Beck's Minor League Threecap: 6/2/2024

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

Heyo! Welcome back to the Threecap. I’m getting started around 5:30 local and it’s been a long weekend, so this is a bit of a Minicap. I’m sure there’s a big backlog to keep you occupied, and perhaps this news will bring you happiness: the DSL starts tomorrow!

I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend. Let’s dive in!

Get Hot, Stay Hot.

I liked Brice Matthews (HOU) coming out of the draft, but the transition to professional ball was rocky initially. He posted a 20-20 season in his platform year at Nebraska while boasting a 90th percentile exit velocity and chase rate that rivaled the top of the college class. He had some swing-and-miss in his game as an amateur that has carried into his professional tenure (25.2% K-rate over 222 minor league plate appearances split between Rookie Ball, Single-A, and High-A), but the idea was that his eye would offset some of the challenges making contact. This season is going much better for him than his post draft stint and he currently sports a .964 OPS through 66 plate appearances. It's a small sample, and a non-negligible portion of those PAs took place in the FCL, but it’s what you would have hoped for from the 28th overall pick last summer. He hit his first and second home runs of the year in a 2-for-3 effort on Saturday after picking up his third and fourth doubles of the year on Friday.

I’ve written a fair bit about Spencer Horwitz (TOR) already this year, which shouldn’t be surprising given he’s carrying a .330/.446/.485 slash through his first 53 games at Triple-A this year. This is his third Threecap appearance. Here’s what I had to say previously:

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.

Horwitz went 5-for-6 with a home run and a double on Saturday. There may be a little more intrigue with him now than there was in early April given the direction the Blue Jays are trending, but he’s still subject to a long line of players ahead of him in line for reps at the big league level.

Hao-Yu Lee (DET) is another player who has appeared before on the Threecap with his previous writeup coming after a big game on May 12th. Since then he’s continued to hit, producing a .282/.350/.521 slash over 18 games with four home runs, two triples, and a double in that time. He’s what I wrote about him a few weeks ago:

Hao-Yu Lee signed with the Phillies for $570K in 2021 and made his way to Detroit at last year’s deadline as the return piece for a true rental of Michael Lorenzen. That trade paid off for the Phils almost immediately as just nine days later Lorenzen tossed the 14th no-hitter in franchise history. For his part, Lee posted respectable if unremarkable lines in eight games with West Michigan and 13 games at the AFL before reporting to Double-A Erie this year. He’s young for the level at just 21 years old, but is holding his own with a hit-over-power profile at present. He went 3-for-4 with a pair of home runs on Sunday.

Lee had arguably the best game of his season on Saturday, going 4-for-6 with a home run and a double in a 14-1 win over the Richmond Flying Squirrels.

Ale-Ale-Jandro.

Alejandro Rosario (TEX) was a fifth rounder out of Miami last summer and is now having one of the most impressive seasons of any pitcher in baseball. It’s no secret that professional pitching development is significantly better than college, even the elite programs like Wake Forest, but the delta between Rosario’s platform campaign as a Hurricane and his stint with Down East has been legitimately stunning. He pitched to a 7.11 ERA over 74.2 innings with the U in 2023, and while poor defense and batted ball luck can explain it to some degree, he still had a FIP approaching 5.00 (as an aside, you can calculate FIP rather easily if you know BBs, HBPs, HRs, Ks and IPs). He has a 1.44 ERA through 31.1 innings with Down East after Saturday’s near-flawless 6.0 inning outing that featured 11 punchouts, and the differentiators have been his velocity, usage, and control.

Charlee So-So. 

Tough night for Charlee Soto, but Jhancarlos Lara and Noah Schultz managed to throw up zeroes. Joander Suarez K’d 10 over 4.2 innings but was touched up in the process. A pretty middle-of-the-road table today.

No viewing guide as tomorrow is Monday and nobody needs to subject themselves to watching Complex level pitching. Next viewing guide in tomorrow’s Threecap!