Hagen Danner has had a unique ride in our rankings. The 2017 second-round draft pick was No. 31 on our 2019 Toronto Blue Jays Top Prospects list, and after falling off completely in 2020 and ’21, he’s now a helium-filled No.14 on our ’22 edition. A position change has fueled the ascent; previously a catcher, Danner was moved to the mound in the months preceding the 2020 shutdown.

Last season saw the 23-year-old right-hander emerge as a shutdown reliever. Pitching against professional hitters for the first time, Danner logged a 2.02 ERA with 42 strikeouts in 35.2 innings with High-A Vancouver. Moreover, those numbers came courtesy of a power arsenal that has prompted our own Eric Longenhagen to proclaim that the Huntington Beach High School product is “on the fast track.”

Danner discussed his conversion — which wasn’t exactly a conversion — and the heater/slutter/curveball combination that he takes with him to the mound, following a spring-training outing against the Pittsburgh Pirates. He proceeded to break camp with the Double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats.

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David Laurila: You were a two-way player in high school. How much did you actually understand pitching at that time?

Hagen Danner: “A lot. It was my main position until senior year, at which time I decided to just swing the bat. That allowed me to get drafted as a hitter and let me try to live out my dream of being a hitter in the big leagues. When that wasn’t going right, it was an easy transition.”

Laurila: You were drafted as a catcher. Why that position?

Danner: “It was what I played in high school when I wasn’t pitching, although I also was a third baseman. I guess it was better [draft-wise] to be as a power-hitting catcher. It helped being able to play defense behind the plate, too.”

Laurila: Do you feel that you had potential as a hitter? There was a lot of swing-and-miss to your game, but you did have a [.409] OBP as a 19-year-old in rookie ball. Read the rest of this entry »

This season, Eric and Tess Taruskin will each have a minor league roundup post run during the week, with the earlier post recapping some of the weekend’s action. Those posts will typically run Monday or Tuesday (since Monday is widely an off day for the minors), though they will occasionally be featured later in the week, as Eric’s notes are here.

Christian Encarnacion-Strand, 3B, Minnesota Twins
Level & Affiliate: High-A Cedar Rapids Age: 22 Org Rank: HM FV: 35
Line: 10-for-14, 3 HR, 2 2B, 1 SB, 15 RBI (!)

Notes
Wow! Encarnacion-Strand ended up at the bottom of our Twins list because we think he’s destined for first base and has more swing-and-miss going on than we’re comfortable with at that position. After transferring from Yavapai to Oklahoma State, he only struck out in about 19% of the plate appearances during his lone Division-I season, which is less than I’d have guessed based on my in-person notes on his contact ability. He certainly has big power, though. The universal DH helps Encarnacion-Strand’s cause since there are more 1B/DH jobs in the majors now, and teams are more open to platooning there and/or carrying a positionless bopper on their bench. 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:

Read the rest of this entry »

Robert Hassell III is a confident hitter, and for good reason. No. 50 on our 2022 Top 100 Prospects list, the 20-year-old outfielder — in the words of Eric Longenhagen — “arguably wielded the most advanced bat of the 2020 draft’s high school hitters.” Drafted eighth overall that summer by the San Diego Padres, he’s lived up to that billing. Playing last year at Low-A Lake Elsinore and High-A Fort Wayne, Hassell slashed .303/.393/.470, with his left-handed stroke responsible for 33 doubles, four triples, and 11 home runs. Moreover, he swiped 34 bases in 40 attempts.

Hassell — back at Fort Wayne to begin the current campaign — talked hitting prior to taking the field for the TinCaps opener last Friday.

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David Laurila: In your own words, who are you as a hitter?

Robert Hassell III: “Last season was the first time I played more than 50 games in a season — I played 110 — and after that, I definitely had a good idea — if I hadn’t already — of what I do consistently. It didn’t take me long. Even through last spring training, just getting in the daily reps, I knew that I was going to be a barrel guy [and] an on-base guy. That’s kind of what I’ve been my whole life, so it’s what I would self-identify as, for sure.”

Laurila: Define “barrel guy.”

Hassell: “I would say that a barrel guy isn’t a dude that can only hit fastballs, or only hit curveballs, or that he excels at one thing way more than the other. I wouldn’t consider that guy a ‘barrel guy.’ I see myself being able to hit every pitch, in any count. That’s what I mean by that.” Read the rest of this entry »

Carson Spiers has quietly thrived since being bypassed in the five-round 2020 draft. Signed that summer by a Cincinnati Reds team that at the time employed Kyle Boddy as their pitching coordinator, the 24-year-old right-hander has done so with a studious approach that he pairs with a bulldog attitude. Featuring a well-rounded pitch mix, Spiers is coming off a season where he logged a 3.55 ERA with 130 strikeouts in 111-and-two-thirds innings spent between Low-A Daytona and (primarily) High-A Dayton.

A senior-sign with a management degree from Clemson University, Spiers — currently on the roster of the Double-A Chattanooga Lookouts — is No. 15 on our newly-released Cincinnati Reds Top Prospects list. He discussed his development, and the debt he owes to Boddy, over the phone in mid-March.

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David Laurila: Who are you as a pitcher? How would you describe yourself?

Carson Spiers: “I’d say that I’m a competitive guy who likes to attack. I’ll fill the zone with four different pitches and let my arsenal work for me. I wouldn’t say I’m the most overpowering guy on the mound, but I have a good enough fastball to play at any level. I also have some pretty good off-speed that I can throw in any count; I can create swings and misses with those pitches, as well. But I’d say that my best trait is my competitive edge. I have a strong will to want to win.”

Laurila: What is your best pitch?

Spiers: “My best pitch is strike one, for sure. My slider and my changeup are definitely my out pitches, but ‘best pitch’ is tough to say, because I can throw all four in any count. I wouldn’t say I have a best.”

Laurila: Baseball America has called your changeup your best pitch… Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Cincinnati Reds. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the second year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

The Diamondbacks and Rangers made a minor deal on Opening Day, with Texas sending upper-level infielder Yonny Hernandez to Arizona for low-level center field speedster Jeferson Espinal. Arizona desperately needs big league infield help with Nick Ahmed (shoulder) and Josh Rojas (oblique) starting the year on the injured list. They traded cash to Chicago for upper-level infielder Sergio Alcántara a few days ago and now add the plucky Hernandez, who was squeezed out of Texas by the additions of Corey Seager and Marcus Semien from above, and by the bevy of prospects (among them Ezequiel Duran, Josh Smith, and Davis Wendzel) who are either on, or are soon-to-be-on, the 40-man from below. Read the rest of this entry »

Just before Opening Day, the Brewers played musical chairs with their catching corps in a pair of moves perhaps triggered by losing Pedro Severino to a PED suspension. They made two trades, adding two backstops and subtracting another, and shipping a couple of lower-ranked prospects out as part of the deals. They are:

From Miami: C Alex Jackson
To Miami: 2B Hayden Cantrelle and RHP Alexis Ramirez

From San Diego: C Victor Caratini
To San Diego: C Brett Sullivan and UTIL Korry Howell Read the rest of this entry »

Frankie Montas was a late scratch from his Saturday start and instead, on Sunday, threw in an early-morning sim game on Oakland’s backfields. Opposing scouts in attendance were from (in totality) Boston, Kansas City, Minnesota, and Tampa Bay.

Montas threw about 80 pitches, warming up and then working in eight-to-ten minute chunks against A’s big league hitters, with staff adding batters to the end of some innings and rolling others to stay within that window (which is commonplace in this setting). Then the whole group took a break for four or five minutes before Montas returned to the mound for another simulated inning. With no umpires, the A’s used the TrackMan pitch locations to call balls and strikes from their seating area behind the backstop; the unit began malfunctioning at the very end of his outing, but only for four pitches.

I have video of his entire outing below, and in addition to it being a topical scouting artifact given trade rumors around Montas, it is also a glimpse into big league minutiae in a quiet setting with just a few scouts, A’s staff, and player families around. You can often hear communication between A’s players and personnel around pitch type and velocity, but there’s no exposure of sensitive ops stuff, something I vetted while cutting this together.

Montas’ fastball ranged from 92–95 mph, but he was consistently pumping in a heavy 93–94 sinker. He was clearly coasting, as a big league vet of this stature should during a morning sim game, so the fact that this velo band is abnormally low for him — his fastball averaged 96 in 2021 and had been sitting close to that so far this spring — is fine. The pitch had big sinking action toward the bottom of the zone early during his outing and induced several ground balls, though hitters had an easier time elevating it later on. As the movement on his fastball dwindled throughout his outing, the length and movement of his upper-80s slider increased, and he found more consistent feel for locating it later in the sim game. At times he uses it like a bat-breaking cutter, at others as a finishing pitch out of the zone. Though it was his least consistent offering, many of his sliders were plus. Read the rest of this entry »

Current work on the team-by-team prospect lists is being complemented by lots of live looks in Arizona as we work on the West Valley cluster of teams (Reds/Guardians/Dodgers/White Sox), so the info in those lists is fresh out of the oven. As I’ve been targeting teams with West Valley facilities who come east and talked to scouts on my side of town, some players have popped up this spring from clubs whose prospect lists we’ve already done, and I’m not wasting time adding them to their org lists just because others aren’t finished. Those changes are noted beneath some notes on Daniel Espino and are indicated on The Board’s “Trend” column, as they’re the only players to have “up” arrows at this stage.
Read the rest of this entry »