The Cardinals are making waves on the big prospect front, and we’re here to cover it.
Five Big Hype Prospects
Nolan Gorman, 22, 2B/3B, STL (AAA)
147 PA, 15 HR, 3 SB, .308/.367/.677
Once the move is official, the Cardinals will become the first team to roster two Nolans at once (I assume). Baseball has come a long way since its origins. From 1878 through 1885, the sport featured a player known as The Only Nolan.
Trivia aside, Gorman will be the latest top prospect to make his debut. Power has always been his calling card, though this is the first season he’s getting to it in games at such a blistering rate. It comes at a price. He had a 34 percent strikeout rate, and he didn’t walk often (8.2 percent walk rate). In my experience, prospects with questionable discipline tend to have volatile debuts. Opponents sometimes quickly seize upon the player’s weaknesses, making it necessary for the hitter to immediately adjust. Other times, opponents accidentally wander into the batter’s nitro zone, leading to an explosive debut. The slump comes later. Players with these plate discipline markers always slump at some point. We’ll soon see if Gorman enters the league with a rampage, a whimper, or something in between.
Matthew Liberatore, 22, SP, STL (AAA)
40 IP, 10.35 K/9, 2.70 BB/9, 3.83 ERA
I’ve been wondering which of Liberatore or Zack Thompson would make their debut first. We now have our answer. Originally acquired in the Randy Arozarena trade, Liberatore was viewed by many at the time as the best player in the trade. Arozarena’s early-career heroics led us to revise our opinion of what looked like a rare misstep for the Rays, but Liberatore is now poised to help complete the analysis.
As a public, we’ve learned a lot about pitching since that trade, and new findings help to put the deal in context. While the southpaw grades out well on a pitch-by-pitch basis – his fastball is mid-90s, his curve has lovely shape, and his slider is a borderline wipeout offering – the repertoire as a whole doesn’t quite mesh. His fastball is built to work low in the zone so it doesn’t tunnel with his curve. It also plays down for other reasons – in short, some hitters are able to identify it out of the hand. There’s still enough here for a solid big-league pitcher, the profile just isn’t as exciting as it once was.
Alek Thomas, 22, OF, ARI (MLB)
39 PA, 2 HR, .316/.333/.553
Thomas is off to a sizzling start. As expected, he’s hitting for average and even has a pair of home runs. Beneath the surface are a few modest causes for concern. He’s known for his plate discipline, but his 2.6 percent walk and 20.5 percent strikeout rates are both worse than many hoped. His swing rates on pitches in and out of the zone are roughly league average. As an industry, we expected him to be more discerning. Thomas is a ground ball-oriented hitter who uses all fields. The profile remains that of a leadoff hitter who can go 15/15 while posting a top batting average and on-base percentage.
Royce Lewis, 23, SS, MIN (AAA)
(MLB) 40 PA, 2 HR, .308/.325/.564
Lewis had a lovely debut for the Twins. He was neither overmatched nor out of his element. The top prospect showed he belonged by flashing power, a high rate of contact, and adequate plate discipline. His aggressiveness as a hitter often worked against him in the lower minors, but Lewis has worked to improve. He posted a 15.3 percent walk rate in Triple-A. While his 2.5 percent walk rate in the majors implies he was free swinging, his swing rates at pitches in and out of the zone were roughly league average. His two home runs were backed by gaudy exit velocities. He maxed out at 114-mph, on par with Mike Trout (114.4), Julio Rodriguez (114), and Bryce Harper (113.8), among others.
For now, he returns to Triple-A in deference to Carlos Correa. The move raised some eyebrows (including mine) due to the struggles of Jose Miranda (.094/.143/.189) and Gio Urshela (.229/.293/.330). Having shown his bat belongs, Lewis will presumably spend the next few weeks preparing to return at a new position. In his first game back at Triple-A, he went 3-for-3 with a home run and a stolen base.
Grayson Rodriguez, 22, SP, BAL (AAA)
37.1 IP, 13.74 K/9, 3.13 BB/9, 2.65 ERA
While we were looking elsewhere, Rodriguez might have completed the final step in his ascension to the Majors. On Tuesday, he faced 23 batters while pitching 5.1 innings. He’d faced 19 batters in his previous four starts. He held the Charlotte Knights scoreless on three hits, three walks, and 11 strikeouts. If there’s a small measure of concern for the right-handed changeup artist, it’s that he’s allowed 4.74 BB/9 over his last four starts. We’re approaching a point in the season where teams might be tempted to push a debut past the nebulous Super Two deadline. That would probably entail at least another full month in the minors.
Five More
Adley Rutschman (24): Rutschman watch continues unabated. He’s passed the rehab hurdles set for him. Over the last week, he hit .261/.370/.522 with two home runs, three walks, and one strikeout. His debut could come within the next week, possibly even this weekend.
C.J. Abrams (21): After skipping Triple-A by earning a spot on the Opening Day roster, Abrams looked overmatched in 65 big-league plate appearances. Optioned to the minors, he’s hitting .216/.293/.459 with three home runs and three steals in 41 Triple-A plate appearances. The results are modestly encouraging despite the low average and OBP.
Marco Luciano (20): Last season, Luciano’s plate approach deteriorated upon a promotion to High-A. Repeating the level, he’s back to his usual ways, hitting .300/.366/.530 with six home runs in 112 plate appearances. He’s hit especially well over his last 60 plate appearances. He’s trending towards a promotion to Double-A.
Chase Silseth (22): Silseth, who also appeared here last week, had a strong debut. He recorded an 11.1 percent swinging strike rate thanks mostly to his frequently-used splitter. His fastball and slider also looked like plus offerings.
Corbin Carroll (21): Over the last week, Carroll hit .435/.552/1.043 with three home runs, two triples, a double, and two stolen bases. He’s overdue for a promotion to Triple-A. Should that go equally well, we could see him in the Majors later this season.
“5 more” dk what team they play for. Anyway u can list them with organization. Thanks BJ2…great article!
Rutschman – Baltimore
Abrams – San Diego
Luciano – San Francisco
Silseth – LA Angels
Carroll – Arizona
Just to save people time.
Thanks for this. It would be nice for them to tag them in the team feeds too.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing. Article was poorly written. The opening paragraph on Nolan was pointless, who cares.
Yeah let’s complain about a free app with tremendous content.
The content is generally regurgitated stuff available elsewhere. The comments however are priceless.
Where is this “regurgitated” from? “Generally” usually means your generalizing and don’t know. You may find the same news on other sites, but these guys always have it fast and sometimes first. And overall, the writing is first rate.
I love MLBTR and appreciate all they do, and I enjoyed the playful opening paragraph about Nolans. That being said, it’s inconsistent to list teams for the first five players but not for the second five, and including them for all would be an improvement.
22 losses with a 2.57 ERA. Fielding must have been atrocious
Dead ball era. Those scores make soccer look like basketball. Although he did give up 208 runs with only 99 of them earned. So yeah defense was probably not good.
The much weirder stat for him is 56 walks in 347 innings and it was the most in the league. That would be in Cy Young contention in today’s game
Four balls was only adopted as the threshold for a walk in 1889. Before that, it was various numbers, all higher than four, and originally there was no such thing as a walk (as it is in cricket).
The 1977 California Angels had both Nolan Ryan and Gary Nolan on the same team. Technically they were the first Nolan duo.
And the LA Rams who shared Anaheim Stadium had Nolan Cromwell.
I was going to say that. Nice catch! Good bit of history there!
dick nolan was close
The comment on Liberatore is interesting. One often doesn’t think enough about how well a pitcher’s repertoire works together, just how each individual pitch moves. It’s probably a hugely important deal that I’m sure teams think about all the time. Just hadn’t really considered it before.
Pitch tunneling has actually been a big thing for several years now.
Nick Prato should be joining Witt Jr. and Melendez in KC as soon as they decide to send Carlos Santana back out on tour for the summer.
Zach Thompson may be lucky to get to majors, period. As a Cardinals fan I can say he is very underwhelming. I could see him end up in the pen to play up his slider. Guess it is good for him to keep starting now to face any many batters as possible to learn the game.
The two Dbacks prospects listed here (Thomas and Carroll) are creating nice problems for the Dbacks. The Dbacks outfield is already left handed heavy, and both Thomas and Carroll are left handed hitters. As is budding star C/CF Daulton Varsho. Thomas has basically taken over CF because Varsho is needed at C while both Dbacks catchers are injured.
In a best case scenario, left handed LF David Peralta heats up and is traded mid-season, so Carroll can be called up. And the other best case scenario is that right handed OF Kristian Robinson can finally resolve his legal issues and join Thomas and Carroll in the ideal, near future Dbacks OF!
39 plate appearances is not nearly a meaningful same size in which to draw conclusions on Alek Thomas.
*sample*
Well, duh.
Thomas is an aggressive hitter to the point where the D-backs had to handicap him (had to take Strike 1 before he was allowed to swing) in AA last year to make him work on putting together longer ABs. In his first 40 PA, he’s taken one walk and has averaged 3.2 pitches per plate appearance. That’s not a huge concern while he’s hitting, because he’s making good contact all around right now while teams don’t have a good idea for his strengths/weaknesses at the MLB level. Once he starts slumping, that could be a problem. I think he’ll get more selective with a better idea of what pitches he can drive and which ones will likely turn into easy outs if he swings at them.
He went 2-4 today, hitting his 3rd HR. The future is bright for this young man.
yeah, let’s just ignore that he’s also hit quite well in the Minors.
Lol on the two Nolan’s crack (probably)
I don’t think Carroll reaches the bigs this season but wouldn’t be surprised to see him break camp in 2023
This year is making sure he can stay healthy. He’d have to really struggle next Spring to not break camp with the D-backs next year.
The 1977 California Angels had Nolan Ryan and Gary Nolan. Does that count?
Yes it is sad that I went and looked this stuff up.
What’s sadder is us old guys that lived it.