Here’s the first dispatch from my trip to scout the Arizona Fall League, my first time back in my former home state in two full years. It’s really good to be back out here, and there is a ton of talent on these six rosters, with a slew of top-100 prospects and first-round picks.
Padres lefty MacKenzie Gore has been a cipher throughout 2021, coming into the year as the top pitching prospect in the minors but struggling so much with command and control that the Padres returned him to their spring training camp in Peoria to try to rework his arm action and just get him to hit the reset button. He started the first game in the Arizona Fall League on Wednesday, and if you’d walked in with no knowledge of his history, you’d probably wonder what all the fuss was about.
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Gore’s stuff was just about as good as ever on Wednesday, as he was 93-98 for his entire outing and hitting a lot of spots around the edges of the zone with the fastball. His slider and changeup were both plus, while the curveball was more of a grade 55 (above-average) pitch than the plus or plus-plus weapon I’ve seen from him before. His arm action is much shorter now, although the high leg kick is still there, and his overall tempo is faster, within the delivery and between pitches — he looks like someone who can’t wait to throw the next pitch, which is good to see from someone who’s had a hard time throwing strikes.
Gore threw 88 pitches, 56 for strikes, with the automated strike zone in play at Salt River Fields, which tends to result in a smaller strike zone than we normally see from human umps. He did give up a two-run double to Spencer Torkelson, who identified a changeup in a good changeup count, after getting Torkelson with 98 mph on the previous at-bat, so Gore’s final line wasn’t as good as you might guess from how good he looked. We’ll see if he repeats this his next time out for Peoria, but it certainly looks like he’s back.
• Zack Thompson was the Cardinals’ first-round pick in 2019 but threw just 13 innings in High A that summer and wasn’t able to pitch in 2020 due to the pandemic, so the decision to start him in Triple A this year was surprising, and he struggled badly, with a 7.06 ERA and awful peripherals. The good news is that Thompson looked sharp in a dominant three-inning relief outing on Wednesday night, sitting 92-95 with good life along with two grade 55 to 60 offerings in his curve and changeup. The curveball had tight rotation and some two-plane break, coming in at 73-77, while his changeup was very deceptive at 85-87 with some late tailing action. He faced 10 batters, struck out five, and only allowed one baserunner on his own fielding error on a groundball. Maybe the jump to Triple A was too much to ask, and it’s possible that he’ll never have great command with so much action on his stuff, but I wouldn’t give up on him after the horrible year in Memphis.
• Giants reliever Gregory Santos missed most of the 2021 minor-league season while serving an 80-game suspension for a positive PED test, which came after his two-inning cup of coffee back in April, but he was back and still electric on Wednesday. He was 96-101, hitting that high mark on his final pitch of the night, with a wipeout slider at 85-88 and some semblance of a changeup at 89-90. He’s a straight reliever but there’s upside here if he’s healthy and not suspended, with two pitches that are both likely to miss a lot of bats.
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• The hitters are behind the pitchers, as the hoary scouting axiom goes, through one day, with a ton of strikeouts in the two games outside of Salt River (without the automated strike zone). Triston Casas (Boston) did hit a long home run on a 93 mph fastball, later singling past a shifted second baseman. Torkelson had that aforementioned double on a changeup that showed great pitch recognition on his part. Nolan Gorman (St. Louis) hit a homer that probably still hasn’t come down, and made a nice play at second where he recovered from a bad first step to get his glove to the ball and still record the out. Brett Baty (Mets) reached base four times, including a hard-hit single on a 95 mph fastball from Gore — especially promising as Baty is a left-handed hitter. One name absent from the Opening Day lineups was CJ Abrams, who is on the Peoria roster but apparently wasn’t ready to play on Day 1.
(File photo of MacKenzie Gore from March 23: Sue Ogrocki / Associated Press)
