Live from the Arizona Fall League: October 31, 2024

Happy Halloween! Thanks for spending some of your day with us at Dynasty Dugout! With Beck in town, we were able to cover both 1:30 games between us before both being at the nightcap in Mesa. There was a ton to see and plenty of good notes. Let’s get to it.

Arizona Fall League Recap: 10/31/24

Glendale (Chris)

Andrew Painter, RHP, PHI, 21

Painter was highly impressive in my live look on Wednesday, tossing three scoreless innings on just 33 pitches. He was highly efficient, landing 25 of his pitches for strikes and flashing all four pitches of his arsenal. 

While he was fastball-heavy early, as the start went on, Painter showed more secondaries, including his changeup. The fastball averaged 97 on the starts and touched 99 with its strong movement profile. It explodes on hitters thanks to the heavy extension that Painter gets.

The curveball was nasty and froze several hitters, showing good depth with some horizontal movement. It sat around 81 mph while his slider sat in the upper 80s. 

The changeup sat around 91 mph with carry and late fading action, though the horizontal movement was inconsistent. 

Painter checked every box for me. Considering he is just ten innings deep of game action since coming back from Tommy John, the stuff was impressive as was his command. He really only missed his spot once in the start. This is the top pitching prospect in baseball.

Zyhir Hope, OF, LAD, 19

While he did not collect a hit in the game, I must mention Hope since it was my first time seeing him in game action. He hit a couple of long-fly balls, but the swing you see below produced a mammoth foul ball that just missed staying in play for a home run. Hope is everything you hope to see. He has a strong frame while still being very athletic. He has major pop for a 19-year-old. Hope is a dude.

Otto Kemp, INF, PHI, 25

Kemp made my underrated hitters to target before the AFL, where I said: 

He continues to perform and hit his fifth AFL home run yesterday on a 105 mph shot. Kemp is showing good plate discipline and contact. He should play a nice utility role for the Phillies in 2025.

Surprise (Chris)

Chase DeLauter, OF, CLE, 23

Health will always be the biggest hindrance in DeLauter’s career. If he can overcome the consistent foot issues and nagging injuries, he has all the talent in the world. In fact, DeLauter might have a 60-grade hit, power, and run tool. But they say the best tool is availability, and that is the case here. DeLauter played just 39 regular season games due to injuries in 2024, which followed up a 2023 season where he played 57. He will have to stay healthy to reach his true potential.

DeLauter had two doubles on Wednesday, including one that nearly left the yard and the other off Andrew Painter. The swing is short and does not look aesthetically pleasing, but it really does not bother me. DeLauter gets to immense power still, has great barrel control, and really does not slow down until after contact. The swing is going to play.

Collin Price, C, HOU, 24

You would be hard-pressed to find someone behind the plate as tall as Price is, standing at 6’4”. Spending the majority of the 2024 season in Double-A, Price mashed 13 home runs and had 16 doubles in 100 games while slashing .227/.327/.391.

Price had a two-hit game on Wednesday, including a mammoth home run that had a 37-degree launch angle that kept traveling. The former sixth-rounder out of Mercer will likely end up at first base and will have a lot of pressure on his bat.

Marc Church, RHP, TEX, 23

Church made his debut with the Ranger in 2024, but it was just one inning of work. He missed extended time this year and pitched just 26 innings total where he posted a 4.21. After watching Church on Wednesday, he looks like a solid MLB bullpen piece. 

Closing out the game for Surprise, Church faced the top of the Glendale lineup, needing just nine pitches for a perfect inning, which included two strikeouts. Church’s slider sat around 90 mph, while his fastball reached 99 mph. Church mixed a couple of 93 mph changeups as well. The arsenal was absolutely electric.

Scottsdale (Chris)

Adrian Pinto, 2B/OF, TOR, 22

It was an interesting day for the entire Scottsdale team, but Pinto was one of the constants. He reached base four times with a single, double, and two walks. He even stole his third base of the fall league. 

While being a little undersized, Pinto has good barrel control and makes a ton of contact. Pinto played just 26 games in 2024 due to injury, but he slashed an impressive .330/.378/.573 with four home runs. Being an undersized bat, Pinto is hit over power but has the tools to be a solid utility-type bat. He will need a strong 2025 season to prove he can stay healthy and perform at higher levels.

Drew Gilbert, OF, NYM, 24

2025 feels like a huge season for Gilbert and how he factors into the Mets’ future plans. Gilbert strained his hamstring on April 6 and missed over three months of action. Upon return, Gilbert showed struggles, slashing just .215/.313/.393 in Triple-A, but he did hit ten home runs with eight doubles in 56 games. Being on the smaller side, power has always been a question, but Gilbert lifts the ball often and regularly gets to the pull side.

The exit velocity data was underwhelming as Gilbert posted just an 85 mph average exit velocity and a 101 mph 90th percentile. The contact data was solid, though, as he made contact on 74 percent of swings and 84 percent of swings in the zone. Gilbert chased at a better-than-average 26 percent rate, which helped lead to an 11 percent walk rate.

On Wednesday night, Gilbert looked highly impressive as he smoked three line drives deep to the outfield. He was robbed on a diving catch once, and another was hit right at Denzel Clarke in centerfield. He finally got one to fall in the eighth inning to add to his two walks from earlier in the game.

Sammy Siani, OF, PIT, 23

Siani just keeps hitting. He has looked really good in the outfield, in my opinion, and has swung the bat really well, having a steady line-drive approach. He smoked two singles on Wednesday night and drove in three runs. He might be knocking on the door of seeing time in Pittsburgh’s outfield. 

Siani is a former first-round pick in 2019 but has failed to live up to the hype over the years. Spending most of 2024 in Double-A Altoona, Siani slashed .265/.338/.401 with nine home runs and 33 extra-base hits. 

Salt River (Beck)

Ryan Ritter, SS, COL, 23

Ritter, like Wilken, is having a tough go in Arizona. He had an excellent year in 2023, climbing to Double-A and maintaining a .281/.383/.519 slash with 24 home runs and 20 stolen bases along the way. He spent all of the regular season in Hartford this year and saw the performance decline you might expect for a player making the jump from Spokane, but was solid overall. He’s a pretty impressive physical specimen, too, and has enough athleticism to play a good shortstop despite a muscular 6-foot-1 build. Seeing him in person made me really want to understand what the flaw is that’s holding everyone back. It’s a tale as old as time: a great athlete with above-average power who can’t handle good breaking stuff. He’s only going to see more of it as he progresses, but if he makes adjustments, I’m pretty intrigued. He got a hold of a Jimmy Kingsbury sinker and sent it out at 112.2 mph to walk off the Javelinas yesterday, ultimately finishing 1-for-4 with two strikeouts in what was a microcosm of his profile writ large.

Tommy Troy, SS, ARI, 22

Troy finished the day 2-for-4 despite failing to put a ball in play over 80 mph. That’s baseball, Suzyn. That said, he looked a lot more like a professional hitter than his teammates, and he’s playing pretty darn well out here. It’s a forgiving environment – defenses are bad, the ball flies similar to how it might in Coors, and the pitching is generally pretty bad (we only saw a couple of arms eclipse 95 mph on their fastball, which isn’t everything, but it’s telling) – but it’s still a positive sign all things considered. He played shortstop in this game (he’s got eight games at 2B and five at SS so far), but it was pretty clear to me that he’s not a long-term fit. I don’t like to make declarative statements about defense after just a handful of innings but he was shaky out there.

Gino Groover, 3B, ARI, 22

Travel meant we were pulling up to our seats just as Groover squibbed a 73.6 mph double down the first baseline. It goes down in the box score as a screaming liner (unless you check the Savant feed), which really underscores the importance of seeing these guys play, whether that be on a video feed or in person. He was moving pretty well for his size, to be fair, and he was more physically imposing than I had imagined. I don’t think it’s crazy to consider him a top-200 prospect at the moment, but the difference between #200 and #400 is pretty small.

Peoria (Beck)

Drake Baldwin, C, ATL, 23

Baldwin had a good day at the dish, finishing 2-for-4 with a pair of singles and a walk. It wasn’t necessarily spectacular – all of his batted balls were between 90 and 100 mph, and none went for extra bases – but it’s clear he can really swing it. The primary reason he’s here is to note how obviously tired he is at this point in the year; he’s played 137 games between the regular season and AFL, up from last year’s figure of 109, and even further up from his previous career high of 60 with Missouri State. That exhaustion mostly manifested in his defense – we saw the Rafters take three bags off of him, though they could be almost entirely charged to the pitcher, as well as a wild pitch he just didn’t make the effort to stop. The fact that he’s carrying a .377/.452/.491 line, despite testing his stamina to this degree, is encouraging.

Brock Wilken, 3B, MIL, 22

Wilken’s AFL line is ugly, there’s no two ways about it. He left last night’s game with two hits in five at-bats, a single and a double, neither of which were hit very hard. The double was an AFL special – off the bat at 88.8 mph but carried to the wall down the line in left. Here’s primarily because I was almost certain he’d have to move to first base early in his career, but I saw soft hands and quick actions that made me rethink my stance on his defensive capabilities. He’ll never be rangy, but he might be serviceable in a manner that does not elicit early-career Ryan Braun comps. It’s only a few innings, and time will tell.

Luis Lara, OF, MIL, 19

Lara pinch ran for Jared Sundstrom in the 6th inning and finished out the game with a pair of singles that just barely left the infield, and each drove in a runner. Neither were hit particularly hard – the first left the bat at 100.5 mph, so hard hit definitionally and certainly for his standards, but not enough to crack the Savant game feed leaderboard – but both were good pieces of hitting. There’s an intriguing set of skills in his profile; he’s a good defender, he has some wheels, and he’s pretty darn good at putting the bat on the ball. He’s hitterish. On the other hand, he’s listed at 5-foot-7, and I would take the under on that figure one hundred percent of the time. I wondered if perhaps the bat was longer than he is tall. That casts a small shadow (get it?) on his future as a big-league hitter. He may not be able to do enough damage for the superlatives in his skillset to break through.

Leo De Vries, SS, SDP, 18

De Vries didn’t do much of substance at the plate on Wednesday, but he was easily the smoothest infield defender I saw. Others we saw man the six were less fluid, had less range, or were less sure-handed, and I get where the hype is coming from even outside of his offensive potential. Zyhir Hope and Jesus Made have been the helium guys of late but De Vries has just as much (or more) #1 overall prospect potential.

Mesa (Beck)

Nick Kurtz, 1B, OAK, 21

Kurtz finished the day 3-for-4 with a dinger, and the homer was my first “oh wow” moment of this year’s AFL trip. It was a majestic blast to left center that sounded different off the bat and offered a little reprieve from one of the sloppiest professional baseball games I can recall attending. His other hits were less impressive – a pair of singles – but Kurtz stands out in just about every way on a diamond. 

Jonathan Long, 3B, CHC, 22

This blurb has less to do with his day at the dish (2-5, a couple of singles) and more to do with where I think he’ll end up defensively, which is probably first base. He committed an ugly fielding error just a little after I said out loud I wanted to see how he looked at third. That’s a bit troubling; I’ve said it a lot, but right-handed first basemen have a really high bar to clear on offense, and he’s undersized for that kind of role. I think the bat is legitimate, but it may not cut it if Michael Busch is manning the position in the foreseeable future.

Moises Ballesteros, C, CHC, 20

Bless Ballesteros’ heart. He caught a full game in which Mesa issued twelve walks and gave up ten hits, which is like catching a game and a half. There were some interruptions to play, too and a lot of pitching changes, so my thoughts and prayers are with his quads. He had a ho-hum game at the dish, walking twice and lacing a line drive into center field for a single. In a grotesque way, his profile reminds me of Pete Crow-Armstrong in that they both showed big issues with chase in their Triple-A stints, and both were young for the level. Transparently, I’m not sure what to make of it. I think there’s enough contact and power for it to play, and discipline can be learned (not saying it’s easy, but it can be done easier than adding a few ticks of EV), so there’s more potential growth for him. I’m ultimately leaving the 2024 season far more bullish on him than I entered it.