Beck's Minor League Threecap: 6/7/2024

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

Hey y’all. I’ve been traveling all day for a family wedding and I’m pretty confident this will be the latest release of the Threecap all year. If you’re here early please go to bed and resume browsing in the morning!

Oops! All Guardians.

I think CJ Kayfus (CLE) is enjoying Double-A so far. He was promoted on June 3rd after laying waste to the Midwest League to the tune of a .338/.437/.578 slash and 21 extra-base hits in 40 games while striking out in just 18.0% of his plate appearances, and so far he’s come out and done better with Akron. Granted, it’s been just three games and 14 plate appearances, but he’s already racked up two doubles, a triple, and a home run in that time. He was billed as a soft-hitting first baseman out of the draft, similar to every infield profile in the Guardians system except limited defensively to the bottom of the spectrum, but he’s really turned that narrative on its head with an unexpected power surge. His stock is up significantly. He was 3-for-5 with the aforementioned triple on Thursday.

Jhonkensy Noel (CLE) has been hitting the snot out of the ball. His batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging are up .53, .44, and .131 points year-over-year, respectively, meanwhile he’s trimmed his strikeout rate by 2.4%. I last wrote about him on May 23rd and cited his huge exit velocities, middling contact rates, and abysmal plate discipline, and the underlying data since then has been a bit of a mixed bag. He’s still doing damage, obviously, and his chase rate has come down from 43.5% (very bad) to 41.8% (still very bad, but improved), but his contact rate has also shrunk. I don’t personally think he’ll hit enough at the next level to be fantasy relevant. He went 4-for-6 with a double on Thursday.

Parker’s Making Me Sick.

Michael Morales (SEA) was a Vanderbilt commit before agreeing to sign with the Mariners for a $1.5M bonus as a third rounder in the 2021 draft. Totally unrelated to his baseball acumen – I always think of Spider-Man when I read his name, and I’m privy to the fact that his name was actually Miles Morales in the film, but my brain can’t knock it off. Michael Morales, the pitcher in the Mariners system, has ascended to High-A after back-to-back 100+ inning campaigns with Modesto and what looks like three straight years of surface-level improvement. He carried a 5.91 ERA in his first go around with Modesto in 2022, not because he was wild as is common with prep arms, but because he was rather hittable. He allowed 143 hits in 120.1 innings while striking out just 125, which led to a WHIP of over 1.60. That figure dropped to 92 in 101.1 innings in 2023 and the strikeouts ticked up (22.4% in 2022 vs. 24.4% in 2023). This year he’s produced a 2.35 ERA through 60.0 innings while striking out batters at the same rate as last campaign. He went 6.0 innings of one-run ball and struck out 10 on Thursday.

I wrote about Parker Messick (CLE) just a few weeks ago, but last night was without question his strongest outing of the year. He went 5.2 shutout innings with 11 strikeouts against Beloit, tallying his highest strikeout total of the season and matching his highest pitch count. He’s now thrown over 110 innings at High-A and could be on the move to Double-A any time. Here’s what I had to say in late May:

Messick was Cleveland’s second round selection in 2022 following a storied career at Florida State, where he was named to the all All-ACC team and later an All-American. He didn’t pitch following the draft and instead reported to Single-A where he threw a touch over 50 innings before being promoted to High-A where he’s returning this year. The results have been fine – he has the execution and stuff to perform well at this level, as is the expectation – but not really eye-popping enough to warrant attention. It looks like a fourth or fifth starter all clicks and he continues to climb, a projection which is aided by his left-handedness and release point. He went 6.0 clean innings with 10 strikeouts on Friday.

Ashcrafty. 

Not every day can be a great day for the table. The only guy to throw zeroes was Santiago Suarez who rebounded from a couple of tough outings recently. Braxton Ashcraft’s line really caught my eye, twelve strikeouts will do that, but more so that he was able to complete 7.0 innings with six hits and twelve strikeouts – ostensibly running up his pitch count – in just 93 pitches.

Here’s what to watch on Saturday with my recommendations italicized as usual:

• Winston Santos (2.33 ERA) for the Hickory Crawdads (TEX) at 5:00 ET

• Yorman Galindez (3.03 ERA) for the Carolina Mudcats (MIL) at 6:05 ET

• Chayce McDermott (3.81 ERA) for the Norfolk Tides (BAL) at 6:05 ET

• Hayden Birdsong (2.28 ERA) for the Richmond Flying Squirrels (SFG) at 6:05 ET

• Mavis Graves (2.79 ERA) for the Clearwater Threshers (PHI) at 6:30 ET

• Shane Baz (6.20 ERA) for the Durham Bulls (TBR) at 6:35 ET

• Brandon Sproat (1.38 ERA) for the Binghamton Rumble Ponies (NYM) at 6:35 ET

• Dylan Lesko (6.35 ERA) for the Fort Wayne TinCaps (SDP) at 6:35 ET

• Noble Meyer (0.00 ERA) for the Beloit Sky Carp (MIA) at 7:35 ET

• AJ Blubaugh (4.00 ERA) for the Sugarland Space Cowboys (HOU) at 8:35 ET

• Cristian Mena (4.43 ERA) for the Reno Aces (ARI) at 9:05 ET

• Mason Black (1.35 ERA) for the Sacramento River Cats (SFG) at 9:37 ET