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 »

Kevin Goldstein and I have updated the pro portion of the Top 100, which means we quickly reviewed the placement of players in the 50 FV tier and above, and considered who was not yet in those tiers but should be based on how they’ve looked during the first month of the 2021 season. I still have three total org audits to do — Milwaukee, Oakland and the Cubs — before I start peeling graduates off the list. Those will be completed shortly. You can find the updated list here.

Also, if you missed it, Kevin and I updated our draft rankings and posted a Mock Draft on Monday.

The lone change up near the top of the 100 is Riley Greene moving into the top 20; he’s in the mix with several other similarly-aged players with the talent to be consistent All-Stars, like Bobby Witt Jr., Julio Rodríguez, and Corbin Carroll.

DL Hall moved into the 55 FV tier on the strength of his stuff. He’s still walking a fairly high rate of opposing batters but just on the strength of his three plus pitches, could be a Haderesque relief weapon even if he can’t start. Read the rest of this entry »

Lyon Richardson remains raw with a ton of potential. Ranked sixth on our Cincinnati Reds Top Prospects list, the 21-year-old right-hander has a 5.13 ERA in seven starts for High-A Dayton, but he also has a pair of a high-octane heaters, a plus changeup, and a hard curveball that gets side-to-side movement. What he lacks more than anything is experience on the mound. Primarily a position player as a Florida prep, Richardson didn’t become a starter until his senior year at Jensen Beach High School. It was then that he began turning heads. Enamored with his athleticism and explosive velocity, the Reds selected him with the 47th-overall pick of the 2018 draft.

Richardson discussed his arsenal, and the learning curve that goes along with it, late last week.

———

David Laurila: Describe yourself as a pitcher.

Lyon Richardson: “I haven’t been pitching for very long. I just try to learn as much as I can, and be as aggressive as I can. At this point, I don’t really have the ability to give in, if that makes any sense. So really, I just try to be as aggressive as possible and push the hitter.”

Laurila: Would you say you’re more of a “stuff guy” right now?

Richardson: “For the most part, in the history of me pitching, I’m a thrower. Historically, I’m a position player, so all I really knew was to throw hard. I’m trying to be more of a stuff guy, but it’s in production. It’s definitely a production.”

Laurila: By and large, you’re trying to be a stuff guy and learning to “pitch” at the same time?

Richardson: “Correct. So, my velocity is definitely up — especially over the past year — and being able to control the pitches with that velocity is definitely a big thing. In 2019, I think my average fastball was 89 to 92 [mph] — something like that. Out of high school, I was anywhere from 95 to 98. This year, it’s back up to right around high school range. I was up to 98 in spring training, and I’ve been up to 97 a bunch so far this season.” Read the rest of this entry »

In May, I took a look at some of the most compelling storylines in the American League for the teams least likely to make the postseason. Since that post ran, Shohei Ohtani has been involved in a benches clearing incident (don’t worry, he’s fine) and Miguel Cabrera inched closer to his 3,000th hit with this bases-clearing double to put the Tigers ahead of the Brewers:

The Brewers are in first place in the NL Central right now, so they will not be making another appearance in this post, as our projections like their chances in a tight division race and predict that they’ll hold that spot to win the division. No, this post is for the teams that are much less likely to make the postseason — the teams that won’t play meaningful baseball in October, but that can hopefully still offer something to the fans who continue to show up. Let’s delve into the prospects, players, and milestones on the horizon for the non-contenders in the Senior Circuit. Read the rest of this entry »

In Tuesday’s otherwise lopsided rout by the Phillies, Nick Castellanos collected a pair of hits off Aaron Nola. With that, he extended his hitting streak to 18 games, thus surpassing his personal best and breaking a tie with Jose Altuve for the majors’ longest streak of this season. The Reds’ right fielder isn’t just hot all of a sudden, however. He’s been raking since Opening Day, and entered Thursday with his .361 batting average, .644 slugging percentage, 185 wRC+, and 2.9 WAR all sitting atop the NL leaderboards, a big step up from last year’s disappointing campaign.

The 29-year-old Castellanos, who signed a four-year, $64 million deal with the Reds in January 2020, hit just .225/.298/.486 in his first season in Cincinnati. He did play every game and bopped 14 homers while helping the Reds to their first playoff appearance since 2013, but his hot start (.340/.411/.840 through 14 games) quickly faded. His final 102 wRC+ was his lowest mark since 2015, his 28.5% strikeout rate represented a career high, and all told, his 0.4 WAR made it a pretty forgettable season.

Castellanos turned the page on 2020 by homering and doubling off the Cardinals’ Jack Flaherty on Opening Day and adding three more homers (plus two doubles and a triple) in the Reds’ next five games; he didn’t strike out for the first time until the team’s fifth game of the season. That week was a particularly colorful one, as his hop-skip-bat-flip sequence on Opening Day led to a retaliatory hit-by-pitch the next day, followed by an in-your-face flexing gesture after he came around to score, and then a bench-clearing brawl and a two-game suspension that made the powers that be look like stick-in-the-muds.

As silly as the suspension was, it halted Castellanos’ brief slump; he resumed raking upon returning, collecting 10 hits (including two homers) over his next six games. On May 2, he went 5-for-6 against the Cubs, with two homers as well as a walk-off RBI single in the 10th inning. On May 12, he began his hitting streak by going 2-for-4 with a walk against the Pirates. Over his 18-game jag, he’s hit .464/.532/.710 with three homers in 79 plate appearance, and overall he’s at .361/.416/.644 with 12 homers. Read the rest of this entry »

Like many of you, I spent a good portion of Memorial Day watching baseball. I started with the Rays and Yankees, and was watching the YES Network feed when rookie shortstop Taylor Walls stepped to the plate. Immediately, the broadcast went to a graphic of who the Rays elected not to call up after they traded Willy Adames to the Brewers: Wander Franco, universally seen as the best prospect in the game, and the red-hot Vidal Bruján. It was a nice little troll, but while so much attention is deservedly paid to the Franco and Jarred Kelenic types before and after they debut, not every rookie has the same kind of prospect pedigree. With that in mind, here are nine prospects who aren’t getting the same kind of hype but are performing at a level that might earn them a big-league look this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Here is an understatement: Jesse Winker had a pretty solid weekend. On Friday, he collected four hits, including three home runs, and a walk. On Saturday, he only went 1-for-4, but added another homer. And on Sunday, he homered again, bringing his weekend total to five and his season total to 13. His wRC+, which entered the weekend at a cool 166, jumped 26 points to 192; by this metric, he’s now the third-best hitter in baseball. His .463 wOBA, meanwhile, ranks first.

To say that Winker has broken out this season would be inaccurate. He has always been a very good hitter, particularly against right-handed pitching. Plus, his numbers have seen a significant uptick over a fairly large sample. In short, it’s not just 2021: Over his last 162 games, dating back to May 22, 2019, he is hitting .306/.401/.563 with 31 homers. In that span, he has been the seventh-best hitter in the majors by wRC+, at 154.

He really put everything together during his 2020 season, with his once-extreme platoon splits (we’ll get to those in a moment) dissipating in the shortened campaign. His 146 wRC+ was a “seasonal” career-high, and his .289 ISO was eye-popping for a hitter who had posted sub-.200 marks for his career to that point. Winker, who had rarely been considered a power hitter — he graded as having 30 game power in his last prospect scouting report back in 2018 — posted the same 2020 ISO as Teoscar Hernández.

Winker’s 2020 season did turn heads, as did his hot start to 2021. But we’re admittedly still dealing with small-ish samples for this new slugging version of him. His ISO, which was only .181 going into 2020, is .320 so far this season. And we’re starting to see the projection systems more fully buy in. Here are the largest rest-of-season ZiPS ISO increases, compared to the pre-season projections:

Read the rest of this entry »