This season, Eric and Tess Taruskin will each have a minor league roundup post that runs during the week, with the earlier post recapping some of the weekend’s action. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

Alec Burleson, RF, St. Louis Cardinals
Level & Affiliate: Triple-A Memphis Age: 23 Org Rank: TBD FV: 40+
Weekend Line: 9-for-13, 3 2B, HR

Notes
As the Cardinals are apt to do with their prospects, they pushed Burleson, a former two-way player, to the upper levels very quickly, having him spend most of his first full season at Double-A before a late-season promotion to Memphis, where he began 2022. He has had virtually no issues, slashing .282/.337/.486 so far as a pro, with a whopping .321/.367/.591 line at Triple-A this year. Burleson has above-average raw power and is hitting the ball hard despite utilizing a simple swing, one that becomes even simpler when he has two strikes. He is adept at hitting up-and-in fastballs, though he sometimes strangely inside-outs them to left field, and he also tends to take pitches down and away from him the opposite way, with enough strength to do extra-base damage in that direction.

Burleson is a pretty aggressive hitter whose chase rates have historically been in the 37-40% range, which would put him among the top 25 or so swing-happiest qualified big league hitters. It’s a somewhat scary underlying data point for a guy who doesn’t bring a lot to the table on defense, as Burleson is a tentative corner outfielder with a surprisingly average arm for a former college pitcher. Burleson has absolutely put himself in the short-term big league conversation with his upper-level performance, but there’s still bust risk here and he’s likely a corner platoon bat who’ll compete with Lars Nootbaar (who has better plate discipline, but a swing less optimized for power) for plate appearances against righties once Corey Dickerson’s one-year deal is up. Read the rest of this entry »

This season, Eric and Tess Taruskin will each have a minor league roundup post that runs during the week, with the earlier post recapping some of the weekend’s action. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

Nick Loftin, CF, Kansas City Royals
Level & Affiliate: Double-A NW Arkansas Age: 23 Org Rank: TBD FV: 45
Weekend Line: 4-for-9, 2B, HR, SB

Notes
Loftin, who was drafted as a shortstop, was first listed as an outfielder on the Royals’ 2022 winter minicamp roster and has begun a transition to center field, playing there exclusively so far in 2022. It’s a logical move given the glut of middle infielders ahead of him in the org, and it’s worth noting that the Royals timed it so Loftin would have two seasons of play prior to his 40-man deadline day to make the move. While Loftin still needs some technical polish (for instance, he has a tendency to backpedal rather than turn his hips and run, and he doesn’t look comfortable with at-’em balls) and often looks like a recent conversion guy out there, his gap-to-gap range is very exciting, and he has the pure speed to be an above-average or better center field defender with reps.

Much more polished is Loftin’s bat. He’s extremely tough to beat with velocity and squares up fastballs with regularity, spraying them into both gaps. He keeps things incredibly simple at the plate, which is part of why he has made such consistent contact, but one can imagine him making more athletic use of his lower half and adding more power eventually. Loftin is also a very wiry, pretty skinny guy. He’s 23, so maybe the cement on his body is dry, but between his frame still having room for mass and his swing perhaps housing dormant power, there are a few potential avenues for him to add thump. Right now he profiles as a contact-oriented center fielder, a profile that’s currently pretty scarce across baseball. Myles Straw is a more extreme contemporary example. Read the rest of this entry »

It wasn’t long ago that the Cardinals viewed Paul DeJong as a foundational player. Coming off a 25-homer 2017 season in which he was the runner-up in the NL Rookie of the Year voting, they signed him to a six-year, $26 million extension — a record at the time for a player with less than a year of service time. But since his 30-homer All-Star showing in 2019, he’s battled injuries, illness, and himself with diminishing returns. On Tuesday, the Cardinals addressed his increasing struggles by optioning the 28-year-old shortstop to Triple-A Memphis.

DeJong is hitting just .130/.209/.208 for a 30 wRC+, ranking among the bottom four in the majors in all four of those categories among players with at least 80 plate appearances (he has 86). His dismal showing has followed two disappointing seasons with very different shapes, a 2021 campaign in which he hit for power with little else (.197/284/.390/, 86 wRC+, 19 HR) and a ’20 season in which he showed little pop (.250/322/.349, 87 wRC+, 3 HR).

Despite missing nearly three weeks (but just 11 games) when the Cardinals had a COVID-19 outbreak in August 2020, DeJong actually rebounded and hit quite well until mid-September of that season, but he closed in a 6-for-46 funk that dragged his numbers down, and went just 2-for-10 in the Wild Card Series against the Padres as the Cardinals were eliminated. He missed a month in May and June of last season due to a non-displaced rib fracture, then tweaked his back later in the year, and started just 19 of the team’s final 47 games as fill-in Edmundo Sosa outplayed him. Sosa, who hit .271/.346/.389 (104 wRC+) last year, got the call in the Wild Card Game, which the Cardinals lost to the Dodgers. Read the rest of this entry »

This season, Eric and Tess Taruskin will each have a minor league roundup post that runs during the week, with the earlier post recapping some of the weekend’s action. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

Darius Vines, RHP, Atlanta Braves
Level & Affiliate: Double-A Mississippi Age: 24 Org Rank: TBD FV: 35+
Weekend Line: 6.1 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 0 BB, 11 K

Notes
Even though Vines had K’d a batter per inning leading up to it, his trademark changeup hadn’t been consistently plus this year until Sunday’s outing. It’s actually been Vines’ fastball, which has lift and carry through the strike zone, that has induced most of his swings and misses this year, even though he hasn’t had any kind of velo spike and is still sitting in the 89-92 mph range and topping out close to 94. A fringy, low-80s slurve rounds out a solid if unspectacular pitch mix that has been weaponized by Vines’ command. Fastball playability, a good changeup, and plenty of strikes drive spot starter projection here. Vines will likely enter the offseason on Atlanta’s 40-man bubble. Read the rest of this entry »

Chances are you haven’t thought much about Edmundo Sosa recently. He lost the Cardinals’ starting shortstop gig to Paul DeJong before the season began, leading to inconsistent playing time. When given opportunities, he’s been hitting a paltry .160/.250/.160; striking out 42.9% of the time and walking zero percent of the time will do that. Making matters worse, his placement on the COVID-19 injured list last week further removed him from the action. He’s seen better days.

But wait — if you’re an astute reader, you might have noticed a curious detail. If Sosa has yet to draw a walk, how is his on-base percentage that high? I’m so glad you asked (and not me, who definitely didn’t need a segue). While Sosa has just 28 plate appearances to his name, he’s already been hit by a pitch three times. That seems like quite a high rate of plunkings! Indeed, here are the much-too-early-but-relevant leaders in hit by pitches per plate appearances so far this season. Guess who’s at the very top:

Take that, Michael Hermosillo. It’s Sosa who claims the throne by a small margin, but considering his offensive woes, the man needs any victory he can take. To Cardinals fans, though, his capabilities as a pitch magnet are nothing new. In 326 more successful plate appearances last season, Sosa dutifully bore the brunt of 17 pitches, which formed the backbone of a respectable .346 on-base percentage; he’s not the type to wait out four balls for it. That, in tandem with flashes of gap-to-gap power, made Sosa a sneaky component of the Cardinals’ yearly devil magic, as they made the postseason in stunning fashion.

It’s unfortunate that Sosa’s bat is dormant to begin 2022, but at least one offensive skill remains. Skill? Absolutely: certain hitters are better than others at getting plunked, and while there’s evidence that pitchers are driving the recent spike in hit-by-pitches, there’s also research suggesting that the latest generation of hitters are eager to endure pain for a free base. In Sosa’s case, any pitcher influence seems minimal; he’s seen about a league-average rate of pitches up-and-in thus far. That he led the league in HBP per PA last season (among hitters with 300 or more PA) and is continuing his reign is no accident. Sosa gets beaned a lot, and he’s good at it. Read the rest of this entry »

Brandon Marsh has an engaging personality and an innate ability to square up baseballs. He also has untapped potential. Rated as the top prospect in the Los Angeles Angels system prior to last season, the bearded, 24-year-old outfielder is building on a 2021 rookie campaign that saw him put up an 86 wRC+ over 70 games. Logging regular playing time in a dynamic L.A. lineup — this within an MLB-wide environment that is evoking memories of 1968’s “Year of the Pitcher” — Marsh is currently slashing .253/.318/.453 with four home runs and a 127 wRC+.

His offensive profile is more table-setter than bopper. Describing himself as a “gap-to-gap, doubles guy,” Marsh explained that while he’ll run into a ball from time to time, home runs are accidents. Line drives are his goal, which is precisely what the Angels want from him — and have wanted since taking him in the second round of the 2016 draft out of a Buford, Georgia high school.

“They’ve preached for me to keep my hands above the ball, and not be getting underneath and scooping it,” explained Marsh, who is listed at 6-foot-4, 215 pounds. “That type of deal. I’m not a strong, strong guy. I’m tall, but the barrel tends to lag sometimes, so I really need to stay through, and on top of the ball.”

Marsh went on to say that he views himself as a scrappy player whose role is to grind and get on base in front of “a lot of special players.” And while it’s true that he’s not in the same class as teammates such as Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, or Anthony Rendon, he nonetheless struck an excessively-humble tone when assessing his own talent level. Read the rest of this entry »

Who’s the best reliever in baseball? There are multiple ways to go about answering that question. You could pick the guy with the lowest projected ERA; that’s Josh Hader, with Emmanuel Clase, Liam Hendriks, and Taylor Rogers close behind. You could pick the guy with the best reputation; I’d go with Hendriks or Hader, but if you’re a giant Raisel Iglesias or Aroldis Chapman fan, I wouldn’t hold it against you.

If you want to look at what’s happening on the field, though, the best reliever in baseball is clearly Ryan Helsley. It’s not “probably Ryan Helsley.” It’s not “Ryan Helsley is in the conversation.” It’s just Ryan Helsley. He’s been absolutely dominant to start the year, so dominant that I’m not sure I have the right words for it.

If you follow the NL Central, you’ve surely heard of Helsley. He’s been in the majors for parts of the last four seasons as a flamethrowing reliever, and that part isn’t changing. He topped out at 103 mph this weekend, the kind of heat that makes Pitching Ninja sprint to his computer and search for the right emoji (he used fire, if you’re keeping score at home). But that pitch reduces Helsley’s performance to “he throws hard sometimes,” which undersells him to a comical extent.
Read the rest of this entry »

This season, Eric and Tess Taruskin will each have a minor league roundup post that runs during the week, with the earlier post recapping some of the weekend’s action. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

Calvin Ziegler, RHP, New York Mets
Level & Affiliate: Low-A St. Lucie Age: 19 Org Rank: TBD FV: 40
Weekend Line: 4.1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 9 K

Notes
Ziegler was generating enough buzz during minor league spring training that a scout in Arizona mentioned his name to me totally unprompted, as a heads up that he might be breaking out. A Canadian high schooler in the Toronto area, Ziegler was in a bind ahead of the 2021 draft because travel restrictions were going to make it hard for him to be seen by scouts. He transferred to TNXL Academy, an athletics “school” in Florida, for his pre-draft spring. The Mets made him their second round pick and signed him for just over $900,000, then shut him down during the regular season.

He’s come out hot to start 2022, at least from a bat-missing standpoint, with last Friday’s outing his most efficient from a strike-throwing standpoint. Ziegler’s stuff isn’t appreciably different than when he was in high school, though he is mixing in his secondary stuff more heavily. He used his fastball over 75% of the time on the summer showcase circuit, but his usage has been closer to 50% so far this year. Both Ziegler’s trademark breaking ball and his mid-80s changeup show bat-missing potential, though the former has much more consistent finish. While Ziegler doesn’t have the prototypical pitching prospect’s frame at a fairly mature six feet tall, his delivery is very athletic, with the power and balance he shows in his lower half and the flexibility of his upper back generating optimism that he might yet throw harder than his current 91-96 mph range. Ziegler’s “lack” of height and the way he gets deep into his legs during his delivery give his fastball a tough-to-hit line. Changeup and overall command refinement are all that stand between Ziegler and pretty comfortable projection into a rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

As you may already know, I’m something of an intentional walk connoisseur here at FanGraphs. When questionable ones occur, particularly in the playoffs, I like to delve into the specifics to figure out which ones are good decisions, which ones are close calls, and which ones are just plain silly.

Earlier this week, I wrote about Joe Maddon’s bases-loaded intentional walk, which was about as far on the silly end of the spectrum as you can get. Today, I’m going to cover the other notable intentional walk of the week: the Yankees giving Miguel Cabrera a free pass on Thursday. Then, as a bonus, I want to talk about Cardinals manager Oli Marmol and a clever thing he did that might escape notice if you aren’t watching closely.
Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Tess Taruskin. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

George Kirby, SP, Seattle Mariners
Level & Affiliate: Double-A Arkansas Age: 24 Overall Rank: 29 FV: 55
Line: 5 IP, 2H, 0R, 0BB, 8K

Notes
Kirby’s fastball sat 96-98 mph on Wednesday night, but more noteworthy was how little he threw it. He leaned much more heavily on his slider, curveball, and changeup, all of which flashed above average throughout the evening.

His increased use of those secondaries resulted in him throwing more balls than is typical of the control-specialist, but while that may have inflated his pitch count, he still kept it in check, and didn’t issue any free passes. More often than not, Kirby hit his spots and he missed bats with every offering, retiring the last 12 batters he faced in order. Read the rest of this entry »