The Arizona Fall League has concluded, putting a final wrap on the 2023 season. The Surprise Saguaros took home the hardware – not that that means anything to most readers. Jakob Marsee managed to sneak by Offensive Player of the Year James Triantos for the top OPS and MVP honors. Liam Hicks took home the batting title. Twin sluggers Kala’i Rosario and Aaron Sabato shared the home run title. Ricky Tiedemann won the AFL Pitcher of the Year award over Davis Daniel. Additional awards can be viewed here.
Listed stats are from the AFL.
Five Big Hype Prospects
Kyle Manzardo, 23, 1B, CLE
101 PA, 6 HR, .272/.340/.565
Manzardo finished the campaign on a strong note. He reached base three times in the championship game and homered twice in the semi-final while leading a nine-run comeback. The 2023 season represented a small step back in Manzardo’s prospect status. Due to an extreme fly ball approach, he struggled to reach base on balls in play. While no slouch in the power department, his exit velocities hovered around league average. His peripherals show evidence of a post-trade adjustment, although I do not know the specifics of that adjustment. We might be looking at a small sample quirk.
Ricky Tiedemann, 21, SP, TOR
18 IP, 12 H, 8 BB, 23 K, 2.50 ERA
After missing a large chunk of the 2023 season, Tiedemann was on hand in Arizona for just four starts. He made the most of them, showing enough to take home a closely-contested award. Tiedemann spent most of his active time at Double-A where he made 11 starts totaling just 32 innings. He missed bats with ease but struggled at times with command – an issue which followed him to the Fall League. He features a repertoire of three plus offerings including a mid-90s fastball, a sweeper, and a changeup.
Jackson Jobe, 21, P, DET
15.2 IP, 14 H, 5 BB, 19 K, 2.87 ERA
The next-highest profile pitching prospect in fall ball, Jobe nearly matched Tiedemann over his four-start run. Jobe works with a deep repertoire of at least five average or better offerings. He’s credited with a head for pitching including a professional-level feel for incorporating analytic analysis into his development. After tasting one start at Double-A this season, he’s on track for a Major League promotion sometime in 2024.
Victor Scott, 22, OF, STL
96 PA, 3 HR, 18 SB, .286/.388/.417
A speedy left-handed hitter, Scott turned heads in the AFL via an advanced feel for contact. He was one of only a handful of hitters who recorded more walks than strikeouts. Thought he has posted above average batting lines throughout his brief minor league tenure, scouts complain of a low-impact swing that might prove exploitable against upper-level pitching. Scott’s path to the Majors likely looks something like Johan Rojas – a defense-first profile with the speed and contact chops necessary to post an empty batting average.
Chase DeLauter, 22, OF, CLE
101 PA, 5 HR, 5 SB, .299/.385/.529
DeLauter is my pick for most intriguing player to participate in the AFL. His swing is an acquired taste – at first visually disturbing, but then it grows on you. Like Scott, DeLauter recorded more walks than strikeouts, a feat that fits right in with the Guardians hitting ethos. He also led the league in RBI. He will have an opportunity to approach the Majors next season, but he needs to prove he can get to power outcomes more consistently in order to get the call.
Three More
Oliver Dunn, PHI (26): A non-prospect coming off a strong Double-A campaign, Dunn likely played his way onto a 40-man roster this fall. He’s Rule 5 eligible so the Phillies will have to roster him or prepare to watch him be drafted. Dunn posted a 1.071 OPS – fourth-best in the league to go with 12 extra-base hits and 12 steals in 88 plate appearances.
Caleb Durbin, NYY (23): An Altuve-scale second baseman, Durbin led the AFL with 21 steals in 23 attempts. He also posted a 1.044 OPS, good for sixth-best in the league. He even delivered a trio of home runs to go with nine doubles and a triple in 99 plate appearances. He recorded twice as many walks as strikeouts. Durbin was arguably the most dynamic offensive performer in the AFL.
Damiano Palmegiani, TOR (23): Palmegiani was already ticketed for a role with the 2024 Blue Jays. With six home runs and 21 RBI in 92 plate appearances, he was one of the top-performing power hitters in the league. Pending offseason activity, he’s primed to compete for an Opening Day assignment.
Did I miss a detail or nuance? DM me on Twitter @BaseballATeam to suggest corrections.
You see all these guys that are near the top of their farm system and then Marsee the MVP who is not even in their top 10. What gives? How did he so thoroughly dominate in a league filled with the best prospects from every team?
Yeah that 2022 draft has been pretty awesome, Lesko with the 1st pick is back from TJ and starting to deal. 2nd pick Robby Snelling won minor league pitcher of the year and is considered by some to be the top left handed pitching prospect in the game already after getting to AA (at 19). 2nd rounder Adam Mazer also reached AA and could make it to the rotation this upcoming year.
And then you get the later picks that look amazing, Jakob Marsee could be in CF by mid-season. Graham Pauley taken in the 13th round and winning batting player of the year in the organization looks like a legit LF option in the near future if the need ends up being there.
Then you have Jackson Merrill and James Wood taking after the 27th pick in 2021 and both in the top 10 or 15 prospects in all of baseball today.
Marsee should be in everyone’s updated top 10’s for the Padres. Just Baseball has a really fresh updated list from a couple weeks ago: justbaseball.com/prospects/san-diego-padres-top-pr…
Their system seems well equipped to balance the team going forward salary wise and the fact all of their monster deals are righthanded bats and all of their best position prospects are lefthanded.
Oh, and in a month or two they’ll be adding arguably the top prospect in the 2024 international free agent class when they sign Leo De Vries.
When people say the Padres need to trade Soto to rebuild the farm that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Coming from someone who isn’t a Padres fan, they’re incredible at acquiring and developing young talent. If Preller chose the “build from within” path and not the path of reckless abandon, I wonder where they’d be.
It was most definitely not “a league filled with the best prospects from every team” – this year only 10 of MLB Pipeline’s top 100 prospects participated, with the highest ranked being Colson Montgomery (#17) and Carson Williams (#19). And as usual the pitching was weak overall (Tiedemann and Jobe were the only pitchers in the Top 100, most of the others were well down their teams’ lists). Add in the way the ball flies in the dry Arizona air – plus the fact that it’s a small sample size, period – and AFL offensive stats need to be taken with a huge grain of salt. Marsee wasn’t the only non-premium prospect to dominate; Triantos was #9 in the Cubs system, while Rosario was #19 for the Twins, and Sabato and Hicks didn’t even make their teams’ top 30. What they did in Arizona doesn’t mean any of them are going to be stars.
You do know that there are more than 3.33 prospects in each teams system, right?
If you’re talking about the top 100 reference, that’s just one way to illustrate that this year’s AFL rosters were relatively short on star power (a point that has been widely discussed by analysts) – by comparison, there were 16 top 100 prospects on 2022 AFL rosters, including four of the top 20. If you want to look at it another way, among each team’s top 10 prospects per Pipeline (300 total players), 36 participated in this year’s AFL – a whopping 12 percent. And of those 36, nearly half (15) were ranked in the 8-to-10 range in their organizations. Still sound like “a league filled with the best prospects from every team”?
Pretty sure Jackson Jobe is in the DET system.
He most definitely is in the Tigers system.
He looks like the second coming of Justin Verlander.
Fingers crossed…
I thought no way he debuts in 2024. But, you never know. Justin Verlander skipped AAA. He went straight from AA Erie to the bigs and never looked back. He didn’t pitch in AAA until like 2015 on a rehab assignment.
Except JV was a college pitcher while Jobe was drafted out of high school.
True dat.
I saw that too, and wondered if I had missed a trade somewhere
I thought maybe the Tigers traded Jobe for the right to draft Max Clark ahead of Wyatt Langford. Scotty probably didn’t know he already had the third pick and he couldn’t trade for draft picks? He’s not the brightest
Think that’s bad? I heard that the archangel Gabriel came to Scott Harris in a dream and commanded that he take Langford, but in his hubris, Scott Harris chose Max Clark instead. What a goof!
With Davis Daniel you have to wonder if he finally put it all together or if he will go back to being the guy that walked 16 per 9 innings in AAA this season.
Manzardo is the “man”. He’ll be the best of the bunch.