The best pitching prospect in baseball, 21-year-old Pittsburgh Pirates righty Paul Skenes, is slated to be called up tomorrow to make his major league debut against the Cubs. The 6-foot-6 leviathan has a 0.99 ERA in seven Triple-A starts this year and has struck out 42.9% of the hitters he’s faced across 27 1/3 innings. He’s a ready-made front-of-the-rotation starter, a Herculean physical presence with even bigger stuff, and perhaps the most important part of an increasingly promising situation in Pittsburgh, a city with three baseball playoff appearances over the last 30 years. Read the rest of this entry »
Flipping through the slate of big league games over the past week has felt a bit like walking through the halls of my high school on the first day of a new school year, quietly taking stock of what and who had changed since I was last there. Who is suddenly wearing colors I’ve never seen them in before? Who’s hanging with a new crowd, or won’t shut up about their camp friends? Who spent time in summer school, and was that stint enough for them to keep up with the rest of their class? And of course: Who’s the new kid?
Last week, the Royals’ Bobby Witt Jr., the Mariners’ Julio Rodríguez, and the Tigers’ Spencer Torkelson, all of whom rank within the top five of our preseason Top 100 Prospects list, made much-anticipated major league debuts, with each player surrounded by their own specific brand of pre-show buzz. And while it would be foolish to draw sweeping conclusions from a player’s performance in any one game or series, a big league debut seems as good a time as any to take a snapshot.
When Witt stepped up to the plate in the bottom of the eighth inning of the Royals’ home opener to face the Guardians’ Triston McKenzie, he’d yet to record a hit in the game, having flied out once and grounded out twice. He took McKenzie’s first offering – a 93 mph fastball, low and away – for a ball, then smashed the second pitch of the at-bat into left for a double, scoring Michael A. Taylor from second, a go-ahead run that would later become the game-winner:
At the end of June 2017, observers could have seen Gavin Lux’s performance as a 19-year-old in the Midwest League and been underwhelmed. Despite a solid 11.1% walk rate and 18.7% strikeout rate, the 2016 first-round pick was hitting .211/.304/.303. The skepticism that often surrounds high school position players from northern states followed Lux through his amateur and early professional days, and the Kenosha, Wisconsin native did little to allay those concerns.
Meanwhile, believers took a glass-half-full view of his performance at that point. A cold-weather player who shows good plate discipline and bat-to-ball ability in full season ball is nothing to scoff at; a middle infielder with athleticism and feel to play has a high floor. And the makeup for which Lux was lauded was thought to be a potential developmental separator, as the shortstop continued to gain strength and make swing tweaks.
Fast forward to the present day, a bit more than two years later, and the Dodgers have called up the 21-year-old, who notched his first two major league hits in his debut on Monday. After recovering in the last two months of 2017 to hit .244/.331/.362 with 27 stolen bases in the Midwest League, Lux turned on the burners. In 2018, he torched the Cal League through 88 games, hitting .324/.396/.520 with 41 extra-base hits. He made a 28-game cameo in the Texas League that year as well and continued to rake, hitting .324/.408/.495. Read the rest of this entry »
When A.J. Puk debuts today — and even though he has been in the bullpen since late-June, he is likely to pitch this evening against the Yankees — he’ll be the 51st player from the 2016 draft to play in the big leagues. He does so, despite missing more than a year recovering from Tommy John surgery, before every high school pitcher selected in 2016, other than Dustin May. Among 2016 draftee prospects still eligible to be on THE BOARD, Puk is ranked sixth; were I to include graduated players from that draft, he’d be seventh. Nick Senzel would slot ahead of him, but I’d still take the next half decade of Puk ahead of Pete Alonso, who I worry will have an early, precipitous decline phase. Read the rest of this entry »
Tonight, 21-year-old Dustin May is set to bring his flaming red hair to Dodger Stadium when he makes his major league debut against the Padres. Every prospect’s journey to the bigs is unique, but they start in similar places, on amateur fields, often under the watchful eye of scouts. May’s path is especially familiar to me; though I was far from the only person in the Dodgers organization involved, I was the scout who signed him.
The funny thing is, I wasn’t especially enamored with May the first time I saw him pitch. It was a little more than four years ago to the day, at the annual Texas Scouts Association showcase game on a characteristically hot July day in San Antonio. May pitched one of the later innings of the day; he worked in the upper-80s with his fastball and threw a sharp upper-70s slurve with good spin. While he pitched well against the high school competition he faced, his stuff didn’t stand out among a crowd of intriguing 2016 high school draft prospects that included players such as Forrest Whitley, Hudson Potts, and Kyle Muller.
Still, May’s prospect status continued to rise at a relatively quick pace following that initial outing. After a solid performance in two separate appearances during the fall of his senior year, he was planted firmly among the list of “must see early” players – a list commonly populated by projectable high schoolers who might make a jump during the springtime. May, who was an ultra-skinny 6-foot-6 with a quick arm, fit the bill well.
By time his senior spring rolled around, May’s velocity had crept up from where it was during my first look. Touching 94 and routinely working in the low-90s with life, he began to morph into a prospect who didn’t seem as far away as he had a few months before. To go along with the increased fastball velocity, the breaking ball, which had always spun well but often got sweepy and had slurvy shape to it, began to develop into more of a true slider.
As an area scout, my responsibility was to gather as much information as I could so the scouting department could make the best decisions possible when choosing among hundreds of options during the draft. It was no different with May. I spent the spring speaking with his coaches, teammates, and teachers, to the college coaches who had recruited him, and advisers who were assisting his family in the process. May was selected in the third round of the 2016 draft as a projectable high school righty with the makings of two pitches that projected to potentially be plus in the future. He was given a $997,500 signing bonus and went straight to work in the AZL.
Between then and now, May has thrown just over 400 innings in the minor leagues, showcasing advanced command and inducing groundballs at an above-average clip. He now works with a four-pitch mix, highlighted by a plus low-90s cutter he added last year. His sinker, which has averaged 95 mph and touched 99, would be among the hardest sinkers major league starters throw. His curveball would be among the highest average spin breaking balls of any major league starter as well. His changeup, still a work in progress, is thrown just over 8% of the time and flashes average.
Beyond being a part of May’s signing process, I also served as one of his coaches – first during Fall Instructional League in 2016, and then again at the end of the 2017 season in his brief but impressive stint in the Cal League. I vividly remember having a conversation with him during instructs after a two-inning outing. He was told to only throw fastballs and changeups during his second inning of work in order to gain reps throwing the changeup, which was developmentally behind his breaking ball. May threw a total of 24 pitches in his two innings – 12 fastballs, 12 changeups. After the outing, he was asked if he intentionally threw the exact same number of each pitch, and if he was aware he could have utilized his breaking ball in his first inning of work. His response was succinct. He explained that he didn’t know it was an exact 50-50 usage split, but that he’d known he could use the breaking ball and decided not to. When asked for his rationale, he said he knew he needed a changeup to get big league hitters out. The coaches who observed this discussion nodded in approval. It’s rare for a teenager to possess the sort of foresight and maturity present in May’s response, one that suggests not only an awareness of what the exercise is intended to achieve in the moment, but also of the purpose it is meant to serve years down the road. It was then that I fully realized that May’s mental makeup would be a strength as his professional career continued.
Coming into the 2019 season, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel ranked May second in the Dodgers system and 21st overall, earning a 55 FV and a report that heralded him as a near-complete prospect, only missing a changeup to round out his arsenal. Their report on May detailed the strength of his curveball and his curls:
May’s flamboyant ginger curls and Bronson Arroyo-esque leg kick are maybe the third and fourth most visually captivating aspects of his on-mound presence once you’ve gotten a look at his stuff. His mid-90s fastball plays up due to great extension, and further incorporation of a running two-seamer has given May’s heater enough tail to miss bats in the strike zone. His vertically-breaking slider (May calls it a slider, but it has curveball shape) has one of the better spin rates in the minors and enough vertical depth to miss bats against both left and right-handed hitters. It’s May’s out pitch, but he also has a developing cutter and its movement is a great foil for his two-seamer. After trying several different changeup grips in 2017, it seems like May is still searching for a good cambio, but his fastball and breaking ball command should suffice against lefties for now.
In 79.1 innings in Double-A this year, May produced a 3.18 FIP, a 19.8% K-BB%, and a 50.5% ground-ball rate. He earned a promotion to Triple-A, an invite to the Futures Game in Cleveland, and a 60 FV, moving closer to fulfilling the promise that had Eric and Kiley describe him as, “what was once a prospect with mid-rotation upside has become one with mid-rotation likelihood.” May is now ranked as the No. 1 prospect in the Dodgers system and eighth overall in baseball on THE BOARD.
Now, after a trade deadline that saw Los Angeles decline to make a significant pitching acquisition, May is getting the call. He’s a young pitcher with a unique combination of a high floor and a high ceiling. There’s a strong likelihood that he is a mid-rotation starter – a plus athlete who throws four pitches for strikes and has never had a major arm injury – and the chance that he continues to refine his arsenal and becomes someone featured at or near the top of a major league rotation. He’ll likely contend for a playoff roster spot on the 2019 Dodgers team, and figures to be featured in the rotation beginning in 2020 and moving forward. His path to the bigs might be complete, but his journey is just beginning.
Bo Bichette was ahead of his time. When he first hit the national scouting radar on the summer showcase circuit after his high school junior season, it was before the fly ball revolution had fully penetrated the big leagues. The 2016 draft class included a number of players who would be looked at differently just a few years later, as front offices saw the value of a big leg kick and an uppercut, high-intent swing (when it came with tools and performance). Bichette, Kyle Lewis, Alex Kirilloff, and Joe Rizzo all come to mind, with a number of others partially-qualifying like Josh Lowe, Will Benson, and Pete Alonso.
I remember talking with some scouts in 2015 who only got on Bichette, Kiriloff, and Rizzo at end of a summer of positive performance because their swings were of the aforementioned type, the kind scouts didn’t want to like until it was proven that they should.
Bichette got the short end of the stick even from this group, despite having the most defensive value, a pro lineage from his father Dante, solid game performance, and close to, if not as much raw power as all of them. Lowe went 10th, Lewis went 11th, Benson went 14th, Kiriloff went 15th, Rizzo went 50th, Jones went 55th, and Alonso went 64th; Bichette went 66th.
The other variable was the career of Bichette’s little brother, Dante Jr., whom the Yankees took 51st overall in 2011. Dante had a similar-looking swing and similarly solid amateur performance; he played the infield and by draft day 2016 was in Double-A, one full season of plate appearances from being out of baseball. Just 12 months after Bo Bichette’s draft free fall, scouts still pointed to Dante Jr.’s career and Bo’s loud swing mechanics as the reasons they missed on Bo so badly. Here’s video of Bichette playing in a high school tournament that was held at the Blue Jays spring training facility near his home:
How would you adjust your pre-draft evaluation of a high school pitcher if you knew he couldn’t pass a physical? That is what teams needed to decide about White Sox righty Dylan Cease, who after a surgery, a year of rehab, and four years of development, will make his first big league start today.
Some version of this scenario occurs almost annually: High school pitcher throws hard during his showcase summer, becomes very famous, comes out the following spring throwing even harder, then breaks. In Cease’s case, he was 93-96 and touching 98 during showcases, then touching 100 early the following spring before he was shut down with an elbow injury that would, as teams knew ahead of the draft, eventually require surgery.
For some teams, the injury shut the door on Cease as an option entirely. He was a Vanderbilt commit whose long arm action some teams had already feared increased his risk of injury, or at least might impede his ability to develop command and a changeup, and funnel him toward a bullpen role.
But Cease also had among the 2014 draft’s best velocity and breaking ball combination. The Cubs properly assessed his signability, and after cutting an underslot deal with Kyle Schwarber for $1.5 million at pick No. 4, they suddenly had a bunch of extra bonus pool money to play with. They ended up signing three high school pitchers to overslot bonuses — Cease, Justin Steele and Carson Sands — and cutting underslot deals of varying amounts at every other pick in the first 10 rounds.
Cease signed for $1.5 million, which was the slot value of that draft’s 38th pick and is around where high school pitchers with this kind of stuff, albeit healthy ones, typically come off the board these days. It took a fortuitous intersection of several variables: Cease’s talent, the Cubs optimistic evaluation of it and his signability, the opportunity created by the underslot deal with Schwarber, and a level of comfort in taking an injured player aided by risk diversification in the other overslot high schoolers. The high school pitching crop in 2014 was wild, and a few of those players probably contributed to the current reticence to pick a similar guy very early. Read the rest of this entry »
As an outfielder for four years at St. Mary’s College, three of which were as a starter, Tony Gonsolin hit .305/.383/.453. During the summer after his junior year, he was an all-star for the Madison Mallards in the prestigious summer collegiate Northwoods League, slugging 11 home runs and hitting .316/.403/.510 with a wood bat. Moonlighting as a pitcher, Gonsolin never struck out more than a batter per inning at St. Mary’s and had nearly as many games saved as he did games started. He was drafted as a senior in the ninth round of the 2016 draft as a pitcher – a decision that was a surprise to some, given his power potential in the outfield and lack of refinement on the mound. In Gonsolin, the Dodgers saw a plus athlete with untapped skills who had immense upside if he focused solely on pitching.
On Wednesday, three years after being selected as a proverbial money saver, the first place Dodgers will call on Gonsolin to make his major league debut against the Diamondbacks. Gonsolin debuting as a big league starter might be even more unexpected than him debuting at all. His first 61 professional appearances were all as a reliever, and it wasn’t until he opened the 2018 season as a member of the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes rotation that the transition from outfielder to reliever to major league starter began materializing.
Gonsolin’s professional career began in the hitter-friendly Pioneer League, as a member of the Ogden Raptors in 2016. There, as a reliever, Gonsolin touched 94 with his fastball and worked 89-92, flashing some feel for two different breaking balls. He displayed solid feel for his arsenal but lacked an out pitch. Still, the foundation was there. The delivery was clean and efficient and relatively low effort. The high arm slot with which he released the ball was repeated pitch-after-pitch. The athleticism was evident and the aptitude for adjusting on the mound was growing by the day. Read the rest of this entry »
The Rockies’ addition of top prospect Brendan Rodgers — No. 1 in Colorado’s system, No. 28 overall — to their big-league roster completes part of a journey that seemed preordained when Rodgers was still just a high school underclassman. As is the case with lots of prominent Floridian high schoolers, Rodgers was evaluated early thanks to the endless parade of both varsity and travel baseball in Florida. Scouts were interested in Rodgers very early, as Kiley noted in his initial 2015 draft rankings.
Rodgers was a standout last summer with scouts saying he’d go in the top 50 picks as a high school junior, then he took a huge step forward this summer when his bat speed and raw power jumped at least a notch, if not two.
Those rankings, which Rodgers topped at the time, were produced after the high school summer showcase season, during which Rodgers looked fine at shortstop and continued to perform against the best pitching in the country. There were tepid evaluations of his defense and some concerns, from model-driven clubs, regarding his advanced age. But Rodgers’ offensive consistency and mix of physical talents (he had among the best raw power in the class at the time) overrode those notions.
Yesterday, the Braves called up Austin Riley, who we ranked second in their system and 33rd in our Top 100. He continued his blazing hot 2019, going 1-for-3 in his big league debut last night, including a home run that was hit 109 mph off the bat. He put up insane numbers at Triple-A in 37 games this year, hitting 15 homers and posting a 160 wRC+ with an unlucky .286 BABIP given his quality of contact.
I’ve been in to see him a few times this spring and captured a homer (102.1 mph off the bat, 32 degrees, 405.3 feet, a homer to straight-away center field) and an off-balance but well-struck double to the pull gap in glorious 1000 frames per second below. You can reference these swings (particularly the first) as an example of the actualized version of Riley’s swing from the mechanical journey I describe below.
Riley got on most clubs’ radar as a standout on arguably the best prep team in Mississippi. He was all over the showcase circuit but was a little thicker then and was arguably a better pitching prospect. He showed some starter traits, running his heater up to 95 mph at times, but having mostly average stuff with limited physical projection. In the spring, he started shaping up his frame, which has continued through his pro career as well. He looked like he had a shot to stick at third base and was getting more athletic, to the point where he was getting to his plus power in games more often. Read the rest of this entry »
