Cleveland Sports Forum

That's it. Surprisingly never had any questions and answers on Jones, Freeman, Valera, but then they all got write ups in the Top 10 listing itself which I'll copy here when I get around to it.

Thanks, Civ...good job.

Except I couldn't get him to tell me that Johnathan Rodriguez is a prospect

hardly any activity in the minor league phase of Rule 5 which is weird since they have no restrictions

Tribe related:

Pirates acquired RHP Luis Oviedo from the Mets for a player to be named later or cash considerations.

New York just selected Oviedo from the Indians with the No. 9 pick in Thursday's Rule 5 Draft, but he's promptly been flipped to Pittsburgh.

The 21-year-old right-hander struggled to the tune of a 5.38 ERA, 1.38 WHIP, and 72/40 K/BB ratio in 87 innings (19 starts) at Low-A Lake County in 2019.

I missed the end of minor league Rule 5 Indians picked 24 year Dodgers OF who's only reached low a his 2019 numbers were good

274/355/459

More triples than homers Some steals 30th round draft choice I'm guessing he's not good enough defender for center or big enough hitter for a corner But Lake County could find a role for him The system is awfully thin on any kind of outfielder

One of the more exciting prospects we've traded away in recent years. Still a long way off. We also dealt Erik Gonzalez, who we didn't need, and got Luplow who is one-half a good outfielder.

7. Tahnaj Thomas | RHP
Tahnaj Thomas
Born: Jun 16, 1999
Bats: R Throws: R
Ht.: 6'4" Wt.: 190
Drafted: Bahamas, 2016.
Signed By: Koby Perez (Indians).
View Player Card

Fastball: 70. Slider: 55. Changeup: 45. Control: 50.

TRACK RECORD: Thomas trained as a shortstop in the Bahamas and moved to the mound only after signing with the Indians for $200,000 in 2016. The Pirates acquired Thomas in the November 2018 that trade sent Jordan Luplow and Max Moroff to Cleveland. Thomas’ velocity spiked and his control improved after the trade, helping him emerge as one of the top pitchers in the Rookie-level Appalachian League in 2019.

SCOUTING REPORT: Thomas hasn’t pitched in a live game since 2019 because of the coronavirus pandemic, but he was sitting 95-99 mph and touching 101 with Bristol at the end of that season. His fastball gets swings and misses with plus life up in the zone, and he has steadily improved his control to become an average strike-thrower. Thomas relies heavily on his fastball, but his slider flashes above-average potential and generates swings and misses at its best. He throws his fringe-average changeup sparingly.

THE FUTURE: Thomas has the kind of overpowering fastball that dominates hitters, but he needs to refine his secondary pitches. He has a chance to stick as a starter if he can improve his changeup or find another offspeed pitch. If not, he can be a dominant reliever with his fastball/slider combination.

more about Thomas:

Sleepers (Pittsburgh): I'm sure you were ready for this question, so I'll put a little bit of a spin on it. Who was the one sleeper/riser over the last 1-2 years that you weren't expecting? Ie. a guy you were surprised made a leap or got more feedback on than you anticipated.
Tim Williams: I really liked the reports we were getting on Tahnaj Thomas at the end of 2019. His velocity and control were much improved in the times we saw him live at Pirates Prospects. Not seeing his follow-up, due to the lost 2020, was disappointing, but he'll be a guy to follow closely next year. I also have liked watching Cody Bolton emerging as a sleeper middle of the rotation option. Basically, I'm a sucker for pitchers adding velocity.

Another talented youngster we traded a couple of summers ago while increasing supply of upper minor league level OFs was Jhon Torres, part of the package for Mercado. 6-4 200 lb RH hitting outfielder. 22 years old now. power hitter with 19 career homers in 524 AB, almost all of that in short season ball. Cardinals #19 prospect in 2019; #15 prospect in 2020; He's rated with top OF arm in today's Baseball America Cardinals Top 10 post. He's not in the top 10 and the rest of the list won't be published for a couple months.

I was checking on some minor leaguers who had some potential, but didn't do much with it, and I find:

Nellie Rodriguez 1B is a minor league free agent; was last winter and doesn't look like anyone signed him. Not bad at hitting homeruns but never succeeded at much else.

Logan Ice C whose skills were always heavily tilted to the defensive side, retired last winter He was drafted in the equivalent of the second round
Ice will finish his five-year minor-league career with a .206/.309/.313 slash line, 18 home runs and 101 RBI. The 24-year-old played in a total of 271 games and spent the entire 2019 season with Double-A Akron, where he hit just .180/.294/.255. The switch-hitting catcher was selected 72nd overall in the 2016 first-year player draft by the Indians following a successful three-year stint at Oregon State.

Top 10 Cleveland Indians Prospects for 2021 Fantasy Baseball
December 23, 2020 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects | 26 Comments
by: The Itch

For this system, the script gets a bit flipped. First, no pitching stone should go unturned in Cleveland. Whereas we’re typically ignoring teenage arms in our quest to stock dynasty systems with power-speed bats, we want all the arms we can hoard in Cleveland. I’m trying to think of another system that operates similarly for our purposes. In Tampa Bay and Los Angeles, we want the arms, too, but we want all the bats just as badly. Plus, those clubs bounce their pitching prospects around between the rotation and bullpen and minors even after they’ve demonstrated they can retire major league bats in order.

Cleveland might be the last place you can count on a young pitcher to get a shot at six innings every time out. Take Aaron Civale for example. A third round pick in 2016 and not an elite prospect by any means, Civale lasted six innings or more in 11 or 12 starts in 2020, falling short in only his final turn, a four-inning, eight-run blowup that devastated his season-long statline and dropped him down some draft boards. It’s beautiful to get the sparkling ratios that come alone with the quick analytic hook, but we need Wins in our game, and despite their typically anemic offense, Cleveland is one of the few places to find double digit winners throughout the rotation.



Format: Position Player | Age on 4/1/2021 | Highest level played | ETA

1. RHP Triston McKenzie | 23 | MLB | 2020

The nickname “Sticks” is cool, in my opinion, and it’s exceptionally fitting for McKenzie, who will likely add muscle as he ages because if he goes the other way, he could become two-dimensional or, if he listens to Radiohead, disappear completely, something he almost did in 2019 when a series of muscle-related injuries sidelined him the whole season.

Cut to 2020, and we find Sticks striking out ten Tigers in his debut, allowing just two hits in six innings. His other few turns followed a slightly different storyline. He dominated the Royals in his third start (6 IP, 0 R, 6 K, 0 BB, 3 H) but didn’t last beyond the fifth inning in any of his other four starts. Small sample caveats are loud here, but we haven’t seen much McKenzie of late, and my lasting impression in the moment was that he’d been great in 2020, so it’s interesting to see he was only fantasy-good in two of six starts. I’m definitely buying in redraft leagues given his impressive four-pitch mix (fastball 53.3%, slider 20.2%, curveball 16.5%, change-up 10%), but his price feels incredibly high in my few dynasty leagues. If you’re in one where he’s still available at a reasonable price, I suggest making an offer. McKenzie seems poised to go one of three ways in 2021: 1) typical Cleveland fantasy success story with even better raw stuff than many of their find-an-aces; 2) injured; or 3) too small to handle a starters’ workload.

Click on the following link to read Grey’s thoughts on the matter:

Triston McKenzie, 2021 Fantasy Outlook.



2. SS Tyler Freeman | 21 | A+ | Mid 2021

Few prospects improved their stock during the pandemic. I was going to finish that sentence with “more than Tyler Freeman” but realized in medias res that it was truer without the tag. Cleveland has better publicly available prospect coverage than just about anyone, and nobody benefited more from our behind-the-curtain access than Freeman because we saw him working extremely hard in several videos throughout the season and then saw him putting that added strength into practice on the field. Simply put, this guy is trying to hit homeruns. All day every day from the looks of it. His stat page is that of a contact-oriented base-stealer, but he’s on track to be something different, and I’m here for it. I’ve been kind of low on Freeman, I think, comparatively, but I really want to see what he looks like in 2021 and will seek to pick up a share or two in anticipation of a little value bump when we see the more muscular version in games.



3. 2B Aaron Bracho | 20 | A- | 2023

A compact switch hitter with power and plate discipline from each side, Bracho brings a tremendous skill set for fantasy baseball but doesn’t offer a great floor on defense. If he can remain a viable option at second base, his plus hit, plus power, plus patience profile fits beautifully in our game.



4. OF George Valera | 20 | A | 2023

Lefties just look good with a bat in their hands. Not all of them, I suspect, but guys like George Valera make swinging a bat look so natural it seems to be the truest state of being for all involved: the swinger, the lumber, the viewer and the baseball.



5. 3B Nolan Jones | 22 | AA | 2021

I’m afraid Jones will fall just shy in the hit department to consistently impact our game. He’s got the power and patience to win himself a job, but time will tell if his hands are fast enough to match up with elite spin. He’s been fighting to stay at third base, a battle that seems somewhat irrelevant in an organization with Jose Ramirez under contract through 2023 but that matters for our game because if he’s going to be a 1B OF type, he needs to get his reps there so he won’t get Jake Bauers’d out of a job because he’s not hitting while learning to play new positions at the top level.



6. RHP Daniel Espino | 20 | A- | 2023

I’m still a bit surprised the league let Espino fall to Cleveland at the 24th overall pick in the 2019 MLB draft, but I guess you have to draft for your own build and not against your opponents’, and a high school righty doesn’t help many GM’s keep their job. Espino made it to Low A in his draft season and struck out 40 percent of the batters he faced there. The numbers he might post in 2021 as a 20-year-old in A ball boggle the mind. On the bump he features a plus-plus fastball along with two plus benders and a change from an athletic 6’2” 205 lb frame with very efficient base mechanics.



7. SS Gabriel Arias | 21 | A+ | 2023

A little like Cantillo, Arias put it all together in 2019 and posted an impressive statistical campaign against opponents who were much older than himself, which helped get him tracked and targeted by Cleveland. He’s got more swing and miss than you like to see, seen in a K rate at 25 percent across 120 games in A+ ball, but he played those games as a 19-year-old and produced a 120 wRC+ with 11 homers and 8 steals in the process. I like the base mechanics of his swing, there’s plenty of power in his 6’1” 205 lb frame, and he’s got more than enough athleticism, hand speed and bat control to access it in game. The ultimate decider of his fate will come down to pitch recognition and plate patience–something Cleveland works hard to develop in its young players.



8. LHP Joey Cantillo | 21 | A+ | 2022

Creator of perfect backspin on his four-seamer, Cantillo saw a velocity bump in 2019 and combined that with plus control and a plus change-up to slice through the Midwest League and end his season in High A at age 19, where he got hit around a little bit. Cleveland saw something they really liked in the 6’4” 220 lb lefty who looks even stronger than that. If he lives in the mid 90’s like he did at times in 2019, we’re looking at a guy with a long career ahead of him no matter how his third pitch looks a few years from now. If Cleveland saw something they think can be unlocked in the curveball or some other offering that pairs well with his high-riding fastball and fall-away changeup, Cantillo could be special. Even if he’s mostly a two-pitch guy, I think he can make that work given the deception in his delivery, the spin on his fastball and a little natural command projection.



9. OF Alexfri Planez | 19 | R | 2024

Still cheap enough in some dynasty circles to acquire for the price of inquiry, Planez generates impressive bat speed by maxing out his 6’2” frame. He’s listed at 180 pounds but seems more likely to check in closer to two bills when next he meets a scale we can see. Not because he’s lazy or big boned or whatever–just because he looked bigger than that when last we saw him, and that was more than a year ago, when he was 18. That’s not always how it works, of course, tallish teenage athletes gaining five years of man-strength in one off-season, but it does happen, and Planez is a likely candidate.



10. RHP Emmanuel Clase | 23 | MLB | 2019

The primary return for the oft-panned Corey Kluber trade of seventeen years ago (last winter), Clase hasn’t thrown a pitch for Cleveland due to his 80-game PED suspension. He’s not eligible for arbitration until 2024–not a free agent until 2027–so Clase has plenty of time to reward Cleveland’s investment, something he seems almost certain to start doing in 2021 near the back of the bullpen thanks to his high nineties heat and nasty cutter.

I should note here this might be the deepest system I’ve seen. Easily top five. While they’re stingy on the big league side, Cleveland invests heavily in development, creating countless avenues for their young talent to improve, be that through education, diet, coaching, training, access to tech resources, etc.

This list could go on for a long, long time, but while I’m here I’ll mention potential 2021 blow ups SS Gabriel Rodriguez, SS Angel Martinez, SS Brayan Rocchio, RHP Tanner Burns, SS Jose Tena, RHP Lenny Torres, RHP Ethan Hankins, OF Daniel Johnson, SS Carson Tucker and personal favorite little engine that could, SS Jose Fermin.

Thanks for reading!

That was civ's belated Xmas present.

civ - I love this article - so thorough.

And i love that it points the way as to our future direction. What I mean by this is the Tampa Bay way. Draft, develop to sustain. And yes, an outsider points out the SPENDING in this area.

He had some interesting notes about Freeman: if he's able to add some power to his multi double talent he can be very good and the answer at 2nd base. In 2021? Speaking of 2nd base, I like anyone who likes Bracho. Planez doesn't show anywhere on the "professionals" lists; BA, MLB, MILB, we sure could use outfielders. On the other hand this guy has not one word on Naylor Jr. who BA rates as our No. 3 pick; perhaps for fantasy players Bo's talents are not worth as much as for actual ballgames?

MEISEL ON THE PITCHING DEPTH:

I. The major league-ready hurlers: Shane Bieber, Carlos Carrasco, Zach Plesac, Aaron Civale, Adam Plutko, Triston McKenzie, Cal Quantrill, Logan Allen and Scott Moss.

All but Carrasco are young and earning the league minimum or thereabouts. That’s a strong foundation that, ordinarily, would grant a team a ton of flexibility in building a competent lineup.

2. The starters who were more likely to help at some point in 2021 if there had been a minor-league season in 2020: Eli Morgan, Cody Morris, Adam Scott, Jordan Humphreys.

You’ll find similar results when you scour their stat lines: encouraging walk rates, high strikeout rates, sparkling ERAs. Morris is a bit of an outlier in this group, as he has only made 20 professional starts, but he’s also 24. Morgan is a change-up specialist who owns a 3.08 ERA in the minors. Earlier this winter, they acquired Humphreys, who has logged a 2.60 ERA with only 1.6 walks per nine innings, though he hasn’t pitched much since 2017. These four don’t project as top-line starters, but they equip the team with plenty of depth.

3. The other 40-man roster members: Sam Hentges, Jean Carlos Mejia, Carlos Vargas.

Hentges is a fascinating, towering lefty who has boosted his velocity into the mid-to-upper 90s. He struggled at Akron in 2019, but the organization still came away impressed with his potential. Mejia has surrendered a grand total of four home runs in 274 career innings. The club added Vargas, 21, to the 40-man roster last month.

The intriguing prospects: Ethan Hankins, Daniel Espino, Joey Cantillo.

Hankins and Espino, a couple of recent first-rounders who throw hard and rack up strikeouts in bunches, spent the summer in Eastlake. Cantillo joined them after coming over in the Clevinger trade. Cantillo, the elder statesman of this trio since he turned 21 on Dec. 18, possesses a well-regarded change-up and posted a 2.26 ERA with 11.6 K/9 in his first full minor-league season in 2019. All three are likely at least a couple of years away from breaking into the majors. It wouldn’t be surprising if one of them cracked a top 100 prospects list in the near future.

4. The new draftees: Tanner Burns, The Other Logan Allen, Mason Hickman.

The club used three of its six draft picks in 2020 on college pitchers. Keep in mind, there’s no longer a short-season affiliate in Mahoning Valley (Ohio), so these guys would probably either start the year at the Arizona complex or head to Low-A Lynchburg (Va.).

5. This is far from an exhaustive list, too. There are guys like Lenny Torres, who hasn’t pitched much since the team grabbed him with the 41st pick in 2018, who didn’t neatly fit into any of these groups. And there’s always the potential for the club to obtain some overlooked prospect in a trade, sprinkle some fairy dust on him and watch him bloom into a Cy Young contender.

As seagull points out this is likely not a season of contention.

Impartial writers/researchers rave about the Tribe system. And the list of their pitchers on Meisel's list shows the depth of pitching in the system.

In the System we trust. That's the approach.

One other thing - the wildcard here IMO is Quantrill. Such high pedigree at one time (pretty recently) in the San Diego system and the Tribe liked him. He showed flashes in the pen. If they trade Carrasco it's with Quantrill in mind as the #4/5