There was a big article about Taylor Jones in the Chronicle on Sunday. I had never really heard of him, but they said he has a chance to be the first basemen of the future? He's already 26, but I think he converted to position player at some point after high school so still has untapped potential possibly. Said he's been working on keeping his hands quieter pre pitch and keeping his bat in the zone longer. Anyone see him as a possible breakout this year? He's 6'7". Intriguing.
Nobody saw anything in Jones profile to suggest he was a prospect of note. He's old for a prospect, wasn't drafted high, has no particularly impressive tools and struggled in the low minors. However, he has hit well the last 2 seasons in the high minors, and more noticeably he was added to the 40 man roster. That means we either think he can play in majors, or we believe other teams think he will.
Spoiler WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Forrest Whitley came into last season as the consensus best pitching prospect in baseball. It was viewed as a foregone conclusion that he would make his major league debut at some point in 2019, a feeling bolstered by his strong performance in his first big league spring training. Shortly after the end of spring training is when everything turned. The Astros top prospect was rocked in his first exposure to Triple A, where he had an unsightly 12.21 ERA and 1.149 opponent OPS in only 24 1/3 innings before the team sent him to Florida to try and reset. Relatively early in the year, it was evident that expectations of a 2019 contribution were overaggressive. Whereas last year the Astros planned for Whitley’s in-season arrival – they tailored their Triple-A rotation around the goal of conserving his innings for later in the year – the 22-year-old right-hander comes into 2020 as a wild card. Before last year, he had encountered adversity in the form of a 50-game suspension for violating minor league baseball’s drug prevention and treatment program as well as minor injuries. But never before had the 17th overall pick in the 2016 draft struggled so mightily on the mound. Player development is not linear, and Whitley’s ability isn’t in question. He is still the Astros’ best prospect, and it’s all but certain he will begin this season back in Triple A. Could 2020 finish with him as the No. 4 starter in a postseason series behind Justin Verlander, Zack Greinke and Lance McCullers Jr.? Sure. Could it finish with him still in the minors? Considering he went backward last season, that outcome is also not out of the question. If Whitley is to pitch his way to Houston this season, he must correct the issues that stalled his ascent. In examining what went wrong last year, three keys to his future emerge. And his 2020 success or failure will hinge on if he can check these three boxes. 1. He needs to stay on the field Whitley has logged only 86 innings during the last two minor league seasons combined. His career high in innings pitched for a minor league season is only 92 1/3, his total from his breakout 2017 in low A, High A and Double A, which was his first full season of professional baseball. In 2018, he was derailed by his 50-game ban, a lat strain and an oblique strain. Last season, he pitched so terribly in Triple A to begin the season that an irritated shoulder prompted the Astros to shut him down and send him to the team’s spring training complex for a mental and physical reset. Whitley spent seven weeks in West Palm Beach from late May to mid-July before he was shipped out to High A and later to Double A. He felt he made progress once he got back out to the affiliates, albeit slowly. The 2019 season represented his first dose of failure on the baseball field. It made for a mental grind. “It was brutal,” he said. “At some points it was really good. At some points it was really bad. It was just an up-and-down year. I’m glad I had it, though. It was kind of good to put in the back pocket and remember how that felt. It was the first bit of baseball adversity I’ve faced in my life.” Whitley reported to spring training earlier this month weighing 230 pounds, about five pounds heavier than last spring but 40 pounds heavier than his lightest at the end of 2017 and beginning of 2018. He hopes the extra weight and being stronger will help him be more durable throughout the season. “That is the biggest goal for me, just to like rack up as many innings as I possibly can. Just stay on the field,” he said. “I’m doing everything I possibly can to make that happen. I’ve worked extremely hard to get to this point to hopefully benefit me and aid me during that process. But only time will tell.” It’s worth noting that the Astros will certainly restrict Whitley’s innings given his low workloads in 2018 and 2019. Coming into last year, he was under the impression that the team’s target for him was about 125 innings. In 2018, it was about 120. Anything too far above the 120-125 mark this season would be a surprise. 2. He needs to throw more strikes By all accounts, Whitley’s stuff was not the issue in 2019. He maintained his usual combination of velocity and movement. But he did experience a meaningful regression in his command, as demonstrated by his alarmingly high walk rate. Code: Level(s) IP ERA Strike% BB/9 2017 Low A/High A/Double A 92.1 2.83 64% 3.3 2018 Double A 26.1 3.76 61% 3.8 2019 Triple A/Rookie ball/High A/Double A 59.2 7.99 60% 6.6 The quality of Whitley’s stuff has always exceeded his command, but not to the extent that it did in 2019. His inability to consistently locate his pitches in and around the strike zone prompted a lot of work on the mechanics of his delivery, a process that is very much still ongoing. In his new delivery, he tries to have less tilt in his shoulders as he’s moving down the mound, and he’s also working to rotate over his front hip after finishing each pitch. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole spring training is going to be ups and downs just because of the delivery change,” he said. “I want to throw well here, obviously, but this is more just about my development as a pitcher. Here in spring training obviously the stats don’t count, so I’m going to take advantage of that as much as I possibly can.” 3. He needs to throw fewer fastballs Since the Astros drafted Whitley out of Alamo Heights High School in San Antonio, team officials, rival scouts and prospect prognosticators alike have mentioned countless times that the young righty has five “plus” pitches. His fastball has traditionally averaged 94-96 mph, he has a late-breaking slider that grades out analytically as his best pitch and a circle changeup that is his favorite pitch to throw. He also has a cutter and a hammer of a curveball. But a deep repertoire does a pitcher little good if he falls back on one pitch as a crutch. Whitley didn’t do himself any favors with his pitch usage last season; he threw too many fastballs. Whitley said at one point during his time in Triple A his fastball usage was 75 percent, a staggeringly high number in a Houston organization in which pitchers upon arrival routinely decrease their fastball usage in favor of more offspeed pitches. He has so many weapons. Why lean so heavily on one of them? “I think I was just struggling to find the zone,” Whitley said. “When you’re struggling to find the zone like that you kind of get fastball happy just trying to find it. That’s probably why I was running into those problems, is trying to find the zone in general. Usually when you’re trying to do that, you’re throwing down the (No. 1).” Learning to use his whole arsenal will be an important part of Whitley’s maturation as a pitcher. He needs to throw his changeup and curveball for strikes to set up his slider and cutter as chase pitches. Getting ahead in counts would go a long way in making the hitters respect all five of his pitches. His curveball tends to lock up hitters. If he could land it to steal an early count strike, it would be a game changer. “He throws plus pitches across the board, but it’s just a matter of letting the hitters know that everything can be in the zone and then working ahead in the counts so they have to respect all of his repertoire,” Astros assistant GM Pete Putila said. “If he gets behind in the count, he has to become more fastball heavy.” Being so fastball heavy contributed to him being so susceptible to the longball early last season. In his only 24 1/3 innings in Triple A, he gave up nine homers. Right-handed hitters accounted for a vast majority of the damage. The hitter-friendly nature of the Pacific Coast League was also obviously a factor. So, too, was the fact that Triple A now plays with the major league baseballs, which aren’t used at any other minor league level or in the prospect-laden Arizona Fall League in which Whitley has pitched (and pitched well) in each of the last two years. “It was a huge difference. It was a completely different ball than the minor league ball,” Whitley said. “When I went back to High A and Double A and I threw those balls, it was like there were absolutely no similarities in them at all. It’s a different thing to get used to, for sure.” Whitley’s star has faded some in the last year, but the industry is still high on him because his pitches grade out analytically as elite. The Athletic’s Keith Law ranks Whitley as the sport’s 14th-best overall prospect and the sixth-best pitching prospect. FanGraphs has him 15th and sixth among pitchers. Baseball America is a bit lower on him, having dropped him to 25th overall and 11th among pitchers. But in the wake of the Greinke trade and the graduation of Kyle Tucker, Whitley is also the Astros’ lone consensus Top 100 industry prospect. His development, along with Tucker’s, is crucial to the team extending its contention window beyond the end of 2021, when Alex Bregman, José Altuve and Yordan Alvarez are the only star players still under contract. George Springer, Michael Brantley and Yuli Gurriel are set to be free agents at the end of this season, and Carlos Correa, Verlander, Greinke and McCullers are in line to be free agents after the 2021 season. Former Astros GM Jeff Luhnow could’ve cashed in on Whitley’s prospect status via a trade on many occasions but refused to part with him. It aligned with his preferred strategy of holding on to the team’s elite prospects, which paid off in the cases of Bregman and Alvarez but backfired with the likes of Francis Martes and AJ Reed. Which bucket will Whitley fall into? It remains to be seen. But as 2020 approaches, arguably no top prospect has more to prove.
C Garrett Stubbs, 1B Jake Adams, and OF Corey Julks all homered into today’s major league spring training game.
One reason I am very optimistic about Nathan Perry, Joe Perez, and Colin Barber is that the Luhnow regime’s track record with drafting HS position players is incredible. Here are the HS position players they have drafted since 2012: SS Carlos Correa: 1-1 in 2012, borderline superstar 3B Rio Ruiz: overslot 4th rd in 2012, traded for Gattis, reached majors with Atlanta and currently plays for Orioles OF Brett Phillips: 6th rd 2012, traded for Carlos Gomez, reached majors with the Brewers and currently plays for the Royals C Jake Nottingham: 6th rd 2013, traded for Scott Kazmir, reached majors with Brewers OF Jason Martin: 8th rd 2013, traded for Gerrit Cole, reached majors with Pirates C: Ruben Castro: 19th rd 2014 from PR; still developing but had a nice year last season OF Kyle Tucker: 1-5 in 2015, reached majors in 2018 and should be the everyday RF this season. OF Daz Cameron: Overslot Comp pick in 2015, traded for Justin Verlander, expected to reach majors this season. 3B Joe Perez (2nd rd 2017), C Nathan Perry (5th rd 2017), and OF Colin Barber are still early in their development, but Perry had a great 2019. So 6 of 8 drafted prior to 2016 have reached the majors, with a 7th very likely to get there this season and the 8th being a late round pick from Puerto Rico. Incredible.
Oscar Colás, the “Cuban Ohtani”, worked out for the Astros yesterday: Would be a huge get, and nabbing both of Leon and Colás would go a long way to rebuilding the farm. Not sure at all how the money will work but I assume if he’s working out for Houston then there is at least a chance.
FWIW, Longenhagen said a director comped him to 4A DH only type, so he might be more of a Cuban AJ Reed. Of course that might be accounted for in the price.
His body didn’t look great in that very short video clip. But he’s still likely one of the top 15 international prospects this J2 and I’m giving Crane/Putila the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise, so if they sign Colás I will be excited. The 35 grade Longenhagen predicted for him wouldn’t even place him on Houstons top 40 on their list, which I find hard to believe.
He is the type of player that the Astros are going to target internationally. I am not surprised Colas is polarizing as a prospect. He isn't a guy that will run a 4.3 forty and in the past he has let his body go (although in fairness there are a lot of reasons this happens with Cubans). However he still has excellent baseball instincts, really can drive the ball and hits off speed pitches really well. He was considered one of the smarter hitters by Japanese pitchers and that should carry over to the big leagues. He reads the ball well off the bat and has an extremely strong arm. He can throw close to 100 MPH and he wants to pitch (or did several months ago when he spoke to US teams). Could he be AJ Reed? Sure it is possible, but the scouting projection seems abnormally harsh..... some guys can just play and commercial scouting projections tend to emphasize what a prospect cannot do, not what they can do well. If he hits off speed pitches well, is a smart hitter, has good instincts in the outfield and has a strong arm....... then the fact that he isn't explosive fast and has had his body up and down doesn't mean it is the end of the world......... that line of thinking is why a certain other Cuban didn't shoot up prospect lists with the Astros.
Oh, I absolutely agree that he's the Astros type. They've pretty consistently targeted big dudes who can hit the ball hard, the 2019 draft was surprising in that they didn't draft a defensively limited slugger until the 23rd round, but traded for Uceta and Rivas in July who fit that profile. I think that 'Cuban Ohtani' seems to be a lazy comp with Ohtani being one of the best athletes in baseball, and Colas apparently isn't.
It is a lazy comparison in a number of ways. Colas does not have the size, body or track record that Ohtani does. The only real similarity is that they both can hit and pitch. Colas doesn't have as bad a body as some are saying. He isn't really THAT slow, and his body isn't THAT bad. He is over 6 feet tall, he has average speed on the bases and isn't quite a station to station type runner at this point. To me it all comes down to how smart/intuitive a hitter is and what his personality is like. He has the instincts and arm and adequate speed to play a corner outfield spot. He can identify pitches well, but does he have adequate bat speed? Is he motivated to keep his body in shape?
In the reading way too much into minor league players during spring training category, Rolando Espinosa, who has not hit at all in 2 seasons of rookie ball got added to the roster for today's doubleheader, while Freudis Nova is the only position player invited to the mini-camp to not be added to the roster yet.
Cesar Salazar and Bryan De La Cruz homered in today’s big league spring training games. De La Cruz is a true sleeper pick. Nothing on paper jumps out but he has defensive value and has always hit the ball really hard; if he’s able to adjust to use that power to hit more balls out his stock will take a huge jump.
Spoiler WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Cristian Javier’s fastball velocity is wholly unremarkable. The Astros pitching prospect averages only 92 mph. It’s not uncommon for him to hit 93 or 94 mph, but 95 is his max. And yet, hitters in the upper levels of the minor leagues have struggled to get a hold of it. The 22-year-old Dominican right-hander dominated with his fastball in High A, Double A and Triple A last season, generating a ton of swings and misses and weak pop ups. In an era when everything is measured, Javier’s best pitch defies the radar gun readings and mystifies teammates and opponents alike. “It’s unreal,” said Chuckie Robinson, his catcher in Double A last season and High A in 2018. “I don’t even know how to explain it.” A popular way to describe Javier’s four-seam fastball is as an “invisiball,” the name his teammates took to calling the pitch last year. Perhaps the most unique pitcher in Houston’s farm system, Javier has a rare combination of deception in his delivery from his low three-quarters arm slot and backspin on his fastball to throw it by hitters despite his pedestrian velocity. Javier’s fastball anchors a four-pitch mix that has the once-overlooked international signee on the verge of the majors. It’s expected he’ll begin the season in the Triple-A Round Rock rotation, where he finished last year, but he could be a candidate to be promoted to the Astros the first time there’s an opening. He’s already on the 40-man roster, having been added in the offseason as to not be left exposed to the Rule 5 Draft. His velocity belied his elite minor league performance in 113 2/3 innings across three levels last season. Among those who logged at least 100 innings in the minors in 2019, Javier’s 1.74 ERA ranked second behind top Padres prospect McKenzie Gore (1.69), who is regarded as the best pitching prospect in baseball. Javier’s .130 opponent batting average was the best in the minors, a whopping .031 points better than Gore. Javier also ranked second in strikeouts per nine innings (13.5), third in strikeout percentage (37.3) and fourth in percentage of swinging strikes (16.9). A .204 opponent batting average on balls in play reflected just how difficult he was to make solid contact against. The next-best BABIP for a pitcher in the minors who logged at least 100 innings was .229. “If he throws it up in the zone, he’s getting a lot of swings and misses, which he tends to do a lot,” Robinson said. “I really can’t compare him to anybody. I’ve never caught anybody that gets as many swings and misses as him. There have been games where it’s like ‘All right, they’re swinging and missing at the fastball. Let’s keep throwing it.’ And then before I know it we’re in the fifth inning.” Javier’s invisiball fastball plays as if its velocity is in the mid-to-upper 90s. He throws with natural deception, showing the ball to the hitter late in his delivery. More importantly, hitters likely aren’t used to seeing the type of fastball movement he generates out of an arm slot as low as his. From his low three-quarters slot, they might expect his fastball to run like a two-seamer yet it rides like a four-seamer. His wrist positioning allows him to stay behind the ball and create backspin, a point of emphasis among the pitching coaches throughout the Astros’ organization. Backspin is what creates ride, also known as hop, and the illusion to the hitter that the ball is rising. “It just holds that line,” said Astros catcher Garrett Stubbs, who worked with Javier in Triple A toward the end of last season. “If (his fastball’s) at the top of the zone, they’re swinging under it. And if it’s at the bottom of the zone, they’re thinking that it’s going to fall out of the zone and be a ball. But it just holds that line at the bottom of the zone.” Javier complements his fastball with a sweeping slider, a changeup in which he’s grown more confident in the last two years and a 12-6 curveball that is his biggest development pitch. He’s traditionally pitched to higher walk rates – he walked 4.1 per nine in 2018 and 4.7 per nine in 2019 – so his command or lack thereof will probably determine his longterm role. If he can’t limit the walks enough to stick as a starter in the majors, he could still provide value to the Astros as a multi-inning reliever. Javier’s rise is a win for an Astros international scouting department that has in recent years found greater success at signing overlooked late bloomers for minuscule signing bonuses than the big-bonus teenagers. Javier, like Bryan Abreu ($40,000), Framber Valdez ($10,000) and Enoli Paredes ($10,000), fits into the former category. He signed for only $10,000 in March 2015, about a week before he turned 18, which is two years older than most international amateurs. He said he didn’t start pitching until he was 16. Until then, he was a slow-footed outfielder with a strong arm. After his position change, Javier caught the eye of Astros international scout Leocadio Guevara. Javier is from La Victoria, a small town just north of Santo Domingo, the capital city of the Dominican Republic. Guevara is from the same region and scouts it extensively. He brought Javier to the team’s Dominican complex for a tryout. In addition to his late switch to pitching, Javier also fell through the cracks because of his lack of velocity and doubts about how he projected physically. He is listed now at only 6-foot-1 and 204 pounds, but a pitcher being undersized has not deterred the Astros in recent years. Javier is quiet and speaks minimal English, though he’s trying to learn the language to better communicate with his teammates. He doesn’t show much emotion on the mound. When he first reached High A in 2018, his manager, Morgan Ensberg, and his pitching coach, Drew French, noticed while walking behind him on the field that Javier’s movements were always slow and deliberate. He was never late but also never in a hurry. His actions reminded them of a reptile. When he furthered the cold-blooded comparison with six no-hit innings in his High A debut, a new nickname was born: “Reptil,” the Spanish word for reptile. Javier made it to Triple A at only the end of last season, so he still has more to prove at the level. The extreme offensive atmosphere of the Pacific Coast League could double as an early season litmus test of his major league readiness. If his performance holds, he could be on a trajectory similar to Corbin Martin last year. Martin, who began last season in Triple A and was the same age Javier will be come Opening Day, debuted for the Astros on May 12 after a struggling Collin McHugh was bumped from the rotation to the bullpen. With uncertainty at the back end of their rotation, the Astros could be bound for another season in which they cycle through double-digit starters. Once the season begins, it will be only a matter of time before they give Javier an opportunity to see how his invisiball plays at the highest level.
Chuckie Robinson’s career highlight will be being quoted in the Athletic. I’ve never watched Christian Javier, but based on the article he kind of sounds like a mix between Kuechel and, funny enough, Javier Vazquez. Obviously TBD if he has anywhere near the success of those pitchers...but that’s what his pitching style sounds like based on the article. What’s the realistic outlook for him? Decent SP3?
It sounds like his fastball is similar to Josh Hader's in terms of arm slot and spin axis. Hader throws 3 mph harder and from the left side, but Javier has about 300 rpm on him. I doubt Javier's fastball will play quite as well as Hader's, but it's good to see how dominant that profile can be.
Apparently they're adding a rule to the minor leagues requiring pitchers to step off before a pick off move. It's too bad Straw is going to be mostly in the majors, because he might steal 100 bases at AAA.
This is a good point and it will be really interesting to see if we get vertical movement data from ST for Javier. It's hard to glean from movement/velocity why Hader's fastball is so hard to hit but when you see his release in slo-mo you can gather why batters have a hard time picking it up. His, wrist almost looks like a sling shot when he releases.
