Xavier Isaac’s game is built around damage. No. 98 on our recently-released Top 100, the 21-year-old, left-handed-hitting Tampa Bay Rays prospect has, according to our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen, “some of the most exciting power in pro baseball.” Getting to it consistently will be his biggest challenge going forward. As Longenhagen also wrote in his report, “By the end of the season, [Isaac] had a sub-60% contact rate, which is not viable at the big league level… [but] if “he can get back to being a nearly 70% contact hitter, he’s going to be a monster.”
While Isaac’s 143 wRC+ between High-A Bowling Green and Double-A Montgomery was impressive, his 33.3% strikeout rate was another story. The built-to-bash first baseman knows that cutting down on his Ks will go a long way toward his living up to his lofty potential. At the same time, he’s wary of straying too far from his strengths.
“I’ve tuned up my power, and now I need to get my contact up a little bit more,” Isaac told me during the Arizona Fall League season. “It’s like a tradeoff, kind of. I’m going to strike out, but I’m also going to hit the ball a little harder. I have a lot of power, so some of it is about going up there and taking a risk. I obviously don’t want to strike out — I‘m trying to put it in play — but I also don’t want to be making soft contact.”
That’s seldom a problem when he squares up a baseball. Not only does his bat produce high exit velocities, he knows what it feels like to propel a pitch 450-plus feet. He doesn’t shy way from the power-hitter label. Asked if that’s what he is, his response was, “For sure.”
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the end of the Yankees’ beard ban, the potential end of MLB’s business relationship with ESPN, and whether the World Baseball Classic should imitate the NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off. Then they preview the 2025 Texas Rangers (50:07) with MLB.com’s Kennedi Landry, and the 2025 Pittsburgh Pirates (1:27:23) with Pittsburgh Baseball Now’s John Perrotto, plus a postscript (2:03:57) about Ben’s growing affection for Tigers righty John Brebbia.
The need to define a scope, to create a boundary of coverage, creates a hole in prospect writing. Most public-facing prospect publications, FanGraphs included, analyze and rank players who are still rookie-eligible because, contrary to what you’ve probably learned about my capacity to be long-winded over the years, you just have to stop somewhere. Because of this, every year there are players who fall through the cracks between the boundaries of prospect coverage and big league analysis. These are often players who came up, played enough to exhaust their rookie eligibility, and then got hurt and had a long-term rehab in the minors. Or who graduated and then have been mothballed at Triple-A due to clogged major league rosters ahead of them. The goal of this piece is to highlight some of the players who no longer fit the parameters of my prospect lists and provide an updated long-term scouting prognosis for each of them.
Peraza was evaluated as an average everyday shortstop when he was last a prospect. Backburnered due to the emergence of Anthony Volpe, Peraza is still an above-average shortstop defender despite average arm strength. He’s always had a slight power-over-hit offensive skillset, and that dynamic has continued; Peraza still has above-average bat speed but only had a 71% contact rate in 2024. He dealt with a shoulder strain which kept him out for most of the first two months of the season and might have impacted his hitting ability. If the shoulder injury continues to affect his bat and he ends up with closer to a 30-grade hit tool instead of his projected 45, he would end up as a utility man rather than a regular.
Rodriguez came to Pittsburgh via the three-team Joe Musgrove deal in 2021, and graduated in 2023 as a 55-FV prospect thanks to projected plus contact ability and catching defense. He needed Tommy John surgery after the 2023 season and missed almost all of 2024, except for 10 games in September at Altoona and Indianapolis. Rodriguez looks bigger and stronger now, and the receiving aspect of his catching defense was fine when he returned, though he had only a few opportunities to throw (he popped 1.97, and 1.90 on a throw cut in front of the bag) and wasn’t really forced to block any pitches in the dirt in his few games back there. Offensively, he looked rusty. He wasn’t rotating as well as before the injury, but he still flashed low-ball bat control from both sides of the dish. I’m wondering if the Pirates had conversations about Rodriguez playing winter ball as a way to get him live reps and, if so, why they decided not to send him. He didn’t play enough to have cogent, updated thoughts on anything but his defense, which I thought looked fine.
I started to move off of Luciano prior to the start of the 2023 season, when he fell to the very back of my Top 100, then was completely off it in 2024. Not only had he made zero progress as a shortstop defender but cracks began to show in his offense. Across the last couple of seasons, as opposing pitchers’ fastball velocity climbed while Luciano traversed the minors, his ability to pull fastballs completely evaporated. He can crush a hanging breaking ball, but his bat path is such that he can really only inside-out heaters to right field. Through my own learned experience, this has become a warning sign when it’s true of low-level prospects. If Luciano can’t pull fastballs when they’re 92 mph, what happens when they’re 95? Well, we’re finding out that it means he has a 70% contact rate, and that in effort to be more on time against fastballs he’s lunging at sliders and missing 40% of those. For a player who is only now just starting to learn the outfield, and therefore not really bringing anything polished to the table at the moment, that’s a problem. The late transition on defense was a stubborn misstep, probably by some combination of Luciano and the org. The Giants were perhaps trying to preserve Luciano’s prospect value for as long as possible (which I suppose worked to an extent, just not here at FG) by leaving him at shortstop and hoping nobody would notice he couldn’t actually play there.
The good news is that Luciano still hits the ball really hard, as do the couple of good big league outfielders who power through their sub-70% contact rates, which appears to be what Luciano will have to do. Think of guys like Teoscar Hernández and Brent Rooker, who broke out in their late 20s. Outcomes like that are perhaps an eventuality for Luciano, but the Giants aren’t exactly in a long-term rebuild such that they’ll be happy to wait around for it to happen. Luciano is also entering his final option year, which means if they want to retain him, those growing pains will have to occur under the big league spotlight. His tenure with San Francisco has been painted into a bit of a corner. He’s still a 40+ FV player for me, and I think Luciano will have a meaningful power-hitting peak in his physical prime, but I think that’s more likely to occur in a different uniform.
I’m still keen on Matos who, despite some relevant flaws, is a special contact hitter with unique pull power characteristics. Matos graduated as a 55-FV prospect in 2023, in part because I believed he could play a viable center field (he cannot). He spent most of 2024 at Triple-A and has struggled to find big league footing, slashing a career .235/.288/.344 in 400 total plate appearances across a couple of seasons. Despite a frustrating tendency to chase, Matos has still maintained high-end contact rates (92% in-zone, 85% overall), and he has a special ability to cover high fastballs with power. A body blow to Matos’ fit on a big league roster is that he’s a below-average corner defender. That’s fine for guys like Juan Soto, Yordan Alvarez, Riley Greene, and Anthony Santander, but less so for one-note offensive performers, which is what Matos might be. Matos’ chase, and the way it saps his game power because he’s putting sub-optimal pitches into play, makes it more likely that his FV hovers in that 30-to-40 range when you stack him against the other corner outfielders across the next several seasons.
Walker was sent down to Memphis in April, didn’t come back up until mid-August, and struggled on both sides of the ball upon his return. The Cardinals have a new hitting coach and so this might change, but Walker’s swing (and more specifically his spray despite his style of swinging) is bizarre. He hits with an enormous open stride, bailing way out toward third base, the swing of someone trying like hell to pull the ball. But he still mostly doesn’t, certainly not as much as you’d expect from someone swinging like this. Walker has also never had especially good secondary pitch recognition, and changeups and sliders both performed like plus-plus pitches against him last year. His current swing certainly doesn’t help him cover those outer edge sliders.
On defense, Walker made a full-time transition from third base to the outfield in 2023, but he’s never looked comfortable catching the baseball out there, and that remained true at the end of 2024. Walker is still only 22 years old and has impact tools in his power, speed, and arm strength. His top-end speed for a 6-foot-6, 250-pound guy is amazing, his outfield arm is one of the better ones in baseball, and his bat speed is near elite. Aside from his lack of plate discipline, Walker shares a lot of similarities with Pat Burrell. Burrell was also a heavy-footed outfielder who relied on his arm on defense, and his issues with secondary pitches continued throughout his career, but ultimately his power made him a very productive player for a long time. Walker was in the big leagues before he turned 21, and Burrell didn’t debut until well after his 23rd birthday. I think Walker deserves more runway, and I’m still optimistic that he can be a middle-of-the-order hitter during his window of team control, but there probably has to be a swing change here.
For the last couple of years, Pratto’s strikeout rates have continued to hover around 30%, even in the minors, and while his swing still has superlative lift, his raw power has plateaued and is insufficient for a first baseman striking out this much. He’s out of options and is on the Royals’ roster bubble.
Trammell only played 10 big league games last year. He looks pretty much the same as he did in 2021 when he was struggling to get his footing in Seattle. He still has above-average power and speed, but he’s a 65% contact hitter who hasn’t been able to cover high fastballs. Despite his speed, Trammell is still not an especially skilled defender; he is a clunky fit in center, and his arm makes left field his best spot. He doesn’t make enough contact to be a regular, but he fits great on a roster as the fifth outfielder. He brings big energy and motor to the party, and he can run into the occasional extra-base hit coming off the bench.
Grissom, who was traded straight up for Chris Sale, looked pretty bad in 2024 amid multiple hamstring injuries. He is not a good defensive second baseman (the only position he played last year), and has a 50-hit, 40-power combination on offense. That’s a fringe big leaguer.
Bubba Chandler is on track to join Paul Skenes and Jared Jones in the power department of the Pittsburgh Pirates starting rotation. Equipped with an elite upper-90s fastball and a solid array of secondary offerings, the 22-year-old right-hander has emerged as one of baseball’s highest-ceiling pitching prospects. As Eric Longenhagen notes in our forthcoming Top 100, Chandler, who was a two-sport, two-way player as an amateur and began focusing solely on pitching in 2023, is still developing, but “so far, [it’s] going as well as could have been hoped when he was drafted, and he’s tracking like a mid-rotation starter.”
His 2024 season offered ample evidence of his ability to overpower hitters. In 119 2/3 innings between Double-A Altoona and Triple-A Indianapolis, Chandler fanned 148 batters while surrendering just 81 hits. Along with a 30.9% strikeout rate and a .187 batting-average-against, he logged a 3.08 ERA and a 3.10 FIP. Moreover, he displayed improved command. The 2021 third-round draft pick out of Bogart, Georgia’s North Oconee High School lowered his walk rate from 10.5% in 2023 to a stingier 8.6% last season.
Chandler discussed his developmental strides, and the bat-missing arsenal he takes with him to the mound, earlier this month.
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David Laurila: What have you learned about pitching since getting to pro ball?
Bubba Chandler: “The number one thing has been command. You can have great stuff, but I’ve noticed that the more I’ve gone up [minor league levels], the less guys swing at crappy pitches. In Low-A, you can throw a slider way out of the zone, and a lot of times you’re going to get a swing. If you throw a slider way out of the zone in Triple-A, especially if you didn’t set that pitch up, you’re not even going to get a lean over, or a budge, on it.
“Learning how to set pitches up has been a big thing for me. Setting them up, tunneling, and just how pitches move… but really, the command part is really what has helped make me better.” Read the rest of this entry »
Tommy Pham is on the move again. The well-traveled outfielder reportedly agreed to a one-year, $4.025 million deal with the Pirates on Thursday, meaning that he’ll join his ninth team over the past five seasons and the 10th of his 12-year career. Past experience suggests he should probably rent instead of buy.
Pham, who will turn 37 on March 8, spent time with three different teams in 2024. Despite a very solid 2023 showing — .256/.328/.446 (109 wRC+) with 16 homers, 22 steals, and 1.9 WAR — with the Mets and Diamondbacks, he went unsigned through spring training before finally inking a deal with the White Sox in mid-April. He escaped their record-setting futility when he was traded back to the Cardinals (who originally drafted him in 2006) as part of the three-way swap that sent Michael Kopech and Tommy Edman to the Dodgers, and then was plucked off of waivers by the Royals on August 31. At least he’s gotten back-to-back trips to the postseason thanks to all that moving around.
Whether it was because he missed spring training, never stayed in one place for long, or was increasingly subject to the ravages of aging — spending time around those White Sox and Cardinals teams could take years off a man’s life — Pham did not play well in 2024. He hit just .248/.305/.368, setting career lows in on-base percentage and walk rate (7.3%) as well as a full-season low in slugging percentage. (He slugged .312 in 125 plate appearances during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.) He was basically replacement level in 2024, and his 91 wRC+ fit into the weird pattern he’s shown over the past half-decade, with above-average seasons in odd-numbered years and below-average seasons in even-numbered ones. Maybe that bodes well for the Buccos. Read the rest of this entry »
I went to the Pirates’ RosterResource page this morning and thought the following thought: “Man, is Isiah Kiner-Falefa really going to lead off for this team? God, that’s depressing.” Not that I have anything against IKF; it’s just symptomatic of a Pirates team that seems built to do little more than participate in the coming season.
The Pirates being an afterthought is nothing new; on the contrary, it’s been the default state of affairs for most of the past 45 years. But recent developments have made this a particularly frustrating time for Pirates fans.
At the risk of oversimplifying things, there are two kinds of good players: Players you can get and players you have to have drop out of the sky for you. Like Willy Adames is a really good player, and worth the monster contract the Giants just gave him. But if he’d signed elsewhere, the Giants could’ve found another player like him.
Jared Koenig’s path to big-league success was anything but smooth. The southpaw didn’t throw his first pitch in affiliated baseball until he was 27 years old, that coming in the Oakland Athletics organization after three seasons on the indie-ball circuit. And while he made his MLB debut the following year, he appeared in just 10 games, logging a 5.72 ERA and losing three of four decision. That was in 2022. Subsequently signed by San Diego, he put up nothing-special numbers in Triple-A and was cut loose by the Padres midway through the 2023 campaign.
The Brewers gave him another opportunity. Milwaukee inked the 6-foot-5 left-hander to a contract prior to last season, and they’re certainly glad they did. Working primarily out of the bullpen — he served as an opener on six occasions — Koenig made 55 appearances for the NL Central champs, putting up a 2.47 ERA and a 3.28 FIP over 62 frames. Moreover, he was credited with nine wins and one save. Seemingly out of the blue, he’d come into his own as a 30-year-old rookie.
Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images and Robert Deutsch-Imagn Images
Here’s a sentence that you probably didn’t expect to see a few years ago: The Pittsburgh Pirates were one of the most exciting teams of 2024. They had the Rookie of the Year and an instant contender for best pitcher in baseball in Paul Skenes. Jared Jones was electric. They’re chock full of young hitting prospects. And let’s reiterate: Paul Skenes!
As you might expect, the Pirates hit this offseason with some momentum. It’s hard to find superstars, but Skenes is one of the best five pitchers on the planet, and honestly, I think he might be the best, period. This is the type of winter that lends itself to going for it. The hype will likely never be greater. Add a star or two around Skenes, fill out the bottom of the lineup, and this team could win a weak NL Central. Come playoff time, no one in the world would want to face the Pirates. So it’s with some remorse that I announce their latest signings. On Monday, lefty reliever Tim Mayza agreed to a one-year, $1.15 million contract; on Tuesday, utilityman Adam Frazier followed suit with a one-year, $1.525 million pact.
Frazier was a fun story the last time he was on the Pirates. In the depths of their despair, he was a rare burst of energy, Luis Arraez before Arraez hit the big time. He rarely struck out, rarely hit homers, and caused chaos by putting the ball in play even without blazing speed. Heck, he even drew a nice trade return when the Pirates sent him to the Padres ahead of the 2021 deadline, headlined by Jack Suwinski and Tucupita Marcano, both of whom have made contributions to the big league club. Read the rest of this entry »
The Tampa Bay Rays have a reputation of getting the best out of previously undervalued pitchers, and Garrett Cleavinger is a prime example. Acquired from the Los Angeles Dodgers in August 2022 in exchange for German Tapia, the 30-year-old southpaw was subsequently limited to 12 games in 2023 due to a knee injury, but a breakout was right around the corner. Cleavinger made a career-high 68 appearances last year, logging a 3.75 ERA and a 26.7 strikeout rate over 60 relief innings. His ledger included seven wins and six saves.
A high-octane heater was one of his best weapons; at 96.3 mph, Cleavinger’s four-seamer ranked in the 84th percentile for velocity. With that in mind, I asked the Lawrence, Kansas native if he identifies as a power pitcher.
“It’s a part of my game,” Cleavinger told me at the close of the 2024 campaign. “I’m definitely not a pinpoint command guy like some pitchers are — I wish I was a little bit better in that aspect — but power stuff coming out of the pen does kind of fit the description for me.”
Possessor of a varied arsenal is another accurate description. The erstwhile University of Oregon closer now features five-pitches, only one of which he threw less than 10 percent of the time. Per Baseball Savant, the breakdown was: cutter 26.3%, four-seamer 24.8%, slider 22.0%, sweeper 17.4%, and two-seamer 9.5%. Two of those were recent additions. Read the rest of this entry »
Back in early October, Termarr Johnson self-assuredly told MLB Pipeline’s Jim Callis that he is continuing to work on being “the best hitter in the world.” The 20-year-old Pittsburgh Pirates prospect didn’t put it quite that way when I spoke to him days later, but he did exude determination and confidence when addressing his craft. That’s understandable. Drafted fourth overall in 2022 out of Atlanta’s Mays High School, Johnson remains a high-ceiling hitter, albeit one whose developmental path hasn’t been as smooth as many had anticipated.
His 2024 season included both stumbles and strides. The 5-foot-7, 190-pound middle infielder logged a solid 121 wRC+ between High-A Greensboro (487 plate appearances) and Double-A Altoona (57), but as our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen wrote last summer, Johnson’s “underlying contact data is pretty concerning.” Moreover, while his 15 home runs were indicative of plus power potential, the accompanying .386 slugging percentage was a bit underwhelming. Johnson’s left-handed stroke is unquestionably capable of causing damage, but further fine-tuning is needed before that can happen at the big league level.
Johnson discussed his approach to hitting shortly after the start of the Arizona Fall League season.
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David Laurila: You’re still just 20 years old. Do you feel that you’ve settled into your identity as a hitter?
Termarr Johnson: “For sure. I feel like I have a pretty good swing, and I hit the ball hard pretty often, so I’m just trying to keep a good approach and bring the pitcher to me. I feel like that puts me in the best position possible. And to be honest with you, I’m a different hitter every at-bat. I’m a different hitter based on… like, every pitcher is different. Every pitch is different. Every situation is different. I’ll be a different hitter if there’s a runner on base and I’m trying to get him in, late in the game, or I’ll be a different hitter when I’m leading off the game.”
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