Eric Longenhagen Prospects Chat: 10/3/25
| 12:21 |
: Good morning from Tempe, where we’ll hit 100 degrees again today, hopefully for the final time this calendar year.
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| 12:22 |
: I did an end of year update to the Top 100 Prospects list. The piece with all the writing is still with editing and will be published at some point today, but for now you can view the fresh list over on The Board.
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| 12:22 |
| 12:24 |
: Today is Fall League Media Day and also one of the last days remaining on the instructional league calendar, so this will likely be more of a 45 minute chat today so I have the option of hitting both.
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| 12:24 |
: What happens in an expansion draft and what excites you about it?
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| 12:27 |
: It probable the rules would be different from the last time MLB had one (like ’96 ish I wanna say?) but essentially teams got to protect 15 players on their roster from selection. The expansion team(s) gets to take a player from each other club in “round one”, and then those clubs get to protect a few more of their players before round two (I think it was three more guys)…
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| 12:29 |
: You pretty quickly end up in a spot where the expansion team is filling their big league roster spots with players on the fringe of the other clubs’ rosters, older Triple-A guys as well as some prospects. Oh I think recent draftees are also carved out of the selection process, but I forget the specifics of that.
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| 12:30 |
: And it seems fun to me because, in a world where most teams’ scouts cover a handful of orgs, I cover all of them, and weirdly have a very specific understanding of the player population that I think would make me particularly helpful in the room.
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| 12:31 |
: How real is Colt Emerson’s increased power this season? Seems like a lack of power has been his biggest flaw as a prospect
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| 12:32 |
: He has great bat speed and raw power, but his swing hasn’t tended to allow him to tap into it in games. He’s made some adjustments to his footwork that looks like they’ve got him in a better spot to do that, and I thought enough of the changes he made to elevate his FV grade on this update.
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| 12:32 |
: He went from the top of the 50 FV tier, to the top of the 55 FV tier
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| 12:32 |
: Were you impressed with Sal Stewart’s cup of coffee and playoff appearance? Where does he slot into Cincy’s plans long term, he looked a bit sloppy at 1B, but is blocked by Steer there and blocked by Hayes at 3B.
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| 12:35 |
: I like the kid a lot. He’s a fiery, competitive SOB, he was beside himself yesterday after the game and taking responsibility for this and that even though he’s the rookie in the locker room. His ability to match and barrel secondary stuff is great. I do worry that his build/athleticism is always going to make him a bit of a liability on defense, and I have questions about how he’ll handle big league velocity. It looked to me like he had made some mechanical tweaks in effort to deal with fastballs better and I just won’t know how those work out until we see him across as bigger sample.
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| 12:36 |
: In short, I still like the 45 FV I have on him, which is more of a 400 PA type role player, still a key cog on a competitive team but not a true every day, every situation type guy
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| 12:36 |
: Are you putting any weight into Luis Pena’s struggles at High A? Or not a concern?
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| 12:41 |
: I’m not too concerned, but the gap in his performance between Low and High A is big enough that there does need to be some reconciliation. I didn’t think his pure Low-A stats were necessarily indicative of his actual ability (otherwise he’d be a top 5 prospect himself right now), the way his BABIP tanked after promotion explains some of the gap, but the doubling of his K% means something to do with *him* also changed…
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| 12:42 |
: In this case it was offspeed chase/miss, he offered at north of 40% of sliders and even more changeups. That’s not good, and if it continues then I would say re-evaluation is perhaps needed.
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| 12:42 |
: What did Yankees dev do with Cam Schlittler and how do you bottle it?
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| 12:45 |
: I don’t know but they seem to have. On some level it makes perfect sense: he’s an enormous, well-built guy who’s athletic for his size. With dev this good (industry-wide, but especially NYY and a few others) your scouts get to go care about size and athletic traits that the org can later mold, and I think it’s so much fun to scout that way.
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| 12:46 |
: I think NYY has preconceived notions about how they can help these guys get better before they draft them, either via physical conditioning or mechanical changes, and they make them during the first offseason they have with the player.
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| 12:46 |
: Has Cam Schlittler had the biggest jump in prospect rankings this year? Related, how much stock do you put in one transcendent outing?
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| 12:47 |
: I mean, if he’s going to sit 98+ for 150+ innings. I’m just glad I didn’t have Roderick Arias ahead of him coming into the season. I felt like I was being aggressive with where I had him at the time but it was still too low. New York Yankees Top 45 Prospects | FanGraphs Baseball
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| 12:48 |
: Matt Shaw was graded at 60 raw but despite some dingers this man has no exit velo just hits fly balls. Were evaluators wrong or is he just not tapping into it?
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| 12:49 |
: Looks like I was heavy. Lemme look at ’24 data real quick and see if it was nutty…
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| 12:50 |
: Stuff was average in ’24, shame on me
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| 12:51 |
: What did you think of Early last night? Has your evaluation changed since his call up?
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| 12:51 |
: He’ll probably be on the Feb ’26 hondo
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| 12:51 |
: Do you think there’s any pro scouting benefit to Arizona/Tampa from the fact that half the teams in the league have training complexes in each team’s back yard, closer to top scouts/top brass?
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| 12:51 |
: Yes
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| 12:51 |
: If your scouting director can literally hop in his car and see whoever, whenever…that’s a big deal.
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| 12:51 |
: Thanks Eric! Dax Kilby had some really impressive Low A numbers, but small sample size (81 plate appearances.) Am I wrong to boost my expectations for his ceiling?
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| 12:54 |
: I was talking to an executive about him this week. This guy’s team picked toward the back of the first round and had Dax in their mix but took someone else, they couldn’t believe he lasted as long as he did after their pick. I haven’t sat to dive deep into his post draft film but I had him ranked like 20 spots higher than he was drafted. I think he’s a “stock up” guy” as far as the whole indsutry is concerned, but maybe not so much for me because I already stuffed him.
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| 12:54 |
: Just wanted to get your thoughts on Seaver King heading to the fall league. It feels like an important developmental step to hear from other voices around baseball and hopefully improve his game.
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| 12:55 |
: Yeah, I just want to watch him play defense and hopefully have a better quality of atbat than he did during the summer.
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| 12:55 |
: I know he isn’t a prospect anymore, but is there anything to make of him leading the PCL in wRC+? Pads fan looking to drown my sorrow in any form of youthful hope.
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| 12:55 |
: Betcha they trade him
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| 12:57 |
: There was moderate interest around the deadline and you can guess who might be in on him based on some recent rumor mill headlines. San Diego’s posture around him at the deadline was purportedly weird. They’ clearly don’t care for him and he doesn’t play, but they were reticent to move him, they valued him in trade talks more than they seemed to on the field by kind of a lot.
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| 12:57 |
: Big jump for Quintero on The Board! What caught your eye?
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| 12:57 |
: His top hand is much more involved in his swing now than at the start of the season, I’m more confident he can actually turn on the baseball now.
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| 12:57 |
: What’s the best place for the average fan to find minor league statcast numbers as well as things like contact%?
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| 12:59 |
: There is no public leaderboard for that stuff, it’s info sourced or lifted from trumedia by any number of folks with access (sometimes one of us has access to an account we’re not supposed to, sometimes team managers at college programs are lifting it for me, etc.) that makes its way onto the hard drives of prospect writers.
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| 12:59 |
: Are DSL contact rates inaccurate? Some guys seem low compared to the numbers when they come to acl
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| 1:00 |
: They are, the games aren’t strung pitch by pitch like the upper level minor league games. So when a guy strikes out, the Gameday will just give the guy three swinging strikes in that at-bat. There’s not a great way for us to scrape away that data from the leaderboards (I’ve asked Sean, trust me) and you should just ignore it.
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| 1:00 |
: in the DSL
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| 1:01 |
: As someone who watches an insane amount of baseball, are there any single events (plays or PAs or even individual pitches) that stand out to you as memories from this season? For example, I got to witness Mason Miller dot up 104 the other day, and then when someone on twitter called it the best pitch ever I just thought, “yeah, that’s probably true.” A great reminder that baseball is fun like that.
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| 1:04 |
: Roki/Yamamoto piggyback during Spring Training, some of Roki’s splitters were unreal. Any time I’m at Chase and Ketel really lays into one it’s moving, Perdomo made a play to his right against the Phillies a few weeks ago (the Friday night game of that series) that was unreal, watching Rainiel Rodriguez go nuclear in Florida
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| 1:04 |
: What’s the reason to not drop Noah Schultz more?
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| 1:05 |
: Still a giant, young, projectable lefty with plus velo and a crazy slider
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| 1:05 |
: Is McGonigle to the AFL really necessary? I feel like he could improve his defense so many ways, and game reps against bad A Ballers might be the least efficient.
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| 1:05 |
: Probably not, wouldn’t surprise me if he’s only here for a little while
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| 1:05 |
: Sneaky reason: keep him hot just in case something happens to Gleyber this month.
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| 1:06 |
: Which five 45+ guys are you most likely to bump up to reach the mandatory arbitrary number of a top-100 prospects list? (I kid, I kid)
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| 1:06 |
: (cigar falls out of mouth)
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| 1:06 |
: “Which of these buttons calls your mom to peek you up?”
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| 1:06 |
: At this point in time, how much better does the 2026 draft look than the 2025 in terms of talent pool?
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| 1:07 |
: I need to do a deeper dive at the college kids, but I thought the HS crop was down.
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| 1:07 |
: Did george Valera change his approach/swing enough to warrant batting 2nd for the Guardians, in the playoffs no less? Or was the CLE outfield just that bad?
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| 1:08 |
: They’ve had pretty sketchy 1B/RF production on their playoff teams the last couple of years. Remember Gabriel Arias started there for them a few years ago?
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| 1:08 |
: I saw Robby Snelling crack the top 100 for I think the first time and his AAA stint looks amazing at surface level, what have the Marlins done differently to the Padres?
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| 1:09 |
: I wrote about it in the piece that should go live shortly but lemme post the pic in here again…
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| 1:09 |
:  Note his placement on the rubber
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| 1:10 |
: He went last offseason to a facility in Atlanta called “Maven” for assessment and development.
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| 1:10 |
: Added three ticks across the board and made this change.
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| 1:10 |
: Could any player turn a successful AFL run into a starting job out of Spring Training? Aidan Miller maybe?
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| 1:12 |
: How about Enrique Bradfield?
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| 1:12 |
: Hendry Mendez maybe?
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| 1:13 |
: BTW, this was going to be my breaking news nugget for chat today: Ethan Salas removed from the Peoria roster. Didn’t play at all during instructs, the org wouldn’t confirm for me that he was going to be removed, seems like he’s maybe not healthy enough to play. Maybe see him in VZ winter ball?
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| 1:13 |
: Did Wyatt Langford’s defense improve a ton when he turned pro? His metrics look great, but I remember that was a knock on him coming out of school
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| 1:13 |
: He was awful in college, too. Dropping routine fly balls.
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| 1:13 |
: do you also have scouting reports for managerial prospects like Vitello?
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| 1:14 |
: Lol, no. I’d be interested to know if the Annies in San Francisco fancy Vitello more than Kapler, though.
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| 1:14 |
: Can we expect Ethan Holliday to see some AA action next year?
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| 1:14 |
: I seriously doubt it.
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| 1:15 |
: Schlittler is the best pitching dev success story since…?
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| 1:15 |
: Yankees fans are the best
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| 1:15 |
: You know Paul Skenes was a catcher at Air Force a couple years ago, right?
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| 1:15 |
: You had Lawrence Butler as a dark horse MVP pick for this year. Do you still see that in him after an up and down year?
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| 1:16 |
: I had him in that mix more because of how the park might play. I’d guess he’s a 3 WAR guy next year. What does the model think?
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| 1:16 |
: In that range, ZiPS has him in the 2.7 to 3 WAR area next three years.
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| 1:16 |
: Are the A’s going to attempt to make Mori a TWP still or is he just staying a hitter?
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| 1:17 |
: Worked out as a TWP this fall, looked like a decent prospect as both.
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| 1:17 |
: How serious of a speed bump is Trey Gibson’s 7.98 ERA across 7 starts at Triple-A?
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| 1:17 |
: Blerg, Triple-A ERAs are almost always awful looking.
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| 1:17 |
: Any concerns from Cole Young and poor debut in the majors?
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| 1:18 |
: Nah, think he could be one of their starting MIFs next year, he looked better this season overall than last year when he was dealing with the wrist stuff.
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| 1:18 |
: As the playoffs get deeper, do you think Mo Baller has a moment?
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| 1:18 |
: That guy needs to be more selective
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| 1:18 |
: Spencer Jones too high risk for you? How does he look compared to Judge?
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| 1:18 |
: Just the best
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| 1:20 |
: Spenny had a 57% contact rate this year. Here are the big leaguers who’ve succeeded for prolonged stretch with a contact rate that low:
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| 1:20 |
: Zane Taylor’s pro debut was at the tail end of the Aviator’s season but where do you think he opens 2026?
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| 1:21 |
: Midland?
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| 1:21 |
: Seems like Rainiel Rodriguez should have gotten a trending down arrow for falling from the mid-40s to 70-something. What caused the drop?
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| 1:21 |
: His grade is the same, no change to his eval, jus re-ordering guys based on proximity/certaintly mostly. Bernal belonged ahead of him.
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| 1:21 |
: A week or two ago you said you were inclined to keep Waldschmidt as a 45 or 45+, now he’s 60th on the board and a 50 FV. What lead you to make that upgrade?
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| 1:22 |
: Full season data was really well-rounded, strike zone discipline especially good. I like short-levered guys with power and he checks that box, looks to me like Dyatt Langford (get it?)
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| 1:22 |
: I know Painter had some issues this year. How was his end to his season, what should we realistically look for in him next year, and is he still projecting as an ace?
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| 1:23 |
: Check the end of last week’s chat, I wrote a ton in there.
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| 1:24 |
: Oh shoot, I need to go. Ok friends, my preview of one of the NLDSizz will run tomorrow and I need to finish that. Lemme peek at the AFL schedule for next week real quick before I split, just to make sure chat isn’t threatened…
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| 1:24 |
: Okay I think we’re good. Thanks for coming, talk to you next week.
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Eric Longenhagen is from Catasauqua, PA and currently lives in Tempe, AZ. He spent four years working for the Phillies Triple-A affiliate, two with Baseball Info Solutions and two contributing to prospect coverage at ESPN.com. Previous work can also be found at Sports On Earth, CrashburnAlley and Prospect Insider.
Ballesteros had a below average chase rate and zone swing rate in his cup of coffee the majors this season, and his SEAGER of 12.5 puts him right about league average for swing decisions. I get that he swung more often in AAA, but I don’t think “That guy needs to be more selective” is a fair answer to that question.
Couldn’t agree more, what a bizarre, mis-informed opinion. I guess in the midst of a chat one can excuse it as a tossed off response without thought, but…just kind of weird and superficial and, well…wrong.
Why are you pointing to 66PAs worth of data over the 500 he had in AAA? Its a legitimate criticism