I made it to another Baysox game on Sunday with my family. While we were there, my six-year-old daughter sat and watched a significant portion of the game and told my wife that she’s starting to understand and like baseball. She even correctly recognized a slider, curveball, and fastball. Cool, that’s step one down. Next, we’ve got building a SQL database and using it to do probabilistic forecasting, and she'll be running the analytics department for a Major League team. Should be a cinch for a six-year-old, right?

I have just two Pearls today, one from each team that played on Sunday. I’ll lead with one player who made the eyes pop out of my head like a cartoon.

Victor Arias (OF, Toronto)

Before Sunday, I had never heard of Victor Arias. I’ve heard of Franklin Arias, of Roderick, of Rayner, and Gabriel. Never Victor.

To be fair, that’s not too surprising. Double-A baseball is chock full of guys I’ve never heard of and, frankly, don’t need to know. Earlier this year, the Baysox had a lineup with three guys named Vasquez, Velazquez, and Valdez batting in order. I didn’t know who they were. I still don’t know who they are. They may not have existed. They have been mere figments of my imagination, a hallucination born from one too many IPAs on a late June day trapped under the heat dome, the real-life equivalent of temporary players that Out of the Park quickly calculates out of thin air if your roster isn't legal.

So it could have been with Victor Arias. Here today and forgotten tomorrow, and Luarbert Arias¹ remains the fifth most important Arias in baseball.

Apologies to Luarbert, who I'm sure is both a real person and a fine baseball player, but it took exactly one pitch for Victor Arias to burn the blessed Truth of his existence into my consciousness. Fresh off the call of “Play ball!” from the umpire, he stepped up to the plate like a conquering hero, a would-be victor in more than just name. Then he faced down his erstwhile teammate Juaron Watts-Brown² and smote the first pitch of the game over the fence in center-left, a credible display of power as a left-handed hitters.

In the third inning, he struck out on a seven-pitch at-bat where he fought back from 0-2. Then, in the fourth, he absolutely obliterated another first pitch fastball. This one sailed easily over the right field wall. It may have been headed down Route 50 for the bay itself had it not been grabbed by the greedy hands of trees in the dense woods outside the ballpark, nature itself eager to snare a souvenir from a star on the day of its emergence into the cosmos.

My purple language aside, this all fits with the data. Last season, as a 20 year-old in Single-A, Arias registered a hit with an exit velocity above 113 mph. Among all recorded exit velocities in the Florida State League over the last two seasons, it ranks 20^th . That’s the upside, the pulled ball in the air that just keeps going and going, though neither the pull nor the air was quite common enough for true batted ball efficiency.

Arias came up twice more in the game, first grounding into a forceout but driving in a run by beating the double-play. The speed is probably closer to a 50 on the scouting scale, but he’s already stolen five bases in just 13 games since being called up to New Hampshire from High-A Vancouver in July after stealing 12 bases in 66 games there. Here's footage of the man himself, his swings on the whiff and grounder moving enough air to stir up a stiff breeze.

The next time up he struck out in an ugly fashion, chasing Trace Bright’s breaking balls without coming close to making contact.

My hyperbolic enthusiasm for Victor Arias aside, Arias certainly has more development to do. He drops his hands in his load and throws his body into his swing, which gives him the power to slay the dragon when it connects – but the whiff above, and the ugly strikeout against Bright, showed what happens when he doesn’t connect. He’s making contact only about 65 percent of the time in his Double-A games, which may be a small sample size, but he was only in the mid-70s in High-A. It's not a red flag yet, but it's certainly enough for me to pause a bit on anointing him as the next coming.

He’s clearly remade his body from whenever they weighed him at 150 lbs. for the media guide, with a stacked upper and lower body, but he’s still on the shorter side. He’s played the majority of his games since being promoted in center field, but he DHed on Sunday and I wasn’t able to see his defense. Sticking in center with this sort of profile gives him a lot more room for error than moving to a corner, so that will be something to watch.

Still, Arias looked to me like a player who’s on a different level than a lot of his peers, despite not turning 22 until the end of the month. These players are very obvious in A-ball, but the talent pool is a bit older and savvier by the time you get up to Double-A³ so it’s harder to pick them out. Arias certainly stood out, though he also showed why he’s not yet on top-100 radars in his final plate appearance of the day.

But he should be on the radar. Put Victor Arias on your watchlist, pick him up in deep leagues; he’s basically free everywhere on Fantrax, and he shouldn’t be. If the contact skills improve and he sticks in center, there’s a very real chance he’ll be the best Arias of them all.⁴

Brandon Butterworth (SS, Baltimore)

Smooth like butter, sweet like syru – you know what, I’m not doing this. I’m sure Brandon Butterworth’s mother is a very nice lady and has been put through hell for her entire married life, or else retained her maiden name to avoid the very obvious joke that every single one of Brandon’s friends no doubt tried to make over the years. So for Mrs. Butterworth’s sake, I’m going to avoid the stack of bad puns I had on the stove. Beginning now.

It’s too bad, really, because “smooth like butter” does describe Butterworth, who arrived from the Padres organization as part of the deadline deal for Ryan O’Hearn and Ramon Laureano. Butterworth, who turns 23 at the end of the month, was a 12^th- round pick of the Padres last year out of NC State, where he was more of a defensive standout than an offensive juggernaut, after spending two previous years at Western Carolina.

Something about Butterworth has changed in the last year, though. Despite the switch from metal to wood, he’s now hit as many home runs this season (12 between High-A and Double-A) as in his entire three-year college career combined. There’s probably room to add more to the frame and get to more power. He’s made contact on 78 percent of his swings this year and doesn’t whiff much, and the approach passed the eye test as well. On his home run on Sunday, he didn’t look like he needed to do a ton of work to get it over the fence, but he was also content to take a single as well.

The athlete is excellent. He’s stolen 14 bases this year and has plus, if not true burner, speed. He showcases good lateral movement and hands defensively, but the real star of the show is the arm. He’s got one of those arms where if he were about six inches taller, he’d have been a five-star quarterback recruit. He barely flicks his wrist and the thing blows down a brick wall – and it’s accurate, too. In a game where there were two inside-the-park homers caused by clown car fielding errors, Butterworth’s defensive play stood out.

Butterworth probably isn’t a superstar in the making, but his play reminded me a lot of Joey Ortiz when he was with the Baysox. He looks like a player who has a good chance at being an MLBer thanks to the defense, but the projection from there really depends on whether the uptick in power since he turned pro continues.

And, look, I got through the rest of this write-up without another pancake joke!

1  He’s a real guy! I found him on FanGraphs!

2  Traded at the deadline for Seranthony Dominguez, Watts-Brown transferred clubhouses about an hour before the scheduled game on Thursday. Watts-Brown, for his part, is probably a reliever – he throws a mid-90s fastball that he can’t command and overuses a low-80s curveball that doesn’t do much. He does feature a killer high-80s slider that made more than a few righties look silly, but I’m not sure he has an answer for left-handed batters right now. Not giving him a full blurb because, well, he’s probably a reliever. But he also deserves a mulligan under the circumstances.

3  Except for the Richmond Flying Squirrels. Never sure who any of them are.

4  Arias also has my wife’s stamp of approval. “That’s the best player I’ve seen at a Baysox game this year,” she declared midway through the game. She’s much smarter than me, so take that for what it’s worth.