These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

From games on June 8

Luis Campusano, C, San Diego Padres
Level & Affiliate: Triple-A El Paso  Age: 22   Org Rank: 3   FV: 55
Line: 3-for-4, HR, 2B, BB

Notes
Recall that Campusano was thrust straight into the big leagues from High-A during the bizarre 2020 season, then found himself unexpectedly in the big leagues again early this year when Austin Nola was hurt. Even Campusano’s struggles during his first few weeks settling into Triple-A (remember, this is a 22-year-old whose last full season was in A-ball) are, you know, just a couple of weeks and he’s hitting .296/.387/.556 since the calendar flipped over to June. I’m not inclined to move off of him at all based on a couple of weeks of poor surface-level performance, especially when dry periods of surface performance are common for catchers because of the physical beating they take behind the plate. This is one of the more talented hitting catchers in all of pro baseball, a well-rounded offensive player at a position that might be the thinnest in all the big leagues. If you’re a dynasty fantasy baseball player who plays in a league with people who overreact to small samples or who struggle to put performance in proper context, you should pursue Campusano. Read the rest of this entry »

Clayton Beeter looks at pitching with a scientific bent. He also blows away hitters with a fastball-curveball combo that has elicited comparisons to a healthy Nick Anderson. Our own Eric Longenhagen made that very comp when he bullishly ranked the 22-year-old right-hander seventh on our Los Angeles Dodgers Top Prospect list. Baseball America slotted Beeter — the 66th-overall pick in last year’s draft — 21st on their own list.

Red-shirted his freshman year at Texas Tech University after undergoing Tommy John surgery during his first semester, Beeter returned to action as a closer, then moved into the Red Raiders starting rotation in his draft year. His future role yet to be determined, he’s currently taking the mound with the High-A Great Lakes Loons.

Beeter discussed his arsenal, and his approach to pitching, this past Saturday.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with how you self-identify as a pitcher. Give me a scouting report on yourself.

Clayton Beeter: “I would say I’ve got an overpowering fastball paired with an overpowering curveball. I can also mix in a changeup if I need to.”

Laurila: You consider yourself a power pitcher…

Beeter: “Yeah. For sure.”

Laurila: Has that always been the case?

Beeter: “I actually didn’t pitch until my last two years of high school. I was a shortstop and then they just kind of threw me on the mound because I had a good arm. I realized I could throw pretty hard for that age, but then I went to college to pitch and my velo kept increasing. So I guess I became that — I became a power pitcher — more so after Tommy John.” Read the rest of this entry »

Bobby Miller doesn’t lack for confidence, and for good reason. Ranked No. 8 on our Los Angeles Dodgers Top Prospects list, the 22-year-old right-hander pairs electric stuff with a first-round pedigree. Selected 29th overall last year out of the University of Louisville, Miller excelled against SEC competition, and he’s gotten off to an excellent start in pro ball. Pitching for the High-A Great Lakes Loons, he’s allowed just eight hits and two runs, with 17 strikeouts, in five starts comprising 14.1 innings.

Miller talked about his growth as a pitcher, and the power arsenal he takes to the mound, following his last outing.

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

Bobby Miller: “I’d like to say I’m the most confident person out there. Other than that, I have velocity and a lot of other pitches. I’m four-seam, two-seam, changeup, slider, curveball. I’m also working on a different slider right now. But yeah, I’m always going to bring the energy out there. No doubt about that. I think that’s a good way to describe me.”

Laurila: Is being “the most confident guy out there” ever a negative?

Miller: “No, I don’t think so. Not at all. I think it can help pick the rest of our team up, as well. Depending on how the game is going… maybe it’s a super-close game. I like to show how confident I am.”

Laurila: How about when you’re getting hit? Are you going to keep challenging hitters?

Miller: “I’m always going to keep challenging hitters, no matter how good or bad I’m doing. Whatever is working for me best that day, I’m going to stick with that until they prove they can do something with it. If they do, then I start going to my other stuff.”

Laurila: Do you identify as a power-pitcher? Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here. Today’s notes feature thoughts on three college hitters who played in the NCAA Regionals, as well as three pitching prospects currently in the big leagues.

Reed Trimble, CF, Southern Miss
Draft Class: 2021  Age: 21
Regional Line: 14-for-25, 4 HR

Notes
When I named Trimble one of Conference USA’s top prospects in a tournament preview post from a couple weeks ago, I made a mistake with respect to his draft eligibility. He’s indeed a (COVID) freshman, but his 21st birthday was Sunday, so he’s a draft-eligible freshman. Trimble hit .345/.414/.638 this year, and the Southern Miss schedule was no cakewalk even though they’re a mid-major. It included 12 games against eventual regional host and top-16 team Louisiana Tech, as well as games against Mississippi State, Alabama, Florida State and Ole Miss, and four against South Alabama, who made a deep regional run. Read the rest of this entry »

Emerson Hancock brought a power arsenal with him to the Seattle Mariners organization. Drafted sixth-overall last year out of the University of Georgia, the 22-year-old right-hander features a mid-90s fastball, a biting slider, a plus changeup, and a capable curveball. But he’s not your prototypical flamethrower. While not backing away from the power-pitcher label, Hancock fashions himself more as a craftsman, a starter who can go deep into games by mixing and matching, and by commanding the strike zone. His track record backs that up. Over his final two collegiate seasons — this in the talent-laded SEC — he logged 131 strikeouts, and walked just 21, in 114-and-a-third innings.

No. 4 on our Mariners Top Prospects list, Hancock currently has a 2.19 ERA in four starts comprising 12.1 innings with the High-A Everett AquaSox. He talked pitching with FanGraphs over the weekend.

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David Laurila: To start, give me a self scouting report. How do you identify as a pitcher?

Emerson Hancock: “One thing I’ve always tried to do, especially since college, is be able to ‘pitch’ — mix speeds, throw pitches in different locations, throw anything in any count to get hitters off balance. That’s something I take pride in. Another thing is trying to do the little things right, like holding runners.”

Laurila: You have plus stuff. How do you go about balancing power and command?

Hancock: “Something that’s helped me is that I haven’t always had the power. In high school, I struggled to have that big-time velocity, so I kind of had to learn at a younger age how to ‘pitch.’ At Georgia, [velocity] started happening — it came along — so now I had this other way. I had to learn how to use it. Even now, in the minor leagues, I’m trying to find different ways to use it. It’s something that’s always evolving for me.” Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Ethan Small, LHP, Milwaukee Brewers
Level & Affiliate: Double-A Biloxi  Age: 24   Org Rank: TBD   FV: 45
Line: 5.2 IP, 2 H, 2 BB, 0 R, 8 K

Notes
Small had a sketchy spring with the big club and has walked an uncharacteristically high number of hitters early on this year, but his last couple of starts have been more in line with expectations as he blows his low-90s fastball (which has big time carry) past opposing hitters. Small’s best secondary pitch remains his changeup and there were doubts about him ever finding a competent breaking ball when he was drafted. So far, his slider and curveball remain below average but that there are now two distinct breakers here is meaningful. He still projects as a No. 4/5 starter with a shot to make the back of the Top 100 as a 50 FV if the command and/or breaking balls tighten up. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite things about attending a live baseball game is how it sounds. Sure, the pops and cracks of leather and wood on the field are comforting in their own right, but what I’m really talking about is the chatter. The constant din of anonymous talkers throwing out well-researched stats, or strongly felt opinions on pitchers’ hair length, or two-notches-too-loud questions about where the Bud Light guy is. And as much as I enjoy the ambient noise of a major-league ballpark, for my money, there is no baseball chatter that compares to that found in the stands of a high school game.

At the end of May, I attended my first live baseball game since 2019, a matchup on the South Side of Chicago between Marist High School and Marian Catholic. Heading into the game, Marist had the best record in Illinois, thanks in part to Noah Smith, their toolsy infielder, and our top-ranked high school prospect in the state. Also on the field was Smith’s Area Codes teammate and fellow Louisville commit, Eddie King Jr., playing in the outfield for Marian Catholic. But in the bleachers along the first base line, the chatter wasn’t about whether Smith would ever eliminate the sway in his swing and stabilize his head to more consistently identify breaking balls, or how hot a bat King was swinging after he smashed a double off the left-field wall (he had homered in the game the day before, also against Marist). Instead, I found myself seated in between a group of teens who had googled the team’s roster because one of them was pretty sure she’d sat next to one of the outfielders in Freshman Spanish, and a mom who spent the entire game playing defense against her toddler, who was intent on pulling on the cord coming out of the camera she had perched on the railing to record her older son’s performance on the field.

After the game, there were hugs and pats on the back from the parents in the stands, and awkward giggles from the group of girls I’d been sitting by, none of whom seemed keen on actually approaching any of the players. Marian Catholic won 9-7, issuing Marist its first conference loss of the season (and third loss overall), and knocking them down to second place in the state. If anyone in the stands noticed, they hid their disappointment well. But regardless of whether or not the audience at this mid-week, mid-afternoon high school game was aware of the stakes of the game itself, it was clear how much they cared about the players on the field. The sense of community was palpable. Even as an outsider, I felt like I’d attended an event that meant something to my fellow spectators – something specific, and unrelated to baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Cole Winn has been on a roll. Pitching for the Double-A Frisco Rough Riders, the 21-year-old right-hander is coming off consecutive scoreless starts where he’s allowed just one hit and fanned 13 batters in 12 innings of near-spotless work. The earlier of those outings was notable for more than just his dominance. As the 2018 first-rounder stood on the mound, a fox darted across the field, traversed the warning track, and finally escaped, untouched by human hands.

Winn — No. 3 on our Texas Rangers Top Prospects list and with a 1.63 ERA on the season — talked pitching (and fox-delays) prior to last Thursday’s game.

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David Laurila: Before we get to pitching, I need to ask you about the fox…

Cole Winn: “I didn’t see it until after I threw the pitch. It was kind of a blur that ran right in front of me. And it was a little bit frustrating that it took so long to get it off the field, because I felt like I was in a good groove. I was on a roll, and that kind of slowed me up for a pitch or two before I got back into it. But honestly, it’s one of the strangest things that’s ever had happened to me — or that I’ve ever witnessed — on a baseball field.”

Laurila: Where was the fox when you first noticed it?

Winn: “When I first saw it, it was right in front of me. Like, it ran between home plate and the pitcher’s mound. I have no clue where it came from. I asked around, and no one else knew where it came from. So it was strange. It was really strange.”

Laurila: The video I saw ended with the fox still running along the warning track. How did it get off the field? Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Los Angeles Angels. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. As there was no minor league season in 2020, there are some instances where no new information was gleaned about a player. Players whose write-ups have not been meaningfully altered begin by telling you so. As always, I’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside of a given org than those within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, I’ve primarily focused on data from there, and the context of that data, in my opinion, reduces how meaningful it is. Lastly, in an effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both on my lists and on The Board: MIRP, or multi-inning relief pitcher, and SIRP, or single-inning relief pitcher.

For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed, you can click here. For further explanation of Future Value’s merits and drawbacks, read Future Value.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It can be found here.

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Santiago Florez, RHP, Pittsburgh Pirates
Level & Affiliate: Low-A Bradenton  Age: 21   Org Rank: 36   FV: 40
Line: 6 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 10 K

Notes
We’re starting to enter an uncharted evaluation context for young pitchers. Big league fastbll usage has been trending down over the last several years but breaker-heavy approaches to pitching haven’t been as pervasive in the minors during prospect development. Especially for pitchers like Florez, who are at best on the starter/reliever line, teams generally make an effort to try to develop fastball command that will give the prospect a chance to start. Per Savant, Florez got 20 swings and misses last night, most of them on his curveball, which he threw a ton. Of his 84 pitches, only 27 were fastballs. He threw about a dozen changeups, while the rest (nearly half his total pitches) were curveballs. I have conflicting thoughts around increased breaking ball usage — how much of the improved results generated by more breakers is coming from what is essentially per-pitch stuff quality, how much is from increased unpredictability as we exit the era of “establishing the fastball,” and is there a point where so many breaking balls are being thrown that the unpredictability piece regresses? — but seeing it on a Low-A arm forces me to view his performance in an unfamiliar context as the Pirates have a 21-year-old lean into what he’s already good at rather than try to improve what he’s not. Now, for Florez specifically, taking this approach at this point in his developmental track makes sense because even though he’s only 21, he’s Rule 5 eligible this offseason and a year from now all he and the Pirates may care about is how he gets outs coming out of a big league bullpen, which will feature him throwing a ton of his breaking ball. Read the rest of this entry »