Beck's Minor League Threecap: 5/26/24

Beck breaks down three major things you need to know from yesterday's MiLB action.

Happy Sunday, all. I hope the holiday weekend is treating you well. I’ve got tomorrow off from the real job so I’m hoping to bang out the remainder of my top 100 update early in the coming week (among other house projects and squeezing in some family time).

Thanks for reading, as always. Let’s go!

Amad’oh.

You might look at Adael Amador (COL)’s line so far this year and say “yikes!” – and you’d be right. He had managed a .145/.313/.176 slash through 163 plate appearances entering Saturday’s game. You can’t really blame it on the park – Hartford is hitter friendly in terms of runs, BABIP, and home runs, though the first two are only modestly so – and you can’t really make an argument for discipline or bat-to-ball regression, so what’s going on? For one, he’s one of the youngest hitters in Double-A, and I’ve talked a lot about how difficult the jump from High-A to Double-A can be, so a little performance regression early on isn’t necessarily unexpected. Amador had also suffered a broken hamate last year, which is an injury that’s known to sap power and have an outsized impact on offensive output, and coincided with surface-level struggles popping up once he’d recovered. Perhaps most concerning is Amador’s proclivity for hitting the ball on the ground. He’s running a 52.4% groundball rate this year after a 55.9% rate at High-A last year, neither figure being one that points to future success. Yesterday’s 5-for-6 effort with two home runs raised his average 30 points.

Hey, look at that. It’s another player who appeared in my pre-season top 100. Graham Pauley (SDP) broke camp with the Padres to open the year and has since yo-yoed between the Majors and Triple-A El Paso while receiving inconsistent and scarce playing time during his stints with the Padres. He’s seemingly back in the PCL for an extended stay and he’s doing… fine! Over his 16 games at Triple-A in May he’s put together a .255/.411/.455 slash, which seems great at first glance but is a little watered down by the run environment in the Pacific Coast League. What’s been most encouraging about this recent stint is that he’s walking more than he’s striking out and reverting to the kind of plate discipline profile we’re used to from 2023. It’s unclear how AJ Preller and the Padres’ brass intend to use him for the balance of the year, but I’m still a fan and think there’s a pretty good buying window opening up for fantasy players who have the patience to wait for his usage to crystallize. He went 2-for-4 with two home runs on Saturday.

Welcome to the Threecap, Brooks Lee (MIN)! He made his first few appearances in game action over the last week as he returned from a herniated disc suffered in Spring Training that held him out for all of April and most of May, and he mercilessly beat up FCL pitching in the process. It’s been reported that the Twins want to take his rehab at a leisurely pace to avoid reaggravating the injury (you know how fickle backs can be), so it may still be a little bit before he’s transferred to Triple-A. I would expect that he’s contributing to the big league club around the All-Star break. He’s not here for any particular single-game performance, but rather as a nod to his return from injury and to highlight that he’s swinging it pretty well early on with eight hits to just one strikeout in his last three games.

Unlike Brooks Lee, Brailer Guerrero (TBR) is here for a single-game performance. He was a perfect 4-for-4 with a double at the dish on Saturday and he added a walk for good measure. He’s been one of the buzziest names at the Complex level so far, and for good reason. He’s rocking a .408/.525/.592 line through 13 games and five of his 20 hits have gone for extra bases (two doubles, two triples, and a home run). He signed for $3.7M in 2023, the fifth largest bonus of any IFA in the period, and has registered a 111 mph max exit velocity already in his career.

Cruz’in.

Noble Meyer (MIA) was unceremoniously disposing of batters yesterday. It’s possible some folks lost track of him after his season started with a few less-than-stellar outings, but he’s been en fuego over the last month. He’s allowed just two earned runs over his last five games (25.0 innings) while going five innings in each of those outings and striking out 35 batters (37.6% K%) along the way. That’s pretty impressive length from a first-year prep arm, especially when you consider how inefficient he’s been on the bump. It’s taking him 79 pitches on average to go that deep, largely because he’s walking 15.1% of hitters in the Florida State League where the ABS zone is wider than the plate itself. For you math savants out there, that equates to over 50% of the batters he’s faced over the last month walking or striking out, and neither outcome is particularly swift in terms of pitch expenditure. The lack of control in a very forgiving environment paired with his age and subsequent long incubation period before debut are the only two dynamics keeping me from throwing him way up my updated top 100. I had him at #55 in January and wrote that he could very well be the top pitching prospect in baseball come 2025, which is an outcome that is very much still in play. He went 5.0 innings of one-run ball and struck out 11 on Saturday.

I love coming across new names as a part of this series. Felipe De La Cruz (NYM) had the best start of any arm in baseball yesterday, going 6.0 scoreless innings and striking out 13 just one day ahead of his 23rd birthday. The lefty put up solid if unspectacular numbers across Single-A and High-A last year (4.36 ERA, 131 Ks in 107.1 innings) and is returning to High-A in 2024, where he’s seen his results take a step forward thus far. There isn’t much in the way of scouting reports out there on him, but from what I could gather on video he was mostly getting it done with a fastball up in the zone and a slider with nice two-plane break that had both lefties and righties flummoxed.

Mavis Graves (PHI) has made a number of Threecap appearances this year (this is his third, to be exact), and today’s is courtesy of another shutout 6.0 inning performance, this time with nine strikeouts. Here’s what I wrote last time he featured (from the May 19th edition):

Today marks the second Threecap appearance for Mavis Graves, who was the org’s sixth round pick in 2022. He’s an imposing figure standing 6-foot-6 but doesn’t have incredibly overpowering stuff, and his professional debut in the Florida Complex was one to flush. He walked 29 batters in 34.0 innings en route to a 7.68 ERA but he’s reeled it in so far in 2024. His 6.0 scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts was one of the best pitching performances of the weekend.

Apparently, I am a big fan of counting how many Threecap appearances Mavis Graves has made.

Nothing Noble About That. 

Have a night, Noble Meyer. David Festa, you’re alright too. Darren Bowen… I’ll take it. The rest of you? Sort yourselves out.

Monday’s viewing guide, because there are games outside of the Complexes on Memorial Day:

• Hurston Waldrep (2.84 ERA) for the Mississippi Braves (ATL) at 7:05 ET

• Eric Cerantola (1.95 ERA) for the Northwest Arkansas Naturals (KCR) at 7:30 ET

Consider spending some time with family and friends before these games kick off. Have a great evening!