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1. Guardians 2B Travis Bazzana | 21  With Bazzana, the Guardians get their most polished draft prospect in a long time, but he’s not a floor play by any means. At six foot even out of Australia, Bazzana has gotten stronger throughout his career in college ball and added significant impact to his plus-contact profile, […]

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This week marks the beginning of a bottleneck on the minor league baseball calendar. 

The Arizona and Florida Complex Leagues will finish their regular seasons on Thursday before a brief playoffs. After the postseason, some of these players will head to a practice facility after a 50-game season. Some will get promoted to Low-A to continue their development via in-game repetitions. You can probably guess which outcome most players would prefer. It’d be a long off-season if you weren’t going to play an actual game again for about seven months. 

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I found out a few hours before the Futures Game that the Skills Showcase Challenge won’t air live after the seventh inning. Instead, it will be available on tape delay the next morning (today) at 10 a.m. EST. Perhaps that’s for the best in the sense that this event is new, and the league has no idea how it’s really going to play out, and certainly has no idea how to broadcast it before it happens. I figured it was pretty intuitive: show the hitter, show the hit, show the hitter, show the hit, and so on, but maybe it’s not that simple, and maybe it’s on tape delay for other reasons than trust in competence. I’m sure they want to have some kind of post-game show and include an interview or two. Whatever the reason, the showcase is probably on right now if you’re reading this as part of a Sunday morning routine. 

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Reds OF Rece Hinds has splurted out of the big league gate like catsup that’s been sitting upside down on a warm summer’s day or a chocolate bar in the hands of a toddler on that same summer day. They’re having a picnic, maybe, and listening to the Cincinnati Reds game because this is the 1970’s in middle America we’re talking about now through the power of sentences. In that era, a guy like Rece Hinds might hang around on the strength of 30 home run thump with the sort of off-the-bus skills that played well in those days, but which I mean he looks good getting off the bus, or sitting on the plane, or taking batting practice on the field. It’s hard to predict how free swingers will react to advanced scouting, but everything we’ve seen so far suggests pitchers will figure out they don’t have to throw strikes against Hinds, and that’ll put the squeeze back in the bottle real quick, as the kids say. Hinds struck out 38.4 percent of the time in 77 Triple-A games this year in part because he can’t catch up to the high cheese, and he can’t lay off the sauce down and out. Ingest at your own risk. 

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The 2024 Futures Game rosters were made public on Tuesday, so I’d like to highlight some key takeaways that might be relevant to people with mid-week transaction set-ups. 

For dynasty purposes, the Futures Game has always been an escalator for prospect fantasy values. Most people don’t watch minor league baseball on the regular, so their first time seeing some of these prospects with their own eyes happens during this seven-inning exhibition game. 

My takeaway today is that values are going to change more than ever this season due to the new Futures Skills Showcase that will follow the game itself. 

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Giants RHP Hayden Birdsong will make his debut for the arm-starved Giants today against the Cubs. He’s pitched well since being selected in the sixth round of the 2022 draft, leaning into a high-velocity fastball to rack up the strikeouts: 75 K’s in 57.1 innings across two levels this year. At 6’4” 215 lbs with that heater playing well atop the zone, he fits the archetype for our times. He may not pitch deep into his starts, but he’s going to try and strike out every single batter with high heat and buried breaking balls as long as he’s out there. 

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Astros OF Joey Loperfido appears to have finally earned a lineup spot. Man that took forever, didn’t it? Or maybe I’ve just been in the sun too long these past couple days. Warps time a bit. 

Athletics 3B Armando Alvarez was called up to take the place of 3B Abraham Toro. He’s 29 years old, so he’s unlikely to become a core piece for Oakland’s build, but I think he’s got at least a chance to stick around in a Joey Meneses kind of way. His past three seasons have netted positive wRC+ scores of 117 in 2022, 125 in 2023, and 132 in 2024, all in Triple-A as he stalled out waiting for a major league opportunity with the Yankees, Giants and Athletics. Unlike Meneses and a lot of these late-stage DH types, Alvarez provides solid defense at the hot corner. Over his last 20 games, he’s slashing .388/.456/.663 with five home runs and one stolen base. If not now, when? 

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Graduated From Stash List Volume 3: Ben Rice Is Boiling: Ben Rice, Orelvis Martinez

Jackson Holliday is not on this list. One of the few rules I’ve implemented here is that once you’re a big leaguer in the current season, you’re off the list. Holliday cashed those major league game checks, so he won’t be represented here. Neither will Tyler Black even though I’m writing this part on a Friday and thinking about his namesake Rebecca. 

 

1. Nationals OF James Wood | 21 | AAA 

Washington is 0.5 games out of the wild card race. Wood returned from his hamstring injury and went 0-for-2 with a walk on Tuesday. Once he’s in rhythm, I think he’s coming up.

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Houston has finally cut bait on Jose Abreu, who will collect another $30 million from the club over the next season and a half. Jonathan Singleton has been tabbed by manager Joe Espada to be the everyday first baseman moving forward, but that’s just, like, his opinion, man. Singleton is a free agent at season’s end, and Joey Loperfido is right there in Triple-A. He has struck out at a 39.5 percent clip in 43 major league plate appearances, but he’s also slashing .333/.381/.436 with a 138 wRC+ over that stretch. Singleton’s wRC+ in 174 plate appearances is 92, which drops to 79 if we look at just the last month. I’m all for the revitalization of a man’s career, but I’m skeptical that’s what we’re seeing here. Abreu has been bad enough that even Singleton is an upgrade, but it doesn’t make much sense to eat $30 million just to play Jon Singleton everyday while Joey Loperfido waits in the wings during what might be a lost season. As of Saturday morning, Houston is 32-and-38, eight games behind Seattle in the division and six games out of the wild card race. 

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