Arizona Fall League Recap: October 20, 2024
Chris and Beck break down everything you need to know from Saturday's AFL action.
Arizona Fall League Recap: 10/20/24
Mesa (Chris)
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 collected just one hit, a double. and reached base a second time via walk. Why is this notable? Well Mesa had just two hits on the day. The overall performance has been relatively uninspiring, but what has been good are the OBP skills. 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.
Samy Natera Jr, LHP, LAA, 24
Natera is an interesting lefty in the Angles system who was taken in the 17th round of the 2022 draft. Nearly 25 years old at this point, Natera is on the older side of things for prospects, but given his draft year and injuries, it is not surprising he has not made it past Double-A. In 2023, Natera posted a 4.76 ERA across 90.2 innings with 118 strikeouts. Pitching just 15 innings year due to injury, Natera struck out 24 and walked six while allowing just one earned run.
On Saturday, Natera tossed two perfect innings with two strikeouts. He is now up to four scoreless innings this fall with one hit and zero walks allowed.
Scottsdale (Chris)
Adrian Pinto, 2B/OF, TOR, 22
Scottsdale struggled at the plate with just three extra-base hits, and while Pinto was not one of those, he did collect two hits on the day. Pinto’s playing time has been inconsistent at times, having just 21 at-bats through the first two weeks of the season, but he has six hits and has reached base three more times via walk.
Pinto played just 26 games in 2024 due to injury, but he slashed an impressive .330/.378/.573 with four home runs. Being an undersized bat, Pinto is hit over power but has the tools to be a solid utility-type bat. He will need a strong 2025 season to prove he can stay healthy and perform at higher levels.
Josue Briceño, C, DET, 20
Honestly, I am a bit tired of writing about Briceño, and you probably are tired of reading about him. But, when you perform every day, you earn a spot on the sheet. Another multi-hit performance on Saturday, and while there were two singles, he had another smoked ball at 107 mph.
Now having 15 hits in eight games, Briceño trails Colt Emerson by just one heading into the third week of action. His five home runs trail Kemp Alderman by one. The .469/.514/1.000 slash is just extremely impressive. Briceño checks a lot of boxes from a young prospect who has the frame, feel to hit, and power.
Geovanny Planchart, C/1B, PIT, 23
Planchart played just 55 games in 2024 between High-A and Double-A, posting an uninspiring .223/.354/.320 slash with three home runs. On Saturday, Planchart was one of the few bright spots in Scottsdale’s lineup, blasting a home run that left the bat at 106.5 mph and nearly left the yard a second time with a fly out to left field. It was Planchart’s first home run of the fall, as he has only played four games. The slash now sits at .231/.333/.539 in a very small sample.
Surprise (Chris)
Chase DeLauter, OF, 23, CLE
Health will always be the biggest hindrance in DeLauter’s career. If he can overcome the consistent foot issues and nagging injuries, he has all the talent in the world. In fact, DeLauter might have a 60-grade hit, power, and run tool. But they say the best tool is availability, and that is the case here. DeLauter played just 39 regular season games due to injuries in 2024, which followed up a 2023 season where he played 57. He will have to stay healthy to reach his true potential.
DeLauter had a big game on Saturday, collecting two hits, both singles, but his most notable was a smoked line drive that I thought might get down in the right-center gap. It left the bat at 110.2 mpg with a 15-degree launch angle and seemed destined for extra bases.
In four games of action, DeLauter is doing what you would expect him to do in the AFL. He has a home run and a .353/.450/.529 slash.
Max Acosta, SS, TEX, 21
Acosta continues to put up solid performances in the AFL, hitting his first home run of the fall, traveling 413 feet with a 105.4 mph exit velocity. He also hit an opposite-field shot that traveled 347 feet to the right and nearly left the yard. Acosta has a slash of .265/.286/.441 with four extra-base hits in 34 trips to the plate.
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.
Josh Stephan, RHP, TEX, 22
Stephan has thrown the most innings among any AFL pitcher after tossing 3.1 scoreless innings on Saturday. He struck out five batters and did not issue a walk, bringing his strikeout total to nine with just two walks across 9.2 innings.
With a fastball in the low-90s, Stephan works east-to-west with a lower slot. The slider is a solid pitch with above-average traits and is his true bat-missing pitch. Stephan relies heavily on it, but I would like to see the changeup take a step forward.
Stephan followed Lopez on Monday, tossing three scoreless innings with one walk and three strikeouts. He tossed 35 strikes on 52 pitches at a solid clip. Stephan has some intrigue as a spot starter, but he is likely a multi-inning reliever like the role he served on Monday night.
Salt River (Beck)
Carlos Lagrange, RHP, NYY, 21
Lagrange is an outlier; he stands a gangly 6-foot-7, 195 pounds and regularly sits 97 mph on his fastball at just 21 years old. He has also carried a 14.9% walk rate over his 95.2 inning minor league career, including a 20.0% mark in 21.0 innings this year. There isn’t much signal in a two-inning sample like yesterday’s outing, and he’s walked five of the 16 batters he’s faced in the AFL thus far, but he managed to keep the base on balls column empty while striking out four on Saturday. He threw four different pitch types in his outing: a four-seam fastball at 95-96 mph (21 thrown, 19% CSW), a cutter at 85-87 mph (7 thrown, 43% CSW), a changeup at 89-91 mph, and a slider at 81-83 mph. There’s obviously a lot of potential here but as much or more risk.
Antonio Gomez, C, NYY, 22
We’re grasping at straws for strong performances today as Salt River and Glendale combined for one run on eight hits. Two of them belonged to Antonio Gomez, a 22-year-old catcher who finished the regular season with the Hudson Valley Renegades for 47 games. He’s not a player I’ve given much attention to given his slow progression and pedestrian numbers along the way, and a brief look at his (admittedly small) sample of publicly available statcast data suggests there likely isn’t much to find. He played just a handful of games in the Florida State league but didn’t manage to hit a ball over 100 mph in that time, and neither of his hits on Saturday crested the mark either.
Peoria (Beck)
Luis Lara, OF, MIL, 19
Lara only managed four home runs in 110 games with High-A Wisconsin during the regular season but required only eight games to get his first in Phoenix. I liked him a fair bit coming into the year and contemplated him as a top-100 entry (ultimately decided against it) after the Brewers had pushed him aggressively to High-A in his first year stateside. As it stands, he’s a well-above average hitter and runner with real questions about his future in-game power output. The Lara bulls out there will point to his 110 mph max EV while the Bears will simply say he’s 5-foot-7, 155 pounds.
Jared Sundstrom, OF, SEA, 23
As far as I can tell, Jared Sundstrom has never graced the pages of the Dynasty Dugout. I don’t necessarily trust the search function on SubStack (perhaps this is my form of constructive criticism), but taking it at face value it’s not all that surprising that he hasn't been covered yet. He was a 10th rounder out of UC-Santa Barbara in 2023 and played the entirety of his 2024 regular season at Everett with solid if unspectacular results. He finished the year with 13 home runs, 26 stolen bases (32 attempts), and a .263/.380/.434 line over 112 games while primarily playing left field. He was definitely the beneficiary of a nice home park to hit in (.841 OPS at home and .787 on the road) and has some weird reverse splits going on (.858 against righties, .683 against lefties), but otherwise his performance looks perfectly cromulent. As a corner outfielder he’s likely to need to hit his way to the show and he certainly has the build to do so. He finished Saturday’s game with a triple in three at-bats, bringing his total line to .321/.406/.536.
Glendale (Beck)
Nathan Church, OF, STL, 24
Church accounted for two of Glendale’s four hits including a triple that led to him scoring the only run of the contest on a Colson Montgomery single. I’m not sure how much there is to get excited about in Church’s profile – I’ve previously written that he’s considered an average athlete without a carrying tool and the outfield is crowded in St. Louis – but he’s been excellent through seven AFL bouts thus far. He has 10 hits in that time and owns a .400/.423/.480 slash.
Colson Montgomery, SS, CHW, 22
Montgomery certainly looks better this time around that he did last time, and it’s really encouraging to see. He was wearing a back brace while participating in the AFL circuit last year and spent much of the regular season playing through a nasty hand laceration that certainly impeded his ability to swing comfortably. Now healthy, he’s putting together an MVP campaign that has him slashing .400/.613/.650 with two doubles, a home run, and a 1:9 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He finished Saturday’s game with a 2-for-3 performance that included a double and Glendale’s only RBI.