The Dia­mond­back­’s 19-year-old arm is show­ing up on top 30s and just start­ing his full-sea­­son try. His sec­ond out­ing was impres­sive­ly pro­duc­tive: 45 of his 72 pitch­es earned strikes (62.5%), and he gar­nered 8 whiffs. The arse­nal is said to include a change­up, but I don’t think I saw one. You’ll see a fair­ly easy-to-eye mid-to-high 90s fast­ball attack, with the Ran­cho offense get­ting aggres­sive after the first time through, lim­it­ing the easy-to-dif­fer­­en­ti­ate break­ing ball mixed in, which I think can get fair­ly firm. By my count, it looked like a rough­ly 2/3 fastball/1/3 break­ing ball mix on the day. The Ran­cho offense was hum­ming of late, but showed a hard time squar­ing Vasquez up: Exe­cu­­tion-wise, you see Vasquez throw­ing enough strikes, but the “pitch­a­bil­i­ty” isn’t his call­ing card with the occa­sion­al­ly non-com­pet­i­­tive offer­ing, but more so the lack of abil­i­ty to land loca­tions the catch­er bla­tant­ly was call­ing for, which I did­n’t leave much of in the edit above. His catch­er (Car­los Virahonda)‘s requests for a fast­ball up often land­ed mid­dle or low, with his calls for some­thing glove-side to a righty end­ing up arm-side. Vasquez did­n’t earn many points on such occa­sions. Maybe I cred­it him for one ot two “OKs” on pitch exe­cu­tions when it was clear from our couch what the intent was. Vasquez’s appeal is the arm tal­ent. The hard fast­bal­l’s sink action isn’t hard to spy from this poor angle, and the break­ing ball scoots. It’s unfair to expect a teenag­er to be exe­cut­ing at a high lev­el, but Vasquez appeals in a ball of clay sense. I’d imag­ine some strug­gles to use his offer­ings well, but he’s got the look of an excit­ing young arm to watch. The frame appeals. The actions feel ath­let­ic. There aren’t any glar­ing mechan­i­cal things I tend to shy away from, like a head whack or gross lack of bal­ance as he gets down the mound. Col­or me intrigued. Let’s see how he bakes a lit­tle. With the arse­nal, it’s not hard to see the stuff­ists tak­ing notice and his dynasty rep­u­ta­tion take off. Return to muddlooks.com Home

Look­ing for a 5‑tool prospect, ros­tered in just 1% of Fantrax leagues, who might be on the rise? I got one for you… The Yan­kees’ used their 2024 13th-round slot on a young mid-major (?) col­lege bat from Queens (NC). Lewis, an unher­ald­ed prep, had him­self a 55-game, 20/20 send-off sea­son with Queens: And pro results are pil­ing up, rough­ly halfway through his first sea­son. The last month or so, while also deal­ing with some minor injuries, he’s been on one: (All video shared here is from this stretch.) Draw­ing from the archives, Lewis impress­es in all five areas, with high­brow ath­leti­cism, strength, and size attrib­ut­es start­ing to look housed in a base­ball play­er. Lewis isn’t a tech­nique poster child, per se, but his actions at the plate are func­tion­ing. The head­line tool is pow­er. Here are his hard­est hit fly­balls from his A‑ball Savant sam­ple: And here are his 6 home runs from his recent hot stretch. Turn the vol­ume on to get some nuggets from the booth, includ­ing his hard­est hit ball of the sea­son: Defense, arm, and speed tools…have a look for your­self: Lewis moves well in the out­field and, for the most part, exudes good jumps off the bat. I don’t know how plus the arm may or may not be, but it isn’t a defi­cien­cy. Lewis has logged 10 OFAs on the year. And base steal­ing seems a part of the pack­age. He prob­a­bly won’t ever go crazy steal­ing bags, but it’s a fea­ture of his game. The plate skills are going to be the biggest ques­tion. But there’s lots to like. Here’s some eye data: Some­thing you don’t get a sense of there is his ball/strike recog­ni­tion. Over his 2025 Tam­pa run, he swung at 15.5% of pitch­es in the Savant sam­ple’s chase/waste zones: 15.5% is pret­ty impres­sive. Paired with his pow­er, you don’t hate that. Here’s some pitch-type Tam­pa Savant data: Lewis looks like a hit it out in front approach, which makes a lot of sense for him. Oppo­site field hits feel more like being late than an approach. You saw a lot of GB sin­gles in our sam­ple. The GB rate is fine over his sea­son, but when you throw in his abil­i­ty to run and hit those ground balls as hard as he does, that rate scoots over to fea­ture: B‑siding sea­son starts to get juicy this time of year. Lewis feels like a mud­dy win­ner. I think we’re hard pressed to find as entic­ing a 5‑tool play at 1% as Lewis right now. A poten­tial play for all league types. 114 mph HRs, gun­ning run­ners out at home, cov­er­ing a lot of CF turf, swip­ing bags, walk­ing a decent 9%, strik­ing out 23%, break­ing up no-hit­ters, mak­ing good on the booths’ called shots, and poten­tial­ly com­ing into his own. Lots to like. In some ways, this feels like the 2025 ver­sion of the 2024 Bo David­son dynasty play. Not sim­i­lar in play­er, but sim­i­lar in lack of pop­u­lar­i­ty paired with a skill set wor­thy of a play. If you’ve got some DSL box score hope­ful, why not expe­dite the whole thing and nab Lewis?? Per­haps a bit of tech­ni­cian gets coached into him?? Noth­ing wrong with good, get­ting bet­ter. Return to muddylooks.com home

20 BF, 71 pitch­es, 83% strikes, 14 whiffs, 21 called strikes, 49.3 CSW% My word was this a banger. This was the most impres­sive out­ing I’ve seen this MiLB sea­son. If you lis­tened to the AL East pod­cast this off­sea­son, if not for Nestor Ger­man, Trey Gib­son was my O’s choice. The 2023 UDFA out of Lib­er­ty set the SAL high water mark for strike­outs this sea­son on an insane­ly low num­ber of pitch­es and dom­i­nance of the zone. If not for one hit­ter who has his num­ber, Chris­t­ian Suero, this was darn near per­fec­tion. (As you’ll see, Gib­son had Suero up against the ropes three of the four times they squared off this sea­son, with Gib­son mak­ing mis­takes Suero did not miss.) Gib­son fits my arche­type as a good “pitch­er” with lots of offer­ings, an abil­i­ty to use them well, and an arse­nal grow­ing teeth. Draft (or in this case sign) a good pitch­er, sharp­en the tools…the O’s have done this well. Their cur­rent AA rota­tion, which includes Nestor Ger­man, Brax­ton Bragg, and now Gib­son, all seem to fit this mold. I did­n’t label pitch­es in this video for a few rea­sons: one, I did­n’t want to add more gaudy graph­ics to a mas­ter­piece, and more so, there’s a lot here, and I was­n’t con­fi­dent in a lot of calls. Your eyes will get the gist. Gib­son’s fast­balls are in the 93–95 range, with a sinker seem­ing­ly the most used. There’s a good curve­ball, obvi­ous to the eye, that he deployed selec­tive­ly and often as an over­whelm­ing, nev­er even thought of that com­ing, kill shot. There’s a firm slider/cutter, a gyro-look­ing slid­er, and a more sweep­ing slid­er. There’s also an off­speed pitch flash­ing a lot of ver­ti­cal drop…perhaps a split­ter. You’ll see him put a mix-it-up-fill-the-zone clin­ic on. As he strikes out 7 of 9 the first time through, as he rarely, if at all, dou­bles up an offer­ing, get­ting to 0–2 before the hit­ter knows it. He gets to 0–2 counts on 12 of the 20 bat­ters faced. You’ll see 21 called strikes, 5 for strike 3…and I don’t know about you, but freez­ing a hit­ter has become more aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing to me than a swing and miss. To boot, Gib­son did this against the best line­up in the league, and one that got him good ear­li­er in the sea­son. There’s no one dom­i­nant pitch here, but a dom­i­nant arse­nal in full com­mand. Out­side of a few balls in the dirt and a mis­take for a home run, this was a video game per­for­mance. This is what it looks like when a pitch­er has it all work­ing: Here’s what Gib­son’s done as a pro thus far: He’s been on one this last month, and he’s the best ver­sion of him­self yet: He broke the SAL this last month, and the O’s agree. It looks like Gib­son is set to make his AA debut Sat­ur­day. He’ll do the same thing to Akron he did to Brooklyn…shoot, a bunch of line­ups at lots of lev­els, if he exe­cutes like this day. Tall order? Yes. Capa­ble? I think so. At just 2% Fantrax ros­ter­ship, Gib­son is not get­ting the dynasty love he deserves. Say what you will about the O’s pitch­ing and cur­rent MLB issues, but they have devel­oped arms well if you define “devel­op” as mak­ing pitch­ers bet­ter than when they got to you. They’re one of the best at it in my opin­ion, and there’s a crop hit­ting the uppers right now I’m excit­ed to see if the suc­cess main­tains and gets into that big league rota­tion. Gib­son is firm­ly plant­ed in said crop.

Cal­i­for­nia League — Ster­ling Pat­ick, LAD (A) The Dodgers signed Per­fect Games’ #2 ranked LHP in Cal­i­for­nia away from a UC-San­­ta Bar­bera com­mit at the end of the 2023 draft. The just-turned-20-year-old with a high spin fast­ball turned in his best pro per­for­mance in May as he start­ed to add length to out­ings, twice going 5 IP and 60+ pitch­es. Flori­da State League — Lucas Elissalt, Det (A) Elissalt’s curve­ball just missed out of being one of the most pro­duc­tive April FSL offer­ings, but he’s rid­ing the curve­ball to suc­cess as he too adds length to his out­ings. Elissalt is start­ing to go 70+ pitch­es and The 2024 13th round JUCO selec­tion is start­ing to go 70+ pitch­es. This 20-year-old might be more than just a break­ing ball. A new low 80s slid­er, used half as much as the curve­ball, but not at all in April, gar­nered a 50.7 whiff% this month. The low 90s fast­ball may need to take a step for­ward before dynasty inter­est feels war­rant­ed, but Elissalt still has some pre­jectabil­i­ty on his side. Car­oli­na League — Yunior Marte, KC (A) The big-bod­ied 21-year-old has the mid-90s veloc­i­ty and hard spin to dream on MLB suc­cess. The walks have need­ed to get bet­ter and Marte might be on the right track. He’s only once walked more than two in an out­ing, and the exe­cu­tion of the whole arse­nal is get­ting clean­er. How clean can it ulti­mate­ly get though? North­west League — Kon­ner Eaton, Col (A+) The aggres­sive lefty with a fast­ball capa­ble of mid-90s and a poten­tial plus slid­er is show­ing out in a tough place to pitch. The 2024 6th rounder out of George Mason might not be long for Spokane if the change­up devel­op­ment goes well. He and the Rock­ies have open­ly won­dered if the future is in the pen or as a starter, but Eaton has the look of a big league arm. Mid­west League — Ryan Gal­lagher, ChC (A+) Gal­lagher takes the over­all 0%er of The Month for me. We reviewed him a few weeks back. Every out­ing is more and more con­vinc­ing he’s “Dude-ing” and should con­tin­ue to do so in the South­ern League. South Atlantic League — Josh Grosz, NYY (A+) The 2023 11th rounder out of East Car­oli­na made a AA appear­ance in 2024, and it feels like his next try isn’t far away. With a fast arm action seem­ing­ly break­ing the laws of biol­o­gy, Grosz looks like anoth­er high spin Yan­kees arm. The firm gyro slid­er can give SAL hit­ters night­mares and might pair well enough with the rest of the starter’s kit to give MLB hit­ters fits too. The Yan­kees iden­ti­fied a good pitch­er here and have helped sharp­en the weapons. South­ern League ‑Jake Palisch, CWS (AA) The 2022 UDFA who relieved at Stan­ford and Texas A&M made his first 4 starts of his pro career this month. It went well. I don’t think the veloc­i­ty of the 90 mph fast­ball tells a fair sto­ry, as it seems to get on South­ern League hit­ters quick­ly and proves tough for them to square up. Orga­ni­za­tion­al depth or viable MLB starter, YTD, but this was one of the more inter­est­ing and sur­pris­ing mud­dy pitch­ing devel­op­ments of the month. Texas League — Shane Panzi­ni, KC (AA) I’m cheat­ing here, as the 2021 4th round prep arm was only recent­ly pro­mot­ed the AA with just one Texas League appear­ance under his belt, albeit an impres­sive one. Panzini’s shal­low, but impres­sive, arse­nal and past bor­der­­line-unten­able walk rates have kept him out­side my per­son­al inter­est over the years. Yet, the exe­cu­tion is steadi­ly improv­ing as he moves up the lad­der. The fast­ball and slid­er are poten­tial 60s and it’s hard to not think future pens­man, yet here we are, in AA and prob­a­bly still start­ing. East­ern League — Trent Sell­ers, NYY (AA) My 2025 Yan­kees arm has­n’t dis­ap­point­ed this year, yet he’s also walk­ing too many to take the leap we won­dered about this off­sea­son. Sell­ers is prov­ing to be one of the bet­ter strike­out pitch­ers in the East­ern League, despite not throw­ing many fast­balls over 91 mph. The UDFA out of Ore­gon State will be hard-pressed to break the Yan­kees rota­tion at any point, but his strike­outs make the bigs feel with­in reach. Inter­na­tion­al League — Lazaro Estra­da, Tor (AAA) If you lis­ten to the pod, you know Estra­da has been a curios­i­ty of The Rook’s for a few years, and I’ve hopped aboard. Estrada’s devel­op­men­tal path has been untra­di­tion­al and bumpy, but here we are at the doorstep of an MLB go. Whether Estra­da is mere­ly an up and down depth arm or more is yet to be seen, but I do think this cur­rent ver­sion, is the best Estra­da we’ve seen yet. Prob­a­bly only of inter­est in deep points leagues. Pacif­ic Coast League — Sauryn Lao, Sea (AAA) Lao had his con­tract select­ed in April, made his debut (in relief,) and was DFA’d short­ly after, going unclaimed. Since return­ing to Taco­ma, he’s been one of, if not the most dom­i­nant pitch­er in the PCL. Lao tech­ni­cal­ly starts, but has­n’t got­ten to 60 pitch­es in an out­ing yet. A two-pitch guy who can occa­sion­al­ly throw a change­up to left­ies sure feels like a reliev­er. This whole list is filled with guys who were once con­sid­ered strict­ly relief prospects; Sell­ers, Estra­da, Palisch, Panzi­ni (at least In my mind), per­haps even Elissalt and Eaton. Guys who dom­i­nate the PCL tend to get MLB tries.

Mean­ing­ful to us or not, the Iso­topes line­up has been torch­ing the PCL of late. The fol­low­ing does­n’t include last night’s mul­ti-home run Ryan Rit­ter out­ing, but the 15 days before that: Hard not to won­der if this is a prod­uct of eas­i­er com­pe­ti­tion, as a whole line­up does­n’t typ­i­cal­ly get scorch­ing hot togeth­er. But every­one is hit­ting bombs except young Yan­quiel, huh? Through 4/23, he had 7 bombs on the cam­paign. Today, 5/30, he’s still sit­ting on 7. Where has the pow­er pro­duc­tion gone? I can’t say I have a bunch of answers for you, but I did take a look at a lot of things: Don’t be over­whelmed. We’ll walk through this togeth­er. On the sur­face, 2/3 of the slash line is the same, but slug­ging has dropped 280 points. The aver­age EV may have dropped a tick, but no flags. The low K rates have held. Look­ing at the bat­ted ball, we see he’s hit­ting more balls on the ground. The 48.8 GB% aligns more with his career than the pre­vi­ous 39%. We see he’s hit­ting more line dri­ves dur­ing the drought, but the 14.6% fly ball rate is going to sap HRs, of course; fur­ther­more, the fly­ball qual­i­ty seems to pale in com­par­i­son. He was mak­ing bet­ter con­tact pri­or, and fly­balls have turned into ground­balls and line dri­ves. A home run drought checks out. But why? Is there a why? Yan­quiel is anoth­er of a long line of young, aggres­sive hit­ters from this org, so of course, won­der­ment over his approach ensues. Have there been any changes? I’ve seen many Rock­ies’ young bats go through some changes (or attempts at) by try­ing to tone down an ultra-aggres­­sive approach. Is that part of the sto­ry here? We aren’t going to delve deep into every aspect of whether Yan­quiel is ton­ing it down or not; we could be here for­ev­er, but there are some note­wor­thy tid­bits. Since the arbi­trary divide between his last home run, he is swing­ing at less 0–0 counts. We see the con­tact going more to the ground. We see the qual­i­ty of shapes and pro­duc­tion drop sig­nif­i­cant­ly on 0–0. Chick­en or the egg, who is to say? The same sto­ry goes for the sec­ond and third pitch­es of ABs, and the hard­er to wran­gle in, 0–2 counts. Is this seem­ing­ly less aggres­sive 0–0 approach due to how he’s being attacked? As far as Yan­quiel seek­ing a spe­cif­ic offer­ing 0–0, I haven’t come away with that opin­ion in years past, and the Savant data from this sea­son seems to show a non-dis­­crim­i­­nat­ing aggres­sive 0–0 hit­ter: 0–0 pitch types put into play whole sea­son: before HR drought after HR drought Is it a mat­ter of 0–0 loca­tions? I did­n’t delve into the Stat­cast here, but my incli­na­tion is to say no. Yan­quiel has a long his­to­ry of being a see strike, attack strike kind of bat. As far as pitch types go, and you will see this a bit in the video, the only note­wor­thy take­away was what might be a lit­tle issue (or rough patch, or blip, or grow­ing pain) with off­speed, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the sec­ond pitch. It does­n’t appear he’s get­ting few­er 0–0 strikes than pre­vi­ous­ly. Although the ruler used here isn’t the great­est, as his deci­sions play into the strike earn­ing, my incli­na­tion again is to think this isn’t quite it either. He does seem to have toned down chase a smidge since his last home run. Some met­rics are going in the right direc­tion here, but again, all the dam­age seems to have dis­ap­peared. Is this an exam­ple for us pro-aggres­­sive hit­ters to point at and claim that tak­ing a guy’s aggres­sive­ness away makes him impo­tent at the plate? It’s prob­a­bly far more com­pli­cat­ed than that, but I thought hey…let’s see what the video shows, at least the 0–0 approach. There are 27 (28 now) instances Yan­quiel took an 0–0 strike. Pre-drought video is black n white. Post is in col­or with some take­aways from the AB after­wards: 0–0 takes for strike 1 on the sea­son: 0–0 called strikes before, goes 0 for 6 with 1 BB, 2 K 0–0 called strikes after, goes 8 for 19, 1 BB, 2 K Like I said, I was­n’t promis­ing many answers, but I do think it’s safe to say that of late, there does seem an effort to try and pass on 0–0 offer­ings by Fer­nan­dez. At least at times. Who or what is dri­ving that, we can’t say with much con­vic­tion, but one of the org’s many issues is hav­ing too many young aggres­sive hit­ters in the MLB line­up at the same time over the past few sea­sons. Being one who has watched a lot of hit­ters in this sys­tem over the last five sea­sons (and suf­fered through a lot of MLB games these prospect bats played in), this Fer­nan­dez dive isn’t a unique look. Tovar, Toglia, Jones, Good­man, Beck, Montero…I’ve seen all of them go through peri­ods where tak­ing 0–0 seemed a plan. We could debate for days on the mer­its or lack­there­of dur­ing their turns with such an approach. On one hand, you can point to guys like Nolan Jones and Ele­huris Mon­tero and how ton­ing 0–0 appraoch down sapped their pro­duc­tion. Those sto­ries too, aren’t that sim­ple, but it sure seemed a part of the sto­ry. Some, like Tovar, who was very much not swing­ing at 0–0 pitch­es to start this sea­son, and came back from injury on an obvi­ous­ly more sub­dued approach, get­ting on base at an insane pace, but not slug­ging how he was as “the worst swing deci­­sion-mak­er” in base­ball. Fer­nan­dez is still only 22 years old and find­ing him­self as a hit­ter. We will see him in the bigs at some point, and when we do, 0–0 is going to be an inter­est­ing watch. How much buy-in will there be (anoth­er Rock­ies chap­ter I could go on about, par­tic­u­lar­ly with Zac Veen?) Is ton­ing it done going to prove a sab­o­tage like it seemed with

18 BF, 73 pitch­es, 64% strikes Ara­ce­na’s intro­duc­tion to A ball at the end of last sea­son caught my eye enough to throw him out as my Mets’ B‑Side choice for 2025. At the time, a teenag­er touch­ing 100 mph with the micro-sized archive sam­ple show­ing some­thing oth­er than an arm with the bal­looned walk rates he put up pre­vi­ous­ly. Last night was Ara­ce­na’s best show­ing as a pro, mark­ing the deep­est he’d gone into a game, the most pitch­es thrown, the high­est strike% of 2025, and a career high 10 strike­outs. I imag­ine he’d not struck out 8 bat­ters in a row before either. Here’s his work as a pro and said out­ing: Ara­ce­na’s arse­nal can blend to the point Savant has a hard time. The one change­up said to be thrown was not a change­up, although I did spy a try at some­thing look­ing split­ter-esque (50 sec mark) that got marked an 88 mph cut­ter, which is off. Look­ing at his Savant sam­ple, he may be try­ing to devel­op an off-speed pitch, but we digress. Ara­ce­na gives me some ear­ly Justin Mar­tinez vibes with a live­ly fast­ball seem­ing to have nat­ur­al cut to it, and there were/are times Savant had/has a hard time dis­cern­ing between the two. The cut­ter and slid­er may blend as well. But there’s more dis­tinc­tion show­ing of late. You can spy a dis­tinct sign for a cut­ter, and the shapes and speeds between it, firmer four-seam­er, and slow­er slid­er show more to the eye than last sea­son. Here’s Ara­ce­na’s pitch mix accord­ing to Savant, 2024 first, fol­lowed by this sea­son: The cut­ter and curve­ball look like the two offer­ings tak­ing the biggest strides here. I had ques­tioned if any sort of spin game would ever hap­pen, and he’s flash­ing a feel for it. There was very lit­tle feel in our small 2024 look. He may have spiked every attempt at a curve­ball then. Now he’s show­ing ver­ti­cal depth to the firm curve­ball, even sit­ting hit­ters down with it. This has hap­pened rel­a­tive­ly quick­ly, and he’s get­ting great results of late: Won­der­ing if the cut­ter usage has been up like it was this out­ing, here’s the pitch mix over his last three: Anoth­er rare start­ing (or pig­­gy­back­­ing-type) 0%er who sits high 90s, there’s at least an inter­est­ing watch­list guy here. The obvi­ous mon­ey would be on Ara­ce­na reliev­ing long term, but strides are being made, and the Mets, under­stand­ably so, seem into giv­ing length to Ara­ce­na’s out­ings a go. This young, elec­tric arm has cut a chunk of the mus­tang out of his game, flash­ing sophis­ti­ca­tion to the tools and attack. Ara­ce­na’s still a bit fer­al, but more results like last night, and he’s going to get deep lea­guers tak­ing a spec­u­la­tive stab at a low/no cost, high-hopes pay­off here. The way Met’s arms are tak­ing steps for­ward these days, it will be fun to see how advanced young Welling­ton can get. He’s learned things over the last 8 months and should have plen­ty of 2025 devel­op­men­tal innings ahead. Return to muddylooks.com home

14 BF, 52 pitch­es, 71% strikes, 10 Whiffs (1 via FB, 9 via sec­on­daries) Mendez’s career felt stalled out in Lake Elsi­nore, but some new­found strike-throw­ing has revi­tal­ized the hard-throw­ing righty’s career. Walks have been a big prob­lem in the past, but what’s going on late­ly?: Mendez made his A+ debut on 5/9. Since then, amongst all starters and pig­gy­back­ers at the lev­el, only Ryan Gal­lagher, McCade Brown, and Trey Gib­son have best­ed Mendez’s 40.4 K%. Mendez is throw­ing hard­er than I recall, but it might be an uptick in sec­ondary com­mand lead­ing the devel­op­men­tal jump here. I don’t recall Mendez hit­ting upper 90s with the fast­ball. As you can see, the com­mand of the poten­tial­ly new heat is a work in progress. Mendez’s strike earn­ing with the sec­on­daries is more impres­sive than the fast­bal­l’s. Take a look for your­self. There is the hard fast­ball, two break­ers, and I believe a split­ter as the off­speed. Don’t take my pitch labelling at 100% here, but close. Here’s his sec­ond A+ out­ing vs the sec­ond-best offense in the league: The 70+% strike throw­ing on the day isn’t reflec­tive of the exe­cu­tion lev­el exud­ed here. Mendez strug­gled to spot the fast­ball well, but seems to have the veloc­i­ty to get away with it at this lev­el. He also received a les­son in offer­ing the get-me-over or steal-first-pitch-strike fast­ball when Jenk­ins sent one. Easy to see how Mendez’s future may be as a pens­man, still yet to prove a starter’s load, both in a sea­son and with­in out­ings, but are we sit­ting at the precipice of his chance to prove those hors­es? This was­n’t Mendez’s most recent out­ing. His last (not archived) saw him throw 86 pitch­es over 4.1 inef­fi­cient innings, where­upon he walked 5 and struck out 9. For all you veloc­i­ty truthers, how many 0%ers touch­ing 99 with the heater, strik­ing out as many hit­ters as any­one at their lev­el, are still out there? Mendez’s devel­op­ment might be tak­ing a juicy turn here. Or it’s just a clas­sic blip on the radar of a fire­baller with no com­mand sto­ry we’ve heard a mil­lion times. Mendez’s sec­ondary com­mand has me won­der­ing if the clas­sic tale might not be the whole sto­ry. Mendez still has plen­ty to prove, but this 0%er intrigues. Return to muddylooks.com home

90 pitch­es, 63 strikes (70%) The 2024 6th rounder has been over­whelm­ing Mid­west League hit­ters over his last three starts, strik­ing them out at a 45% clip over 18 IP, throw­ing strikes with all of his many weapons (67%), and keep­ing the walks around 9%. Gal­lagher’s thrown FQOs in two of his last three starts: Gal­lagher’s mid 90’s fast­ball earns lots of whiff up in the zone vs these. There’s two or three break­ing balls, anoth­er fast­ball, and a split-change. Here’s a look at his lat­est out­ing. The South Bend broad­cast cuts away from catch­er signs and the broad­cast gun was out of whack, label­ing some high heat as low as 41, mak­ing pitch­ing label­ing tough here. But we can still get a good sense of Gal­lagher’s game here: Gal­lagher got groov­ing in this one. Retir­ing 9 in a row and hav­ing mul­ti­ple stretch­es of doing noth­ing but throw­ing strikes. (End­ed the day throw­ing 12 of them in a row.) The fast­ball sets up a slew of sec­on­daries he can poten­tial­ly sequence in all sorts of ways. He kind of already does. He had these guys whooped. Despite it being Gal­lagher’s first pro sea­son, he is not with­out a nice track record of innings: On a quest for real­ly good stuff, meet­ing good use of it, I can’t help but won­der if Gal­lagher is that. I want to sound the 0%er-is-a-Dude-alarm. Gal­lagher is the best 0% ros­ter SP spec out there, right? He could rise quick. I’m slot­ting him #1 on my Cubs list.

If you lis­tened to the pod­cast this off­sea­son, you know Rig­gio is one of, if not my favorite, prospect from a fan per­spec­tive. Rig­gio’s all gas, no breaks approach to the game with a knack for mak­ing acro­bat­ic plays and com­ing through in the clutch…how can one not be a fan? But the 2023 4th rounder out of Okla­homa St. is turn­ing more legit MLB prospect than cult favorite. Injury caused a late start to the sea­son. After two com­plex games, he’s been back in Hud­son Val­ley for 12 games in what feels like con­tin­ued rehab before he hits Som­er­set for the first time. After an 0 for 10 start in his first two+ games, he’s got 10 hits over 9+ games, 5 HR, and went hit­less in just one game. Here are his first 30 BBEs of his Hud­son Val­ley sea­son: Here’s what he’s done as a pro: Rig­gio showed an abil­i­ty to hit hard line dri­ves to all fields last sea­son and might be one capa­ble of max­i­miz­ing bat­ted ball shape and back­spin to hit balls over the wall at a high­er clip than his stature and EVs might sug­gest. Rig­gio max­i­miz­ing what he’s got to work with is kind of his thing. Includ­ed in the video were a few booth clips remark­ing on how the ball trav­eled fur­ther than they thought it would, which is start­ing to be an obser­va­tion when watch­ing him. Rig­gio has post­ed exit veloc­i­ties north of 110. There’s bat speed. There are also good con­tact skills in his aggres­sive approach. Rig­gio is in a tough org to break through, but I’m sold we’ll see him in the bigs at some point. The up-the-mid­­dle-glove and intan­gi­bles might be seen as the car­ry­ing tools, but Rig­gio is not a noth­ing at the plate. At 1% Fantrax ros­ter­ship, he’s a great B‑Side prospect. If he keeps swing­ing it like this, espe­cial­ly when he gets to Som­er­set, that mud­dy sta­tus isn’t going to last.

My friend Chris Clegg shared some data met­rics on Pirates’ young slug­ger Axiel Plaz that got me think­ing, and sent me into my deep­est video-mak­ing project. Here are Plaz’s first 248 swings of 2025. Stick around for some thoughts after­wards, if you like, as a defense of the Young, Aggres­sive Hit­ter. Mr. Plaz’s sea­son, and how some data met­rics might not be mea­sur­ing them well will fol­low: A mas­sive load of things to unpack there, but we’ll try and keep it snap­py. Off the top, and one you did­n’t need video to observe, is the improve­ment in K rate. Down 11%, it’s an encour­ag­ing devel­op­ment. One a skep­tic would note the aggres­sive approach and how one can­not strike­out if they don’t get to two strikes. Plaz is quite aggres­sive. If you’ve lis­tened to the pod­cast, you know The Rook and I have dif­fer­ent opin­ions about hit­ters who don’t walk much. Young, aggres­sive hit­ters get my atten­tion, and Plaz might be a bit of a poster child in some regards. Not strik­ing out because you don’t get to two strikes…might be a bit hyper­bol­ic, but it also might be an addi­tion to, or pos­i­tive byprod­uct of a sound approach at the plate that iron­i­cal­ly gets deemed a poor, or non-approach when look­ing at some met­rics. Clegg and oth­ers, respon­si­bly so, hold skep­ti­cism with Plaz’s pro­file because of con­tact and out-of-zone num­bers. But there are things those num­bers don’t con­sid­er. Did that look like a guy strug­gling or hack­ing his way along to lucky out­comes? Not to me. There seems to be an ever-grow­ing con­cept amongst pitch­ers of win­ning the first pitch of an at-bat (even more sophis­ti­cat­ed, win the first three pitch­es). Aggres­sive hit­ters essen­tial­ly say bring it on. Not hap­pen­ing on my watch. Plaz is win­ning the first three pitch­es of at-bats, par­tic­u­lar­ly the first pitch, at an insane rate right now. We’ll get to that. Why be so “anx­ious,” swing­ing at so much first offer­ing when you can sit back and be more selec­tive? Maybe get some­thing bet­ter you can do dam­age to? Seems log­i­cal. Aram Leighton recent­ly inter­viewed Max Clark on his pod­cast The Call Up, and Clark spoke on how selec­tiv­i­ty is a big part of his plan. Can’t argue against him, it’s work­ing very well…for him. No objec­tions here. Clark is heady, tal­ent­ed, and suc­ceed­ing. But what Mr. Plaz here exudes is a rebuke of the notion that aggres­sive hit­ters don’t have an “approach” or are being shal­low, near-sight­ed, self­ish, ral­­ly-killing, smooth brain­ers. There is wis­dom in being aggres­sive. Avoid­ing Ks, like we not­ed, is just one. Clark notes his selec­tiv­i­ty comes from know­ing he can’t do much with cer­tain pitch­es. My curios­i­ty and affin­i­ty to watch­ing aggres­sive hit­ters revolves around the ques­tion, “How does one know they can’t do dam­age on par­tic­u­lar pitch­es if they’ve nev­er tried? Aggres­sive hit­ters like Plaz might be fix­ing to find out. Some have, to a much fur­ther along sense than Plaz, like Eze­quiel Tovar, Corey Sea­ger, Teoscar Her­nan­dez, Nolan Are­na­do, to name some aggres­sive hit­ters (who are not all the same kind of aggres­sive). The great­est hit­ters in base­ball give pitch­ers no “safe zones.” They are capa­ble of doing dam­age on good pitch­es, bad pitch­es, fast pitch­es, slow pitch­es, move­ment, in and out of the zone. Teoscar Her­nan­dez tak­ing a 99 mph fast­ball at the edge of the shad­ow zone yard like he did against Shane Baz a few years back comes to mind. There’s no safe haven for pitch­ers. They do not get to win the zone. Plaz showed ele­ments of this skill set that might not be fit for Max Clark or the heuris­tic set forth by what data defines as good swing deci­sions and the like. Here’s what Plaz did in the shad­ow zones: Swings in the shad­ows had a .488 BABIP, but you have the video to deter­mine how much “luck” was involved. In my opin­ion, it was­n’t chock-full of luck, name­ly how luck has noth­ing to do with the abil­i­ty to hit the snot out of the ball and increase your chances of get­ting a hit with every mph of EV. Note in the video, espe­cial­ly ear­ly on, how Plaz cov­ers the out­side of the zone, dar­ing pitch­ers to come inside (and they rarely ever do), often swing­ing at pitch­es out of the zone and hit­ting them very hard. These looks make me wan­na throw out in-and-out of the zone met­rics with Plaz, or at least dis­miss them as a huge telling sign. A one-size-fits-all gen­er­at­ed “good swing decision”/strike zone does­n’t mea­sure every­one well, just the mean. Which is a bit iron­ic, no? Aren’t we seek­ing hit­ters capa­ble of doing things out­side those con­straints? Swings in the shad­ows, FWIW: He did more “dam­age” in the shad­ows than the heart (.361 BABIP): Plaz’s whiff rate on the sea­son is 29%, which is a touch high­er than the 25% or less you prob­a­bly want to see, but how much does whiff­ing with zero or one strikes mat­ter, espe­cial­ly when you can hit the ball as hard as he does? Two strikes is when it real­ly mat­ters. Here’s what Plaz did with two strikes: That’s an accept­able whiff rate, even more so con­sid­er­ing Plaz isn’t gear­ing down a lot. An avg. EV of 89.5 is at or above MLB aver­age, and he hit half his home runs on two strikes. Some­thing you don’t get in the video are his takes. Plaz exudes a good eye, pass­ing on plen­ty of pitch­es just out­side the zone with two strikes. And with 7 swings on 43 pitch­es in the chase or waste zones, and video looks illus­trat­ing nice con­trol at the plate, sug­gest­ing Plaz has a chase prob­lem feels quite unwar­rant­ed. Of course, there are times he gets fooled/doesn’t see it well, like when three straight of the same pitch got him whiff­ing three times, and the like. That hap­pens, and hap­pens sig­nif­i­cant­ly more with oth­er teenagers in A ball. But those instances came up against qual­i­ty offer­ings, even