MINOR LEAGUE NOTES WEEK 3: ORELVIS GOES OFF
Success-wise, the past week like like an inverted pyramid throughout the Blue Jays organization. While the big league team took two three game sets to go 4-2 and Buffalo did the same at the Triple-A level, the rest posted losing marks. Vancouver and Dunedin were the mirror image each going 2-4, and New Hampshire dropped five straight to Portland after a decisive first game win.
There were however plenty of noteworthy performances and developments worth highlighting. What follows are some notes and observations that stood out to me over the past week.
- The obvious name to discuss this week is Orelvis Martinez, who pummeled Columbus pitching for five home runs including one tape measure extra inning grand slam that made the internet rounds a few days ago:
While I’m highly skeptical it was actually 469 feet (some of the minor league tracking systems have calibration issues; on Sunday Orelvis sailed another bomb clear over the CF batting eye measured at a clearly erroneous 410 feet which would be barely over the fence), the power when he connects is indisputable and incredible. He’s been getting to it in-game while critically holding the strikeouts in check (21%) and might be pretty close to busting his way to the big leagues. So is it a big arrow on his outlook?
I’ve been (relatively) bearish in that regard the past few years, fearing that he ends up a “Quadruple-A” free-swinging slugger who can hit for power and run into balls, but strikes out 30%+ of the time while not walking much to largely negate it (think a Juan Francisco statistical profile). The players who do combine prodigious power and strikeout rates for above average production tend to draw walks.
In the back of my head I keep going back to last April when he was almost comically bad and overmatched as pitchers literally just fed him any type of breaking ball off the plate and he just flailed and flailed. He did rebound nicely, and optimistically has shown some ability to adjust and mitigate. Triple-A pitching is frequently trying the same approach and he’s still prone to bouts of flailing at them. Major league pitching only figures to be more effective at executing and exploiting that playbook. Given what he’s done to start 2024, I would increase the odds of impact level outcomes, but in my view the risk factors still flash yellow. At this point at it’s probably the case that we’re just going to find out at the major league level.
- Alek Manoah made another start for Buffalo, and while I wasn’t able to catch it to add any insights, it was good to see some positive results with just 2 runs over 5.2 innings.
- I did catch Chad Dallas’s start Saturday, which just underlined my thinking. The first time through the order he looked very good, recording four of five strikeouts while leaning on his fastball/curveball combination that was highly effective. He was much less effective after that, his velocity dipped a touch and he went cutter heavy to try and keep hitters off balance.
- Down in New Hampshire, Josh Kasevich has been a catalyst at the top of the order, posting a .364/.426/.436 line, though tailing off the past couple weeks. He’s done a very nice job squaring balls up, but my overall impression is that the impact has still been fairly pedestrian. It’s positive just that his offensive profile continues to hold up in Double-A, but fundamentally I’m not seeing a breakout towards the type of 70-hit tool FanGraphs as suggested as upside. More underwhelming has been in his work in the field, failing to convert a few ground balls that were pretty routine.
- One player who has impressed and even wowed defensively is Arjun Nimmala. Over the weekend he made a particularly beautiful play as the D-Jays had a shift on with the second baseman swung over towards the line such that he had no chance on a topper about 10 feet wide of the bag. Nimmala came swooping across to only stop the ball from getting through into centre, but transferred and made an off-balance play to just nab the runner. Then on Sunday he redeemed an errant throw with by turning an incredibly smooth 6-unassisted double play. His bat got most of the attention in the run-up to the draft, but he’s looking like an easy plus defender.
- A very under-the-radar Dunedin name: Christian Feliz, a big lefty hitter with the ability to seriously impact the ball. Granted, he has some contact issues that make Orelvis look like Tony Gwynn by comparison (striking out more than 50% and >40% the last two years on the cmplex). That’s probably fatal, but very few prospects can produce the really high end exit velocities he flashes from time to time.
- Finally, on the Dunedin pitching front I was excited to get a first good look at several pitchers. As advertised, Juaron Watts-Brown showed two very good breaking balls, barely used his change-up but flashed one very good one, and battled control while getting hit pretty good. Grant Rogers (11th round 2023) showed a quality three pitch mix and effectively managed contact for five innings before being touched up in the 6th. Kai Peterson is another intriguing low slot lefty. A good look at Sebastian Espino’s breaking ball was not as dynamic as hoped, not the sharp weapon I thought it might be from a poor angle.
- Closing on a more sour note, Landen Maroudis exited his start Sunday in the third inning with apparent injury, which would be the third significant pitching prospect to be afflicted with arm problems (Brandon Barriera hasn’t appeared since exiting opening weekend, and Ricky Tiedemann missed his turn this past week). Notably, his curveball did not have the dynamic snap in the first inning or so. It was coming around by the end of the second though, but starting the third his first couple fastballs were high-80s, with a few ticking up tot he low-90s but well short of the 94-95 he was routinely hitting prior. And then he came out.