There’s a week at the end of every season when Triple-A welcomes some of baseball’s top prospects for a brief stint at the minor leagues’ highest level before they hang up their cleats for the year (or in many cases, head to the Arizona Fall League). Expanded rosters at the big league level leave a slew of freshly vacated Triple-A roster spots. Meanwhile, the Low-, High-, and Double-A seasons end when there’s still a week left on the Triple-A schedule, creating a sizable pool of lower-level up-and-comers. These prospects, especially the younger ones, are looking to prove themselves capable of standing up to competition beyond what their developmental schedule might otherwise deem appropriate. It’s also a big reason why so many of the following year’s prospect list write-ups include some version of the phrase “He notched a few innings at Triple-A at the end of last season.”

One such prospect this year is Ricky Tiedemann, the young lefty hurler who sits atop the Blue Jays prospect list and currently ranks 18th on our overall Top 100. If that résumé sounds oddly familiar, you may be picking up echos of recent big league debutant Kyle Harrison, who tops the Giants list and is stacked just spot above Tiedemann on our Top 100. The similarities don’t end there, though. Both Harrison and Tiedemann were drafted as teenagers, and both boast a tremendous punchout ability that belies their years, posting strikeout rates above 40% at various points in their young pro careers.

Before I continue, a caveat: Due to a combination of mid-season arm soreness and a short leash when it came to his pitch count, Tiedemann only threw 44 innings in 2023. That’s important to keep in mind, especially considering that Harrison’s lowest innings total in a pro season is more than double that. Tiedemann still has to demonstrate that he’s capable of maintaining his prowess over the type of innings load that Harrison has endured. With that established, let’s dig into how the two young southpaws resemble one another, and more importantly, what sets Tiedemann apart, at least for now. Read the rest of this entry »

There are certain stats that seem likely to always move in tandem. A high walk rate will, almost by definition, result in a high on-base percentage. A low whiff rate seems to naturally beget a high contact rate. But sometimes things don’t line up in the way intuition would dictate.

The other day I was perusing the minor league pitching leaderboards and when I sorted them by swinging strike rate, a crop of standouts topped the list, posting rates higher than 16% (the minor league average is around 12% for pitchers with at least 100 innings pitched). Curious, I re-ordered the list to see how these pitchers stacked up in terms of strikeout rate – a stat my brain assumed would result in a similar list of names, if slightly reordered. To my surprise, however, many of the top-ranked swinging-strike inducers skidded down the list when it was re-sorted by strikeout rate:

This caught me off guard, so I pulled up the major league leaderboards and repeated the same steps, first sorting by swinging strike rate, then by strikeout rate. At the major league level, no pitcher even falls out of the top 30, let alone tumbling as tremendously as some of the top bat-missers of the minor leagues:

It seems like the recipe that whips up minor league pitching success isn’t the same as the one that results in being a bat-missing major leaguer.

So, what gives?

Let’s start with the obvious. Perhaps the clearest difference between pitching in the minors and pitching in the majors is the caliber of the opponents. Specifically, it’s much more difficult to induce a swinging strike on a junky pitch when facing an advanced hitter than it is against a less-experienced minor leaguer. Thus, it stands to reason that in-zone swinging strike rate is a more reliable indicator of the sustainability of minor league results, as it diminishes the impact of a batter being duped. Testing this theory against the major league pitching leaderboard supports this idea, as the list of high-achievers stays relatively constant when sorted by in-zone contact rates.

That logic still holds true when we look to the minor league leaderboards. Indeed, of the 10 pitchers leading the minors in swinging strikes, only two (Drew Thorpe and Yoniel Curet) have in-zone swinging strike rates that are better than their overall mark in that column. And wouldn’t you know it, those are the only two pitchers who stay in the top 10 when the list is instead sorted by strikeout rate. The other three minor leaguers with overall swinging strike rates above 16% (Chih-Jung Liu, Cristian Mena, and Nick Nastrini) all have in-zone swinging strike rates that are lower than their overall swinging strike rates, and each of these pitchers falls by a few dozen spots when the list is re-ordered by K-rate. This illustrates the importance of missing bats in the zone, particularly when it comes to alchemizing whiffs into punchouts.

It also stands to reason that promotion to a higher minor league level would result in a dip in these types of pitching statistics. Assuming, as we do, that it’s easier to fool a Double-A hitter into offering at an unhittable breaking ball out of the zone than it is a Triple-A hitter, then promotion from one level to the next would presumably expose a pitcher’s reliance on chase swings as opposed to those precious in-zone whiffs. Lucky for us, two of the aforementioned pitchers – Nastrini and Mena – are not only in the same org and have virtually identical Double-A stats, but they also received simultaneous Triple-A promotions at the end of August. So, let’s take a look at how they compare and assess what their results might indicate about the sustainability of their minor league success.

Looking at how Nastrini and Mena performed on paper at Double-A makes them seem like virtually the same player. They’re both in the White Sox system, with similar stats in terms of swinging strikes, walks and strikeouts. They also feature the same arsenal – four-seamer, slider, curveball, changeup – and made their Triple-A debuts within a couple days of one another. But within those similarities, there are key distinctions between them that might alter our expectations of them.

Let’s start with how they ended up with the White Sox. Mena was signed for $250,000 out of the Dominican Republic in 2019, and while the start of his pro career was delayed by the pandemic, he was still just 18 when he took the mound for the first time in 2021. Having been largely untested before then, he quickly ascended through the org as part of Project Birmingham and is now the youngest pitcher to reach Triple-A this year. Conversely, Nastrini, who is several years older, was acquired mid-season as part of the Joe Kelly trade with the Dodgers and boasts a more robust track record than Mena, having been a fourth-round pick in 2021 out of UCLA.

In terms of statistics, their walk rates were identical at Double-A, each posting an unsavory 11.3% mark in that column. Their strikeout rates were similar to one another as well, each hovering above 25%, and their swinging strike rates differed by just .1%, with Nastrini’s coming in at 16.5%, and Mena’s at 16.6%. But before we chalk up those similarities to these guys being the same pitcher in different fonts, let’s investigate how they’re producing these numbers and see what we might expect from each going forward.

While Nastrini and Mena feature the same pitch mix, they use their arsenals in very different ways. Mena has long boasted an impeccable ability to spin his curveball, to the point that he’s been tasked with building his arsenal around that pitch. Since turning pro, he’s worked on adding a slider to his mix, and while it’s developed a slightly more distinct shape this season (tighter, with more horizontal action), it still blurs with his curveball, with both pitches acting in similar ways to miss bats on offerings out of the strike zone.

While Nastrini’s breaking balls don’t cause jaws to drop the way Mena’s curveball has throughout his career, their shapes are much more distinct from one another, and there’s roughly 7 mph of velocity separation between them.

Both pitchers throw a changeup between 13-14% of the time, and both favor the cambio against lefties. Nastrini’s changeup has a sharp shape to it, with its velocity and arm-side movement geared at mirroring the movement of his slider, allowing the changeup to work against lefties the way that his slider works against righties.

Mena’s changeup is also most effective when he’s able to play it off of the shape of his slider, in the hopes of getting lefties to flail at it off the plate. Unfortunately, his changeup is much faster than the slider, flirting with 90 mph, and its shape doesn’t feature much horizontal action.

Meanwhile, Mena’s fastball has lost some of its ride, as well as a tick or two of velocity, so it tends to hover in the 91-92 mph band, and without the bat-missing ride, its shape and velocity are too similar to those of the changeup for either pitch to be a reliable in-zone bat-misser.

As a result, Mena’s lukewarm heater has been frighteningly hittable this season, contributing to a very high home run rate for the young hurler. Nastrini’s four-seamer, on the other hand, has been much more successful, with a flatter, more deceptive shape. It’s thrown from a release point that’s more difficult to pick up due to Nastrini’s setup towards the third base side of the rubber. His fastball has maintained a higher average velocity, eliciting significantly more swinging strikes and a more anemic resulting slash line than that induced by Mena’s heater. This in turn has resulted in more whiffs throughout the strike zone, particularly at the top of it, and confirms that Nastrini’s overall swinging strike rate doesn’t rely as heavily on chase as Mena’s does.

That said, Nastrini’s command is worse than Mena’s, as he offers up a greater number of non-competitive wild pitches compared to Mena’s strategic out-of-zone offerings. Their matching walk rates at Double-A were arrived at very differently, with Mena’s coming as a side effect of intentional out-of-zone offerings, whereas Nastrini’s were more indicative of legitimate mistakes. This has held true at the higher level, with both pitchers now a few starts into their time with Triple-A Charlotte. In fact, many of the assumptions that could be drawn from their time at Double-A have come to fruition since their promotion.

In Mena’s first start, only three of his 88 pitches resulted in a swinging strike, due largely to Triple-A batters’ collective ability to lay off his breaking balls. His second and third starts were better in this regard, but he still struggled to induce chase on the outer half against righties, which was a key ingredient in the elixir that allowed his stuff to play up at lower levels. The patience of his opponents has resulted in a relative downtick in strikeouts, along with an uptick in walk rate. He has also given up an inordinate number of hits, due in large part to the hittablity of his heater. Nastrini, on the other hand, has kept opposing bats off his offerings but has struggled to maintain command. His second start with Triple-A Charlotte featured four wild pitches, including one with the bases loaded, which nearly allowed two runs to score when the ball bounced several feet in front of the plate and caromed off the catcher’s gear into the visitors dugout.

It’ll take more than a few starts apiece to get a sense for how Mena and Nastrini adapt to the higher level, but their outings have been in keeping with our expectations so far. Mena is young and athletic enough to hope that he’ll be able to tack additional velocity onto his fastball, while also working to refine the look of his entire arsenal to induce more in-zone whiffs. Expectations-wise, this likely means Mena’s on his way to a big league role at the back of a rotation, with multi-inning relief as a fallback option. Nastrini is more fully developed in terms of the look of his stuff, so his more urgent task will be to refine his command, such that his entire repertoire can play to its potential. As such, his ceiling is higher, and a spot near the front of a rotation is attainable if the command piece falls into place. Otherwise, he has the look of an impactful late-inning reliever.

All in all, if either Mena or Nastrini hope to remain atop the swinging strike leaderboard at Triple-A and beyond, there are key improvements to be made and flaws to be addressed, and despite their seeming similarities, their respective flaws (and necessary improvements) are distinct from one another. While it seems neither is likely to emerge as the next Spencer Strider, they both have a good shot at firming up an important big league role within the next season or two.

With Instructional League underway in Arizona (casts look of disappointment toward Florida) and Fall League rosters likely about two weeks out, the time has come to line the coffers with data and re-worked scouting reports in preparation for another round of farm system audits. Especially at the up-the-middle positions, defense is both very important and also a bit of a black box for readers, as there aren’t many publicly available minor league defensive stats and so much of evaluating defense is visual. I’ve recently been working on a video deep dive on the position players currently graded as 50 FV prospects or better, specifically to evaluate their defense in detail. Here I’ve taken a pass at the shortstops, providing video supplements for the prospects who I’ve evaluated in the 55 FV tier and above. I’ve made changes to their defense and arm tool grades over on The Board as a result of this exercise, and highlight the instances where this has caused a change to the player’s overall FV grade in the analysis below.

I’ve cut the videos in such a way that you can see each shortstop making similar plays one right after another. The videos feature plays to their left where I want to see them flip their hips and throw, plays that show the extreme end of their range, backhand plays in the hole to their right, plays coming in on the grass, and double play attempts. The fewest balls in play I watched for an individual player was 36 (Colson Montgomery and Dyan Jorge) and the most was closer to 70 (Jackson Holliday, Carson Williams and Marcelo Mayer). Read the rest of this entry »

Troy Melton is fast emerging as one of the top pitching prospects in the Detroit Tigers system. Drafted in the fourth round last year out of San Diego State University, the 22-year-old right-hander has a 2.33 ERA and a 3.21 FIP in 81 innings between Low-A Lakeland and High-A West Michigan. Featuring plus command and a firm fastball that he delivers from a deceptive slot, he’s fanned 84 batters while allowing 21 walks and 66 hits. Over his last three starts, the Anaheim native has allowed just a pair of runs in 17 innings, with 10 strikeouts and nary a free pass.

Assigned a 35+ FV by Eric Longenhagen at the time our Tigers Top Prospects list came out in June, the young right-hander has since moved up to the 40+ FV tier thanks to his “burgeoning upside.” In the opinion of our lead prospect analyst, “his fastball’s impact alone should be enough to make him a good big league reliever even if his secondary stuff doesn’t develop.”

Melton, who has a marketing degree from SDSU’s Fowler College of Business, discussed his development path earlier this month.

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David Laurila: I was told that you have plus stuff. Would you call yourself a power pitcher?

Troy Melton: “I think I’m a mesh of a power guy and a control guy. Coming up in high school, I really didn’t throw very hard, so I kind of had to learn how to pitch. That definitely helped. There are always things to work on with command — you’re never going to be perfect — but that is something I feel I’m good at. I can throw four pitches for strikes, and kind of quadrant up with them too.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Oakland A’s have not been shy about calling up their top prospects this season, including a slew of the most highly-ranked young players in their system. Many of those prospects have already begun to sculpt the narrative of their early big league careers, to largely disappointing results. Mason Miller dazzled in his first few outings, but was felled by injury soon thereafter. Kyle Muller has bounced between the majors and Triple-A, with a meager mid-teens strikeout rate and an ERA above 7.00 at both levels. Esteury Ruiz has been as spectacular as expected on the basepaths, but his Triple-A offense was a mirage that has dissipated in the majors. And while Ken Waldichuk’s stuff seemed noteworthy in the lead up to the season, his walk rate has ballooned and his fastball was at one point measured by Statcast as the worst in the league, at 16 runs worse than average. As of now, to borrow a phrase, he’s just Ken.

This past month has seen the promotion of three more of Oakland’s promising young prospects: Tyler Soderstrom, Zack Gelof, and Lawrence Butler. The most recent of those promotions was Butler, who joined the A’s major league roster on August 11 after tamping down his strikeouts and finding himself on an ultra-fast track (he started the season at Double-A). With just a handful of games under his belt, it’s too soon to read much into his performance. Soderstrom and Gelof, meanwhile, both debuted in mid-July. And while Soderstrom is the more highly ranked prospect, his bat has been too quiet to make up for his strikeouts at the big league level. Instead, it’s Gelof whose name is currently accompanied by a string of fire emojis in the Baseball Savant search bar. Read the rest of this entry »

A large portion of every season’s prospect-related transaction activity takes place between the draft and the trade deadline, a window that, since the draft was moved to July, spans just a few weeks. We can use the way the FanGraphs farm system rankings are calculated to track movement during this period on the baseball calendar and hopefully come to more fully understand how successful rebuilds are born. Over time, we can better contextualize trade and draft hauls by using this methodology to build a historical understanding of prospect movement. Mostly though, these rankings track the depth and impact of talent in each farm system at a specific moment in time. Or, in the case of the below links and tables, four moments in time. There are some methodological caveats to pass along (I’ll get to those momentarily), as well as some very specific examples where the movement communicated in the tables below does not properly capture team activity during the last month of trades and draft signings (which I get into throughout this post).

Let’s start with some basic disclaimers. Remember that while the Craig Edwards research that facilitates this approach is empirical, my subjective player evaluations (and their resulting Future Values) feed the formula that spits out the farm rankings. Just one significant over- or under-evaluation of a player can shift the way a team lines up in these rankings pretty dramatically, especially if you’re focused on the ordinal rankings. The monetary values, in addition to providing an approximate measure and reminder of how the draft and international amateur processes suppress what these guys might earn on an open market, illustrate the ways systems are spaced and clustered with more nuance. If I’m way too light or way too heavy on any single impact prospect, I’m basically infecting a list with half a standard deviation’s worth of error in this regard because Craig’s math favors top-heavy systems rather than ones with depth. Read the rest of this entry »

“There’s something about his swing that looks odd and unnatural, but DeLauter otherwise looks like a middle-of-the-order bat from a tools perspective.”

Eric Longenhagen shared that scouting perspective when describing Chase DeLauter back in January. Ranking him No. 9 on our Cleveland Guardians Top Prospects list as a 45 FV prospect, our lead prospect analyst also opined that the 2022 first rounder was “a fascinating draft case,” in part because he played just 66 games over three seasons at James Madison University. Moreover, the broken foot that prematurely ended his final collegiate season delayed DeLauter’s professional debut until this past June. Initially assigned to the Arizona Complex League, the 21-year-old outfielder has slashed .356/.373/.548 with one home run in 75 plate appearances since being promoted to the High-A Lake County Captains.

DeLauter discussed his swing, and the approach that goes with it, prior to a recent game. Read the rest of this entry »

Ranked and briefly analyzed below are the prospects who have been traded during the loosely defined “2023 deadline season,” which for simplicity’s sake I consider all of July. Most of the deals these prospects were part of have been analyzed at length on this site. An index of those pieces can be found here, or by clicking the hyperlink in the “Trade” column below, which will take you to the relevant article. I’ve moved all of the 35+ FV and above players listed here to their new orgs over on The Board, so you can click through to see where they rank among their new teammates and read their full scouting reports. Our Farm System Rankings, which update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up following the draft and the deadline. Read the rest of this entry »

Jack Flaherty hasn’t quite looked himself since 2019, but the Cardinals were still able to get three prospects for a few months of his services from the Orioles at the trade deadline. The prospect return on the way to St. Louis — whose other deals are covered here, here and here — is made up mostly of near-ready players who should be able to play a role in what we’ve assessed as an attempt to rebuild quickly. The three prospects are Cuban infielder César Prieto, lefty Drew Rom (both of whom were at Triple-A Norfolk), and 19-year-old righty Zack Showalter, who was promoted from the Complex level to Low-A toward the end of June.

While playing pro ball in Cuba, Prieto broke Kendrys Morales‘ rookie hits record and the Serie Nacional’s hit streak record (40 games) in 2020, striking out just six times in 250 plate appearances. The rate of player defections from Cuba significantly diluted the quality of pitching in pro ball down there, so it was difficult to gauge his hit tool with precision. He defected from the Cuban National Team not long after arriving in Miami for an Olympic qualifier in May of 2021 (there’s a riveting Sports Illustrated story that details his “extraction”), and he signed a $650,000 deal with Baltimore at the beginning of the 2022 international signing period.

After torching High-A for a few weeks, Prieto was promoted and spent most of his first minor league season with Double-A Bowie, where he struggled, slashing .255/.296/.348 in 90 games. He halved his strikeout rate when he was sent back to Bowie at the start of 2023, slashed a BABIP-aided .364/.406/.476 and was promoted to Triple-A Norfolk. In about a month prior to the Flaherty trade, he was hitting .317/.365/.471, again with a high BABIP.

Prieto can actually hit. His short levers make him extremely difficult to beat in the strike zone, and he can let the baseball travel deep before striking it the other way, generating doubles power pole-to-pole. His big issue is his propensity to chase, which he did at a 36% clip in 2022 and at a 40% rate so far in 2023, hindering the quality of his contact as well as his ability to reach base. But lefty sticks who make this much contact (91% Z-contact% as of the trade!) tend to carve out some kind of role, especially if they can play multiple positions.

Prieto is a below-average infield athlete and presents a stiff, non-traditional look at both second and third base. He also plays shortstop, but that is not something he’s remotely capable of doing at the big league level. I was hopeful that another full year with pro athletic training facilities and another season of seeing pro-quality pitching after he had access to neither for such a long time would help enable adjustment in these areas, but they’ve continued to be issues. I think the Eric Sogard comp I’ve had on him since his amateur days still holds water. He’s a flawed part-time player, but guys who can hit like this tend to play for a long time.

The other player who should provide a quick turnaround is Rom, an over-slot 11th-round high schooler from the 2018 draft who has slowly climbed through the minors with a cutting low-90s fastball. Especially when he was very young, he looked like he had a chance to break out if he could throw harder as he matured. That hasn’t really happened, and he’s still sitting mostly 90–92 mph, but his fastball still punches above its weight, and he’s managed to strike out more than a batter per inning throughout his pro career. While that likely won’t continue at the big league level because his stuff isn’t nasty enough, he throws enough strikes with his four pitches (if you count his four-seamer and sinker as two different offerings) to project as a depth starter. Already on the 40-man, Rom joins the mix of starters I mentioned in the analysis of the Jordan Montgomery deal as a candidate for the 2024 rotation.

Finally, there’s Showalter, another over-slot 11th-round high schooler, to round out the Cardinals’ return. It took a $440,000 bonus to buy him out of a commitment to USF after last summer’s draft, and he has made a strong pro debut. He generated some scout buzz during Extended Spring Training, then made only a few Complex starts before being promoted to full-season ball a little over a month before the deadline. Showalter works usually three or four innings per outing and sits 93–95 with uphill angle and tail. His delivery is of the open-striding drop-and-drive variety; he keeps his arm action very short and tucked close to his body as he motors toward the plate. It helps keep his release consistent and allows him to hide the baseball well. But he isn’t a fantastic athlete and lacks balance over his landing leg, which is often an indication of relief risk. I’m not yet ready to toss him on the main section of the updated Cardinals prospect list, but he’s a solid low-level arm with a mean outcome of a fastball/slider reliever. Prieto (40 FV, a 1-WAR annual performer who I expect will get 350–400 PA in his best years) and Rom (35+ FV, a spot starter) do make the cut.

This return isn’t enough to alter what I outlined in the Montgomery piece. The Cardinals still have a below-average farm system but have filled up the upper levels during this mini-rebuild and should have the pitching depth to compete for the NL Central next year if their core of hitters stays healthy and performs as expected. As a return for the Jack Flaherty who looked like one of the better pitchers in the NL for a little while, it feels light. But for the recently vanilla, free-agent-to-be Jack Flaherty, it makes sense for St. Louis to have received a few lesser prospects.

When trades occur that aren’t quite big enough to merit their own post, we sometimes compile our analysis into a compendium like this, where we touch on a number of transactions at one time. In this dispatch, I’ll cover the Rays’ trades for upper-level depth (pitchers Manuel Rodríguez and Adrian Sampson from the Cubs, and catcher Alex Jackson from the Brewers), as well as the Mariners/Orioles swap of Logan Rinehart and Eduard Bazardo.

The Rays acquired Adrian Sampson, Manuel Rodríguez, and $220,000 of international free agent bonus pool space from the Cubs for minor league pitcher Josh Roberson. Sampson, 31, was originally the Pirates’ 2012 fifth round pick. He made the big leagues with the Mariners in 2016 and then began to hop around the fringes of various rosters, which is part of what led to his 2020 jaunt to the KBO before a return to MLB with the Cubs. He made 19 starts for the Cubbies in 2022 as a long-term injury replacement, but he has missed most of 2023 due to a knee surgery from which he only recently returned. Sampson has been sitting 90-91 mph during each of his last two minor league starts. He does not occupy a 40-man roster spot and should be considered injury replacement depth for the Rays. Read the rest of this entry »