Outfield: Mason Auer
The 2021 fifth-rounder was known for his strong arm and speed coming out of the Texas junior-college ranks, but he showed he has some power and overall hitting ability in his bag as well.
The 21-year-old outfielder hit .290/.372/.487 with 15 homers in 115 games at Single-A and High-A in his first full season. He combined his power and speed to lead all Minor Leaguers with 12 triples and also ranked among the top three Rays Minor Leaguers with 48 steals (first), 223 total bases (second) and 133 hits (third).
“We knew that he had pretty special tools,” McLerran said. “That was pretty evident. The question had always been, ‘Can you put it all together?’ Once he got one time through the league in [Single-A], we realized he was making adjustments off them, or teams just weren’t able to adjust to him. This was more than a hot streak, and the skills were starting to kind of match the tools.”
https://www.milb.com/news/tampa-bay-ray ... stars-2022
CF Jorge Barrosa (45 FV)
Arizona added Fletcher and Barrosa (who is actually a switch-hitter) to the 40-man. Barrosa lacks power but does everything else. His hit tool, plate discipline, and defense in center field are all plus, and even though I believe his power output at Amarillo was a caricature of his actual pop, there’s enough good stuff here to consider him more of a fourth outfielder who plays a lot rather than a light-hitting fifth outfielder, which is how I had him evaluated in the low minors.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/40-man-rost ... s-nl-west/
2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
SIRP Kolton Ingram (40 FV)
Ingram was released by the Tigers in 2020 and was picked up by the Angels in ’21. Since then, he has yet to post a strikeout rate below 30% at any stage of his rapid ascent through the Angels system. He uses his short stature to create a deceptive, shallow approach angle, allowing his 92 mph fastball to play off his high-spin slider, resulting in above-average whiff and chase rates on both offerings. If he can add velocity to his fastball, he could evolve into a high-leverage reliever, but he’s currently on the fast track to a middle inning role.
SP Hogan Harris (40 FV)
They also added pitching prospect Hogan Harris, likely in the hopes that he’ll be big-league ready sometime next season ... Harris is a tall lefty who throws from a three-quarters arm slot. He ascended quickly through the A’s system in 2022 thanks to a fastball that missed bats at the top of the zone and a good amount of movement on the rest of his arsenal. When he reached Triple-A, he started facing batters more adept at punishing him for letting his fastball dip too far into the zone; while he hadn’t given up a single home run in his 45.1 combined innings at High- and Double-A, he allowed six in just 28.1 innings at Triple-A (Vegas, baby). Still, given the A’s need for big-league everything, he looks primed for a rotation spot sometime in 2023.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/40-man-dead ... s-al-west/
Ingram was released by the Tigers in 2020 and was picked up by the Angels in ’21. Since then, he has yet to post a strikeout rate below 30% at any stage of his rapid ascent through the Angels system. He uses his short stature to create a deceptive, shallow approach angle, allowing his 92 mph fastball to play off his high-spin slider, resulting in above-average whiff and chase rates on both offerings. If he can add velocity to his fastball, he could evolve into a high-leverage reliever, but he’s currently on the fast track to a middle inning role.
SP Hogan Harris (40 FV)
They also added pitching prospect Hogan Harris, likely in the hopes that he’ll be big-league ready sometime next season ... Harris is a tall lefty who throws from a three-quarters arm slot. He ascended quickly through the A’s system in 2022 thanks to a fastball that missed bats at the top of the zone and a good amount of movement on the rest of his arsenal. When he reached Triple-A, he started facing batters more adept at punishing him for letting his fastball dip too far into the zone; while he hadn’t given up a single home run in his 45.1 combined innings at High- and Double-A, he allowed six in just 28.1 innings at Triple-A (Vegas, baby). Still, given the A’s need for big-league everything, he looks primed for a rotation spot sometime in 2023.
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
Rays: Mason Auer, OF (No. 11)
Auer went from being a fifth-round pick out of San Jacinto (Texas) JC in 2021 to batting .292/.372/.487 with 48 extra-base hits and 48 steals between Single-A and High-A in 2022. He needs more polish but would make an attractive trade chip because he comes with well-above-average raw power, speed and arm strength.
White Sox: Cristian Mena, RHP (No. 10)
At age 19, Mena reached Double-A at the end of a season in which he logged a 3.80 ERA and 126/38 K/BB ratio in 104 1/3 innings at three levels, but he's still a couple of years away from helping a White Sox club that is looking to win now. The most expensive pitcher in Chicago's 2019 international class, he signed for $250,000 out of the Dominican Republic and works with a low-90s fastball while flashing a plus downer curveball in the upper 70s.
Angels: Adrian Placencia, 2B/SS (No. 8)
While the Angels system is relatively thin, it does have some depth in terms of infielders, especially at the lower levels. With Zach Neto likely heading to the upper levels with Kyren Paris, there are also talented players on the dirt like Denzer Guzman, Werner Blakely and Placencia, who held his own in full-season ball in 2022 and started to tap into some power.
https://www.mlb.com/news/each-team-s-tr ... e-coverage
Auer went from being a fifth-round pick out of San Jacinto (Texas) JC in 2021 to batting .292/.372/.487 with 48 extra-base hits and 48 steals between Single-A and High-A in 2022. He needs more polish but would make an attractive trade chip because he comes with well-above-average raw power, speed and arm strength.
White Sox: Cristian Mena, RHP (No. 10)
At age 19, Mena reached Double-A at the end of a season in which he logged a 3.80 ERA and 126/38 K/BB ratio in 104 1/3 innings at three levels, but he's still a couple of years away from helping a White Sox club that is looking to win now. The most expensive pitcher in Chicago's 2019 international class, he signed for $250,000 out of the Dominican Republic and works with a low-90s fastball while flashing a plus downer curveball in the upper 70s.
Angels: Adrian Placencia, 2B/SS (No. 8)
While the Angels system is relatively thin, it does have some depth in terms of infielders, especially at the lower levels. With Zach Neto likely heading to the upper levels with Kyren Paris, there are also talented players on the dirt like Denzer Guzman, Werner Blakely and Placencia, who held his own in full-season ball in 2022 and started to tap into some power.
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
18. Jorge Barrosa, LF (Double-A Amarillo)
Similarly undersized like Fletcher, Barrosa has a more suspect offensive profile, but makes up for it with plus foot speed and strong defensive instincts. The soon-to-be 22-year-old signed for $415,000 out of Venezuela back in 2017 who has gone back and forth on switch-hitting, but has shown greater acuity for the craft in the past couple seasons. Grant Schiller picked him as his personal cheeseball at the end of this season, noting he outperforms his tools with maximum effort play and precocious pitch recognition. That manifested in a career-high 12.7% walk rate in Amarillo as a 21-year-old just three ticks below his strikeout rate, something that bodes well for a potential future fourth outfielder.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... prospects/
What's your opinion of Wilfred Veras, specifically his ceiling and future position (first or third)?
Bill Mitchell: Hello J.P., as to your question whether Veras will play first base or third, the answer is neither. He was switched to the outfield in instructional league and is mostly playing left field in the Dominican Winter League. That's likely his position moving forward, with perhaps a chance in right field if he improves both his arm strength and accuracy of his throws. Regardless, it's all about the bat for Veras, and he projects to hit enough for any position. It's middle-of-the-order raw power. You'll be able to read more about him when the Prospect Handbook arrives in your mailbox.
Jared Kelley had a decent amount of buzz when drafted, but injuries and not great performance seem to have led to have descending on the White Sox prospect list. Has his future outlook changed significantly or is there still a decent hope that, being still very young, he will pop and become an impact pitcher down the road?
Bill Mitchell: Trent, there's still plenty of hope for Kelley. After battling injuries in 2021, he had a nice bounceback season in 2022. He got back to using his changeup more and increased the use of his two-seamer to get groundballs. This really was Kelley's first full season, coming after the COVID year in 2020 and throwing less than 25 innings in 2021. He needs to continue to work on conditioning his big body and improve his pitchability.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... ects-chat/
Similarly undersized like Fletcher, Barrosa has a more suspect offensive profile, but makes up for it with plus foot speed and strong defensive instincts. The soon-to-be 22-year-old signed for $415,000 out of Venezuela back in 2017 who has gone back and forth on switch-hitting, but has shown greater acuity for the craft in the past couple seasons. Grant Schiller picked him as his personal cheeseball at the end of this season, noting he outperforms his tools with maximum effort play and precocious pitch recognition. That manifested in a career-high 12.7% walk rate in Amarillo as a 21-year-old just three ticks below his strikeout rate, something that bodes well for a potential future fourth outfielder.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... prospects/
What's your opinion of Wilfred Veras, specifically his ceiling and future position (first or third)?
Bill Mitchell: Hello J.P., as to your question whether Veras will play first base or third, the answer is neither. He was switched to the outfield in instructional league and is mostly playing left field in the Dominican Winter League. That's likely his position moving forward, with perhaps a chance in right field if he improves both his arm strength and accuracy of his throws. Regardless, it's all about the bat for Veras, and he projects to hit enough for any position. It's middle-of-the-order raw power. You'll be able to read more about him when the Prospect Handbook arrives in your mailbox.
Jared Kelley had a decent amount of buzz when drafted, but injuries and not great performance seem to have led to have descending on the White Sox prospect list. Has his future outlook changed significantly or is there still a decent hope that, being still very young, he will pop and become an impact pitcher down the road?
Bill Mitchell: Trent, there's still plenty of hope for Kelley. After battling injuries in 2021, he had a nice bounceback season in 2022. He got back to using his changeup more and increased the use of his two-seamer to get groundballs. This really was Kelley's first full season, coming after the COVID year in 2020 and throwing less than 25 innings in 2021. He needs to continue to work on conditioning his big body and improve his pitchability.
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
21. San Diego Padres (34) Jose Lopez, SIRP, from the Tampa Bay Rays
A husky lefty with a big, mid-90s fastball, Lopez occupied a single- and multi-inning relief role for the Rays Double-A Montgomery roster throughout much of 2022. He’s a power pitcher with stuff commensurate with the best lefty out of a contending team’s bullpen, but probably not the command/control consistency to be handed the keys to such a role right away. Lopez’s 81-85 mph slider has two-plane angle that plays as a chase pitch to lefties and as a back-foot weapon against righties, so he’s not purely a lefty specialist prospect and could grow into a more meaningful role down the line.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-2022-ru ... g-reports/
1.17 Padres - Jose Lopez, LHP, Rays
The 23-year-old lefty was signed back in 2016 out of the Dominican Republic and after three middling years in the lower minors, Lopez enjoyed a breakout season in Double-A in 2022, reaching Triple-A by year’s end. Coming into the season Lopez added power and improved the shape of his two primary pitches—his four-seam fastball and slider. His fastball went from sitting 93-95 mph to sitting 95-96 mph with an added inch of vertical break and a cleaner spin axis, while his slider added a few ticks of velocity and nearly three inches of sweep on average. He made improvements to his changeup as well, as he added a few inches of run this season. The improvements in pitch shapes and added power led to a 8-3 record, nine saves and 91 strikeouts over 55.1 innings of work.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... -analysis/
Oscar Colas, OF, White Sox
Since AJ Pollock’s departure, general manager Rick Hahn has stated resistance to making a splash in a flush outfield free agent market, opting instead to explore options inside the organization. Some have marketed this as “Project Birmingham,” but really it amounts to asking the interns to perform life-saving surgery on an organizational rebuild on life support. Colas has an ability to both swing a lot and hit the ball very hard. Those two things can be at odds with one another, as they have been with Colas, who has a tendency to swing and miss without taking very many walks. This type of profile tends to initially sizzle for a couple of weeks before big league pitching adjusts. The person who elects to initially roster Colas will have a choice to endure the valleys that go with the lolling peaks. Colas has the ability to eek out 20 home runs with a .250 average, putting him in a tier with names like Hunter Renfroe and Randal Grichuk.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/fant ... e-in-2023/
A husky lefty with a big, mid-90s fastball, Lopez occupied a single- and multi-inning relief role for the Rays Double-A Montgomery roster throughout much of 2022. He’s a power pitcher with stuff commensurate with the best lefty out of a contending team’s bullpen, but probably not the command/control consistency to be handed the keys to such a role right away. Lopez’s 81-85 mph slider has two-plane angle that plays as a chase pitch to lefties and as a back-foot weapon against righties, so he’s not purely a lefty specialist prospect and could grow into a more meaningful role down the line.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-2022-ru ... g-reports/
1.17 Padres - Jose Lopez, LHP, Rays
The 23-year-old lefty was signed back in 2016 out of the Dominican Republic and after three middling years in the lower minors, Lopez enjoyed a breakout season in Double-A in 2022, reaching Triple-A by year’s end. Coming into the season Lopez added power and improved the shape of his two primary pitches—his four-seam fastball and slider. His fastball went from sitting 93-95 mph to sitting 95-96 mph with an added inch of vertical break and a cleaner spin axis, while his slider added a few ticks of velocity and nearly three inches of sweep on average. He made improvements to his changeup as well, as he added a few inches of run this season. The improvements in pitch shapes and added power led to a 8-3 record, nine saves and 91 strikeouts over 55.1 innings of work.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... -analysis/
Oscar Colas, OF, White Sox
Since AJ Pollock’s departure, general manager Rick Hahn has stated resistance to making a splash in a flush outfield free agent market, opting instead to explore options inside the organization. Some have marketed this as “Project Birmingham,” but really it amounts to asking the interns to perform life-saving surgery on an organizational rebuild on life support. Colas has an ability to both swing a lot and hit the ball very hard. Those two things can be at odds with one another, as they have been with Colas, who has a tendency to swing and miss without taking very many walks. This type of profile tends to initially sizzle for a couple of weeks before big league pitching adjusts. The person who elects to initially roster Colas will have a choice to endure the valleys that go with the lolling peaks. Colas has the ability to eek out 20 home runs with a .250 average, putting him in a tier with names like Hunter Renfroe and Randal Grichuk.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/fant ... e-in-2023/
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
12. Reese Olson, P (Double-A Erie)
Olson threw about 120 innings in Double-A as a 22-year-old, striking out just a smidge under a third of the batters he faced. Yet, his stuff can remain maddeningly inconsistent at times. His fastball will never be the star of the show here. It’s a low-90s offering with a bit of two-seam action, but more run than sink. He will pop 95 now and again, but it can also slide down closer to 90 within the same outing.
His secondaries frustrate in a similar way. Olson’s best changeups are clearly plus—mid-80s with late dive and fade. He can double up with it when it’s going good, and it’s a true-swing-and miss pitch. Then a batter later the change will be fringy, just sort of running down barrels. His slider can be a big sweeping low-80s offering, a potential 55, or it can bleed into the mid-70s 12-6 curve in a slurvy sort of way. And when Olson wasn’t striking out guys, the stuff was a bit more hittable than it really should be. He’s likely to be a major leaguer, even as soon as 2023, but without more consistency in command and secondaries, he projects as a very frustrating backend starter.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... prospects/
12.) San Diego Padres: LHP Jose Lopez (from Tampa Bay Rays)
Another 95-and-a-slider guy, this time lefty (very good) and with worse command (very bad). Typically relievers who walked almost six batters per nine at Double-A don’t stick very long in contenders’ bullpens, but he’s a lefty who throws hard so any minimal improvements to the command might be enough to carry him.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... aft-recap/
Jose Lopez, LHP, Rays
A full-time move to the bullpen in 2022 helped Lopez as he reached Triple-A for the first time while striking out a combined 14.4 per nine and holding hitters to a .169 average against. Command is an issue (5.8 BB/9), but lefties with mid-90s fastballs and swing-and-miss breaking stuff that has played at upper levels often get a long Rule 5 look.
https://www.mlb.com/news/rule-5-prospec ... e-coverage
Olson threw about 120 innings in Double-A as a 22-year-old, striking out just a smidge under a third of the batters he faced. Yet, his stuff can remain maddeningly inconsistent at times. His fastball will never be the star of the show here. It’s a low-90s offering with a bit of two-seam action, but more run than sink. He will pop 95 now and again, but it can also slide down closer to 90 within the same outing.
His secondaries frustrate in a similar way. Olson’s best changeups are clearly plus—mid-80s with late dive and fade. He can double up with it when it’s going good, and it’s a true-swing-and miss pitch. Then a batter later the change will be fringy, just sort of running down barrels. His slider can be a big sweeping low-80s offering, a potential 55, or it can bleed into the mid-70s 12-6 curve in a slurvy sort of way. And when Olson wasn’t striking out guys, the stuff was a bit more hittable than it really should be. He’s likely to be a major leaguer, even as soon as 2023, but without more consistency in command and secondaries, he projects as a very frustrating backend starter.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... prospects/
12.) San Diego Padres: LHP Jose Lopez (from Tampa Bay Rays)
Another 95-and-a-slider guy, this time lefty (very good) and with worse command (very bad). Typically relievers who walked almost six batters per nine at Double-A don’t stick very long in contenders’ bullpens, but he’s a lefty who throws hard so any minimal improvements to the command might be enough to carry him.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... aft-recap/
Jose Lopez, LHP, Rays
A full-time move to the bullpen in 2022 helped Lopez as he reached Triple-A for the first time while striking out a combined 14.4 per nine and holding hitters to a .169 average against. Command is an issue (5.8 BB/9), but lefties with mid-90s fastballs and swing-and-miss breaking stuff that has played at upper levels often get a long Rule 5 look.
https://www.mlb.com/news/rule-5-prospec ... e-coverage
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
Change of teams provide better opportunity ...
Athletics acquired RHP Freddy Tarnok from the Braves as part of a three-team, nine-player trade.
Tarnok spent the majority of the 2022 season in the upper levels of the Braves' minor league system, pitching to a 4.05 ERA, 1.28 WHIP, and 124/44 K/BB ratio in 106 2/3 innings between Double-A Mississippi and Triple-A Gwinnett. The 24-year-old right-hander will have a clearer path to a regular rotation spot in Oakland, but his command needs some work.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... ddy-tarnok
Freddy Tarnok, RHP
Age: 24
The Braves signed Tarnok in the third round of the 2017 draft and signed the former two-way player for a $1.4 million bonus. He progressed slowly at first, before a breakout season in 2021 when he reached the upper minors. He made his big league debut in 2022 in a relief capacity. The Braves have developed Tarnok as a starter despite his first taste of the majors coming out of the bullpen. Outside of Atlanta, he could potentially earn more opportunities to continue proving he is a starting pitcher. He has a four-pitch mix headlined by a plus fastball in the 93-95 mph range that touches 98, with plus spin and carry. A previously plus curveball backed up in 2022, but is still a potentially above-average offering, and the Braves had worked with Tarnok to develop a low-80s slider. He also throws a mid-80s changeup and showed progress with that pitch, giving him an arsenal of four fringe-average or better pitches. Many scouts think Tarnok could excel in a bullpen role, where he could shorten his repertoire and focus on dominating with his fastball and one or two of his secondaries. He’s a fringe-average strike thrower. Tarnok ranked No. 9 in the Braves system.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... s-brewers/
Tarnok is a lanky 6-foot-3 former two-way player whose major league experience comes to a grand total of three batters faced. He, too, sits in the mid-90s with a changeup with good arm-side movement, as well as a mid-70s curveball he can use as a get-me-over pitch. Eric believes Tarnok is another guy who might thrive if his velocity jumps in the bullpen.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/three-teams ... ockbuster/
Courtesy of BP’s Jeffrey Paternostro: Tarnok continued to miss bats in the upper minors as a starter before Atlanta moved him to the pen for the last month of the season. Relief work is his best fit, where he can pump mid-90s and better heat, but he may lack a true swing-and-miss secondary. The Athletics have starting pitching opportunities to give though, so he may get a few more turns through the rotation than he would have in Cobb County.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news ... -the-ride/
Athletics acquired RHP Freddy Tarnok from the Braves as part of a three-team, nine-player trade.
Tarnok spent the majority of the 2022 season in the upper levels of the Braves' minor league system, pitching to a 4.05 ERA, 1.28 WHIP, and 124/44 K/BB ratio in 106 2/3 innings between Double-A Mississippi and Triple-A Gwinnett. The 24-year-old right-hander will have a clearer path to a regular rotation spot in Oakland, but his command needs some work.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... ddy-tarnok
Freddy Tarnok, RHP
Age: 24
The Braves signed Tarnok in the third round of the 2017 draft and signed the former two-way player for a $1.4 million bonus. He progressed slowly at first, before a breakout season in 2021 when he reached the upper minors. He made his big league debut in 2022 in a relief capacity. The Braves have developed Tarnok as a starter despite his first taste of the majors coming out of the bullpen. Outside of Atlanta, he could potentially earn more opportunities to continue proving he is a starting pitcher. He has a four-pitch mix headlined by a plus fastball in the 93-95 mph range that touches 98, with plus spin and carry. A previously plus curveball backed up in 2022, but is still a potentially above-average offering, and the Braves had worked with Tarnok to develop a low-80s slider. He also throws a mid-80s changeup and showed progress with that pitch, giving him an arsenal of four fringe-average or better pitches. Many scouts think Tarnok could excel in a bullpen role, where he could shorten his repertoire and focus on dominating with his fastball and one or two of his secondaries. He’s a fringe-average strike thrower. Tarnok ranked No. 9 in the Braves system.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... s-brewers/
Tarnok is a lanky 6-foot-3 former two-way player whose major league experience comes to a grand total of three batters faced. He, too, sits in the mid-90s with a changeup with good arm-side movement, as well as a mid-70s curveball he can use as a get-me-over pitch. Eric believes Tarnok is another guy who might thrive if his velocity jumps in the bullpen.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/three-teams ... ockbuster/
Courtesy of BP’s Jeffrey Paternostro: Tarnok continued to miss bats in the upper minors as a starter before Atlanta moved him to the pen for the last month of the season. Relief work is his best fit, where he can pump mid-90s and better heat, but he may lack a true swing-and-miss secondary. The Athletics have starting pitching opportunities to give though, so he may get a few more turns through the rotation than he would have in Cobb County.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news ... -the-ride/
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
Anybody who has viewed Oscar Colas’ Instagram account over the past two months understands that the No. 2 White Sox prospect and No. 95 prospect overall, per MLB Pipeline, had very little down time after his breakout 2022 Minor League campaign.
What was the reasoning for Colas’ return to intense preparation after such a short break? Last year’s impressive results mean little to him in the context of what he wants to achieve next, possibly at the Major League level.
“I don’t like to rest. Why should I rest if I haven’t earned anything?” Colas told MLB.com through interpreter Billy Russo during a phone interview. “I have a goal. I know in order to reach my goal that I have to work hard.
“That’s what I’ve been doing. I haven’t accomplished anything. I need to work hard and once I accomplish my goal, then I will work harder for the next one.”
Colas, 24, seems to be selling himself a bit short when saying he hasn’t accomplished anything. After playing previously in Cuba and Japan, the left-handed-hitting outfielder joined the White Sox as an international free agent when he signed a $2.7 million contract in January.
Colas' lone Minor League season included stops at High-A Winston-Salem (59 games, 244 at-bats), Double-A Birmingham (51 games, 206 at-bats) and Triple-A Charlotte (seven games, 31 at-bats), where he slashed a combined .314/.371/.524.
First-year goals for Colas included 15 home runs and 100 total hits. Colas finished with 23 homers, 151 hits, 79 RBIs, and 81 runs scored. But he was most impressed by his overall consistency.
“I’m more mature. I know how to do things in a better way, how to be more disciplined about baseball and my skills,” Colas said. “I know what I’m able to do on the field, and this year I just was able to put a lot together and display what I’m able to do. I don’t recall a stretch of four or five games when I wasn’t able to hit.”
“We think very highly of him,” said White Sox general manager Rick Hahn of Colas at last week’s Winter Meetings. “We think he very much deserves to be in the mix for the Opening Day roster in ’23.”
Oscar Colas crushes 21st homer
Hahn certainly didn’t guarantee Colas as the White Sox starting right fielder, which many people assume especially when looking at the team’s current 40-man roster, featuring Luis Robert as the only pure outfielder among the small group. Fans understandably are not thrilled with the White Sox lack of offseason activity, coming off a highly disappointing 81-81 season.
Yet having Colas earn his way into the lineup is a positive for the organization. It fits Hahn’s original rebuild idea of filling some spots with key players from within the club's farm system.
“Oscar is a special kid. A lot of desire. A lot of hunger. He wants to play. He wants to be good. A lot of determination,” said Marco Paddy, special assistant to the general manager, international operations, who scouted and signed Colas. “To be able to leave Cuba and leave Japan to enter a free agent market without knowing what the results were going to be, you have to be very courageous. I have a lot of respect for him and the way he’s handled it since Day 1.
“He’s prepared to handle that challenge. I think he’s got a chance to be successful. Oscar loves to work, and he loves to take care of his body. He’s hungry for that opportunity. I think that the results are going to be something special.”
While currently living in Miami, Colas has been in frequent contact with Robert, who lives 36 miles away in Weston, Fla. The duo could make a solid outfield combination, with Colas having the defensive capabilities to play center field as a right fielder.
There are no Major League projections or predictions from Colas in December, though he appreciates all the praise. He’s too busy working to fulfill his next baseball goal.
“Support from the fans, my teammates -- it makes me feel good,” Colas said. “It definitely fuels my motivation. Just reaching my goals and making my dream come true is a motivation. All those little things, when you factor all those little things, it makes you feel unbelievable.
“You know -- I’m motivated, and I really want to earn that spot. That’s my goal right now. I’m working hard for that, and we’ll see what happens.”
https://www.mlb.com/news/oscar-colas-of ... oster-spot
What was the reasoning for Colas’ return to intense preparation after such a short break? Last year’s impressive results mean little to him in the context of what he wants to achieve next, possibly at the Major League level.
“I don’t like to rest. Why should I rest if I haven’t earned anything?” Colas told MLB.com through interpreter Billy Russo during a phone interview. “I have a goal. I know in order to reach my goal that I have to work hard.
“That’s what I’ve been doing. I haven’t accomplished anything. I need to work hard and once I accomplish my goal, then I will work harder for the next one.”
Colas, 24, seems to be selling himself a bit short when saying he hasn’t accomplished anything. After playing previously in Cuba and Japan, the left-handed-hitting outfielder joined the White Sox as an international free agent when he signed a $2.7 million contract in January.
Colas' lone Minor League season included stops at High-A Winston-Salem (59 games, 244 at-bats), Double-A Birmingham (51 games, 206 at-bats) and Triple-A Charlotte (seven games, 31 at-bats), where he slashed a combined .314/.371/.524.
First-year goals for Colas included 15 home runs and 100 total hits. Colas finished with 23 homers, 151 hits, 79 RBIs, and 81 runs scored. But he was most impressed by his overall consistency.
“I’m more mature. I know how to do things in a better way, how to be more disciplined about baseball and my skills,” Colas said. “I know what I’m able to do on the field, and this year I just was able to put a lot together and display what I’m able to do. I don’t recall a stretch of four or five games when I wasn’t able to hit.”
“We think very highly of him,” said White Sox general manager Rick Hahn of Colas at last week’s Winter Meetings. “We think he very much deserves to be in the mix for the Opening Day roster in ’23.”
Oscar Colas crushes 21st homer
Hahn certainly didn’t guarantee Colas as the White Sox starting right fielder, which many people assume especially when looking at the team’s current 40-man roster, featuring Luis Robert as the only pure outfielder among the small group. Fans understandably are not thrilled with the White Sox lack of offseason activity, coming off a highly disappointing 81-81 season.
Yet having Colas earn his way into the lineup is a positive for the organization. It fits Hahn’s original rebuild idea of filling some spots with key players from within the club's farm system.
“Oscar is a special kid. A lot of desire. A lot of hunger. He wants to play. He wants to be good. A lot of determination,” said Marco Paddy, special assistant to the general manager, international operations, who scouted and signed Colas. “To be able to leave Cuba and leave Japan to enter a free agent market without knowing what the results were going to be, you have to be very courageous. I have a lot of respect for him and the way he’s handled it since Day 1.
“He’s prepared to handle that challenge. I think he’s got a chance to be successful. Oscar loves to work, and he loves to take care of his body. He’s hungry for that opportunity. I think that the results are going to be something special.”
While currently living in Miami, Colas has been in frequent contact with Robert, who lives 36 miles away in Weston, Fla. The duo could make a solid outfield combination, with Colas having the defensive capabilities to play center field as a right fielder.
There are no Major League projections or predictions from Colas in December, though he appreciates all the praise. He’s too busy working to fulfill his next baseball goal.
“Support from the fans, my teammates -- it makes me feel good,” Colas said. “It definitely fuels my motivation. Just reaching my goals and making my dream come true is a motivation. All those little things, when you factor all those little things, it makes you feel unbelievable.
“You know -- I’m motivated, and I really want to earn that spot. That’s my goal right now. I’m working hard for that, and we’ll see what happens.”
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
In Yoan Moncada, the White Sox currently have a big, strong, athletic Cuban third baseman.
In Bryan Ramos, they have a big, strong, athletic Cuban third baseman who is quickly moving through the system.
After spending most of the season with High-A Winston-Salem and hitting .275/.350/.471 with 19 home runs in 99 games, Ramos finished up with Double-A Birmingham and continued making a strong impression.
In November, Ramos was added to Chicago's 40-man roster.
“I was impressed with the way he carried himself on both sides of the ball,” Birmingham manager Justin Jirschele said. “His physique stands out, and it's easy to be excited about Bryan.”
Just 20 years old, the 6-foot-2, 225-pound Ramos tore up the South Atlantic League before being promoted to Birmingham with several other of Chicago's brightest prospects from Winston-Salem and Low-A Kannapolis.
In 21 games with the Barons, Ramos tailed off a bit. He hit .225 with three homers while also striking out 15 times in 80 at-bats.
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“He's going to continue learning his approach at the plate,” Jirschele said. “With that, I can only see the power grow from what is there now. But at the end of the day, what he was able to do at age 20 across two higher levels is impressive.”
A natural third baseman with a powerful throwing arm, Ramos played eight games at second base after arriving at Birmingham.
“I really like his actions at third base and I think he profiles extremely well over there,” Jirschele said. “Second base was new to him this year, but I thought he continued to settle in there and gain confidence in the middle of the field each time he went out there.”
After accomplishing so much at such a young age, Ramos is more than ready for what comes next.
“Bryan is a great teammate,” Jirschele said. “Soft spoken, a hard worker who leads by example in everything he does with his daily work.”
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CHI-LITES
— Chicago also added shortstop Jose Rodriguez to its 40-man roster. He hit .280/.340/.430 with 11 home runs in 104 games for Double-A Birmingham.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... white-sox/
In Bryan Ramos, they have a big, strong, athletic Cuban third baseman who is quickly moving through the system.
After spending most of the season with High-A Winston-Salem and hitting .275/.350/.471 with 19 home runs in 99 games, Ramos finished up with Double-A Birmingham and continued making a strong impression.
In November, Ramos was added to Chicago's 40-man roster.
“I was impressed with the way he carried himself on both sides of the ball,” Birmingham manager Justin Jirschele said. “His physique stands out, and it's easy to be excited about Bryan.”
Just 20 years old, the 6-foot-2, 225-pound Ramos tore up the South Atlantic League before being promoted to Birmingham with several other of Chicago's brightest prospects from Winston-Salem and Low-A Kannapolis.
In 21 games with the Barons, Ramos tailed off a bit. He hit .225 with three homers while also striking out 15 times in 80 at-bats.
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“He's going to continue learning his approach at the plate,” Jirschele said. “With that, I can only see the power grow from what is there now. But at the end of the day, what he was able to do at age 20 across two higher levels is impressive.”
A natural third baseman with a powerful throwing arm, Ramos played eight games at second base after arriving at Birmingham.
“I really like his actions at third base and I think he profiles extremely well over there,” Jirschele said. “Second base was new to him this year, but I thought he continued to settle in there and gain confidence in the middle of the field each time he went out there.”
After accomplishing so much at such a young age, Ramos is more than ready for what comes next.
“Bryan is a great teammate,” Jirschele said. “Soft spoken, a hard worker who leads by example in everything he does with his daily work.”
ADVERTISING
CHI-LITES
— Chicago also added shortstop Jose Rodriguez to its 40-man roster. He hit .280/.340/.430 with 11 home runs in 104 games for Double-A Birmingham.
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
White Sox pitching prospect Cristian Mena carries a reputation from his coaches and instructors as even-keeled, self-scrutinizing. With a measured, not gushing tone, he assesses how 2022 went for him.
“For me, it was an amazing season,” Mena said by phone call.
To his point, the 2022 campaign saw the Dominican-born Mena leave the team complex in Arizona, where he’d spent the offseason, and pitch in full-season affiliated ball for the first time. He moved through three different minor league levels. He learned a new slider grip from a longtime big leaguer to complement his 12-6 curveball. He earned his way into the Sox organization’s advanced English classes for Spanish speakers, while also working toward his high school degree. Mena’s involvement in Project Birmingham meant that he completed his season by reaching the Double-A level before his 20th birthday.
Birmingham had Mena facing the best hitters he had ever seen, at the tail end of the longest season and heaviest workload of his young life. Mena bludgeoned overmatched Low-A hitters with his standout curveball to the point where it was a challenge for him to develop his other pitches, and there were stretches of his time in High-A where his focus dipped when he wasn’t being challenged. So roving pitching coordinator Everett Teaford prepped his pupil on what he wouldn’t be able to get away with on the next level. The potentially daunting task was met with Mena’s now-typical response to challenges so far in his career.
“‘We’ll see,’” Teaford recalls his pupil always saying. “Then a shrug.”
Other than the 13-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio, Mena’s three-start, year-end stop in Birmingham was rough, as expected. Hitters who were more than five years older than Mena (on average) connected on 16 hits in 10 innings, and spiked his final line to a 3.80 ERA in a career-high 104 1/3 innings, with 126 strikeouts across three levels. After his last start, he asked if he could head back to the Dominican Republic to visit family a few days early, because he was planning on returning to the team’s complex in Arizona to work through the winter for the second straight offseason.
“There’s never been a time where I felt like Cristian was intimidated by a situation, or intimidated by an opponent,” said assistant general manager Chris Getz.
“This kid does not have big highs and big lows,” said minor league education coordinator Erin Santana. “You see him throwing a bullpen and he’s loose. He’s into it, he’s listening, he takes in everything and remembers it forever. He’s the same way in class. He’s very loose and he just wants to soak it all in.”
“He’s almost stubborn in a good way,” said John Ely, his pitching coach at Kannapolis. “And I’d say he’s a little bit cocky at times, but in a good way. He kind of just screams, ‘I’m going to be a big leaguer.’”
Mena’s love of tongue twisters, an exercise Santana says helps him grapple with pronunciation through his accent, has helped him handle English quicker than expected. With a slew of high draft picks spent on high school arms the last few years, it’s a bit of a surprise that Mena is the teenage pitcher threatening to be a top-5 prospect in the organization. But the $250,000 bonus Mena received as a 16-year-old was the largest the White Sox gave to any pitcher in their 2019 international class. A fast start wasn’t out of the question if he was willing to put the work in, and that’s what Mena does.
“I expected a year like that,” said Mena, navigating through most of his interview in English despite only beginning instruction a few years ago. “Because last year I stayed in Arizona, working hard through the offseason.”
“He did what he had to do,” said special assistant to the general manager Marco Paddy, who signed Mena as a 16-year-old. “When the guys are that good, they are going to make sacrifices. He has made the sacrifices and he’s getting the results right now.”
Growing up, Mena idolized pitcher Yordano Ventura, which is ultimately a reminder that Mena was 12 when he watched his Dominican countryman pitch in the 2015 World Series. Their arsenals are different. They don’t really look alike. Mena’s coaches who played with Ventura don’t exactly see the connection. Mena’s passion for the game is more steady than fiery.
“I’m aggressive like him,” said Mena. “But I’m more patient, under control and calmed down.”
Mena is listed at 6-foot-2 and gets the “projectable” label plenty, but he’s already started to fill out. And with their belief that rehab pitching coach Donnie Veal ironed out the spin efficiency issues with Mena’s fastball, the Sox would be perfectly happy if it sat 92-93 mph with consistent carry, above-average extension and the ability to reach back for 95 mph when he needs it. He is young, he has not had many long outings and just cleared 100 innings in a season for the first time, but for the most part has done all of this in spurts already.
The selling point on Mena is a curveball — that he knows how to use it, and what it means for him to have a handle on these facets of pitching at such a young age.
“There’s a lot of things about (Mena’s curveballs) that makes them special,” said Danny Farquhar, who was Mena’s pitching coach at Winston-Salem. “One of them: they’re very hard. The harder the breaking ball, most of the time, the better it performs. The shape to them: it’s very sharp and very late, with how much velocity and how much spin he puts on it, it’s a late break. Then the final and probably the most important component of it, he can command them. We joked last year: in 3-2 counts, what do you think his curveball percentage was?”
50? Surely it was high, but…
“It was either 90, or 100 percent,” laughed Farquhar. “I was like hey, man, like, you know they have the report on you?”
“He has the ability to manipulate it, so the average movement of it doesn’t jump off the page,” Ely said. “It’s late-breaking, which there’s no metric for. It spins well and it moves in the hitting zone. He throws one at minus-6 (inches of inverted vertical break) and then he’ll throw one at minus-13, and one’s a putaway and one is for a strike.”
Mena ascribes no great origin story to his ability to spin the baseball. He said he’s always been comfortable with it, and since he’s dedicated himself to his dream since he was 12, the spin is now second nature. The comfort to execute a breaking ball pretty much every time in a full count gives the team confidence that he can continue to build out a horizontally sweeping slider from the new grip Farquhar showed him in the second half of the season. Mena probably needs to get comfortable with his changeup, beyond just throwing it eight times per game, because Farquhar (jokingly) threatened to fine the Winston-Salem catchers if he threw it less than that.
“I never actually fined Adam Hackenberg, Keegan Fish or Colby Smelley any money,” said Farquhar, though he has had plenty of luck challenging Mena to get more efficient to stay under his pitch count.
No one with the Sox is trying to sell Mena as the next ace of the staff, since they can’t suddenly give him Norge Vera’s towering frame and velocity. He’ll need another “amazing season” to get on the radar of top-100 prospect lists and start the conversation about his major-league ETA. There are some who wouldn’t blame any evaluator for looking at Mena now — an average-sized right-hander with average velocity and one major league-viable off-speed pitch out of a high three-quarters slot — and think that for all his makeup and pitchability, he’s a future fifth starter until he proves otherwise.
Being every coach’s favorite White Sox pitching prospect doesn’t actually make him the best prospect. But those coaches would argue Mena can’t be ruled out to get better and make his mid-rotation potential a reality — because it’s so easy to help him get better.
“He’ll throw a pitch in the bullpen and we’re looking at the TrackMan and watching it with our eyes, and he’ll immediately have this grimace and immediately be like ‘What happened? That one wasn’t as good,'” Teaford said. “He knows instinctively when he gets off, to make corrections. As a coach, that’s what you’re dying to have: a person that can feel that and change it on the fly in one pitch. He can do that with his breaking ball.”
“If he makes a bad pitch, and let’s say the guy fouls it off or swings through it, when we’re watching video he’ll be like, ‘Ooh, I made a bad pitch right there and I got away with it,’” Farquhar said. “Even though it was a swing and a miss, he understands at higher levels that he’s not going to get away with that. He shows accountability.”
“He is always trying and willing to make a fool of himself,” said Santana, who says only Bryan Ramos really compares to Mena as a quick learner of English in the Sox system. “He asks for advice when he needs it. He’s not afraid to ask for help. He’s not afraid to like, say, ‘Hey, this situation is happening to me, what should I do?’ Whereas some kids his age think they already know what to do. He’s not like that.”
Mena spoke with The Athletic from Arizona, near the team complex where he’s preparing for spring training. He’s already lauded by his coaches for moving his fastball to different quadrants of the zone, understanding how to throw his curveball, and relative to his age and experience level, not departing his mechanics to throw harder. But when asked what he’s working on, “my location” is still his fallback answer. It’s always something.
“I was, like you said, younger, but I’m always trying to learn from everybody,” Mena said. “And I was close to good people and that helped me. My teammates are older than me, so every time I’m trying to listen to everybody. If they say something good, I’ll take it and that helps me a lot.”
There are a host of pitching prospects who have dominated A-ball with an incomplete skill set, only to later reveal they did not have another wave of development in them. Mena’s precocious maturity is impressive and allowed him to defy his age with early success, but it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s untapped upside for him to unfurl against more sophisticated hitters who have seen curveballs as good as his before. Which is all to say, it’s not going to get any easier from here.
But Mena finally zeroed in on why he liked watching Ventura.
“I’m never afraid,” he said. “I think I took that from him.”
https://theathletic.com/3996193/2022/12 ... tian-mena/
“For me, it was an amazing season,” Mena said by phone call.
To his point, the 2022 campaign saw the Dominican-born Mena leave the team complex in Arizona, where he’d spent the offseason, and pitch in full-season affiliated ball for the first time. He moved through three different minor league levels. He learned a new slider grip from a longtime big leaguer to complement his 12-6 curveball. He earned his way into the Sox organization’s advanced English classes for Spanish speakers, while also working toward his high school degree. Mena’s involvement in Project Birmingham meant that he completed his season by reaching the Double-A level before his 20th birthday.
Birmingham had Mena facing the best hitters he had ever seen, at the tail end of the longest season and heaviest workload of his young life. Mena bludgeoned overmatched Low-A hitters with his standout curveball to the point where it was a challenge for him to develop his other pitches, and there were stretches of his time in High-A where his focus dipped when he wasn’t being challenged. So roving pitching coordinator Everett Teaford prepped his pupil on what he wouldn’t be able to get away with on the next level. The potentially daunting task was met with Mena’s now-typical response to challenges so far in his career.
“‘We’ll see,’” Teaford recalls his pupil always saying. “Then a shrug.”
Other than the 13-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio, Mena’s three-start, year-end stop in Birmingham was rough, as expected. Hitters who were more than five years older than Mena (on average) connected on 16 hits in 10 innings, and spiked his final line to a 3.80 ERA in a career-high 104 1/3 innings, with 126 strikeouts across three levels. After his last start, he asked if he could head back to the Dominican Republic to visit family a few days early, because he was planning on returning to the team’s complex in Arizona to work through the winter for the second straight offseason.
“There’s never been a time where I felt like Cristian was intimidated by a situation, or intimidated by an opponent,” said assistant general manager Chris Getz.
“This kid does not have big highs and big lows,” said minor league education coordinator Erin Santana. “You see him throwing a bullpen and he’s loose. He’s into it, he’s listening, he takes in everything and remembers it forever. He’s the same way in class. He’s very loose and he just wants to soak it all in.”
“He’s almost stubborn in a good way,” said John Ely, his pitching coach at Kannapolis. “And I’d say he’s a little bit cocky at times, but in a good way. He kind of just screams, ‘I’m going to be a big leaguer.’”
Mena’s love of tongue twisters, an exercise Santana says helps him grapple with pronunciation through his accent, has helped him handle English quicker than expected. With a slew of high draft picks spent on high school arms the last few years, it’s a bit of a surprise that Mena is the teenage pitcher threatening to be a top-5 prospect in the organization. But the $250,000 bonus Mena received as a 16-year-old was the largest the White Sox gave to any pitcher in their 2019 international class. A fast start wasn’t out of the question if he was willing to put the work in, and that’s what Mena does.
“I expected a year like that,” said Mena, navigating through most of his interview in English despite only beginning instruction a few years ago. “Because last year I stayed in Arizona, working hard through the offseason.”
“He did what he had to do,” said special assistant to the general manager Marco Paddy, who signed Mena as a 16-year-old. “When the guys are that good, they are going to make sacrifices. He has made the sacrifices and he’s getting the results right now.”
Growing up, Mena idolized pitcher Yordano Ventura, which is ultimately a reminder that Mena was 12 when he watched his Dominican countryman pitch in the 2015 World Series. Their arsenals are different. They don’t really look alike. Mena’s coaches who played with Ventura don’t exactly see the connection. Mena’s passion for the game is more steady than fiery.
“I’m aggressive like him,” said Mena. “But I’m more patient, under control and calmed down.”
Mena is listed at 6-foot-2 and gets the “projectable” label plenty, but he’s already started to fill out. And with their belief that rehab pitching coach Donnie Veal ironed out the spin efficiency issues with Mena’s fastball, the Sox would be perfectly happy if it sat 92-93 mph with consistent carry, above-average extension and the ability to reach back for 95 mph when he needs it. He is young, he has not had many long outings and just cleared 100 innings in a season for the first time, but for the most part has done all of this in spurts already.
The selling point on Mena is a curveball — that he knows how to use it, and what it means for him to have a handle on these facets of pitching at such a young age.
“There’s a lot of things about (Mena’s curveballs) that makes them special,” said Danny Farquhar, who was Mena’s pitching coach at Winston-Salem. “One of them: they’re very hard. The harder the breaking ball, most of the time, the better it performs. The shape to them: it’s very sharp and very late, with how much velocity and how much spin he puts on it, it’s a late break. Then the final and probably the most important component of it, he can command them. We joked last year: in 3-2 counts, what do you think his curveball percentage was?”
50? Surely it was high, but…
“It was either 90, or 100 percent,” laughed Farquhar. “I was like hey, man, like, you know they have the report on you?”
“He has the ability to manipulate it, so the average movement of it doesn’t jump off the page,” Ely said. “It’s late-breaking, which there’s no metric for. It spins well and it moves in the hitting zone. He throws one at minus-6 (inches of inverted vertical break) and then he’ll throw one at minus-13, and one’s a putaway and one is for a strike.”
Mena ascribes no great origin story to his ability to spin the baseball. He said he’s always been comfortable with it, and since he’s dedicated himself to his dream since he was 12, the spin is now second nature. The comfort to execute a breaking ball pretty much every time in a full count gives the team confidence that he can continue to build out a horizontally sweeping slider from the new grip Farquhar showed him in the second half of the season. Mena probably needs to get comfortable with his changeup, beyond just throwing it eight times per game, because Farquhar (jokingly) threatened to fine the Winston-Salem catchers if he threw it less than that.
“I never actually fined Adam Hackenberg, Keegan Fish or Colby Smelley any money,” said Farquhar, though he has had plenty of luck challenging Mena to get more efficient to stay under his pitch count.
No one with the Sox is trying to sell Mena as the next ace of the staff, since they can’t suddenly give him Norge Vera’s towering frame and velocity. He’ll need another “amazing season” to get on the radar of top-100 prospect lists and start the conversation about his major-league ETA. There are some who wouldn’t blame any evaluator for looking at Mena now — an average-sized right-hander with average velocity and one major league-viable off-speed pitch out of a high three-quarters slot — and think that for all his makeup and pitchability, he’s a future fifth starter until he proves otherwise.
Being every coach’s favorite White Sox pitching prospect doesn’t actually make him the best prospect. But those coaches would argue Mena can’t be ruled out to get better and make his mid-rotation potential a reality — because it’s so easy to help him get better.
“He’ll throw a pitch in the bullpen and we’re looking at the TrackMan and watching it with our eyes, and he’ll immediately have this grimace and immediately be like ‘What happened? That one wasn’t as good,'” Teaford said. “He knows instinctively when he gets off, to make corrections. As a coach, that’s what you’re dying to have: a person that can feel that and change it on the fly in one pitch. He can do that with his breaking ball.”
“If he makes a bad pitch, and let’s say the guy fouls it off or swings through it, when we’re watching video he’ll be like, ‘Ooh, I made a bad pitch right there and I got away with it,’” Farquhar said. “Even though it was a swing and a miss, he understands at higher levels that he’s not going to get away with that. He shows accountability.”
“He is always trying and willing to make a fool of himself,” said Santana, who says only Bryan Ramos really compares to Mena as a quick learner of English in the Sox system. “He asks for advice when he needs it. He’s not afraid to ask for help. He’s not afraid to like, say, ‘Hey, this situation is happening to me, what should I do?’ Whereas some kids his age think they already know what to do. He’s not like that.”
Mena spoke with The Athletic from Arizona, near the team complex where he’s preparing for spring training. He’s already lauded by his coaches for moving his fastball to different quadrants of the zone, understanding how to throw his curveball, and relative to his age and experience level, not departing his mechanics to throw harder. But when asked what he’s working on, “my location” is still his fallback answer. It’s always something.
“I was, like you said, younger, but I’m always trying to learn from everybody,” Mena said. “And I was close to good people and that helped me. My teammates are older than me, so every time I’m trying to listen to everybody. If they say something good, I’ll take it and that helps me a lot.”
There are a host of pitching prospects who have dominated A-ball with an incomplete skill set, only to later reveal they did not have another wave of development in them. Mena’s precocious maturity is impressive and allowed him to defy his age with early success, but it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s untapped upside for him to unfurl against more sophisticated hitters who have seen curveballs as good as his before. Which is all to say, it’s not going to get any easier from here.
But Mena finally zeroed in on why he liked watching Ventura.
“I’m never afraid,” he said. “I think I took that from him.”
https://theathletic.com/3996193/2022/12 ... tian-mena/
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
10. Adam Macko
Pos: P
Born: 2000-12-30
B: Left, T: Left
H 6′ 0″, W 170 lbs.
History: Drafted by the Seattle Mariners in the seventh round of the 2019 draft, Vauxhall HS (Vauxhall, AB); signed for $250,000. Acquired from the Mariners for Teoscar Hernandez.
Previous Rank: #10 (org, SEA)
Major League ETA: 2024
Year Team Level Age W L SV G GS IP H HR BB% K% K GB% BABIP WHIP ERA DRA
2021 MOD Lo-A 20 2 2 0 9 9 33.3 29 1 13.5% 36.1% 56 36.8% .373 1.50 4.59 6.03
2022 EVE Hi-A 21 0 2 0 8 8 38.3 33 4 12.0% 35.9% 60 43.4% .372 1.38 3.99 4.10
The Report: On last year’s list we tabbed Macko as “two healthy seasons away” from believing in his ability to start long-term. We’re still waiting on the first of those two. The Slovakian-born southpaw by way of Canada went on the IL in late May and didn’t return until the Fall League, where he both walked and struck out about a batter an inning. You might glean from his walk rates that Macko isn’t much of a finesse pitcher, and you would be correct. He also has one of the better two-pitch combos in the system, with a double-plus, high-spin, two-plane curveball and a high-spin fastball he can run into the upper-90s, although he generally sits more in the mid-90s range in his starts. Macko also offers a below-average slider and changeup, but the two pitches could be scrapped with a move out of the rotation. Macko’s delivery is not without effort and likely led to some soft tissue shoulder issues in 2021 along with his relatively small size. He’s also shortened his arm swing to the point that he now keeps the ball well hidden behind his hip. At one time Macko looked like he could eventually sneak into the back end of a rotation with improved command and another usable secondary. There’s a non-zero chance that’s still possible, and he still has time on his side as he pitched all of 2022 as a 21-year-old. That said, it looks more and more like a relief-only profile going forward, and a potential late-inning one at that.
OFP: 50 / Setup reliever
Variance: Very high. Macko’s durability and command issues are legitimate concerns and he has yet to throw more than 52 innings in a calendar year. Given how dominant his fastball and curve can be, he’s just as likely to move quick as he is to stall out at Double-A. —Eli Walsh
19. Adrian Hernandez, P (Triple-A Buffalo)
“Right shoulder soreness” is not what you want as a pitcher at any time, let alone when you are on the cusp of the majors. Hernandez dominated his three minor league stops in 2021, and kept it going into Triple-A in 2022. Then he missed two months once his shoulder started barking and got knocked around once he came back. When healthy he fires plus changeup after plus changeup and ties hitters in knots, like a live-action version of “Baseball Bugs.” Hernandez will pop a low-90s fastball now and again, which probably looks like 95+ after watching the cambio float in every other pitch. Hernandez never been too fine with his control even when healthy, and he lost the plate more often after coming back from his injury. Hopefully he is 100% in spring and can compete for a spot in the Toronto pen in 2023. The world needs more changeup specialists.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... prospects/
Pos: P
Born: 2000-12-30
B: Left, T: Left
H 6′ 0″, W 170 lbs.
History: Drafted by the Seattle Mariners in the seventh round of the 2019 draft, Vauxhall HS (Vauxhall, AB); signed for $250,000. Acquired from the Mariners for Teoscar Hernandez.
Previous Rank: #10 (org, SEA)
Major League ETA: 2024
Year Team Level Age W L SV G GS IP H HR BB% K% K GB% BABIP WHIP ERA DRA
2021 MOD Lo-A 20 2 2 0 9 9 33.3 29 1 13.5% 36.1% 56 36.8% .373 1.50 4.59 6.03
2022 EVE Hi-A 21 0 2 0 8 8 38.3 33 4 12.0% 35.9% 60 43.4% .372 1.38 3.99 4.10
The Report: On last year’s list we tabbed Macko as “two healthy seasons away” from believing in his ability to start long-term. We’re still waiting on the first of those two. The Slovakian-born southpaw by way of Canada went on the IL in late May and didn’t return until the Fall League, where he both walked and struck out about a batter an inning. You might glean from his walk rates that Macko isn’t much of a finesse pitcher, and you would be correct. He also has one of the better two-pitch combos in the system, with a double-plus, high-spin, two-plane curveball and a high-spin fastball he can run into the upper-90s, although he generally sits more in the mid-90s range in his starts. Macko also offers a below-average slider and changeup, but the two pitches could be scrapped with a move out of the rotation. Macko’s delivery is not without effort and likely led to some soft tissue shoulder issues in 2021 along with his relatively small size. He’s also shortened his arm swing to the point that he now keeps the ball well hidden behind his hip. At one time Macko looked like he could eventually sneak into the back end of a rotation with improved command and another usable secondary. There’s a non-zero chance that’s still possible, and he still has time on his side as he pitched all of 2022 as a 21-year-old. That said, it looks more and more like a relief-only profile going forward, and a potential late-inning one at that.
OFP: 50 / Setup reliever
Variance: Very high. Macko’s durability and command issues are legitimate concerns and he has yet to throw more than 52 innings in a calendar year. Given how dominant his fastball and curve can be, he’s just as likely to move quick as he is to stall out at Double-A. —Eli Walsh
19. Adrian Hernandez, P (Triple-A Buffalo)
“Right shoulder soreness” is not what you want as a pitcher at any time, let alone when you are on the cusp of the majors. Hernandez dominated his three minor league stops in 2021, and kept it going into Triple-A in 2022. Then he missed two months once his shoulder started barking and got knocked around once he came back. When healthy he fires plus changeup after plus changeup and ties hitters in knots, like a live-action version of “Baseball Bugs.” Hernandez will pop a low-90s fastball now and again, which probably looks like 95+ after watching the cambio float in every other pitch. Hernandez never been too fine with his control even when healthy, and he lost the plate more often after coming back from his injury. Hopefully he is 100% in spring and can compete for a spot in the Toronto pen in 2023. The world needs more changeup specialists.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... prospects/
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
10. Beck Way
Pos: P
Born: 1999-08-06
B: Right, T: Right
H: 6′ 4″, W: 200 lbs.
History: Drafted in the fourth round of the 2020 draft, Northwest Florida State; signed for $600,000. Acquired from the Yankees for Andrew Benintendi.
Previous Rank: N/A
Major League ETA: 2024
Year Team Level Age W L SV G GS IP H HR BB% K% K GB% BABIP WHIP ERA DRA
2021 HV Hi-A 21 1 2 0 4 4 16.3 18 3 12.0% 38.7% 29 54.1% .469 1.65 7.71 4.50
2021 TAM Lo-A 21 3 1 0 15 14 47.0 23 2 14.9% 27.7% 54 62.0% .202 1.11 2.68 4.73
2022 HV Hi-A 22 5 5 0 15 15 72.3 55 9 9.0% 27.6% 80 46.1% .271 1.12 3.73 4.86
2022 QC Hi-A 22 3 3 0 7 7 35.7 24 1 11.1% 30.7% 47 41.0% .288 1.15 3.79 4.34
The Report: Another Yankees arm from a directional Southern school—and the rare double directional at that—Way used his advanced fastball/slider combo to strike out plenty of batters in two different High-A leagues in 2022. His uptempo, effortful delivery combined with the two-pitch nature of his arsenal may point to a relief role long term, but his mid-90s fastball has decent sink and run, and his slider shows hard depth as part of its two plane action despite a low-three-quarters slot. Last year Ben Spanier pegged the development of his changeup as a key, and it remains a bit firm in the upper-80s. You don’t need a third pitch to be a starter—it’s the 2020s after all—but Way will need a bit better command and a bit more consistency with the breaker to stick in a rotation regardless.
OFP: 50 / no. 4 starter or setup man
Variance: Medium. Beck’s fastball/slider combo should have some major league utility, but the ultimate role and overall upside are going to be limiting factors. —Jeffrey Paternostro
Jesse Roche’s Fantasy Take: The Yankees know how to draft and develop two-plane sliders, and Way has a good one. Whether he’ll throw enough strikes to stick as a starter, however, remains to be seen. Regardless, Way has intriguing, bat-missing stuff that could eventually make a fantasy-relevant impact.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... prospects/
Pos: P
Born: 1999-08-06
B: Right, T: Right
H: 6′ 4″, W: 200 lbs.
History: Drafted in the fourth round of the 2020 draft, Northwest Florida State; signed for $600,000. Acquired from the Yankees for Andrew Benintendi.
Previous Rank: N/A
Major League ETA: 2024
Year Team Level Age W L SV G GS IP H HR BB% K% K GB% BABIP WHIP ERA DRA
2021 HV Hi-A 21 1 2 0 4 4 16.3 18 3 12.0% 38.7% 29 54.1% .469 1.65 7.71 4.50
2021 TAM Lo-A 21 3 1 0 15 14 47.0 23 2 14.9% 27.7% 54 62.0% .202 1.11 2.68 4.73
2022 HV Hi-A 22 5 5 0 15 15 72.3 55 9 9.0% 27.6% 80 46.1% .271 1.12 3.73 4.86
2022 QC Hi-A 22 3 3 0 7 7 35.7 24 1 11.1% 30.7% 47 41.0% .288 1.15 3.79 4.34
The Report: Another Yankees arm from a directional Southern school—and the rare double directional at that—Way used his advanced fastball/slider combo to strike out plenty of batters in two different High-A leagues in 2022. His uptempo, effortful delivery combined with the two-pitch nature of his arsenal may point to a relief role long term, but his mid-90s fastball has decent sink and run, and his slider shows hard depth as part of its two plane action despite a low-three-quarters slot. Last year Ben Spanier pegged the development of his changeup as a key, and it remains a bit firm in the upper-80s. You don’t need a third pitch to be a starter—it’s the 2020s after all—but Way will need a bit better command and a bit more consistency with the breaker to stick in a rotation regardless.
OFP: 50 / no. 4 starter or setup man
Variance: Medium. Beck’s fastball/slider combo should have some major league utility, but the ultimate role and overall upside are going to be limiting factors. —Jeffrey Paternostro
Jesse Roche’s Fantasy Take: The Yankees know how to draft and develop two-plane sliders, and Way has a good one. Whether he’ll throw enough strikes to stick as a starter, however, remains to be seen. Regardless, Way has intriguing, bat-missing stuff that could eventually make a fantasy-relevant impact.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... prospects/
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
Unranked a Year Ago, Mason Auer Is One of Tampa Bay’s Most Promising Prospects
by David Laurila
Mason Auer made some of the biggest strides in the Tampa Bay Rays system in 2022. Unranked going into his first full professional season, the 21-year-old Joplin, Missouri native not only slashed .290/.372/.487 with 15 home runs between Low-A Charleston and High-A Bowling Green, he legged out 12 triples and swiped 48 bases. Moreover, he impressed on defense. A fifth-round pick in 2021 out of San Jacinto College, Auer is rated the best defensive outfielder, and as having the best outfield arm, among Rays prospects.
Auer discussed his path to pro ball and the skill set that has allowed him to emerge as a promising prospect at the end of last season.
———
David Laurila: You were a late-round pick out of high school in 2019 but opted to attend a junior college rather than sign with the Chicago Cubs. What went into that decision?
Mason Auer: “There were talks earlier in the draft, but it wasn’t the money I wanted. Then they picked me in the 39th round. They called and said that there was maybe going to be some more money opening up if they didn’t get a few guys signed, so there was some serious talk about me signing, but that didn’t happen. I mean, it was still a hard decision. Ultimately, I knew that I wanted to keep working hard and go higher in [an upcoming] draft.”
Laurila: You have a plus arm and spent time on the mound in college. Did the Cubs want you as a pitcher or as an outfielder?
Auer: “They drafted me as an outfielder. There was a lot of talk about me being a pitcher when I was in high school, but I always kind of knew that I wanted to play the outfield and be a hitter. I like to play every day.”
Laurila: That said, how hard did you throw?
Auer: “I was up to 97 [mph]. I had a pretty good arm in high school, but again, I kind of knew that I wanted to be an outfielder and hit.”
Laurila: Being that you’re from Missouri, I’m guessing you grew up a Cardinals fans and the idea of playing for the Cubs wasn’t as appealing as it otherwise might have been? Players usually claim they don’t care where they go in the draft, but at the same time, roots runs deep…
Auer: “I have always been a Cardinals fan, yes, so I can’t say that it didn’t cross my mind. But like you said, at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. You just want a chance to play.”
Laurila: That chance is coming with the Rays, who took you in the fifth round a few years later. What were your expectations going into that draft?
Auer: “I mean, the draft is a weird thing. I had my expectations, which were to go in the top five rounds, and I did. It worked out pretty well for me.”
Laurila: What about in terms of teams you thought were most likely to take you? Was Tampa Bay one of them?
Auer: “So, I actually didn’t talk to the Rays until a couple of days before the draft. But there had been some talk with my coaches at San Jac — Rays scouts had been talking to them — and there were other teams as well, like the Angels and the Blue Jays. The Rays were one of the top ones.”
Laurila: What were your expectations coming into this season?
Auer: “More than anything, I just wanted to work hard every day and show my talent. I wanted to prove to everybody that I can play at a high level, and that I can be the player I want to be.”
Laurila: You obviously put up some pretty impressive numbers. Looking at it objectively, did you maybe exceed what you thought you’d do in your first full season?
Auer: “I mean, I have very high expectations for myself. I do feel like I had a really good season — I played very well — and I think I showed everybody what I can do. I guess what I would say is that I probably exceeded some other people’s expectations.”
Laurila: How would you describe your game? What are your strengths?
Auer: “I’m pretty good at… I guess I would say that I’m good at being an all-around baseball player. I take pride in playing hard every day, and I have tools to do a lot of different things on the field; I can affect the game in a lot of different ways.”
Laurila: Which part of your game do you most need to improve?
Auer: “I think my biggest need, and this pretty much goes for all hitters, is improving my strikeout-to-walk ratio. That’s pretty much what I need to do going forward. At the same time, I want to keep getting better at everything I do.”
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/unranked-a- ... prospects/
by David Laurila
Mason Auer made some of the biggest strides in the Tampa Bay Rays system in 2022. Unranked going into his first full professional season, the 21-year-old Joplin, Missouri native not only slashed .290/.372/.487 with 15 home runs between Low-A Charleston and High-A Bowling Green, he legged out 12 triples and swiped 48 bases. Moreover, he impressed on defense. A fifth-round pick in 2021 out of San Jacinto College, Auer is rated the best defensive outfielder, and as having the best outfield arm, among Rays prospects.
Auer discussed his path to pro ball and the skill set that has allowed him to emerge as a promising prospect at the end of last season.
———
David Laurila: You were a late-round pick out of high school in 2019 but opted to attend a junior college rather than sign with the Chicago Cubs. What went into that decision?
Mason Auer: “There were talks earlier in the draft, but it wasn’t the money I wanted. Then they picked me in the 39th round. They called and said that there was maybe going to be some more money opening up if they didn’t get a few guys signed, so there was some serious talk about me signing, but that didn’t happen. I mean, it was still a hard decision. Ultimately, I knew that I wanted to keep working hard and go higher in [an upcoming] draft.”
Laurila: You have a plus arm and spent time on the mound in college. Did the Cubs want you as a pitcher or as an outfielder?
Auer: “They drafted me as an outfielder. There was a lot of talk about me being a pitcher when I was in high school, but I always kind of knew that I wanted to play the outfield and be a hitter. I like to play every day.”
Laurila: That said, how hard did you throw?
Auer: “I was up to 97 [mph]. I had a pretty good arm in high school, but again, I kind of knew that I wanted to be an outfielder and hit.”
Laurila: Being that you’re from Missouri, I’m guessing you grew up a Cardinals fans and the idea of playing for the Cubs wasn’t as appealing as it otherwise might have been? Players usually claim they don’t care where they go in the draft, but at the same time, roots runs deep…
Auer: “I have always been a Cardinals fan, yes, so I can’t say that it didn’t cross my mind. But like you said, at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. You just want a chance to play.”
Laurila: That chance is coming with the Rays, who took you in the fifth round a few years later. What were your expectations going into that draft?
Auer: “I mean, the draft is a weird thing. I had my expectations, which were to go in the top five rounds, and I did. It worked out pretty well for me.”
Laurila: What about in terms of teams you thought were most likely to take you? Was Tampa Bay one of them?
Auer: “So, I actually didn’t talk to the Rays until a couple of days before the draft. But there had been some talk with my coaches at San Jac — Rays scouts had been talking to them — and there were other teams as well, like the Angels and the Blue Jays. The Rays were one of the top ones.”
Laurila: What were your expectations coming into this season?
Auer: “More than anything, I just wanted to work hard every day and show my talent. I wanted to prove to everybody that I can play at a high level, and that I can be the player I want to be.”
Laurila: You obviously put up some pretty impressive numbers. Looking at it objectively, did you maybe exceed what you thought you’d do in your first full season?
Auer: “I mean, I have very high expectations for myself. I do feel like I had a really good season — I played very well — and I think I showed everybody what I can do. I guess what I would say is that I probably exceeded some other people’s expectations.”
Laurila: How would you describe your game? What are your strengths?
Auer: “I’m pretty good at… I guess I would say that I’m good at being an all-around baseball player. I take pride in playing hard every day, and I have tools to do a lot of different things on the field; I can affect the game in a lot of different ways.”
Laurila: Which part of your game do you most need to improve?
Auer: “I think my biggest need, and this pretty much goes for all hitters, is improving my strikeout-to-walk ratio. That’s pretty much what I need to do going forward. At the same time, I want to keep getting better at everything I do.”
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/unranked-a- ... prospects/
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
The Miami Marlins on Wednesday selected right-handed relief pitcher Nic Enright from the Cleveland Guardians organization in the MLB phase of the Rule 5 Draft, the final major event of the league’s annual Winter Meetings. As a Rule 5 selection, Enright has to stay on Miami’s big-league roster for the entirety of the 2023 season. He can’t be optioned to the minor leagues.
Enright, 25, was the Guardians’ 20th-round pick in the 2019 MLB Draft out of Virginia Tech and finished the 2022 season with Cleveland’s Triple A affiliate, the Columbus Clippers. In 37 innings over 29 appearances with the Clippers, Enright posted a 2.68 ERA with 50 strikeouts against just six walks while holding opponents to a .216 batting average.
For his career, he has pitched 141 2/3 innings in the minors and has a 2.80 ERA with 201 strikeouts against 35 walks.
Baseball America called Enright “one of the most polished available relievers in this year’s Rule 5 class” and called him “a relatively low-risk addition to a big league bullpen as a Rule 5 pick.”
He is a fastball-slider pitcher. His fastball while only having a velocity in the low-90s has “some of the best carry in the minors, which makes it a bat-misser that he can dot the zone with,” according to Baseball America. As for his slider, it “generates plenty of swings and misses as well, and serves as an excellent chase pitch when he gets ahead in counts.”
This marks the fifth consecutive season in which the MLB phase of the Rule 5 Draft has occurred (it was skipped in 2021 due to the league lockout) that the Marlins have selected a pitcher in the Rule 5 Draft. The others, all right-handed pitchers: Elieser Hernandez in 2017, Riley Ferrell in 2018, Sterling Sharp in 2019 and Paul Campbell in 2020. The team also traded for right-handed pitcher Zach Pop immediately following the 2020 Rule 5 Draft.
https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/mlb/ ... 05386.html
Enright, 25, was the Guardians’ 20th-round pick in the 2019 MLB Draft out of Virginia Tech and finished the 2022 season with Cleveland’s Triple A affiliate, the Columbus Clippers. In 37 innings over 29 appearances with the Clippers, Enright posted a 2.68 ERA with 50 strikeouts against just six walks while holding opponents to a .216 batting average.
For his career, he has pitched 141 2/3 innings in the minors and has a 2.80 ERA with 201 strikeouts against 35 walks.
Baseball America called Enright “one of the most polished available relievers in this year’s Rule 5 class” and called him “a relatively low-risk addition to a big league bullpen as a Rule 5 pick.”
He is a fastball-slider pitcher. His fastball while only having a velocity in the low-90s has “some of the best carry in the minors, which makes it a bat-misser that he can dot the zone with,” according to Baseball America. As for his slider, it “generates plenty of swings and misses as well, and serves as an excellent chase pitch when he gets ahead in counts.”
This marks the fifth consecutive season in which the MLB phase of the Rule 5 Draft has occurred (it was skipped in 2021 due to the league lockout) that the Marlins have selected a pitcher in the Rule 5 Draft. The others, all right-handed pitchers: Elieser Hernandez in 2017, Riley Ferrell in 2018, Sterling Sharp in 2019 and Paul Campbell in 2020. The team also traded for right-handed pitcher Zach Pop immediately following the 2020 Rule 5 Draft.
https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/mlb/ ... 05386.html
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
Scott (Boston):What does Beck Way need to do to continue to start? Or is he destined for the pen?
Bill Mitchell: The keys for Way, who was acquired from the Yankees organization in the Andrew Benintendi trade, will be to get more separation on his changeup from the fastball and using the pitch more often, as well as improving the command of all three of his pitches. Talent evaluators believe that Way is probably destined for the bullpen where he can concentrate on his above-average fastball and slider, but the Royals will continue to develop him as a starter. You can read more about Way and other prospects in the Royals Top 30 when you receive your invaluable Prospect Handbook.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... ects-chat/
Bill Mitchell: The keys for Way, who was acquired from the Yankees organization in the Andrew Benintendi trade, will be to get more separation on his changeup from the fastball and using the pitch more often, as well as improving the command of all three of his pitches. Talent evaluators believe that Way is probably destined for the bullpen where he can concentrate on his above-average fastball and slider, but the Royals will continue to develop him as a starter. You can read more about Way and other prospects in the Royals Top 30 when you receive your invaluable Prospect Handbook.
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
As a teenager in his native Dominican Republic, shortstop Jose Rodriguez was nicknamed “Popeye.”
Standing 5-foot-11 and weighing 175 pounds, he's hardly a physical specimen. But Rodriguez does have some Popeye-like forearms, and the moniker followed him into professional baseball after signing in February 2018.
“He's naturally a strong kid,” White Sox assistant general manager and farm director Chris Getz said.
Spending the entire 2022 season at Double-A Birmingham at the age of 21, Rodriguez hit 11 home runs, 21 doubles and six triples while batting .280/.340/.430 in 104 games.
Chicago added the righthanded hitter to the 40-man roster in November.
If he can stay healthy, Rodriguez is capable of putting up even bigger numbers. Last spring, he was slowed by a leg injury, and it took him time to get settled in.
“I think it affected him early on in the season, because he didn't get the ample reps they usually get in spring training,” Getz said. “He was having a bit of an uphill battle.”
Stuck on two home runs through July, Rodriguez erupted in August and hit nine homers in 17 games. During an Aug. 20 at-bat, he broke his hamate bone and missed the rest of the season.
“Nice to see him dig himself out of a statistical hole like that,” Getz said. “He made adjustments in his swing, calmed his base and got much more direct to the ball. He was using the whole field and obviously picked his spots where he put his swing together and ran into some home runs.”
Getz said Rodriguez will “undoubtedly” be ready to go when spring training opens, and he'll be back playing second base and shortstop.
Rodriguez started catching Chicago's attention in 2021, when he hit a combined .301/.338/.469 with 14 home runs for Low-A Kannapolis, High-A Winston-Salem and Birmingham.
He can also run, and had 70 stolen bases over the last two seasons.
“He loves to play,” Getz said. “He's got such fire in him.”
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... -big-year/
Standing 5-foot-11 and weighing 175 pounds, he's hardly a physical specimen. But Rodriguez does have some Popeye-like forearms, and the moniker followed him into professional baseball after signing in February 2018.
“He's naturally a strong kid,” White Sox assistant general manager and farm director Chris Getz said.
Spending the entire 2022 season at Double-A Birmingham at the age of 21, Rodriguez hit 11 home runs, 21 doubles and six triples while batting .280/.340/.430 in 104 games.
Chicago added the righthanded hitter to the 40-man roster in November.
If he can stay healthy, Rodriguez is capable of putting up even bigger numbers. Last spring, he was slowed by a leg injury, and it took him time to get settled in.
“I think it affected him early on in the season, because he didn't get the ample reps they usually get in spring training,” Getz said. “He was having a bit of an uphill battle.”
Stuck on two home runs through July, Rodriguez erupted in August and hit nine homers in 17 games. During an Aug. 20 at-bat, he broke his hamate bone and missed the rest of the season.
“Nice to see him dig himself out of a statistical hole like that,” Getz said. “He made adjustments in his swing, calmed his base and got much more direct to the ball. He was using the whole field and obviously picked his spots where he put his swing together and ran into some home runs.”
Getz said Rodriguez will “undoubtedly” be ready to go when spring training opens, and he'll be back playing second base and shortstop.
Rodriguez started catching Chicago's attention in 2021, when he hit a combined .301/.338/.469 with 14 home runs for Low-A Kannapolis, High-A Winston-Salem and Birmingham.
He can also run, and had 70 stolen bases over the last two seasons.
“He loves to play,” Getz said. “He's got such fire in him.”
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... -big-year/
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
Marlins No. 2 prospect Max Meyer will begin throwing soon.
Speaking for the first time since undergoing Tommy John surgery on Aug. 9, 2022, Meyer provided an update on his rehab to Kyle Sielaff during the Marlins' Hot Stove Show on Wednesday night.
"I think early February -- even Feb. 1 -- is when I'm going to start throwing," the 23-year-old right-hander said. "Been starting to get the elbow moving a little bit. ... Strength-wise has come a long way. I'm pretty much like the same if I'm lifting 90 to this side, I'm lifting to 90 in the other. So it's pretty much good strength right now, which is what you need when you're going to start throwing in two weeks or whatever it is. I'm pretty close. When Spring Training rolls around, I'll be throwing with all those guys -- I don't know with the team or not -- but I'll be throwing. It's coming up here pretty soon."
Meyer admitted that undergoing Tommy John surgery felt like an inevitability. Prior to his Major League debut, Meyer had been sidelined for a month while pitching at Triple-A Jacksonville. At the time, he wondered whether his right UCL might be torn, but the MRI exam came back showing just ulnar nerve irritation. He had never dealt with elbow pain before.
So on the 10th pitch of his second MLB start on July 23 in Pittsburgh, Meyer felt a pop and "knew that was it." After undergoing an MRI exam on July 25, which revealed a tear in the UCL, Meyer mulled over his decision following various opinions.
"Just hard when you pick up the ball in warmups and you start throwing [and] it's just a brutal pain," Meyer said. "I was kind of waiting for it, honestly, as nasty as that sounds. You kind of just wait on it, and felt it on a fastball outside."
Meyer, who turns 24 on March 12, has leaned on former University of Minnesota teammate and Phillies prospect Brett Schulze as well as Marlins No. 4 prospect Jake Eder and right-handers Anthony Bender, Cody Poteet and Paul Campbell. The latter three underwent the procedure in 2022.
The rehab time frame for Tommy John surgery typically ranges from 12-18 months. Eder, for example, had the surgery in August 2021 and began throwing off the mound for the first time on July 1, 2022. He expects to be full-go for Spring Training next month.
"We're all going through it at the same time, we're all together," said Meyer, who works out every day. "'What did you feel today? How's this? How's your extension going today?' So it's just been easier. Being able to talk to them, and sometimes you just need someone to talk to when you know you're going through arm pains again, but you know it's all going to be OK if you just stick with the process."
During the Winter Meetings in early December, general manager Kim Ng said Meyer will be on the injured list in 2023 and "hopefully ready to go in 2024."
"I just can't wait to start throwing again," Meyer said. "Just getting ready to pick the ball up again and having a little bit of competitiveness every day. it's just going to feel good when I get back into the swing of things."
https://www.mlb.com/news/max-meyer-upda ... hn-surgery
Speaking for the first time since undergoing Tommy John surgery on Aug. 9, 2022, Meyer provided an update on his rehab to Kyle Sielaff during the Marlins' Hot Stove Show on Wednesday night.
"I think early February -- even Feb. 1 -- is when I'm going to start throwing," the 23-year-old right-hander said. "Been starting to get the elbow moving a little bit. ... Strength-wise has come a long way. I'm pretty much like the same if I'm lifting 90 to this side, I'm lifting to 90 in the other. So it's pretty much good strength right now, which is what you need when you're going to start throwing in two weeks or whatever it is. I'm pretty close. When Spring Training rolls around, I'll be throwing with all those guys -- I don't know with the team or not -- but I'll be throwing. It's coming up here pretty soon."
Meyer admitted that undergoing Tommy John surgery felt like an inevitability. Prior to his Major League debut, Meyer had been sidelined for a month while pitching at Triple-A Jacksonville. At the time, he wondered whether his right UCL might be torn, but the MRI exam came back showing just ulnar nerve irritation. He had never dealt with elbow pain before.
So on the 10th pitch of his second MLB start on July 23 in Pittsburgh, Meyer felt a pop and "knew that was it." After undergoing an MRI exam on July 25, which revealed a tear in the UCL, Meyer mulled over his decision following various opinions.
"Just hard when you pick up the ball in warmups and you start throwing [and] it's just a brutal pain," Meyer said. "I was kind of waiting for it, honestly, as nasty as that sounds. You kind of just wait on it, and felt it on a fastball outside."
Meyer, who turns 24 on March 12, has leaned on former University of Minnesota teammate and Phillies prospect Brett Schulze as well as Marlins No. 4 prospect Jake Eder and right-handers Anthony Bender, Cody Poteet and Paul Campbell. The latter three underwent the procedure in 2022.
The rehab time frame for Tommy John surgery typically ranges from 12-18 months. Eder, for example, had the surgery in August 2021 and began throwing off the mound for the first time on July 1, 2022. He expects to be full-go for Spring Training next month.
"We're all going through it at the same time, we're all together," said Meyer, who works out every day. "'What did you feel today? How's this? How's your extension going today?' So it's just been easier. Being able to talk to them, and sometimes you just need someone to talk to when you know you're going through arm pains again, but you know it's all going to be OK if you just stick with the process."
During the Winter Meetings in early December, general manager Kim Ng said Meyer will be on the injured list in 2023 and "hopefully ready to go in 2024."
"I just can't wait to start throwing again," Meyer said. "Just getting ready to pick the ball up again and having a little bit of competitiveness every day. it's just going to feel good when I get back into the swing of things."
https://www.mlb.com/news/max-meyer-upda ... hn-surgery
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
Dax Fulton, LHP, Marlins
When the Marlins drafted Fulton in 2020, they knew it might take a little while for him to shed his post-Tommy John surgery rust. Toward the second half of the 2022 season, it was clear he was back to his old self and began dominating the upper levels of the minor leagues with improved stamina, fitness and the pitch mix to match. Fulton made some alterations to his repertoire as well, adding a two-seamer and utilizing a new grip on his changeup. The results were a dominant stint in Double-A, where he struck out nearly 13 hitters per nine innings and helped lead Pensacola to the Southern League crown. Further improvement to his changeup could boost Fulton into the Top 100.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... t-in-2023/
Sean Burke, RHP, White Sox
A third-round pick out of Maryland in 2021, Burke flew up three levels to Triple-A in his full-season debut and led the White Sox organization with 137 strikeouts while showing improved control from college. The former high school basketball star missed his freshman year after having Tommy John surgery and had his sophomore season canceled by the coronavirus pandemic, but he’s improved rapidly as he’s gotten consistent mound time. The 6-foot-5 Burke now features a plus fastball that has ticked up to sit 94 mph and touch 98 with riding, tailing life, a borderline plus curveball with tight, downward break and a slider and changeup that both show average potential. Most importantly, he’s improved his strike-throwing and learned to command the ball down to both sides of the plate. With his stuff, athleticism and improved control, Burke has solidified himself as one of the White Sox’s best pitching prospects and put himself in position to make his major league debut in 2023.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... h-in-2023/
Mason Auer, OF Rays: Drafted in the fifth round of the 2021 draft out of juco powerhouse San Jacinto (Texas), Auer hit .290/.372/.487 with 15 home runs and 48 stolen bases while leading the minor leagues with 12 triples. Auer is a tool shed with 55 or better tools across the board and a true 80-grade throwing arm. With double-plus speed, above-average power and hitting ability, Auer could burst onto the Top 100 early in 2023 and stay there.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... ects-list/
When the Marlins drafted Fulton in 2020, they knew it might take a little while for him to shed his post-Tommy John surgery rust. Toward the second half of the 2022 season, it was clear he was back to his old self and began dominating the upper levels of the minor leagues with improved stamina, fitness and the pitch mix to match. Fulton made some alterations to his repertoire as well, adding a two-seamer and utilizing a new grip on his changeup. The results were a dominant stint in Double-A, where he struck out nearly 13 hitters per nine innings and helped lead Pensacola to the Southern League crown. Further improvement to his changeup could boost Fulton into the Top 100.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... t-in-2023/
Sean Burke, RHP, White Sox
A third-round pick out of Maryland in 2021, Burke flew up three levels to Triple-A in his full-season debut and led the White Sox organization with 137 strikeouts while showing improved control from college. The former high school basketball star missed his freshman year after having Tommy John surgery and had his sophomore season canceled by the coronavirus pandemic, but he’s improved rapidly as he’s gotten consistent mound time. The 6-foot-5 Burke now features a plus fastball that has ticked up to sit 94 mph and touch 98 with riding, tailing life, a borderline plus curveball with tight, downward break and a slider and changeup that both show average potential. Most importantly, he’s improved his strike-throwing and learned to command the ball down to both sides of the plate. With his stuff, athleticism and improved control, Burke has solidified himself as one of the White Sox’s best pitching prospects and put himself in position to make his major league debut in 2023.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... h-in-2023/
Mason Auer, OF Rays: Drafted in the fifth round of the 2021 draft out of juco powerhouse San Jacinto (Texas), Auer hit .290/.372/.487 with 15 home runs and 48 stolen bases while leading the minor leagues with 12 triples. Auer is a tool shed with 55 or better tools across the board and a true 80-grade throwing arm. With double-plus speed, above-average power and hitting ability, Auer could burst onto the Top 100 early in 2023 and stay there.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... ects-list/
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
Bryan Ramos, 3B, Chicago White Sox (Double-A Birmingham)
The White Sox system is still a shallow outfit, but a pair of legit breakouts by relatively recent IFA signings has done a lot for the high end of the team list, and could very well make the national scene next season. On the offensive side of the docket it’s Ramos, who followed up a solid full-season debut in 2021 with a significantly better than solid High-A campaign. The 20-year-old is prone to the occasional protracted slump, which dampens his overall numbers a bit, but despite an aggressive approach he keeps his strikeouts down thanks to above-average contact ability and the tenaciousness to foul off tough pitches. There’s plus game power in the toolbox, and Ramos actualized a lot of it in 2022 while maintaining a fluid swing that impacts pitches in all four quadrants. It’s a large frame but he’s a good athlete who visibly tightened up his physique last offseason and shouldn’t have an issue staying at the hot corner for the foreseeable future. —Ben Spanier
Cristian Mena, RHP, Chicago White Sox (Double-A Birmingham)
On the pitching side the White Sox had a breakout materialize out of the thick, humid air in the form of the 19-year-old Mena. Inked for $250,000 in 2019—maybe breathless J2 coverage isn’t everything—the Dominican dominated older hitters all summer, racking up whiffs in the Carolina and South Atlantic Leagues with a high-spin fastball/curve combo. The fastball plays well up in the zone and the curve moves sharply both vertically and horizontally, easily evading bats when it slices the bottom quadrants. The changeup isn’t a factor yet but the curve can be manipulated into a truer, slower change-of-pace offering, and modern minds are now generally able to conceive of two-pitch starters in any case. The heater is sitting low-90s touching mid-90s at present, but Mena is a dynamic athlete with a manageable delivery who shows a precocious feel for pitching. If he takes to Double-A as a 20-year-old, watch out. —Ben Spanier
Mason Auer, OF, Tampa Bay Rays (High-A Bowling Green)
An under-slot, day-two draftee from 2021, Auer broke out in his first full professional season, posting excellent numbers across two A-ball levels. Physical and athletic, the tools are solid across the board with his speed and defense helping to give a high floor to the profile. He’s still getting plenty of play in center but is likely a corner outfielder long-term, where his plus arm and good instincts will place him among the upper tier of defenders. Offensively, he’s still a bit of a free swinger and tends to chase breaking pitches out of the zone. He does, however, have some natural bat-to-ball skills and is strong enough to do damage when he makes contact. With continued development, both the hit tool and power should grade out to above-average.
There’s still risk, he’s yet to face upper-minors pitching and could easily fall into a tweener category if the power fails to take a step forward. Despite the potential setbacks, Auer’s speed and power give us plenty to dream on and the possibility that he’s in the team picture for outfielders when we discuss next year’s top 101. —Nathan Graham
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... 4-top-101/
James Outman, OF, Los Angeles Dodgers
Outman does a lot of things we love: He hits the ball hard at an ideal approach angle without overswinging, he doesn’t chase that much, and he can ostensibly man center field thanks to above-average athleticism. To no one’s surprise, he is demonstrably better against righties than lefties, and it’s one of the primary reasons for his omission from the 101: that and his sub-par contact rates both within and outside the zone, primarily against pitches with bite. Outman might hit the ball hard enough where his less-than-desired contact rates don’t matter, so we could be looking up in a few months wondering why we ever doubted a guy who the Dodgers seemingly want to give a chance. After all, the Dodgers did pass on theoretical upgrades in the trade or free agent markets, so it makes you wonder just how much they like Outman. He’s a guy I’m trying to get in dynasty league trades as a throw-in. —Smith Brickner
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... ssed-2023/
Most Valuable Player: Omar De Los Santos, St. Lucie (NYM)
De Los Santos led the Florida State League and tied for third in all of Minor League Baseball with a whopping 70 stolen bases. (No other player had half as many in the FSL.) With a ripped-off bags total like that, it might be tempting to assume he was a one-trick, uh, race horse. Not the case. The Mets outfielder slugged 16 homers (third-most in the league) in addition to posting a .271 average (third-highest in the league).
https://www.milb.com/news/single-a-all- ... spect-2022
The White Sox system is still a shallow outfit, but a pair of legit breakouts by relatively recent IFA signings has done a lot for the high end of the team list, and could very well make the national scene next season. On the offensive side of the docket it’s Ramos, who followed up a solid full-season debut in 2021 with a significantly better than solid High-A campaign. The 20-year-old is prone to the occasional protracted slump, which dampens his overall numbers a bit, but despite an aggressive approach he keeps his strikeouts down thanks to above-average contact ability and the tenaciousness to foul off tough pitches. There’s plus game power in the toolbox, and Ramos actualized a lot of it in 2022 while maintaining a fluid swing that impacts pitches in all four quadrants. It’s a large frame but he’s a good athlete who visibly tightened up his physique last offseason and shouldn’t have an issue staying at the hot corner for the foreseeable future. —Ben Spanier
Cristian Mena, RHP, Chicago White Sox (Double-A Birmingham)
On the pitching side the White Sox had a breakout materialize out of the thick, humid air in the form of the 19-year-old Mena. Inked for $250,000 in 2019—maybe breathless J2 coverage isn’t everything—the Dominican dominated older hitters all summer, racking up whiffs in the Carolina and South Atlantic Leagues with a high-spin fastball/curve combo. The fastball plays well up in the zone and the curve moves sharply both vertically and horizontally, easily evading bats when it slices the bottom quadrants. The changeup isn’t a factor yet but the curve can be manipulated into a truer, slower change-of-pace offering, and modern minds are now generally able to conceive of two-pitch starters in any case. The heater is sitting low-90s touching mid-90s at present, but Mena is a dynamic athlete with a manageable delivery who shows a precocious feel for pitching. If he takes to Double-A as a 20-year-old, watch out. —Ben Spanier
Mason Auer, OF, Tampa Bay Rays (High-A Bowling Green)
An under-slot, day-two draftee from 2021, Auer broke out in his first full professional season, posting excellent numbers across two A-ball levels. Physical and athletic, the tools are solid across the board with his speed and defense helping to give a high floor to the profile. He’s still getting plenty of play in center but is likely a corner outfielder long-term, where his plus arm and good instincts will place him among the upper tier of defenders. Offensively, he’s still a bit of a free swinger and tends to chase breaking pitches out of the zone. He does, however, have some natural bat-to-ball skills and is strong enough to do damage when he makes contact. With continued development, both the hit tool and power should grade out to above-average.
There’s still risk, he’s yet to face upper-minors pitching and could easily fall into a tweener category if the power fails to take a step forward. Despite the potential setbacks, Auer’s speed and power give us plenty to dream on and the possibility that he’s in the team picture for outfielders when we discuss next year’s top 101. —Nathan Graham
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... 4-top-101/
James Outman, OF, Los Angeles Dodgers
Outman does a lot of things we love: He hits the ball hard at an ideal approach angle without overswinging, he doesn’t chase that much, and he can ostensibly man center field thanks to above-average athleticism. To no one’s surprise, he is demonstrably better against righties than lefties, and it’s one of the primary reasons for his omission from the 101: that and his sub-par contact rates both within and outside the zone, primarily against pitches with bite. Outman might hit the ball hard enough where his less-than-desired contact rates don’t matter, so we could be looking up in a few months wondering why we ever doubted a guy who the Dodgers seemingly want to give a chance. After all, the Dodgers did pass on theoretical upgrades in the trade or free agent markets, so it makes you wonder just how much they like Outman. He’s a guy I’m trying to get in dynasty league trades as a throw-in. —Smith Brickner
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/pros ... ssed-2023/
Most Valuable Player: Omar De Los Santos, St. Lucie (NYM)
De Los Santos led the Florida State League and tied for third in all of Minor League Baseball with a whopping 70 stolen bases. (No other player had half as many in the FSL.) With a ripped-off bags total like that, it might be tempting to assume he was a one-trick, uh, race horse. Not the case. The Mets outfielder slugged 16 homers (third-most in the league) in addition to posting a .271 average (third-highest in the league).
https://www.milb.com/news/single-a-all- ... spect-2022
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said on Sunday in an interview with MLB Network Radio that Miguel Vargas will likely be the team's starting second baseman this season.
Friedman elaborated that the Dodgers have plenty of positional flexibility with their infield mix and are open to competition this spring. He also added that Gavin Lux will likely be the team's primary shortstop with Max Muncy at third base, Chris Taylor staying in the outfield, and Miguel Rojas in a versatile utility role. The big development here is that Los Angeles views Vargas as a potential starting option at the keystone after he batted a sublime .304/.404/.511 with 17 homers and 16 stolen bases across 520 plate appearances for Triple-A Oklahoma City. He'll be a popular late-round sleeper candidate in fantasy drafts this spring.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... uel-vargas
23. Miguel Vargas, 3B/2B/OF, Los Angeles Dodgers
Age: 23 | 6-3 | 205 pounds
Bats: Right | Throws: Right
International signing in 2017
Last year’s ranking: 62
Vargas was arguably the best hitter in the PCL last year, and certainly the best one under the age of 26, hitting .304/.404/.511 with just a 14.6 percent strikeout rate for Oklahoma City while playing four different positions, putting him in line to be the Dodgers’ second baseman this year if Gavin Lux slides over to short. Vargas has always been able to hit, but his body has improved substantially since he first broke out in 2019, when scouts questioned whether he’d get too heavy or slow-footed for third base; now he’s a plus runner underway and there’s no doubt he could stay at third or handle second. We didn’t see his best bolts in the majors but he’s topped 110 mph off the bat in the minors and hits a ton of line drives, with a swing that might make him more of a 40 doubles/20 homers guy than a 30 homer guy, although either way he’s likely to post OBPs in the upper .300s. I think he’ll be the former, a high-OBP hitter who smashes a ton of doubles, maybe getting to 50 or so in his peak years, with solid-average defense at second or third, but maybe has years where he hits “only” 15-18 homers and is quietly excellent instead.
https://theathletic.com/4132943/2023/01 ... ign=601983
Friedman elaborated that the Dodgers have plenty of positional flexibility with their infield mix and are open to competition this spring. He also added that Gavin Lux will likely be the team's primary shortstop with Max Muncy at third base, Chris Taylor staying in the outfield, and Miguel Rojas in a versatile utility role. The big development here is that Los Angeles views Vargas as a potential starting option at the keystone after he batted a sublime .304/.404/.511 with 17 homers and 16 stolen bases across 520 plate appearances for Triple-A Oklahoma City. He'll be a popular late-round sleeper candidate in fantasy drafts this spring.
https://www.nbcsportsedge.com/baseball/ ... uel-vargas
23. Miguel Vargas, 3B/2B/OF, Los Angeles Dodgers
Age: 23 | 6-3 | 205 pounds
Bats: Right | Throws: Right
International signing in 2017
Last year’s ranking: 62
Vargas was arguably the best hitter in the PCL last year, and certainly the best one under the age of 26, hitting .304/.404/.511 with just a 14.6 percent strikeout rate for Oklahoma City while playing four different positions, putting him in line to be the Dodgers’ second baseman this year if Gavin Lux slides over to short. Vargas has always been able to hit, but his body has improved substantially since he first broke out in 2019, when scouts questioned whether he’d get too heavy or slow-footed for third base; now he’s a plus runner underway and there’s no doubt he could stay at third or handle second. We didn’t see his best bolts in the majors but he’s topped 110 mph off the bat in the minors and hits a ton of line drives, with a swing that might make him more of a 40 doubles/20 homers guy than a 30 homer guy, although either way he’s likely to post OBPs in the upper .300s. I think he’ll be the former, a high-OBP hitter who smashes a ton of doubles, maybe getting to 50 or so in his peak years, with solid-average defense at second or third, but maybe has years where he hits “only” 15-18 homers and is quietly excellent instead.
https://theathletic.com/4132943/2023/01 ... ign=601983
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
58. Edwin Arroyo, SS, Cincinnati
Age: 19 | 6-0 | 175 pounds
Bats: Switch | Throws: Right
Drafted: No. 48 in 2021
Last year’s ranking: Unranked
Arroyo was one of the youngest players in the 2021 draft class, so he played at 18 in his first full year in pro ball, during which he also found himself part of the trade that sent Luis Castillo to Seattle. He was the youngest regular in the Cal League before the trade and hit .316/.385/.514 there, struggling after he moved to the Reds’ system as he wore down at the end of the summer. He’s an above-average defender at shortstop, almost a lock to stay there even as he fills out, while he’s got short swings from both sides of the plate — showing zero platoon split last year — and has started to grow into some doubles power, even hitting a surprising 14 homers, 13 of them for Modesto before he was traded. He’s the age of a college freshman and will go to High A to start the year. If his late-season fade was just fatigue, and he can add some strength to sustain his performance through an entire season, he’ll establish a clear floor for himself as a good utility player, with the upside still of a sometime All-Star who hits for high averages and saves 5-10 runs a year on defense at short.
78. Dax Fulton, LHP, Miami Marlins
Age: 21 | 6-7 | 225 pounds
Bats: Left | Throws: Left
Drafted: No. 40 in 2020
Last year’s rank: Unranked
Fulton had Tommy John surgery during his senior year in high school, taking him from a likely first-round selection to an over-slot bonus in the second round from the Marlins. He’s a huge kid, 6-7 and listed at 225 pounds, who starts on the first base side of the rubber and can show both a plus slider and plus changeup. The Marlins’ minor-league pitching coordinator Scott Aldred worked with Fulton to get a more comfortable arm slot and clean up what had been a pretty rough delivery, so while it’s not completely clean now, it’s far more fluid than it used to be and gives him a better chance to throw strikes and command his fastball. The heater is his worst pitch, as his velocity has fluctuated some post-surgery and hitters square the pitch up more than you’d like, which might limit his ceiling. He’s shown plus velocity in pro ball and might still get there consistently, so even without a lot of life or movement it could be enough to let him get to the two secondaries, with that slider, which is sharp and late with biting tilt and a ton of horizontal movement, a real lefty-killer. I like him as a back-end starter as he is, with clear upside as he continues to add strength and get further away from the surgery.
89. James Outman, OF, Los Angeles Dodgers
Age: 26 | 6-3 | 215 pounds
Bats: Left | Throws: Right
Drafted: No. 224 in 2018
Last year’s rank: Unranked
Outman has made some real swing changes since the Dodgers took him off an unremarkable couple of years at Sacramento State, and he’s performed better and better even as they’ve moved him up aggressively due to his age. He’s one of the best athletes in their entire system who might have four pluses on the scouting report, definitely a plus run, plus arm, plus power guy who might be a plus defender in center as well. There’s too much swing and miss in the zone here to say he’ll be more than an average hitter, but with his other tools, that makes him a potential star, especially if he can do more against lefties than just hit for power. He’s older than any hitter on this list, but doesn’t have as much baseball experience as the typical 25-year-old. Don’t be surprised if he ends up the Dodgers’ primary center fielder this year.
https://theathletic.com/4132943/2023/01 ... ign=601983
Age: 19 | 6-0 | 175 pounds
Bats: Switch | Throws: Right
Drafted: No. 48 in 2021
Last year’s ranking: Unranked
Arroyo was one of the youngest players in the 2021 draft class, so he played at 18 in his first full year in pro ball, during which he also found himself part of the trade that sent Luis Castillo to Seattle. He was the youngest regular in the Cal League before the trade and hit .316/.385/.514 there, struggling after he moved to the Reds’ system as he wore down at the end of the summer. He’s an above-average defender at shortstop, almost a lock to stay there even as he fills out, while he’s got short swings from both sides of the plate — showing zero platoon split last year — and has started to grow into some doubles power, even hitting a surprising 14 homers, 13 of them for Modesto before he was traded. He’s the age of a college freshman and will go to High A to start the year. If his late-season fade was just fatigue, and he can add some strength to sustain his performance through an entire season, he’ll establish a clear floor for himself as a good utility player, with the upside still of a sometime All-Star who hits for high averages and saves 5-10 runs a year on defense at short.
78. Dax Fulton, LHP, Miami Marlins
Age: 21 | 6-7 | 225 pounds
Bats: Left | Throws: Left
Drafted: No. 40 in 2020
Last year’s rank: Unranked
Fulton had Tommy John surgery during his senior year in high school, taking him from a likely first-round selection to an over-slot bonus in the second round from the Marlins. He’s a huge kid, 6-7 and listed at 225 pounds, who starts on the first base side of the rubber and can show both a plus slider and plus changeup. The Marlins’ minor-league pitching coordinator Scott Aldred worked with Fulton to get a more comfortable arm slot and clean up what had been a pretty rough delivery, so while it’s not completely clean now, it’s far more fluid than it used to be and gives him a better chance to throw strikes and command his fastball. The heater is his worst pitch, as his velocity has fluctuated some post-surgery and hitters square the pitch up more than you’d like, which might limit his ceiling. He’s shown plus velocity in pro ball and might still get there consistently, so even without a lot of life or movement it could be enough to let him get to the two secondaries, with that slider, which is sharp and late with biting tilt and a ton of horizontal movement, a real lefty-killer. I like him as a back-end starter as he is, with clear upside as he continues to add strength and get further away from the surgery.
89. James Outman, OF, Los Angeles Dodgers
Age: 26 | 6-3 | 215 pounds
Bats: Left | Throws: Right
Drafted: No. 224 in 2018
Last year’s rank: Unranked
Outman has made some real swing changes since the Dodgers took him off an unremarkable couple of years at Sacramento State, and he’s performed better and better even as they’ve moved him up aggressively due to his age. He’s one of the best athletes in their entire system who might have four pluses on the scouting report, definitely a plus run, plus arm, plus power guy who might be a plus defender in center as well. There’s too much swing and miss in the zone here to say he’ll be more than an average hitter, but with his other tools, that makes him a potential star, especially if he can do more against lefties than just hit for power. He’s older than any hitter on this list, but doesn’t have as much baseball experience as the typical 25-year-old. Don’t be surprised if he ends up the Dodgers’ primary center fielder this year.
https://theathletic.com/4132943/2023/01 ... ign=601983
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
Get In While You Can: Jose Rodriguez, Chicago White Sox
The White Sox have been aggressive with Rodriguez, giving him his first full-season ball assignment as a 19-year-old in 2021 following a lost 2020 campaign. He was up to the task that year, putting up a .301/.338/.469 batting line with 14 home runs and 30 stolen bases while finishing the year at Double-A Binghamton.
Rodriguez spent all of 2022 back at Binghamton, although he might have concluded the year at Triple-A Charlotte had he not suffered a fractured hamate bone in August. Before the injury, the infielder posted a .280/.340/.430 batting line with 11 long balls and 40 stolen bases across 104 games. He’ll be ready to go for spring training after being added to the 40-man roster this offseason.
Rodriguez isn’t a big guy and hit too many ground balls last season, but his power is legitimate, and he rarely strikes out. Guaranteed Rate Field–which ranks fourth in baseball for home runs for right-handed batters over the last three seasons–will also give him a power boost. He’s also an aggressive base stealer and has been efficient in the minors.
While he has mostly played shortstop on the farm, the feeling seems to be that Rodriguez might be better suited for second base. The White Sox have a clear opening at the keystone, so Rodriguez could debut in 2023 even as he’s likely to begin the season at Charlotte.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/fant ... cond-base/
Miguel Vargas, Los Angeles Dodgers
BP darling Miguel Vargas looks like he’ll finally get his shot after a cup of coffee last year. He’s ready and too good for Triple-A. He lands at 2B in our writeup because, despite his ability to play across the field, he’ll likely get most reps at the keystone this year. To quote our prospect team, “In 113 games at Triple-A last season, Vargas slashed .304/.404/.511 with 53 extra-base hits, 17 home runs, and 16 stolen bases. He did this while drawing 71 walks (14% walk rate) and striking out a mere 76 times (15% K-rate), demonstrating his plus feel for the strike zone and his professional offensive approach.”
Here’s the crux of the Vargas conundrum: his 50 plate appearances at the big league level showed slightly above average exit velocity on balls in play, but low end max exit velocity. In other words, there are questions on whether he’ll get enough on the ball consistently to become the next Rafael Devers or Alex Bregman? I use third basemen comps here because that should be his eventual home and there really isn’t another second baseman profile like his. He has a ceiling of high-end counting stats and average compared to most 2B options available; it’s worth buying in.
Lenyn Sosa and Jose Rodriguez, Chicago White Sox
In the case of the People vs. Reinsdorf, Judge Hahn awarded the plaintiffs with a default judgment in the amount of Sosa and Rodriguez. While I think both of these players could be fun, this is an indictment on White Sox leadership. At best, Hahn is saying, “we’ve tried nothing and we’re out of ideas.” At worst, he’s saying “the punishments will continue until morale improves.”
This isn’t to lambast Sosa or Rodriguez, but it doesn’t say much that they are in an open competition with Leury Garcia, a player who earned a 0 WARP and 68 DRC+ last year. Sosa posted a .114/.139/.229 line over a sip of coffee, and that was still better than Garcia. He has fringe power and chases way too much to buy in with any degree of confidence, but what he might have is an ability to put the ball in play and use his legs to eke out a respectable batting average. Still, you’re talking about a second baseman who might as well be the poster child for “empty average”.
Speaking of chasing, Sox faithful were chasing the dragon in 2021 when Rodriguez showed out, imitating Tim Anderson over three levels prior to stalling out at Double-A. He has an outside shot to break camp as the starting second basemen, but a better chance to come up after the other two options stall out. He has some ability to put the ball over the fence and has a higher upside than Sosa in the long term, but he’s still raw at this point and expectations should remain tepid for 2023.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/fant ... s-in-2023/
The White Sox have been aggressive with Rodriguez, giving him his first full-season ball assignment as a 19-year-old in 2021 following a lost 2020 campaign. He was up to the task that year, putting up a .301/.338/.469 batting line with 14 home runs and 30 stolen bases while finishing the year at Double-A Binghamton.
Rodriguez spent all of 2022 back at Binghamton, although he might have concluded the year at Triple-A Charlotte had he not suffered a fractured hamate bone in August. Before the injury, the infielder posted a .280/.340/.430 batting line with 11 long balls and 40 stolen bases across 104 games. He’ll be ready to go for spring training after being added to the 40-man roster this offseason.
Rodriguez isn’t a big guy and hit too many ground balls last season, but his power is legitimate, and he rarely strikes out. Guaranteed Rate Field–which ranks fourth in baseball for home runs for right-handed batters over the last three seasons–will also give him a power boost. He’s also an aggressive base stealer and has been efficient in the minors.
While he has mostly played shortstop on the farm, the feeling seems to be that Rodriguez might be better suited for second base. The White Sox have a clear opening at the keystone, so Rodriguez could debut in 2023 even as he’s likely to begin the season at Charlotte.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/fant ... cond-base/
Miguel Vargas, Los Angeles Dodgers
BP darling Miguel Vargas looks like he’ll finally get his shot after a cup of coffee last year. He’s ready and too good for Triple-A. He lands at 2B in our writeup because, despite his ability to play across the field, he’ll likely get most reps at the keystone this year. To quote our prospect team, “In 113 games at Triple-A last season, Vargas slashed .304/.404/.511 with 53 extra-base hits, 17 home runs, and 16 stolen bases. He did this while drawing 71 walks (14% walk rate) and striking out a mere 76 times (15% K-rate), demonstrating his plus feel for the strike zone and his professional offensive approach.”
Here’s the crux of the Vargas conundrum: his 50 plate appearances at the big league level showed slightly above average exit velocity on balls in play, but low end max exit velocity. In other words, there are questions on whether he’ll get enough on the ball consistently to become the next Rafael Devers or Alex Bregman? I use third basemen comps here because that should be his eventual home and there really isn’t another second baseman profile like his. He has a ceiling of high-end counting stats and average compared to most 2B options available; it’s worth buying in.
Lenyn Sosa and Jose Rodriguez, Chicago White Sox
In the case of the People vs. Reinsdorf, Judge Hahn awarded the plaintiffs with a default judgment in the amount of Sosa and Rodriguez. While I think both of these players could be fun, this is an indictment on White Sox leadership. At best, Hahn is saying, “we’ve tried nothing and we’re out of ideas.” At worst, he’s saying “the punishments will continue until morale improves.”
This isn’t to lambast Sosa or Rodriguez, but it doesn’t say much that they are in an open competition with Leury Garcia, a player who earned a 0 WARP and 68 DRC+ last year. Sosa posted a .114/.139/.229 line over a sip of coffee, and that was still better than Garcia. He has fringe power and chases way too much to buy in with any degree of confidence, but what he might have is an ability to put the ball in play and use his legs to eke out a respectable batting average. Still, you’re talking about a second baseman who might as well be the poster child for “empty average”.
Speaking of chasing, Sox faithful were chasing the dragon in 2021 when Rodriguez showed out, imitating Tim Anderson over three levels prior to stalling out at Double-A. He has an outside shot to break camp as the starting second basemen, but a better chance to come up after the other two options stall out. He has some ability to put the ball over the fence and has a higher upside than Sosa in the long term, but he’s still raw at this point and expectations should remain tepid for 2023.
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/fant ... s-in-2023/
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
At the end of last July, White Sox pitching prospect Sean Burke didn’t look like the next in line for the major-league rotation.
Development doesn’t always translate into results, and there were plenty of reasons that was the case for Burke at Double-A Birmingham in 2022. But for someone described by his manager as “a fierce competitor,” Burke saw a 7.71 ERA across five starts that month, twice being roughed up by the Tennessee Smokies, and wanted things to change.
“My month of July was probably one of the worst months I’ve ever had in my life pitching, and I got frustrated a little bit during that time,” said Burke, who found himself calling his father; his offseason pitching coach, John DeRouin; and others to figure out why stuff that internal metrics said was legit wasn’t translating into on-field results. “We had some conversations, I had some conversations with (White Sox pitching coordinator) Everett Teaford, and they all basically said the same thing: ‘The stuff isn’t really changing; your stuff is good. It’s just throwing in a little bit better spots and a little bit better counts.’”
Heading out for spring training Sunday with a major-league camp invite in hand, the 23-year-old Burke still wouldn’t describe himself as “someone who is, like, crazy obsessed with numbers.” But checking in on the progress of his changeup and slider in movement profiles was a big part of his preparation this winter as he worked at his agency’s facility near Nashville, Tenn., alongside fellow Bledsoe clients Jake Burger and Colson Montgomery, his offseason roommate. And diving into reports and gaining more comfort in seeing what pregame data says about where he can attack hitters was part of a turnaround that resulted in Burke ripping off seven starts from the beginning of August, striking out 46 hitters in 28 1/3 innings with a 2.54 ERA and earning a late-season promotion to Triple A, the doorstep of the majors.
With free-agent signing Mike Clevinger under MLB investigation, the White Sox rotation is potentially in flux. Last year, Davis Martin was the prospect who emerged from the minors to serve as a reliable depth option in the starter mix. Now Martin’s role could wind up being even bigger, and the Sox need another prospect in the upper minors to emerge and serve as an option to step in and contribute to the big-league club when needed. Repeatedly, they have identified Burke as that pitcher this season. His 4.75 ERA across three levels last year might not tell the story. He might have posted shinier stats if he had leaned more on the four-seam/curveball combination he’s always been comfortable throwing out of his high arm slot, rather than trying to build out the four-pitch arsenal he will need in the majors. But the team’s hope is vested in the pitcher Burke had grown into by year’s end.
Assistant general manager Chris Getz identified Burke as a potential rotation member “for the foreseeable future.” But as arguably the most polished White Sox pitching prospect, and with the rotation potentially thrown into flux, there’s certainly a need for it to happen as soon as possible.
“I was trying to take three, four years of minor-league baseball lessons and shrink them all into one year and learn as much as possible,” said Burke. “So that, going into this year, I’d have a shot to be in Chicago and have a lot of information and have a lot of confidence to do well there.”
And this winter, Burke is still cramming. He logged 108 innings in 2022 — easily higher than any workload he achieved in college in between Tommy John surgery and COVID-19 disrupting his time at Maryland — even with Sox coaches citing nagging injuries as affecting his performance. But Burke estimates he lost 5 to 10 pounds throughout the season just from exertion, and he has been adding strength and diving into his arm care program in anticipation of even more work in 2023.
Throwing from his high arm slot out of a towering frame makes the vertical movement of Burke’s pitches tough to deal with when he locates at the letters or drops a breaking ball at the knees. But it also means he knows he’ll never have a changeup with Luis Castillo levels of arm-side fade, and he strives to create more of a Dylan Cease-style bullet spin slider with drop than a horizontal sweeper. So he’s seeking enough repetitions with the changeup that he has comfort in at least locating it when he needs his fourth pitch. And his mention of Cease’s slider is not an idle one. Burke has spent the winter seeing how the Cy Young runner-up moves his wrist and fingers on release and examining his own work via Edgertronic video. It’s not going to eliminate the role of his curveball but ideally will serve as a harder pairing to his riding four-seamer.
“I was trying to throw my slider a little bit harder towards the end of the year, and I was having some success with it,” Burke said. “It’s not going to have a ton of horizontal movement or a ton of movement, really, at all. I’m trying to create a little bit more depth.”
Burke will have a chance to study Cease and his slider up close in the coming weeks and pick up some more insight, but at a certain point the next step lies in trusting and best using what he has. The praise that Getz and others most readily bestow upon Burke is his ability to consistently repeat his delivery. Such praise is not readily extended to taller, lankier pitchers, and it’s certainly not a compliment Burke would have given to himself earlier in his career, but that’s what lies at the heart of him being able to stick in a major-league rotation long-term.
“The game is never too fast for him; he’s able to slow it down,” said Justin Jirschele, who managed Burke at Birmingham last year and is lined up to do it again at Charlotte in 2023. “He’s that type of guy where it’s: ‘I’m out here. I’m better than you. Here I come. I’m going to give you my best stuff, regardless of how I’m feeling this day and this inning, this pitch.’”
That mentality is what Burke cites for keying his improvement in his delivery. Once he trusted that he was big and strong enough that the mid-90s velocity and power would always be behind his pitches if he executed, he thought less about reaching back for the hardest pitch he could throw and more about hitting the checkpoints in his delivery on time. Now, as he heads to Arizona, the White Sox believe the tools for Burke to contribute in the majors eventually are present; they just need to be put together.
“When everything’s synced up on time, everything else really takes care of itself,” Burke said. “I’m just approaching (spring training) like last year. I’m just gonna go out and do what I can do, continue trying to get better and work on what I’m trying to work on every day. And just let everything else take care of itself.”
https://theathletic.com/4153735/2023/02 ... ign=601983
Development doesn’t always translate into results, and there were plenty of reasons that was the case for Burke at Double-A Birmingham in 2022. But for someone described by his manager as “a fierce competitor,” Burke saw a 7.71 ERA across five starts that month, twice being roughed up by the Tennessee Smokies, and wanted things to change.
“My month of July was probably one of the worst months I’ve ever had in my life pitching, and I got frustrated a little bit during that time,” said Burke, who found himself calling his father; his offseason pitching coach, John DeRouin; and others to figure out why stuff that internal metrics said was legit wasn’t translating into on-field results. “We had some conversations, I had some conversations with (White Sox pitching coordinator) Everett Teaford, and they all basically said the same thing: ‘The stuff isn’t really changing; your stuff is good. It’s just throwing in a little bit better spots and a little bit better counts.’”
Heading out for spring training Sunday with a major-league camp invite in hand, the 23-year-old Burke still wouldn’t describe himself as “someone who is, like, crazy obsessed with numbers.” But checking in on the progress of his changeup and slider in movement profiles was a big part of his preparation this winter as he worked at his agency’s facility near Nashville, Tenn., alongside fellow Bledsoe clients Jake Burger and Colson Montgomery, his offseason roommate. And diving into reports and gaining more comfort in seeing what pregame data says about where he can attack hitters was part of a turnaround that resulted in Burke ripping off seven starts from the beginning of August, striking out 46 hitters in 28 1/3 innings with a 2.54 ERA and earning a late-season promotion to Triple A, the doorstep of the majors.
With free-agent signing Mike Clevinger under MLB investigation, the White Sox rotation is potentially in flux. Last year, Davis Martin was the prospect who emerged from the minors to serve as a reliable depth option in the starter mix. Now Martin’s role could wind up being even bigger, and the Sox need another prospect in the upper minors to emerge and serve as an option to step in and contribute to the big-league club when needed. Repeatedly, they have identified Burke as that pitcher this season. His 4.75 ERA across three levels last year might not tell the story. He might have posted shinier stats if he had leaned more on the four-seam/curveball combination he’s always been comfortable throwing out of his high arm slot, rather than trying to build out the four-pitch arsenal he will need in the majors. But the team’s hope is vested in the pitcher Burke had grown into by year’s end.
Assistant general manager Chris Getz identified Burke as a potential rotation member “for the foreseeable future.” But as arguably the most polished White Sox pitching prospect, and with the rotation potentially thrown into flux, there’s certainly a need for it to happen as soon as possible.
“I was trying to take three, four years of minor-league baseball lessons and shrink them all into one year and learn as much as possible,” said Burke. “So that, going into this year, I’d have a shot to be in Chicago and have a lot of information and have a lot of confidence to do well there.”
And this winter, Burke is still cramming. He logged 108 innings in 2022 — easily higher than any workload he achieved in college in between Tommy John surgery and COVID-19 disrupting his time at Maryland — even with Sox coaches citing nagging injuries as affecting his performance. But Burke estimates he lost 5 to 10 pounds throughout the season just from exertion, and he has been adding strength and diving into his arm care program in anticipation of even more work in 2023.
Throwing from his high arm slot out of a towering frame makes the vertical movement of Burke’s pitches tough to deal with when he locates at the letters or drops a breaking ball at the knees. But it also means he knows he’ll never have a changeup with Luis Castillo levels of arm-side fade, and he strives to create more of a Dylan Cease-style bullet spin slider with drop than a horizontal sweeper. So he’s seeking enough repetitions with the changeup that he has comfort in at least locating it when he needs his fourth pitch. And his mention of Cease’s slider is not an idle one. Burke has spent the winter seeing how the Cy Young runner-up moves his wrist and fingers on release and examining his own work via Edgertronic video. It’s not going to eliminate the role of his curveball but ideally will serve as a harder pairing to his riding four-seamer.
“I was trying to throw my slider a little bit harder towards the end of the year, and I was having some success with it,” Burke said. “It’s not going to have a ton of horizontal movement or a ton of movement, really, at all. I’m trying to create a little bit more depth.”
Burke will have a chance to study Cease and his slider up close in the coming weeks and pick up some more insight, but at a certain point the next step lies in trusting and best using what he has. The praise that Getz and others most readily bestow upon Burke is his ability to consistently repeat his delivery. Such praise is not readily extended to taller, lankier pitchers, and it’s certainly not a compliment Burke would have given to himself earlier in his career, but that’s what lies at the heart of him being able to stick in a major-league rotation long-term.
“The game is never too fast for him; he’s able to slow it down,” said Justin Jirschele, who managed Burke at Birmingham last year and is lined up to do it again at Charlotte in 2023. “He’s that type of guy where it’s: ‘I’m out here. I’m better than you. Here I come. I’m going to give you my best stuff, regardless of how I’m feeling this day and this inning, this pitch.’”
That mentality is what Burke cites for keying his improvement in his delivery. Once he trusted that he was big and strong enough that the mid-90s velocity and power would always be behind his pitches if he executed, he thought less about reaching back for the hardest pitch he could throw and more about hitting the checkpoints in his delivery on time. Now, as he heads to Arizona, the White Sox believe the tools for Burke to contribute in the majors eventually are present; they just need to be put together.
“When everything’s synced up on time, everything else really takes care of itself,” Burke said. “I’m just approaching (spring training) like last year. I’m just gonna go out and do what I can do, continue trying to get better and work on what I’m trying to work on every day. And just let everything else take care of itself.”
https://theathletic.com/4153735/2023/02 ... ign=601983
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
Marlins right-hander Nic Enright was one of the many pitchers and catchers heading to the back fields at the Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium complex on Monday morning. What seemed to be a normal Spring Training sight was anything but.
Twelve days after Miami selected him in the Rule 5 Draft, Enright woke up with what he thought was a crick in his neck. The next morning, his lymph nodes were swollen. En route to urgent care, he never could've imagined what came next.
On Dec. 23, Enright was diagnosed with nodular predominant Stage 2 Hodgkin lymphoma.
Cancer doesn't run in his family, so it caught him off guard. Plus, his weight room numbers and mound sessions in the weeks leading up to the news were better than they were the previous year.
"I was feeling good and I felt like I was at the top of the mountain, and then everything kind of came down a little bit with the diagnosis," said Enright, who turned 26 on Jan. 8. "But now I feel like I have a really good plan moving forward on how I'm going to tackle this and beat it. It's not an 'if,' it's a 'when.' When I get this behind me and get this cancer kicked, then it'll make being up there and helping the team win some games that much sweeter."
Understandably, this wasn't Enright's mindset when he first heard the diagnosis. During the first two weeks, he didn't tell many people because he thought that if he spoke it out loud, it would make it real. But then Enright read about Yankees first baseman Anthony Rizzo and Arizona Cardinals running back James Conner beating the disease. A Marlins trainer connected him with Mets right-hander Carlos Carrasco, who overcame leukemia. These stories made Enright more confident he would get through this. He just needed a plan of attack.
Enright has avoided chemotherapy. Instead, a port was inserted into his chest in December and he underwent a round of immunotherapy every Thursday for four weeks. That first time, Enright passed out when he received the IV because he was nervous. He also broke out into hives. Enright didn't feel great that day or the day after, but he bounced back soon after.
It was clear the immunotherapy was working, as his lymph nodes started to shrink. Enright's final cycle was Feb. 9. He will begin another round of treatments around July 10.
"That's kind of when I was hoping to be able to come back and be in game shape and hopefully be a part of the team and everything," Enright said. "It's metered expectations through all of this. For me, I'm just thankful and happy to be out there and being able to still continue to play catch and do all those kind of things."
Enright has no physical limitations. Since the port came out on Jan. 14, he has been able to work out in his basement in Rocky Mount, Va., and begin throwing. He has leaned on pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre Jr., who battled prostate cancer in 2021 and lost his father and brother to cancer.
Though Enright is at Spring Training, he is a little behind schedule because he couldn't throw for a month. Stottlemyre is ironing out a plan for Enright's return to the mound, making sure to protect the young reliever.
"I've been trying to let this affect me as little as possible," Enright said. "One of the things that [Carrasco] told me was that one of the things he told himself was, 'You might have cancer, but the cancer doesn't have me.' And that's kind of what I've been trying to do. That's how I've been trying to kind of go about all this. I might have this, but there's nothing I can do to change any of that part. So I'm just trying to do everything I can to continue living my life -- whether it's training and doing all that kind of stuff, keep on doing what I've been doing.
"Sitting down and feeling sorry for myself or anything like that wouldn't really help the situation. Trying to be positive, think of all the good things that are going to come from it. Hopefully raise awareness so that if someone has something similar to what I have, they go get it checked out as soon as I did and they're able to catch it early the way that I was and not let it become an issue later on."
https://www.mlb.com/news/nic-enright-cancer-diagnosis
Twelve days after Miami selected him in the Rule 5 Draft, Enright woke up with what he thought was a crick in his neck. The next morning, his lymph nodes were swollen. En route to urgent care, he never could've imagined what came next.
On Dec. 23, Enright was diagnosed with nodular predominant Stage 2 Hodgkin lymphoma.
Cancer doesn't run in his family, so it caught him off guard. Plus, his weight room numbers and mound sessions in the weeks leading up to the news were better than they were the previous year.
"I was feeling good and I felt like I was at the top of the mountain, and then everything kind of came down a little bit with the diagnosis," said Enright, who turned 26 on Jan. 8. "But now I feel like I have a really good plan moving forward on how I'm going to tackle this and beat it. It's not an 'if,' it's a 'when.' When I get this behind me and get this cancer kicked, then it'll make being up there and helping the team win some games that much sweeter."
Understandably, this wasn't Enright's mindset when he first heard the diagnosis. During the first two weeks, he didn't tell many people because he thought that if he spoke it out loud, it would make it real. But then Enright read about Yankees first baseman Anthony Rizzo and Arizona Cardinals running back James Conner beating the disease. A Marlins trainer connected him with Mets right-hander Carlos Carrasco, who overcame leukemia. These stories made Enright more confident he would get through this. He just needed a plan of attack.
Enright has avoided chemotherapy. Instead, a port was inserted into his chest in December and he underwent a round of immunotherapy every Thursday for four weeks. That first time, Enright passed out when he received the IV because he was nervous. He also broke out into hives. Enright didn't feel great that day or the day after, but he bounced back soon after.
It was clear the immunotherapy was working, as his lymph nodes started to shrink. Enright's final cycle was Feb. 9. He will begin another round of treatments around July 10.
"That's kind of when I was hoping to be able to come back and be in game shape and hopefully be a part of the team and everything," Enright said. "It's metered expectations through all of this. For me, I'm just thankful and happy to be out there and being able to still continue to play catch and do all those kind of things."
Enright has no physical limitations. Since the port came out on Jan. 14, he has been able to work out in his basement in Rocky Mount, Va., and begin throwing. He has leaned on pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre Jr., who battled prostate cancer in 2021 and lost his father and brother to cancer.
Though Enright is at Spring Training, he is a little behind schedule because he couldn't throw for a month. Stottlemyre is ironing out a plan for Enright's return to the mound, making sure to protect the young reliever.
"I've been trying to let this affect me as little as possible," Enright said. "One of the things that [Carrasco] told me was that one of the things he told himself was, 'You might have cancer, but the cancer doesn't have me.' And that's kind of what I've been trying to do. That's how I've been trying to kind of go about all this. I might have this, but there's nothing I can do to change any of that part. So I'm just trying to do everything I can to continue living my life -- whether it's training and doing all that kind of stuff, keep on doing what I've been doing.
"Sitting down and feeling sorry for myself or anything like that wouldn't really help the situation. Trying to be positive, think of all the good things that are going to come from it. Hopefully raise awareness so that if someone has something similar to what I have, they go get it checked out as soon as I did and they're able to catch it early the way that I was and not let it become an issue later on."
https://www.mlb.com/news/nic-enright-cancer-diagnosis
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Re: 2023 White Sox Prospect Notes
Talk to Royals 2022 first-round pick Gavin Cross for just a few minutes and It’s obvious that the lefthanded-hitting outfielder has been a student of hitting for much of his life.
That's not surprising considering that his father is a baseball lifer who coached many of Cross’ youth teams.
“I’ve always believed that the best hitting coach is yourself,” Cross said. “You’re the one who's in the box, and you’re the one who's feeling what you’re feeling . . . Growing up with a baseball dad and a baseball family, it definitely helped me.”
The Royals prioritized Cross in the draft after his three-year career at Virginia Tech and drafted him with the ninth overall pick. After three games in the Arizona Complex League, Cross reported to Low-A Columbia, where he hit .293/.424/.596 in 26 games.
While some evaluators project Cross to be power-over-hit, Cross himself believes he’s going to strike the right balance as his career progresses.
“I’ve always grown up to be a hit-first guy who takes good at-bats” Cross said. “I’m training my swing to be a good hitter—be level, and I’m not trying to lift . . . There’s a fine line of just hitting for power and hitting for average, but I think I can do both.”
“We feel he’s a hybrid,” Royals minor league hitting coordinator Drew Saylor said. “He’s going to have some good hittability and he’s going to (do) a lot of damage. That’s within his profile.”
In early February, Cross had recently finished a preseason hitting camp at the Royals' complex in Arizona. One of the biggest benefits was being around players with a wide range of ages and experience levels.
The advancements Cross made in a short time point to the potential for continued improvement.
“Gavin is just a little bit more physical with the body,” Saylor said. “We’re seeing more efficiency in terms of how his swing is playing, and it really just goes to all the work that he’s put in this offseason.”
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... ive-blend/
That's not surprising considering that his father is a baseball lifer who coached many of Cross’ youth teams.
“I’ve always believed that the best hitting coach is yourself,” Cross said. “You’re the one who's in the box, and you’re the one who's feeling what you’re feeling . . . Growing up with a baseball dad and a baseball family, it definitely helped me.”
The Royals prioritized Cross in the draft after his three-year career at Virginia Tech and drafted him with the ninth overall pick. After three games in the Arizona Complex League, Cross reported to Low-A Columbia, where he hit .293/.424/.596 in 26 games.
While some evaluators project Cross to be power-over-hit, Cross himself believes he’s going to strike the right balance as his career progresses.
“I’ve always grown up to be a hit-first guy who takes good at-bats” Cross said. “I’m training my swing to be a good hitter—be level, and I’m not trying to lift . . . There’s a fine line of just hitting for power and hitting for average, but I think I can do both.”
“We feel he’s a hybrid,” Royals minor league hitting coordinator Drew Saylor said. “He’s going to have some good hittability and he’s going to (do) a lot of damage. That’s within his profile.”
In early February, Cross had recently finished a preseason hitting camp at the Royals' complex in Arizona. One of the biggest benefits was being around players with a wide range of ages and experience levels.
The advancements Cross made in a short time point to the potential for continued improvement.
“Gavin is just a little bit more physical with the body,” Saylor said. “We’re seeing more efficiency in terms of how his swing is playing, and it really just goes to all the work that he’s put in this offseason.”
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... ive-blend/
