Beck's Minor League Threecap: 8/21/2024

Buying lottery tickets and taking a bow

Welcome back! Today is a weird day in the minor league calendar. The Dominican Summer League regular season has come to an end, which is one of the last dominoes to fall before we’re making Arizona Fall League roster predictions and speculating on roster expansion come September 1st. There were a number of standouts in the DSL this year – Emil Morales, Jesus Made, Luis Pena, and Eduardo Beltre primarily – and I’m more interested in speculative upside plays now than I have been in quite some time. I’ll write more about that some other time, for now let’s dive into yesterday’s standouts!

Worcester Booster.

It didn’t take long for Roman Anthony (BOS) to get comfortable in Worcester. He was promoted on August 12th and now has 29 Triple-A plate appearances under his belt, and his total line looks pretty impressive. He’s hitting lefties well this year (86 plate appearances, 1.035 OPS), though I’m well aware that the sample size isn’t large enough to simply say his difficulty with same-side breaking stuff has been solved. Ultimately he’s one of the most exciting prospects in a down talent period across minor league baseball and sits at #5 in my work-in-progress rank update. He went 4-for-5 and was a triple shy of the cycle on Tuesday.

Just one player in the last 10 years had hit 13 home runs in his first 200 plate appearances in the Dominican Summer League. That is until Emil Morales (LAD) did it this year – he has 14 in 201 – and he’s quickly become the most exciting player at the level. It’s an arbitrary benchmark but speaks to the pop he’s already generating at just 17 years old. As I mentioned in the intro and earlier this week on Twitter, I think the total level of talent in the minors is lower than it’s been in some time and I’m willing to take a shot on high upside young players instead of holding on to players that profile as second-division regulars at the back of the current top 100. Morales would be my primary target in this demographic.

Keeping up with the Joneses.

I’m not the biggest Brycen Mautz (STL) guy out there but everybody was rooting for him on Tuesday as he racked up 12 strikeouts over 7.0 one-run innings. He generated some buzz early in 2023 when he opened his professional career with 15.0 innings of 1.80 ERA ball with 19 strikeouts while firing 67% strikes. That faded pretty quick, but a second round draftee with an impressive platform year tends to stick around a while. He looks the part as a 6-foot-3, 190-pound lefty but doesn’t have outstanding stuff to pair with his physicality. He sits in the low 90’s with a sinker, slider, curveball, and changeup, none of which are outstanding but among them the slider stands out. Bravo to a great outing, I love to see pure, unadulterated domination from a less heralded arm, but I’m not necessarily rushing out to pick him up.

I’ve seen some people fading Jared Jones (PIT) lately and I don’t understand it. Surely some of that sentiment is coming from the redraft crowd for whom his near two-month absence is a huge blow. Outside of that circumstance, he looked like the Jared Jones we knew prior to his injury on Tuesday. His velocity was back and he was hugely effective, ultimately going 5.0 innings and allowing just two baserunners while striking out 10.

Cory Lewis and The News. 

Tuesdays are a little weird because there’s a larger number of TBA’s when I write the viewing guide on Monday. There were only three arms I recommended (Wenninger, Sykora, Dana), but I probably would have mentioned the other three had they been announced earlier. I nailed it on Dana – he went 8.0 innings like the workhorse he is – and on Sykora, who continues to dominate Single-A and should be facing advanced competition.

We’ve got a bigger collection of interesting arms slated for Thursday than we had on Tuesday and that’s a very good thing. Here’s where I’d focus my attention:

• Quinn Priester (4.60 ERA) for the Worcester Red Sox (BOS) at 12:05 ET

• Bubba Chandler (0.00 ERA) for the Indianapolis Indians (PIT) at 6:15 ET

• Josh Knoth (4.54 ERA) for the Carolina Mudcats (MIL) at 6:30 ET

• Jackson Nezuh (3.32 ERA) for the Asheville Tourists (HOU) at 6:30 ET

• Rhett Lowder (0.00 ERA) for the Louisville Bats (CIN) at 6:35 ET

• Ian Seymour (2.73 ERA) for the Durham Bulls (TBR) at 6:35 ET

• Alejandro Rosario (2.93 ERA) for the Hickory Crawdads (TEX) at 7:00 ET

• Gary Gill Hill (2.46 ERA) for the Charleston RiverDogs (TBR) at 7:05 ET

• Drue Hackenberg (3.51 ERA) for the Mississippi Braves (ATL) at 7:35 ET

• George Klassen (6.75 ERA) for the Rocket City Trash Pandas (LAA) at 7:35 ET

• Yu-Min Lin (4.33 ERA) for the Amarillo Sod Poodles (ARI) at 7:35 ET