Standout Prospects from the AFL Title Game

The Arizona Fall League championship game (domestic professional baseball’s de facto funeral for the year) featured superlative performances from a number of prospects that may have piqued your curiosity. Here’s a look at how, after nearly two months of evaluating these players, I feel things will play out moving forward.

Miguel Almonte, RHP, Kansas City Royals (Arizona Fall League)

The 21 year-old Dominican righty has shown terrific stuff but also a few mechanical issues that may cause that stuff to play down a bit. Almonte’s fastball sat 93-96 and touched 97, a comfortable 65 on the 20-80 scale if you’re grading on velocity alone. But Almonte’s low arm angle sucks out a lot of the downhill plane scouts like to see and his fastball often comes in flat with some horizontal movement but little to no vertical descent. He’ll miss his share of bats based on velo alone but looks like he’ll be flyball prone and have some platoon issues because of that arm angle.

One thing that might help quell some of that platoon split is Almonte’s above average changeup which projects to plus. It’s much harder than your typical changeup, coming in anywhere between 86-89 mph with terrific arm-side run. Almonte’s arm speed will vary once in a while on the change but is generally fine. The tertiary offering is a curveball, 79-81, with two plane tilt. It’s a solid average pitch that could mature another half grade. Almonte’s arm slot is higher when he throws the curveball so that he’s better able to get on top of the baseball and create the downward spin necessary to generate downward movement. That could impact the ultimate utility of the pitch if Major League hitters are better able to identify curveball out of the hand because of this variation in arm slot.

Almonte’s control/command were not great this fall though he was much better on Saturday (and when I saw him in Wilmington early this year) than my previous two AFL looks. The control is fringe average right now and I feel comfortable projecting it to average despite some of Almonte’s issues with repeating his delivery and some length and violence to the arm action. The all encompassing package is a solid one, a likely #4 starter with a chance to be a shade better than that.

Longenhagen’s Grades: Fastball: 60/60, Curveball: 50/55, Changeup: 55/60, Command: 45/50, FV: 50

Kiley’s Grades: Fastball: 55/60, Curveball: 45/50+, Changeup: 55/60, Command: 40/50, FV: 55

Justin O’Conner, C, Tampa Bay Rays (Arizona Fall League)

Rays catcher Justin O’Conner hooked out two home runs in Saturday’s title game but what’s likely to carry O’Conner toward a useful Major League role is his defense, not his bat. The most prominent tool in O’Conner’s skill set is his 70 grade arm, which produces pop times in the low 1.80s and below. It was on display Saturday when a ball in the dirt got away from O’Conner who rose from his crouch, bent to pick up the ball in the lefty batter’s box and, in one motion, uncorked a rocket to second base to hosed Eddie Rosario who was running on the pitch, not on the bounce. Other aspects of O’Conner’s defense are praise-worthy. His footwork and mobility behind the plate are also exceptional, blocking balls in the dirt with technically sound slides to both his left and right.

Maybe the most interesting aspect of O’Conner’s defense going forward will be his receiving. He’s generally quiet and smooth and has strong enough wrists to steal strike calls in the bottom of the zone, but it’s not uncommon to see him simply drop as many as a half-dozen pitches in a game; this issue may be magnified in AFL, where teams use so many pitchers per game. I don’t know how significant that might be as it pertains to getting strike calls. I can tell you that most catchers who are considered to be “good receivers” don’t drop many pitches. Wieters (didn’t catch enough pitches to qualify for the below list), Lucroy, Perez and Posey all only drop one out of every 800 pitches they catch. Among catchers with good catching metrics/reputations, only Yan Gomes and Jose Molina show up in the middle or bottom of the pack as it pertains to “Pitches per drop”. Here’s the bottom and top 10 catcher pitches per drop (min. 5000 pitches) from this past season, as charted by Baseball Info Solutions.

Bottom 10	Pitches	Drops	P per D
Thole, Josh	5839	92	63.5
Rivera, Rene	11771	98	120.1
Baker, John	7506	44	170.6
Nieto, Adrian	5046	28	180.2
Pierzynski, A.J.	11726	64	183.2
Cruz, Tony	5298	26	203.8
Molina, Jose	10474	51	205.4
Ross, David	6832	32	213.5
Pena, Brayan	5854	27	216.8
Sanchez, Hector	5051	23	219.6

Top 10	Pitches	Drops	P per D
Conger, Hank	10278	20	513.9
Joseph, Caleb	10857	20	542.9
Mathis, Jeff	7569	13	582.2
McCann, Brian	14667	25	586.7
Chirinos, Robinson	13110	21	624.3
Suzuki, Kurt	16027	25	641.1
Hanigan, Ryan	10082	14	720.1
Lucroy, Jonathan	18951	26	728.9
Perez, Salvador	20326	25	813.0
Posey, Buster	14256	16	891.0

Offensively, O’Conner has above average raw power, pull-side only, but likely won’t tap into to all of it because of issues with swing and miss and swing plane. O’Conner’s bat path only really allows him to make authoritative contact on pitches he’s well out in front of as his swing only really begins to have any loft at all once it passes his body. He looks to me like a future 40 hitter. The package as a whole is solid though, and even if O’Conner’s offensive warts are magnified at the Major League level the defensive package is good enough to give him a high-end backup/low end starter’s floor. If he can hook 10-15 bombs annually and hit a little bit then he’s an average everyday player.

Longenhagen’s Grades: Hit: 30/40, Raw Power: 55/55, Game Power: 30/45, Run: 30/20, Defense: 50/65, Arm: 70/70, FV: 50

Kiley’s Grades:  Hit: 20/40, Raw Power: 55/55, Game Power: 20/45+, Run: 35/35, Defense: 45/50+, Arm: 70/70, FV: 45

Eddie Rosario, LF, Minnesota Twins (Arizona Fall League)

Twins prospect Eddie Rosario has elite hand-eye coordination and bat control, but there’s little else here and it’s hard for me to get excited about a prospect whose primary defensive position is an outfield corner and who has little more to hang his hat on than impressive bat-to-ball skills. If Rosario can prove to be a viable option in center field, then we can talk, but he’s just an average runner, maybe slightly above, and will have to show a preternatural feel for the middle of the diamond if he’s going to stick there. In left field this fall he was average with a fringe average arm. I think the defensive profile here is that of a 2B/LF utility type who might play some center in a pinch.

I’m skeptical about Rosario’s future offensive output. He’s got below average power and any impactful offensive contribution he’s going to make will have to come from the hit tool (he doesn’t walk much). While he does have some aforementioned attributes working in his favor in this regard (the impressive hand-eye coordination and ability to move the bat around the zone) Rosario’s hands are excessively noisy as he loads and his front foot is constantly bailing toward first base when he swings.

While it’s not unusual for a hitter to make unorthodox hitting actions work for him, it’s certainly worth noting that Rosario has some “funk in his load”, as Carson Cistulli reminded Kiley and I dozens of times during his stay here in the desert. Rosario’s footwork issues cause him to pull just about everything he hits on the ground to the right side of the infield. A lot of the base hits we saw Rosario accrue this fall on grounders to that side of the infield are going to find leather in the Majors when teams adjust take one look at his batted ball data and start shifting him. He still might make enough contact to grade the bat out at a 55, but I anticipate it to be a rather empty .275, if that.

Longenhagen’s Grades: Hit: 45/50, Game Power: 30/45, Raw Power: 45/45, Run: 50/50, Defense: 50/55, Arm: 45/45, FV: 40

Kiley’s Grades: Hit: 20/50, Game Power: 20/45, Raw Power: 50/50, Run: 50/50, Defense: 45/50, Arm: 45/45+, FV: 40