Eric Longenhagen Prospects Chat: 8/15/25

Eric A Longenhagen: Hey everyone, thanks for stopping by the site to chat.

Eric A Longenhagen: There are a lot of good questions in the queue already so let’s get right to it…

Tacoby Bellsbury: FanGraphs is having a nostalgia birthday today. What are your best memories of working here, and what do you feel like is your best work?

Eric A Longenhagen: Next June will be my *10th* year here. I have memories that predate my actual hiring, I remember discovering the site in college via my then-girlfriend (another former IronPigs intern) who was on it first, I remember walking along Tempe Town Lake when Kiley and I first hopped on the phone to talk about working together and how natural it felt right away. I laughed so hard all the time with Carson and that’s how it is when everyone from the site gets together at an ASB or winter meetings….

Eric A Longenhagen: I really feel lucky to work here and I’m glad it’s going well for David, for the site, and for those who have passed through and moved on to other things. I think the most impressive thing that can be said about David and this venture is that people have left and yet the site rebuilds and grows and improves without wandering from the north start that David (and definitely Meg) are navigating toward.

Eric A Longenhagen: Meg is nuts, and the stuff she does on the daily is freaking incredible. She basically got handed the keys to the site out of left field when Carson left and just had to pick up the baton and run with it after getting this bomb dropped on her at Thanksgiving (I remember because it was dropped on all of us, it put me on tilt that whole weekend) and she just did. She shovels coal into the site every day.

Eric A Longenhagen: As far as my own stuff, I think The Board is pretty cool. I wrote Cuban defector history in a hardcopy hardball times  way back when I started and I loved that. I should probably compile a “Best of” scouting report album or something.

Guest: is benge making a good case to be a 60?

Eric A Longenhagen: Major League Leaderboards – 2020 to 2025 – Batting | FanGraphs Baseball

Eric A Longenhagen: It means he’d have to sustain something in the Randy Arozarena territory here to hit that grade. That’s a little more than I’m comfortable with, I think.

An Open Mook: Any new thoughts about Kristian Campbell?

Eric A Longenhagen: Let’s all take a peek at his expected stats really quick…

Eric A Longenhagen: Minors Search | baseballsavant.com

Eric A Longenhagen: These are super weird and much, much different than last year, and that would prime me to do a deeper comparison with last year’s look on film.

Eric A Longenhagen: What’s going on here with the huge drop in hard hit rate? Is there a temporary physical problem, like an ailment or something he’s dealing with? Or was this guy’s swing never really sustainable in the first place? The full-armed effort it takes someone to swing the way he does could be tough to sustain all season. One of the things about Campbell was, “I’ve never seen a swing like this before (Yuli maybe?), is that good or bad?”

Eric A Longenhagen: Now, he’s so young, and the context of his development (this is only Campbell’s third year of high level baseball) rings true to me, so I wouldn’t panic, but also i’m curious where he’s not slugging now that he was last year

Jason N: Are the Padres any good at development?  I read a lot about how they’re turning these under the radar castoffs into great trade chips, but it also seems that they rarely have their own non-premium draftees pop while they’re in their own org.

Eric A Longenhagen: It’s a good question. I think you can be inclined to view it in a couple of different ways, one of them is the way you put it: Teams trade with the Padres and take their prospects all the time, therefore the Padres have made good prospects and part of that must be development.

Eric A Longenhagen: Of course, teams are also always looking for undervalued players who they think they can improve. In fact I’ve had scouts ask me who (in college and pro) is *not* good at development because they’d like to scout those teams/schools with that in mind, and hopefully unearth under-performing players there.

Eric A Longenhagen: Mostly what I think is at play is that the Padres front office’s threshold for what they deem as an acceptably good player is higher than most other teams.

Eric A Longenhagen: I would contrast this with Baltimore, specifically. I’d guess that the talent range Baltimore considers to be commensurate with a marginal player and what San Diego considers so are pretty different. The Padres aren’t trying to platoon like the Rays are, ya know, they want B role players and above at every position.

Guest: whats up with this Kendry chourio kid, is the command as good as the bb% ?

Eric A Longenhagen: He’s good, sitting 94-96 all year, really fast arm, really direct line to the plate, throwing fastball strikes, love the changeup projection. He’s a little undersized and his delivery is more violent than you like, the fastball shape isn’t great, he has more of an in-zone breaking ball usage right now without obvious ability to locate it for chase, so there’s stuff to work on.

Eric A Longenhagen: 40+ type for me

Guards! Guards!: If you have a player who makes terrible swing decisions, how much can you improve it?

Eric A Longenhagen: Research from a sabermetric era ago suggested it was a relative constant for all but a few guys, usually guys with long big league careers who have an uncommonly long amount of time to polish this. With changes in tech, virtual reality stuff (I’d call the Trajekt a form of vr) has created a new hitting prep environment for hitters and I wonder if that will have a meaningful impact on this going forward.

T.J.: Any under the hood stats to get excited about with Juneiker? Kinda surprising he was the breakout star of the Guard’s AZL team.

Eric A Longenhagen: Just exceptional feel for contact, like comfortably plus in terms of overall and in-zone contact, hard hit data is surprisingly high, in the MLB average range. Lotta well-struck grounders and liners, definitely a downhill bat path guy right now.

Lord Thunder: Can Jonny Farmelo be labeled “injury prone” at this point?

Eric A Longenhagen: Nah because the injuries have been very different, it’s not like he’s had consistent foot or hammy issues.

Eric A Longenhagen: Could the lack of reps have already had a meaningful impact on the pace and trajectory of his development? Yeah.

Guest: hear anything on the likelihood Wetherholt debuts this season?

Eric A Longenhagen: I haven’t heard anything specific but once the calendar allows for guys to be promoted while still retaining rookie eligibility next year, all bets are off.

Chase Mybroth: Best DSL bat?

Eric A Longenhagen: Josuar

Travis: Nice seeing you at Disneyland a few months back 😉 Do the Padres now have the worst farm system ever?

Eric A Longenhagen: Hey dude! You should drop your email in another question so we can communicate after this. No, they don’t.

Eric A Longenhagen: Farm System Rankings | FanGraphs Baseball

Eric A Longenhagen: At quick glance it’s the mid-2021 White Sox who do.

Jonny: Ryan Clifford = Lucas Duda? Or better/worse as a major leaguer?

Eric A Longenhagen: That’s more or less the outcome I have him projected for, lots of K’s but enough lefty power to be the larger half of a platoon.

Brad: Any word on why Brailer Guerrero has been out recently?

Eric A Longenhagen: I’ll work on that

Guest: Do you think Luis Pena has potential to be the top prospect in all of MLB?

Eric A Longenhagen: That’s a little rich from a tools/projection standpoint but his data is in that stratosphere.

Murph: How many minor league baseball games do you get to a year?

Eric A Longenhagen: Depends how you wanna count the days on the quads when I sometimes have eyes on like 9 per day.

Eric A Longenhagen: Do you wanna count the times I put my camera up on the Royals side and then walk to the Rangers side?

Eric A Longenhagen: I honestly don’t feel like I’ve had a year where I’ve maxed out, though. Maybe ’26, IDK how much longer I’ll live in AZ, probably on the back nine there.

Dex: How good actually is Jakob Marsee? Have your expectations changed based on his debut?

Eric A Longenhagen: I think there’s a chance he’s a real piece for them.

Steve: What’s going on with Arjun Nimmala? Counting stats have been bad for a couple of months but batted ball data seems to have improved. Bad luck? Injury?

Eric A Longenhagen: I think he’s fine, just variance. He’s a dude.

Oaktown Blues: You mentioned a couple chats ago that you dropped Luis Morales to a 45 since he was moved to the bullpen. My understanding is that the move was just a load-management situation, and the A’s still see him as a starter. Do you have intel that says otherwise?

Eric A Longenhagen: No intel, just projection.

Lord Thunder: Am I just missing Quentin Young as I scroll through the pages of The Board. What’s his FV?

Eric A Longenhagen: He should be on there, one sec…

Eric A Longenhagen: The Board | FanGraphs Baseball

Eric A Longenhagen: He’s on there.

JC: EV90 Fangraphs release date?

Eric A Longenhagen: IDK, pretty sure we’ve discussed adding it, I’d guess stary of ’26 just based on how we tend to onboard data stuff like that but that’s not a promise.

EL Chupacabra: God, Carson is the funniest person in baseball. Speaking of, any plans to rejuvenate FanGraphs Audio?

Eric A Longenhagen:

Will: Is Striker Pence the chosen one?

Eric A Longenhagen: It was nuts.

Eric A Longenhagen: I don’t want to be that guy who’s like “This 16-year-old is NEXT” but that was crazy. It’s not super violent, the way he moves is pretty special at his size. It’s not quite like Hunter Greene where it was easy to be confident he’d just throw 100 all the time, but Pence’s breaking ball is better at the same stage by kind of a lot.

Eric A Longenhagen: Here, i’ll show you…

Eric A Longenhagen: striker pence slomo fb 3

Eric A Longenhagen: give it a minute to process

Patrick: I understand the concerns about Justin Crawford’s launch angle and power, but the rest of the tools seem like they’re at least plus. Is he a slam dunk September call up or are the defensive improvements too recent/unproven to test at the MLB level yet?

Eric A Longenhagen: Yeah, I think you can bring him up to run and play defense and he’ll make a positive impact

Refuge: Are there any tools or qualities of your job that you wish were better or different? Are there any metrics you wish you had access to?

Eric A Longenhagen: Cloning

flightsongs: Dodgers adding Tibbs and Ehrhard as (then-) struggling AA OFs when Hope and De Paula were busting open A+ seems from the outside like it creates a developmental logjam. Can a prospect be blocked in the minors?

Eric A Longenhagen: Not really. I think Tubbs illustrates how aqueous talent movement in baseball can be.

Petey Bienel: Complements to you on your evaluation of Daylen Lile. So far, he looks not overwhelmed and useful. I think you’ve had him higher as a 45 than other raters, and you look vindicated. Given the opening created by the Lowe DFA, Lile should get playing time. As for his performance so far, his K% and the combo of below average (slightly) O-swing and above average Z-swing doesn’t look like he’s killing himself with chasing, which was one of your worries. high contact when he swings. Question is, have you seen anything so far in the majors to make you think he’ll stick as perhaps a DH?

Eric A Longenhagen: I think you try like hell to let him develop into a passable OF during this window of building.

Mike: Why do most Twins prospects not hit as well as we expected? Lee isn’t hitting at all, Miranda and Julien? Larnach? It’s basically Wallner and Jeffers in nine years.

Eric A Longenhagen: Some of it has just been injuries, some it it is us over-projecting, some of it is pitfalls (Miranda’s chase, Julien’s lack of athleticism) having meaningful impact. I don’t think there’s any one reason (though a lot of their guys do get hurt)

Phil: Clemens has had a few things to say about the threshold when a new major leaguer’s success is quantitatively sufficient to seem sticky. As a prospect guy, do you think you are less interested in such a threshold–more confident in your ability to recognize the real thing quickly–then are people who focus on the majors? Or are “exciting prospect” and “exciting major leaguer” two different categories with different criteria? I am asking this question with Roman Anthony in mind, but am interested in it in general also.

Eric A Longenhagen: I think in general it’s true that the data we have now is so granular that we can more quickly have a big, signal-giving sample. I also think the league adjusting to the player over time is definitely a thing, and that physical progress and decline happens to different athletes at different times and rates that season any one guy with at least a little bit of chaos.

Thomas: Thoughts on Yesavage potentially joining the Jays bullpen for the playoffs?

Eric A Longenhagen: It’d be rad, do it to it, Lars.

SUSaki: Does Sasaki even get called up at this point? He genuinely looked horrible yesterday, even for a first rehab start. Sitting 93, 0 whiffs on the fastball and slider… and against the Rockies AAA team too, if that matters.

Eric A Longenhagen: It was not good, he is not getting a courtesy promotion when the team is fighting for the division.

Doug: Can you explain why the Brewers would give up a real prospect and pay down Cortes’ contract to league minimum for just Brandon Lockridge?

Eric A Longenhagen: Well it kind of takes me back to that Padres player dev question, right? Knowing Lockridge is basically a 70 runner and defender, knowing that the team has sprinkled pixie dust on Collins, Priester and Vaughn, and had success prioritizing speed and defense across its whole roster, I just give them the benefit of the doubt.

colt emerson: colt emerson

Eric A Longenhagen: Mariners folks in chat seem to have shifted from Montes to Emerson with zero reflection, summer is more than half over.

J: Speaking of guys with weird swings – any thoughts on the swing changes Matt Shaw has made? His stance and leg kick are completely different. Not sure if you’ve had a chance to look in detail.

Eric A Longenhagen: Not in detail, just in passing from watching them the last little bit. Bare minimum it’s positive he’s able to make changes on the fly if asked to.

SoxFan997: Re: Campbell, it could be that he’s still feeling the lingering effects of the rib injury from May (only missed a few games, but those are brutal to fully recover from as a hitter)

Eric A Longenhagen: Maybe, this guy uses his whole body to swing and I could see how having bum ribs might make it uncomfortable for him to do so.

RAH: Edgardo Henriquez is an interesting case. Absolutely dominant looking stuff, but the Dodgers have moved him up and down a good bit, making it look like they don’t want to hand him a prominent role. Is this just standard bullpen roster shenanigans, or does his command still need work, or maybe some immaturity that he needs to work his way out of? (mysterious spring training injury, or his losing composure on the mound could add fuel to the fire that is that question)

Eric A Longenhagen: yes to all

Daniel: Any thoughts on Angel Genoa’s lack of power so far this year? Do you expect this to change or is it a sign that he’ll struggle for power long term?

Eric A Longenhagen: Low launch guy, right there with Emerson, not concerned about it being a bust indicator, but it’s why he’s more a 50 than a 55 or 60

Sodo Mojo: Has Cole Young adjusted to MLB faster or slower than you anticipated?  Is a 110-120 WRC with solid 2nd base defense a reasonable forecast for him moving forward?

Eric A Longenhagen: Yes and yes, I think last year’s wrist stuff really bothered him and this is closer to his true talent.

Adam: I was estatic when the Rays were able to get Adam Serinwinowski from the Reds for Zack Littell.

Then quickly enraged when he was flipped for Hunter Feduccia with Paul Gervase.

What is your take on the deal?

Eric A Longenhagen: Reds Deepen Rotation With Zack Littell Three-Teamer, Dodgers Leave With Best Prospect | FanGraphs Baseball

Sam Yost: Any insight on the latest Brailer Guerrero injury? been difficult to find info

Eric A Longenhagen: Chat ends when I get this dope and report it.

Eric A Longenhagen: You know what, let’s make it mandatory that at some point during every chat I report something, even if it’s small like this.

Eric A Longenhagen: I’m making this a rule and I expect people to hold me to account for it each week. Chat can’t end until I report something.

2-out walk: Is it safe to assume that neither CLE nor BOS would have traded Kwan or Duran for a package centered around DeVries?

Eric A Longenhagen: I don’t think that’s safe to assume. I think Clase’s probe impacted things Cleveland and SD might have done.

Eric A Longenhagen: Brailer Guerrero has patella tendinitis.

Eric A Longenhagen: There, and with that, at the 80 minute mark, I shall depart. Thank you all for coming this week, the number of you here has grown during that span and I look forward to chatting with you again next week, same bat time and channel.