Live From The Arizona Fall League: October 30, 2024

Hello everyone, happy Wednesday! We had a full slate of action yesterday, and today is Andrew Painter Day! I am heading out to Surprise right after I hit publish on this article for the start.

I have film on everyone on the Dynasty Dugout YouTube, so check that out and subscribe! Enjoy the reports from Tuesday’s action.

Arizona Fall League Recap: 10/30/24

Scottsdale (Chris)

Peyton Williams, 1B, TOR, 24

Williams is a big boy with big power. Standing at 6’5”/255, the former Iowa Hawkeye gets to juice with ease. Getting to see him in person, Williams is easily the biggest player here. He mashes too, hitting two home runs and adding a single in Tuesday’s action while driving in four runs. He reached base a fourth time via walk. In ten games so far in the AFL, Williams has seven extra-base hits.

During the regular season, Williams missed time due to injury, but over his 363 plate appearances, he slashed .288/.375/.476 with 11 home runs and 22 doubles.

Charlie Szykowny, 3B, SF, 24

A 2023 9th-round pick, Szykowny split the 2024 season between Single-A and High-A, where he slashed .295/.362/.451 with six home runs and 38 extra-base hits in 94 games. Having a strong 6’4”/225 lb frame, you might expect Szykowny to get to more power, but we could still see him tap into it despite his age. 

While he did not do anything out of the ordinary on Tuesday, Szykowny collected a triple and was one of the few extra-base hits that Scottsdale had.

Surprise (Chris)

Alejandro Osuna, OF, TEX, 22

Another day, another Alejandro Osuna writeup. Osuna continues to look like one of the more impressive hitters in Arizona, collecting five hits on Tuesday with a home run and a double. He drove in two runs out of the leadoff spot and looked strong in centerfield. 

Osuna has walked more than he has struck out while having eight extra-base hits so far this fall. The slash of .389/.535/.611 is also quite impressive. Osuna is a pure hitter.

Carter Jensen, C, KC, 21

Jensen is one of my favorite catching prospects in the game, and he has remained quite underrated. Jensen blasted his fourth fall home run and had to push his slash to .393/.514/.857. He has struck out just six times in 35 trips to the plate while also walking six times. The bat-to-ball skills are impressive, and Jensen has very strong plate discipline. 

Jensen is one of the more underrated prospects in the Minors, especially among the catching crop. He now gets to showcase his talent in Arizona. Jensen finished the year with 18 home runs, 22 doubles, six triples, and a surprising 17 stolen bases. He slashed .259/.359/.450 splitting his season between High-A and Double-A

Glendale (Chris)

Edwin Arroyo, SS, CIN, 21

Arroyo had a nice game on Tuesday, having two hits, including a triple, where he showed off his impressive speed. He reached base a third time via walk and swiped his fifth stolen base of the AFL. 

Arroyo missed the entire 2024 season due to a shoulder injury but is now playing in the Arizona Fall League. A torn labrum is a tough injury to recover from so I would take his AFL stats with a grain of salt. The stint in the AFL is all about getting healthy and his game timing back.

Thomas Saggese, INF, STL, 22

Saggese reached base in all four trips to the plate on Tuesday, having three singles and a walk. He showed good pitch recognition and rhythm in the box and really strong bat-to-ball skills. 

The 2024 regular season saw Saggese spend the majority of the year in Triple-A before debuting in the majors late in the year. In Triple-A, he slashed .253/.313/.438 with 20 home runs and nine stolen bases. On Thursday, Saggese smoked a ball 111 mph, which was a new season high, a massive jump from his 108.2 mph max exit velocity in the regular season. 

Matt McLain, MI/OF, CIN, 25

McLain probably has as much MLB service time as any player to spend significant time in the AFL. He did miss the entire 2024 season with shoulder shoulder surgery and then later had a stress reaction in his ribs. The ball jumps off McLain’s bat differently than any hitter I have heard out here as McLain does not have monster power, but he does square up the ball exceptionally well. 

He homered on Tuesday on a shot to dead center that traveled 431 feet with a 102 exit velocity. For reference on how the ball flies out here, there were only five home runs hit this season with an exit velocity of 102 mph or less that traveled at least 430 feet. They were all at Coors Field. It has only happened 16 times in the last four years, with 13 of them at Coors Field and two at Chase Field here in Phoenix.

Salt River (Beck)

Gino Groover, 3B, ARI, 22

We don’t talk enough about his legal name, LuJames. He’s putting up a spectacular batting average out here – .349 over 49 plate appearances – but has yet to record an extra-base hit. That should mean it comes as no surprise that his inclusion here comes on the back of a multi-hit effort (pretty much the only way you get highlighted without an extra-base hit) as he finished the day with three hits in five at bats, two runs scored, and an RBI.

Caleb Durbin, 2B, NYY, 24

This is inconsequential to everyone but the small group we’ve got playing Fantasy AFL (which includes Chris, Nate, and me). Durbin launched a “grand slam” in Tuesday’s game against Glendale that propelled Nate to first place as he looks to repeat his title from last year’s competition. He doesn’t have quite the same line he had last year, but he is threatening to eclipse his stolen base total and challenge the league record (he has 15 through 15 games; the record is 24). For what it’s worth, the slam he hit was clearly foul and not by a small margin.

Ben Ross, SS, MIN, 23

I’m supremely confident I’ve never written about Ben Ross because (1) look at the picture on his baseball reference page, it’ll stick with you and (2) he’s in the Twins system and I keep a pretty close eye on their farm given they’re the closest parent club to me. He was a fifth-rounder in 2022 out of Notre Dame College – not the Notre Dame you’re thinking of, the one in the Mountain East Conference. His numbers there and in the Northwoods League were off-the-page bonkers but haven’t yet translated to pro ball, where he’s struggled to crest the .700 OPS mark over the last year. His 29.5% strikeout rate in Double-A has a lot to do with that, but that’s not to say he doesn’t have the requisite tools to be productive with improvements to his bat-to-ball profile. He’s a prototypical 6-foot-nothing, 180-pound shortstop that is capable of putting a charge into it when he’s making contact. Until then, there probably isn’t much to see. He was 2-for-4 with a double and a walk on Tuesday.

Peoria (Beck)

Ethan Salas, C, SDP, 18

Salas has been one of the most productive bats in the circuit thus far, a stunning turnaround from his .206/.288/.311 line across 111 games with Fort Wayne this spring and summer. He belted his second home run of the year with a third-inning shot off Coleman Crow that ultimately proved futile. It’s hard to know what to make of his fall resurgence – we don’t know if he was physically hindered in some undisclosed way during the season (though he looked overmatched nearly every time I tuned in), the environment is rather friendly, and he’s still punched out 17 times in 61 plate appearances. He was 1-for-4 with a three-run homer in yesterday’s loss.

Colt Emerson, SS, SEA, 19

Emerson had a perfect day at the dish on Tuesday, in part because he only got one at-bat. He laced a double, stole third, played the field for a few innings, and then was replaced by Juan Baez in the bottom of the 3rd inning. It was not injury-related – he looked fine fielding his position before being swapped out. Emerson is vying for MVP honors with nine doubles, eight swipes, and a .970 OPS.

Juan Baez, 3B, MIL, 19

Baez relieved Colt Emerson of his duties at shortstop and subsequently went 1-for-4 with a triple. He’s having an even more productive AFL than his team- and position-mate, though in a smaller sample. He’s slashing .375/.490/.675 through 49 plate appearances with an even smattering of doubles, triples, and homers, with two of each. This is a significant departure from the remainder of his professional career to date, so I’d take it with a grain of salt. He’s no younger than Colt – he’s actually a little less than a month older – and his out-performance in a 12-game sample is relatively meaningless.

Jared Sundstrom, OF, SEA, 23

Sundstrom launched a solo shot in the 9th inning off of CJ Weins, which was a certified missile that left the bat at 107.3 mph and traveled 432 feet. He’s coming off of a relatively impressive year that saw him hit 13 home runs and 28 doubles, with two big caveats: he was playing at Everett and is 23 years old. That doesn’t dismiss the pop in his bat out of hand but it is helpful context for evaluating his .380 OBP and .813 OPS. He’s got surprising instincts for a guy who measures 6-foot-2, 230 pounds, and swiped 26 bags in 32 attempts during the regular season. It looks like there could be some interesting tools here, I’m just not taking signals from Everett and the AFL too seriously. Performance against advanced competition (and access to underlying data) should give us better information. I’m looking forward to seeing him in an hour when I land in Phoenix.

Mesa (Beck)

Brooks Brannon, C, BOS, 20

It was a bad day for Mesa all around. They managed just eight hits en route to four total runs and committed two errors along the way. Brannon accounted for three of the Solar Sox hits, one of which was a double, but was left stranded each time and had nobody on to drive in. He’s played well thus far – I know because I’ve stumbled over the Br-Br first-name-last-name alliteration too many times in the last few weeks – and currently sports a .333/.382/.510 line through 12 games. Brannon split equal time between catching, first base, and DHing during his 54-game regular season in Salem but has caught exclusively in the AFL, leaving some hope that he has a defensive home after all, but by all appearances (and by merit) Kyle Teel is the catcher of the future in Boston.

Jonathon Long, 1B, CHC, 22

I’m increasingly wary of a Matt Mervis situation developing again this year in the form of Jonathon Long. He’s been crushing the ball and finds himself tied for fourth place in the home run column after a 4th inning home run. He had a solid regular season, belting 17 homers in 114 games and running absurd numbers in a 46-game sample in Tennessee to end the year, but not quite as dominant as Mervis was leading up to their respective trips to the desert. In any event, he’s one of the players I’m most interested in seeing – but I’m also pretty skeptical. He’s a relatively under-sized right/right first baseman (or left fielder, which doesn’t necessarily mute my concerns) with a short pro track record that I have little-to-no underlying data on. He finished Tuesday’s game 1-for-3 with the aforementioned homer, a walk, and two runs scored.