The numbers belie his anonymity. Unranked and flying well below the radar, Ben Harris has fanned 91 batters in 46 innings this year between Low-A Rancho Cucamonga and High-A Great Lakes. Boasting a 17.8 K/9, which ranks highest in the minors among hurlers with at least 40 frames, the 22-year-old southpaw is probably the best pitching prospect you’ve never heard of.

It would only be a mild exaggeration to say that he came out of nowhere. Drafted in the eighth round last year out of the University of Georgia by the Los Angeles Dodgers, Harris threw just 39.2 innings as a collegian, almost all of them in his junior season. Prior to that, he was a two-way player who rarely saw game action. The idea that Harris could emerge as one of the most-overpowering pitchers in professional baseball was unimaginable to anyone not in possession of a crystal ball.

His ability to overpower hitters doesn’t come courtesy of smoke and mirrors, but neither does it come via elite velocity or nasty breaking stuff. The Alpharetta, Georgia native excels thanks largely to a fastball that’s unique in its deception.

“I don’t throw super-hard,” said Harris, whose heater sits 92–94 mph and tops out at 95, and whose repertoire currently comprises roughly 70% fastballs and 30% sliders. “Luckily, there’s something with the way I throw. It’s a little bit tucked behind — I throw from behind my head — so it’s a little more hidden than normal. I’ve never faced off against myself, but that’s what I’ve been told. I believe [the effectiveness] comes from a combination of a few different metrics, as well.”

Great Lakes pitching coach David Anderson agrees on that point.

“He has a unique ability to hide, and ride, the ball,” he said. “It’s a really efficient throw. I think he probably benefited from being an outfielder in college — there are elements that have transferred from an outfield throw — and it’s a quick arm. The way he sequences his body down the mound puts him in a really good position to let the ball jump on hitters.

“It’s more spin than approach angle,” he added. “Some of it is the speed of the arm, but he does take advantage of the approach a little bit. He’s kind of got a whole package with the fastball [and] with outlier characteristics. Part of what makes him unique is that he didn’t design the throw to do what it does. It’s all natural to him.” Read the rest of this entry »

Alex Binelas has big-time power. The extent to which he can get to it will go a long way toward determining his future. The 22-year-old corner infielder has gone deep 23 times this season between High-A Greenville and Double-A Portland, but he’s also fanned 126 times in 418 plate appearances. As Eric Longenhagen wrote this spring, “Binelas’ calling card is plus-plus raw power… but it comes with plenty of swing-and-miss.” His left-handed stroke has produced a 104 wRC+ this season and a .206/.318/.445 slash line.

The potential for Binelas to do far more than he’s shown since being drafted 86th overall last year out of the University of Louisville is real. The Red Sox certainly think so. Enamored by his exit velocities and ability to hit moonshots, Boston acquired the Oak Creek, Wisconsin native from the Milwaukee Brewers last winter as part of the Hunter Renfroe deal.

Binelas discussed his do-damage approach and the in-progress mechanical adjustment he’s hoping will help him turn the corner prior to a recent game at Portland’s Hadlock Field.

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David Laurila: How would you describe yourself as a hitter?

Alex Binelas: “I go up to the plate looking to impact the ball. I obviously want to put together quality at bats — I want to swing at the right pitches — but my ultimate goal is putting the ball in play as hard as I can. I’m not trying to hit a home run every time, but when you try to impact ball hard with quality swings and are attacking the right pitches, you put yourself in a good position to do damage.”

Laurila: Exit velocity is a priority.

Binelas: “Yes.” Read the rest of this entry »

Kyle Harrison is one of the top pitching prospects in baseball. Drafted 85th overall in 2020 out of Concord, California’s De La Salle High School, the just-turned-21-year-old left-hander is No. 30 on our updated Top 100. Ranked ninth among hurlers, Harrison has dominated at two levels. Currently with the Richmond Flying Squirrels, the Double-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, he’s fanned 143 batters and allowed just 57 hits in 86-and-a-third innings this season. In a word, the young southpaw has been overpowering.

Harrison discussed his repertoire when Richmond played in Portland over the weekend.

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David Laurila: To start, give me a self-scouting report.

Kyle Harrison: “My fastball averages around 94 [mph]. I spin it decently — not too high — but it’s from a low approach angle, so I think it looks like the ball has a little bit of rise. Then I’ll go to my slider. I’ll kind of grip that off the four-seam and really just try to rip it at the bottom of the zone. It’s a little more sweepy-ish than a regular slider. I’m trying to make it harder. I’m able to get it to 85 sometimes — that’s kind of where I want it to be — but those are the max-effort ones. It’s usually more 80-83.

“The changeup I’m playing around with now is a new grip. I’m kind of splitting the two seams there. It’s more of a one-seam, so I can get a little bit more tumble. I’ve been throwing it harder than I’d like. I’m trying to take a little velo off to get some better speed differential.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ranked and briefly analyzed below are the prospects who have been traded during the loosely defined “deadline season,” which for simplicity’s sake I consider all of July. Most of the deals these prospects were a 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 Rankings, which update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up following the draft and the deadline compared to prior to the draft and relevant 2022 prospect graduations.

I’ve included the compensatory draft pick the Cubs will receive after they extend Willson Contreras a qualifying offer and he signs elsewhere, as they will essentially be trading him for that pick if he signs with another team this offseason, which I think is the most likely outcome. Now, on to the rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last two and a half years, the Nationals’ World Series championship roster has deteriorated around Juan Soto, hollowed out by trades and underperformance. After rejecting a 15-year, $440 million extension offer, the club realized Soto’s camp was hellbent on him hitting free agency, an eventuality that put Washington at risk of only receiving draft pick compensation for him, and not until a few years from now. With new ownership looming, the Nationals were unlikely (and the team’s current owners seemingly unwilling) to build a contender around Soto before he hit the market; every passing day, arbitration year, and postseason spent in Washington diminished his trade value. Once the team decided to move on, it made sense to deal Soto now, while the club trading for him could enjoy him for three postseasons instead of two. Still, it’s a painful parting, just as it’s painful for it to have unfolded in public the way that it did, with information leaked to prime fans with the logic I outlined above in the hopes of avoiding blowback.

The Padres, meanwhile, obviously coveted Soto. A.J. Preller tends to press the gas pedal a little harder than other folks in the industry, both in terms of the players he asks for and what he’s willing to give up in return. There are alternate timelines in which this deal doesn’t get done. There are iterations of a Bryan Reynolds trade that could have occurred this past winter that would have put Soto out of reach; there’s a version of the 2020-21 offseason where Nolan Arenado becomes a Padre instead of a Cardinal. But because those (and other deals) didn’t happen, and thanks to James Wood’s emergence, the Padres still had enough at the top of their farm system to trade for a 23-year-old future Hall of Famer and carry several of the most exciting and talented players of this century on their roster at the same time while they’re at it. Soto, Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, and Yu Darvish all have enduring baseball significance. The Padres are no-doubt contenders and among the most exciting teams in pro sports.

That comes at a great cost. There are many talented players headed to Washington in this trade: MacKenzie Gore, C.J. Abrams, Robert Hassell III, and Wood are all current or recent Top 100 prospects, while Jarlin Susana might have the nastiest stuff of any pitcher his age in pro baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, the Rays traded C/INF Ford Proctor to the Giants for Triple-A reliever Jeremy Walker. The Rays appear to have been trying to clear 40-man space. The Rays have several players on the 60-day IL who don’t currently occupy a 40-man spot but will need to once they return, including Wander Franco, Manuel Margot, and Harold Ramírez, all of whom are likely to come off of the IL between now and the end of the season. Tampa could also potentially add more big leaguers before the deadline who would require 40-man space. The move was an opportunistic pounce by the Giants, who get a player I happen to like quite a bit.

Proctor was occupying a 40-man spot while hitting .213/.329/.306 at Triple-A Durham, and his strikeout rate has climbed significantly for the second straight year. He was a contact-oriented infielder at Rice and in the lower minors who the Rays moved behind the plate during the early stages of the pandemic. While he’s made huge strides on defense, he still has moments of ineptitude, whiffing on the occasional easy-to-receive pitch, or letting a blockable ball in the dirt get past him. For a convert who has just shy of two years experience wearing the tools of ignorance, Proctor looks pretty good even though he’s 25. Read the rest of this entry »

Oakland fetched a sizable return in the trade that sent the potent combination of Frankie Montas and Lou Trivino to the Yankees on Monday afternoon. The deal is headlined by two top 100 prospects, lefty Ken Waldichuk and righty Luis Medina, and is supplemented by near-ready backend starter JP Sears and fleet-footed A-ball second baseman Cooper Bowman. All three pitchers are essentially big league-ready, with Medina and Sears already on the 40-man roster, and Waldichuk a lock to be added after the season and likely to debut next year.

The youngest of that trio is Medina, a 23-year-old flamethrower who has been a prospect of import for over half a decade, walking the starter/reliever balance beam all the while. Now at Triple-A Scranton Wilkes-Barre, he has made 17 starts (he typically works four to five innings at a time and has maxed out at six twice this season) while posting a 3.38 ERA, his third consecutive level where he has posted a sub-4.00 ERA. While he’s historically struggled with walks (he’s been at least a five walks per nine guy his entire career) and overall consistency, Medina’s stuff makes him tough to square up and induces lots of groundballs (50% GB%). His fastball has been in the mid-to-upper-90s his entire career and is parked in the 94-98 mph range again this season, peaking at 102. Read the rest of this entry »

With their outfield (and whole roster, really) hit hard by injuries, the Rays acquired 34-year-old left fielder David Peralta from the Diamondbacks for 19-year-old catching prospect Christian Cerda on Sunday. The Freight Train is hitting .248/.315/.457, good for a 109 wRC+, which is in line with his career norm (111 wRC+), even though the shape of his production has totally changed.

Before we get into how that came to be, though, let’s take a moment to appreciate Peralta’s remarkable path here. Originally a left-handed pitcher in the Cardinals organization, he was released amid shoulder issues and played outfield in Independent ball for a couple of years before signing with the Diamondbacks in 2013. It’s borderline offensive to cram that stretch of Peralta’s career into one sentence. Indy ball isn’t exactly glamorous, and Peralta was broke and worked at McDonalds while waiting for the Diamondbacks, who he knew wanted to sign him, to free up the minor league roster space to do so. After he finally signed, it took only about a year for him to reach the big leagues, and Peralta has had one hell of a now nine-year MLB career, during which he’s been one of the better left field defenders in baseball (and has one Gold Glove), won a Silver Slugger during his peak year in 2018 (.293/.352/.516 with 30 bombs), led the league in triples twice, and endured wrist and shoulder surgeries while becoming a cult hero in Arizona. From a baseball role standpoint, the Rays are getting a platoon stick (.268/.325/.496 versus righties this year) and plus defender in a corner spot, but Peralta also brings the parts of himself that helped him grind through injury and Indy ball. Read the rest of this entry »

Late Friday night, the Mariners and the Reds consummated the first blockbuster trade of the deadline period, with changeup artist Luis Castillo on his way to the Pacific Northwest for a considerable haul of young players headlined by No. 11 overall prospect Noelvi Marte. In exchange for about a year and a half of Castillo, the Reds netted a combination of upside (Marte, 18-year-old Low-A shortstop Edwin Arroyo, and burgeoning reliever Andrew Moore) and stability (likely 2023 rotation contributor Levi Stoudt).

The 20-year-old Marte, a potential All-Star shortstop and a 60 FV prospect, is hitting .275/.363/.462 at High-A Everett and has actually performed better than that more recently, slashing .301/.379/.549 since the beginning of June; he hit 15 homers and 19 doubles in 85 games prior to the trade. Marte has his doubters, or at least people in the industry who would take the under on my personal evaluation of him. There are scouts and clubs who were discouraged by his early-season conditioning; others are skeptical of his hit tool. Most commonly, though, there are scouts who think he won’t stay at shortstop. This is in part due to the way his physique looked early this season (it wasn’t bad, but was close to maxed-out), and also because Marte has had issues with errors, mostly of the throwing variety; he has accumulated 24 total errors already in 2022. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets augmented their bench and reliever depth yesterday via a small trade with the Reds, acquiring 10-year veteran Tyler Naquin and up/down lefty Phillip Diehl in exchange for two Low-A minor leaguers, second baseman Hector Rodriguez and right-hander Jose Acuna.

In a platoon role for the Reds, Naquin was hitting .246/.305/.444 overall and .264/.333/.472 against right-handed pitching, playing right field almost exclusively. Both lefty-hitting reserve outfielders, Naquin and Travis Jankowski, are suddenly redundant on the Mets’ bench, which might mean they move on from the latter. Jankowski has just nine hits all year, none since May (he was injured for a stretch), and had been reduced to a rare defensive replacement and frequent pinch runner leading up to the trade. Naquin isn’t as fast as Jankowski nor as good a defender, but he has one of the better throwing arms in baseball and can be a specific sort of defensive replacement of his own (aka a sac fly sniper) and provide meaningfully more with the bat than his fellow 2012 first-rounder. Brandon Nimmo’s center field defense is such that Jankowski rarely represents a meaningful upgrade at his most capable, valuable position. A skillset like Naquin’s is a puzzle piece that fits more snuggly with righty-hitting corner mainstays Starling Marte and Mark Canha, though Jankowski is out of options and was DFA’d shortly after publication of this piece. Read the rest of this entry »