Tampa vs. Clearwater Notebook

The series I’ve been waiting in anticipation for. Clearwater has one of the better rosters in the FCL, with a diverse cast of position players and George Klassen headlining their rotation.

I was able to catch both games of a Tuesday doubleheader, where both games were only 7 innings. I tried to focus on some other players for Tampa this time around that I previously haven’t written up. Clearwater’s roster was chock full o’ players I’ve been statline scouting throughout this year.

Tampa took and early lead in game 1 and never relinquished control. Luis Serna had a strong start, only striking out 3 batters but walking none and scattering 3 hits across 5 innings. His slider and change-up were the pitches he went to when he needed a swing and miss, but he absolutely pounded the zone and was able to get a fair amount of sinkers to go for called strikes. There were 15 balls in play, but only a few were hit particularly hard, all coming in his last inning of work.

Kris Bow came on to close out the last inning of the game, and made it slightly interesting by loading the bases via 3 walks. He has a super low release point and throws hard, hitting 97 mph with his sinker at one point. The contact he gave up was soft, but the problem was that he couldn’t consistently throw strikes or even get close enough to the zone to entice some hitters to swing. He threw a change-up to lefty Trent Farquhar but he really leaned on the sinker and slider. It’s an arm angle that should drive right handers nuts, but only if he can hit the zone.

Gabriel Barbosa started the second game and started off strong, retiring the first five batters he faced, and then gave up consecutive hits to Jordan Viars, Nikau Pouaka-Grego, Avery Owusu-Asiedu and Dakota Kotowski. Only the hits by Viars and Kotowski were struck with force, but Barbosa’s propensity to fill the strike zone hurt him by a team with a deep lineup. His change-up and slider are still his best offerings, but both his fastballs are showing a Z-Contact% at 95% or greater. He also hit two batters (one in the head) and walked another two while only striking out two. Despite all of that, Barbossa worked through to give Tampa six innings with only 4 runs given up even as he was gassed and down to the high 80s on his fastballs.

Allen Facundo started the third game I saw. He looked good initially, but he nibbled around the zone a lot, leading to deep counts and forcing him to throw his fastball in the zone, which got hit hard. His slider and change-up are good and get whiffs, but he’s prone to missing arm side with them.

Jordy Luciano is a shorter reliever, with an active arm holding 94mph throughout his two innings. His slider was his best pitch but like Facundo he struggled to throw strikes. The slider is a high spinning offering with some good downward movement. He throws a harder cutter, that fell kind of between the fastball and slider velocity wise but he couldn’t get the whiffs like he did for his slider.

Dylan Jasso is probably one Tampa’s most polished hitters. His OBP is .403 and he’s slugging .500. He’s shown doubles and homerun power, and some swing and miss tendencies, leading to a 26.8 K%. He does take quite a few called strikes, and there is swing and miss in the strike zone. He had a nice hard hit single to drive in the first two runs for Tampa. He’s strong enough to muscle balls out of the field and executed a hit and run to perfection in the Thursday game. In the field, he’s been featured mostly at the corners, first base and third. I saw him at third base for both games and he has a strong arm but wasn’t hit anything that made him move very far. Without knowing his range, I can’t say he’s a for sure third basemen. If he can stick there, then the bat won’t have as much pressure, though he’s more than capable as a hitter.

Jackson Castillo was someone I did not see much of early on due to injury. He’s a short but not small left handed hitter and a good centerfielder. He looked really good in the first game as a table setter, drawing walks and stealing second, drawing the attention of both pitchers and the catcher. In the field, he showed great range coming in and diving for a sinking line drive. He does swing and miss, with a 25.7 K% and whiffs quite a bit against secondary pitches (48.9% according to Bobby Orr’s Damage Leaderboard). He ran into a pitch in his last at-bat, with a wall scraping (xBA was .030) homerun to his pull side. He’s not just a slap hitter, but that power is only going to come out when he really sells out to right field.

Tomas Frick was a draft pick out UNC and has shown an advanced approach, which is unsurprising for a 23 year old college bat. He demonstrated some opposite field power for a homerun in the first game while also walking once. The ball he hit for an out was actually hit harder, at 107mph but right at the center fielder. He has an OPS of 1.033 right now and is walking nearly as much as he’s striking out. Frick seems like a catcher only, and he probably needs to stick there to have a role at higher levels. He doesn’t have a strong arm behind the plate, and he soared a throw into centerfield during the first game. He receives well enough where maybe you can live with a less control over the run game?

Coby Morales was a late round pick out of Washington and is a first basemen only to me. He’s been in the corner outfield but he doesn’t really move particularly well, so despite the immaculate fielding percentage, it’s the balls going for hits that he needs to chase down that could turn into extra base hits. Though his straight line speed might be better, given his six stolen bases on the year. He’s a tall lefty, with a straight up stance and bat wiggle and a big leg kick that he sort of holds for a second. When he swings, you can see the force with which he drives his back leg forward, really selling out. He doesn’t really shorten up in two strike counts, which leads to swing and miss but he also an ability to draw walks and lay off the really out of zone pitches. Right now he’s not really tapping into any of his power because he’s running a 51.5% groundball rate. He’s also shown a platoon split, really struggling against left handed pitchers.

Roderick Arias walked more than he struck out in the first game (2 to 1), but the swing is so long that he needs to commit super early for fastballs, which he can still be late on and then gets fooled when they’re offspeed pitches due to that early commitment. He does have enough discipline to run a 17.1% walk rate. He beat out a groundball to shortstop in game one, but he was caught stealing twice, giving him a 1:1 stolen base to caught stealing ratio. In the last game I saw, he hit an laser to dead center for a triple. If you look at his last two weeks, the gap between his K% and BB% has actually closed, which may be a sign of increasing comfort. He’s a good defender at short but there’s still a ways to go with a strikeout rate of 35%. Most encouraging was that both his hits in the Thursday game came with two strikes, with one coming against a change-up specifically, as secondaries have given him problems thus far.

Daury Arias is a player I really can’t get a read on. He is slashing .119/.221/.149 for a 21 wRC+, which is very bad. On the other hand, he has a .190 BABIP, with some really well hit balls going right at fielders, including a couple in the most recent games. His K% is 33.8%, which isn’t great but isn’t even the highest on the team or Florida State League and this is his second full season at Single-A. I think he’s a pretty solid corner outfielder, with good range and reads and a fairly strong arm. He very nearly threw out (I still think he did) a tagging base runner on a go-head run in the Thursday game. I really hope his batted ball luck improves, because I really think there’s a solid player here.

Willy Montero is another player who has struggled early on. He’s 6'4 and extremely thin and lean. He is only 19, and is prone to chasing pitches out of the zone. But he’s only running a 24.2% K rate, and only a 6.7% walk rate. His BABIP is .253, so he may be a little unlucky, but the main issue is that 50% of his batted balls are on the ground. The exit velocities haven’t been impressive, but there’s room for him to fill out and potentially add to those EVs. He’s shown some speed, as I had him 4.05 down the line on a groundball he hustled for. In the field, he seems to be a better fit in the corner right now than in centerfield. Every route I’ve seen him take in center for balls over his head ends up bending back over his shoulder, which is not great but can only improve with reps. Even with inefficient routes, he comes extremely close to making those difficult plays, like bouncing off the glove close, so if they improve then there would be less pressure on the bat.

I did miss out on George Klassen for Clearwater, but I did see an extremely strong lineup with a few interesting pitchers. I’ll try to separate them into some categories after I touch on Aidan Miller:

Miller is one of the hottest hitters in the Florida State League right now. He’s putting up a .300/.400/.500 line with a ton of contact on pitches in the zone. He’s really maximizing his damage pulling the balls in the air and he’s not even lifting the ball as much as he could, with a 49.2% groundball rate. I saw a lot of hard hit line drives from him during this stretch. He did have two strikeouts to breaking pitches, but he’s not swinging and missing at some of the rates his teammates are. I saw him make some great plays, showing off excellent range both in the hole and up the middle and made strong throws that were just a step or two too late. If he has to move off to third base, I think he could be a strong defender and hit enough to be above average contributor.

Contact Guys/Infielders

Trent Farquhar is a 23 year old undrafted free agent signing out of Michigan State and he’s really showing an advanced approach as an older bat. He’s walking more than he strikes out and doesn’t chase out of the zone. He gets into a wide and low stance and it’s really a swing geared towards line drives. He has hit a ball at 109mph, but it was on the ground against Tampa. In the infield he split between short and second, but he really didn’t get much in the way of opportunities. It’ll be interesting to see how his bat holds up at higher levels, and if it does there might be a utility player role for him.

Nikau Pouaka-Grego is out of Australia and currently posting a BABIP over .400, leading to a .317/.407/.481 line. It’s another line drive swing from an open stance. He was at third, though it wasn’t the strongest arm in the one attempt I saw from him. He’s only 19 years old and the contact is going to be what carries him, because there’s not a lot of power for him to tap into right this second.

Devin Saltiban is not a contact maverick like the above two players, but his exit velocities do indicate a bit more power ceiling than either of them. He showed some great hustle on a misplay by a second basemen that kicked a ball into the outfield, turning it into a double. Considering he’s 19 years old, he’s holding his own, but like many players on Clearwater’s roster, there’s some swing and miss right now in the strike zone and to secondary pitches.

Outfielders of the future?

TJayy Walton is 19 years old with some impressive exit velocities. He showed a lot more contact than power in the games that I saw, and his hardest hit ball at 110mph+ was a worm burning double play. He’s super competitive, and even on his weakest groundball, legged out an infield single. There’s some swing and miss but he had a pretty good control over the zone. Even when he was in a couple 0–2 counts, he didn’t chase and worked longer at-bats. He did have a scary moment where he was hit directly in the helmet with a pitch, but was able to continue playing. He did not play in the other two games I saw. I don’t know how much more strength he can add, since he’s already pretty filled out but given how hard he’s hitting the ball, that’s not a huge problem. It’s a long ways off, but he may hit some prospect lists with a strong showing the rest of the way.

Avery Owusu-Asiedu is a 6'4 centerfielder with a lean build. He runs extremely well and was covering centerfield exceptionally. He very nearly threw out a runner who got caught trying to make it back to first on a hit and run flyball. He’s only 21, but there’s a lot of swing and miss in the zone right now and to breaking pitches. He actually showed a fair amount of discipline drawing a few walks and not striking out once, despite sitting in some two strike counts during the three game run I attended. Running a 40.9% K Rate probably won’t play above Single-A but it’s still early. There’s some thump in the bat based on his max exit velocities compared to rest of the league. If they can reign in the strikeouts, I think there’s a potentially good centerfielder waiting to be uncovered.

Jordan Viars is a 20 year old corner outfielder taking a run at Single-A for a second time. He’s mostly only faced right handers this year and is doing a great job, with a .907 OPS. Like Owusu-Asiedu and Walton, he’s posting some good exit velocities. There’s a fair amount of swing and miss in the zone and two secondaries but this is a much better start than his first go around.

Raylin Heredia doesn’t have the power upside of some of his outfielder teammates when looking at his overall exit velocities. He can get himself into holes by taking a lot of strikes, but he was comfortable hitting with two strikes in the two games I saw, popping a couple line drive doubles to center and right field.

Catchers

Luis Caicuto and Kehden Hettiger are two younger catchers. Hettiger has shown some great discipline, walking nearly as much as he’s struck out, which is only a 19.1% K rate. He hasn’t shown much power thus far compared to Caicuto, who is also striking out less than 20%. Caicuto’s put the bat on the ball more often that Hettiger in the zone, and is able to use all fields more. Caicuto has allowed 31 stolen bases in 135 innings thus far, while Hettiger has allowed 12, but only caught one stealing compared to Caicuto’s 11. We’re so far out right now, and catching is very difficult so maybe check back on them in a year or two.

Pitchers

I saw a few older pitches from Clearwater in Braydon Tucker, Paxton Thompson and Drew Garrett. One thing I’m going to say is that team wide, most of these pitchers have really good slider/sweepers, at least compared to what the Single-A hitters have seen in the lower levels. Garrett is a single inning reliever most likely, who touches 96 with a very good slider. He locked down the final two innings of the Thursday night game and overall has shown some vulnerability to walks, but he’s probably going to move up to High-A sometime this summer with the amount of batters he’s striking out.

Tucker was not great but held Tampa to four runs over 5 innings. He had a really good two plane slider and a change-up with a a large amount of fade. Thompson also showed a solid sweeper/slider to go with his sinker, which got a surprising amount of whiffs, probably due lower arm angle, but also he pitched up in the zone with his sinker.

Jaydenn Estanista started off very strong, striking out 4 of the 11 batters he faced, but he also lost the zone at one point walking four overall including one with the bases loaded. He threw his fastball pretty hard buthe ended up missing arm side towards the end, and a cutter/slider that got whiffs on every Tampa swing. If he can get ahead and use that slider as an out pitch, he’ll be a reliever to watch.

Jonathan Petit was up at High-A but had a rough time, he came back down and toyed with the Tampa lineup throwing a curveball for a 88% whiff rate on 8 swings, and was able to throw it for a strike as well. It was actually impressive to watch him just continually spam it with righties unable to touch it.

I saw Micah Ottenbreit, Jake Eddington and Brandon Beckel as well but I can’t say I got much insight. Ottenbreit held 93mph on his fastball and had a good two plane slider and works at really quick tempo for his wind-up. He was wild and he balked once, but really didn’t get any whiffs and had a lot of balls in play. Eddington had an uneventful two innings in his start. Beckel’s best pitch was his breaking ball (curve? slider?) by far, but he gave up a long homerun to Oswald Peraza who was on rehab assignment. Both Eddington and Beckel walk more batters than they strike out.