Speaker 1: Nine, five miles an hour, riding too his head. He
Speaker 1: hopped down first with the lumpbonius face, and on the
Speaker 1: very next pitch he up and stole second phase with
Speaker 1: greatest me. He wasn't born, he had the dirt.
Speaker 2: Yes, beautiful, all right. So Episode thirty nine of the
Speaker 2: Prospect B Sides podcast. Welcome, Thank you for turning us
Speaker 2: on if you have not listened to this podcast before.
Speaker 2: Myself and my buddy Matt. Here we are getting muddy,
Speaker 2: getting into the dirty, grimy, maybe hard to see full
Speaker 2: season ball, trying to dig around and find some interesting
Speaker 2: prospects that might not be real popular in the Dynasty world.
Speaker 2: And I think we got a good little little muddy
Speaker 2: exercise to get into this episode. But Matt, how are you, buddy?
Speaker 3: All right? I'm good, Nate, I am good. Spending a
Speaker 3: bunch of time working and dadding and then squeezing in
Speaker 3: any little bit of minor league baseball that I can watch.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was mentioning this to some friends that
Speaker 3: I hung out with last weekend. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I watched way less major league baseball these days, just
Speaker 3: because like when I have a free minute, I'm like, no,
Speaker 3: let me peruse some minor leagues, and let's catch up
Speaker 3: on a couple guys that I've put on a watch
Speaker 3: list because one of my leaderboards has them as interesting.
Speaker 3: And you know, to build on your point, we're not
Speaker 3: really talking about the pretty boy prospects. It's pretty rare.
Speaker 3: We'll dive into anybody on anybody's top one hundred. We're
Speaker 3: really trying to identify some of those guys that we
Speaker 3: think maybe belong in some public top one hundreds but
Speaker 3: aren't there yet, or we might have an eye on
Speaker 3: as a riser. But yeah, we're mostly interested in talking
Speaker 3: about how the pretty boys, as Nate likes to say,
Speaker 3: aren't actually all that pretty and maybe you can get
Speaker 3: some discount. Pretty boys wipe off.
Speaker 2: The mud exactly. And you know, Matt one, you know,
Speaker 2: my main I don't know, maybe lack of a better term,
Speaker 2: process is just watching MiLB dot TV. That's what I
Speaker 2: like to do. And part of the benefit and what
Speaker 2: I really like about it is a lot of times
Speaker 2: Matt eyeballs are faster than spreadsheets or gouting reports. You know,
Speaker 2: I think we saw that maybe some with some of
Speaker 2: the arms that we picked this offseason, right we turned
Speaker 2: on a few innings of a few guys, and we
Speaker 2: were kind of, you know, interested before they started hitting
Speaker 2: lists and getting blurbs and whatever. And in the dynasty world,
Speaker 2: deeply especially, that's the name of the game. We got
Speaker 2: to beat your opponent to the punch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's also paying attention after the beginning of the season.
Speaker 3: I think you mentioned this on our last pod, But
Speaker 3: some of the performances that we've seen in midsummer to
Speaker 3: late summer, where guys have started to turn it on
Speaker 3: or maybe come back from injury and are really performing,
Speaker 3: or we saw some kind of a change and now
Speaker 3: they're really succeeding. They'd been doing that in April, everybody
Speaker 3: would be talking about them. Yeah, you know, just think
Speaker 3: about how quickly people jumped on some of the hot
Speaker 3: names early this year, and now some guys are putting
Speaker 3: up similar kinds of performance, but nobody's really talking about them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, And this is a good time to
Speaker 2: do some mudding too, because I think a lot of
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of people played fantasy baseball and
Speaker 2: fantasy football, and all those footballers are getting ready for
Speaker 2: their football drafts.
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah, yeah, you do such a thing. But
Speaker 3: you know, some people do, apparently.
Speaker 2: So Matt and I before the season started this year,
Speaker 2: back way back in October, almost a year ago now,
Speaker 2: Matt getting to be a year, we went back through
Speaker 2: and picked a pitcher and a hitter from every organization
Speaker 2: that was either not created yet in fan tracks to
Speaker 2: maybe two percent roster. There was a few occasions maybe
Speaker 2: we went a little over guys we think might have
Speaker 2: sent get more popular, become a good trade chip for you,
Speaker 2: a prospect for you. Right, And we had three more
Speaker 2: guys hit the bigs just this last week. Matt, think
Speaker 2: that brings our total up five bad?
Speaker 3: And is that thirty five across? Like your Yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: doing this because you because yeah, because you had a
Speaker 3: few more that have had some time to percolate. Do
Speaker 3: you know what it is from our last offseason?
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't have it right in front of me,
Speaker 2: but I could count that up. You've done well. You've
Speaker 2: been two guys going at it tonight in the same game,
Speaker 2: Brent Herder, who's I think looks pretty good and is
Speaker 2: what three.
Speaker 3: Or four outings he's just sporthouting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got an opener going for him, but he
Speaker 2: like went six last time. Then Matt tonight. He uh,
Speaker 2: he took like one and ten and eleven line drive
Speaker 2: off the leg and like trying to finish the play,
Speaker 2: and I think faced one more batter after that before
Speaker 2: he got a pulled, probably a little prematurely because of that,
Speaker 2: but he's looked good still. I don't know what the
Speaker 2: story was in triple A why his numbers weren't better,
Speaker 2: but I think that was a good call by you.
Speaker 2: He's just like funky and nasty. Yeah, yeah, I feel
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 3: It's interesting what Detroit has been doing so far. Wonder
Speaker 3: if it's like an innings management thing as much as
Speaker 3: anything in TRIPAA. I feel like his era was elevated
Speaker 3: largely due to Babbit and just some left on base luck.
Speaker 3: I think that he was more or less the same
Speaker 3: guy that I saw in twenty twenty three, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: You know, International League. It's not the PCL, but it's
Speaker 3: still a pretty tough place to pitch, especially with the
Speaker 3: strike zone the way it is. I think that might
Speaker 3: have affected it. He posted his highest walk percentage that
Speaker 3: he ever has, and I feel like he hasn't walked
Speaker 3: anybody since he's been up in the bigs. Right, like
Speaker 3: at least the three outings that I've seen, I think
Speaker 3: he just has one walk and yeah, and they're piggybacking him,
Speaker 3: but I do wonder. You know, we've talked about Detroit
Speaker 3: has a pretty good pitching staff and especially upper miners
Speaker 3: depth as well. But I still like Herder as a
Speaker 3: guy who's going to settle in as a pretty useful
Speaker 3: big leaguer for them. So again, kind of funky lefty
Speaker 3: with some sink and some change up and some slider
Speaker 3: that keeps the ball on the ground a lot.
Speaker 2: Definitely.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like him a lot, and I haven't been
Speaker 3: discouraged by his triple A this year at all personally.
Speaker 3: You know, he's run a five to eight ear, but
Speaker 3: his FIP is like a run and a half lower
Speaker 3: than that, and the x FIP agrees that he's just
Speaker 3: been getting unlucky. So I don't know, I'm still quite
Speaker 3: a fan of Brent Herder.
Speaker 2: We do not shy away from loving on some soft tossers,
Speaker 2: some soft toss and lefties especially, and Hearder doesn't throw
Speaker 2: all that hard. It works, you know, I'm just getting
Speaker 2: to see this run, you know. To me, that's the
Speaker 2: biggest question, Like, all right, how is this gonna play
Speaker 2: against major league hitters, And like tonight he had some
Speaker 2: Cubs just looking goofy man, so the funk I think
Speaker 2: can play then.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In the same game, Matt, your boy Jack Neely, who
Speaker 2: was traded to the Cubs, made his debut. I shut
Speaker 2: it off right when we started recording here, and he
Speaker 2: looked like he was in a little bit of trouble,
Speaker 2: but I think he's promising. Looking bullpen a possibility for
Speaker 2: the Cubs. And then we had True Romo get called
Speaker 2: up after the Rockies released Elias Diez.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so Matt, you know, you were talking about
Speaker 2: if some players we've been looking at now had started
Speaker 2: off the season like they're playing right now, how different
Speaker 2: there may dynasty reputation would be right now. And to me,
Speaker 2: at the top of that sort of list is young
Speaker 2: Bo Davidson. Last episode I mentioned him and Louis Castillo
Speaker 2: as a couple guys i'd turned on a few times.
Speaker 2: We're putting up some numbers, needed to do some homework
Speaker 2: on still, and I did that. I have to say,
Speaker 2: Luis Castillo doesn't really strike my interest too much. He's
Speaker 2: hit a lot of home runs, but he's kind of
Speaker 2: a wild, swinging looking lefty. I'm not so sure about,
Speaker 2: but Bo Davidson man undrafted out of junior college. I
Speaker 2: think the story is he didn't start playing baseball until
Speaker 2: a handful of years ago, came back from an injury
Speaker 2: on July twentieth, and he has just been on fire. Dude,
Speaker 2: in my opinion. You know, stats are one thing. He's
Speaker 2: not going to keep running a five point fifty babbit
Speaker 2: or whatever it is. Whatever it's been, right, But you
Speaker 2: saw some of them. I've been watching, and I think
Speaker 2: the eyeball test piques my interest just as much as
Speaker 2: those numbers. What do you think, Matt.
Speaker 3: I think one of the things that I've liked about
Speaker 3: my looks at Davidson so far, just from an esthetic perspective,
Speaker 3: is seeing how much the power has played to all fields,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Like he's more of an opposite field hitter. I think
Speaker 2: he's grooved and they hit left center, and he's got
Speaker 2: the power to hit him out that way. More of
Speaker 2: his home runs have gone opposite field than pulled.
Speaker 3: And he has that kind of spray Looking over the
Speaker 3: data that we have so far that he does spray
Speaker 3: it around the yard like it's not he's not super
Speaker 3: pole happy. For some guys, I think that that's a
Speaker 3: conscious choice that maybe they don't have the exit velocities,
Speaker 3: the swing speed to really take advantage of you know,
Speaker 3: pulled homers, pulled eyeballs. Yeah, but I think the very
Speaker 3: best hitters are the ones who can get to their
Speaker 3: power no matter where the pitch is and where the
Speaker 3: ball goes. You look at Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, Ronald Akunya,
Speaker 3: Shoheo Tani, like these guys leave the yard to center
Speaker 3: and to their pull side and to the opposite field.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that has been I think
Speaker 3: separating Bo Davidson for me from some of the other
Speaker 3: guys that we get excited about at this stage is
Speaker 3: he's showing that power to all fields, and I think
Speaker 3: is pretty special. You know, he's a little bit old
Speaker 3: for the level. He was twenty one on the complex
Speaker 3: to start this year coming back from injury, and now
Speaker 3: he's twenty one in a I.
Speaker 2: Want to interrupt that, Matt, because this was brought up
Speaker 2: before he started the season in a ball, got hurt
Speaker 2: and then.
Speaker 3: And then came back to comy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, and he also he just turned twenty one
Speaker 2: July fifth, Yeah, and if you look up on Baseball Reference,
Speaker 2: that makes some point one year younger than the average
Speaker 2: hitter in the calg Now, which.
Speaker 3: Is which is what I was going to say. It's like,
Speaker 3: it's not it's not like he's seventeen in a ball young,
Speaker 3: but it's also not like he's a college kid that
Speaker 3: just got drafted and is performing and taking advantage of
Speaker 3: the lesser competition post draft in a ball right, Like
Speaker 3: what I was mostly going to do that as a
Speaker 3: positive as far as like kind of the mental adjustment
Speaker 3: that you do for hitters, I do think that they're
Speaker 3: like I think there's two components to the age to
Speaker 3: level thing that I like to look at personally. One
Speaker 3: is the power projection piece. And I know we've talked
Speaker 3: about this before. I have some amount of skepticism about
Speaker 3: when we look at a player as a nineteen year
Speaker 3: old post draft like and we say, oh, he's super
Speaker 3: athletic looking and tall, and he's going to pack on
Speaker 3: the pounds and then the exitbulers are going to follow.
Speaker 3: My contention, and I've done a little bit of research
Speaker 3: into this, is that those gains are are somewhat limited
Speaker 3: like that we should actually temper expectations there. And so
Speaker 3: the power projection piece is one part of the age level,
Speaker 3: and the other is the mental library, Like have you
Speaker 3: built up the reps of being able to see pitches,
Speaker 3: make good swing decisions, and then do damage on the
Speaker 3: pitches that you are swinging at, And that one is
Speaker 3: way more complicated, and it's one of the reasons that
Speaker 3: gives me pause about people that are new to the sport.
Speaker 3: So lots of people like to point to somebody that's
Speaker 3: new to some aspect of the sport. So they were
Speaker 3: a two way player, now they've given up pitching and
Speaker 3: now they're hitting full time. Or they were a multi
Speaker 3: sport athlete in high school and really were actually better
Speaker 3: at basketball, but they picked up baseball and they're going
Speaker 3: to run with that now, and that's a reason to
Speaker 3: be optimistic about their development. And I've looked into this
Speaker 3: a little bit and I'm a little skeptical of that. Like,
Speaker 3: to me, that's the one flag I have for Davidson.
Speaker 3: He's new to the sport and is immediately having success.
Speaker 3: And so one of the narratives around that is even
Speaker 3: more will come because he's still learning. He's still like
Speaker 3: building that mental library, and there isn't a lot to
Speaker 3: nitpick about his approach so far. Maybe a touch high
Speaker 3: on the case side. It's not bad by any means,
Speaker 3: but it's a little bit elevated. But he's got good
Speaker 3: walks and the swinging strike rate maybe a little bit high,
Speaker 3: and so maybe he's being smart and passive and letting
Speaker 3: the balls come to him. Like I like that kind
Speaker 3: of hitter personally. As we've talked about before, I do
Speaker 3: wonder how this is going to go as he starts
Speaker 3: to get challenged at levels right, and as there are
Speaker 3: people who have spent their whole lives building up that
Speaker 3: mental library, Like how much of that discipline piece is
Speaker 3: going to stick? So for me, the only like sprinkle
Speaker 3: of cold water I put on Davidson is that the
Speaker 3: new to Baseball narrative is one that is actually a
Speaker 3: minus for me, and it's one that gives me pause
Speaker 3: about like, maybe this is just a pretty impressive hot streak,
Speaker 3: and we should expect quite a bit of regression, especially
Speaker 3: in things like his plate approach. That said, I have
Speaker 3: been very impressed by the power piece, and while I
Speaker 3: haven't seen any underlying data, I don't know if you have, Nate,
Speaker 3: But I haven't seen any underlying data about his exit
Speaker 3: bulos yet. I suspect they're impressive, Like I suspect that
Speaker 3: we're looking at like really good ebs.
Speaker 2: I just know Clegg had chimed in and he didn't
Speaker 2: give any specifics, but he kind of signed off and
Speaker 2: said that the data that he has all looks legit.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting. I haven't seen that, So that kind of
Speaker 3: jibs with my looks at him and kind of seeing
Speaker 3: what he's got. I think that plays with the like
Speaker 3: opposite field power when he's gotten into balls to the
Speaker 3: pull side or just straight away like they're mashed, and
Speaker 3: even for a twenty twenty one year old in the
Speaker 3: Cow League, like that's different. Like, you know, I watch
Speaker 3: a lot of the COLL League. You watch a lot
Speaker 3: of the Collleague guys when the hit homer is there,
Speaker 3: like yeah, it's quote unquote of no doubt, but it's
Speaker 3: like ten feet past the fence, you know, like it's
Speaker 3: really not they You see these guys, they're younger, they
Speaker 3: don't hit bombs. And a lot of those parks, at
Speaker 3: least the ones we have good views for, they're great
Speaker 3: hitters parks you know, like especially for power. So when
Speaker 3: he gets into some of these balls and really nukes them,
Speaker 3: you're like, Okay, that's impressive power. Like that's kind of
Speaker 3: the kind of power that we were seeing from Likelzara
Speaker 3: Montes down there.
Speaker 2: I've made some home run montages before video, I can't
Speaker 2: say that I've ever really made one that looked like
Speaker 2: like that with that high percentage of opposite field and
Speaker 2: letting the ball travel and getting the barrel on in
Speaker 2: some different spots and putting charges in them quite like
Speaker 2: that opposite field. If you're not familiar with Davidson, he's
Speaker 2: an athletic guy. He's good sized, he plays center field,
Speaker 2: he can run like it just strikes me as an athlete. Yeah,
Speaker 2: get me, man, I'll tell.
Speaker 3: You what it would just go really like they seem
Speaker 3: he seems like a real prospect, like one is worthwhile
Speaker 3: in I would say even like sixteen twenty team leagues,
Speaker 3: Like this is to me, this is a guy that
Speaker 3: there's enough signal here from the eyeball view and the
Speaker 3: numbers that he's putting up that like he seems like
Speaker 3: a top five hundred guy to me with a chance
Speaker 3: that that looks stupidly low in another six months or
Speaker 3: you know, early next year. So I'll tell you like,
Speaker 3: I acted on this in a couple of leagues and
Speaker 3: snagged him over some guys that like might be helpful
Speaker 3: for my competing teams because I was like, there seems
Speaker 3: to be some lightning in the bottle potential here and
Speaker 3: he was still on the waiver in a couple of thirties,
Speaker 3: so I was like, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna try
Speaker 3: and scoop him.
Speaker 2: He kind of checks some boxes for me, just like
Speaker 2: mechanical stuff. But I like to look for he's he's
Speaker 2: got a pretty still, calm, balance, still head thing going
Speaker 2: on that I like to look for. He doesn't have
Speaker 2: to like wind up to get into it, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think he's a legit prospect. He's on
Speaker 2: the back of pipelines trying his top thirty. Like, I
Speaker 2: don't think we're the only ones who might think that
Speaker 2: he's pretty good or has the chance. Is maybe the
Speaker 2: best way of what I'm trying to say here. I've
Speaker 2: seen guys that were taken in the top five, young
Speaker 2: guys taken in the top five of the drafts before that,
Speaker 2: I was way worse mechanics than he does, and we're
Speaker 2: lauded for their athleticism and what could be and what
Speaker 2: have you. So, and I'm not getting hung up that
Speaker 2: he is an undrafted guy. We're down to twenty rounds.
Speaker 2: Lots of guys in the BIGS who were drafted past
Speaker 2: the twentieth round. Some of these undrafted free agents still
Speaker 2: signed six figure signing bonuses. You know, given his story
Speaker 2: and where he came from, I'm not surprised that not
Speaker 2: a lot of teams were on him. He's from some
Speaker 2: junior college that no one has ever played pro ball
Speaker 2: from before. You know, they have lou Davidson man a
Speaker 2: bit of fun middle of August early August sort of
Speaker 2: mud find here. And he's still at I think zero
Speaker 2: percent roster. I would like to see what that's going
Speaker 2: to look like at the end of the year. I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: Well. I did notice that Chris Clegg talked him up
Speaker 3: a couple of times recently, and had seen a couple
Speaker 3: of tweets come through the Dynasty dug Out discord, And
Speaker 3: I did notice that there's a real cleg effect here.
Speaker 3: When Clegg posts something about somebody, you see that numbers
Speaker 3: start to tick up. I think he went out zero
Speaker 3: point four percent. Like in the day after Clegg talked
Speaker 3: about talked about him, so Chris quit talking about our guys.
Speaker 2: So cleg roster a Clegg endorsement is worth zero point
Speaker 2: four percent the roster percentage increase? Is that what you're
Speaker 2: telling me?
Speaker 3: I mean, it seems it's it's not nothing. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to attribute at all to him and all that.
Speaker 3: And there's lots of leagues that you know, he's still
Speaker 3: probably is a watchless guy instead of a must add.
Speaker 3: But he's pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, super interesting. So Matt, I don't know this
Speaker 2: last week, last couple of days or so, I kind
Speaker 2: of did something I haven't really done before. A little dig,
Speaker 2: a little exercise. I think I've done things like this,
Speaker 2: but maybe quite this thorough. But I was looking at
Speaker 2: and watching a player that we had mentioned in passing
Speaker 2: a few times, I think, but we never really talked
Speaker 2: about that. I was like, hey, you know what, this week,
Speaker 2: we need to shout this guy a little bit more
Speaker 2: and get into him. And that led to this he
Speaker 2: is one of these. But I was like curious, I'm like,
Speaker 2: how many guys have like legit jumped two levels. This year,
Speaker 2: I've gotten two real promotions. And I don't mean fill
Speaker 2: in for an injury. I don't mean rehab assignment. I
Speaker 2: don't mean a guy who was in High A last
Speaker 2: year or Double A at the end of last year
Speaker 2: was maybe coming back from something. I mean, like legit
Speaker 2: moved up two levels. And I think this time of
Speaker 2: year is maybe a good time to do that. As
Speaker 2: a minor leagues start to gear up for the playoffs,
Speaker 2: you might get some guys that get bumped up just
Speaker 2: for that little run and go back. You see that,
Speaker 2: and you see that with the White Sox, I think
Speaker 2: often with what they do with their Double A and
Speaker 2: what have you. So so I just got curious. I
Speaker 2: scraped every player in the minor leagues that had played
Speaker 2: at three different levels, and matt that probably returned I
Speaker 2: don't know, between four hundred and five hundred guys, and
Speaker 2: then I did the tedious task of vetting all of them.
Speaker 2: Which ones are legit you know, moved up two levels
Speaker 2: not you know the other things that I talked about.
Speaker 2: There'll be some complex guys that'll jump up and fill
Speaker 2: in for a week and Double A and things of
Speaker 2: that nature, and I don't mean those guys. How many
Speaker 2: bats do you think legit received two promotions this year?
Speaker 3: Bats that received two I'm gonna say.
Speaker 2: So that's played in three levels. If you were promoted twice.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say fifty.
Speaker 2: This is not super scientific. I could have missed a
Speaker 2: few guys. I could have deleted a guy off my
Speaker 2: list for maybe in that appropriate reason. But Matt, I got,
Speaker 2: I think you're looking at more like thirteen.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, that is a lot lower than I thought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got guys. You know, maybe I may have
Speaker 2: deleted a couple guys that are in the majors too,
Speaker 2: so maybe it was a little bit more than that.
Speaker 2: I think the point that I was trying to make,
Speaker 2: and it's like, not nearly as many as you might think,
Speaker 2: or at least I thought. Right, So you got Christian Campbell, right,
Speaker 2: he started in high he's gone. He's up in triple
Speaker 2: A now he got Password Garcia started at A, balls
Speaker 2: in double A. Now Dezenzo, who started off in double A.
Speaker 2: He's in the Biggs now, right. Alex Freelan hya to
Speaker 2: triple A. Jacob Wilson, of course, he went double A
Speaker 2: to the Biggs. Trey Morgan started off a ball. He
Speaker 2: just got to double A. And then Will Wagner was
Speaker 2: what he was at, like high A, double A, and
Speaker 2: then the Biggs right after after the trade, and those
Speaker 2: guys are all on the map, right we know these guys,
Speaker 2: these guys are fairly popular. And then the guys who
Speaker 2: aren't roster zero to one percent at o Kemp we've
Speaker 2: talked about a little bit. Peyton Elis Eels, who I've
Speaker 2: seen some buzz around. He was a guy that the
Speaker 2: Twins signed from Independent Ball, kind of the speedy, top
Speaker 2: of the order type guy. Uh, he started off in
Speaker 2: a ball. He's up in triple A now. Philip Glasser,
Speaker 2: he was a college draft he who maybe kind of
Speaker 2: started lower than maybe he quote should have, but he
Speaker 2: was a ball to start the year. He's up to
Speaker 2: double A now. We've mentioned him in passing a little bit.
Speaker 2: And then the guy that started this whole thing off
Speaker 2: for me, Romeo Santa Bria, who we've passing a little bit.
Speaker 2: But and I guess maybe there's there's one more guy
Speaker 2: that I don't know if you really fit this sort
Speaker 2: of these guidelines, but there's a young I guess, middle
Speaker 2: infielder with the astros Ja Maal incarnacion. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you've seen him at all. I didn't really realize
Speaker 2: what his season story was. But he's played at a
Speaker 2: ball for a few weeks at a time. Hiated a
Speaker 2: few weeks at a time double A and then like
Speaker 2: back to highest. So I don't know, filling in where
Speaker 2: they need. But I don't know. I think it's a
Speaker 2: little bit more than that. He's he's a nice looking player.
Speaker 2: To me, he's he's speedy. I think he's good with
Speaker 2: the glove. He's stolen like thirty six bases. He's popped
Speaker 2: only three home runs and like his ISO and slug
Speaker 2: is pretty low. But the home runs that I saw
Speaker 2: him hit, like dude, they were jacked man. And he's
Speaker 2: twenty years old, so I'm not you know, this doesn't
Speaker 2: go rush out, but he's kind of put himself on
Speaker 2: my radar or something. I'm going to pay attention to him.
Speaker 2: I don't know if he totally fits this criteria. So
Speaker 2: I don't know these guys that are still in the mud,
Speaker 2: I don't ken. What do you got any thoughts on him?
Speaker 2: He hit pipeline. He's at like number twenty eight for them,
Speaker 2: and I saw BA named him like the first half
Speaker 2: Phillies prospect of the year. I kind of like him
Speaker 2: in a Yeah, I think this guy has a chance
Speaker 2: to make the big sort of sense fifteen home runs,
Speaker 2: seventeen stolen bases on the year. I think there's solid
Speaker 2: contact ability to slug. I don't know about the defense.
Speaker 2: I think he plays around several positions in the dirt.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I don't know. I don't ken you got
Speaker 2: any thoughts.
Speaker 3: I think I watched him a little bit. This was
Speaker 3: maybe a month or so ago, maybe like early July.
Speaker 3: I want to say he'd been on a pretty hot heater.
Speaker 3: I think I think this was probably when he was
Speaker 3: still in high A in Jersey Shore. I want to
Speaker 3: say I watched him a little bit. And I think
Speaker 3: this was after you had mentioned him and you had
Speaker 3: said that you were pretty in interested in him. And
Speaker 3: what I saw was a lot of similarities to what
Speaker 3: you were saying in that he does lots of things
Speaker 3: pretty well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't think there was kind of up your alley.
Speaker 3: It is. I like the kind of well rounded skill
Speaker 3: set of he doesn't strike out a lot, shows a
Speaker 3: propensity to walk more than average. He didn't seem super
Speaker 3: fast to me, but he seemed like he used his
Speaker 3: speed pretty well. I think I pulled a couple of
Speaker 3: games where he had stolen bases and there looked like
Speaker 3: like he, you know, is an athlete in that sense
Speaker 3: that he kind of is taking advantage of his athleticism
Speaker 3: that he does have. I think the thing that slowed
Speaker 3: my role as far as like a full throated endorsement,
Speaker 3: was the we hadn't seen this kind of performance out
Speaker 3: of him in his previous two minor league seasons. Especially
Speaker 3: when I looked at him, he was like a twenty
Speaker 3: four year old in high A, and I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: does look good, but given where he has been, it
Speaker 3: was like, all right, this is kind of underwhelming performs
Speaker 3: the last couple of years. I at the time, my
Speaker 3: evaluation was like this is solid, like somebody that I
Speaker 3: do think could make the major leagues. But I wasn't.
Speaker 3: I wasn't thrilled by any anything in the profile that
Speaker 3: I saw, you know what I mean, Like, to me,
Speaker 3: he looks like a guy that might end this year
Speaker 3: at Double A, start next year at Double A, maybe
Speaker 3: make it up to Triple A. But then it's now
Speaker 3: he's twenty five. What makes him difference from a Matt
Speaker 3: Kruhn or something like we talked about, who was kind
Speaker 3: of an older guy that had performed for the level
Speaker 3: and then was stalling out in the upper miners for
Speaker 3: the Phillies. Right, So he reminded me in some ways
Speaker 3: of Krune, although a Krune does some things differently than
Speaker 3: he does. But that was my look is like, hey,
Speaker 3: there's stuff like here, but I don't know if this
Speaker 3: is somebody to get super excited about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Philip Blasser with the Nats is kind of similar
Speaker 2: to accountant. Yeah, maybe not quite as much pop, but
Speaker 2: I think he is be a bit more athletic. He's
Speaker 2: got twenty two stolen bases on the year, But some
Speaker 2: of that I'm just talking up to, you know, a
Speaker 2: ball pitchers and catchers not being good at controlling the
Speaker 2: run game. Maybe he's an auto kemp light if you will.
Speaker 2: And it doesn't strike my interest a whole ton here,
Speaker 2: but worth noting. You know, he's moved up a couple
Speaker 2: levels and not a lot of guys are doing that.
Speaker 2: I was surprised to see that Glasser didn't get a
Speaker 2: top thirty designation by pipeline for that system. I kind
Speaker 2: of thought he would fit in the NATS top thirty,
Speaker 2: but yeah, what do I know. And then Matt I
Speaker 2: saw some I don't know if it was a tweet
Speaker 2: or somebody sharing in the dugout, but Peyton Elis was
Speaker 2: getting I think a lot of love from some sort
Speaker 2: of stat based system or something something of that nature. Right,
Speaker 2: He's twenty four seven home runs, He's stolen thirty bases,
Speaker 2: he walks fifteen percent of the time, strikes out than
Speaker 2: that thirteen percent of the time on the season. As
Speaker 2: a whole, I've turned him on a little bit. My
Speaker 2: whole thing is like I have gleaned a liking to
Speaker 2: a few independent ball signees over the years, and it
Speaker 2: just never really turns into much more than having a
Speaker 2: really nice minor league season before they're released. But at
Speaker 2: least for hitters, this is kind of a I think, Yeah,
Speaker 2: like I said before, I think top of the lineup
Speaker 2: sort of guy. Maybe he's a bit slappy, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I haven't watched a ton of him, but yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I point being is, I'm not like over
Speaker 2: the moon that this is some b side gem here.
Speaker 2: But nonetheless, a guy, you know, doing some things but
Speaker 2: could very well fall into like a career triple A
Speaker 2: or I think.
Speaker 3: Pretty interesting for this is really Peyton Eel's first full season. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you know he's another one that like I think
Speaker 3: he's super short, right like him.
Speaker 2: Up, Yeah, I don't think he's very big, and you know, lots.
Speaker 3: Of people hate on that, but I'm certainly no grtist here.
Speaker 3: If you can play the game, you can play the game.
Speaker 2: So so yeah, and then the guy that started this all,
Speaker 2: Matt Let's I want to talk about Romeo Sanabria, some
Speaker 2: who was catching my eye watching some cal League earlier
Speaker 2: in the year. He was putting up some good numbers.
Speaker 2: He's got a really nice left handed stroke. Again, a
Speaker 2: lot of the same things I talked about earlier that
Speaker 2: I like to look for, just calm, quick, direct, balance,
Speaker 2: still head and I was kind of surprised. I didn't
Speaker 2: really even realize that he got you know, he was
Speaker 2: obviously got promoted to high and then what last week,
Speaker 2: week and a half ago now he got promoted to
Speaker 2: double A. I don't have the numbers in front of me,
Speaker 2: but he scorched his first week with San Antonio saw
Speaker 2: him rip a double, but he's only twenty two years old.
Speaker 2: Eleven home runs on the season. He swiped a few bags. Now,
Speaker 2: I think he's listed as a catcher in places, but
Speaker 2: he has not caught this year. He plays first base.
Speaker 2: He's got an on base percentage throughout his three levels
Speaker 2: combined at four to twelve. He's slugged four sixty three.
Speaker 2: I so, you know, maybe we'd like to see that
Speaker 2: a little higher, but he is. He has had a
Speaker 2: nice season at the plate. And this is a guy
Speaker 2: who's jumped three levels and is only rostered in one percent.
Speaker 2: Pipeline put him number twenty four in the Padre system.
Speaker 2: Now they've jettison some guys, so there's some room on
Speaker 2: that list. But I think Santa Bria is a pretty
Speaker 2: underrated prospect here, Matt, are you with me or not
Speaker 2: so much?
Speaker 3: I am intrigued. I will say, I don't really think
Speaker 3: he's that athletic. I mean, he's he stole three bags
Speaker 3: in Low A this year and is zero for three
Speaker 3: in High A and Double A combined, So I don't
Speaker 3: think that's going to be a big part of his game.
Speaker 3: And then the first space profile only is one that
Speaker 3: you should look at with some degree of skepticism, right,
Speaker 3: like that it's hard to make that position work in
Speaker 3: the fantasy realm and in real life baseball too, so
Speaker 3: that like, starting from that perspective as Okay, this guy's
Speaker 3: really probably only going to play first base for you
Speaker 3: or you know, DH, I guess you should. He's really
Speaker 3: got to be showing some other skills that you're into
Speaker 3: for you to, like, I think, be excited about rostering him. Luckily,
Speaker 3: for Santa Bria, I do think he has some of that.
Speaker 3: He's another one who his played approach and his back
Speaker 3: to ball skills seem pretty good to me having watched
Speaker 3: a little bit of him, and I think the numbers
Speaker 3: back this up a bit. I don't think he swings
Speaker 3: and miss misses all that much, and while he can
Speaker 3: get himself worked into deep counts and then maybe chase
Speaker 3: because of that, I've on balance thought that his approach
Speaker 3: was a plus for me, you know, not super elite,
Speaker 3: but not He's not chasing a ton, he's not being
Speaker 3: overly aggressive, and I think that that leads into some
Speaker 3: of the other positives, which is he seems to hit
Speaker 3: the ball well but at like pretty good angles, Like
Speaker 3: I think he's a guy that I don't know. I'm
Speaker 3: not going to comp him directly to like a Freddie Freeman,
Speaker 3: but he's got that kind of vibe to me of
Speaker 3: a guy who's going to run a little bit higher
Speaker 3: than average line drive rates and he's not going to
Speaker 3: be like you're kind of elevate and celebrate kind of
Speaker 3: hitter at least I don't think. I don't think he's
Speaker 3: like selling out for fly balls or pulled flyballs. He's
Speaker 3: I think to your point, like you called that, you've
Speaker 3: seen him just smoke some doubles. That's kind of what
Speaker 3: I've seen out of him too. It's not as much
Speaker 3: over the fence power as it is like he just
Speaker 3: kind of laces these line drives all over the yard
Speaker 3: and that leads to you know, slightly higher babbitbs. Like
Speaker 3: he's run high babbits the whole time in the minor leagues,
Speaker 3: and right now he's at babbit at double is absurd, Like,
Speaker 3: you know, ignore that really it's super super high. But
Speaker 3: I like him in that gonna run a little higher
Speaker 3: babb gonna hit lots of line drives and doubles, and
Speaker 3: I think he's got a pretty reasonable plate approach, and
Speaker 3: all that to me says that this guy might be
Speaker 3: a real solid, kind of real life hitter, a little
Speaker 3: bit like the like the blame crim kind of archetype
Speaker 3: you know that I have talked about before for the Rangers.
Speaker 3: Like that, he's just he's not gonna leave the yard
Speaker 3: forty times in any season. I don't think that, like
Speaker 3: that's not the kind of upside. But he does everything
Speaker 3: else well enough that you're like, this is a big
Speaker 3: league regular quality bat. Now whether he can sustain this
Speaker 3: kind of thing and does he stall out at the
Speaker 3: uppers because he's a first baseman without like that true
Speaker 3: light tower power, I don't know. I don't know. So
Speaker 3: I'm I'm round down because of the position inflexibility, but
Speaker 3: the rest of it looks pretty interesting to me. And
Speaker 3: I do think he's a bat to be not fu
Speaker 3: but like I would add him in places if he
Speaker 3: were available.
Speaker 2: I haven't done this with a hitter this year. I
Speaker 2: don't think. Well, I guess I guess I did like
Speaker 2: all of Brooke Baldwin's bad at ball events, But I'm
Speaker 2: kind of thinking, man, when we get to the off season,
Speaker 2: I might like try to view all of his at
Speaker 2: bats because I've seen a good handful, it'd just be
Speaker 2: fun and I don't, like I haven't seen it at
Speaker 2: bat was like, oh that was a bad swing. That
Speaker 2: was a bad choice, Like, oh he got really full there,
Speaker 2: Like he just seems so solid to me. You know,
Speaker 2: the numbers aren't like gaudy, right, there's not anything over
Speaker 2: the top. But why is that? I guess is what
Speaker 2: I want to know? What's missing? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And to me, the only number that like stood
Speaker 3: out to me when I was reviewing his profile was
Speaker 3: that the babeps have been pretty high and in his
Speaker 3: couple of weeks in double A, like he's just hitting
Speaker 3: everything on a line. Yeah, nobody does that. Nobody, even
Speaker 3: the very very best guys can't sustain a forty percent
Speaker 3: line drive rate, Like that's gloser eyes can't do that,
Speaker 3: Freddie Freeman can't do it. Nobody can do that. Right,
Speaker 3: So that's the part, like it's gonna that is gonna
Speaker 3: come down. You might expect some of the other numbers, like,
Speaker 3: you know, his strikeout rate might tick up a little bit, walker,
Speaker 3: it might come down a little bit. And then he's
Speaker 3: a first baseman in double A who's like a little
Speaker 3: bit younger than average, like twenty two year double a
Speaker 3: that's still comfortably below average, but that WRC plus now
Speaker 3: maybe evens out to like one twenty or so after
Speaker 3: those regressions, and then you're to your point like what
Speaker 3: what's the thing wires and he leaving the yard, like
Speaker 3: what else do we want to see here? So it
Speaker 3: seems to me that he might be more of a
Speaker 3: good doubles as kitter than like a corner matcher. The
Speaker 3: plate skills and the batted ball profile are really strong,
Speaker 3: so like maybe there is more power coming, or maybe
Speaker 3: he will run into thirty homers a year at some point.
Speaker 3: I don't know. That's the part that keeps me interested
Speaker 3: is that there isn't anything to point to that's like
Speaker 3: an obvious like, Okay, yeah he's super hot, but this
Speaker 3: can't possibly sustain. There's enough here that you're like, you
Speaker 3: could see him running a three thirty BABP and you
Speaker 3: could see him running a twenty five percent k rate,
Speaker 3: but everything else looks really good, and you're like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a good hitter.
Speaker 2: I agree. Maybe some off season homework there, maybe he
Speaker 2: stays at one percent, And that's that's my bat for
Speaker 2: this offseason. But we'll see that's premature at this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're too early to make those kinds of calls.
Speaker 3: But good to put some guys on shortlists. Yeah, do
Speaker 3: you have any more of the double Mover guys that
Speaker 3: you wanted to highlight?
Speaker 2: No, that was it. That was it for me.
Speaker 3: Well, I wanted to contribute something, you know, I rarely
Speaker 3: do on these podcasts, but I wanted to do something
Speaker 3: for the people. And I don't know if this guy
Speaker 3: is a well I feel like he's definitely not a
Speaker 3: household name these days. I've not heard much about him,
Speaker 3: but he's someone that I wanted to highlight as Like,
Speaker 3: as you know, I spent a lot of time in
Speaker 3: a Ball because I'm always really really interested in the
Speaker 3: guys that we've never seen, whether that's from you know,
Speaker 3: high school where we've just seen like showcase stuff or
Speaker 3: college or the Complex or or the DSL, and then
Speaker 3: guys that can promote it to a ball. It's like
Speaker 3: our first view of some of these guys that maybe
Speaker 3: we've read about or we've seen some interesting lines and
Speaker 3: first first time to like actually get eyes on guys.
Speaker 3: And one of the guys this year that I had
Speaker 3: I think I had him on a Complex watch list
Speaker 3: when I was just going through like really young guys
Speaker 3: that had performed well at the DSL last year, and
Speaker 3: then I was like, I really like to watch all
Speaker 3: of those guys. Basically every sixteen year old or seventeen
Speaker 3: year old that gets at bats in the DSL kind
Speaker 3: of regardless of how they perform, that they're at young
Speaker 3: playing at a level. You know. Again, dsls can be
Speaker 3: variable in quality, but to me that's a good leading
Speaker 3: filter that there might be something here. And this guy
Speaker 3: for the Guardians, Luis Morejo, he had a pretty good
Speaker 3: DSL last year, popped a couple homers, walked some, didn't
Speaker 3: strike out very much, but had an interesting flyball prin
Speaker 3: City that I was like, hmm, that's kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: Played kind of all over first base third base again,
Speaker 3: like at the DSL, if you're already playing left field
Speaker 3: or something, that's like can be a bit of a flag.
Speaker 3: But anyway, he was a guy that I thought was
Speaker 3: interesting and then he was really bad on the Complex
Speaker 3: to start, like punching out all the time, power wasn't
Speaker 3: showing up. It was like I was like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 3: not that interested. And then I forget what I think
Speaker 3: I did some like complex ret rolling filter, and he
Speaker 3: showed up as like having a really good couple of weeks,
Speaker 3: and then he got promoted to Low. That Lynchburg team
Speaker 3: had a couple of I think it might have been
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks ago when they were playing down
Speaker 3: East or there's another team that I was pretty it
Speaker 3: might've been down East. That might have been Columbia or something.
Speaker 3: They were playing another team, and it was like an
Speaker 3: interesting bunch of guys that had just been promoted or
Speaker 3: were like I think you've mentioned this before, like the
Speaker 3: Carolina League is often really full of interesting guys, and
Speaker 3: so I turn on this matchup and am watching like
Speaker 3: a bunch of different kind of like an interesting set
Speaker 3: of guys on both sides and Morejo just showed out.
Speaker 3: He had two bombs in the game. He was absolutely
Speaker 3: scorching the ball. He's this big, framed, athletic looking, you know,
Speaker 3: corner guy. They've mostly played him at first base thus far,
Speaker 3: although I know he's gotten some time in the corner
Speaker 3: outfield spots as well. And you know, six ' four
Speaker 3: or something six three one ninety ish to me. But
Speaker 3: in the first bad of this game against I think
Speaker 3: it might have been fan Bilt, maybe it was fanfil
Speaker 3: this one I was looking at. He takes this slider
Speaker 3: that's below the zone and right on right, so righty
Speaker 3: batting slider just below the zone, and he takes this
Speaker 3: hack and this pitch is definitely like knee level or below,
Speaker 3: like this is not some hanging ball, but he takes
Speaker 3: it and just muscles it out to center field and
Speaker 3: it was like, not the longest home run that I've seen,
Speaker 3: but it was a really impressive swing on that kind
Speaker 3: of pitch. He homered again later in the game. Somebody
Speaker 3: around this time might have posted some nugget about his
Speaker 3: exit Bilows being really really impressive. I think somebody might
Speaker 3: have shared this in the dug out. Maybe it was
Speaker 3: Maddy Backpack or somebody who I think also really likes
Speaker 3: somebody that. So he's now eighteen, is in full season ball,
Speaker 3: has done nothing but hit, and I kind of think
Speaker 3: there's real power here, and I suspect there's a sneaky athleticism.
Speaker 3: So I'm curious what Cleveland's going to do with the
Speaker 3: defensive position. It's nice that they haven't pigeonholed him just
Speaker 3: to first base or third base. Even like he's they're
Speaker 3: already trying him out in different spots. While he's still
Speaker 3: mostly playing first base. He's playing around the diamond still
Speaker 3: a little bit, and I think he may have the
Speaker 3: athleticism to make that work. But the power, to me,
Speaker 3: seems pretty interesting. I've made a couple of like small
Speaker 3: bets on him in a couple of deeper leagues as
Speaker 3: somebody that I'm cautiously optimistic about for the next year.
Speaker 3: He's a guy that I could see kind of dominating
Speaker 3: a ball and maybe even high a next year and
Speaker 3: then being considered a legit kind of power focused prospect.
Speaker 3: So Luis Morejo to me is one of the most
Speaker 3: interesting guys that I've seen at a ball that I
Speaker 3: hadn't had eyes on before.
Speaker 2: Sweet, I like that.
Speaker 3: Have you watched him at all? Have you caught him
Speaker 3: at all in the Caroline?
Speaker 2: I don't believe. I don't believe.
Speaker 3: So he's just been there for like three weeks maybe,
Speaker 3: But yeah, he's he's fun and I think you'll dig
Speaker 3: his swing. Who do you remind me of a guy
Speaker 3: that you liked, big, righty swing? I can't remember who,
Speaker 3: I thought I remember watching him last week and being like,
Speaker 3: I feel like he looks like one of Nate's guys.
Speaker 3: That it's kind of a big swing, but like still
Speaker 3: head and good stuff to like for sure.
Speaker 2: You know, this is a good time of year to
Speaker 2: keep an eye on some teenagers that might be hitting
Speaker 2: full season. We've had some, you know, edgar Quero came
Speaker 2: across my radar in that fashion and that's turned out
Speaker 2: to be a pretty dang good b side.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely a good time to keep an eye out
Speaker 3: for these kinds of players. And again, like lots of
Speaker 3: your league mates, like you said, they might be playing
Speaker 3: some other stupid sport instead of our interesting one.
Speaker 2: You hear a lot of chatter like, oh, they need
Speaker 2: to promote this guy, like oh he needs better competition,
Speaker 2: like oh he's too old for the level, and like
Speaker 2: just a lot of the times it's just incorrect. They're
Speaker 2: not too old for the level because all the levels
Speaker 2: have gotten older and nobody moves up to two uh
Speaker 2: levels in a year, like unless it's like somebody like
Speaker 2: we mentioned, right, I mean, just it doesn't happen like that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you guy was killing abell. He got up to high A.
Speaker 2: He had a good couple first two weeks and let's go,
Speaker 2: he's got to go to double A. It's like, eh,
Speaker 2: slow roll, give it a couple months, and a lot
Speaker 2: of times a couple months later you're like, yeah, you
Speaker 2: know he's struggling now, but yeah.
Speaker 3: And there's also the contraction of the minor leagues plays
Speaker 3: into this too, where I think we see some of
Speaker 3: the younger guys get pushed a little bit more and
Speaker 3: some of this maybe team focus, like they're trying to
Speaker 3: promote guys so that maybe they have a hot couple
Speaker 3: of weeks leading into the trade deadline, and now they
Speaker 3: pop for the model based teams, like the teams that
Speaker 3: really really care about age to level. There's some gaming
Speaker 3: the system that I think can happen there, But there's
Speaker 3: also with the contraction, there's just fewer spots to go around,
Speaker 3: so like maybe a guy does get aggressively pushed up
Speaker 3: to double A, but then the double A and triple
Speaker 3: A lineups are filled with guys that are on the
Speaker 3: forty man, are almost on the forty man, and there's
Speaker 3: nowhere else for them to go. And we saw this
Speaker 3: with the Orioles. They had a ton of guys that
Speaker 3: were interesting up and down their system, but the very
Speaker 3: top of the system, including the major leagues, they just
Speaker 3: don't have roster spots for all those guys, Like they
Speaker 3: don't want Tearstad and Mayo and Holiday before he came
Speaker 3: up the second time and crushed like that. They don't
Speaker 3: want them just to languish on the bench for four
Speaker 3: out of seven games in a week, like they want
Speaker 3: them seeing reps and seeing at bats. And at some
Speaker 3: point you have this good problem of like you don't
Speaker 3: know where to put everybody. And we've said this about
Speaker 3: some of like that next tier down of the Orioles prospects,
Speaker 3: that they're really good, We're really interested in them, and
Speaker 3: I think they did an awesome job identifying some of
Speaker 3: the guys to send away to consolidate, Like it was
Speaker 3: very Dynasty Baseball level trade when they sent you know,
Speaker 3: et Seul and Horvath and Bonmeister for zach Eflin, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I love that trade on both sides, Like those are
Speaker 3: three guys that I think are really interesting and one
Speaker 3: guy that went healthy looks like a sp number two,
Speaker 3: although the other effort is hurt now and it's so
Speaker 3: bad timing I think for you too, Right, you have
Speaker 3: Efflin in a couple of important places. Yeah, it's brutal.
Speaker 2: So if you're out there, if you're on fangrass and
Speaker 2: you do this sort of of a filter and look
Speaker 2: at guys at three levels, this is not something that
Speaker 2: I was naive to. But you will also catch a
Speaker 2: lot of names, Matt that started in the complex, started
Speaker 2: in a Ball, moved to Hya, moved for a few weeks,
Speaker 2: moved to double A for a few weeks, and then
Speaker 2: we're released. It's like one last quick shot, throw them up.
Speaker 2: I don't know what what all the thinking is behind it,
Speaker 2: but there are a lot of guys that was the
Speaker 2: end of my vetting road with them was like, well
Speaker 2: you got released after your little whirlwind of the system.
Speaker 2: But another interesting part of this, Matt, So I'll just
Speaker 2: tell you so you know, this is one of five
Speaker 2: thousand reasons pictures and pitching is so much better than hitting.
Speaker 2: But there's about twice as many pictures that have had
Speaker 2: these sort of true double promotions this year, or more
Speaker 2: then your dumb hitters. But on the total list, on
Speaker 2: the total list, Matt, a third of these guys we're
Speaker 2: from the Houston organization either still with them or traded
Speaker 2: away and did you see Matt Pipeline and those guys
Speaker 2: put Houston Houston System at number thirty once again, and.
Speaker 3: I did see.
Speaker 2: That drives me bonkers, dude, How well you know, we
Speaker 2: don't know, you know, the talent isn't there. They develop well,
Speaker 2: but we don't know where it comes from. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: then your process is screwed up, man, because the whole
Speaker 2: point of a system is to produce major lead talent
Speaker 2: help and Houston does that better than anybody, but yet
Speaker 2: never gets recognized for it. So I just I just
Speaker 2: wanted to note that a third of these guys that
Speaker 2: have jumped up multiple levels are from that system.
Speaker 3: It's interesting for lots of reasons, like Houston's a fascinating
Speaker 3: system for over the past decade for lots of different reasons,
Speaker 3: from the Super Tanky years to the early adopters of
Speaker 3: a bunch of the kind of cutting edge tactics that
Speaker 3: we see in player development, the under the radar kind
Speaker 3: of moneyball at two point zero esque identification of what's
Speaker 3: valuable and what's going to be good going forward. They've
Speaker 3: been fascinating. And now they've got Dana Brown at the
Speaker 3: helm and that's an interesting shift in their approach. I
Speaker 3: did think that their trade for Kukuchi this offseason was
Speaker 3: probably not one that someone like Michae Elias would have done.
Speaker 3: I don't know what did you think about that? Like
Speaker 3: to me, it felt like a trade I might do
Speaker 3: in dynasty, where I'm like, these four guys, I think
Speaker 3: maybe three of them are going to be big leaguers,
Speaker 3: maybe like a below average big leaguer or two, but
Speaker 3: they're like they belong on a big league roster, is
Speaker 3: what I felt like. But maybe none of them is
Speaker 3: going to be a star. And Kakuchi's like a good
Speaker 3: depth arm that I'm happy to roster and plug in
Speaker 3: as my fourth best starter or whatever. I felt like
Speaker 3: it was an interesting shift in tactics from the Astros.
Speaker 3: But to your point, the point of a minor league system,
Speaker 3: for if you're really trying to win, is to develop
Speaker 3: major league assets, and whether you do that by trading
Speaker 3: them away or turning them into major league assets, I
Speaker 3: think is part of the trick for a major league team.
Speaker 3: It's an interesting shift in their surplus value chasing approach.
Speaker 3: I think right like I feel like under Alias, they
Speaker 3: really cared about the dollars and cents of it because
Speaker 3: they had a strict payroll budget. They were going to
Speaker 3: be lean until they were sure they had stars and
Speaker 3: then try and extend them on team friendly deals. And
Speaker 3: it was an interesting sort of shift, like Kakuchi's a
Speaker 3: rental and they sent four guys away who have decent
Speaker 3: shots at being productive mlbers that are all pre orb
Speaker 3: they're all in their first or second year eligibility right
Speaker 3: first year right like they sent nobody away that was
Speaker 3: It's an interesting philosophical shift. I will definitely agree with
Speaker 3: you that I think Houston is doing a bunch of
Speaker 3: things right in the searching for value where other teams
Speaker 3: still are ignoring, and their player development does seem to
Speaker 3: be pretty good. Like, you know, we had talked about
Speaker 3: low Berfido a year ago and we're like, he looks
Speaker 3: like a pretty interesting guy, and nobody was really on him.
Speaker 3: And then he had an awesome year this year in
Speaker 3: the upper minors and I think found himself on the
Speaker 3: way to some top one hundreds. I'm still skeptical that
Speaker 3: he's like a major league average or better player, Like
Speaker 3: he looks to me more like a one more to
Speaker 3: half a war kind of player at Steady State. Hey,
Speaker 3: they netted a good player on them. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Houston is just a fascinating organization, I think, to both
Speaker 3: of us. And it's not always for the reasons that
Speaker 3: you would think.
Speaker 2: Trade the wait Gilbert, you know, their first round pick
Speaker 2: from a few years ago. And I think they're almost
Speaker 2: like how I would how I want to fancy myself
Speaker 2: in dynasties, like oh, I don't care you want my
Speaker 2: pretty boys or my trendy guy, like we take them,
Speaker 2: you know, unless I really really love him and believe
Speaker 2: in them. Right. I think the Astros kind of spoke
Speaker 2: that those players weren't super valuable to them, right, and
Speaker 2: they're just gonna backfill and they're gonna develop some more
Speaker 2: guys and just keep it coming. And I don't think
Speaker 2: they gave away anything that they can't live without.
Speaker 3: Definitely not, definitely not. I know it was a bit
Speaker 3: of a meme in The Dynasty. I got discorded this
Speaker 3: offseason that I was kind of low on Lowferfeedo and
Speaker 3: then he just went nuts at Triple A and was
Speaker 3: just hitting a bomb every day, and I kept getting
Speaker 3: tagged about it. I forget which member was was doing that,
Speaker 3: but it was it was a good bit. And then
Speaker 3: you know he's been in the bigs for most of
Speaker 3: this year and was the last I looked like an
Speaker 3: eighty w RC plus player had like two bombs or
Speaker 3: something in the bigs, and that was three. I guess
Speaker 3: now at seventy eight WRC plus now you know, striking
Speaker 3: out a time, not walking us like that looks like
Speaker 3: the guy that we saw just he was on a
Speaker 3: hell of a heater in in Triple A. So it's
Speaker 3: it's interesting how that works out.
Speaker 2: I want to get into some of the pictures here.
Speaker 3: We have to.
Speaker 2: There's some good ones, man, There's and and some a
Speaker 2: few guys that were new to me that I turned
Speaker 2: on a little bit, mostly from the Houston system. But
Speaker 2: so you got your obvious guys, right, Waldrip it was,
Speaker 2: you know, first round pick whatever. He's moved up three levels,
Speaker 2: and I gotta say, I think he hasn't really lived
Speaker 2: up to the first year player draft tight this year, Matt,
Speaker 2: I would, uh, we got George class, you know, I
Speaker 2: was traded and now he's up in Double A. First
Speaker 2: couple of Double A starts, Matt, where's all those strikeouts
Speaker 2: that that big nasty fastball was supposed to get your
Speaker 2: boy Logan Henderson, God, I love him, been pretty good.
Speaker 3: He's so freaking good man. I I wish if he
Speaker 3: hadn't gotten hurt in that Breakouts game, right that he
Speaker 3: got hurt, Yeah, it was if it wasn't for that.
Speaker 3: I wonder if we were would see him in the
Speaker 3: show this year. He has just been so fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you'd still take him over miss Rawski, Yes, definitely, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm with you.
Speaker 3: I think is gonna end up being an awesome reliever,
Speaker 3: like stuff is so impressive. But I think Henderson is
Speaker 3: going to be a really good starter.
Speaker 2: Matthews, of course, who's started at HYA, has made a
Speaker 2: couple of major league starts now, amazing season for him.
Speaker 2: Andrew Morris, also in that same system, went from High
Speaker 2: A to now in Triple A. Andrew Morris is pretty
Speaker 2: good dude. I have to admit that he's a guy
Speaker 2: that I probably the first couple of times I saw
Speaker 2: him when he first came up, probably underestimated him. But
Speaker 2: he's gotten to be a pretty dang good picture. He's
Speaker 2: twenty two years old now in Triple A. I think
Speaker 2: that's a dude. But I was too late Brandon Sproute, right,
Speaker 2: he's moved from high A to double A, Triple A.
Speaker 2: Thomas Harrington. Quinn Matthews, which is a good call by
Speaker 2: you this preseason. By the way, how many innings has
Speaker 2: that guy lock now the last two years? Quite a few?
Speaker 3: Huh, probably a lot. Yeah, I know that when we
Speaker 3: looked at him last year, when I was saying that
Speaker 3: I liked him, as you know, I'm shy on pictures
Speaker 3: going out coming out of the draft generally, and it's like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, there's gonna be some pop ups that
Speaker 3: we don't really know who they are, and so I
Speaker 3: just kind of picked Quinn Matthews as a guy that
Speaker 3: I had seen that was good in his time at
Speaker 3: Stanford and obviously had that great was that super regional
Speaker 3: or regional game against Texas and when he went one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty six pitches or something. But yeah, he's
Speaker 3: logged quite a few innings, and it's interesting this year
Speaker 3: that I think he's held his pro velocity games still
Speaker 3: even if he's made it up, even as he's made
Speaker 3: it up to double A.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Jake Bloss who's started the year, you know, his
Speaker 2: first pro full pro season started hi A. He's made
Speaker 2: up to the bigs. He got traded to Toronto from Houston,
Speaker 2: and then Brad Lord the National system started off in
Speaker 2: hy A's up in Triple A. Now, I don't know
Speaker 2: how much you've watched Lord, if any this preseason that
Speaker 2: we were talking about the Nats system in their arms
Speaker 2: right and how it was just like such a sleeper,
Speaker 2: like I don't know, grasping to get excited about somebody
Speaker 2: that wasn't you know, already rostered highly, like you know whoever.
Speaker 2: And I feel like Lord is just kind of like
Speaker 2: the king of that of that sort of profile. Like
Speaker 2: is that a great season? I don't want to discount
Speaker 2: his production. It's been awesome. I'm just not so sure
Speaker 2: there's like stuff there to get too excited about, or
Speaker 2: any sort of funkiness to get excited about, or deception,
Speaker 2: lots of flyballs, not a ton of caves. Just kind
Speaker 2: of overall feels pretty major league lackluster to me unless
Speaker 2: I'm missing something that I don't.
Speaker 3: Think you're missing anything. And this is something that we've
Speaker 3: talked about with that system. I don't know whether it's
Speaker 3: the Nationals haven't or like maybe they've tried for some
Speaker 3: of the pitchability guys and they haven't been able to
Speaker 3: put it all together or what the deal is. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I kind of agree with you on Lord.
Speaker 2: I kind of wonder with them if they're just of
Speaker 2: the thinking, which I think is a very smart tact,
Speaker 2: gather some of the pitchability skill if you will execution stuff.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe the tools the pictures aren't real loud and
Speaker 2: then we can get them louder, And maybe that just
Speaker 2: hasn't really panned out with some guys that they were
Speaker 2: hoping for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, they've got the guys like Sikora
Speaker 3: and ardenssan On those guys that I think are kind
Speaker 3: of definitely the stuff Maven's and seem like they know
Speaker 3: how to pitch a bit, especially in Sikora's case. I
Speaker 3: wonder because they had like a few drafts in a
Speaker 3: row where they took top like fireballing pictures pretty early
Speaker 3: that maybe had some questionable injury history and I don't
Speaker 3: know if that worked out for them or they were
Speaker 3: trying to diversify their risk, but it really made a
Speaker 3: lot of their system seem kind of boring outside of
Speaker 3: like the top kind of pretty boy arms which looked
Speaker 3: particularly risky to me. So I don't know whether that
Speaker 3: was a systemic thing or what, but yeah, it's an
Speaker 3: interesting phenotype that they seem to have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and those are the guys that are well beyond
Speaker 2: beside roster percent. The next guy I'm want to bring
Speaker 2: up here Hester passed that he's at five percent. He's
Speaker 2: number twenty nine on the Brewers pipeline list. And I
Speaker 2: know has been chatted about quite a bit in the discord.
Speaker 2: But Casey Hunt with the Brewers started off in a
Speaker 2: ball is now in double a right. Story with him,
Speaker 2: he was mostly a reliever in Mississippi State or exclusively
Speaker 2: a reliever, I don't know for certain, got drafted in
Speaker 2: the twelfth round the twenty twenty two draft, but the
Speaker 2: Pirates did not sign with them. I don't know what
Speaker 2: the story is there why that was. And then he
Speaker 2: went and played independent ball and then the Brewers signed
Speaker 2: him last year. And he's put up some great numbers, right,
Speaker 2: I don't know, his K minus BB's really good, his
Speaker 2: strikeout percentage, all that stuff. Right, I've seen some little
Speaker 2: you know, wo'd you rather when Casey Hunt and Logan
Speaker 2: Henderson in the same conversation I'm just like, whoaha, whoa
Speaker 2: why I can't I can't get on board that. I
Speaker 2: don't know if you've watched Hunt Matt, but you're talking
Speaker 2: about I don't know, fastballs like ninety one, ninety two.
Speaker 2: He's right handed, high seventies. I think it's pretty decent.
Speaker 2: Furmer slider change up right. He's got he's got the tools,
Speaker 2: his good body, good size. He can pitch, you know,
Speaker 2: although I have to say the outings that I've seen,
Speaker 2: there's you know, a lot of the catcher calm for
Speaker 2: something in the location and him him not hitting that,
Speaker 2: him missing it. But you know, more more so than
Speaker 2: someone i'd say was pitching real clean right. I wonder
Speaker 2: if there's like a little Johnny right hander in him.
Speaker 2: I see the fastball. When there's damage done, it's usually
Speaker 2: the fastball. Tend to wonder if his pitchability and his
Speaker 2: like you know, good secondaries, good use of secondaries, kind
Speaker 2: of mask what could maybe be a big major league hurdle.
Speaker 2: Wondering about that fastball quality, and I think he, I
Speaker 2: don't know what's the best way to say it, Maybe
Speaker 2: he knows the fastball and like his greatest pitch because
Speaker 2: he is trying to tuck that thing down and down
Speaker 2: and the way in the zone quite often. So I
Speaker 2: don't know. I know some people are really excited about
Speaker 2: Casey Hunt. He there's a lot of things that we
Speaker 2: would like about him, right man. We like pitchability. Guys
Speaker 2: like guys you can execute a whole arsenal and sequence differently,
Speaker 2: and I think he's got some of that in this game.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm just tampering some of my big league dreams
Speaker 2: with him. But of course he's the type of guy
Speaker 2: if he comes back next year and he put on
Speaker 2: a couple of clicks on the fastball or reworked in
Speaker 2: it's a better quality fastball, you could go Zebbie Matthews esque.
Speaker 2: I think so I like it. I like it. I'm
Speaker 2: just not sure I'm as excited as some I'll.
Speaker 3: Admit I haven't watched any of Hunt this year, and
Speaker 3: that's probably a mistake because, like you said, it sounds
Speaker 3: to me like there's a lot of things here that generally,
Speaker 3: I like, you know, somebody that maybe isn't a fastball
Speaker 3: first guy, or isn't succeeding in the minor leagues based
Speaker 3: on a fastball only, and maybe had some of those
Speaker 3: other traits to dive into. So let me hold off
Speaker 3: my view until I get a chance to dive into
Speaker 3: a start or two of hunts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the next guy I want to bring up, he's
Speaker 2: the only one who wouln't teetering on the B side
Speaker 2: popularity right now. Matt. He's at three percent and he's
Speaker 2: gone from abel to high A to just promote it
Speaker 2: to double A. I think he made one double A
Speaker 2: start just the last couple of days. I'm not one
Speaker 2: hundred percent on that, but that's cold Drake with the Rangers,
Speaker 2: and I know Clegg has liked him quite a bit,
Speaker 2: and I think I have to agree with Clegg. And
Speaker 2: part of this is some other opinions that are closer
Speaker 2: to the situation, but I think they really like him,
Speaker 2: and well he's twenty one on the pipeline list, but
Speaker 2: I think this is another candidate for like one of
Speaker 2: the most underrated prospects maybe in all baseball. I still
Speaker 2: want to see The Rangers for a long time have
Speaker 2: had tons of interesting arms and the lowers, and then
Speaker 2: they get to the uppers and they can't get them
Speaker 2: over the hump. Like really, Matt Bradford's like the only
Speaker 2: guy that they have totally developed or has totally come
Speaker 2: up through their system. Everybody else that's been pitching for
Speaker 2: them for several years now like wasn't you know. I
Speaker 2: got to imagine that's a big emphasis for them that
Speaker 2: they need some of their homegrown arms so they don't
Speaker 2: have to pay all these high dollar free agents. But
Speaker 2: I think Cold Drake, of all the interesting arms that
Speaker 2: were in Hickory down East this year, and there's been
Speaker 2: a lot, man, I think he might be the best
Speaker 2: of the bunch.
Speaker 3: So I've watched a little bit of Cold Drake and
Speaker 3: I agree with you. I think he's a nice underrated
Speaker 3: prospect and definitely co signed him. Had I watched a
Speaker 3: couple of the starts earlier this year that were impressive,
Speaker 3: both in the pitchability realm of like he was executing
Speaker 3: as you like to say. It wasn't just use leveraging
Speaker 3: the stuff to get the results like it was. There
Speaker 3: was you could see the intent, you could see the plan,
Speaker 3: and you could see him executing that pretty well. So
Speaker 3: I do like Drake, and he's one. It'll be interesting
Speaker 3: to follow how his promotion to Double A goes. I
Speaker 3: wanted to ask, have you seen another guy at Hickory
Speaker 3: and I think he spent most of the year at
Speaker 3: down East. Maybe good in his first couple of starts
Speaker 3: in Hickory, and that's David de villov Yeo Deva Leo?
Speaker 3: Is that that Deva Leo?
Speaker 2: I think it's I don't.
Speaker 3: Know Deva Leo. I think because it's just the one
Speaker 3: l first in the But anyway, he I've actually really
Speaker 3: liked my looks at him. I agree the kind of
Speaker 3: movement profile that's got some decent east west to it.
Speaker 3: Induced his ground balls pretty well, but he still gets
Speaker 3: some whiffs, seems to have decent command. I just have
Speaker 3: got a couple of his starts, but I was pretty
Speaker 3: interested in him. Like you mentioned, I think there have
Speaker 3: been some good arms in the Lowers for Texas, but
Speaker 3: he was one that I hadn't really heard many people
Speaker 3: talk about. And I think he's a zero percent or
Speaker 3: one percenter on fan tracks too that I have on
Speaker 3: a couple of watch lists, like I want to see
Speaker 3: a little more. I'm not sure there's the swing and
Speaker 3: miss to the profile for the long term, but he's
Speaker 3: shown some really impressive signs and it just seems like
Speaker 3: UH has has some skills that I like to bet on,
Speaker 3: including the fact that he's approaching one hundred innings already
Speaker 3: as a twenty one year old in Low ay to
Speaker 3: High this year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Matt, in my opinion, he he's a pitcher, he's
Speaker 2: a young pitcher. He's he's got several weapons, can put
Speaker 2: them in different places, can pitch differently. You know that.
Speaker 2: You don't see that, you know, with a ton of
Speaker 2: guys and a ball, butting some of all parts sort
Speaker 2: of down for sure. And he was like my last
Speaker 2: cut in a couple of deep leagues. As I dropped
Speaker 2: him for like a reliever that might help me in
Speaker 2: the playoffs sort of thing. I might end up regretting that,
Speaker 2: but but we'll see. I caught four guys that started
Speaker 2: the year in the DSL and are now in a ball,
Speaker 2: So that's a I consider that a couple of promotions.
Speaker 2: I caught Hayes, who's Flores of the Brewers, nineteen year old,
Speaker 2: good sized kid. I watched them at Fredericksburg. Now he
Speaker 2: came in with like one out, bases loaded, got down
Speaker 2: three to zero, there was a wild pitch and then
Speaker 2: I think a couple more run score and then he
Speaker 2: put three more zeros up after that. I don't know
Speaker 2: if there's anything to soundbriter alarms too much here, though.
Speaker 2: He's got like a high eighties fastball and looks like
Speaker 2: a big breaker and that seemed about it. But curious
Speaker 2: as to why the Brewers might have him in full
Speaker 2: season ball right now. They when they've done that with
Speaker 2: players in the past, the pitchers in the past, they
Speaker 2: tend to get interesting at some point. Houston kind of
Speaker 2: older guy that was in DSL. For whatever reason, they
Speaker 2: signed him internationally started him there, twenty two year old
Speaker 2: by the name of Pedro Marquez. I don't think there's
Speaker 2: anything too interesting there right now. It looks like a
Speaker 2: kind of classic reliever. The Rangers had another older DSL
Speaker 2: guy on Hill a Moscow, same thing a couple appearances.
Speaker 2: I think he's probably a reliever all the way. But
Speaker 2: then I saw now, I don't know, was this a
Speaker 2: highbrow signing or something. Matt Anderson Brito of the Astros
Speaker 2: is raster and two sent of leagues right now, and
Speaker 2: I think he's like the number eighteen prospect on pipeline
Speaker 2: for them right now, which I thought was interesting. He's nineteen.
Speaker 2: I don't know how many innings he has with them
Speaker 2: in a ball right now, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not many, just fifteen. But I think it was
Speaker 3: on the back he had, like, oh, absolutely wild start.
Speaker 3: Let me see if I can find it. I think
Speaker 3: he had a start. Yeah, his last DSL start I
Speaker 3: think blew up because he went four and two thirds
Speaker 3: and had twelve punch outs and just one hit. And
Speaker 3: I want to say Baddler or somebody down there like
Speaker 3: posted about him after that, like saying, hey, this guy's
Speaker 3: on a real heater. The Astros really love him, and
Speaker 3: then they promoted him right to Complex. He had one
Speaker 3: start the Complex, and then they promoted him to a
Speaker 3: ball again as a nineteen year old. So I think
Speaker 3: that was what it was. And I remember this because
Speaker 3: I picked him up because of that in one league
Speaker 3: where I had some I think that was right on
Speaker 3: the trade deadline for me, and I had sent away
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of prospects to try and shore up
Speaker 3: a good team for the run, and he was one
Speaker 3: that I was like, Oh, that's pretty interesting and seems
Speaker 3: like there's something there. So I haven't actually watched him
Speaker 3: at Lowa yet, but the I think the hype came
Speaker 3: from baseball America.
Speaker 2: Well, I was pumped because I saw that. What is
Speaker 2: so his first A ball appearance was in Lafayette and
Speaker 2: that's a crappy angle. It's like from right center field
Speaker 2: wouldn't be so great for alariety. But then I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: he pitched at Augusta. That's awesome. That's like one of
Speaker 2: the best angles. And and then I turned on the
Speaker 2: broadcast mat and for whatever reason, they weren't filming from centerfield.
Speaker 2: It was really it was all from like the side,
Speaker 2: from this weird angle that I've never even seen broadcasts
Speaker 2: from Augusta. So, Matt, interesting, do you want to talk
Speaker 2: about my Houston Astros conspiracy theory? They don't want people
Speaker 2: to know how good their prospects are for some reason.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe I'm.
Speaker 2: Telling you it's just weird stuff like that that happens.
Speaker 2: But long story short, they didn't get any really good
Speaker 2: looks at his stuff. Right, he's short, but he does
Speaker 2: get down the mound, So that sided you. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm not accustomed to watching a lot of pictures from
Speaker 2: the side, but he's short, but he really gets far
Speaker 2: down the mound, and the fastballs hitting upper nineties, there's
Speaker 2: a curveball, there's a slider, there's a change up. I
Speaker 2: don't really know. I was just really disappointed in that
Speaker 2: broadcast Anderson Brito maybe a budding dude. And then the
Speaker 2: next day one of those other DSL guys pitched, and
Speaker 2: so I turned that game on and it was back
Speaker 2: to back to center field camera.
Speaker 3: I don't know, that's so funny.
Speaker 2: It's just weird. Yeah, man, Like my conspiracy theory isn't like,
Speaker 2: obviously teams are going to see them, but I just
Speaker 2: feel like for some reason, they like don't want their
Speaker 2: prospects like hyped in the public sphere or something. I
Speaker 2: don't know, it's just weird.
Speaker 3: But your conspiracy theories, Nate, you know that.
Speaker 2: There's just weird stuff like that that happens. And I'm
Speaker 2: constantly being ranked at the bottom. Is weird to me
Speaker 2: and for our purposes, for our b siding, it's like, honeypot.
Speaker 2: I think like there's there's so many interesting prospects, so
Speaker 2: many guys that jump up in that system and don't
Speaker 2: get a lot of a lot of hype in the
Speaker 2: public world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my money. Jose Fleury has has turned it on
Speaker 3: after a slow start to the year and I think
Speaker 3: injured for a bit, but he's been looking pretty good
Speaker 3: of late.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's I've had three more astro arms on
Speaker 2: my list here, let's go. So maybe I don't think
Speaker 2: I clarified either, I like eliminated a bunch of relievers.
Speaker 2: I was just thinking starting pitchers here, so there were
Speaker 2: a lot more relievers too that jumped multiple levels. And
Speaker 2: I think, like in a legit manner, but maybe the
Speaker 2: last I know, Jeff Ponce talked about this guy and
Speaker 2: they I think we're talking about him to people their
Speaker 2: last sort of like ds el stud pitcher that came
Speaker 2: Stateside olimber Santa Santa. I don't think he's quite lived
Speaker 2: up to the to the hope he did. He started
Speaker 2: off in the complex this year and now he's in
Speaker 2: double A. I kind of think though that it sure
Speaker 2: seems like the track is a reliever right now, or
Speaker 2: they're just really limiting his innings. I know they, you know, Piggyback,
Speaker 2: I have a lot of guys they want to try
Speaker 2: to develop, but he's not even getting like three innings.
Speaker 2: He's like it's like two max. So I don't know,
Speaker 2: I don't know what the whole story is with him there,
Speaker 2: but well, he's one percent roster and he's number sixteen
Speaker 2: on pipeline, but then two other guys that are sitting
Speaker 2: at zero percent. If the Astros are promoting some starting pitchers,
Speaker 2: I'm definitely going to take notice. But James Hicks and
Speaker 2: Ethan Pecco went from a ball to double A this year.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've watched any of them. Matt
Speaker 2: James Hicks, I think he was like mostly an SEC reliever.
Speaker 2: I think I missed Sippy State. Maybe no at South
Speaker 2: Carolina started a little bit for them, maybe, But this
Speaker 2: is kind of when I think of an Astros pitching prospect,
Speaker 2: or at least what they gobble up in the draft
Speaker 2: is a fastball that plays really well up in the zone.
Speaker 2: I think it's better than some of the grades I've
Speaker 2: seen slapped on it, but it's not super high velocity,
Speaker 2: low nineties, but I think it's got, you know, movement
Speaker 2: profiles at work. I'm not like overly pumped about James
Speaker 2: Hicks here, but he's a guy that if they I
Speaker 2: think he does have a good breaker already, but if
Speaker 2: the stuff sharpens up a little bit or comes up
Speaker 2: a grade, he could be really interesting. Then Ethan Peco.
Speaker 2: He's twenty one, big body, fastball breaker, another fastball up
Speaker 2: in the zone guy. I think he's got with stuff,
Speaker 2: with stuff that plays, you know, up and down. He's
Speaker 2: he's more interesting to me than Hicks. But another guy
Speaker 2: on in that pitching farm that's that's moving up, So
Speaker 2: maybe that turns into a good pop up next year.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: They are so good at taking these guys that are
Speaker 3: just like late picks or under aft free agent signs
Speaker 3: and nobody else is talking about and turning him into
Speaker 3: potentially interesting players seemingly every year. So you know, I'm
Speaker 3: not going to bet against that development team.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, right, Another arm that I guess technically
Speaker 2: has like moved up three levels. But it's a little
Speaker 2: maybe a little cheating here. But Wyatt Crowell of the Dodgers,
Speaker 2: he was there, what fourth rounder from twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: but he had I believe he had Tommy John I
Speaker 2: think cut his college well maybe last year short or whatever,
Speaker 2: so this is really his first pro season. But he's
Speaker 2: up in High A now, he's twenty two. He's a lefty.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of surprised these zero percent roster do you
Speaker 2: think you know, someone a picture that the Dodgers taking
Speaker 2: the four or five rounds usually gets some pub from
Speaker 2: Florida State. I think he's one of these sort of
Speaker 2: potentially maybe like a tough angle from the left side.
Speaker 2: He's kind of side armed three fourth a slot. He's funky,
Speaker 2: interesting that he's, you know, like a funky left y.
Speaker 2: I think he's got the good breaking ball that could
Speaker 2: play well versus both hand hitters. Maybe a guy to
Speaker 2: keep an eye on him has been a little slept on.
Speaker 2: He's not like the biggest guy in the world. I
Speaker 2: think they have him listed a six foot But yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know why A Crowel's career is underway, and
Speaker 2: I think he's had some nice performances. Have you watched
Speaker 2: him at all? I haven't no My Giants B side
Speaker 2: arm Trevor McDonald, he really hasn't. Like last year, he
Speaker 2: didn't throw a lot of innings, but they liked him
Speaker 2: enough to throw him on the forty man and he
Speaker 2: started off in a ball. He's in triple A now.
Speaker 2: I still, you know, think that there's there's some nasty
Speaker 2: stuff and there strikeout appeal. I think there's some pitchability
Speaker 2: with him. I didn't look to see how his tria
Speaker 2: A run has been going of late. But I think
Speaker 2: he's still a very interesting starting pitching prospect that's only
Speaker 2: two percent rostered.
Speaker 3: Has he thrown any innings, because wasn't that one of
Speaker 3: my knocks on him, as like he couldn't stay on
Speaker 3: the mound.
Speaker 2: Pretty much pretty much? Yeah, But I mean I think
Speaker 2: he's been there was another injury or something that kept
Speaker 2: him out early. He's been thrown for a minute now.
Speaker 2: Another guy who has jumped three levels from the complex
Speaker 2: to High A. Another Ranger, Isaac Tiger. He was a
Speaker 2: seventh rounder the Junior College and the last two drafts
Speaker 2: ago twenty twenty three listened at six to two. I
Speaker 2: watched the August fifteenth start at Hudson Valley, which I
Speaker 2: think was like the only really decent angle in High
Speaker 2: A from him. He started, he went three, four hits,
Speaker 2: one and run three walks five k's fastball, dry ro slider,
Speaker 2: and I think he uses pretty well the locates. Well,
Speaker 2: there's I think there's plenty of developmental meat, you know,
Speaker 2: still on the bone here, but there's just knowing the
Speaker 2: rangers and stuff. There's got to be some sort of
Speaker 2: outlier or weird characteristic with something with him that they
Speaker 2: like him. He's been you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: piggyback and there's a lot of arms to get innings
Speaker 2: to and he's kind of rising above a couple other
Speaker 2: names that I really like, at least, you know, level
Speaker 2: wise and getting the three innings. So I don't know,
Speaker 2: he's just kind of an interesting guy. I might watch
Speaker 2: a little bit.
Speaker 3: More of speaking of like kind of small sample size
Speaker 3: Johnny cum lately's have you checked out Kumar Rocker since
Speaker 3: he's been back?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he shoved again today too.
Speaker 3: He looks so different and it's so good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I mean there's a reason why you got
Speaker 2: millions of dollars, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I loved him in college. You know, his
Speaker 3: run it in the playoffs was really special, and you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't think he was like three overall talented, but
Speaker 3: it's pretty cool to see him put it together after
Speaker 3: so much injury and middling success. But that's what we're
Speaker 3: talking about the Rangers. I was thinking about Rocker again.
Speaker 3: It's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's been pretty good again, Like just horsepower, isn't
Speaker 2: there is gonna stay on the mound? Is all this
Speaker 2: stuff gonna hold up. I don't you know, there's no solid,
Speaker 2: fool proof answer for that. You just gotta wait and see.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: But then the last guy I want to talk about, Matt,
Speaker 2: who was who got me digging the most and thinking
Speaker 2: the most doing this dive on the arm side. He
Speaker 2: just got promoted to Double A. He started off in
Speaker 2: a ball. There's been some shoulder stuff in his history.
Speaker 2: It's why he's probably progressed a little bit slower or
Speaker 2: moved up a little bit slower. He's twenty three years
Speaker 2: old and I've wanted to bring him up a few
Speaker 2: times prior Mat, but I'm terrified trying to pronounce his
Speaker 2: name right now. But I reached out to Nathaniel Schultz
Speaker 2: from Prospect Live, who I wrote like a super awesome,
Speaker 2: great deep dive on him with video. You know, I
Speaker 2: love that sort of stuff. That's my kind of prospecting there.
Speaker 2: But he said that I should pronounce it Chen John
Speaker 2: Ao June. Oh yeah, with the with the A's what
Speaker 2: he's from Chinese Taipei? Is that right? But yeah? He
Speaker 2: just I think it was a Double A debut or
Speaker 2: maybe his second start with Midland, and he like struck
Speaker 2: out nine. Man. He's he's interesting dude. He's got a
Speaker 2: fastball that's hard and you know you can you could
Speaker 2: just see eyeballs just rides. He's got a great change up,
Speaker 2: really nasty change up. But he went like six scoreless
Speaker 2: against Tulsa. There only two hits. One walk. Wasn't the
Speaker 2: first time that I turned him on, but it was
Speaker 2: definitely like a start that got me thinking about him more.
Speaker 2: And then I read uh Nathaniel's piece and that was
Speaker 2: awesome and got me thinking more. He's watched him a
Speaker 2: lot in Midland, or excuse me, a lot in Lansing.
Speaker 2: I think his numbers have been really awesome this year.
Speaker 2: A little bit short on be the K side, and
Speaker 2: I think that part Matt has a lot to do
Speaker 2: with breaking ball stuff. His fastball change. Evidently has experimented
Speaker 2: with a lot of different kinds of breakers, a different cutter,
Speaker 2: maybe a couple of different cutters, but something of that
Speaker 2: ilk right. So I think maybe Nathaniel suggested that part
Speaker 2: of the lack of ks this season might be from
Speaker 2: him throwing a lot of breakers and working on that.
Speaker 2: He's a you know, decent sized guy. I don't think
Speaker 2: he's real tall, but you know, he's strong looking. I
Speaker 2: think there's a little bit of funk to his release.
Speaker 2: I don't know what the height is on it, an
Speaker 2: interesting arm, and there's system. He's one percent rostered right now.
Speaker 2: Definitely a candidate for me to be my ASB side
Speaker 2: next year if that roster percentage stays down. I think
Speaker 2: he throws like six or seven pitches right now technically,
Speaker 2: but I think a lot of that is just trying
Speaker 2: to find that that third offering, that spin that he's
Speaker 2: probably going to need, and that's probably going to be
Speaker 2: the biggest question with him, and the biggest hurdle if
Speaker 2: he's really gonna take off as a starting pitcher. But
Speaker 2: Chen Jean al June, I think that's how you say it.
Speaker 3: Do love the command, you know, low sub four percent
Speaker 3: walk rate been up to double a this year. I
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he's definitely you know, throws a ton of strikes,
Speaker 2: Lou with the you know, fastball change up combination. I
Speaker 2: will say, though I don't I don't know what his
Speaker 2: command grades are and stuff like that, but it seems
Speaker 2: more to me strike thrower than real like you know,
Speaker 2: execute executing more sophisticated locations and stuff like that. But
Speaker 2: you know that fastball is that combo so effective that
Speaker 2: you know, maybe he doesn't have to be super pinpoint
Speaker 2: with it. You know, he hasn't been up this level
Speaker 2: of hitter, but who knows when he moves up. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know, man, that was probably you do Mutton,
Speaker 2: and you do these long, tedious processes and stuff, and
Speaker 2: sometimes there's not a whole lot at the end. But
Speaker 2: this was the most interesting new new find, so to speak,
Speaker 2: for me doing this.
Speaker 3: Nice And I'd seen him pop on a couple of leaderboards.
Speaker 3: I think when I was looking at the low walk
Speaker 3: guys who have built up some innings this year, he
Speaker 3: was on that list. I think we talked a little
Speaker 3: bit about that last week when I was quizzing you
Speaker 3: one who was at the top of the walk leaderboards
Speaker 3: in the miners, and he was, you know, midway down
Speaker 3: that list. But I got to be honest, I haven't
Speaker 3: watched any of him this year, So yeah, I'll put
Speaker 3: him on the list and see if there's anything else
Speaker 3: that stands out to me. But that sounds like a
Speaker 3: pretty good recommendation there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think that you'd like him ultimately,
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know how excited you get, but
Speaker 2: I think you'd sign off as a decent little watch here.
Speaker 2: I know he's pitched like internationally for that team against
Speaker 2: like some big leaguers and stuff on WBC. Perhaps for
Speaker 2: something that has had some success on that level, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know. Matt doing pretty dirty here.
Speaker 3: Got a little money today, Maybe.
Speaker 2: I'll start cutting up some video of Santa Bria. That
Speaker 2: might be my next little project here. Yeah, I think
Speaker 2: that'll do it for episode thirty nine of the Prospect
Speaker 2: B Sides podcast. Unless you've got anything else you want
Speaker 2: to talk about, Matt, I.
Speaker 3: Don't think so. We're still working on getting our special
Speaker 3: guest in. Yeah, still sounds like he's he's into it,
Speaker 3: but schedules have gotten in the way this week. So
Speaker 3: hoping to get something in with with him in the
Speaker 3: next week or two. But yeah, other than that, happy money.
Speaker 2: You will and we'll talk to you next time.
Speaker 1: Later, five miles an hour were riding to his head.
Speaker 1: He hopped down first with the lump bonius face, and
Speaker 1: on the very next pitch he up and stole second
Speaker 1: face with greatest He wasn't born, he had dir yes
Speaker 1: uniform