Francisco Urbaez wasn’t sure what to expect when he reported to spring training. Signed by the Cincinnati Reds as a non-drafted free agent in June of last year, the 23-year-old infielder knew only that he was being given an opportunity. To say he’s made the most of it would be an understatement. In 275 plate appearances with the High-A Dayton Dragons, Urbaez is slashing an eyebrow-raising .332/420/.454.

A native of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Urbaez didn’t come to the United States solely to play baseball. The son of a mechanical engineer and a psychologist, he came to earn a degree.

“That was my family’s plan,” explained Urbaez, who spent two years at Chipola Junior College, and two more at Florida Atlantic University. “They were like, “Go to the States and play ball, and whatever happens happens, but you need an education first.”

Already fluent in English when he arrived in the U.S. at age 18, Urbaez was initially an Accounting major, but then changed to International Business, and ultimately to Business. And while baseball wasn’t the priority, it did serve as a catalyst. Former Toronto Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista is involved with a foundation that helps Latin American student-athletes come to the U.S. via scholarships, and Urbaez was one of the beneficiaries.

Unlike many Dominicans currently playing professional baseball, Urbaez hadn’t attracted a lot of attention while on the island. He received only one offer from an MLB organization, and that was after he’d committed to come Stateside to begin his studies. Teams didn’t exactly knock down his door during his JC tenure, either. It wasn’t until his junior year at FAU that scouts began to take notice. Prominent among them was Andrew Fabian, whose familiarity with Urbaez dated back to his time as a coach at Hillsborough Community College. Now an area scout with the Reds, Fabian saw potential in the under-the-radar second baseman. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin. Read previous installments of the Daily Prospect Notes here.

Eric’s Notes — Games on 8/4

Chandler Redmond, 1B/2B/3B/LF, St. Louis Cardinals
Level & Affiliate: Hi-A Peoria Age: 24 Org Rank: 34 FV: 35+
Line: 2-for-3, 2 HR, BB

Notes
It’s time for Redmond to be promoted. He’s hit .245/.361/.520 since June 22 and owns a career .259/.368/.508 career line, but he’s done so as an old-for-the-level prospect. Redmond was a 32nd round pick out of Gardner Webb, so it made sense to begin his career in the Appy League even though he was already 22. Now 24, he’s not seen a plate appearance above A-ball. Redmond has big, all-fields power and has played all over the field. He could be a bat-first piece, hidden on defense wherever the opposing club is least-likely to hit one that day. Visually, his swing is kind of grooved, and I’d like to see Redmond’s contact skills stress-tested against more advanced arms. Read the rest of this entry »

What a ride this year’s deadline was. All told, we had 75 prospects move in the last month. They are ranked below, with brief scouting reports written by me and Kevin Goldstein. Most of the deals these prospects were a part of were 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. I’ve moved all of the 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. Our farm rankings, which now update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up post-deadline.

A couple of quick notes before I get to the rankings. We’ve included a few post-prospect players here (those marked in blue) so you can get an idea of where we value them now as opposed to where we had them at their prospect peak. Those players, as well as the Compensatory pick the Rockies will receive after they extend Trevor Story a qualifying offer and he signs elsewhere, are highlighted below. We had closer to 40 prospects (and 23 Players to be Named Later) traded last year, with the PTBNL number inflated by 2020’s COVID-related transaction rules. The backfields are not well-represented here, with just four prospects who have yet to play in full-season ball. Two of those are currently in the DSL and have no official domestic pro experience, though Alberto Ciprian has played stateside for instructs/extended spring training. Now on to the rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

While the rest of the baseball industry was focused on the flurry of rumors and trades leading up to Friday afternoon’s deadline, Joey Votto was mashing like never before. From Saturday, July 24 through Friday, July 30th, the Reds’ first baseman not only homered in seven consecutive games, he doubled up on back-to-back contests on July 27-28 against the Cubs. With a chance at tying the major league record for consecutive games with a home run on Saturday against the Mets at Citi Field, Votto managed just a groundout and a pair of routine fly balls against starter Rich Hill. He had another shot in the eighth inning against Seth Lugo, and whacked a center-cut changeup 109.4 mph off the bat, a drive with an expected batting average of .970, and an expected slugging percentage of 3.649…

…but it came just inches from going over the wall in right-center. Votto had to settle for a loud single. D’oh! Because the Mets tied the game in the ninth inning, he actually got one more shot in the 10th, but struck out against Edwin Díaz. Thus Votto fell short of becoming the fourth player to homer in eight straight games, and the first since Ken Griffey Jr. in 1993:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Reds have continued to overhaul their bullpen during the final week before the deadline, acquiring right-hander Mychal Givens, who has undergone a bit of a transformation himself this year, from the Rockies in return for minor league right-handers Case Williams and Noah Davis. Cincinnati will be responsible for roughly $1.5 million of Givens’ remaining salary in his final year of arbitration before he reaches free agency this offseason.

Givens is a player more valued by the industry than fans; consistent relievers, even if they are just consistently solid, are a rare commodity. And Givens is just that, with the weird 2020 season as his only campaign with a negative WAR, and just -0.1 at that. He’s not a high-leverage guy, but he is at least dependable.

His 2.73 ERA this year isn’t supported by most metrics that consistently put him in the 4-plus range, but Givens has a consistent track record of missing bats with both his 92–96-mph fastball and plus changeup, both of which come from a funky, extra-low arm angle. His changeup has always been his best pitch, and over the last three years, he’s gone from using it around 10% of the time to nearly 20% in 2020 to a whopping 40% this season. It makes sense based on how well the pitch performs; you could easily make an argument that Givens should go with a Trevor Hoffman-esque approach of leaning primarily on his fastball/changeup combination and greatly reduce his slider usage, as his fringy breaker gets consistently hit hard. Read the rest of this entry »

It was a hectic day on the trade market. First, news broke that the Pirates had traded Tyler Anderson to the Phillies. Shortly after, the Mariners provided extra heat to the stove by sending relievers Kendall Graveman and Rafael Montero to the Astros in exchange for Abraham Toro and Joe Smith. They didn’t stop there, swooping in to nab Anderson and taking advantage of an issue that surfaced with one of the two Phillies prospects originally headed to Pittsburgh.

The number of tweets dwindled as the night rolled in, signaling an end to the frenzy. We would have to wait until tomorrow for more deadline shenanigans, but I suppose a bonus transaction couldn’t hurt, because out of the blue, the Yankees’ Twitter account dropped this bit of news:

The New York Yankees have announced that following Tuesday’s game they traded RHP Luis Cessa and LHP Justin Wilson to the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for a player to be named later.

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) July 28, 2021

A trade announcement at 12:35 AM Eastern Time? Sure, why not. Let’s break this one down.

Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Brendan Gawlowski. Read previous installments of the DPN here.

Across the country and around the world, it’s the Daily Prospect Notes.

Graham Ashcraft, RHP, Cincinnati Reds
Level & Affiliate: Double-A Chattanooga Age: 23 Org Rank: 22 FV: 40

A threat to walk everyone in the ballpark in college, Ashcraft seemed like a surefire reliever after the Reds drafted him in the sixth round of the 2019 draft. But a weird thing happened between then and now: He found a way to throw strikes, started going deeper in games, and did both while still missing bats. Read the rest of this entry »

Matthew Barefoot initially struggled to get a foothold in pro ball. A sixth-round pick by the Houston Astros in 2019 out of Campbell University, the now-23-year-old outfielder slashed a woeful .155/.241/.159 that summer in the New York-Penn League. On the heels of that abysmal debut, and with no 2020 minor league season in which to redeem himself, Barefoot was an afterthought on our 2021 Astros Top Prospect list.

He’s proceeded to make people stand up and take notice. Fueled by mechanical changes and a relaxed mental approach, Barefoot has been one of the best hitters in the Houston system this season. In 190 plate appearances split between the Low-A Fayetteville Woodpeckers and the High-A Asheville Tourists, the former Campbell Fighting Camel has socked a dozen home runs while slashing .329/.384/.618 with a 167 wRC+. Befitting his plus athleticism, he has 15 steals to boot.

Asked what was behind his his boffo numbers, Barefoot alluded to an age-old baseball adage: You can’t think and hit at the same time.

“This year, I’m able to just go out and play and let the results take care of themselves,” explained Barefoot. That’s been a real key for me. In my first season, I was working on a bunch of swing-mechanics stuff, so I really wasn’t competing how I wanted. I was more or less trying to make swing changes in-game, which made it really hard. Mentally, I wasn’t in a great spot every game.”

Organizations often don’t ask newly-drafted players to make meaningful adjustments until they report to instructional league. The initial months are mostly a hands-off acclimation period, allowing a player to simply get his feet wet in pro ball. That wasn’t the case with Barefoot. Read the rest of this entry »

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

There were lots of notable performances in the minors last night, so I covered more players than usual and shortened up some of the notes. Additionally, the 2021 Futures Game rosters were announced today and they are freaking loaded. You can see the entire rosters and access players’ scouting reports on The Board’s seasonal tab. Thanks to Sean Dolinar for his speedy help in getting that up.

A.J. Puk, LHP, Oakland Athletics
Level & Affiliate: Triple-A Las Vegas Age: 26 Org Rank: 2 FV: 50
Line: 2 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 4 K

Notes
Puk has now had two consecutive scoreless outings after he surrendered multiple runs in each of his previous six (!). When I saw him during the spring, his velo was only in the low-90s, well below the 96-99 range a fully healthy Puk would typically be operating in. Per Synergy, that velocity has returned to peak levels during the regular season. Today I noticed a change in Puk’s arm slot. This change occurred earlier this month. I don’t know if that velo rebound occurred in concert with this change, or if this is something Puk was instructed to do, or if it just began happening naturally. Regardless, this is still a lefty with big velo and a deep coffer of impact secondaries. If he can get right at some point this season, he can be an impact relief weapon for a team fighting for its division, and I still like Puk as a multi-inning reliever long-term. Read the rest of this entry »

Braxton Roxby was an unpolished gem when the Cincinnati Reds signed him as a non-drafted free agent last summer. A 6-foot-3, 235-pound right-hander, Roxby possessed projectable stuff, but his resume was anything but shiny. In three collegiate seasons with the Division-II Pittsburgh-Johnstown Mountain Cats, he logged a 7.31 ERA. Moreover, that number was 9.68 in his junior year.

Then came Kyle Boddy and the Reds pitching-development machine.

In what is shaping up as one of the best underdog stories in recent memory, Roxby has been shoving in his first professional season. Pitching in a relief role for the High-A Dayton Dragons, the 22-year-old hurler has surrendered just four hits and one run in 16 innings. He’s punched out 28 batters.

How he ended up signing with Cincinnati is a story in itself. Roxby talked to 20-plus teams after being bypassed in last year’s truncated draft, and the tenors of the conversations were largely the same… with one notable exception.

“The Reds were the only team to take it a step above,” said Roxby, who majored in Civil Engineering at Pittsburgh Johnstown. “They had me on a Zoom meeting — [Director of Pitching] Kyle Boddy and [Assistant Pitching Coach] Eric Jagers were both on there — and they had video breaking down my mechanics, as well as the analytics of my pitches and how I can use them better. That made it hard not to choose them.” Read the rest of this entry »