Blaine Crim, Matt Shaw Headline 10 Statcast Standouts (Sep. 16)
Image credit: Blaine Crim (Photo by Eddie Kelly / ProLook Photos)
Every Monday morning, we’ll highlight several players who stood out to us based on their underlying Statcast metrics. These are not full scouting reports, but can often serve as good early indicators of prospects who might be ready to break out or are demonstrating MLB-ready skills.
Last week, we hyped up Kristian Campbell, discussed a couple of thrilling bullpen arms and dug into several interesting names.
Among the highlights this week:
- Giving some love to an underappreciated player
- A Cubs standout with a 20/20 season
- A Reds starter with three average-to-plus secondaries
- A 6-foot-8, 250-pound slugger emulating Aaron Judge
- An underrated Red Sox prospect
- Luisangel Acuna is better than his surface level numbers
- Jacob Berry is better than you think
- Another big slugger with big whiffs
- Reviewing recent callup Zach Penrod’s arsenal
- A very early look at Bryce Eldridge
10 Statcast Standouts
Blaine Crim, 1B, Rangers
There are two prospect archetypes that I’m constantly drawn to. The first is the Oneil Cruz/James Wood/Elly De La Cruz/Sebastian Walcott archetype: the tooled-up mega athlete with a massive ceiling. The second is the grinder-type: the kid who has performed every step of the way, every year of his career, but doesn’t standout on the field athletically or thump the ball outrageously hard. He’s constantly underrated, working hard and mostly under-the-radar, and his skills are likely only known to avid, prospect-focused people and his organization.
No one fits this archetype better than Blaine Crim, a now-27-year-old first baseman for the Rangers. Crim was drafted in the 19th round (565th overall) in 2019 and signed for $5,000 as a 5-foot-10 righty-righty first baseman out of Mississippi College. He was a very good hitter in college, playing four seasons of college ball:
- 2016: .300/.358/.424 with three HR
- 2017: .335/.393/.540 with eight HR
- 2018: .384/.435/.665 with 13 HR
- 2019: .373/.423/.689 with 11 HR
Good numbers, but not the kind of numbers you need to overcome being a short first base-only prospect, hence the 19th round pick and small bonus. Crim is one of the guys that may have not been able to continue chasing his dream if they didn’t make progress towards fixing minor league pay.
Fast forward to his minor league career, and we still see a guy who has hit everywhere he’s played:
- 2019 Low A: .335/.398/.528; eight HR in 236 PA
- 2021 A+: .300/.372/.559; 20 HR in 304 PA
- 2021 AA: .288/.331/.525; nine HR in 148 PA; 124 wRC+
- 2022 AA: .295/.363/.508; 24 HR in 531 PA; 118 wRC+
- 2023 AAA: .289/.385/.506; 22 HR in 582 PA; 114 wRC+
- 2024 AAA: .277/.372/.468; 19 HR in 554 PA; 111 wRC+
Every single season, at every single level, Blaine has produced. He hasn’t dominated, but he hits for average, hits for power and draws walks. He also doesn’t strike out a whole bunch. Let’s see if the Statcast data lines up with this profile:
We see a remarkably consistent batter year-to-year, with a robust sample pointing to excellent discipline, average contact skills and 60-grade raw power with the ability to get to optimized launch angles. If I were translating the raw Statcast metrics into a batting line, it would probably look quite a bit like his numbers across his career.
Blaine has done everything he can to show he’s ready for the next challenge. If anyone in the Rangers organization is reading this, this is my pitch to you to give Blaine a shot: The dude has been grinding and producing, chasing that elusive dream. An end-of-year promotion would do wonders for him; he’s more than earned it.
Matt Shaw, INF, Cubs
Shaw recently cracked the 20/20 mark, and he’s long past due some coverage in this series. The Cubs have targeted college batters with good contact and power metrics, and Shaw is precisely that. He has the defensive versatility to play anywhere in the infield, getting most of his reps at 3B but also seeing time at 2B and SS.
Shaw shows roughly 60-grade power, with a 106 mph 90th EV, though his contact and discipline metrics are below major league average, even against Triple-A pitching. Ideally, you want to see below-average chase rates and above-average in-zone swing rates, but he’s both too passive in-zone and too aggressive out-of-zone. Given his pedigree and track record, my projection is that this will improve as he gets more reps at Triple-A. This sets him up to be a key contributor by May or June of next season as a versatile infielder with a 50 hit/60 power combination. If you play fantasy baseball, he’s probably a sneaky value as a super flex who will contribute across the board in all categories.
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Chase Petty, RHP, Reds
Petty looks to have regained some of his velocity, sitting 95+ and topping out at 97.7 mph. His primary pitch is either a two-seamer with no seam-shifted wake (the movement profile stays very true to the spin axis), or a four-seamer with sub-par shape. Either way, it’s a pitch that won’t work very well against lefthanded batters. He pairs it with both a bullet slider at 90 mph that looks like a very good pitch and a sweepier slider around 80-83 that looks to be a plus pitch. The changeup gets a ton of arm-side movement and good depth, giving it solid shape. I think it’s a very promising pitch for him, with ideal velo separation from the sinker.
Pitchers without a dominant fastball can have bouts of inconsistency, but he’s got good velocity and three distinct average-to-plus secondaries. That will play.
Carson McCusker, OF, Twins
What a find by the Twins, who seem to be ok with developing guys with massive power and some massive holes in their swings, with the current shining example being Matt Wallner. McCusker is perhaps an even more extreme version of Wallner, standing a mammoth 6-foot-8, 250 pounds.
The good: 114 MPH max exit velo and 107 mph 90th percentile exit velocity
The bad: A 66.7% contact rate
The ok: A decent 80% zone contact rate
It’s likely there’s a little more juice than his early Triple-A numbers would suggest, as he topped this list of EV standouts back in May from Geoff Pontes with a whopping 111.5 mph 90th percentile exit velocity.
Let’s take a look at a highlight clip:
Nobody is Aaron Judge. But that swing and that frame look a lot like Aaron Judge. For someone like McCusker, that’s exactly the player you want to try to emulate. This is the other archetype I’m drawn to: the mammoth slugger with a huge ceiling and huge question marks.
Chase Meidroth, INF, Red Sox
How do you post a .300/.447/.411 137 wRC+ at Triple-A when you have a 90th percentile exit velocity of only 100 mph? Simple. You only swing at pitches in the zone and also never swing and miss:
Meidroth is perhaps overly passive, but he has an elite ability to make contact when he chases, so he can afford to be patient, as he’s extremely good at avoiding strikeouts (12.7% strikeout percentage on the season). The extreme patience has allowed him to also post a 19.3 BB%, which is incredible for a guy that pitchers aren’t afraid to challenge. His average launch angle is optimized for line-drive contact, so he could produce a lot of value by drawing walks and spraying line drives.
It’s extremely rare to have this level of contact skills combined with this level of patience. I think Meidroth is going to be a good major league player for a very long time.
Luisangel Acuna, 2B, Mets
Note that I’m missing a few plate appearances for Acuna here, but they don’t meaningfully alter the data:
In Triple-A this season, Acuna has hit a paltry .258/.299/.355, which is good for a wRC+ below 70. While those are all very poor numbers, he’s hitting the ball with roughly 45-grade power, albeit without the launch angles needed to hit home runs. He’s making a ton of contact, both in-zone and out-of-zone, but he will be somewhat limited by his aggressiveness.
My take is that if we only looked at his underlying data, I’d lean towards saying he’s ready to be challenged at the major league level, especially given the almost 600 plate appearances he’s accumulated at Triple-A. This tells me that the Mets are looking more at the metrics than the surface level numbers, which bodes well for them organizationally, as Acuna is much better than the surface stats would indicate. It appears that I’m doing fantasy baseball tips in this week’s episode, so I’ll suggest that Acuna is a good fantasy baseball pickup. I think he’ll hit for average, get lots of stolen bases and sneak in a home run every now and then.
Jacob Berry, 3B, Marlins
Berry from the right side is a contact hitter, with fringy power:
Berry from the left side is an exceptional contact hitter with maybe average power:
If we look at Berry as only a left-handed batter, we get a very tantalizing profile. He makes good swing decisions, hits the ball with an optimized launch angle swing and makes a ton of contact. His high-end exit velocities aren’t ever going to be amazing, but he could be a sneaky-good hitter. The sample size as a RHB is very small, so it’s hard to say if he should abandon switch hitting and focus on his lefty swing only. I’m way more bullish on Berry’s prospects than I was before looking at his data. He’s not going to be a superstar, but I had written him off completely, and now he looks like a sure bet to be a decent major league hitter.
Bob Seymour, 1B, Rays
Seymour is smoking the ball to the tune of a 108.4 mph 90th percentile exit velocity. But his contact rate is a very poor 62.5% against righties (where he has the platoon advantage) and an abysmal 55.6% against lefties (where he also sports an unworkable 47% chase rate). Like McCusker, he’s a big boy who hits the ball very hard, but has huge questions about if he can hit enough to make it all work.
Zach Penrod, LHP, Red Sox
Penrod features a good fastball that averages 95 mph with about one inch of ride above expected given his very vertical release point. He pairs it with a changeup at 88 mph that produces tons of whiffs , as it was over 50% whiffs/swing at the Triple-A level and is working in his early MLB stint. A true gyro slider at 89 mph gives him three plus pitches. This is a smashing success for Boston player development. Kristian Campbell, Penrod and Meidroth are shining examples of lesser known players that have catapulted themselves into major league talents.
Bryce Eldridge, 1B, Giants
Eldridge has ascended from A ball all the way to Triple-A, developing much faster than anyone could have anticipated. He impressed me the most out of all the batters in the Futures Game, so I was very excited to get access to his Statcast data.
We only have 35 pitches at Triple-A at the time of writing, but he’s maintaining his solid contact rate around 70%. His average exit velo is well above-average at 91 mph, and he gets the ball in the air with a 17 degree average launch angle, which is consistent with his batted ball distribution at lower levels. This included a couple of moonshots at 98 and 99 mph that he just got under and hit at 45 degree launch angles. He’s my leading candidate to headline in the final installment of this series which will post shortly after the Triple-A season ends.
