77 pitch­es, 51 strikes (66%), 17 Whiffs (9 via FB, 7 via SLD, 1 via CHG), 21 BF Anto­nio had a career night, becom­ing the fourth teenag­er to throw an FQO this sea­son (Melvin Her­nan­dez, Wei-En Lin, Junior Sanchez.) The young Colom­bian sinker/slider big boi dom­i­nat­ed the zone and this line­up. This was­n’t pick­ing on the weak­est hit­ters, either, as the Fire­flies have struck­out few­er than any oth­er Car­oli­na League offense. Here’s a look at Anto­nio’s pro career thus far: A sinker flash­ing legit depth and a hard slid­er are the main attrac­tions here, but he does try a few change­ups vs left­ies. There is also a four-seam­er. Here’s his com­plete out­ing from last night: Anto­nio’s veloc­i­ty held up through the out­ing. He also exud­ed the abil­i­ty to dip into the reserves and put more on it with two-strikes. The strong base helps. Clear­ly the change­up is a work in progress. I did catch him shak­ing off to get to it, and that I absolute­ly love. Anto­nio had a no hit­ter going at the time, but he showed stones to want to give the change­up a go. This was an impres­sive look for a kid. I’m a fan. There are devel­op­men­tal arms in the low­ers in need of much more pol­ish than Anto­nio here. The Braves can be pushy with their arms as well. Who knows where he might end his 2025? Col­or me intrigued with this 0%er.

Mike Bur­rows had a career-best 11 strike­outs last out­ing. The 25-year-old made his MLB debut last Sep­tem­ber, mak­ing one appear­ance, log­ging 3.1 relief innings. Bur­rows has­n’t had his sec­ond try, but one would imag­ine that chance is any day now. The 2023 and 2024 sea­sons were cut short for Bur­rows due to Tom­my John surgery, and he may still be in the lat­er stages of return­ing. In 2022, he and Gavin Stone were amidst break­out sea­sons. Both of their change­ups impressed over and over and were big parts of their suc­cess­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly Bur­rows’ career-long reverse splits. These respec­tive change­up sto­ries may have tak­en dif­fer­ent paths. After review­ing this out­ing, Bur­rows’ change­up sucked me in again. Here’s Bur­rows’ pitch mix on the day: Bur­rows’ 17 change­ups this day were the most he’d thrown in any 2025 out­ing. Dig­ging into Savan­t’s sam­ples, he’s thrown 60 of them on the sea­son, rough­ly 15% of his arse­nal. It’s earned a 37 CSW%, 65.5 Whiff%, and .000 BAA. It’s been put into play three times. One you will see here, one was anoth­er weak con­tact, and once it got hit very hard by Will Ben­son, but of course, for an out, Albeit small sam­ples, here’s Bur­rows 2023, pre-injury: 2024 post injury:mn 2025: Here are the four hits the change has allowed in this small sam­ple: Some pret­ty elite pitch production…but does a 2025 53% strike rate sig­nal a wham­my? Let’s see what his best change­up day of 2025 might say. Change­ups are in col­or: All things con­sid­ered, Bur­rows might not be feel­ing the change­up all that well. Get­ting there, per­haps. Hav­ing tak­en in many Bur­rows looks over the years, it’s no sur­prise that a career day of any sort involves this offer­ing doing some work. Bur­rows can dom­i­nate when this third-ish pitch is pulling weight. Much less excit­ing for a dynasty own­er when it isn’t. It’s my opin­ion, even though it’s a 15 to 20% offer­ing, it’s a piv­otal tool, and Bur­rows will go as his change­up does when he hits the bigs again. He takes the mound for Indi­anapo­lis tonight in one of the dou­ble­head­er games, and I’ll be keep­ing tabs.

Mud­ding involves doing home­work on 0%ers. Jean Joseph caught my eye while doing up some pitch­ers. There were some hard-hit balls not land­ing for hits, and then I saw the fol­low­ing posts: Joseph start­ed the sea­son in extend­ed spring train­ing. The bot­tom of A‑ball line­ups aren’t typ­i­cal­ly gold mines, but Jospeh was­n’t a noth­ing IFA in 2022, sign­ing for 450 K. Turn­ing on some games, I got sucked into watch­ing all his broad­cast BBEs. Here they are: That was a .485 SLG on a .239 BABIP. The plus 13% swing­ing strike rate sug­gests a swing-and-miss wart. The 23.5 K% might be a tad mis­lead­ing, as he is aggres­sive ear­ly in counts. Joseph will prob­a­bly get tabbed as a guy repeat­ing a lev­el, but the actu­al­i­ty is he’s logged about 3/4 of an FSL sea­son’s worth of PAs due to injuries inter­rupt­ing things. Joseph is hit­ting the ball hard­er in this sam­ple than he did last year as a teenag­er. Joseph’s 2024 (ground­ball) Savant sam­ple had him with a 90th EV of 102.5, a 107 max, a FB EV of 87.5 with two fly­balls over 100 mph. In our small 50 BBEs here, his 90th is 104.62 (at or above MLB aver­age), a 109 max, 88.2 FB EV with two over 100. His 2025 90th sam­ple is 80% balls in the air, while his 2024 sam­ple was 59% balls in the air. I take up an argu­ment with Fan­Graph­s’s bat­ted ball data here. I count a 14% IFFB, not 30some%. If you go by the launch angles/standard divi­sions of bat­ted balls, I count 40% GB, 18% LD, 28% FB, 14% PU, (42% FB+PU). Any­who, here’s what Joseph has done as a pro: I’m not sold that the 0 stolen bases tell a good sto­ry this year. Game sit­u­a­­tion-wise, I’m not sure I saw him on first base, with sec­ond open. If there was, it was only a few times. I’m going to lean stolen bases are com­ing. Noth­ing wild, but some. I caught one throw from the out­field, and the arm was­n’t over­ly impres­sive, but it was­n’t a sit­u­a­tion I’m cer­tain was max effort, so maybe some YTD there. Dynasty-wise, Joseph is just a 0% name right now, but one I’ll be keep­ing an eye on. A young cen­ter­field­er who hits the ball hard, might patrol a good out­field, might have some bags in him…there’s curios­i­ty here. And I find ultra-aggres­­sive young bats inter­est­ing, at least ear­ly in their devel­op­ment, as long as it isn’t sab­o­tag­ing them. Joseph showed out a bit here, hit­ting all speeds and loca­tions hard. And hold­ing his own against some of the bet­ter pitch­ers in the FSL. Those are traits I val­ue and don’t see in every video mash-up. Joseph plays the game aggres­sive­ly all the way around and is, at the very least, a fun guy to watch.

81 pitch­es (despite boxs­core say­ing oth­er­wise), 54 strikes, 67% strikes, 10 whiffs (despite game­day cred­it­ing 12), 22 BF The Mets’ arm farm is turn­ing heads this sea­son, deserved­ly so. Near the fore­front of the mud­di­er buzz is their 2023 5th rounder out of Grand Canyon, who put up a 29.5 K‑BB% over four Brook­lyn starts. Thorn­ton’s first cou­ple AA out­ings weren’t any­thing to write home about, but he put up an FQO in his third try. Thorn­ton’s been a curi­ous sub­ject in our Dis­cord, so let’s get into a look. You don’t get through 7 IP with­out some quick at-bats. This out­ing was full of them. Thir­teen of 22 at-bats last­ed three pitch­es or less. A Hart­ford line­up full of aggres­sive hit­ters isn’t news, but unlike Hart­ford line­ups of recent his­to­ry, there might not be much here in the way of future MLB bats. Regard­less, Thorn­ton filled up the zone, unafraid of con­tact; 6 ground­outs, 7 air outs, which is a .188 BABIP if you’re count­ing at home. Bad hit­ting? Good pitch­ing? Both? All debat­able. Hart­ford’s broad­cast is one of the bet­ter angles we’ll get in the minors. It’s also full of cut­aways. You don’t get any looks of catch­er signs, and as you’ll see, straight-up miss­ing pitch­es and quick ABs lead­ing off an inning are par for the course. The broad­cast does offer velo, but I am unsure how that read­ing is gained. These fac­tors, plus Thorn­ton’s arse­nal, make things a bit tricky. Offer­ings are labeled on our video, but con­fi­dence in the label­ing is lack­ing. It might be more use­ful to think about veloc­i­ty readings/bands paired with eye­balls to try and dis­cern what Thorn­ton’s throw­ing. The four-seam­er sits 91/92. There are a few fast­balls flash­ing arm­side run, but most did not look that way. Two dif­fer­ent fast­balls? Hard to say with any cer­tain­ty. The rest gets tougher to par­cel out. Thorn­ton’s game is break­ing balls, of which there’s either a ton of incon­sis­ten­cy or five dif­fer­ent ones, putting the cut­ter in the fast­ball fam­i­ly feels both right and wrong depend­ing on which one you pick out. Thorn­ton is throw­ing a cut­ter around 87/88 mph. And prob­a­bly his mon­ey-mak­er. There are times I won­dered if there were cut­ters a few ticks slow­er, or a few ticks high­er. I’ve gener­i­cal­ly labeled what might be two dif­fer­ent pitch­es, “SLD” in an 85ish mph band. There seems to be two dis­tinct shapes in this range, one a more gyro-look­ing ver­ti­cal drop, and one more hor­i­zon­tal. There is also a slow­er, slurve-look­ing break­er I marked “SWP.” Thorn­ton also throws a dis­tinct curve­ball in the 75–78 mph range. And to throw anoth­er wrin­kle in, Thorn­ton is said to throw a change­up. I can’t pick one out with 100% cer­tain­ty. Part of the issue here might be that his change­up grip isn’t easy to spot/isn’t tra­di­tion­al, and the change may deceive us from our angle and/or his arm angle, or it might have a lit­tle cut to it, real­ly mak­ing it tough to spot. There may be some change­ups to right­ies marked as a break­er in the 83ish mph range, but maybe not. For our pur­pos­es, this change­up stuff does­n’t need to be solved to get a good grasp of Thorn­ton’s game. Messy stuff there, but things make more sense as you watch: What do you think? As impres­sive as the line leads on? In my opin­ion, not real­ly. I’d love to be inside every pitcher’s head for every pitch, but Thorn­ton more so than most. There are all kinds of things going on all over the place here, but how much looks like Thorn­ton intend­ed it to go? Are we throw­ing to the mid­dle of the plate and let­ting the buf­fet of gears and break do what they do? Regard­less, this line­up did­n’t han­dle it well. In our con­text, try­ing to project how an arm may or may not help our MLB fan­ta­sy teams, imag­ine this per­for­mance dropped into an MLB game. You think it goes well? I tend to think not. And of course, that is the answer to darn near every out­ing we will review, but there’s a spec­trum, right? Are there any MLB lefty SPs like Thorn­ton? By no means 1:1 com­par­isons, but the only two I can think of that might be a dis­tant cousin are Nestor Cortes and Noah Cameron…maybe?? Per­haps a data per­son would have a far dif­fer­ent take, point­ing to out­lier abil­i­ties we can’t see. But I’m still skep­ti­cal how this all plays vs bet­ter hitters/the rest of the East­ern League sea­son. I’m also aware, if you looked at Joel Diaz, Thorn­ton’s rota­tion mate in Brook­lyn, with me, there might be a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties between the two, with Diaz being a right-hand­ed ver­sion. Per­haps I am hyp­o­crit­i­cal, but the dif­fer­ence between the two is hav­ing more con­fi­dence in Diaz’s fast­ball game, and my guess Diaz’s inten­tions are more sophis­ti­cat­ed. Intrigu­ing watch, and from a fan stand­point, I love guys like Thorn­ton and would love to see MLB suc­cess. I’m just not bet­ting on see­ing him in the Mets rota­tion any time soon, not­ing the lack of innings build-up on his resume, or that this is going to be a dynasty must-have. Thorn­ton’s still ros­tered in just 1% of leagues, so I’d still say he’s under­val­ued. There are less pop­u­lar arms I feel more con­fi­dent in or am con­vinced are more excit­ing gam­bles.

The Blue Jays’ 2023 3rd rounder out of Okla­homa seems to be find­ing his form, strik­ing out 39.4% of the NWL bat­ters faced while keep­ing the walks in check at 7.3%. Not.too.shabby. Here’s what Watts-Brown has done as a pro thus far: The tools are fair­ly sim­ple, yet maybe not. The look we’ll have here, you get a four-seam fast­ball. I think he sinks it on a few occa­sions. You get a slider/cutter look­ing break­er that had this line­up a mess. You see a curve­ball and change­up vs left­ies. Pair it with Savan­t’s 2024 FSL sam­ple, and Watts-Brown appears to have a lit­tle Mussi­na to his spin game, with a myr­i­ad of speeds and breaks on his resume: If you like swords and freez­ing hit­ters, this look is full of them. Note how many of the Ks came vs the top of the line­up vs hit­ters who are cur­rent­ly or have been con­sid­ered top 100 bats. The big take­away for me is the effect Watts-Brown slide piece(s) have on hit­ters. He has them all kinds of in between, leav­ing me to won­der if some­thing out­lier is hap­pen­ing with Watts-Brown’s decep­tion and qual­i­ty of stuff. Maybe stuff+ type mod­els see it too, maybe they don’t. I recent­ly had some­one in base­ball tell me, much like a change­up, if some­one tells you with too much con­fi­dence what makes a slid­er a good slid­er, there’s only so far that can go. The proof is most­ly in the pud­ding. See for your­self: Watts-Brown is still up and down, out­­ing-to-out­­ing, pro­­duc­­tion-wise, but in my looks, exe­cu­­tion-wise as well. Locat­ing the fast­ball well might be a big­ger key for him than for some. It’s not a mon­ster, but it might be good enough. When I’ve seen him hit hard, it seems like a mis-exe­­cut­ed fast­ball, like we saw above, is the cul­prit. At 2% Fantrax ros­ters, Watts-Brown isn’t very pop­u­lar. Per­haps jus­ti­fi­ably so at this junc­ture, but it might be worth keep­ing an eye here. The Blue Jays can be hard to fig­ure out in regards to assign­ments and how they deploy their farm arms, but Watts-Brown is cur­rent­ly in a small league where hit­ters are going to get a lot of looks at him. This can be a good test for him. I would­n’t be shocked to find him in the East­ern League rel­a­tive­ly soon either. One does­n’t need to be over­ly imag­i­na­tive to see a future MLB pen arm.

May is a fun time to mud. Devel­op­ing arms start find­ing a groove. The April rust is loose and we start see­ing more length in out­ings. For some, good con­sis­ten­cy starts to show and the cream starts to rise more. This past week­end gleaned this. I search for some­thing I call a Fan­tas­tic Qual­i­ty Out­ing, or FQO, when perus­ing MiLB pitch­ing lines. It’s one day’s work doing all the things you could ask from a start­ing pitch­er: get at least 18 outs, give your team a chance to win by not allow­ing more than 3 ER, don’t allow more than 2 BB, strike out at least 6, keep the ball in the yard, and keep traf­fic in check (a game WHIP under 1.30.) It’s not an easy feat. Of the 4,072 2025 GS in full-sea­­son, only 123 have been FQOs. That’s under 3% of out­ings. Those 124 have been pulled off by 106 dif­fer­ent pitch­ers, 92 of which are yet to make the bigs. Of those 92, 15 have pulled it off more than once already: Since we start­ed track­ing on 5/4/21, here are the sea­son lead­ers: Say what you will regard­ing these arms and MLB suc­cess (oth­er than it’s prob­a­bly too soon to judge for most.) But the val­ue of FQO watch­ing has proved valu­able sig­nal­ing unpop­u­lar names soon to take a bump in pop­u­lar­i­ty. 2021 Jho­ny Brito was not an arm dynasty own­ers were ros­ter­ing. Nei­ther was Kil­ian or Pfaadt. Ran­gal, Otto, and Daniel would go on to get some MLB run. 2022 was Bibee and Thor­pe lift offs, while folks gave Fitts a cold shoul­der for a few years. Dob­bins is just now sought after. Aguiar could very well be amidst an MLB sea­son if not for injury. Gus­to is get­ting his MLB shot and turn­ing some heads. Of course Dana, Math­ews, and Chan­dler ascend­ed up lists. Owen Wild next? But back to my point: this past week­end, over 20% of the entire sea­son’s FQOs were thrown in three days: **Not includ­ed are Ty Blach, Nathan Wiles, Diet­rich Enns FQOs (for­mer big lea­guers)** Some dynasty own­ers may start to feel fatigue this month. Oth­ers will hold on to their ear­ly sea­son spec prizes too tight­ly, bank­ing on April fool­ery. The arms bud­ding in May might be where it’s at? Here’s some fun, a strike­out from every out­ing above: FQOs aren’t some­thing to use pre­dic­tive­ly, nec­es­sar­i­ly, but rather a sig­nal to where we should maybe put our eyes. These are the kinds of out­ings we want for our fan­ta­sy teams and check­ing out who’s look­ing the part helps. I fil­ter these out every day and high­light them in the tool you can find on the home page head­ing.

The SAL’s April Hit­ter of the Month, Jacob Reimer, is ros­tered in 3% of Fantrax leagues. Here are his first 82 bat­ted ball events of 2025, a run that earned a .330/.416/.615 slash with 5 HR, 24 RBI, 3 SB. Reimer did this with a bat­ting aver­age of balls in play of .397. A broad­cast claimed Reimer went through a major over­haul this off­sea­son. (You’ll hear the booth talk about this.) Did he, though? Real swing changes are as com­mon as a Rock­ies win, most­ly dynasty base­ball lore and tall tales. Right? A look at the bat­ted ball pro­file is inter­est­ing. This ear­­ly-sea­­son sam­ple has Reimer hit­ting 12% few­er ground­balls and 7.2% few­er IFF­Bs, and he’s going oppo­site field less than he ever has. They say ground­ball and fly­ball rates tend to sta­bi­lize around 80 BBEs. Hunt­ing the archives for a good open-faced look at 2024 Reimer came up emp­ty. There is one of 2025 Reimer in the fol­low­ing video. Here’s Reimer’s bat work thus far in 2025: That was not the most luck-filled, out­ra­geous­ly high BABIP mash-up I’ve ever seen. Reimer is mak­ing a lot of good con­tact there. Sure, some mishits fell and some ques­tion­able scor­ing deci­sions helped him out, but Reimer’s line dri­ve approach is send­ing more balls in the air than on the ground. Does it sus­tain? We shall see. But how much does it mat­ter? Let’s say a hit­ter makes a change and flips 10% of his bat­ted balls from ground­balls to fly­balls. In a sam­­ple-size of 82, that would be flip­ping 8 BBEs. Let’s be a smidge gen­er­ous and say those ground­balls would have led to two hits, as GB BABIP is around .230. Most like­ly sin­gles. Our new fly­balls will prob­a­bly result in one hit, giv­en FB BABIP of .170some. But that hit’s SLG and HR poten­tial out­weighs the cre­at­ed run poten­tial vs two sin­gles. Those smarter than I, holler if I’m wrong, but it’s basi­cal­ly trad­ing two sin­gles for a home run, no? I digress. Reimer may have tru­ly tak­en a devel­op­men­tal leap. I’ve been fooled by oth­ers’ uptick in home run pro­duc­tion and bet­ter-look­ing bat­ted ball pro­files before. Reimer can hit the ball hard; this has always been the case, but now the shapes are more con­ducive to home runs. Injuries have slowed him down in the past. Con­sid­er­ing he’s the age of a young col­lege bat in this year’s draft, maybe we just hit the reset but­ton on our dynasty eval­u­a­tion? If we did, and only knew this ver­sion, would this 3%er hold the same dynasty val­ue as a first-rounder in this upcom­ing MLB draft?

75 pitch­es, 69 strk%, 12 whiffs (8 via FBs, 3 via BB, 1 via CHG) Beam’s three-year SEC resume is lengthy and pro­duc­tive. Pub­lic reports tend to tag him as a “com­mand guy with a high floor.” These are monikers dynasty own­ers tend not to grav­i­tate towards aggres­sive­ly. A 3ros% reflects this. The reports on the arse­nal bol­ster this nar­ra­tive. Despite his long ama­teur track record, which includes pro­duc­tion in the Col­lege World Series, this was my first time see­ing Beam. The idea that an advanced col­lege arm should roll through the low­ers isn’t one I sub­scribe to all the time, but it might apply here. Despite all that, Beam won me over with this look, leav­ing me to won­der if this “floor” tag is shad­ing the upside. The 2024 2nd round pick out of Ten­nessee has been cruis­ing. After a rough-look­ing debut line, he’s been nails over five starts: Beam showed a bud­ding three-fast­ball game. Unsure where the booth was get­ting their read­ings, the fast­ball was 93–97. He would sink it when asked, and there were cut­ters sewn in. The only shared veloc­i­ty of a cut­ter was 90. This offer­ing has a look of one far more on the fast­ball end of the cut­ter spec­trum. Most fast­ball offer­ings in this video are labeled gener­i­cal­ly as “FB” with spots I was more sure of or won­der­ing, labeled as such. Beam’s most-used sec­ondary was a change­up he would throw to both hand­ed hit­ters. His break­ing ball is a slow­er 1 to 7/2 to 8 look­ing curve­ball. I did won­der if there were a few tries at a dif­fer­ent break­er, but I can’t say for cer­tain. The three fast­ball game might be sub­tle to the eye here. I did­n’t pick up on some of it until my sec­ond and third times through. Beam threw a lot of fast­balls, espe­cial­ly the first time through, real­ly bul­ly­ing at times. But he shows an abil­i­ty to make the base­ball do what he wants at a high clip, with heat sub­tly mov­ing in sev­er­al direc­tions and a propen­si­ty to spot them where he wants. As the out­ing pro­gress­es, he starts using the sec­on­daries more, but still uti­lizes his heaters. For what­ev­er it’s worth, the booth com­ment­ed through­out the broad­cast how his fast­ball felt faster than the read­ings. Giv­en the pub­lic reports on the fast­ball and the look here, I’m lean­ing Beam is throw­ing a bit hard­er than those have him. Sure, this is a High‑A line­up, but one of the more pro­duc­tive MWL offens­es. It isn’t so much the results here that sucked me in, but more so the way Beam pitch­es and uses his weapons. And how it leaves con­fi­dence the upper’s assignment(s) might be a rel­a­tive­ly breezy adjust­ment for him. See for your­self: I think the sec­on­daries get 50 reviews, and I won­der if the break­ing ball game needs a facelift, but Beam’s three-fast­ball game might put less need on such things. The inter­sec­tion of know-how and tools is our des­ti­na­tion, and Beam lives in that neigh­bor­hood. Beam is the most encour­ag­ing Roy­als arm I’ve watched in 2025, and has me think­ing the dynasty world is under-val­u­ing him…maybe sig­nif­i­cant­ly so. It’s one look in the log­book, but I’m a fan here, and this feels like a great play in a 30 or only league. Like, maybe make some room for him??

The 2023 11th rounder had a career day, set­ting a high in strike­outs over five score­less innings. My man John asked about him, so it felt like time to have a look. The biggest take­away? How fine a line can be between a bad (short) day and a career day. As you’ll see, the line here was one pitch. Let­son cruised before and after the sixth out need­ed, but that out took 22 pitch­es and almost sent him home for the day before the end of the sec­ond. It also exudes how cru­el the base­ball gods can be, as Let­son was­n’t pitch­ing poor­ly. A cou­ple of infield hits and near miss­es loaded the bases, and a bat­tling 9‑hole hit­ter sent it to the edge. Let­son threw 77 pitch­es on the day, 66% strikes, earned 14 whiffs, sev­en with the break­er, 6 with fast­balls, and one with the change­up. The 9 Ks was a best. Let­son is off to a great start. The large-framed-righty’s arse­nal isn’t com­plex; the fast­ball was 92–96, prob­a­bly sit­ting 94 this out­ing. He’ll sink it when his catch­er asks as well. Dur­ing the rough stretch, the heat looked to be los­ing a few ticks, but he ramped it back up lat­er, leav­ing me to won­der if the dip was more about the sit­u­a­tion than his fast­ball sta­mi­na. There’s a slow­er ben­der and a change­up. He threw one change­up to a righty, so at this stage, he’s more or less a two-pitch guy. Here’s what he’s done as a pro thus far: Let­son very much has the feel of a devel­op­ing arm, but a skill set with a strong foun­da­tion; a devel­op­ing arm one might feel rel­a­tive­ly safe with. Let­son makes the base­ball do what he wants at a nice clip for a 20-year-old, but still has plen­ty of work to do. Bet­ter fast­ball exe­cu­tion would have helped him avoid some longer at-bats and things. The slow­er slid­er gives these guys fits. Change­ups are hard­est, and yet eas­i­est to judge…how’d it work? It seemed to do all right. The change does­n’t appear to be his most com­fort­able offer­ing. Room to grow all the way around for Let­son, but you don’t have to squint too hard to see how it could come togeth­er. Adding anoth­er trick may be required before MLB suc­cess is on the table, but folks are doing that all the time. Let­son is still a baby in pitch­ing years, but a fair­ly advanced two-pitch-look­ing one. As far as dynasty inter­est? Yeah, sure. In a larg­er league where you don’t mind hold­ing a bak­ing arm, Let­son feels like a fine choice. The cake prob­a­bly lacks a few ingre­di­ents right now, and there is a large field of such arms out there, but I can see rea­sons for pre­fer­ring him over many oth­ers. It will be inter­est­ing to see what Let­son looks like at the end of the year. If it feels much the same as he approach­es 200 devel­op­men­tal innings, my inter­est prob­a­bly dwin­dles some.

ERC came via trade from the Red Sox, yet he has the feel of a clas­sic IFA Yan­kee arm in the lowers—a live­ly arm with raw spin capa­bil­i­ty, zip­py fast­ball, but fer­al. The high walk rates need improve­ment, and he’s off to an encour­ag­ing start in that depart­ment in 2025, hav­ing walked 3/3/0/1/2 hit­ters his first five out­ings. ERC’s also one of only four pitch­ers to throw mul­ti­ple FQOs this sea­son, hav­ing done so in back-to-back starts head­ing into this one. It seemed time to check in on the lean whip­py arm tal­ent and see what’s bak­ing. I did not expect what I found. Hav­ing not reviewed his pre­vi­ous out­ings, the broad­cast booth was queu­ing us on some devel­op­ments. ERC threw a lot of split­ters. More so than they’ve ever seen, per the booth. Most­ly to left­ies, but you’ll spot a few right on right. He threw about twice as many sec­on­daries as fast­balls. This sure seemed like a devel­op­men­tal out­ing, some­thing the Yan­kees seem to do a good job with some of their young arms. Encour­ag­ing, but even more encour­ag­ing was ERC earn­ing results while pitch­ing to devel­op­ment. A 67% strike rate pops in this con­text. You will still see more non-com­pet­i­­tive pitch­es than you’d like, par­tic­u­lar­ly some with fast­balls. Throw­ing so much “junk” and then com­ing back to the fast­ball seemed a bit of a chal­lenge this day. See for your­self: Hav­ing writ­ten ERC off as a pre­ferred dynasty play, shy­ing away from these types as exe­cu­tion abil­i­ty tends to be capped for most arms like this, this out­ing has me ques­tion­ing that call. At 4% ros­tered, there’s a mid­dling inter­est here from dynasty own­ers, which makes sense. ERC is still very much a devel­op­ing arm, but one that appears to be putting the work in and mak­ing strides in the direc­tion we’d want. Live­ly stuff get­ting cor­ralled and sharp­ened here. The get-the-good-stuff-around-the-zone exe­cu­tion might sig­nal its abil­i­ty to play against more advanced line­ups. ERC has my atten­tion. See­ing ERC in AA, still fair­ly raw, and get­ting results in 2025 would­n’t shock me.