted out of the 2020 draft, raked in college, went in the middle of last year’s first round, and has raked so far as a pro. He’s posted a 144 wRC+ during a 2024 first half spent at Double-A Portland, where he began his first full pro season. He tracks pitches well and his barrel stays in the hitting zone for a long time, enabling Teel to let pitches travel a little deeper and spray them to the opposite field. His vertical bat path and high-effort style of swinging helps produce impressive in-game power for a medium-framed hitter, and Teel has shown that he can make a roughly average rate of contact using this style of hitting. You can beat him with velo up-and-away and with backfoot breaking stuff, but you’d better make sure that breaking ball finishes because most of his power occupies the middle-in part of the zone. It’s a very solid offensive skill set for a catcher.

Teel does not have the prototypical size and bulk of an everyday catcher, and there are times when his lack of strength impacts his receiving and pitch framing, but he does virtually everything else well on defense. His raw arm strength is fair, but Teel’s exchange is lightning quick and he’s often able to make accurate throws even when awkward pitch locations force him to contort his body to do so. He’s also an incredibly mobile ball-blocker, especially for someone who catches from such a wide, one-knee’d base. At the rate Teel is performing and climbing, it’s possible we could see him in Boston at some point next year, debuting in a timeshare with the similarly small Connor Wong that would allow Teel to get his feet wet while relieving some of the position’s physical burdens for both of them. There might be roster flexibility considerations (like Reese McGuire being out of options) that complicate this, but it’s a way to onboard Teel while also maximizing Wong, which is fortuitous and exciting.

They made a Jarren Duran sequel already? Campbell has been shot out of the pro ball cannon. He has an OPS over 1.000 as of list publication, and he’s been performing at Double-A Portland for the better part of the last month. At Georgia Tech, Campbell was an outstanding slash-and-dash leadoff man who was among the most difficult Division-I hitters to make swing and miss during the 2023 season. He hit .376/.484/.549 and struck out just 17 times in 217 PA during his draft year as an age-eligible redshirt freshman.

Subtle changes to the way his hands load, as well as alterations to his approach, have resulted in a seismic shift in his profile. Campbell is swinging with damage-seeking intent and has been able to lift the ball more. The power he’s generating with his new style is shocking. His high-end exit velocities are comfortably plus on the big league scale (he hit a ball 114 mph this year) and he’s doing huge damage to all fields. While these changes have come at the expense of Campbell’s ability to make contact (he had a 90% contact rate in college and has yo-yo’d around the 70-77% range so far as a pro), keep in mind that this might improve as he gets comfortable with his new swing. His cut still looks weird, like it did in college, when he was often chopping down at the baseball. Unlike a lot of the powerless college bat-control mavens who go on Day Two of the draft, Campbell isn’t undersized or relatively unathletic; he’s a strapping 6-foot-3 guy with explosive rotational athleticism. This isn’t a skills-over-tools type who doesn’t check the physical scouting boxes; this is a projectable athlete who hasn’t played a ton of high level baseball yet (recall that he was an age-eligible redshirt freshman with one year of college experience), and still he’s having huge success at Double-A.

Campbell played second base at Tech but has also played a lot of center field so far this year. He’s a plus runner who has the wheels for it, but he needs reps to improve his feel. His athleticism has bailed him out of some bad reads; Campbell will get twisted around out there and still find a crazy way to make the play, which is pretty exciting given the context of his development.

I don’t think Campbell is going to have a Bondsian OPS forever, but I do buy that there have been meaningful changes here that have unlocked dormant impact power. The “contact-only second baseman makes swing changes and moves to center field” plot summary reads almost exactly like Jarren Duran’s scouting report did when he first broke out in the lower minors. Campbell’s swing is still so odd and requires such effort that I’d like to see him sustain a high level of performance against upper-level pitching for a little while longer before he moves into the Top 100, but he’s certainly on that trajectory.

Rodriguez-Cruz is a very projectable sinker-oriented righty who was still shy of 18 when Boston picked him in the fourth round of the 2021 draft out of Leadership Christian Academy, the Puerto Rican high school that also boasts Heliot Ramos and Jose Miranda as alums. He didn’t have electric stuff coming out of high school, but he did have a prototypical starter’s build, a smooth delivery, and a shapely breaking ball, allowing you to dream on his velocity, command, and changeup growth. For the last two seasons, ERC has been on an upward trajectory in terms of his velocity and innings count. He rather impressively held his own as a teenage starter in full-season ball last year before he was shut down with elbow inflammation. Elmer was sitting 92 and mixing in three secondary offerings. This year, he’s back in Salem (so far) and has had a significant velo jump while also adding a cutter. He’s sitting 95, touching 98 (with sink), and maintaining starter-quality walk rates amid his arm strength boost.

Rodriguez-Cruz repeats his mechanics with impressive consistency for a young pitcher his size and is one of the higher probability starter prospects in this system even though he’s so young. Basically everything you could have hoped for when ERC was drafted is coming to fruition. He’s parlayed his curveball feel into other good breaking balls (there’s a slider or cutter here, or possibly both) that top out around 89 mph, and he continues to have changeup projection because of his loose, whippy arm action. I’d like to see him sustain this kind of velocity all season (or at least across 75 or so innings) and perform against High-A hitters during the second half, but he’s currently tracking like a mid-rotation starter and an offseason addition to the Top 100 list.

Paez is not the best pitching prospect in this system, but he is my favorite. The little low-three-quarters righty looked like a Vance Worley starter kit last year, but his secondary pitches and velocity have both taken a meaningful leap compared to 2023 and Paez has retained his incredible command in the process. Paez is an east/west artist and rarely misses in hittable locations. He’ll bury his sinker in spots that make it impossible to elevate, run it back over the corner of the plate for a strike, set up his excellent changeup with precise arm-side location, and occasionally run his heater up the ladder where it can slip past certain hitters’ bats because of its angle. Paez’s slider is much harder this year than last, averaging 82 mph, up four ticks from 2023. His ability to attack with lateral fastball/slider divergence and then pull the string with his changeup is so advanced that Paez could probably be pitching at Double-A right now. His cross-bodied delivery requires a fair bit of effort for the little righty to execute, but Paez is a fantastic athlete and has never had strike-throwing issues. This is one of the few prospects in the minors who has a chance to develop elite, 80-grade command and could be a mid-rotation starter despite his relative lack of size and velocity.

One of the players who came back in the 2022 Christian Vázquez trade with Houston, Abreu is a well-rounded corner outfielder with deceptive speed for an athlete of his build. He was one homer shy of having a 20/30 season in 2022, and he hit .274/.391/.538 with 22 homers at Triple-A in 2023 before he was called up late in the year to get his feet wet at the big league level while still retaining rookie eligibility into 2024.

Though his expected stats based on quality of contact are quite a bit beneath his surface-level performance, Abreu is still having a terrific rookie season and looks like a very solid corner platoon option who’ll get most of the right field at-bats due to his handedness. I wrote last year that Abreu’s incredible 2022 walk rates seemed inflated based on his underlying data and indeed he regressed in that regard in 2023, as his plate discipline was closer to average on the surface and under the hood. His swing is geared for extreme lift, something his relatively short levers enable since his barrel needs to take a longer path to get on such an uphill plane. This style of hitting leaves Abreu vulnerable to high fastballs, which he often swings underneath. The lack of a true plus tool offensive tool here is offset by Abreu’s plus corner defense and huge arm. He’s a really nice player who you can win with, but ideally you have a righty-hitting caddy for him on your roster.

Perales had Tommy John about a week prior to list publication. Regardless of the surgery, I still would have had him projected in relief due to the extreme, high-effort nature of his delivery and his relative lack of size. Perales was sitting 96-98 and touching 100 before the TJ, which is up two ticks from last season. Another reason Perales profiled in relief: His due north arm slot created downhill angle on his fastball that made it vulnerable to contact. Around the time he blew out, he was allowing a wOBA of nearly .400 on that pitch and generating an average CSW% for a fastball. He seemed to be taking a cutter-heavy approach this year, though some of what I think auto pitch-tagging was classifying as his cutter were actually splitters that cut on him.

Make no mistake, this is a buck nasty pitching prospect with late-inning stuff. His cutter has slider shape when it’s located down but it plays like a cutter when it’s located up, and Perales’ splitter has enough depth to play as a bat-misser against hitters of either handedness. This was Perales’ first year on the 40-man roster and now he’ll spend just about all of his second one on the IL rehabbing from TJ. The Red Sox will almost certainly be granted a fourth option year for him via an injury exemption, which gives them more time to stretch him back out as a starter if they want to, but if they’re competitive like they are now upon his return, I’d just put him in the bullpen and have him let it eat as a setup man or closer.

A torn Achilles tendon in 2019 cost Hamilton his junior year at Texas; the injury also dropped him to the later part of his draft’s second day, where the Brewers selected him in the eighth round. He finally got his first taste of pro baseball in 2021, and a season defined by gaudy stolen base totals ended with him being traded to Boston in the Hunter Renfroe deal. He’s stolen 129 bases combined in his first two years in the Red Sox org and debuted in 2023. He’s been up for most all of 2024 and is having a good rookie season, graduating with a 104 wRC+, which is a little north of what I’d expect him to produce throughout his big league career.

Hamilton is a 70-grade runner who regularly gets down the line in the 4.00–4.10 second range. Minor league camera operators had trouble keeping him in frame, and his speed forces opposing infielders to rush their throws, often impacting their accuracy. This speed, combined with Hamilton’s suitable shortstop defense, makes him very likely to play a part-time big league role for a long time. He made above-average rates of contact in the minors but did so as an old-for-the-level player. It thus felt prudent to round down on his hit tool projection a little bit, but Hamilton has had a relatively seamless big league transition aside from elevated chase. Vulnerable on the outer edge, Hamilton is best at turning on inside pitches, which is really the only part of the zone in which he’s able to hit for power. More “fine” than excellent at short, Hamilton also got some run in center field during the 2023 season, but Boston’s needs at the big league level have prevented that experiment from continuing so far in 2024. This is a pretty stable utilityman with premium baserunning ability as his headline tool.

Alcantara entered the 2024 season as one of my Picks to Click, but he didn’t come to camp having added meaningful strength and he’s struggling to swing the bat at Low-A Salem. His swing has become incredibly noisy and features much more effort than my notes from last year’s complex look indicate. It’s possible that like a lot of the hitters in this system, Alcantara is making an effort to swing as hard as he can and that he has to wind his whole body up with these elaborate gesticulations in order to do so, but he’s often late to the contact point. If Alcantara is going to shorten up, then he has to get stronger.

Still, there’s no change to his FV grade here because Alcantara is such a slick defensive infielder that he stands a very good chance to be a high-end utilityman even if he has long-term issues with the bat. He is rangy and smooth, very agile and acrobatic, and he makes beautiful plays at both middle infield spots. Alcantara is only 19 and I think he still has a chance to layer meaningful strength onto his frame, though there are scouts who think his build is so slight that he won’t. If the Red Sox decide to be deadline buyers, I’d kick the tires on Alcantara in trade talks if only to try to get a sense of the way they value him. This is still a prospect I’m on despite his current struggles because he’s the best defensive shortstop (and maybe non-Rafaela player) in the org.

Yorke was perhaps the biggest surprise of the 2020 draft’s first round. He was a known bat-first prospect from California, but time off recovering from a shoulder surgery and the pandemic made him tough to evaluate properly before the draft — tough enough that he was not generally seen as a first-round prospect. Yorke had a great 2021 pro debut, then his 2022 was impacted by myriad injuries (turf toe, back stiffness, wrist soreness). He rebounded in 2023 against Double-A pitching, began 2024 in Portland again, and has hit his way to Worcester. Never an especially good second base defender, Yorke has begun playing some left field this year, and as soon as he looks comfortable out there, he’ll be ready to play the part-time role that Romy Gonzalez and Rob Refsnyder are currently combining to play, though it’s notable that he has pretty dramatic reverse splits throughout his minor league career.

Yorke’s hitting hands are very sexy, and his righty cut looks great despite his relatively mediocre bat speed and athleticism. He lacks huge top-end power and swing loft, but he consistently hits the ball hard, with a 46% hard-hit rate at Portland and a 55% mark so far at Worcester. A rare righty low-ball hitter, he might be tested by big league velocity; Yorke’s tendency has been to inside out harder fastballs, which might be an indication he’ll be late on those. The hitting talent in Yorke’s hands is quite exciting, and while he’s flawed and will have to come off the field for defensive reasons late in games, he’s a well-rounded hitter whose game power might take a leap with an adjustment to his swing. Yorke has done nothing but hit his entire (healthy) career as a prospect and is a pretty good bet to be put on Boston’s 40-man this offseason.

Big-framed and athletic, Sandlin spent two years at an Oklahoma JUCO prior to his lone season in Norman. For many, including yours truly, he was a 2023 spring training revelation, as Sandlin showed mid-90s arm strength and a plus breaking ball on the Royals backfields. His 2023 was cut short by an oblique injury, and then in the offseason he was traded from Kansas City to Boston for John Schreiber.

Given that he had two JUCO seasons, seemed to be breaking late in his junior year at Oklahoma, and then was part of a Royals org that hasn’t been great at developing pitchers, the Red Sox might have gotten in on the ground floor here. Though he dealt with a forearm strain this year, Sandlin has been effective during short outings at Greenville. He’s touched 100, his trademark slider has been great again, and he’s scrapped his splitter in favor of a new cutter. Though he now lacks a weapon you might associate with platoon neutralization, Sandlin’s slider has enough depth to play versus lefties. I want to see him prove he can maintain this kind of arm strength for a whole season of 100-plus innings before stuffing him, but Sandlin has the ingredients to be in a good team’s rotation.

Cespedes signed for $1.4 million in 2023 and was my 18th-ranked international prospect that year because of his advanced hit tool. He had a great 2023 pro debut in the DSL and was off to such a hot start in the 2024 FCL that he was promoted to Low-A as an 18-year-old shortly before list publication. Hand soreness has delayed his Salem debut.

With the acknowledgment that this guy’s hand speed is pretty nutty and he can really bang, this scouting report also aims to caution folks against taking Cespedes’ rookie ball performance at face value. He is very physically mature relative to other 18- and 19-year-old hitters; one might argue he’s already become concerningly large for this stage of his career. Obviously he’s so young that Cespedes and Boston’s strength and conditioning program could make significant changes in this area, but his frame is maxed out right now and it impacts his mobility on defense enough that there’s a chance he won’t stick on the infield at all if he gets bigger the way people tend to as they age. It’s reminiscent of Willie Calhoun at the same age.

Cespedes is also a very aggressive swinger; over the course of four or five plate appearances, he might only see six or seven pitches. His bat speed and feel for contact are both special and have allowed him to thrive against rookie ball pitching despite this. Indeed, his talent in this regard is going to allow him to perform for a while despite other issues. At some point there will probably have to be an adjustment on Cespedes’ part, especially if he ends up being a below-average defensive player and needs every drop of offensive production he can muster to root himself on a major league roster. Because defensive versatility probably won’t be a thing here, Cespedes’ outcomes are binary: Either he keeps hitting enough to be an everyday second baseman (becoming a better defender as he climbs) or he’ll be tough to roster. I break from syllogistic reasoning a bit here having Cespedes ranked ahead of Chase Meidroth, who has proven he can hit despite other limitations in a way Cespedes hasn’t yet. I think there’s way more power potential here than Meidroth’s profile could ever hope to have, and that’s driving the flip.

Romero ranked 37th on the 2022 draft board and was selected 24th overall, receiving a $2.3 million bonus to forego a commitment to LSU. High school Romero was viewed as one of the draft’s more polished prep hitters, a sweet-swinging middle infielder who might not stick at shortstop. Lower back stiffness sidelined him for most of 2023 and those issues have persisted into the start of 2024. When he was finally deemed healthy in the middle of May, the Red Sox effectively skipped Romero over Low-A (he only played there for a month last year) and sent him straight to Greenville.

Romero still has a good looking low-ball swing and the explosive hitting hands that made him an exciting draft prospect. His mobility on defense isn’t great, and he takes quite a while to turn the baseball around to first base. His throwing stroke and accuracy also look a little odd (Romero has an over-the-top arm slot atypical of an infielder), and he takes a while to get rid of the baseball. Whether this is just rust or is the result of continued back discomfort or physical changes caused by it, we just won’t know until Romero gets more time to air out as a pro prospect.

Romero’s 40-man timeline is such that he and Boston have through the 2026 season to get things on track; that’s still plenty of runway. If I were an actual team thinking about Romero from a trade standpoint, it would be tougher to rank him this highly; teams aren’t falling over themselves to acquire a teenager with recurring back issues. But this is a “hold” on where Romero’s FV grade was as a draft prospect. I am more inclined to let Romero’s late-season look — once he’s had an opportunity to fall into a routine and get some traction — drive any sort of FV update during the next list cycle.

I had a stronger grade on Slaten than is typical for someone who is left off a 40-man and exposed to the Rule 5 Draft, turning him in as a good bullpen’s third banana thanks mostly to his devastating slider. But even I didn’t think Slaten would become this consistently good. Other than him continuing to improve his conditioning (his body looks way different than when he was in college) and moving a little further to the first base side of the rubber, there has only been one major change to Slaten’s operation: his cutter usage. It’s become his most used offering and a way for him to get some early-count groundballs, whereas he was much less efficient pitching primarily off his fastball. His slider is still his money pitch, an 81-86 mph two-plane nightmare garnering swinging strike rates north of 20% at the big league level. Slaten graduates looking as good as I thought he’d be but not in exactly the way I anticipated. He was a great Rule 5 pick (sorta — the Mets took him and traded him to Boston).

Teams have liked Wikelman since 2021, but nobody took him in the 2022 Rule 5 Draft even though the Red Sox left him exposed because he was far too raw as a strike thrower to stick on anyone’s big league roster. Even though his strike throwing didn’t get any better in 2023, the Red Sox felt compelled to add Gonzalez to their 40-man after he struck out 168 and walked 70 in 111.1 IP last year.

There has been perhaps no more disappointing prospect performance across all of baseball than 2024 Wikelman, who is running an ERA over 7.00 at Portland and who has usurped Bryan Mata as this org’s resident prospect tease. Gonzalez is capable of missing bats with three pitches, but he hasn’t generated an above-average rate of swing-and-miss with any of them this year. His sinking 93-95 mph fastball has always played down a bit due to shape and poor command, but Gonzalez’s secondary stuff (which still looks like it has a ton of movement to the naked eye) has underperformed, too. It’s a positive that Gonzalez has now held mid-90s velocity under something approaching an actual starter’s workload, as he threw 111 innings last year and is once again sitting about 94, but as his options begin to dwindle away, time is running out for him to polish his strike throwing enough to start. It’s looking very likely that he ends up in relief, probably in a multi-inning role because of his repertoire depth.

One of several hitters in this system who seem to be taking high-effort swings much more of the time, Castro’s offensive profile has shifted pretty dramatically in 2024, as he’s hitting for an unexpected amount of power but also dealing with an uptick in strikeouts. He had been more of an advanced, balanced offensive performer who lacked meaningful power projection because of his medium frame. This year, Castro’s hard-hit rate has exploded to north of 50% (it was 34% last year), but his overall performance has keeled off with the added strikeouts. Switch-hitters with this kind of power are uncommon and Castro does some other stuff really well. He’s selective, he seems capable of toning down his approach when the situation calls for a ball in play, he’s a good corner outfield defender (fringe in center), and he has a huge arm. If we extrapolate Castro’s rate of promotion, he should be in Portland the second half of this year, and if he hits well there, he might have won himself a 40-man roster spot for next season. If the Sox slow play things and keep Castro in High-A the rest of 2024, it’s a sign they’ll try to slip him through the Rule 5. So long as he’s getting to his power (I think he will), Castro will be core role player.

Little Meidroth was absurdly difficult to strike out in college and had more walks than strikeouts throughout his career, slashing .319/.430/.519 at San Diego. His diminutive frame and lack of a clear position (his throwing accuracy from second base was pretty wild) pushed him to the 2022 draft’s fourth round. Meidroth has more or less coasted to Triple-A before his 23rd birthday while producing absurd OBPs, just over .420 throughout his pro career.

There are a handful of guys in the minors with this kind of profile: extreme contact and on-base ability undercut by a lack of power and defensive utility. Chase, ironically, Meidroth does not. He has fantastic plate discipline and is chasing at only a 20% clip so far in 2024, which is an improvement on his already excellent 2023 rate. He’s also really hard to make whiff. His compact stature aids in this because it keeps his swing short, but he also has great hand-eye coordination and bat control. He has a minor league leading 2.7% swinging strike rate in 2024 and is putting balls in play five times as often as he’s swinging and missing. Meidroth will tomahawk the occasional high pitch with extra base power, but most of his contact is of the low-lying variety, with lots of oppo pokes and slaps. It’s pleasing to watch, but isn’t especially impactful. Baseball Savant’s minor league statcast data has Meidroth with a .321 xSLG this year. It’s pretty rare for hitters who slug under .400 to carry elite OBP skills into the big leagues for an extended stretch; there really aren’t any long-career hitters with OBP north of .400 whose slug is below it the last 20 years or so. Jamey Carroll’s offensive output is a pretty good proxy for what to expect from Meidroth — it’s enough for him to be a big league role player but probably not a Steven Kwan sequel despite the swinging strike excellence.

Defensive versatility is going to be important to roserting Meidroth consistently and he’s been playing 2B/SS/3B this year. He lacks typical middle infield range, athleticism and arm strength, but his hands around the bag are pretty good and Meidroth’s throwing issues from college have subsided. He looks most comfortable at third base and is below-average at second. This is a very fun role-playing infield prospect who is in line to be part of Boston’s part-time 3B/2B mix if Rafael Devers moves to first base. Meidroth doesn’t have to be put on the 40-man until after 2025.

Fitts spent most of his college career in the bullpen but, like a lot of Yankees draftees, he was moved into the starting rotation as a pro and has ascended through the minors with little resistance. Fitts worked a whopping 152.2 innings in 2023, 50 innings more than he did in 2022, and he not only maintained his velocity throughout the entire season but had a little bit of a bump. He was part of the Alex Verdugo trade and sent to Worcester, where he’s having roughly the same level of performance as last year, though the Sox have made changes to his repertoire. Plus fastball command and a hard, two-plane slider give Fitts two whiff-getting weapons. He’s leaned more on his slider in 2024 and also has incorporated a changeup at a roughly 15% clip. The changeup is good every once in a while, and Fitts’ command helps make it so that even when it lacks movement, it tends to stay out of trouble, but that pitch’s future is important to him maxing out. Barring a huge uptick in cambio quality, Fitts is a low-variance fifth starter.

Dobbins was hidden as an underclassman at Texas Tech because he was a reliever as a freshman, his sophomore year was wiped out due to COVID, and he blew out and needed TJ as a junior. Aside from his dwindling groundball rates, Dobbins has coasted to Double-A, where his peripherals have backtracked the slightest bit. His innings count has climbed (he threw 112.2 innings in 2023) to the point where he could feasibly handle a big league starter’s workload as soon as next season. The 2024 season is Dobbins’ 40-man platform year, so we might get to see him do that. He doesn’t have an exciting athletic look or delivery, but he still throws hard, up to 98, though it plays down a bit because of its plane. Dobbins’ mix of breaking balls (cutters up to 93 mph, sliders in the 81-84 mph range, upper-70s curveballs) is pretty average from a pure stuff standpoint, except for the curveball, which is his repertoire’s bat-misser. This is a near-ready fifth starter prospect.

Encarnacion is a well-made righty who was recently promoted to Portland after a dominant early-season showing in Greenville. He attacks hitters with several different fastballs from a low slot (I put a Miguel Castro comp on his delivery last year) and gets most of his whiffs at the letters. JDE’s ability to vary the shape of his fastball and cutter at the top of the zone is going to break a bunch of bats and make hitters’ hands sore, but he doesn’t have a weapon with arm-side action, nor does he really have a great breaking ball that can miss bats in the strike zone. He’s been durable during his early 20s and it makes sense to continue developing him as a starter to give Encarnacion as many reps as possible in an attempt to find better secondary stuff, but he’s probably going to be a reliever if he can’t find one.

After a rough start to 2024, Paulino’s contact rates have rebounded back to his career norms, and though he’s still a little rough around the edges as a defender, he continues to project as a lefty-hitting utilityman. Paulino is well-rounded but lacks a plus tool. He swings hard for a guy his size but does so at the expense of contact, as it requires visible effort for him to take such big hacks. The bat speed Paulino produces and his swing’s uppercut path make him a dangerous hitter on the inner third of the zone, but he isn’t moving the barrel all over to do damage or anything like that. Paulino runs pretty well, and his athleticism and effort translates to defense, where he’s a rangy and flashy defender whose hands still need polish. Though he’s playing everywhere on the dirt except first base, third seems like his most comfortable spot. The Sox left Paulino off of their 40-man last offseason and it feels like a less than 50/50 shot that he gets added after this year. But given his profile (lefty hitting, well-rounded, versatile) and age, he projects to play a lower-impact part-time infield role eventually.

Coffey (who I preferred as a pitcher in high school) is having a fine start to his 2024 season, already doubling his career home run total in the season’s first half. He is still expanding the zone frequently enough to project that poor pitch recognition will mar his output as he climbs the minors, but for now Coffey is performing in a well-rounded fashion having maintained a 22.5% K% in full season ball the last two years. Coffey’s short levers allow him to have a bit of a scooping bat path, the type that tends to pull mistake breaking balls but drive most fastballs to the opposite field. His hitting hands are fairly explosive and generate something approaching average big league raw power right now. Coffey has filled out in pro ball and likely doesn’t have much power projection remaining, but the juice he has now makes him dangerous enough to be a prospect despite his looming chase issues.

Coffey’s defense is still a mixed bag. His hands (and, increasingly, his range) aren’t great, but his arm and actions are. He’s mostly playing a mix of third base (where hotshot grounders are often too much for him) and shortstop (where his range may end up being an issue). He’s great operating around the second base bag and is capable of making long throws from behind third, with flashes of big league ability and flubs in equal measure. Coffey has a utility infielder projection so long as he can maintain the range to play short. If he can’t, then he’s more comparable to someone like Daniel Robertson.

Garcia made the bottom of last year’s list despite posting red flag strikeout rates because of his physicality and power. He’s listed at just 163 pounds on his official minor league player page but is at least 50 pounds heavier than that. He has thunderous power to the opposite field and his swing’s finish is incredibly ferocious. This is a physically dense young man who has a shocking amount of fluidity in his hips and shoulders for someone so strong. Garcia’s power was really only evident during in-person looks in prior years, but he’s finally producing on paper in 2024, posting 14 first half home runs, more than he had in his first three seasons combined. It’s big time all-fields juice that has been undercut by swing-and-miss issues until this year when Garcia has reduced his strikeout rate pretty substantially. His lever length will probably cause him to have strikeout issues in perpetuity and, while he’s still playing a lot of center field, his size means he’s destined for a corner outfield assignment at maturity, so this is still a pretty volatile lower-level prospect who evokes Franmil Reyes and Steven Souza.

Monegro was a little older than the typical complex-level arm last year but still had a breakout of sorts and was dominant after his promotion to Low-A. The Red Sox have accelerated his promotion pace and he’s been at High-A in 2024. He’s still projectable at a high-waited 6-foot-4, and he’s growing into feel for his body and for all four of his pitches. So far in 2024, Monegro has upped his usage of his secondary stuff, often leading with his slider and using his fastball as more of a late-count surprise. His slider and changeup feel are both inconsistent, but they flash average or better. Monegro needs big effort throughout his torso to generate plus arm speed, but that arm speed gives his changeup considerable ceiling. He can also lob in a curveball now and then. This is still a pretty raw developmental starter prospect with sizable variance, and it’s plausible that Monegro could even be a high-leverage reliever at some point. His outcomes are all over the map because he’s talented and raw.

Anderson signed for $1.5 million rather than go to Georgia Tech, which is just a shade north of the bonus associated with where I had Anderson ranked before the draft (60th overall). He’s an explosive rotational athlete with a high-waisted frame in the Jonathan Schoop mold. His size may move him off of shortstop if his arm accuracy issues don’t do it first. Anderson has a huge arm bar that creates enough hit tool risk for me to slide him below the FV tier typically associated with hitters (especially switch-hitters) who have power potential like Anderson’s. So far as a pro he is struggling on both sides of the ball, with problems recognizing secondary pitches and scattered throwing accuracy representing his biggest issues so far. There hasn’t been some kind of instant leap or change here — Anderson remains a high-variance switch-hitting power project.

Bastardo has had some dandy Double-A starts this year and he has four distinct pitches, but issues with his fastball’s playability and his control funnel him into the relief bucket. Bastardo’s best pitch is his changeup, an 84-88 mph offering that dies as it approaches the plate as if an invisible parachute has popped out of the back of it. He can manipulate breaking ball shape but doesn’t land his slider regularly, and Bastardo’s arm angle is the sort that imparts hittable shape on his fastball. He should be able to reach back for more heat in a one-inning role and bully hitters with even more velocity, enough to be a solid middle reliever.

A very toolsy 11th round pick from last year’s draft, it took $300,000 to keep Taylor from heading to Florida State for what would have been his junior year. He’s gotten off to a pretty good start at Salem aside from an elevated strikeout rate, which seems likely to be part of his game in perpetuity because of his style of swinging. Taylor has been given a swing akin to Alex Verdugo’s; his hands load low and he has an uppercut path through the zone. This leaves him vulnerable to letter-high velocity, but also takes advantage of Taylor’s athleticism and helps him generate very impressive power on contact for a guy who just went in the 11th round.

Plus, you can live with a higher rate of strikeouts because Taylor is an actual fit in center field. He shared time with Miguel Bleis there prior to Bleis’ promotion, but since then Taylor has been playing center more frequently and looks pretty good. He certainly runs well enough to play out there, or at least continue to develop there, though his feel for the position is only fair. Taylor has a much better chance to occupy a premium defensive home than some of the more famous hitters in this system. His likely ceiling is as a K-prone fourth outfielder, but so long as his glove pans out as projected, his floor isn’t much lower than that.

The toolsiest of Boston’s 2024 Florida complex group, Nunez missed the first month of the FCL season and has only really gotten his feet wet in June. He presents the most exciting combination of athleticism and projectability on that roster. Like a lot of Red Sox prospects, he has a defensive back’s build at a sinewy 6-feet tall. He’s loose, swings with ferocious effort, and has regular pull-side capability. Nunez swings with his whole body and he’s distinct from fellow FCL shortstop Franklin Arias, whose game is more about patience and contact. Nunez looked the part at shortstop during my jaunt through Florida and also stood out for how outwardly competitive and demonstrative he was on the field. This guy wears his emotions on his sleeve, which I liked during my three-game look at Nunez (who was just coming off his month long layoff when I saw him), but I could imagine it wearing on opponents and others if it’s a persistent, everyday thing. This is a talented, toolsy, risky shortstop prospect in the lower minors.

Dean would typically sit 93-96 with big carry out of the bullpen in college, but the Red Sox have been developing him as a starter for the last two seasons. That didn’t go so well in Dean’s first pro season, as he sat just 92 mph and walked a batter per inning at Low-A Salem. He’s back there again in 2024 and the Sox have totally overhauled his delivery. He now has a cross-bodied stride and three-quarters arm slot more typical of a nasty lefty reliever, and his arm strength has rebounded in a big way. The new delivery has also aided in the playability of Dean’s breaking ball, a big 82-85 mph bender that starts in the lefty batter’s box and finishes over the plate. His cambio now lacks the sinking finish it had at peak, but it might rebound as Dean gets feel for his new mechanics. It’s possible I’m underappreciating how big a velo boost Dean would have if he actually moved to the bullpen, and if that’s true, I’m underselling his ceiling here. But he’s throwing with a lot of effort right now and I think he’d hold in this range were he ‘penned. He looks like a good lefty reliever.

Riemer fits the Red Sox Day Two draft archetype as a college hitter with superlative bat-to-ball performance. He blew his ACL just a couple of weeks into his 2023 junior season and still has yet to play a pro game as of list publication. You can count on your fingers the number of times Riemer whiffed in 2022, as he seems to find a way to put the bat on the baseball no matter where it is in the strike zone. He isn’t clubbing traditional extra-base power, but he is stinging the ball in a Steven Kwan-ish way that feels like it will translate to pro ball. Riemer played shortstop at Wright State, but he isn’t a realistic fit there in the pros due to a lack of arm strength, so there might have to be more power here if he can only play second base at the next level. As I’ve mentioned up and down this list, the Red Sox tend to take guys like this and ask them to swing as hard as they can with the hope that they generate more power without sacrificing too much of the hit tool. This is the FV grade I had on Riemer entering 2023.

Your uncle from Hopedale’s new favorite Sox prospect is Connelly Early, a deceptive lefty who transferred from Army to UVA for his draft year. He’s a well-rounded strike thrower with what are mostly 40- to 50-grade pitches aided by command and deception. Early sits 92-93 (up two ticks from college), but he hides the ball for a long time and commands a shapely (but slow) breaking ball and changeup to either side of the plate. His arm action is long but Early has thrown strikes anyway, and his changeup might take a leap if the Red Sox shorten him up in pro ball. Considering that Early is coming from Army and UVA, it’s reasonable to think there’s more developmental meat on the bone here. He has a spot starter’s foundation and some late-bloomer traits.

Mullins is a smooth-operating lefty with a clean looking delivery and a good slider. He was a big time high school prospect but ended up at Auburn, where injuries, including a Tommy John from which he only returned late last year, were frequent. Mullins’ can really spin his breaking ball and the upshot angle on his fastball helps it punch above its weight. His changeup has late arriving projection because of his clean looking arm stroke and because Mullins didn’t pitch a ton in college. He looks like an eventual spot starter right now with a shot to entrench himself at the rear of a rotation if his changeup and command continue to improve.

Arias’ 89% contact rate in the 2023 DSL was the best in the system, so he came into 2024 with a lot of profile for a guy who signed for $525,000 the year before. Arias is incredibly patient and has good hand-eye coordination, but he isn’t especially twitchy or toolsy. He has below-average bat speed and ran 4.5 for me in Florida last month. He’s very, very, very patient at the dish, so much so that it can be tough to get a good feel for his physical tools in person because Arias isn’t apt to, you know, swing. A water-carrying hit tool has him firmly on the prospect radar, but it’s tough to see big ceiling here unless there’s a drastic change to Arias’ strength and bat speed through physical maturity.

Ingrassia was an athletic little college southpaw who transferred from San Diego State to Fullerton for his draft year. The crafty, diminutive lefty has a whippy arm stroke that helps him sell his fading mid-80s changeup. The Red Sox have altered his delivery (it is now more cross-bodied, like Noah Dean), which has aided the effectiveness of Ingrassia’s sweeping low-80s breaking ball, and he’s also had a velp uptick into the low-90s. Because of the upshot angle of his fastball from his low-ish, cross-bodied slot, his heater plays up even though he doesn’t throw all that hard, and Jojo is still getting feel for what it’s like to attack hitters with his fastball at the letters (which he really didn’t do in college). Because of his lack of size, it’s more likely that he ends up being a long reliever in the Ryan Yarbrough mold, but Ingrassia has a starter’s repertoire and command and probably needs to be promoted to be tested.

A swing change has unlocked an extra gear of power for Carlos Beltrán’s nephew and may have salvaged the former second round pick’s career, especially as he’s slid all the way down the defensive spectrum from shortstop to left field. Lugo’s hands are setting up earlier than last year and the path they take to load has changed. His mistake-crushing style has him on pace to hit 30 homers in the minors this year. Always geared for pull-side lift, there hasn’t been a dramatic change to Lugo’s batted ball profile, but he is hitting the ball harder this year and has also been chasing less. Hellbent on pulling the baseball, Lugo struggles to cover the outer third of the zone and swings inside a ton of pitches out there. Given his hit tool limitations and the way his defensive versatility has trended down, he looks more like an above-replacement up/down outfielder than a consistent role player.

It’s kind of amazing how little Blaze is striking out considering how often he’s chasing. He is one of the swing-happiest players in pro baseball and had a chase rate of 40% through the first two months of the season, but he’s only striking out 10% of the time and has posted a comfortably above-average batting line as a 21-year-old at Double-A so far. Like a lot of Red Sox hitting prospects, Jordan is better at contacting pitches at the top of the strike zone. His swing is relatively simple and compact, helping him be on time consistently. Jordan has had close to average big league raw power since he was in high school, and because he was physically mature early on, his raw remains in that area.

He’s playing a mix of both corner positions. He’s a smooth third base defender with elegant footwork and a knack for making accurate throws. One scout’s smooth is another scout’s slow twitch, and that’s also true of Blaze, whose below-average range puts a dent in his playability at third. Jordan is a precocious if projectionless contact hitter with red flag plate discipline. The high-end outcomes for a player like this would be Wilmer Flores, who has had a great 10 year career despite issues similar to Jordan’s, or maybe Shea Hillenbrand if Blaze finds a way to get stronger even though he’s already a bigger guy. More likely, Jordan will turn out to be a Ryon Healy type.

Like Cutter Coffey, there was a pretty long stretch when I prefered Zanetello as a pitching prospect rather than a position player, but his deafening BP and overall performance at the Draft Combine (he had the longest broad jump at 10-feet-4) was fantastic and ignited my enthusiasm for him as a position player. Why the initial apprehension? Zanetello’s hands work an awful lot like Keston Hiura‘s, Jeter Downs‘ and Carter Kieboom’s — a visually pleasing loop that looks hitterish but actually tends to cause these guys to be late against good velocity. Still, I’m surprised by how badly Zanetello is struggling during his 2024 pro debut, striking out nearly 40% of the time. In the week leading up to list publication, he was offering at pitches that were nowhere near the strike zone and was wholly incapable of moving the barrel around. He also had a very error-prone stretch last month. His arm strength is more than sufficient for shortstop, but his hands are very inconsistent. While I’ve had a light touch with some of the other struggling young hitters who have dealt with inconsistency or injury, Zanetello looks so far from being any sort of viable pro baseball player that I feel compelled to push the panic button here. He seems like a low-probability prospect whose hit tool fallibility was exposed in a profound way by pro-quality stuff.

Sena has been on and off the bottom of the Red Sox prospect list the last couple of seasons, but he’s added a new pitch (a cutter) and is in the middle of his best year as a pro, posting both the highest strikeout and lowest walk rates of his affiliated career. Sena has a catcherly build and generates huge over-the-top arm speed, resulting in mid-90s heat that plays down a bit due to downhill plane. Sena’s cutter, which tends to live around 90 mph but has peaked at 95, helps mitigate some of his fastball’s vulnerability in this way. He doesn’t locate it well enough to be a bat-misser, instead relying on his power mid-80s curveball to get whiffs. Because his release is so high, that pitch doesn’t pop out of Sena’s hand, it just dives and dives until you’re swinging over top of it. Sena doesn’t have the command to out-pitch his fastball’s vulnerability and is more likely to be an up/down reliever until he refines that part of his game.

A very physical C/1B, Musett has the best present hit and power combination of the Red Sox FCL prospects. He is rhythmic and loose in the batter’s box, and shockingly fluid and flexible for a hitter his size. Musett is of softer build but that’s fine for a catcher, and it doesn’t seem to be detracting from his explosiveness as a hitter at all. He’s playing a mix of first base and catcher and, predictably, needs to develop a lot as a defender in order to stick behind the dish. His prospectdom is mostly dependent on that occurring as, due to his lack of projectability, the ceiling on his raw power is somewhat capped.

Guerrero is an arm strength maven whose stuff overpowered hitters in the lower minors. It’s been much tougher sledding for him as he’s climbed, and even though Guerrero will show you two or three plus pitches on any given night, their inconsistency often makes him hittable. Guerrero will touch 100, vary his breaking ball shape (sometimes on purpose, sometimes not), and flash a plus splitter. When he misses his spot with any of them, he tends to be hittable. He has also tended to run walk rates in the teens, which on its own would likely limit him to up/down duty.

Liu’s fastball velocity seems to have stabilized after fluctuating at times during the last few years. He’s routinely in the 94-96 mph range again, and while that pitch lacks life, Liu’s slider and (especially) his splitter are both capable of missing bats. A two-way amateur player who didn’t focus on pitching until 2019, Liu’s split-action changeup has huge sink and arm-side movement. It’s easily his best pitch, and he uses it to finish both lefty and righty hitters. His slider has variable shape, but Liu at least has feel for locating it consistently. His arm action is now super short, but Liu still doesn’t have great fastball command. He was still throwing in the 94-97 mph range as a starter prior to his second IL stint of 2024. He has an sport start or up/down relief projection.

Even though he’s in his second go around with High-A Greenville and in the midst of a fairly significant velocity surge, Rogers isn’t generating as much swing-and-miss as last year and he continues to struggle with walks. This is a vert slot lefty with a good changeup who has been given a new, harder breaking ball this year. Rogers has always worked in an inefficient way at the top of the zone with his fastball, but his new mid-80s slider/cutter should theoretically be helping him get some weak early-count contact. Instead he’s issuing free passes at a 13% clip. Still, four-pitch lefties with mid-90s heat aren’t exactly a dime a dozen. I wonder what might happen with a move to the bullpen here and think Rogers could probably still play a low-leverage long relief role down the road.

Portes is one of the harder throwing youngsters in the Red Sox system. He’s been up to 98 and is sitting 93-96. That was too hot for the FCL to handle and Portes was promoted to Salem a few weeks prior to list publication. There he’s working about three innings per start, using his fastball and slider almost exclusively, and struggling with walks. Portes has a very short arm action but is still having trouble finding a consistent release, as his heater scatters all over the place and his slider’s quality is inconsistent. When he’s operating at his best, he creates rise/run angle in on the hands of righties and then bends his two-planed upper-70s slurve away from them. His delivery lacks the fluidity you want in order to project changeup progress, and that, plus the raw feel for location, pushes Portes toward the relief bucket.

Vargas is a stout six foot righty who has cut his walks substantially compared to 2023 while also enjoying a two- or three-tick velocity spike. Vargas’ fastball averaged 92-93 last year and a scout who saw him earlier this spring had him sitting 93-95, but when I saw Vargas in June, he held 95-96 and touched 98 across three innings of work. He also has a snappy curveball in the 81-84 mph range that flashed plus on my look. At Vargas’ size, he’s perhaps more likely to be a reliever, but he’s made a ton of progress in the last year, especially in the strike-throwing department. He’s a hard-throwing developmental prospect with a good two-pitch foundation.