These are notes on prospects from Tess Taruskin. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

Lisandro Santos, LHP, Atlanta Braves
Level & Affiliate: High-A Rome Age: 23 Team Rank: TBD FV: TBD
Line: 3.1 IP, 3 H, 4 R, 10 K, BB

Notes
Santos recorded 10 outs on Thursday night, all by way of the strikeout, as he continued a dominant beginning to his 2022 season at High-A Rome. Notching double-digit strikeouts in relief suggests a remarkable outing worthy of top marks. But much like many a crab cake, it turned out there was a bit too much Mayo in the mix for this performance to quite hold together. Santos’ dominance happened to coincide with Top 100 prospect Coby Mayo’s first multi-home run game of the season. Mayo sent a pair of two-run knocks out, punishing Santos by plating the only other baserunners he allowed on the night.

So far this year, Santos has fanned 41 of the 80 total batters he’s faced, against just seven walks. His fastball still sits in the mid-90s and touches 96 mph, as has been the case for the past several years. He pairs it with a high-80s slider with occasional depth that he throws from a consistent arm slot. Much of his effectiveness comes from his ability to hide the ball. Santos sets up on the far first-base side of the rubber from an exaggeratedly closed stretch. His delivery then features a long arm action and a very short stride, with his arm whipping around from a high slot and slinging across his body, sending him spinning towards third base. The video feed for Santos’ Thursday performance was less than ideal for evaluation, but it does make clear his short stride. Read the rest of this entry »

This season, Eric and Tess Taruskin will each have a minor league roundup post that runs during the week, with the earlier post recapping some of the weekend’s action. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

Darius Vines, RHP, Atlanta Braves
Level & Affiliate: Double-A Mississippi Age: 24 Org Rank: TBD FV: 35+
Weekend Line: 6.1 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 0 BB, 11 K

Notes
Even though Vines had K’d a batter per inning leading up to it, his trademark changeup hadn’t been consistently plus this year until Sunday’s outing. It’s actually been Vines’ fastball, which has lift and carry through the strike zone, that has induced most of his swings and misses this year, even though he hasn’t had any kind of velo spike and is still sitting in the 89-92 mph range and topping out close to 94. A fringy, low-80s slurve rounds out a solid if unspectacular pitch mix that has been weaponized by Vines’ command. Fastball playability, a good changeup, and plenty of strikes drive spot starter projection here. Vines will likely enter the offseason on Atlanta’s 40-man bubble. Read the rest of this entry »

Last fall, the Braves won a championship with an outfield that bore no resemblance to the one that they used for the first half of the 2021 season, as circumstances required president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos to perform an on-the-fly remake that yielded impressive results. In fact, two of the four outfielders he acquired in trade in July, Eddie Rosario and Jorge Soler, wound up winning MVP honors in the postseason, the former in the NLCS against the Dodges and the latter in the World Series against the Astros. Yet even with two of the principals whose absences necessitated that makeover — Ronald Acuña Jr. and Marcell Ozuna — back in action, this year’s outfield has been a major weakness for a team that has stumbled to an 11-15 start.

We’re still in small-sample territory to be sure — particularly with regards to the individual performances — but through Wednesday, Braves outfielders have hit a combined .191/.261/.331 for a 72 wRC+ in that role, the fifth-lowest mark in the majors. Worse, the team has dipped into the same player pool to cover its designated hitter spot, and they’ve done more sinking than swimming, hitting .171/.235/.226 for a 36 wRC+, the majors’ third-lowest mark. That lack of production has weighed down the team’s entire offense, which ranks 12th in the NL at 3.77 runs per game. Not to be outdone on the other side of the ball, Atlanta’s outfield is tied for last in the majors in both UZR (-6.3) and DRS (-7), though here I’ll remind everyone not to get overly-invested in four week’s worth of defensive metrics; both the outfield and DH spots are second-to-last in the majors in WAR, with -0.8 and -0.9, respectively. In Tuesday’s doubleheader loss to the Mets, their outfielders and DHs went a combined 4-for-28, though Travis Demeritte did drive in their only run that wasn’t accounted for by Matt Olson’s three-run homer, and Acuña collected one of their two extra-base hits outside of Olson’s pair. Read the rest of this entry »

This season, Eric and Tess Taruskin will each have a minor league roundup post that runs during the week, with the earlier post recapping some of the weekend’s action. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

Calvin Ziegler, RHP, New York Mets
Level & Affiliate: Low-A St. Lucie Age: 19 Org Rank: TBD FV: 40
Weekend Line: 4.1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 9 K

Notes
Ziegler was generating enough buzz during minor league spring training that a scout in Arizona mentioned his name to me totally unprompted, as a heads up that he might be breaking out. A Canadian high schooler in the Toronto area, Ziegler was in a bind ahead of the 2021 draft because travel restrictions were going to make it hard for him to be seen by scouts. He transferred to TNXL Academy, an athletics “school” in Florida, for his pre-draft spring. The Mets made him their second round pick and signed him for just over $900,000, then shut him down during the regular season.

He’s come out hot to start 2022, at least from a bat-missing standpoint, with last Friday’s outing his most efficient from a strike-throwing standpoint. Ziegler’s stuff isn’t appreciably different than when he was in high school, though he is mixing in his secondary stuff more heavily. He used his fastball over 75% of the time on the summer showcase circuit, but his usage has been closer to 50% so far this year. Both Ziegler’s trademark breaking ball and his mid-80s changeup show bat-missing potential, though the former has much more consistent finish. While Ziegler doesn’t have the prototypical pitching prospect’s frame at a fairly mature six feet tall, his delivery is very athletic, with the power and balance he shows in his lower half and the flexibility of his upper back generating optimism that he might yet throw harder than his current 91-96 mph range. Ziegler’s “lack” of height and the way he gets deep into his legs during his delivery give his fastball a tough-to-hit line. Changeup and overall command refinement are all that stand between Ziegler and pretty comfortable projection into a rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

Less than two weeks into the 2022 season, the Braves and Dodgers crossed paths for the first time, not only rekindling the rivalry between the teams that have met in the last two National League Championship Series en route to World Series wins but also presenting the chance for their recent free agent additions Freddie Freeman and Kenley Jansen to receive some well-deserved fanfare in the presence of their old pals. Freeman figured prominently in Monday night’s game, clubbing a solo homer in his first plate appearance against his old team, furthering a strong start with his new one, while Matt Olson, the Braves’ choice to fill his sizable shoes, collected his fourth three-hit game of the young season and briefly took over the major league lead in WAR and the NL leads in batting average and on-base percentage. His team ended up on the short end of a 7-4 score, and he took an 0-for-4 on Tuesday, though the Braves evened the series in a 3-1 victory closed out by Jansen.

Few players in recent memory have been placed under the microscope as swiftly as the 28-year-old Olson. On March 13, he was still the first baseman for the A’s, though amid the team’s umpteenth teardown, multiple suitors had expressed interest in trading for him. A day later, he was suddenly the new first baseman for the Braves, as the defending champions acquired him in exchange for four players, effectively slamming the door on the Freeman era. The day after that, Olson became a franchise cornerstone himself by agreeing to an eight-year, $168 million extension. Read the rest of this entry »

On the day the Dodgers made the signing of longtime Braves star Freddie Freeman official, Atlanta turned around and poached one of Los Angeles’ high-profile free agents. Kenley Jansen, a three-time All-Star who has spent the last 10 years as the Dodgers’ closer, has joined the Braves via a one-year, $16 million deal.

The 34-year-old Jansen is coming off his best season since 2017, pitching to a 2.22 ERA and 3.08 FIP in 69 innings, saving 38 games in 43 chances, and producing 1.8 WAR. He was extremely difficult to hit, holding batters to a .153 average (his lowest since 2016) and .233 slugging percentage (his lowest since ’11). Contact-wise, he held hitters to an 84.0 mph average exit velocity, .260 xwOBA, and 4.6% barrel rate, which respectively placed him in the 99th, 93rd, and 92nd percentile.

If there was a blemish on Jansen’s season it was his 12.9% walk rate, his highest since his cup-of-coffee season in 2010; when combined with his 30.9% strikeout rate, it produced an 18.0% strikeout-to-walk differential, the lowest of his career. Jansen was able to compensate thanks to his sequencing and his ability to limit hard contact, though he took the Dodgers and their fans on some rollercoaster rides. For what it’s worth, while he walked 28 in his first 40.1 innings through the end of July (16.3%), he walked just eight in 28.2 innings (7.5%) the rest of the way, that while posting a 35.8% strikeout rate. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently asked a pair of prospects which of their former teammates have the best wheels, and on each occasion a 24-year-old middle infielder in the Boston Red Sox system was on the short list. One had him numero uno. The other deemed the speedster in question as being a step behind his first choice.

“Corbin Carroll, for sure,” was Ryne Nelson’s response to my question, the top pitching prospect in the Arizona Diamondbacks system naming the organization’s top position player prospect. “That dude flies.”

While that answer was anything but unexpected, is Carroll truly faster than David Hamilton, whom Nelson played with in the Cape Cod League?

“I think so,” said the righty. “I’ve never seen them together, but I have watched Corbin get from home to third in what felt like three seconds. Hamilton is definitely up there, but it seems like Corbin is the fastest player I’ve ever seen in my life. He can really burn around the bases.”

So too can Hamilton, whom Kody Clemens played with at both the University of Texas and in the independent Constellation League during the 2020 shutdown. Prior to my conversation with Nelson, the Detroit Tigers prospect had told me that Hamilton is the swiftest he’s taken the field with. Read the rest of this entry »

The Braves re-signed one of the key members of their championship squad, inking Eddie Rosario to a two-year, $18 million deal with a club option for 2024. Acquired by the Braves on July 30, Rosario didn’t get into a game for his new club until August 28, but from that point on, he slashed .274/.333/.579 (135 wRC+) to help Atlanta win its fourth straight NL East title. He found an even higher gear once the calendar turned over to October, slashing .383/.456/.617 (182 wRC+) in the playoffs; he carried close to the entire offensive load in the NLCS against the Dodgers, earning MVP honors during that series. The Braves made two additional smaller moves on Wednesday, signing left-handed outfielder Alex Dickerson and right-handed reliever Tyler Thornburg to non-guaranteed contracts worth $1 million and $900,000, respectively.

Rosario probably won’t be able to replicate his late-season heroics over a full season in Atlanta, but he’s been a solid contributor throughout his career. In six seasons with the Twins, he posted a 106 wRC+ and 11.4 WAR, then signed a one-year deal with Cleveland after Minnesota non-tendered him early in the offseason. He struggled to a 86 wRC+ to start the year before being sidelined with an abdominal strain, then was traded to Atlanta in a clear salary dump right before the trade deadline.

Due to an aggressive approach at the plate, Rosario has always been prone to hot streaks and cold spells, but he did make some slight tweaks to curb his over-aggressiveness at the plate last season and also improve his contact quality:

Unsurprisingly, Rosario’s batted ball data was fantastic, but it’s reassuring to see that the changes he made to his plate discipline metrics carried over from his time in Cleveland. Overall, he was a little less swing-happy and managed to make better decisions when he did offer at a pitch. His strikeout rate sat right in line with his established norms over the past few years, but his walk rate hit the second-highest mark of his career. With an offensive profile that’s BABIP-dependent, these slight changes to his approach should help improve his floor when he does hit one of those cold streaks. Read the rest of this entry »

If you think back through the mists of time to last October, the Braves had one calling card on their march to the World Series: a bullpen that answered the bell day after day and either kept them in games or closed the door, depending on the situation. The core four members of that bullpen – Will Smith, Tyler Matzek, Luke Jackson, and A.J. Minter – will return, but some peripheral members of the team’s pitching staff left in free agency, and you can always use more pitching. To that end, Atlanta signed Collin McHugh today:

#Braves Sign RHP Collin McHugh: pic.twitter.com/MjLGaejG0h

— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) March 15, 2022

As far as I’m concerned, the terms of the deal – two years and $10 million, with an additional team option for $5 million net of buyout – are an incredible deal for the defending champions. McHugh was one of the best relievers in baseball last year on a rate basis, and he’s getting less this year than Brad Hand, who bounced through three teams on his way to a below-replacement-level season.

I could just tell you that McHugh looks like a good bet to provide strong relief work, but I’ll do slightly better than that. As Jon Tayler noted in our free agent preview, McHugh made one key change to his pitch mix in 2021: he rediscovered an old friend. He threw his cutter 33% of his time, a rate he hadn’t approached since he was a full-time starter in 2016. In addition to that, he maxed out on slider usage; he threw it 52.9% of the time, by far a career high. He was essentially a cutter/slider pitcher, with the occasional four-seamer mixed in for the element of surprise.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Atlanta Braves have decisively answered the questions about their newly acquired first baseman’s future with the team. On Tuesday, they signed Matt Olson to an eight-year, $168 million extension that will keep him with the club through the end of the 2029 season.

Olson still had two years of arbitration remaining, so the deal isn’t quite at the level he likely would have gotten as a free agent.

Breakdown on Olson: $15M in 2022, $21M in ‘23, $22M from ‘24 to ‘29. This is an extension, not a free-agent deal. Olson had two years of arbitration remaining. Gets roughly $140M to $145M in free-agent years.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) March 15, 2022

The speed with which the Braves signed Olson to an extension suggests that they wanted to avoid the sort of uncertainty they experienced with Freddie Freeman as his own long-term deal approached its expiration last fall. Read the rest of this entry »