Eric Longenhagen Prospects Chat: 9/19/25

Eric A Longenhagen: Good morning, everyone. I just got back from visiting family in PA and am looking forward to starting the mental lawnmower again. Let’s get to as many of your questions as possible in the next hour-ish.

Taker55: Can Spencer Jones fake it in CF enough for the Yankees to run him out there next year? The price tags for Grisham and Bellinger go up by the week.

Eric A Longenhagen: I think you add him to the 40-man but need redundancy at the position in case he can’t make enough contact to be good. They should try to re-sign one of those guys or seek an alternative option. I don’t think it’s advisable to just hand the job over to a guy striking out as much as Jones does with no other option.

Rob: With Lara getting promoted today, what looks good with him despite the awful AAA numbers?

Eric A Longenhagen: This is Jhancarlos Lara, btw. He throws really, really hard. I wouldn’t add him if you’re in your fantasy championship series or anything, he’s too wild to trust in that way.

Pudge: How much has your view on Connelly Early shifted in the last couple weeks?

Eric A Longenhagen: He’s good, was just outside the top 100 and on update might be in there. He’s had a strong eval since leaping onto the radar. Stuff+ grades aren’t as good as I thought they’d be, command has been better in his two big league outings.

Hazmat Corntail: I stocked with dynasty team with young arms heading into next year. How would you rank them?: Yesavage, Melton, Messick, Boyle, Henderson

Eric A Longenhagen: I’d probable have Boyle highest just because he seems like more of a lock to play a big role while the other guys can be optioned. Rank the injured guys lowest, and the guys with fastball playability highest. Watch how Yesavage’s heater plays this month, that’s a big variable.

Oaktown Blues: Does LDV having immediate success in AA change his timeline at all?

Eric A Longenhagen: If anything I think the A’s rapidly improving and exciting situation at the big league level is what might promulgate acceleration there. But also, yes. If he’d suddenly started K’ing 30% of the time you’d have to pump the breaks, but he’s doing well so you his pace/course at least stays the same.

Scotty: You buying this Kemp Alderman AAA performance at all or is this just a guy with 80 raw power going on a heater?

Eric A Longenhagen: Guys like him can come up and have a relevant window, for sure. Note how different his GB% is from Double-A compared to Triple-A. That’s the sort of thing that’d make me want to look at his swing to see if there’s been a change or if it’s just a small sample anomaly. He’s got to get to that power to be relevant. He could have a Franmil Reyes type arc.

Taker55: Is Rafael Flores another one of those bat first no glove catchers that the Yankees always seem to deal away?

Eric A Longenhagen: I wouldn’t call him “no glove”, the arm is the thing that limits him on defense but he’s improved in the other areas. Think he has questionable plate coverage, too. But he has real power and standout big league physicality, the traits of a late-blooming catcher. A nice scouting & dev win for the Yankees to turn a small school guy into a tradeable prospect, and a totally defensible dart throw by the Pirates via trade.

RAH: T.J. Nichols really closed the season strong. A big part was a dramatic improvement in HRs allowed. Do you have ideas of what was behind it? Are park factors at play? Did he improve his FB shape, or establish the change, or lean more heavily on his slider?

Eric A Longenhagen: I don’t have the specific changes off hand, it might be that his command has just trended better than I thought it would in a big wat.

Ahmad: You excited to see espino in the AFL ?

Eric A Longenhagen: I am, just hope the kid can feel what it’s like to come off the mound healthy at the end of the season.

RAH: The Diamondbacks took a bunch of Rangers arms at the deadline. Do these guys have the profile to thrive in the desert?

Eric A Longenhagen: I like them, yeah. I do think both Bratt and Drake could be homer-prone here to an extent, but I’d expect both to debut next year and contribute to a competitive team’s rotation for the next half decade or so.

Guest: Duno’s season making you look smart, any chance he elevated to the 60 FV bucket?

Eric A Longenhagen: Thanks, probably still a 55 for me, still a risky fella as big as that ceiling is.

Eric A Longenhagen: Just seemed, to me, like a freaky toolshed from the jump.  I haven’t always been right about those guys (see: Bleis, Miguel) but yeah, this one so far I have been.

Guest: Getting knocked around in AAA, but Trey Gibson end the season on an up arrow relative to the pre-season report?

Eric A Longenhagen: Sure, if only because he’s done well against better hitters and under another 30+ innings of stress.

Adam D.: Where do you think we’ll see Josuar start next season, and where do you think he should start?

Eric A Longenhagen: Extended. He can go to San Jose at any time, but let him light up extended for a bit before you do that, imo.

mitch: who is likelier to be in the opening day rotation next year, george klassen or jaxon wiggins?

Eric A Longenhagen: I’d have to say Klassen based on the Angels tendencies to promote guys quickly.

Eric A Longenhagen: On talent I think Wiggins has a better long term shot to be a starter.

Yovani Gallardo: I was wondering if you have attended all 30 MLB and all (however many) MiLB stadiums. And if you have any tips for somewhat serious fans to pull off all MiLB parks, please let us know!!

Eric A Longenhagen: I have been to: PHI, ATL, WSH, BOS, BAL, ARI, LAD, SD, SEA, CLE, CHC, PIT, STL, SF, COL, TEX

Eric A Longenhagen: Man, doing all the minor league ones is tough. Just try to build a map and do chunks of it based on geography, structure your trips across multiple weeks (like make the middle of it the weekend) so matchups change and reshuffle your deck a bit

Eminor3rd: Any updated thoughts on Troy Melton from what he’s shown in MLB this year?

Eric A Longenhagen: Not really, looks good to me. Fastball plays, wanna see him find changeup location consistency which might be tough given how deliberately short his arm action is.

JHench: Does a prospect playing on a team in the minor league playoffs factor into how you evaluate them?  I’ve heard some executives think that a playoff atmosphere helps a player’s development; wondering where you fall on that.

Eric A Longenhagen: I agree. It’s a new sort of tension that they maybe haven’t experienced in a while, or at all. I’d wanna see how they respond to that.

Chase: Good afternoon Eric, thanks for the chat as always. Luis De Leon of the Orioles, whom you’ve already put a nice grade on, is my favorite type of pitching prospect. Lefty with a heavy sinker, good slider, and elite at generating GB%. Hes only given up five (!!!) home runs in his minor league career thus far. When I watch his mechanics, he seems like a young Cristopher Sanchez. Do you like that comp as a ceiling?

Eric A Longenhagen: I see more of a Genesis Cabrera, mechanically at least.

David: Did you see this coming with Cade Horton?

Eric A Longenhagen: He’s tracked almost exactly in line with projection.

Jake: Do you have updates on Jackson Baumeister? He was terrible early in the year, missed multiple months with an unreported injury, and then pitched very well the last month before heading to the AFL.

Eric A Longenhagen: Because he’s an AFL guy, I don’t have anything off the top since I’m just waiting to see him here.

W: Luis Matos and Marco Luciano badly need a change of scenery, wouldn’t you say?

Eric A Longenhagen: For everyone

Yesavage: Permission to overreact to one start?  Awful lot of whiffs generated…

Eric A Longenhagen: Feel free, my only concern is that delivery is violent. But on stuff you can go wild.

GraphsFan: What’s up with Sebastian Walcott‘s power #’s? 13 HRs and .131 seems low for a 70 Game, 80 Raw. I know he’s doing this against much older competition, but does he need a redo at AA?

Eric A Longenhagen: At least to start next year, probably. I’m not worried about him all that much, though. He’s a kid.

David: Cubs and Tucker very likely don’t work out. You going external or giving one of Caissie or Ballesteros those AB’s? Seiya can move to RF depending on who you choose obviously. Or maybe Johnny Long gets a chance…. Could platoon with either as well.

Eric A Longenhagen: I think you’re thinking about it the right way. Let the young guys play, spend Tucker’s money elsewhere, pick up a draft pick, etc.

Bret S: As a Cardinal fan how excited should I be for the season Joshua Baez had?

Eric A Longenhagen: you can be glad he’s had a good season but I’m still skeptical about him hitting big league pitching for a sustained period of time.

Eric A Longenhagen: I’m surprised his K% is as low as it is, guys whose hands fire from a dead stop like his do tend to K a ton.

AL Central Casting: Kyler Fedko is having himself a great season for the Twins’ affiliates, but has not been considered a prospect of note. Do these kind of late breakouts raise a player’s stock much, or do teams consider them “career years” in a way? Or does it depend on whether the guy made significant changes to his game?

Eric A Longenhagen: I try to stay sensitive to the older guys (Fedko is 25, did a ton of damage at AA this year) even when their age/polish might be the reason they’re having success because once in a while you get a Nellie Cruz or Kerry Carpenter or something…

Eric A Longenhagen: in Fedko’s case I’d wanna know if he’s viable in CF. His underlying hit data isn’t nuts or anything, it’s pretty average.

Eminor3rd: My gut response on the fall scouting moratorium is: sure, great idea in concept, but it seems like we’re incentivizing a black market/shady business. Can this be properly policed?

Eric A Longenhagen: I think it’s conceptually sound, kids should go play basketball or something rather than baseball all winter, but I agree it’s going to be tough to police for numerous reasons. If I’m at an indoor facility to see a free agent pitcher throw a bullpen and the guys who throw before and after him are rising sophs at a college, what am I supposed to do? Leave? Cover my eyes?

Eric A Longenhagen: The little corner cases can be discovered and the rules can be polished or tweaked. The “no third party” piece of the rule means I can’t go see a player for my buds and send them video or whatever. The rule isn’t good for scouts but is probably good for players.

GraphsFan: Do NPB minor leaguers get treated any better than the guys going through the minor league slog stateside? Thinking along the lines of like compensation, facilities, nutrition, etc. Does NPB have a draft system, similar to MLB?

Eric A Longenhagen: I actually don’t know about facilities/amenities/lifestyle for the minor leaguers over there. They do have a draft that includes both high school and college players, but the rules are different, and the first round is conducted kind of like ranked choice voting.

Colton: Orelvis Martinez outright released. My assumption was potentially to pursue an opportunity in Korea or Japan because it feels odd for a former top guy in their system to just get kicked like that. Any dope you can share?

Eric A Longenhagen: I have nothing there at this time.

Chris: Dax Kilby had a very exciting debut, could we be looking at a 50 grade to start next year or is the sample still too small?

Eric A Longenhagen: More like a 45+ and Pick to Click as I’m sitting here right now. Like him a lot, though.

RVA_Empire: As the baseball year comes to a close, which prospect (or non-prospect) surprised you the most after getting up to the big leagues?

Eric A Longenhagen: Isaac Collins

Bill G: Given that the disparity between MLB and the minors is the largest we have ever seen is there really enough talent to expand by two more teams?

Eric A Longenhagen: I think it might dilute the pitching enough to curb K’s in a way that’s good for the aesthetic of the game. I also think when the next CBA is agreed upon that we’ll see yet more reduction/changes to the minor league structure and I want more teams to offset that so we don’t lose 30 more affiliates.

A Boy Named Yu: Is Ballesteros tall enough to play 1B or athletic enough to try 3B?  I’m trying to figure out how the Cubs could carry Kelly, Amaya, and Bally next year.

Eric A Longenhagen: You could live with him at 1B even though he’s a squat guy.

Mickey: Is there any world where Colt Emerson should be the Mariners 2B in the playoffs?

Eric A Longenhagen: It’s a tough call. I could see a scenario where he’s your best option, but it’s a little late in the game to find out how he’ll do against big league arms.

Pinstriped Power: I feel like the vibe going in to the season on Cam Schittler was back to mid rotation starter but that you were a bit higher on him. How do you feel now that he has been in the majors for a bit? I feel like he looks like a solid second-third guy in a rotation long term no?

Eric A Longenhagen: I think that’s right

Eric A Longenhagen: More 3 than 2 for me because I’m like that, but yeah.

Old Prospector: What are your expectations for Luis Peralta next year and beyond?

Eric A Longenhagen: I liked him as third-best RP in a bullpen as a prospect but his command has tanked since that trade. I’m bummed

Jay Buhner: Obligatory Colt Emerson question.  Seems like the power stroke has been found with the toe tap.  Fun defensively to watch.  Mid/late season call up in 2026 with Crawford’s contract coming to an end?

Eric A Longenhagen: Yeah, this is the more likely chain of events. I’d wanna trade JP if I could, and I’d try to gauge when his market would be hottest based on FA depth at shortstop, etc. COuld be an offseason thing rather than an in-season 2026 transition from JP to Young/Colt.

IE: George Lombard Jr. never seemed to take off in AA. Does this say something about his ability to adjust to higher level pitching or is he just so young for the league that we should cut him some slack?

Eric A Longenhagen: The latter, the kid has real juice and is a great defender. He’s a Dude.

Guest: In relation to Baumann’s recent Tong article, why don’t more prospects encourage higher arm slots? Theoretically wouldn’t you want as much rise on your fastball as possible? I would assume that a horizontal spin axis is ideal for rise

Eric A Longenhagen: backspin helps the fastball ride but a higher slot means you’re more likely to have downhill plane (which is hittable). It’s a tradeoff, and the IVB of a fastball is impacted by the release height (higher releases = more IVB, you need to adjust for that, more IVB does’t always mean it’s a better riding heater)….

Eric A Longenhagen: when you get the guys who generate backspin AND have a low release height, now we’re really talking. That’s the Timmy Lineccum, Clayton Kershaw type fastball. There are all kinds of ways to succeed with different types of arm angles and fastball shapes, there’s no universal ideal. Tong’s fastball gives him good margin for error in the strike zone and I think he’s going to be quite good even though I bet he’ll struggle with walks here and there due to the nature of his delivery.

Eric A Longenhagen: That’s a big head whack, and you don’t see many guys spinning out on their heels like he does.

Jeremy: Andrew Painter scuffled this year. Just normal post-TJ recovery, command taking longer to return than velocity/stuff? Or has AAA revealed some things he needs to improve, that weren’t exposed at lower levels?

Eric A Longenhagen: His arm slot is different than pre-surgery. I have a bunch of notes in a top 100 update piece I’ve been working on during my time off (i know, i know) and I do think we need to adjust expectations for how his fastball is going to play…

Eric A Longenhagen:

Eric A Longenhagen: but in a vacuum, I think his season was positive. In the context of our expectations, it was not.

Eric A Longenhagen: Here, lemme just post my updated report draft in here and then I need to split and get ready for my instructs game today…

Eric A Longenhagen: Painter is wrapping up a season that is disappointing in light of the perhaps overzealous expectations laid out for him by people like myself, who posited Painter might kick down the door and play a meaningful role in a contending team’s rotation by the end of this season. He’s struggled to the tune of an ERA and FIP over five at Triple-A Lehigh Valley, and is missing fewer bats with his fastball than I would have guessed if you’d have told me Painter would be sitting 96 all year (more on that later) coming off surgery. But in a vacuum his season has been fine. This is a 22-year-old who hadn’t thrown a pitch at an affiliate since 2022 and yet was aggressively pushed to Triple-A and has been able to keep his head above water, plus Painter has pitched better of late.

Eric A Longenhagen: When you look at the 2025 season as a whole, Painter’s stuff has performed like it’s made of average or below components across the board, but his stuff still *<em>looks</em>* good, and Painter is making adjustments. Since the All Star break he’s nearly tripled his changeup usage, and that pitch is improving rapidly. Both it, and his slider, are playing more like plus offerings in terms of miss and chase, during the last six weeks of the season. Painter has feel for backdooring his harder slider (impressive for a pitcher his age/size) and for burying his curveball in the dirt, but less so for creating lateral chase off the plate with his breaking stuff. It’s a nice toolkit of secondary pitches for a giant 22-year-old.

Eric A Longenhagen: If there’s a real issue looming here it’s Painter’s lack of fastball playability. This is a 6-foot-7 guy who is only generating a little over six feet of extension, he’s not powering way down the mound. This is having dual negative impact on Painter’s fastball because not only does the generic extension make hitters appear more comfortable, but a shorter stride and therefore more upright style of delivery is causing Painter’s fastball to approach the plate with downhill plane, which is often not great for missing bats. When we last had affiliated pitch performance data from Painter (2022) his fastball was utterly dominant (29% miss, .645 opponent OPS), but this year has been pretty bad, with a 17% miss rate and an opponent’s OPS over 1.000 (pending update after final start). Has there been a post-surgery mechanical change here that might explain the huge dip in the fastball’s bat-missing performance? I’d say so.

Eric A Longenhagen: Painter’s newer delivery features a good bit less tilt in his torso and a slightly lower arm angle. The current release point looks easier for him to execute and repeat than the one in 2022 and this newer slot probably helps Painter move the ball laterally more than his old one, but these changes have also sucked some of the pure vertical life out of his pre-surgery fastball. Here we have visual evidence that reinforces what the data suggests; that something here has changed and negatively impacted the bat-missing ability of Painter’s fastball compared to when he was last pitching for an entire season.

Eric A Longenhagen: He still has a very favorable overall forecast as a mid-rotation workhorse with good secondary stuff and command, but it’s tough to project him as a contender’s no. 1 or no. 2 starter without Painter having an impact fastball, and so he slides an FV tier on this end-of-season update. He made his final Triple-A start on Wednesday (the Phillies were shortening his rest between starts until the last couple of weeks when they let him go on a full week’s rest) and . I think you could argue he’s the Phillies’ fifth best starter right now, or at least that he’s in the mix with Taijuan Walker and Walker Buehler in that regard, but it would take a ton of depth-killing 40-man roster maneuvering (plus altering Painter’s day to throw to get him in lockstep with Walker and Buehler) for Painter to be elevated proactively. Despite Zack Wheeler’s injury, Painter is unlikely to impact the playoff race unless the Phillies have a couple more injuries during the final few weeks of the season.

Eric A Longenhagen: OKay, and with that I’m out of here. Thanks for coming again, I’ll see you guys next week.