Since I can’t go scout players in person as I usually would, I’ve been watching various young players so far this season to provide scouting-like notes from home, focusing on players who are either still rookies or just recently lost rookie eligibility but haven’t established themselves yet in the majors. This is the sixth in my series of scouting notebooks, covering some prospect performances from the last few days.
Triston McKenzie‘s prospect status took a hit after he missed all of 2019 with upper back and pectoral strains and half of 2018 with forearm soreness, but he’d been a top 100 prospect prior to last year because of his combination of stuff, exceptional command and big extension in his delivery. His major-league debut this year was one hell of a comeback statement, as he struck out 10 Tigers and allowed just three baserunners in six innings for the Indians — the longest start by any rookie pitcher so far in 2020 — where he showed exactly why he was my No. 19 overall prospect after the 2018 season.
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McKenzie worked from 93-97 in his debut, showing exquisite command for someone so young and with only about 320 pro innings before his callup. He located it very effectively down and away to right- and left-handed batters, and also was able to work with it just above the top of the zone to get chase swings. His changeup was his most effective pitch, with hitters swinging and missing at three of the nine he threw on the night; it doesn’t have much action, but hitters clearly don’t pick it up out of his hand. The one run he allowed was on a changeup, though, an 88 mph pitch that he left up, middle-in to Willi Castro, who either picked it up out of his hand or just guessed right and hammered the pitch out to right.
McKenzie’s breaking stuff is more average to fringe-average, but is effective because hitters just don’t seem to recognize his pitches – which I suspect is from his huge extension out over his front side, giving hitters very little time to react to what he throws. He used what appeared to be two distinct breaking balls, a curveball mostly 79-82 and a slider 86-89 (one of which got a swinging third strike against Miguel Cabrera), although he’d get caught in between and throw a slurve of sorts in the middle of those ranges. Although neither pitch has great spin or especially sharp break, the slider seems to fool hitters gearing up for the fastball. With that, the changeup, and his ability to put his fastball where he wants to three different sports at the edges of the zone, he looked even better than I had expected when I ranked him among the game’s top pitching prospects.
McKenzie wasn’t the only top pitching prospect to debut on Saturday night, as Sixto Sánchez, the main prospect going to the Marlins in the trade that sent J.T. Realmuto to the Phillies. Sánchez started the second game of a doubleheader against the Nationals, against yet another pitcher making his major-league debut, Wil Crowe. Sánchez has one of the best fastballs, by pure velocity, of any starter in professional baseball, hitting 100+ mph four times on Saturday according to Statcast data, and hitting 98+ twenty-one times, all in just 66 pitches. He was mostly 98-100 in the first four innings and looked easy doing it, with an above-average to plus changeup as his best secondary pitch, 87-91 with good fading action. His breaking stuff is just fair, mostly a slider at 85-89, but he got more swings and misses on the slider and curveball (4 out of 19 pitches) than he did on that blazing fastball (just 1 in 31 pitches). As hard as he throws, he was better on Saturday when he mixed in his other three weapons – and that’s especially important given how his velocity dropped in the fifth inning, when he was suddenly as low as 93 and lost 2 mph off his average fastball. If he can’t hold upper 90s past 50 or so pitches, either he has to learn to pitch far more with his offspeed stuff, or he’ll have to go to a different role.
Wil Crowe was the No. 5 prospect in the Nationals’ system and had quite the path to the majors. A possible first-round talent out of high school, Crowe slipped to the 31st round on concerns over his knees and his strong commitment to South Carolina. While at SC, he had Tommy John surgery and missed his junior year, so he slipped again, this time to the 21st round, and chose not to sign. He returned as a senior and had his best season, going in the second round to the Nats. He’s made steady progress through their system, reaching the majors this year at age 25, working as a strike-thrower with just average stuff, which is what he showed on Saturday. Crowe was 89-92, and his best pitch was his changeup — that’s a trend in this column, apparently — coming in at 83-84 with good arm speed and some fading action. His slider was solid average, and generated three of his four swings and misses, with the last coming on the changeup. He can spin the ball well but his fastball is pretty ordinary and Marlins hitters didn’t have much trouble squaring it up, which probably limits him to a fifth starter or swing role.
Joey Bart‘s arrival in the majors on Thursday meant that the top four picks from the 2018 draft class — Casey Mize, Bart, Alec Bohm and Nick Madrigal — have now all reached the majors, a good outcome for a draft class that also reflects how teams are now more college-heavy with high picks. Bart’s first few games as a Giant showed off his power — he nearly homered on a 95 mph fastball middle-away from a lefty, driving it to the right-field wall — and the issues he’s had with swing and miss, as he’s been chasing a lot of offspeed stuff out of the zone and also whiffing on breaking stuff in or near the zone. His arm hasn’t been tested yet, with just one steal attempt against him on a pitch that was in the dirt, so that one big part of his game hasn’t come into play yet. I’ve always seen Bart as a power bat who’ll probably struggle to hit for a good average because he’s going to swing and miss a lot. In this tiny sample of 15 plate appearances (including two times he was hit by pitches), that projection has held so far.
(Top photo: Jason Miller / Getty Images)
