Some notes from the Somerset/Altoona game on Friday night at Somerset’s TD Bank Ballpark…
• Mason Martin has been on the fringes of the Pirates’ prospect pile since Pittsburgh took him in the 17th round in 2017; he hit 11 homers in 39 games in the Gulf Coast League that summer. He had a big three-true-outcomes year in 2019, with 35 homers, 68 walks, and 168 strikeouts between Low A and High A, hitting .239/.333/.528 at the higher level as a 20-year-old.
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He’s carried that forward and then some this year in Double A, with 18 homers already for Altoona in 63 games and a .272/.343/.600 line for the Curve. Martin is striking out a third of the time, and not walking nearly enough (7.5 percent) to make up for that — his OBP is held up by 7 HBP, too — but I think he’s a better hitter than that might indicate, and while he might need more time to become a big-league regular than a typical 22-year-old in Double A does, there’s at least everyday upside here.
Martin’s swing is big, but it is not out of control or wild. He takes a big stride, loads deep, and swings hard, but he gets the bat head to the zone on time for good fastballs and the contact he makes is hard. When I saw him on Friday night against some good Yankee prospect arms, he hit a pair of balls hard, smoking a 95 mph fastball for a double, struck out once on a fastball middle-in on the ninth pitch of an at-bat, ran through a stop sign, and then struck out in ugly fashion on three off-speed pitches, missing two breaking balls by about a foot. It was a full evening’s work — but he either hit or fouled off a lot of good pitches in the zone, and I’m not sure why he expanded the zone in his last at-bat. I see a guy who can hit anything in or near the zone hard, and who would project as a regular right now with just a small reduction in his chase rate. He’s a first baseman only, so he has to hit, but he makes so much hard contact — more than half of his hits this year have gone for extra bases — that he could probably strike out 25-30 percent of the time and still produce enough to play every day.
• This was my first look at Ji-Hwan Bae in person since seeing him in spring training a few years ago. He’s at least a 60 defender at short, maybe a 70, with great range to his left, a plus arm, good hands, and very good instincts on groundballs. But that’s a below-average bat, and likely to stay that way barring some major swing overhaul — it’s very inside-out and designed to avoid swings and misses, with no path to drive the ball.
He shouldn’t be on the team, in any case: He was convicted in South Korea in October 2018 of violently assaulting his girlfriend, who subsequently asked the Pirates to release him.
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• Omar Cruz started for Altoona, where he’s been for a month after a promotion from High-A Greensboro. Cruz came to the Pirates in the Joe Musgrove trade, a finesse lefty with a very good changeup but a below-average breaking ball and neither the deception nor the command to profile as a starter. Cruz was 87-93 and got away with some poorly placed fastballs early because of the changeup, but his second and third times through Somerset’s order, that trick didn’t work, and he walked four of the last 10 hitters he faced. He performed well in the low minors but he has to find some other way to get Double-A hitters out, because this arsenal and this lack of command — or even just control — won’t cut it.
• Right fielder Cal Mitchell‘s July swoon continued with an 0-for-4 night full of non-competitive at-bats. Mitchell’s carrying tool back when he was drafted out of high school in the second round in 2017 was supposed to be his bat, but he didn’t perform in 2019 and he looked overmatched all night against Somerset. Outfielder Canaan Smith-Njigba, on the other hand, still looks like a solid fourth outfielder, capable of hitting right-handed pitching for average and some doubles power with a patient approach. He was part of Pittsburgh’s return for Jameson Taillon this winter, along with right-hander Roansy Contreras, who is on the injured list for Altoona and didn’t pitch in this series.
• Somerset right-hander Hayden Wesneski was 93-96 as the Patriots’ starter, giving up a couple of runs in the first and then cruising until he ran into trouble in the fifth and was pulled after 4 2/3. The Yankees’ sixth-round pick out of Sam Houston State in 2019, Wesneski has a very hard, straight changeup at 85-89 and a sharp-breaking curveball at 78-83. He dominated High A before a callup to Somerset in June, but Double A hitters have had better luck squaring up his arsenal, which Altoona did at a few points last night. I don’t see much movement on either the fastball or changeup, and the breaking ball moves a lot but is also easy to see early out of his hand. It might not have been his best night, so he could still have more starter potential than I saw, but this stuff out of the bullpen might be really nasty.
• Shortstop Oswald Peraza has been one of several Yankees prospects to have breakout seasons this year, with a .297/.365/.502 line between High A and Double A so far. He was the DH for the Patriots on Friday, so I didn’t get to see him at short, while at the plate, he had one hard-hit double and a line-drive single, yet he swung and missed at several fastballs and changeups in or just outside the zone — even though he faced lefties most of the night. He has strong hands and I buy the power, but that average/OBP doesn’t line up well with the approach I saw.
• Dermis Garcia isn’t a viable prospect anymore — he hasn’t improved at all in four years — but man, does he have some unbelievable power. He nearly homered once on a fastball he got towards the end of the bat, only to have center fielder Johan Davis get his glove over the wall to steal it. So Dermis homered again, for real, in the sixth. He has 80 power and a 30 hit tool, but his at-bats are more competitive than you’d think; he seems to lay off enough stuff out of the zone, but within the zone, it’s like someone triple-distilled Joey Gallo to extract some sort of swing-and-miss flavored whiskey.
(Photo of Martin: Mike Janes / Four Seam Images via AP)
