Notes From the Field: Observations From a Week of Cactus League Action

I’ve been bouncing around spring training camps for a little more than a week now, which makes this a good time to drop a few notes. I’ve mostly kept to the backfields, but I’ve taken in a couple big league games as well, and these observations draw from both sources. I’ve got a mix of updates on top prospects, some off-the-radar names who have played well, and a few thoughts on a notable recent graduate.

Roki Sasaki, RHP, Dodgers
I caught Sasaki on Tuesday night, where he looked similar to how he did last season. His splitter is absolutely devastating, perhaps the best split I’ve ever seen live, but it’s also the only reliable pitch for him right now, and even that didn’t generate the same kind of chase his second time through the order. Meanwhile, he still doesn’t command his fastball well, and it got hit hard when he left it out over the plate. Sasaki looked great at times in a relief role last year, and with his arm strength and split, he could be a monster closer. I wouldn’t be shocked if he winds up in relief sooner rather than later.

Carson Whisenhunt, LHP, Giants
Whisenhunt was a late cut from our Top 100 list, as we ultimately determined that his lack of a breaking ball was leading to deep counts, predictable pitch selections, and ultimately too much traffic on the bases for him to project as a mid-rotation starter despite a monster changeup. His quest for a better third pitch led him to a cutter this spring, a low-90s offering that to my eye flashed average, but lacked the late bite or tight velo separation from the fastball to change the calculus for him much. The rest of the package looked as it has for a while. He had his good velo back, up to 96, and generated swings and misses up in the zone. His change, as ever, looked excellent.

Ryan Sloan, RHP, Mariners
Sloan is having a very good spring on the backfields. In my look last week, he chewed through Kansas City bats, at one point registering five outs in 15 pitches. His fastball, slider, and splitter were all plus, and, perhaps most encouragingly, he’s working to both sides of the plate. In our Mariners list, we highlighted his tendency to pull everything to the glove side as the one nitpick in his game. If he’s able to reliably locate all over the zone, with his arm strength and stuff, he may well develop into a no. 1 starter. This isn’t just my opinion, either. The Mariners are sky high on him internally, and one rival scout watching called him “the best pitching prospect in baseball who hasn’t pitched in the big leagues yet.”

Wilder Dalis, SS/3B, Rockies
The nature of backfield looks, particularly on a trip where I’m taking a breadth-over-depth approach, means I just don’t see most hitters enough to build a full report out on them; the value is more in assessing how guys look relative to last year. In that regard, Dalis stood out in a positive way. He’s a good athlete with a chance to stick at short, and, very interestingly, he hit several balls between 104-108 mph in my looks. That latter figure was his max a season ago, which suggests he’s grown into a little more power over the winter. It’s early, but the arrow looks up here.

Sean Gamble, OF, Royals
Gamble was Kansas City’s first-round pick last year, a power-hitting high schooler from the IMG Academy who was already 19 on draft day. He’s made a couple decent plays in center but has looked lost at the plate, where his timing is off and he’s lunging badly. This isn’t just my opinion, either, as another evaluator who followed the Royals prior to my arrival reported the same thing. We never want to get too wrapped up in what happens during the spring, but the look aligns with pre-draft reports that questioned how much he’d hit.

Seong-Jun Kim, RHP/SS, Rangers
Kim is a two-way player from South Korea. He signed with Texas for $1.2 million last May and made it into a handful of DSL games. I caught him for an inning on the mound last week, when he sat in the low 90s and touched 96. He has two functional breaking balls, though his slow curve will either need a few more ticks or wind up purely as an occasional get-me-over pitch. Even in the short look, I’d be aggressive projecting on his command, as he has great body control and a beautiful, flowing delivery. I’m rooting for this to work, but I am concerned about Kim’s size, as he’s slight of build and doesn’t have the kind of Shohei Ohtani-like physical projection that would make me feel better about his chances of withstanding the rigors of pitching and hitting.

Offensively, I have little to report. He had two at-bats and swung once. Hopefully we’ll see more of him at the breakout game and through the rest of the backfield season.

Corey Avant, RHP, Athletics
Avant was the Athletics’ ninth-round pick in 2023 out of Wingate University, the same school that developed Angels rookie Mitch Farris and San Diego two-way prospect Sean Barnett. Avant sat 96-97 and missed a few bats with a sweeping slider about 10 ticks lower than that. That velo was toward the high end of his range last year, probably in part due to the short duration of the outing. His delivery is a little stiff, and while he wasn’t wild in this look, he walked more than four per nine in High-A last year. Still, the stuff looks better than his numbers, and I’m keen to see how he looks in longer outings. He’ll jump onto our A’s list when we finish their system overview later this spring, probably in the 40 FV section.

Cody Morse, LHP, Dodgers
Morse was a mid-round pick from a Texas JUCO in 2024, and the low-slot lefty had an uneven debut season. This spring, though, he’s looked sharp and has gotten a lot of work in big league games, where he’s struck out seven in 3 2/3 innings. In both stadium and backfield settings, he’s been sitting 93-95 with two east-west breaking balls. He was able to reliably hit the box with the slower sweeper and elevate to get whiffs with the fastball. Credit the Dodgers evaluation group for finding another interesting player late in the draft.

Yimi Presinal, RHP, Royals
Presinal touches 98 with average secondaries and will likely earn an honorable mention nod on our upcoming Royals list. Because I have nowhere else to share it, I wanted to use this space to report that he also fired the worst pickoff attempt in the history of the game. With runners on first and second, he tried to get the runner at second. Instead, he sailed his best fastball five feet too high and a good 15 feet wide of second base. The ball split the outfielders, rolled to the wall, and ultimately cleared the bases. Baseball is hard, but it’s also goofy, and if you can’t enjoy that, you probably won’t like the backfields much.

Josuar Gonzalez, SS, Giants
Gonzalez is fast, athletic, and twitchy. He grounded out three times, with three sub-4.10 run times down the line, in my loan game watching him, which made me reflect a little on the limitations of such a short look. From that one game, if I had known nothing else, could I imagine why he’d be a consensus top 100 prospect in baseball? Yep. Could I build that kind of report off of that look alone without additional info? Nope. Funny game, baseball.

Scuttlebutt

• Speaking of Gonzalez, he hurt his leg sliding into second in a backfield game on Monday. It didn’t look horrible, but he walked off a little gingerly and hasn’t played since; he will reportedly not play in the Giants’ prospect game this week.

• Like a FanGraphs commenter on his best behavior, an Angels source came up to me and gave me the “nice rundown of our system, here’s what I think you missed on” spiel — and to be clear, I appreciate his feedback. He’s one of a couple people who have noted that Walbert Urena is having a great spring, and he also highlighted Nate Snead as a guy who belongs on the main section of the list. I’ll be following both closely.

• It sounds like Christian Little, a 40-FV arm on our Mariners list, will be pitching in relief this year. That was the likely long-term home for him anyway, and he could be this year’s version of Troy Taylor.