Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Chicago White Sox. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the fifth 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. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) 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 »
It wasn’t supposed to go down this way. Oneil Cruz is 26 years old and still has as much talent as just about any player in baseball. Here’s what I wrote back in August, when the Pirates moved him to the outfield and I eulogized Oneil Cruz the Shortstop: “Cruz is still just 25. I do think it’s more likely that he’ll be fine in center, and possibly even great. Quite simply, there’s more margin for error in the outfield. He’ll take some bad routes and make some bad reads, but he’ll be able to make the most of his speed…” The early returns are not exactly making either Cruz or me look great.
Cruz spent 23 games in center to end the 2024 season, and the results were mixed. His best grades came from Statcast, which had him putting up a very encouraging 2 OAA and 1 FRV. However, Cruz was credited with -3 DRS and -2.1 DRP. On a per-inning basis, the latter number made him one of the worst center fielders in baseball. Still, all those numbers included two errors, which loomed very large in such a small sample size. Outfielders tend not to make that many errors, but Cruz was brand new to the position. He was fast. He had a rocket arm. Even if all he did was cut out the errors, he’d be at the very least a decent center fielder. It was reasonable to assume that he would only get better out there.
He has not yet gotten better out there. Cruz is currently sitting on -8 DRS, -2 OAA and FRV, and -0.1 DRP. Among all outfielders, those numbers respectively rank worst, third worst, fourth worst, and fifth worst. The advanced defensive metrics work on different scales and they often disagree, but on this point they are unanimous: Cruz has been one of the very worst outfielders in all of baseball this season. According to DRS, Cruz is the least-valuable defender in baseball, full stop. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s never fun being the subject of a story that people call a saga. So when the Pete Alonso free agency saga transpired over the winter, I wondered whether he’d get off to a sluggish start as a result. Signing for less money than your agent told you you’d make, later than you expected to sign, and with a team offering you a smaller contract than they had the year before? It’s enough to make spring training a bit less of a ramp-up period and a bit more of a time for taking out frustration. If Alonso had started slow this season, I wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow.
Turns out, Pete Alonso isn’t like me. Instead of sulking a little and coasting into the regular season, he’s come out like a man possessed. Through Tuesday’s action (17 games), he’s hitting an outrageous .356/.466/.729, the kind of batting line that doesn’t really make any sense and doesn’t need to. Suffice it to say, he’s not going to stay this hot unless he’s secretly Lou Gehrig, a development that would raise more questions than it answered. So we don’t need to ask whether this form is real – we can instead focus on what Alonso is doing the same and differently, and then go from there.
What is Alonso best at? That’s right, hitting the ball in the air with authority. That’s always been his calling card and it’s no different this year. Want a simple way of stating that? He leads the majors with 13 barrels, one ahead of Aaron Judge. That’s the kind of power you’d expect from a first baseman who averages 38 homers per 600 plate appearances (2020 makes “per year” stats pretty annoying). Even last season, Alonso’s worst in the bigs, he finished 13th in the majors in barrels. He plays a lot and he hits the ball very hard; those are things we’ve always known about Alonso. Read the rest of this entry »
I didn’t come close to an answer, because while watching Baz pitch, I was struck by the sparseness of the young right-hander’s uniform. Only three letters in his name; two digits in his uniform number, but represented by skinny numerals. It stood out on the Rays’ classy blue-on-white uniforms. (Some say it’s boring and/or derivative, but I disagree — it’s a color scheme that’ll never steer you wrong in baseball.)
Then I lost the plot a little. The Rays don’t have a jersey sponsor, and their sleeve patch doesn’t contain any script. Their team name is only four letters long. How close does Baz come to having the fewest characters on his uniform of any major league player? Read the rest of this entry »
Randal Grichuk was ranked seventh when our 2015 St. Louis Cardinals Top Prospects list was published in March of that year. Acquired by the NL Central club in trade 16 months earlier, the then-22-year-old outfielder had been drafted 24th overall by the Los Angeles Angels out of a Rosenberg, Texas high school in 2009. The selection is a well-known part of his story. Grichuk was the first of back-to-back Angels’ picks that summer, the second being Mike Trout.
Grichuk has gone on to have a good career. Now in his 13th major league season, and his second with the Arizona Diamondbacks, the right-handed-hitting slugger has propelled 203 home runs while logging a 102 wRC+. Moreover, none of the 23 players drafted in front of him (in what was admittedly a pitcher-heavy first round) have homered as many times, nor have they recorded as many hits. AJ Pollock is the only position player with a higher WAR.
What did Grichuk’s 2015 scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think of it a full decade later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what our then-lead prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel wrote, and asked Grichuk to respond to it.
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“Grichuk was the Angels first rounder that they took one pick ahead of Mike Trout in 2009, though Grichuk has turned into a solid prospect in his own right.”
“That’s accurate,” replied Grichuk. “I was taken one pick before Trout, and I played well enough in the minor leagues to be looked at as a prospect.”
Have you seen all the technological advances taking over pitching in recent years? High-speed cameras, pitching labs, weighted ball training, wind tunnels – maybe the reason we haven’t sent anyone to the moon for decades is that we’re using all the technology to strike batters out instead. Clearly, the arms race (get it?) favors technological savvy and complicated, inscrutable mathematical modeling.
Here’s a counterpoint, though: Maybe you should just throw a fastball and a slider and laugh as batters flail at both. Case in point: Randy Rodríguez has been the best reliever in baseball this year, and there’s nothing fancy about his game. He throws a 98-mph fastball. He throws a tight slider. That’s it – and that’s really all he needs anyway. Through eight appearances this year, he has 13 strikeouts, zero walks, and zero runs allowed.
Oh, two paragraphs don’t make an article? Well then, I guess we should expand on everything a bit. First, his backstory: Rodríguez signed with the Giants in 2017 out of the Dominican Republic and then slowly climbed the minor league ranks. He was a reliever right from the jump, with only occasional dalliances with short-burst starts, and he got a taste of Triple-A in 2022, where he got shelled. He tried it again in 2023 with better results, and by 2024 he looked like he belonged. That was his first year in the upper minors with a single-digit walk rate, and that’s all the Giants were waiting for; they called him up midseason and plugged him into the bullpen. Read the rest of this entry »
While the Twins continue to stumble, the Tigers are in first place in the AL Central, having recently won nine out of 11 games. Spencer Torkelson played a big part in that surge, homering four times over that span and five times so far this season, putting him halfway to last year’s total before tax day rolled around. As he’s done on and off throughout his brief career, the top pick of the 2020 draft is raking, but given his ups and downs since reaching the majors in ’22, it will take more than a few strong weeks to convince anyone he’s truly turned a corner. Still, the adjustments he’s made suggest this is more than just a random hot streak.
Through 156 games, the 25-year-old Torkelson is hitting an impressive .288/.380/.627. His slugging percentage ranks sixth in the American League, while his 184 wRC+ ranks eighth; he was second behind only Aaron Judge in both categories until Monday’s 0-for-4 against the Brewers. Admittedly, he hasn’t exactly been beating up on Cy Young Award hopefuls, as his homers have come at the expense of the Dodgers’ Alex Vesia, the White Sox’s Davis Martin, the Yankees’ Carlos Carrasco, and the Twins’ Kody Funderburk and Simeon Woods Richardson. But Tork and his teammates are part of the reason that list looks inauspicious, as the Tigers — who are 10-6 thus far, their best start since 2015 — have beaten up opposing pitchers, scoring 5.0 runs per game (tied for second in the AL) with a 116 wRC+ (third). Read the rest of this entry »
For the past half decade, Logan Webb has been one of the game’s premier starters. He churns out 30-start seasons with ERAs in the 3s like clockwork; that’s almost exactly his seasonal average since switching to a full-time sinkerballer in 2021. In that span, he’s averaging 4.4 WAR per year, and he’s topped 200 innings in each of the past two seasons. This year, he’s atop the leaderboards again, with a 2.63 ERA and 2.25 FIP through four starts. But there’s something new to see here, and it’s a change I thought Webb would make for years before he actually did, so I think an updated look is in order.
Webb’s approach was simple and yet effective. He threw three pitches to righties: sinker, sweeper, changeup. Against lefties, he threw fewer sweepers and more changeups, and he also mixed in a few four-seamers in lieu of sinkers. For the most part, though, he alternated his three best pitches, weighted to suit the batter he was facing. Here’s a great graphic, courtesy of Baseball Savant’s player pages, that shows Webb’s movement profile. I picked 2023 for reasons that will become obvious shortly:
This shows a few things about Webb’s game in one image. His sinker and changeup move very differently from the league-average versions of those pitches. His four-seamer, rarely thrown, is effective not because of inherent shape, but because it’s different from his primary fastball. His sweeper is the only thing he throws that breaks glove side, and it breaks that way by quite a lot. If you’re facing Webb, you’re either going to see something that tails hard arm side (sinker or changeup) or something that shoots hard glove side (sweeper). It’s like facing Clay Holmes or Blake Treinen for 100 pitches at a time. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve gotten prematurely excited aboutNick Lodolo before. This is not that. I’ve consulted my physician and I’m working on the problem. But he’s such a weird pitcher I can’t completely forget him.
What’s he up to now? Well, believe it or not, El Cóndor del Río Ohio is not walking anyone. Maybe that’ll change when he starts against the Mariners tonight, but through his first three starts, Lodolo has faced 71 batters and walked only one. And while he suffers the same predilection for hitting batters that plagues many long-levered sidearmers, Lodolo has plunked just one opponent in 2025. Read the rest of this entry »
Erick Fedde returned stateside in 2024 and had a career-best major league season. One year after going 20-6 with a 2.00 ERA for the KBO’s NC Dinos, the 32-year-old right-hander logged a 3.30 ERA and a 3.86 FIP over 31 starts between the Chicago White Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals. His previous big league campaigns had been relatively rocky. From 2017-2022, Fedde fashioned a 5.41 ERA and a 5.17 FIP with the Washington Nationals.
Fedde, whom St. Louis acquired at last summer’s trade deadline as part of an eight-player, three-team swap, entered professional baseball with high expectations. He was drafted 18th overall in 2014 despite having undergone Tommy John surgery during his junior season at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. When our 2017 Washington Nationals Top Prospects list was published in March of that year, Fedde was ranked third in the system, behind Victor Robles and Juan Soto.
What did Fedde’s 2017 scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think of it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen wrote, and asked Fedde to respond to it.
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“As a junior at UNLV, Fedde was a potential top-10 pick until he blew out in May.”
“Pretty accurate,” Fedde said. “Going into my junior year, I was projected to go at the end of the first round, and just kind of kept climbing as the year went. Unfortunately, I was hurt just before the draft. I think I had TJ two days prior. But it all worked out. I was still able to go in the first round, which was really cool.
“Jeff Hoffman, who was drafted [ninth overall] by the Blue Jays, was kind of the big right-hander ahead of me. He blew out earlier in the year. I think he was kind of up there with me and Aaron Nola at one point. We were looking at possibly top 10, although I don’t know if there was a specific team.”
“Fedde’s fastball mostly sits 90-94 and will touch 96 with a bit of sink and run.”
“I’d say that’s pretty spot on,” Fedde replied. “I didn’t really start throwing hard until that sophomore-to-junior summer; that’s when I started getting up there. I was a consistent 92-93, but the big thing I remember was that I would hold velocity, if not gain it, as the game went on. That’s something I think scouts enjoyed.”
“Fedde’s out pitch is a slider, mostly 81-84 mph, that flashes plus but can get slurvy and lose bite when he doesn’t get on top of it.”
“Yeah, 100%,” he acknowledged. “I think I was throwing a sweeper before I knew what a sweeper was. A couple of years ago that became the total rave — it became the belle of the ball in the sense of pitching — and it’s kind of what I threw. At that time we would call it slurvy, but in today’s world it’s a sweeper.”
“His arm slot can get slingy and low, making it hard for him to drive the ball down.”
“I mean, at that point my life all I did was throw the ball down in the zone,” Fedde countered. “At least mentally, that’s what I was trying to do.”
“Not all scouts are enamored of Fedde’s delivery. His lower half is frail, often unbalanced, and at times plays no role in his delivery at all.”
“I was a thin guy,” recalled Fedde, who now stands 6-foot-4 and weighs 205 pounds. “I think I left for the draft at like 175 pounds. So, I guess I probably relied on whip and quickness instead of strength. I don’t know. Maybe that came into the idea of my having a lack of leg use.”
“If Fedde can improve his currently fringy, mid-80s changeup, he’ll have a viable three-pitch mix and above-average command of it.”
“Yeah, I feel like I’ve always been pretty good with command,” he said. “It’s something that I’ve leaned on throughout my career. The changeup really stunk all the way up until a couple of years ago. So that’s very true. I finally feel like I have a decent changeup. And then, as I got into pro baseball, I learned a cutter to add to my mix. Now it’s a four-pitch mix.”
“He projects as a sinker/slider mid-rotation arm.”
“I think it’s been kind of east-to-west that way,” Fedde said. “I’ve been in the middle of rotations. I definitely would never say that I’ve been a number one. But yeah, just keep growing and hopefully push to the top end of rotations. Last season was my best so far, for sure. I had a lot of struggles early, a lot of learning. But like [the scouting report] said, if I can get a good changeup… I mean, I think the changeup really changed my career.”
