Spencer Michaelis

Valerio is walking a bit less and striking out a bit more, but he actually has a higher OPS at A+ than A ball so far!

According to Hedbert Perez’s Instagram Story, it appears he is on his way to Low A Carolina! See David Gasper’s Tweet with the screenshot.

Prospects Live released their midseason update today The newcomers didn’t get any scouting report, but you can still see the preseason reports for all of the guys who remained on the list.

@BrewersPD with the Video Tweet of both of these home runs.

Just to give some context to my list, I usually watch at least 4 or 5 minor league games a week from our system, but watch specific players a lot more often. I actually have a running spreadsheet of prospects that I update with notes and such as I watch games. For the rookie leagues, since the games aren't broadcasted, I have some filters setup on Fangraphs with stats that I find valuable in order to try to find guys that are worth paying attention to, as well as paying attention to who gets aggressive assignments from the organization and watching any video I can. Of course, I also factor in the scouting reports from sites like Fangraphs, MLB Pipeline, Prospects Live and Baseball America, etc, especially for those rookie league players. That said, I'm not claiming to be an expert at all, this is just something I enjoy doing This time around, I ended up with 149 players that I found to be worth paying some attention to (35 or higher OFP). They're grouped below in tiers: Before the list, here is where I had the recently traded players slotting in before they were traded: 37 Bowden Francis RHP (45 OFP) -- Traded with Trevor Richards to TOR for Rowdy Tellez 24 Cooper Hummel UTIL (45 OFP) -- Traded with Alberto Ciprian to ARI for Eduardo Escobar 53 Alberto Ciprian IF (40+ OFP) -- Traded with Cooper Hummel to ARI for Eduardo Escobar 13 Reese Olson RHP (45+ OFP) -- Traded to DET for Daniel Norris 38 Payton Henry C (45 OFP) -- Traded to MIA for john Curtiss 60 OFP 1 Garrett Mitchell OF 55 OFP 2 Hedbert Perez OF 50+ OFP 3 Aaron Ashby LHP 4 Jeferson Quero C 50 OFP 5 Brice Turang SS 6 Ethan Small LHP 7 Sal Frelick OF 8 Antoine Kelly LHP 45+ OFP 9 Mario Feliciano C 10 Tyler Black 2B 11 Eduardo Garcia SS 12 Joe Gray Jr OF 13 Korry Howell OF/SS 14 Zavier Warren C/CIF 15 David Hamilton SS/2B 16 Freddy Zamora SS 17 Jake Cousins RHP 18 Felix Valerio 2B 19 Victor Castaneda RHP 20 Tristen Lutz OF 21 Abner Uribe RHP 22 Hendry Mendez OF 45 OFP 23 Justin Topa RHP 24 Joey Wiemer OF 25 Hayden Cantrelle SS 26 Jackson Chourio SS/OF 27 Alex Binelas 1B/3B 28 Miguel Sanchez RHP 29 Logan Henderson RHP 30 Russell Smith LHP 31 Caden Vire LHP 32 Ernesto Martinez 1B 33 Jheremy Vargas SS 34 Max Lazar RHP 35 Micah Bello OF 36 Dylan File RHP 37 Thomas Dillard 1B 38 Luis Medina OF 39 Justin Bullock RHP 40+ OFP 40 Alexis Ramirez RHP 41 Je'Von Ward OF 42 Luke Barker RHP 43 Carlos Rodriguez OF 44 Carlos Luna RHP 45 Yujanyer Herrera RHP 46 Carlos Rodriguez RHP 47 Darrien Miller C 48 Quinton Low 1B/RHP 49 Ashton McGee INF 50 Clayton Andrews LHP 51 Evan Reifert RHP 52 Daniel Guilarte SS 53 Alec Bettinger RHP 54 Jesus Parra 3B 55 Eduarqui Fernandez 1B/OF 56 Weston Wilson UTIL 57 Braden Webb RHP 58 Andy Otero LHP 59 Israel Puello RHP 60 Pablo Abreu OF 61 Zack Brown RHP 62 Corey Ray OF 63 Angel Perdomo LHP 64 Jace Avina OF 65 Cam Robinson RHP 66 David Fry UTIL 67 Gregory Barrios SS 68 Harold Chirino RHP 69 Lun Zhao RHP 70 Brannon Jordan RHP 71 Brendan Murphy LHP 72 Jesus Lujano OF 73 Jesus Chirinos 1B 74 Ethan Murray SS 75 Daniel Castillo 2B 76 Patricio Aquino RHP 77 Miguel Segura RHP 78 Alexander Perez SS 40 OFP 79 Nick Belzer RHP 80 Noah Zavolas RHP 81 Fernando Olguin RHP 82 Wes Clarke C/1B 83 Noah Campbell 2B 84 Nick Kahle C 85 Reidy Mercado OF 86 Brandon Knarr LHP 87 Brandon Ramey RHP 88 Taylor Floyd RHP 89 Stiven Cruz RHP 90 Manuel Vargas OF 91 Juan Geraldo RHP 92 Jose Sibrian C 93 Michelle Vassalotti RHP 94 Michael Perdomo RHP 95 Tristan Peters OF 96 Branlyn Jaraba 3B 97 Alex Hall C 98 Kay-Lan Nicasia SS 99 Antonio Pinero SS 100 Leo Crawford LHP 101 Nick Bennett LHP 102 Zack Raabe 2B 103 JT Hintzen RHP 104 Gabe Holt 2B 105 TJ Shook RHP 106 Troy Stokes Jr OF 107 Yeison Coca SS 108 Jhoan Cruz RHP 109 Zach Vennaro RHP 110 Miguel Guerrero RHP 111 LG Castillo OF 112 Jesus Castillo RHP 113 Carlos Roa 2B/SS 114 Nash Walters RHP 115 Joey Matulovich RHP 35+ OFP 116 Ryne Moore RHP 117 Lucas Erceg 3B/LHP 118 Chad McClanahan 1B/3B 119 Andre Nnebe OF 120 Pablo Garabitos LHP 121 Peter Strzelecki RHP 122 Albreris Ferrer INF 123 Terence Doston OF 124 Kelvin Bender LHP 125 Edwin Jimenez RHP 126 Eduarh Colina OF 127 Freisis Adames RHP 128 Oscar Castaneda RHP 129 Jonathan Guzman SS 130 Jadher Areinamo SS/3B 131 Duncan Garcia OF 132 Christian Tripp RHP 133 Santiago Elizondo RHP 35 OFP 134 Thomas Jankins RHP 135 Domingo Mejia RHP 136 Matt Hardy RHP 137 Kent Hasler RHP 138 Alexander Vallecillo RHP 139 Rafael Camacho RHP 140 Jose Gonzalez OF 141 Luis Castillo OF 142 Ney Serrano SS 143 Leoni De La Cruz LHP 144 Caden Lemons RHP 145 Phili Silverio RHP 146 Quintin Torres Costa LHP 147 Fray Morelo RHP 148 Diego Larez OF 149 Edgardo Ordonez C Players in the 35 through 40+ tiers can fluctuate pretty regularly. 40+ and 45 can fluctuate. It's much harder to break into the 45+ tier and higher.

The ACL Gold team is currently in the 5th inning of their game, and it's been a fun one for the international youngins so far... Hedbert Perez: 3 for 4, 2 Doubles, 1 HR, 4 RBI Eduardo Garcia: 3 for 4, 1 Double, 1 Triple, 3 RBI (Currently a HR away from the cycle)

If I had to guess, some of the draft picks will be joining Low-A or High-A soon, causing a bit of a domino effect, except falling “up” the organizational ladder. For example Black, Murray and/or Raabe could push a guy like Valerio ot Warren up to High A. Which pushed Hamilton up and that pushed Turang up.

Raabe signed for $25k below slot, according to this Jim Callis Tweet

No, Hummel's seen some action behind the plate this season. Seems to be doing good, since there aren't any errors or passed balls in the box scores... I watched him back there for one of the games last week. He was catching Lindblom at the time. Seemed to receive pretty well honestly. I was surprised how comfortable he looked back there. I didn’t see him have to block many pitches or make any throws, but the receiving was cool to see. Looked passable back there, at least.

Watched part of his start on milb TV. He was throwing both his fastball and his slider. Fastball still showed good life. Velo was 93-95 based on what the opposing announcer was saying. Slider looked decent. His defense really screwed him on one of the runs. Joey Wiemer was lackadaisical on a fly ball to medium right field and the runner on first was able to tag up and take second. That runner then scored on a slow grounder that snuck through with two outs. One thing I noticed is that Kelly appears to be trying to shorten his arm path. I compared it to his start with the T Rats in 2019, and it’s a definite change. He didn’t look particularly comfortable with the new path yet...

Maybe they're just trying to ease Hummel in by having him shadow Lipka

Plus, at 6'9" he probably has long arms and may have a release point closer to the plate than most pitchers (like Peralta) making his pitches seem 2-3mph faster than they clock. One of the exGM’s on the MLB network mentioned the other day that his front office had studied really tall pitchers and their study showed that really tall pitchers have greater difficulty repeating their delivery. Doesn’t mean it’s always true but an interesting data point. As a D3 pitching coach with a 6’9 lefty in the bullpen, I can confirm that it’s very hard for them to repeat their mechanics. However, considering Smith’s strike throwing prowess, I’d say he likely is doing a really good job of it. At first look, he doesn’t appear to stride that far out (not surprising at his size), so I’d imagine his extension isn’t anything too crazy. Even with his height. But a good changeup from that type of arm angle is really tough on hitters. If he can fine tune a breaking ball, and maintain the command into pro ball, there could be a really interesting starting pitcher in there.

Huh? You can't get onto regular YouTube? You don't need YouTube TV to watch this one. I suppose I could watch it on my phone or lap top but I'd rather sit on the couch and watch it on tv... If your laptop has a HDMI port you can just plug that into the TV and watch it that way. That’s what I’ve been doing for most of the season with the way Sinclair and YoutubeTV have forced me to watch games this season

Since been deleted... I remember the exact same thing happened with Grisham when he got called up. I think his high school coach tweeted a congratulations or something like that. Crowder probably jumped the gun on announcing it before the team. Considering the TBD starter tomorrow and these Tweets, I’d bet he’s either coming up to start tomorrow or at least to provide an option that can give length out of the bullpen.

Along with those very impressive results, he seems like he’d be incredibly easy to root for. Pitching Ninja posted a great video of an interview Kopps did after Arkansas was eliminated and Kopps hung around to sign autographs for over an hour after the game VIDEO TWEET

Baseball America wrote about the AZL and DSL today in this article. With the AZL starting June 28, and the DSL starting July 12. They mention that “Originally, the Brewers and Blue Jays were slated to have a combined team of players, but the Brewers decided to go to two full teams.” Also looks like the Brewers, Giants and Royals are the only teams with 2 AZL teams.

This is news to me. Small was an extremely talented multi-pitch lefty that consistently missed bats. Hiura was the consensus top college hitter available. I looked it up because I wasn’t sure on either of them. Small signed for about $700k under slot and Keston was about $570k under.

Same here! Can’t believe last time I was able to attend a Brewers game, Yasmani Grandal was the starting catcher...

Ethan Small got a blurb in the Fangraphs Daily Prospect Notes. Longenhagen mentions some development with Small’s breaking balls, which is definitely noteworthy (though he still says they’re below average).

102 even, according to this Tweet

How I have always differentiated between the two is, control= walks/strikes thrown, command= location in and around the zone (basically is a pitcher hitting spots).

Felipe Lopez was traded for twice. 2009 and 2011. 2011 was similar to Nottingham in that the Brewers just gave up cash.

I think if you put him on a rehab assignment it ups the chances of losing him to a claim later on. Right now, he has to go straight from missing spring and the start of the season to a MLB roster if somebody claims him. Probably the best shot to sneak him through.

Looks like he got a bit of a write up by Baseball America in the 2019 International Review. They said "Another lower-dollar player to note is Venezuelan righthander Yujanyer Herrera, who signed when he turned 16 on Aug. 17. He's one of the youngest players in the class but has already reached 93 mph with more physical projection remaining in his 6-foot-3, 170-pound frame and good feel for a changeup for his age." So a 17 year old that is likely sitting low 90's, maybe touching mid-90's with a solid changeup? Uh yeah, count me in as extremely intrigued as well.

Here’s a nice MLB.com article talking about Mitchell, Ashby, Hedbert and some others time in extended spring and the alternate site.