Coby Mayo, Paul Skenes Return As Statcast Standouts (April 8)
Image credit: Orioles 3B prospect Coby Mayo (Photo by Brian Westerholt/Four Seam Images)
Every Monday morning we’ll highlight 10 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.
Last week, Coby Mayo and Paul Skenes both showed major league caliber tools in small samples, and both continued to impress, returning to this list for a second week. They are major leaguers playing in Triple-A. But there are other more under-the-radar players, including a pair of lower-level Cardinals arms, already producing intriguing data in 2024 as well.
You can access the data below via Baseball Savant.
Related prospect rankings
Coby Mayo, 3B, Orioles
The primary traits to evaluate prospects in the minors include age relative to level, whiff rates, patience, exit velocities and the ability to elevate the ball. Coby Mayo checks every single one of these boxes. Check out the two graphs below.
His 109.5 mph 90th percentile exit velocity would place him at the very top end of major league baseball (80-grade power), and he’s doing it while elevating the ball, averaging a 12-degree launch angle (it was higher before dropping a bit on Sunday). He’s also young for the level, giving him lots of time to develop and already elite skill set. Mayo might be a tad overlooked given Norfolk is stacked, but he’s hitting like a top 5-10 prospect in the early going. Jackson Holliday is two years younger, so it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but Mayo is hitting the ball much harder than Holliday, with more loft and much less swing and miss.
Paul Skenes, RHP, Pirates
For the second consecutive start, Skenes averaged 101 mph with his fastball, and it returned a 47% whiff rate and 32% swinging strike percentage, destroying batters up in the zone. The pitch is so good he barely used his other pitches, which didn’t get very many whiffs in his second start, but they all have promising traits. It is this author’s opinion that he should be using those pitches more while he’s in Triple-A, but I get that he just wants to show the world that he shouldn’t be wasting bullets in Triple-A. Can’t wait to see him mow down major league hitters with his “dead zone” fastball.
Addison Barger, INF, Blue Jays
The Jays have Barger playing third base and right field this season, setting him up to be a Ben Zobrist type of playe who can play all over the field. He’s off to a good start, hitting .290/.405/.484. We really like how Barger is comfortably situated in our Baseball America Magic Quadrant, hitting the ball hard with very little swing and miss. He’s been doing that for a while, prioritizing hard line drive contact. His 70-grade raw power indicated by his 90th percentile exit velocity probably plays closer to 55 or 60 given the launch angles, but it’s average to plus contact and power with oodles of defensive versatility. He looks major league ready and should be a nice addition to the Jays lineup pretty soon.
Tyler Soderstrom, C, Athletics
Soderstrom is performing almost as well as Mayo in terms of his hitting traits, with a little less power, a little more swing and miss, but more loft. He’s also playing catcher full-time this season, so the Athletics may keep him down in Triple-A for a bit to (not save money of course) work on his defense. Ignore the .148 batting average, Soderstrom can mash and should be a good big league hitter, and will be even more valuable if he can be even a serviceable major league catcher.
Josue Briceño, C, Tigers
Briceño currently ranks No. 18 in the Tigers system, but he looks poised to shoot up Detroit’s Top 30. I believe he could even crack a Top 100 list next season. It’s very early, but Briceño is already showing plus plus raw power, with a pristine 5.5% swinging strike percentage and just a 12.5% whiff rate, which is incredibly low in general, but absolutely elite when you can impact the ball as hard as he does.
He’s played more at first than at catcher in the early going, but he’s definitely got the bat to profile at first. If he can hold his own at catcher, the sky is the limit, especially if he can learn to lift the ball. Players with this level of contact ability, paired with this level of exit velocity, are extremely, extremely, extremely rare. If I had a rocket ship emoji rating for Briceno, it would have 80 of them.
Yeral Martinez, RF, Marlins
Yeral has the hardest hit batted ball in the Florida State League and the second hardest in the minors from the limited data set publicly available. One sample does not make the batter, but a 112.6 mph max exit velocity indicates plus raw power, and he got to it with a 15-degree launch angle. We’ll need a lot more of this to buy in, but he’s worth monitoring if he can continue to impact the ball at the elite level that he has in his first FSL weekend. He’s repeating the level, so we may not get too much data, as he may get moved up soon.
Tobias Myers, RHP, Brewers
The Guardians acquired Myers for Junior Caminero a few years ago. Since then, he’s bounced around multiple rosters thanks to control troubles. The Brewers appear to have figured out how to get the most out of his lively fastball.
Last season, he had a 5.00 ERA despite a very respectable 168 strikeouts in 137 innings at Double-A Biloxi. In his second year in the Brewers organization, he’s stepped it up a notch, looking like this:
In his first start of the season, Myers averaged a pedestrian 92.8 mph with his fastball, but it had elite carry at 20.1 inches of IVB. Given the release height and velo, that graded out as roughly an average pitch. On Saturday, he dialed it up to 94.3 mph, while maintaining 20 inches of vert, inducing 12 whiffs on the pitch, in zone and out of zone. More importantly, he filled up the zone with the pitch, and combined with the bat-missing vert, presents a very solid base to build around.
It appears the Brewers had him focus on his cutter as his primary secondary, coming in at 89 mph, with good separation off the fastball and has the potential to be a good contact quality management pitch that gets a decent number of whiffs. He mixes in a gyro slider with promising traits and good results so far (21.1% swinging strike percentage), as well as a curve and changeup that don’t project as well.
If the fastball, cutter and slider are as good as they’ve been in this short sample, Myers could join the Brewers rotation soon. He’s fully built up, has been shouldering a starter’s workload for almost eight seasons in the minors and looks like he could slide in to any rotation and be productive. I love rooting for the guys who have been grinding in the minors for almost a decade. Here’s hoping he gets to achieve his dream soon.
Thomas White, LHP, Marlins
Thomas White is quite popular here at Baseball America, featuring in a bevy of breakout articles by Matt Eddy, Geoff Pontes, Josh Norris’ Bible, and JJ Cooper. I’m ready to join the party after taking a peek at his FSL pitch data.
White, a 6-foot-5 lefty, isn’t your typical projectable prep pitcher, as his fastball already has present plus traits, averaging 95.2 and touching 97.6 with good, but not great, 17 inches of IVB, which is slightly above-average given the release point. This is an absolutely phenomenal base from which to build out a repertoire, and, in this author’s opinion, his fastball projects as a much better pitch than what Noble Meyer showed in his first outing.
The most important thing for a starting pitcher prospect is having a strong fastball, as that provides a strong floor for performance. The fastball as it stands now would probably be a roughly major league quality pitch in terms of shape, and could be elite with natural gains in velo and ride. I’m not a fan of either the slider (probably a curve) nor the changeup, despite the early success. Given other pitchers with his type of fastball, I’d say he’s a good candidate for a gyro slider. He’s got lots of time to build out his arsenal, and is in an org that has shown success at developing pitchers.
Quinn Mathews, LHP, Cardinals
Mathews’ preseason scouting report described his fastball sitting 90-92 mph with above-average ride. His stuff appeared to take a jump in his first outing of the season. His fastball sat 92-94 mph and touched 96. Mathews threw his four-seam fastball 25 times, getting eight whiffs on 10 swings. But what’s more intriguing is the 18.5 inches of IVB from a low 5.6-foot release height, giving him almost three inches more ride than a typical pitcher will get from that arm slot.
He mixes in a two-seam fastball shape with almost as much ride and about five inches more run. I’m not sure if this is a pitch classification issue, or if he really is throwing two fastball shapes. He complements the fastballs with a true gyro slider with only 1.3 inches of IVB, and it should pair very well with the high vert fastballs. He mixed in a curveball and a changeup as well, showing the potential for a five-pitch mix, and was able to steal strikes with the curveball, though that may not persist as he moves up the ladder. We’ll need a large sample size, and Mathews did walk five batters in 3.1 innings, but if he continues to show this stuff, he’s a name to watch in their system.
Chen-Wei Lin, RHP, Cardinals
We close out this list with a 6-foot-7 righty from Taiwan. There’s limited info on Lin given he never pitched stateside, but his first start of the season may be a precursor for a big rise. It’s rare to have never heard of a pitcher and then have those “holy crap” moments when doing research. He’s 6-foot-7? Averages 97.4 mph with his fastball? He topped out at 100? The shape isn’t spectacular, getting only 15-16 inches of vert, but this is a special arm.
He throws a true bullet slider with almost no IVB or horizontal break, but he doesn’t yet get the velo that pairs well with the fastball. If he can find a much firmer version of the pitch, closer to 88 mph, it could be an elite four-seam fastball/slider mix. The changeup isn’t particularly great at the moment.
Lin may be a prime candidate for the Yankees special—the sinker/sweeper combo—which could give him three distinct pitches if he can also throw the gyro slider. There’s a lot of development to go here, but that’s the type of arm you can dream on.
