Prospects who will be key figures in upper-level division races
By Sam Dykstra/MiLB.com
Just under three weeks. That’s all that remains in the Minor League regular season before the playoffs start for most leagues on on Sept. 3.
And as the window closes, the playoff races are tightening. Consider, for instance, the Southern League where all five North Division teams are separated by only three games and three South Division squads have only 1 1/2 games between them. That’s an extreme case, but you get the idea.
With only a few games left, it’ll take team efforts for some of these clubs to stand out among their peers and grab a ticket to the postseason. That being said, some individual players will undoubtedly have a bigger influence than others, given their talents.
These are some of those prospects in the Triple-A and Double-A circuits:
International League: A.J. Cole, RHP, Syracuse Chiefs — The Chiefs lead Pawtucket by one game in the North Division and have a three-game advantage above Rochester for the Wild Card, so they’re not a lock despite having the IL’s best record at 70–53. They’ll need every win they can get in these last few weeks, and it’ll certainly help when they have the Nationals’ №2 prospect on the mound.
Since moving up to Triple-A ball at the end of the June, Cole is 4–0 with a 2.87 ERA, 1.34 WHIP, 34 strikeouts and 11 walks in eight starts (47 innings). He hasn’t allowed more than four earned runs in any of those eight outings and has gone at least seven frames in three of his last five starts with the Chiefs. With 22 games left on the schedule, they could use a few more of quality outings from the 22-year-old right-hander.
It’s important to note that Cole isn’t likely to get called up by the Nats, a la Michael Taylor, in the next few weeks given that he’s not on the organization’s 40-man roster. Right-hander Taylor Hill, who has made two appearances in the Majors this season and is 10–6 with a 2.94 ERA in Syracuse, is more likely to make the jump in an emergency.
Pacific Coast League: Jason Rogers, 3B, Nashville Sounds — Nashville has generated little offense this season. It ranks last in the PCL with 523 runs. By comparison, Las Vegas leads the league with 765 runs. Of course, the Sounds have relied heavily on a pitching staff that owns a league-best 3.61 ERA. But they’ll need their bats if they’re going to maintain their 1/2-game lead over Memphis in the American Southern Division.
That’s where Rogers comes in. Like Cole, he moved to the Triple-A ranks in late June and hasn’t had much trouble adjusting to Minors’ highest level. In 40 PCL games, the right-handed slugger owns a .289/.346/.507 line with seven homers and 29 RBIs.
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He’s been especially hot lately, as he showed Sunday when he went 4-for-6 with three roundtrippers and nine RBIs in a doubleheader against Round Rock. The 26-year-old’s slash line this month is .325/.386/.675, which couldn’t have come at a better time for Nashville. Rogers clubbed a career-high 22 homers with Double-A Nashville a season ago en route to Southern League mid-season and post-season All-Star honors, and even though he’s unlikely to reach that number again — he’s at only 14 this season — his other numbers are already above his career averages. The Sounds need a slugger to carry them into the playoffs, and Rogers could be just the man for the job.
Eastern League: Richmond Flying Squirrels starting rotation — I wrote back in June about how a rotation with four top-10 prospects (Kyle Crick, Adalberto Mejia, Ty Blach, Clayton Blackburn) is so rare that the Giants had sent two pitching coaches (Ross Grimsley, Jerry Cram) to their Double-A affiliate to help out. Following the promotion of №8 prospect Chris Stratton two weeks ago, Richmond’s rotation is filled to the brim with five of the organization’s top eight prospects.
Crick (3.32 ERA) is the most talented of the bunch; indeed, he’s the only Giants prospect ranked in the top 100 overall at №50. While control remains an issue (5.7 BB/9), he continues to produce swing-and-miss stuff and leads in K/9 (10.8) among pitchers with at least 80 innings in the Eastern League.
Blach’s numbers have dropped off since the All-Star break (2.98 ERA before, 4.21 ERA after), but he showed what he’s capable of with seven scoreless innings in his last time out on Aug. 7.
Blackburn just pitched past the fifth inning for the first time since coming back from a rib injury in early July and has been a proven performer with a 2.89 ERA in six starts (28 innings) since his return. In a similar fashion, Mejia hasn’t worked deep into a game in a long time — he last pitched more than five innings on June 15 — but is showing signs of effectiveness with just five earned runs allowed in his last four starts (17 1/3 innings). Stratton, meanwhile, has yet to find his form in his new home with four earned runs and eight walks allowed in two starts (eight innings).
Standing 1 1/2 games ahead of Akron in the Western Division, the Squirrels will need to squeeze as many quality outings out of their rotation as they can get, and given the talent involved, that might not be too much of a problem.
Southern League: Corey Seager, SS, Chattanooga Lookouts — The Dodgers’ Double-A affiliate finished at the bottom of the North Division’s first-half standings, a massive 20 games behind first-half champs Huntsville. Now, the Lookouts are perhaps the hottest team in baseball with an 11-game winning streak and have climbed to a tie with Tennessee atop the second-half standings.
A big reason for that has been the performance of Seager. The Dodgers’ top prospect joined Chattanooga in mid-July and has been very impressive at the plate. The 20-year-old shortstop is 16-for-43 (.372) with a homer, a triple, four doubles and nine RBIs during the winning streak and owns a .346/.358/.538 slash line in 20 Southern League contests overall.
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Seager has all the offensive potential in the world — he received 60 grades on his hitting and power tools from MLB.com — and the fact that it’s showing despite a bump from the Cal League to the Southern League is incredibly promising. The left-handed slugger should continue to anchor the middle of the Lookouts order as they try to stay atop the closest division race in the Minors.
Texas League: Joey Gallo, 3B, Frisco RoughRiders — Of course a slugger with 38 homers, second-most in the Minor Leagues, belongs on a list like this, but for different reasons than the guys above.
Unlike Seager, Gallo has actually struggled lately with the RoughRiders, who sit one game ahead of Midland and have a chance to sweep the South Division first-half and second-half titles. He’s hit only one homer in his last 11 games and that comes during a time when he’s 7-for-43 (.163) with 18 strikeouts. His average in Frisco has fallen from .278 on July 25 to .243 after an 0-for-5, five-strikeout night on Wednesday. He’s fanned 41.7 percent of the time in 54 Double-A games this season.
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This could just be Double-A pitching catching up to the 20-year-old, who fanned in 36.8 percent of his at-bats in 2013, but Frisco will need their №5 hitter to start making contact — and loud contact at that — if they’re to hold off the RockHounds. Even if they can’t, they’ll need his bat in the playoffs, where they’ve already secured a spot with their first-half title.
