Arizona Fall League Recap: October 16, 2024
Chris and Beck break down everything you need to know from the Arizona Fall League action.
Finally! A full day of action. Tuesday brought us a three-game slate for the first time since Saturday and it did not disappoint. Some big time home runs and solid performances all around.
Beck and I bring you everything you need to know from all the action. Let’s dive in!
Arizona Fall League Breakdown: 10/16/24
Mesa (Chris)
Denzel Clarke, OF, OAK, 24
Clarke’s continued strong performance in the fall league has him looking like a potential top-100 prospect. No, the AFL has not changed his stock. It was just seeing the things I wanted to see from him, and Clarke is passing the test.
He reached base six times on Tuesday, including two hits and four walks. Clarke’s OPS is up at 1.080, and he has struck out just two times in 22 trips to the plate.
From June 1 forward, Clarke slashed .304/.370/.510 with a collective 24.7 percent strikeout rate. Ten of his home runs came over those 77 games, and he added 32 extra-base hits with 28 stolen bases. When you think of toolsy, upside-type players, Clarke checks many boxes. He has a 6’4”/220 frame with plus raw power and plus speed.
Tre’ Morgan, 1B, TB, 22
Morgan is thriving in Arizona, a percent environment for his game. He mashed his first home run of the fall, a grand slam and drove in six runs as he had two doubles and a single to add to the ledger.
He is now up to 10 hits in 26 plate appearances and has a 1.254 OPS. Morgan is a contact machine who has put up strong exit velocities in the fall league. Having a 111.2 mph max stands out to me, especially for someone with fringe game power.
Ben Cowles, UTL, CHC, 24
Cowles collected three hits, including two doubles in Tuesday’s action. It has been a pretty slow fall league to this point for Cowles, but this game should allow him to get back on track. Reaching base five times is nothing to scoff at and Cowles showed why I have always been a fan of him. The contact and on-base ability with sneaking pop should allow him to play a solid utility role around the infield for a major league club.
David Mershon, 2B, LAA, 21
The Angles have done with Mershon exactly as you would expect from a recent draft pick, push him fast. The interesting thing is they are doing this with an 18th-rounder. Mershon was selected in this summer’s draft as a sophomore, immediately slotting him in Double-A and now sending him for additional work in the fall league.
Mershon has handled the assignment well, and after another hit and two walks, he has his AFL OPS up to .899. The interesting thing is Mershon has just four hits, all singles, but has walked eight times. This is not a surprise after he walked more than he struck out in both his freshman and sophomore campaigns at Mississippi State and had a .447 OBP. Being on the smaller side, I do wonder how much power is in the profile, but Mershon is clearly an OBP machine.
Scottsdale (Chris)
Drew Gilbert, OF, NYM, 24
Gilbert missed the majority of the 2024 season due to a hamstring injury. Upon his return there were struggles on the surface, but Gilbert mashed and hit ten home runs in 247 Triple-A plate appearances. He slashed a modest .215/.313/.393, but he still made contact at an above-average 74 percent overall and 84 percent in-zone. Gilbert did not chase often, and continued to show many of the traits that made him a top prospect in 2023.
Needing a big AFL, Gilbert mashed his first home run of the fall in a dreadful day for Scottsdale’s offense. The numbers do not look great on the surface for Gilbert this fall, but he did show good bat speed on the home run swing, which hopefully is a catalyst for better performance.
Termarr Johnson, 2B, PIT, 20
Johnson has said time after time that his goal in the fall league is to prove he is the best player every time he is on the field. So far, he has looked the part in a much-needed big performance. While Scottsdale had just two hits, Johnson had one of them, which was a double. He has struck out just twice all fall and has been on base in ten of his 19 trips to the plate. The performance looks like what many hoped it would be coming out of the draft as the fourth overall pick.
Josue Briceño, C/1B, DET, 20
As one of the youngest players in Arizona this fall, Briceño’s performance has been nothing short of impressive. After having a three-home run game over the weekend, Briceño came out firing on Tuesday, where he collected a triple. He did strike out twice and has seven this fall in 22 plate appearances, but the power and bat speed has been evident. Despite the strikeouts, the contact rate has been a managed 73 percent in all AFL, and in Hawkeye tracked games, Briceño has made contact on 90 percent of pitches in the zone.
Considering he turned 20 years old in September, this looks like a top-100 prospect to me.
Surprise (Chris)
Alejandro Osuna, OF, TEX, 22
Osuna collected the hardest hit ball of the day at 110 mph, and in 11 batted balls, he has an impressive 99 mph average exit velocity. In a small sample so far this fall, Osuna has five hits, including a home run, and has walked nearly as often as he struck out. The OPS sits at a strong .935.
Osuna spent time between High-A and Double-A during the regular season and the jump to Double-A did not phase him either, as he posted a .306/.379/.523 slash with nine home runs and seven stolen bases in 265 plate appearances. Between both stops, he ended the year with a .292/.362/.507 slash with 18 home runs and 47 extra-base hits.
Max Acosta, SS, TEX, 21
If you have stuck with Acosta since he signed for $1.65 million back in 2019, then props to you. It has been a bumpy road over the years, but in 2024, we saw a really solid performance from a 21-year-old who spent the season in Double-A. Acosta slashed a smooth .288/.353/.425 with eight home runs and 34 extra-base hits in 104 games. He swiped 26 bases for the second straight year.
Acosta collected two doubles on Tuesday and drove in two runs in the process. Both batted balls left the bat with exit velocities of at least 105 mph. He had an additional batted ball that traveled 329 feet but was smoked right at centerfielder Garrett Martin.
Hitting the ball hard all AFL, Acosta has run into some bad luck but has also shown some strong skills to show that he is still a relevant prospect.
Milan Tolentino, 2B, CLE, 22
Tolentino has been one of the more steady producers in all fall, and while the numbers are not flashy, he has consistently gotten on base and stolen bases at a high clip. He is currently tied for the AFL lead with four stolen bases and has walked twice as often as he has struck out. He has just one extra-base hit, which occurred on Tuesday, but the contact has been impressive as Tolentino has an 85 percent overall contact rate, and that jumps to 96 percent in-zone.
Spending the year in Double-A, Tolentino put up a rather pedestrian slash of .241/.313/.370 with just nine home runs, but he did steal 17 bases and had 31 extra-base hits.
Salt River (Beck)
Robert Hassell III, OF, WSH, 23
Don’t look now, but Hassell is in the running for AFL MVP. He’s trailing just Kemp Alderman in OPS through the first week and has a change of action by way of four doubles (two of which came on Tuesday) and a home run. He’s in his third AFL stint, and it’s reasonable to expect that some familiarity would get him out of the gate hot, but that’s not to take anything away from his performance. I’m not sure there’s much he could do to really make me take notice – the fall league is full of poor pitching and is too small of a sample – but it would be nice for him to enter 2025 with some wind in his sails, especially considering the young core the Nationals are starting to build and coalesce around.
Maxwell Romero, C, WSH, 23
Romero launched his first home run of the fall on Tuesday in 1-4 night. The eight total bases between him and Hassell weren’t enough to lift Salt River over Surprise, but Romero is already outpacing his regular season results by a fair margin after hitting just nine home runs in 82 games with Wilmington. He’s a former 38th-rounder who had a nice year in 2023 before running into struggles in 2024, and it’s always nice to root for these guys with double-digit round selections – especially the rare pick still kicking around beyond round 20.
Peoria (Beck)
Colt Emerson, SS, SEA, 19
Nobody reading this blurb needs to be reminded of my affinity for Colt Emerson, but he’s on the rundown for a 2-for-5 day that was rather pedestrian for him thus far in his AFL campaign. He’s up to a .448/.452/.655 line (for the math-inclined folks, that means a two hits yesterday dropped his average) on the back of a barrage of doubles over his first six games. It’d be nice to see his raw power show up in games and his K/BB to level out (sitting at 8/1 right now), but it’s still too small a sample to make anything of it.
Brock Wilken, 3B, MIL, 22
It’s been all-or-nothing for Wilken through his first six games in the desert. He has four hits, two of which are home runs, but nine strikeouts and a .160/.250/.400 line. I remain hopeful that he’ll get back to full strength the further out we get from his HBP early in the year, but that remains to be seen. Homers are nice, but the power isn’t a question in his profile, and he’s striking out quite a bit thus far. He should be in the Brewers’ plans for the second half of 2025 if he turns things around.
Brendan Durfee, C, SD, 23
Durfee transferred from California Lutheran – a small, private, non-profit school in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic conference – to UC-Santa Barbara for the 2024 season and proceeded to mash to the tune of a .324/.455/.566 line and nine home runs in 46 games. That earned him a 14th-round selection by the Padres this summer, and we’re seeing the first real sample of pro performance from him this fall. He’s a catcher that hits from the left side, which is already intriguing, and is listed at a massive 6-foot-3, 221 pounds. Tuesday was the first time we saw him in AFL game action, and he went 1-for-3 with a double, two walks, and a run scored. I could see this being a guy that makes a B-Side selection in 2025.
Glendale (Beck)
Zyhir Hope, OF, LAD, 19
It’s the Hope that kills you, especially if you were the Peoria Javelinas on Tuesday. Hope poured it on in yesterday’s game with three hits in five at-bats, including a double and his third home run of the fall. The homer left the bat at 111 mph and traveled 456 feet, which is firmly in “how the hell does a 19-year-old do that” territory. If you don’t already roster him, the window to do so for any reasonable price is closing tremendously fast.
Colson Montgomery, SS/3B, CHW, 22
Montgomery is having the AFL campaign we expected from him last year thus far. He reached base four times on Tuesday with two walks, a home run, and a single, and his line now sits at .417/.632/.750. His OPS trails just Kemp Alderman (league leader in home runs with five), Robert Hassell III, and Garrett Martin (good name to keep an eye on). He’s yet to strike out through his first five games but has walked five times. Perhaps he’s finally healthy; he played the 2024 regular season with a gnarly laceration on his hand and had previously battled a back injury.
Thomas Saggese, 2B, STL, 22
Saggese picked up a three-hit night that included a double on Tuesday and is largely doing what you’d expect a player with major-league service time to do against the pitching of this quality. I was relatively high on him about a year ago based primarily on his spray chart – he outhit his measurables because he more or less mastered the art of the pulled fly ball – but he’s walking a tightrope, and it remains to be seen how it’ll fully translate to MLB. He managed a .204/.250/.556 line in a 52 plate appearance sample with the Cardinals this year, though some of that is a function of a poor .265 BABIP.
Tim Elko, 1B, CHW, 25
Elko launched his second home run of the fall in the first inning off of Patrick Monteverde, who was tagged rather relentlessly for three homers in his 3.0 innings of work. Elko was a 10th-rounder in 2022 out of Ole Miss, where he launched 24 home runs in 65 games as a senior. He’s closing in on 26 years old, making him roughly three years older than the competition in the AFL, and he’ll need to really perform to grab my attention given he’s a R/R first baseman that got significant run in Triple-A during the regular season.