Atlanta is getting incredible production from a shortstop spot manned by Maurcio Dubon (139 wRC+) and Jorge Mateo (222 wRC+), but if they should need another in-house option before Ha-Seong Kim returns from injury, Braves SS Jim Jarvis (25) is firing on all cylinders for Triple-A Gwinnett, slashing .411/.506/.575 with three home runs and 13 stolen bases in 19 games. Defensive prowess has been the carrying tool throughout his baseball life, so it’s surprising to see him roaring out of the gate like this. A left-handed hitter at 5’9” 190 pounds, he’s never slugged .400 as a professional. Hasn’t even gotten especially close, but he’s always controlled the strike zone and taken his walks, maintaining a K:BB ratio somewhere in that sweet spot of 1:1 with a teenage strikeout rate. He’s been hunting a lot more than ever before this year, moving the contact point out front just a bit and really seeking pitches he can pull with loft. Click here to see doing just that and launching an inside pitch.
Obviously, he’s going to slow down at some point, and Atlanta is one of the few teams that has nowhere to put a Triple-A streaker like Jarvis. Dominic Smith has earned that designated hitter job until further notice. The only real pitch is through Mike Yastrzemski, who looks kinda cooked at age 35. Dubon and Mateo can both play across the outfield, and Jarvis would probably be a quick study in a corner. The team owes Yaz $23 million over the next two seasons, so perhaps sunk cost fallacy will drive this bus all season, but I’ll be adding Jarvis to a few of my teams just in case.
Speaking of pull-side power and the young men who wield it, Astros C/1B Will Bush (22, AA) was a 16th round pick out of Tyler Junior College in 2023 and has been developed primarily as a catcher. The team played him at first base in the 2025 Arizona Fall League and has him playing there again for Double-A Corpus Christi, where the bat might be outracing the glove. He hasn’t been a strong defender behind the plate anyway, but now that he’s slashing .345/.537/.690 with three home runs and a 19.5 percent strikeout rate through ten games, Houston might start dreaming on the 6’1” 235 pound left-handed bat as a potential everyday option at first base. He’s never hit anything like this before, for what it’s worth, at least not as a professional. He probably had some crazy stretches in little league. High school, too, I suspect, but the point is this is pretty new, and you never know how a guy will react to getting out from behind the plate. Also, I tend to bet on local kids the Astros pluck out of small Texas schools. They’re good at digging deep and striking that Texas Tea.
I’m not sure how you’d decide who the hottest hitter on the planet is at any given moment, but I know you could make a case for Twins 3B Ben Ross (24, AA). Granted, this is the fourth straight year he’s playing at Double-A, but it’s easy to look past that for a minute when a guy is slashing .480/.552/.900 with five home runs and seven stolen bases through 13 games. A fifth-round pick out of Notre Dame in 2022, Ross was enjoying a fairly standard progression through the minors when he opened 2024 back in Double-A after closing out 2023 with ten games at the level. He would perform well under the league average across 123 games that season (73wRC+) and more or less repeat that feat across 120 games in 2025 (87 wRC+). Nonetheless, gains had been made. He cut his strikeout rate by seven percent and increased his walk rate by 2.5%. Nothing that would presage a genuine outburst the following season, but it’s at least a stepping stone between who he was in 2024 and what he appears to be in 2026. Might be a Driveline story here somewhere. Not easy to fake a two-week stretch like this one. Happens sometimes, of course, and maybe we wouldn’t even notice if Ross was hitting this way in July, but it’s not his fault it’s not July. Or mine. Or yours. Frickin’ Biden.
After three under-the-radar, pop-up types this week, we’ll round it out with an over-the-radar type enjoying this early season. Yankees SS George Lombard Jr. (20, AA) has played primarily against older players as a professional, leading to more hype than production at most of his minor league stops. He’s looking to change that this season despite being 2.9 years younger than the level’s average-age player. Slashing .400/.471/.667 with two homers and three steals, he might not be long for the league after playing 108 games with Double-A Somerset last year. Then again, the Yankees don’t have much cause to rush him. Why not dominate him for a little while?
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