Beck's Minor League Threecap: 4/3/24
Beck breaks down three major things you need to know from yesterday's MiLB action.
Welcome back to the Minor League Threecap! We’ve got opening weekend under our belts, now we move to week two of the Minor League season. It’ll be all Triple-A action until Double-A, High-A, and Single-A open their seasons on Friday. And away we go!
Tuesday MILB Standouts
Ladies and gentlemen, the Norfolk Tides.
Look, I only have so much discretion about what to cover in any given rundown and they’ve all but forced my hand. This will mellow out as the remainder of the full-season levels start on Friday and some of their core contributors debut with the big league team. They hit six home runs on Tuesday evening en route to a 10-6 victory over the Charlotte Knights (CHW), though the score was a much more comfortable 10-1 entering the bottom of the 9th inning.
Jackson Holliday led off the contest with his second home run of the year, this one a 414 foot blast that left the bat at 99.6 mph. He’s one of five batters in their lineup with an OPS north of 1.000 entering Wednesday’s games. He did K three times in the contest, bringing his early K-rate to 23.8%.
Connor Norby followed him up with a home run of his own just four pitches later, also his second of the year. It wasn’t hit particularly hard, neither of his long balls have been, but they count the same regardless. He’s struck out just once in 20 plate appearances and sports a 1.283 OPS through four contests.
It’s hard to stand out in this lineup, but Heston Kjerstad sure has. He belted his first and second homers of the year and they were blasts. They traveled 451 and 368 feet, respectively, on EVs of 107.1 and 105.8 mph. It was only a matter of time for him given his big time underlying power. I’d like to see him hit it in the air with more regularity, but also feel folks would be much more into his profile if he were, say, 23 instead of 25 years old. That’s his functional baseball age in my mind as a result of the myocarditis that held him out of competition for so long after his draft year.
Kyle Stowers also went yard, giving Norfolk over-the-fence contributions from their 1, 2, 3, 5 and 9 hitters on the evening. Stowers’ blast was his second of the year and left the bat at 100.3 mph. The nine hole hitter was Errol Robinson, a 29-year-old journeyman who has spent time in the Dodgers, Reds, Cardinals, and Orioles systems without making a big league appearance.
The pitching was just as good as the offense. Cade Povich went six scoreless with five strikeouts and allowed just one baserunner all night. Truth be told, it was kind of a bizarre outing. He threw 74 total pitches, 39 of which were in the zone, and hitters swung at 20 of those offerings. Precisely zero swings on pitches in the zone failed to make contact, leaving Povich with a 100% zone contact rate on the evening. He finished with a 30% CSW almost entirely on the back of the ‘CS’ portion of ‘CSW’.
Have you seen the Milwaukee Brewers rotation?
Aaron Ashby hasn’t. At least not since his last start for the big league club on October 1, 2022. He made his Triple-A debut on Tuesday evening after throwing just seven innings in all of 2023 and tossed five, allowed three earned on four hits and two walks, and struck out five. There wasn’t anything particularly special about the outing – except that when you meander over to Roster Resource you’ll see Milwaukee’s 3 through 5 are manned by Colin Rea, Jakob Junis, and Joe Ross. Seems ripe with opportunity, no?
Ashby will certainly be restricted in terms of innings, but I’d wager the front office would prefer the bulk of whatever he has to offer comes with the Major League team. He may mix in as a long reliever (or any relief role, for that matter), but there’s also a pretty solid chance he solidifies himself as the fifth starter who’s skipped when the schedule allows.
Guys? Guys? I’m right here.
It’s time to talk about some of the players who regularly fly under the radar or are otherwise largely forgotten men. No need to rush in and roster them (only fools do that), but they had good nights on Tuesday.
There is admittedly little fantasy intrigue for a 26-year-old 1B/DH, but Spencer Horwitz has never done anything but hit. He’s carried a wRC+ north of league average at every stop in his minor league career sans a 44 plate appearance stop at now-deprecated A-, and he’s continued hitting thus far in 2024. Small sample, and probably one you shouldn’t care about given the numbers aren’t eye popping (c’mon, the guy hasn’t even left the yard), but he also shouldn’t be entirely forgotten in deeper leagues.
Dustin Harris was a popular top-100 guy coming into the 2023 season and I genuinely can’t remember the last time I heard his name. He had an .809 OPS split pretty evenly between Double-A and Triple-A, which at first glance doesn’t seem so bad, until you realize that figure came in the Texas League (very hitter friendly) and the Pacific Coast League (very, very hitter friendly). In any event, Harris had a banger of a Tuesday night, putting two souvenirs over the outfield boundary. He may just be in the kind of system that doesn’t let a bag of 50’s crack the lineup, but he shouldn’t be wholly off the radar, either.
Speaking of loaded systems, Miguel Vargas had a hell of a night in a hell of a Dodgers system. He tattooed a ball 105.4 mph for a 398 foot grand slam in the fourth inning shortly after lacing a double in his previous at bat. He had such a long, sustained slump during the middle of the season that he’s all but forgotten for fantasy purposes, but if you can stomach something like a .250 batting average and 15-20 bombs, he’s still worth rostering.
Great write-up, Beck. I appreciate your almost sassy tone in this series.