Prospect News: AJ Preller’s Paperclips or Wonders Never Cease

When AJ Preller was in first grade, his mom always packed his lunch with five baby carrots and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, along with some kind of treat that could be salty or sweet, depending on what was around. AJ didn’t mind the carrots, but he did eventually get tired of eating the same thing every day, so he started asking around. Other kids were facing similar dilemmas. A plan was hatched. AJ would cultivate an intricate schedule of lunch sharing. He’d trade a few carrots here for an apple there. Swap a half a sandwich for a pack of crackers then combine the apple and crackers to get a cheese stick and some salami off Shane, the kid whose parents owned a deli. Life just wasn’t the same after that. He’d spend most days sketching out the trades he could make, sometimes getting caught “daydreaming” during class, but he didn’t mind. He knew this was his life now. His future. A person could just spend all day every day imagining or making trades and never get bored. 

So that’s how Dylan Cease became a Padre. 

Baby carrots. 

Like a lot of Preller’s trades, this one looks pretty good both ways. He’s not just walking around with his dong out like some of these dynasty rip-off guys, sliding into DMs like a scammer seeking a mark. “Is so and so available?” and then “Who do you like on my team?” Next thing you know, Mike Trout has been traded for Brooks Lee and Harry Ford without anyone in the league knowing he might be on the move. That wasn’t the case with Cease. The Sox played this well, letting everyone know he was on the block and what he was worth to them, holding their position until the market came to them. It’s hard to get real value for a player if there’s only one team in the bidding. It’s hard for buying teams to push themselves to the place that gets the job done until another contender enters the fray. I think this is where Preller shines. He has confidence in his ability to keep adding talent, so he’s less huggy with the prospects he does have, which means he’s willing to meet a team halfway. The White Sox wanted a pile of top prospects, and Preller ponied up. 

RHP Jairo Iriarte is on the rise and feels like a great get for Chicago. He’s already inside a couple Top 100 lists and could help the team right away. Cease produced a 4.58 ERA and 1.42 WHIP last season across 177 innings. Iriarte might be able to hit those benchmarks right now. He’s already got three plus pitches in his fastball, slider and changeup, and his stuff is still improving. He’s an extremely athletic 6’2” listed at 160 lbs but clearly bigger than that now. It’s good weight, and there’s probably more to come. 

RHP Drew Thorpe looks a bit like Lucas Giolito with his short-arm delivery, so White Sox fans might not even miss their one-time ace. Here’s what I said about Thorpe in my San Diego Padres Top 10 Prospects for 2024 Fantasy Baseball: 

“The 61st overall pick in 2022, Thorpe broke out in 2023, posting an elite 24.6 percent strikeout-minus-walk rate in 109 innings at High-A then a preposterous 35.5 percent (and 0.60 WHIP) in 30 innings at Double-A. Thorpe explained his development in a story on mlb.com: “They don’t chase much out of the zone, so you’ve got to pitch in the zone more,” Thorpe said. “Going in, I was just seeing what I could get miss-wise inside the zone versus out of the zone. Trying to compete with myself a little bit more. Obviously they’re better hitters; they’re not going to chase as much as they normally would in High-A.”

His changeup and solid slider combine with a functional fastball to give Thorpe a three-pitch mix that’s aided by some deception given his short-armed release. Command is the calling card. His delivery is balanced throughout and doesn’t put much tax on any particular part of his body.”

And that’s me quoting me! This trade hurt my NL-Only squad because I was really hoping to get some WHIP-safe innings out of Thorpe. So it goes. 

The real prize here might wind up being OF Samuel Zavala, a 6’1” 175 lb lefty who hit 14 home runs and stole 20 bases in 101 games in Low-A, slashing .267/.420/.451 with a 140 wRC+. He won’t turn 20 until July 15 and might be playing centerfield in Double-A by then. 

RHP Steven Wilson is the final piece and could compete for saves in a bereft bullpen. Now that the club is moving RHP Michael Kopech to relief, he’s probably the top option, or at least has the stuff to make that the case in short order. I like the whole shape of this thing a lot for the White Sox. They added two likely starters so they could bump a should-be reliever back to a spot that gives him a great chance to generate value. It also creates some space for LHP Garrett Crochet, who looks good this spring and brings something like ace upside if he can stay healthy. 

On the Cease front, he already felt like a good bounceback candidate after a lost season in Chicago. After an off-season of reworking his approach, in a more competitive setting, he could be back in the Cy Young race like he was in 2022. As good as all these prospects are, none of them offer that kind of immediate upside. None of them give you the playoff edge a dialed-in Cease could contribute. AJ is eating salami and cheese fresh from a deli today at lunch. 

Fantasy baseball Twitter is so weird right now. An obvious sleeper candidate who posted a 1.73 ERA in relief last year will throw six shutout innings in a spring game, and a fantasy guy will post “Ackshually, he posted a nine percent rub-to-tug ratio (RtT), so I don’t want him,” and the world will just keep right on spinning. Anyway, Blue Jays RHP Bowden Francis is good. Command is a skill. It can be hard to measure in tugs and rubs, but it’s pretty damn useful. 

I saw a new stat today called “out percentage” that totally ignores sequencing. I’m sure it’s fine. Yes, splitters and curves generate outs at a greater rate than fastballs. Thing is, that happens partly because fastballs exist. Remember tunneling? When we tried to keep every pitch in a context of what it looked like to a hitter compared to the previous pitches? I liked that. 

Thanks for reading!