Here’s the two month check-in with all our top 20 (and some) prospects. All stats as of 6/1/25. I dove a bit deeper into any starter in my 6/1 rotation check in, but i’ll repeat some of the info here. Note: all stats were as of 6/1 and I know some stuff has happened since so i’ll add in last three days updates.
#1. Dylan Crews OF (CF): was slashing just .167/.308/.352 in May to lower his already poor seasonal numbers when he tweaked something in his left side and hit the DL with an oblique injury. This is the kind of injury that can derail a season. So much for that Rookie of the Year hopes. How concerned should we be long-term? I really was hoping for him to hit the ground running and he just hasn’t. Temperature: on ice.
#2 Travis Sykora RHP (Starter): off the DL, inexplicably started in low-A, so far unhittable in High-A too. He’s now 21, so its time to get him out of A-Ball. Temperature: red hot.
#3 Brady House SS/3B: Continuing to hit in AAA; .284/.339/.500 slash line for May. Would like to see abit more OBP, but he’s definitely starting to get the team to ask questions about the sh*t-show they’re throwing out at 3B in the majors. Temperature: hotter.
#4 Jarlin Susana RHP (Starter). Hit the DL with a “grade 1 UCL strain.” Which in Nats parlance probably means two months off, an attempted start, and TJ surgery. Temperature: on ice.
# 5 Seaver King SS. King has been improving. His May slash line: .291/.321/.408. Not bad. Still not where we’d like to see him based on the performance of some players we passed up to take him. All that said, just after we wrote this we learned he’s reportedly being promoted to AA (perhaps by the time you read this). Mentioned in the comments is a reminder of how hard it is to hit in Wilmington. Here’s King’s home/road splits so far in 2025: home: .214/.275/.286. Road: 305/.337/.463. Ok, well that’s pretty clear. Maybe we need to keep reminding ourselves not to judge Wilmington hitters too harshly, again. Temperature: warming a bit
# 6 Yohandy Morales 1B/3B: Earned a promotion to AAA. .326/.396/.463 in May. That’s awesome. Maybe he continues to mash in AAA and lets the Nats sunset our ridiculous .150-hitting DH Josh Bell. Temperature: pretty warm.
#7 Cayden Wallace 2B/3B: struggling in AA. He had a marginally better May than April, but still only hit .212 for the month. That’s not good enough for a top-10 prospect, nor is it one that’s going to push for a promotion. He continues to split time between 2B and 3B, though honestly after watching him earlier this spring he seems like a 2B longer term. Which is good, if House turns out to have a years-long lock on the position. Temperature: still cold.
# 8 Cade Cavalli RHP (Starter): he’s back, he’s embarrassing hitters in AAA ( 25/6 K/BB in 16 IP) and I think we see him in the majors inside of a month. hallelujah! Temperature: Warming fast.
#9 Alex Clemmey LHP (Starter): He’s starting to heat up. 1.59 ERA, a ton of Ks, but too many walks in May. You’re not going to keep a starter with a 1.59 ERA in the league for long. Temperature: heating up.
# 10 Robert Hassell III OF (CF): Really started to hit the ball in AAA in May (.330./.356/.500), then got a callup to cover for the injured Young and has held his own in his MLB debut so far: .268/.268/.351). Can’t ask for much more there. Lots of naysayers are eating crow on him right now. Oh, and man he’s fast. Temperature: hot
#11 Caleb Lomavita C: Continuing his solid pro debut; his average and OBP dipped in May, but his power spiked up. Remember, he’s a catcher; if he can mainitain a .800 OPS figure and have plus defense, we’ll be ecstatic. Temperature: Staying Warm.
# 12 Luke Dickerson SS/CF: quickly got promoted out of the FCL and is now hitting well in Low-A: .293/.403/.466 so far playing exclusively SS for Fredericksburg. Great debut so far. I’m so cynical on prep kids that we draft not working out … that i’m shocked he’s this good this quick. Temperature: Red Hot.
# 13 Andry Lara RHP (Starter): He hit the DL in late April and spent the entire month of May there. I have no idea what the injury is, nor is he appearing on the Nats official injury report. Temperature: cold.
#14 Tyler Stuart RHP (Starter): My last-month worries about a TJ are gone: he’s made four rehab starts and has dominated in them. As he should, as someone who solved AA last year and who needs to be in AAA. Great news that he’ll be back soon. Postwriting; he’s been taken off DL and optioned to AA for the time being. Hopefully not there for long. Temperature: hope to warm up soon.
#15 Daylen Lile OF (CF): His hot hitting continued in AAA after his promotion last month, which earned him a MLB call up, where he’s been covering for the Young/Crews injuries for weeks now. He’s not lighting MLB on fire, but he’s 22 in the majors. All due credit. Temperature: red hot.
#16 Kevin Bazzell C/3B: after hitting .115 in April, he’s improved a bunch; he hit .245 in May. Still not the .280/.380/.450 slash line i’d like to see out of a college slugger. Definitely a disappointing debut. Temperature: cool
#17 Jake Bennett LHP (Starter): Bennett made 3 starts to open the month, but now hasn’t pitched since May 11th. Uh oh. Would love to know what is going on here, if anyone has intel. Temperature: very cold.
#18 Brad Lord RHP (Starter): continues to be a multi-role pitcher in the MLB pen and he’s holding firm with a 95 ERA+ for the year. Temperature: red hot for the development, decently warm for production.
#19 Angel Feliz 3B/SS: promoted stateside for the FCL 2025 season and is cruising so far: .333/.420/.467 in a month in Florida. That’s great to see. Temperature: hot
#20 Andrew Pinckney OF (Corner): holding steady with mediocre slash lines playing RF for AAA. He’s officially been passed on the OF depth chart by both Hassell and Lile, and the next time they need an OF call-up it might not be Pinckney even then. Temperature: cold
Notables #20 and above by the Level they started 2025:
in AAA:
- #28 Andrew Alvarez LHP (Starter) saw his AAA numbers fall. I feel like, when the time comes for a real prospect to rise and needs a AAA spot, he may soon be in trouble. Right now there’s three AAA starters on the DL (Stuart, Ogasawara, Lara) and all three are “better” prospects than Alvaraz, as much as I like him. Maybe he can find a home in the bullpen, especially as a lefty.
- #31 Andres Chapparo 1B has been optioned to AAA post injury stint thanks to a squeeze on the MLB roster; he’s still a “prospect” and has been (unsurprisingly) tearing up AAA. If Rizzo parts ways with millions of dollars of unproducing relievers, what’s to stop him from parting ways with millions of dollars of unproducing DHs (Josh Bell)?
- #35 Jackson Rutledge RHP (Starter->Reliever) has stepped back for the MLB bullpen, but has been a better option than the three veterans they’ve now released (Sims, Poche, Lopez).
In AA:
- #36 Cole Henry RHP (starter->reliever) has become one of the best relievers in the MLB bullpen. Can’t say i saw this coming.
- #41 Marquis Grissom RHP (Reliever) has been shelled in AAA and isn’t anywhere close to knocking on the door.
- #47 Phillip Glasser SS has cooled from his hot start.
- #50 Max Romero C is making the team forget about its younger Catching depth with a .339/.386/.519 May in AA.
- #75 Seth Shuman RHP earned a promotion to AAA, where he’s struggling to hold onto it.
In High-A:
- #23 Elijah Green has been unofficially demoted to rookie ball in an undocumented move probably meant to not embarrass him. He has no official ABs since May 17th.
- #26 Jackson Kent continues to pitch well and won’t be a #26 prospect for long.
- #27 Armando Cruz continues to struggle at the plate.
- #51 Brenner Cox had the lowest OPS for Wilmington for the month at just .387.
In Low-A:
- #21 Christhian Vaquero is not really improving at the plate.
- #42 Robert Cranz had a solid month; 9ip, 2hits, 14/3 K/BB. Still would like to see him in the rotation.
- #43 Randal Diaz only hit .194 for the month.
In FCL:
- #44 Jose Feliz, a 23IFA RHP has been FCL’s best starter so far: 24/4 K/BB in 5 starts with a near 3.00 ERA.
- #45 Dashyll Tejeda, also a 23IFA and with Feliz the two best players out of that class so far, has started out hot: .300/.488/.367 with his move stateside.
- #72 Sir Jamison Jones: slow out of the gate at .214 for the month.
On Hassell, what justifies the “hot” designation? He posted a 99 wRC+ in AAA (.742 OPS) and a 58 wRC+ in the majors (.577 OPS) so far. There’s been a lot of complaints about Jacob Young’s bat not being good enough to stick in the majors, but in his major league career he has a 82 wRC+ (.640 OPS) and even in 2025, his worst season of his short career, a 72 wRC+ and .591 OPS.
I’m thrilled that Hassell has gone from one of the worst AAA hitters to an average AAA hitter, but it feels like he’s being held to a different standard than other guys on the list.
But with all that said, it’s great that there’s a lot of hype, even if it’s unjustified. Prospect ratings are heavily predicated on (unjustified) hype, which inflates value. If Hassell’s mediocre performances can elicit some trade value, then that’s fantastic. Because I still fail to understand how his batting profile will ever translate into anything beyond a 4th outfielder, and we already have two guys to fill that role in Young and Call.
Lile, on the other hand, seems to have a better development path. While he doesn’t have Hassell’s CF defense, that’s not much of an issue on a team with Young and Crews. But Lile strikes out quite a bit less than Hassell and hits for quite a bit more power, and has seemingly similar ability to draw walks and speed/base stealing ability, while being over a year younger at the same level.
But I’m really pleased that the team is giving both players a chance to showcase their talents, even if they’re not setting the league on fire. This is what rebuilding is all about. Not having talent blocked by throw-away free agent retreads. I’d much rather (and have vastly more patience for) watch Hassell slug .333 than our veteran DH or 3B.
Randal Diaz’s slump has been disappointing. He came out of the gates so well. Batting .310/.412/.381 through his first 13 games. But since then, it’s been an extended slump, hitting only .168/.270/.208 over his past 29. He’s still walking and striking out at good rates, and the .200 BABIP doesn’t help. But the absence of power is concerning.
Last but certainly not least is Travis Sykora. I’m honestly surprised he hasn’t received the prospect helium that Dickerson is getting. His stats are otherworldly. The only criticism is that he’s been doing this mostly at age appropriate levels. Wilmington will be his first real test, and so far so good. He’s been just as dominant there. I wonder if he’ll get a quick promotion to Harrisburg? Our top hitting prospects have spent next to no time in Wilmington. Crews, House and Morales spent less than 20 games there. But we’ve had so few genuine pitching prospects come through A+ recently. Susana spent 10 games there, but Lara (who isn’t quite a top prospect) spent 29 games there. And Irvin, Parker and Cavalli were there far too long ago to make much of a judgement.
One small advantage of FanGraphs being so slow with their prospect lists is that we’ll get a relatively recent look at where risers like Dickerson, Sykora, Morales and Lile stand, while they understandably got less attention in the offseason.
Will
4 Jun 25 at 11:08 am
@Todd – I’m not sure I agree with “on ice” for Crews and Susana. Injuries happen, and I really don’t think you should adjust your expectations much for players until there’s a pattern of multiple injuries or until rehab is troubled and atypical.
Susana was looking good despite too many walks in AA before the injury. And Crews’s triple slash has been bad, but he was getting murdered on batted ball luck, so I think you have give him credit for something like a league average bat in terms of current true talent.
Grading on the curve of expectations, I think I have Susana “lukewarm” and Crews just a bit cooler, say, “tepid”.
SMS
4 Jun 25 at 12:20 pm
A fun read, as always. I think that regarding Crews as “on ice” is a bit harsh. When you look at his batted ball metrics he’s been extremely unlucky. His bat speed (74th percentile) and barrel % (85th). His average EV is league average (52nd). This is why his “expected” stats are WAY better than his results so far. His xBA (.258) is 62 points higher than his BA (.196). His xSLG (.469) is 115 (!) points higher than his SLG (.354). That’s why his xwOBA (.343) is in the 63rd percentile.
In a crude back-of-the-envelope calculation, by his xBA he should have about ten more hits than he does now. If he were hitting to his “expected” results, adding the ten hits to his OBP and subbing in his xSLG, his splits would be about .258/.324/.469/.793. To get an OPS+ comp I looked at the Nats, and the closest OP to .793 is Amed Rosario at .783, good for a 122 OPS+.
If he were doing THAT, he’d be in the ROY conversation already. Now obviously this is a crude extrapolation. But the important point is that, for a guy who just turned 23 in February and is in his rookie year, he’s got a solid foundation upon which to build.
John C.
4 Jun 25 at 12:47 pm
On Crews being so “unlucky”:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2025/05/24/nationals-bad-luck-dylan-crews/
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6337543/2025/05/06/fantasy-baseball-rebound-candidates-unlucky-julio-rodriguez/
Hopefully his physical reset will give him some time to mentally reset as well.
KW
4 Jun 25 at 3:08 pm
I had two picks to click this season, one based on logic (Morales), and one based on gut (Hassell). I’m still not 100% convinced on Hassell, but I’m glad he’s getting the opportunities. It seems pretty clear that both he and Lile can be “major leaguers,” but are they MLB starters on a contending team? I’m not sure we’ll know that this season.
In somewhat of a bizarre way, Morales seems to have “benefited” from injury in that he wasn’t pushed on to AAA as rapidly as Pinckney and Crews were. That said, I also don’t “blame” the Nats for their promotion schedules over the last couple of seasons. I think they and everyone else are still trying to figure out the re-leveling of minor-league levels after the destruction of the minors (one of MLB’s dumbest recent moves) plus having a ballpark at Wilmington that they obviously don’t trust to give a fair chance to young hitters (and perhaps inflates the talents of young hurlers).
I’m surprised that Cole Henry has made it back to what seems to be full arm health but not at all that he’s pitching so well. I’ve always thought that he was a more effective “pitcher” than Cavalli. (Cade struggled through another very shaky AAA outing last night.)
I’m super excited about Sykora and excited about Nuke Clemmey.
Kiley McDaniel comping Luke Dickerson to Wyatt Langford (wow): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKwniyZhq9c&t=161s
KW
4 Jun 25 at 3:27 pm
To reiterate what a said a couple of posts ago, I really do want Cavalli to succeed, and as a starter. But he’s currently giving up 9.3 hits per 9 at AAA, with a 1.46 WHIP. If you put him at the major-league level right now, he’d be struggling about as much as Trevor Williams is.
(Now, if someone wanted to argue that the Nats would benefit more from Cavalli learning from those struggling starts than they do from Williams being an aging guy looking bad, that might be a fair argument, if it didn’t wound Cavalli’s psyche.)
KW
4 Jun 25 at 4:00 pm
“cold” vs. “hurt”. Being ice cold in this sense isn’t that the guy stinks, it’s that the hype is getting cold. Susana’s probably going to need a TJ, so it’s going to be another month before the diagnosis and mid-2026 before he returns to AA. That’s bad, even though it’s not his fault.
Crews was hitting very poorly. I suspect he’d have figured it out, but at the time he hadn’t. I hope he gets healthy and then spends several weeks at AAA “getting his timing back” when it looks like he really needed a little more polish.
Anyway, things look pretty good on the farm, for the first time in a very long time. I’d like it if the farm system had a better record, but whatever.
Kevin R
4 Jun 25 at 10:04 pm
as usual, this is quite the compilation! thx!
I don’t agree with all of the assessments nor would I expect to. but the clear observation for me is that we finally have a system with multiple prospects worth discussion. very few will succeed but a good number will have value.
FredMD
5 Jun 25 at 8:38 am
@KW = Even with Cavalli’s somewhat shaky last start, that’s not why his AAA stats look mediocre. It’s all from his first two outings that were still formally part of his rehab.
If you count from when he officially came off the IL, it has been 18.2 IP with an ERA of 1.93, a FIP of 2.44 and a K/9 of 12.54. If he maintains anything near those numbers for the next month, the team will call him up as soon as allowed by the days of service math and plausible deniability.
SMS
5 Jun 25 at 4:54 pm
Speaking of Cavalli, can anyone clarify what his current service time usage is?
As I understand that since he got injured while he was on the MLB roster, all his rehab time counts as service time, so he’s now at 2 years and 41 days of service time (per FanGraphs). Is this correct?
And does he still have rookie eligibility because most of that time wasn’t on the ACTIVE roster?
With this in mind, what sort of service time manipulation options for the Nats have left to use?
Will
5 Jun 25 at 5:29 pm
FredMD — Thanks for making the point that “very few will succeed.” Some folks don’t like it when I pump brakes on many of these guys. But succeeding at the highest level is damn hard, all the more succeeding to the point that one can be a contributor on a contending team. That’s the ultimate point, right?
Also, some of the bars of what’s “good enough,” or at least good enough to be a contributor, keep changing. Right now there 63 starting pitchers with at least 50 IP with a FIP under 4.00, which is less than two per team. There are 80 under 4.50, and 43 under 3.50, which seems to be about the line for above-average quality. Gore is one of only 14 who are under 3.00.
At the plate, we think of 3B as a power position, but only seven 3Bs had more than 25 homers in 2024. Only nine 1Bs did, only eight DHs. Perhaps more amazingly, only five OFs had more than 25 homers, with three others right at 25. So we’re not going to have 25-homer players in all of these slots, even if that seems ideal.
Some things still hold. I’ve generally thought of .330 as around the minimum desirable OBP, and 78 qualified hitters are above that line, so that seems about right. For SLG, 83 players are at or above .425. So .330 + .425 gets you to a quality player being of around a .755 OPS, which again sounds about right. The only Nat hitters above .750 right now are Wood, Abrams, and Rosario (who presumably will be traded sooner or later). Garcia was at .762 last year during his supposedly good season.
KW
5 Jun 25 at 5:51 pm
@Will – Re Cavalli’s service time. I’m pretty sure that he needs to be in the minors for 52 days to delay his free agency a year, so after 2029 instead of 2028.
I got that number by adding the 41 days he started the year with to the 10 extra ones built into the schedule and then one more. 52 days from 5/11 is 7/3, if I’m counting right, but Rizzo probably thinks that timing it exactly is asking for grievance. So I’d expect something a bit later. Probably right around the trade deadline, so there can be another unsuspicious baseball transaction as the proximate cause.
As far as rookie eligibility goes, I’m much less sure, but I think he is still eligible. But I can’t think of a realistic way for that for that to matter, though, other than him graduating off all the prospect lists. They won’t hold him down long enough to be rookie eligible next year, and it’s far too late for any ROY chances this season.
SMS
5 Jun 25 at 6:33 pm
Actually, just looked it up and there are 15 extra days, not 10. So 57 days or 7/8 is the cutoff, unless I’m misunderstanding something.
SMS
5 Jun 25 at 6:44 pm
I haven’t really understood the service time thing since the last CBA kicked in. But Cavalli is almost 27. It’s a much bigger deal with younger players like Wood and Crews.
KW
5 Jun 25 at 7:02 pm
Coming back to Sykora, his dominant minor league career got me thinking about what kind of stats the top pitching prospects in baseball put up, and how those compare to Sykora’s. I plugged MLB Pipeline’s top 10 pitching prospects into FanGraphs’ player comparison page (play around with it yourself here).
Sykora doesn’t just hold his own. Statistically, he’s been arguably the best pitching of the bunch since 2024. He has the highest strikeout rate, 3rd lowest walk rate, 2nd best ERA, best FIP (by a huge margin), 2nd best xFIP. Any rate stat, he’s at or near the top.
All that to say, he’s absolutely in the discussion for the best pitching prospect in the game right now. In no small part because Lowder’s arm broke down and he’s presently on the 60 day IL. Matthews has been dealing with shoulder issues and his control has disappeared in the process (18 BB in 18 IP this season). Then Hagen Smith, Noah Schultz and Thomas White have been merely “good” not “great” this season, while struggling with their command, and Painter still doesn’t look like the same guy from 2022 before the injuries. Altogether, I think Chase Burns and Bubba Chandler are the top two, but after that Sykora has just as strong of a case as anyone else.
Will
6 Jun 25 at 8:21 am
Cavalli Service Time: Roster Resource also has him at 2yrs, 41 days. Since the Nats kept him on MLB 60-day DL all this time, he burned service time. Two full years for 2023 and 2024. The 41 days is from his time up in 2022. … but still had all three options left heading into 2025 (they just burned one to make him active in AAA a few weeks ago).
MLB rookie eligibility is 130ABs/50IP/45days on active roster … but 45 days does not include DL time or Sept 1 callups. So Cavalli got called up 8/26/22, made one start, got hurt, went on D/L 8/31 … so according to MLB rookie eligibility he’s got exactly 5 days of service time. Ergo, still rookie eligible. As far as delaying his free agency … He needs to avoid 172 days in 2025, less the 41 days he already has, so he needs to avoid 131 more days this year. A season typically has 187 days so 187-131 = 56 days. We’re already well past 56 service days, so I think we’re ok. Lets say he got called up 6/1 for easy math: that’d be all of June, July, Aug, Sept or about 120 days. Add that to the 41 he already has and he’s still below 172 to count for a full service year. So we’re good; even if he gets called up immediately, we’re still retaining an extra service time year. This is why, when manipulating players, they only have to stay down a couple weeks into April to get past that threshold (187-16 days = 171; voila. Kris Bryant was the poster child for Service time Manipulation: guess how many extra days he has? That’s right; exactly 171, or one day below the threshold: https://www.fangraphs.com/roster-resource/depth-charts/rockies
Todd Boss
6 Jun 25 at 9:53 am
But Cavalli was accruing time this season too, until the end of his rehab on 5/11. Which means he needs to be down another month-ish.
And, while I certainly agree that service time matters less for Cavalli than Wood or Crews, I think that’s mostly about pitchers breaking and that year being a riskier value proposition and less about age. We’re talking about Cavalli’s age 30 season, so it’s hardly like we’d be counting on decline setting in. Circumstances can change, especially with pitchers, so who knows what will happen, but I’m reasonably sure Rizzo has the date marked on his calendar.
On Sykora, yes, he looks fantastic. Need to get him to AA.
SMS
6 Jun 25 at 10:49 am
@SMS; oh duh. good point (sorry got conflated between rookie of the year rules vs service time rules). OK so DL from start of season to the day he was optioned: 4/1 to 5/11. so that’s 30+11 days or 41 days. So now he needs to avoid 172 days given an additional 41 days.
187-131 = 56 days, then add in 41 days. So that puts you to 97 days from start of season. That’s four days in March (season started 3/27), all of April, May, June for 91+4 = 95 days on july 1st. So he has to stay down until something like July 3rd or July 4th if we’re trying to be exact.
Honestly, that’s not out of the realm of likely; that’s basically a month at AAA after not throwing in games for two full seasons. A month of starts after his rehab is almost exactly the 6-7 weeks of spring training these guys get …
Todd Boss
6 Jun 25 at 12:10 pm
Ah yes, Kris Bryant, who once looked like one of the greatest prospects ever. It’s hard to think of someone with nearly 30 career WAR and a 125 OPS+ as a failure, but for various reasons he’s never come close reaching what 2016-17 promised.
Nope, there are NO sure things in baseball.
KW
6 Jun 25 at 7:24 pm
I’ll cross-post some thoughts on Morales that I just had on Nats Prospects, which I’m not sure anyone looks at after the immediate day.
Will was praising what Morales has done this season, and he and I had both wondered all offseason why the gurus had soured on him so rapidly after one injury-riddled season. He’s off to a great start this year, has already been promoted to AAA, and homered on Thursday.
I did have concern whether Morales would show the power necessary to play a corner position in the majors. His 5 HRs over 43 games this season (AA and AAA) would only project to 17 over 150, but his 12 doubles would project to 42. Interestingly, Lowe’s best MLB season (2023) was 17 HRs and 38 doubles. So Morales looks pretty comparable to Lowe right now, and if he gets into the 20-25 HR range, he could be better. FanGraphs has a 60 power grade on him, so 20-25 isn’t an unreasonable hope. As I noted above, only nine 1Bs reached the 25 HR level at MLB in 2024, and only eight DHs.
The brake-pumping caveat on Morales would be that he’s had really good BABIP “luck” at both levels this season: .387 at AA and .364 at AAA. He seems to have had high BABIP at all MiLB stops, though. I’m not sure what that means. It’s tempting to say that it means he hits the ball hard, but as discussed above, Crews has had high exit velos this season and truly awful BABIP.
Morales is clobbering LHP this year: .333/.434/.578
Lowe vs. LHP: .181/.221/.278
Hmm . . . (But yes, right now it’s better for Morales to be playing every day at AAA.)
KW
6 Jun 25 at 9:02 pm
Florida State didn’t start Arnold in game one tonight (Friday) (maybe giving him an extra day to recover from 119 pitches?) but no doubt will tomorrow in an elimination game after blowing a three-run lead to Oregon State after two outs in the bottom of the ninth. Arquette had a ringing double to start the winning rally in the 10th, although he was forced at the plate before the winning sac fly. Arquette 2-5 with single and double, starting two scoring rallies.
KW
6 Jun 25 at 9:36 pm
@Kw: Kris Bryant as a failure. Reminds me of people passing judgement on Chris Webber’s career. You know, Chris Webber … 5-time all-star, $178 million in career earnings … failure. Um, ok. Its like saying Ted Williams was a failure because his team never won the Series.
Todd Boss
7 Jun 25 at 10:08 am
@KW – I think one of the curious wrinkles around the Morales over-reaction is that none of the rising folks had a slam dunk case. Like, Morales did have a season below expectations, especially given how dependent on singles his late season excellence was, but it was like a 35th percentile outcome, not a disaster, and not even really much worse than any of the similarly ranked prospects in our system.
Just going by Pipeline, here are the prospects who jumped Morales last offseason: King, Clemmey, Dickerson, Lomavita, Lile, Wallace, and Hassell. I suppose fair enough on King – 1st rounders always ride in on a huge wave of hype – but he was something of an underslot / reach pick and it’s not like came blasting out of the gate. wRC+ of 122 in low-A. Fine, but not enough to make anyone revise his grades up from what they were before the draft. Still, using bonus size as a coarse shorthand, King got twice what Morales did, so it’s hard to blame the scouts / pundits here.
The others are more perplexing. Wallace’s 2024 was quite straightforwardly a worse, injury plagued disappointment than Morales’s. At best, I think you can say that Lile and Clemmey held serve and met expectations in 2024. And I’d grade Hassell worse than that given the complete collapse after his promotion to AAA, but even if you wanted to dismiss those 69 PAs, I don’t think folks would say his AA line exceeded expectations.
I could see a scout being hyped up about Loma or Dickerson, but the latter didn’t play a single game last year and the former was significantly below average in his first weeks as a pro despite being above his league’s average age. Maybe there was enough there for the someone to put one or other above Morales, but even those feel like idiosyncratic hot takes and not a slam dunk consensus move.
So, without really any pressure from the rise of other prospects, Morales’s drop feels almost like a conscious choice by the pundits. And given that the clearest expression of their concern was “unable to access raw power in games”, his .200+ ISO in AA should force a change in perspective. I’ll be curious to see the midseason updates.
(Though, interestingly, this season a number of prospects in this band have actually exceeded expectations, and unless Morales adjusts better to AAA, Dickerson, King and possibly even Lile and Hassell might build a case to still be above him in the rankings.)
SMS
7 Jun 25 at 11:35 am
Back on Sykora – he’s only had 13 IP at A+, but he has the lowest FIP (0.94) and xFIP (1.53) out of 515 pitchers with 10+ innings of A+ and he’s tied for the lowest WHIP with 0.54.
His 11 K/BB is pretty good too, tied for 4th, but is ERA is nothing special – just 1.39, which ranks 39th (though, to be fair, only 2 of those 38 are younger than he is).
SMS
7 Jun 25 at 12:15 pm
I’m not saying that Bryant is a failure, but he’s also sure not what folks thought he could/would be. He accumulated more than half of his career WAR before he turned 26.
He’s had considerable injury issues, but at some point he just ceased to be nearly as good as he was, particularly in the big power department. The league adjusts to everyone.
KW
7 Jun 25 at 12:39 pm
Marcus Phillips is starting for the Vols today, not Doyle. Arnold is scheduled to start for Florida State tonight.
KW
7 Jun 25 at 12:50 pm
Arnold with 29 pitches in the 1st inning. Other than the first batter, who he overpowered in three pitches, he couldn’t put the others away. That’s concerning. He did limit the damage to only one run, scored by Arquette, who had a solid single off of Arnold and then got a huge jump off of him to steal second and get in scoring position.
As we’ve previously discussed, Arnold isn’t big. He does have some funk in his delivery, and quite a bit of swagger.
Arnold gives up two more hits in the 2d but gets Arquette to ground out to end the inning. He’s at 50 pitches through two.
Kade Anderson of LSU got clobbered today for nine hits and six earned runs, although it should be noted that five of the runs happened after they left him in too long. Very unlikely that he’s going to truly move into the 1/1 conversation, though.
KW
7 Jun 25 at 9:40 pm
Arnold settled in after the first two innings and only gave up two more hits and no runs over his subsequent 4.2. They extended him to 113 pitches following 119 last time. Frankly, I hope FSU loses today just so they don’t keep abusing him.
Arnold gets a lot of movement on his pitches from his three-quarter slot delivery. His fastball is basically a riser. In the early innings, the majority of the Oregon State hitters were getting their bats on it, albeit for a lot more foul balls than hits. As always in a college game, his K total of nine can be misleading as he struck out the OSU leadoff guy four times.
All in all, it ended up being a solid performance in a pressure situation. I really didn’t see anything that would scare me off from picking him, but he wasn’t Skenes-level dominant either (but who is?). As noted above, I got concerned in the first couple of innings that he couldn’t put guys away.
Arquette held his own against the best pitcher he’s faced. As with Arnold, I didn’t see anything that would scare me off of him. Let’s see if he can do anything special today with lesser pitchers and all the Omaha chips on the table. He homered in the regional final last weekend. (9 p.m. tonight)
Doyle will be in the same position today that Arnold was, pitching in what is an elimination game for his team, and on the road. I do think he’ll be facing a tougher lineup. (3 p.m. this afternoon)
KW
8 Jun 25 at 7:58 am
One other note about Arnold: the first line of every scouting report on him has to read, “There’s no way this kid is 6-1.” He’s fairly solidly built but definitely on the 5-11 side of 6-1.
KW
8 Jun 25 at 10:01 am
Well, that sure didn’t bring any clarity. Doyle hit the very first batter and pitched with guys on base nearly all of his 3.2 IP. Gave up five hits, but only one hit (really) hard. Most were seeing-eye singles.
(Also, Vitello totally blew his season by pulling his best pitcher when he did. The reliever was an epic disaster.)
But . . . I see more ceiling in Doyle than I do in Arnold, perhaps a lot more. Arnold is more polished, could get to the majors faster, but there’s probably not much more improvement left in him. He’s going to peak at 94/95 and rely heavily on his polished offspeed pitches. Doyle is a strong-looking athlete, throws “easy” upper 90s. He’s got some control/locating issues, or at least he did today. But if he can hone in his radar, he looks like a #2/3 MLB starter. Arnold looks more like a #4/5 to me.
If Doyle had dominated today, he would have put himself more in the 1/1 conversation. But he didn’t. But . . . as we’ve said all along, he sure looks a lot more like a Rizzo prospect than Arnold does. So I’m thinking that Doyle’s outing today makes it more likely that the Nats go with Holliday, with Arnold as the backup if Holliday won’t play ball with his price.
Doyle will get drafted by the Rockies and have a miserable life.
KW
8 Jun 25 at 4:51 pm
My take on Anderson’s line: I did not see the game live but watched video highlights below, but when you’re winning 10-1 you’re not every pitching with the same intensity as in a 0-0 game. I’m not going to hold him that accountable for cruising through
My personal experience on this: I played on an industrial league team in college and we had a guy who pitched for West Virginia on our team. We went to a tournament in like PA somewhere and had to play a bunch of games in one day. So we’re winning this game, and our WVA starter is in like the 5th or 6th inning and we notice he’s almost like lobbing the ball in. We go dude, what are you doing? He goes … well i gotta go nine and we’re winning, so i’m just trying to get them to hit grounders so save my arm. Well, turns out he didn’t know we were only playing 7-inning games. He’s like, “oh, well in that case” and went back to max effort the rest of the way.
I guess the lesson is, who cares if you win 10-1 or 10-7 as long as you win in the post season.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6CQHbMfmV0 for the video highlights if you want to see Anderson pitch. minute mark 7 starts him pitchign with the 10-1 lead. I saw a bunch of balls through the middle, errors, only one really well hit ball in the runs he gave up.
Todd Boss
9 Jun 25 at 12:37 pm
I think Arnold is too gimmicky. I think Doyle is too emotional but has more talent. Anderson seems more level headed and has showed out a lot more impressively this off season but seems limited.
Honestly, i don’t think i want to give any of them $9M.
Todd Boss
9 Jun 25 at 12:38 pm
Doyle getting pulled; just the latest exhibit of College Coaches over coaching. You still see it all the time; too many bunts, awful pitcher management, better arms buried in the bullpen, etc. They’re either yanking starters too early or leaving them in for 130 pitches. how do these guys keep their jobs?
Todd Boss
9 Jun 25 at 12:39 pm