Pittsburgh 3B Juan Jerez is all over my Twitter feed these days, which probably says as much about my Twitter feed as it does Juan Jerez, but that’s beside the point. Juan Jerez can hit, is the point. He’s slashing .307/.400/.521 with 6 HR and 10 SB as a 19-year-old in the Complex League. Would love to see him get a crack at Low A, even for a week or so, but Pittsburgh is getting stacked up on the lower levels, so he’ll probably have to wait it out. In his last ten games, Jerez is hitting .425 with 4 HR and 4 SB. Swing mechanics work bottom to top, maximizing the thunder in his 6-foot frame. This next bit comes from the department of redundancy department if you’re here every week: Pittsburgh knows what it’s doing on the development front. A lot of their hitters look like poetry in the batter’s box. They settle like still water then strike from their core through to their hands.
Here’s a Jerez bomb with a nice effort and assist from the left fielder.
If the comments sections of my articles are any indication, Dodgers OF Andy Pages has caught a lot of eyeballs this summer, slashing .260/.390/.520 with 26 HR and 6 SB as a 20-year-old in High-A. The most impressive numbers might be his K/BB rates at 24/14.6%.
Anytime I open the book on Pages, I’m reminded of that nixed trade with the Angels that would’ve sent Joc Pederson, Ross Stripling and Andy Pages to the Halos for Luis Rengifo and two prospects in the low minors. The full story never got sussed out, the way I remember it, but the story I gleaned was that Angels owner Arte Moreno didn’t want to add the salaries of both veterans, so then-GM Billy Eppler never got Pages, or Stripling, or Pederson, but he did get fired, and the club does still have Rengifo.
Despite the mental tick that is my need for thorough context, that’s all history now. It’s in the books, or rather, not in the books. Nothing really to do with Pages, who’s come through the Dodgers’ hitting factory looking like he could headline a deal for a lot more than Luis Rengifo today.
I’m aiming for Sunday on my final Top 100 update of the season, and I can sort of guess who I’ll be asked about after the fact, in the sense that I’m an outlier on a few popular names, and on some lizard-brain level, we love the fantasy chamber of echoes like Kevin Bacon loves digging up the yard. It’s safe. Comfy. Garrett Mitchell is a top 25 prospect. Nolan Jones and Austin Martin are Top 100 locks. MacKenzie Gore is amazing! Come to think of it, we outliers might have a tiny buy window on Gore, who was promoted to AA this week. Prospectors have finally stopped adorning him with the #1 pitching prospect label, and he’s got an actual chance to come up and pitch meaningful innings this month.
I don’t mean to get too salty here, but I did have beef bacon for breakfast. Not just that, though a bacon-only breakfast would bring the sizzle. I also had eggs and toast cooked in the beef bacon grease then lightly salted after the fact. Someone call my doctor if I drop off mid-sentence here, please. Guy’s last name is Standing, which I ought to be doing all day if I want to live, yet here I remain, oozing sodium from the pores of my finger tips as I type.
I’ll cover Mitchell today because this one is pretty simple. Truth is, Milwaukee OF Garrett Mitchell’s worst tool is hit. That’s not what we want. Sure, it works out sometimes, but others, you’ve got an experienced college hitter slashing .197/.309/.282 for a month at AA.
“For a month” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Can’t blame anyone who goes shoulder to the wheel on a player and ignores a month of output. Please, Garrett, just drive. Trouble is he has always had to grind on his hitting. Several scouts thought he’d need a swing change in the pros, something we’ve yet to see. Milwaukee has been great at a lot of things this past decade, but developing its own hitters when they need help isn’t at the top of that list.
Another big name guy whose worst tool is hit? New York (AL) OF Jasson Dominguez comes to mind. It’s the kind of underhanded compliment nobody wants to hear, but it helps me put these types into context. Some players do figure out how to hit across time, but it’s definitely the hardest aspect of this particular sport. I’d put Dominguez in a different bucket than Mitchell, for what it’s Wuertz–he’s half a decade younger and already has more skill with the barrel when it comes to adjusting mid-pitch–just came to mind as an example. If he’s lower than you thought he’d be when the list hits, that’s because he’s not a good baserunner (yet?) and doesn’t make enough contact (yet).
Tampa Bay is reportedly calling up OF Josh Lowe today, and that’s pretty good news for our purposes, assuming Lowe is going to play, which we should not be assuming despite Lowe’s success at AAA: 21 HR, 24 SB (on 24 attempts) with a .282/.369/.540 triple slash. I’ve mentioned in this space a few times that he’s likely to be a platoon bat with speed, power and strikeouts. Can certainly be useful in the right league. Another guy whose hit tool is the dullest in the box.
Cincinnati OF Austin Hendrick falls into the Mitchell bucket for me: guys who’s worst tool is hit, but the draft stock created by the surrounding skillset floated the fantasy profile too high too early. He was the Reds top prospect on a lot of lists this preseason. Hindsight is 20/20 and whatnot, but you’re climbing milk crates if you push a low-contact high school hitter over hyper-elite arms like Hunter Greene and Nick Lodolo. Might look cool for a beat, but we’re all pretty sure how it’s gonna end.
Boston OF Jarren Duran is tough to place. He looked almost as lost as Kelenic in his first 107 at bats. Would be nice if he somehow graduated prospect eligibility by the weekend, but that’s not happening. One reason I love to remember context is it’s so easy to lose track of the path these players walked to get here. Duran surged into the centerfield picture this spring but got demoted anyway, so he had to wait a month to play real games before eventually starting the year in AAA, where he pummeled the ball for two months. Well, almost two months. His coldest stretch of the season were his final two weeks at the level, when he slashed .200/.322/.380 over 13 games. It’s not a unique story. Players get held back while on a streak then promoted in the middle of a slump. I realize it’s a big ask to want organizations to prioritize a young player’s first big league month over whatever’s happening on the big league side, but I think these don’t have to be competing interests as often as they are.
Still, we have what we have with Duran. He hasn’t played every day, spotting in and out intermittently and getting some of his chances against lefties after sitting against a righty. Nonetheless, it’s an ugly line today: 35.7% strikeout rate, 3.6% walk rate, .215/.241/.336 with 2 HR and 2 SB. He’s never been this kind of hitter on the plate skills front, so it’s pretty easy to see he’s pressing, but it’s also pretty clear he’s not seeing spin and identifying pitches well.
Thanks for reading!
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