The Arizona Fall League Has A Pitching Problem—Here Are 5 Potential Fixes

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For more than three decades, the Arizona Fall League has been the sportâ€s premier finishing school for top prospects. Both 2025 rookies of the year—Athletics slugger Nick Kurtz and Braves catcher Drake Baldwin—spent time in the AFL last year.

In 2017 alone, the league featured Ronald Acuña Jr., Max Fried, Austin Riley, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Andres Muñoz, Yordan Alvarez, Kyle Tucker, Framber Valdez, Anthony Santander, Josh Naylor, Will Smith, Kyle Lewis, Mitch Keller and Sandy Alcantara.

So far, that group has racked up 29 all-star appearances, three rookie of the year awards, a Cy Young and an MVP.

In the final game of this yearâ€s World Series, 11 players in the teams†starting lineups—plus defensive hero Andy Pages—were AFL alumni.

In recent years, however, the quality of play out in the desert has dropped sharply—and people around the sport have noticed. One major issue, in particular, is that teams are simply not sending their top pitchers to the AFL. The preliminary rosters this past season included just one Top 100 pitching prospect—White Sox lefthander Hagen Smith.

“When teams are reluctant to send high-quality names … in favor of just a bunch of org arms,†one scout said, “that, to me, is a big problem.â€

A few other arms raised their stock during the fall—Orioles lefty Luis De Leon and Astros righthander James Hicks fit among this group—but, overall, the league in 2025 was filled with pitchers who either lacked stuff, couldnâ€t throw strikes or both.

Consider that AFL pitchers faced 6,374 hitters this year and walked 972 of them. Thatâ€s a league-wide walk rate of 15.2%. To put that into perspective, there were just four qualified pitchers outside of the complex leagues in 2025 whose walk rates were worse than the AFLâ€s collective mark.

The lack of control isnâ€t a one-year aberration, either. From 2018 through 2025 (removing the 2019 season, when the league played games against Mexican League teams), the leagueâ€s walk rate was no better than 11.5%. Before then, the last time it was worse than 10% was in 2013, when the league walked 10.7% of hitters.

Without question, the automatic ball-strike system (ABS) is part of the equation. The league began ABS testing in 2019, and the electronically-enforced strike zone took many forms in the preceding seasons. In one post-pandemic year, the AFL also played half the season with a pre-tacked baseball and the second half with a standard baseball.

Even so, the AFLâ€s 2025 walk rate was its worst since that 2013 season. The league-wide mark has hovered between 12.3% and 15.2% every year since 2021.

The problem—a declining number of strikes—is easily identifiable. Finding a solution, however, is much trickier. To suss out some ideas, Baseball America spoke to scouts, executives and farm directors around the sport to get their thoughts (Major League Baseball declined comment for this story).

Here’s a rundown of five potential fixes for the AFL’s pitching problem.

Fix No. 1: Increase Financial Motivation

One possible solution that came up consistently was the idea that, while teams cannot be forced to send their best arms, they can potentially be induced to do so. Multiple people surveyed suggested financial incentives—both for players and teams—might go a long way toward cajoling clubs into sending higher quality players to the desert.

Currently, the AFL pays players the Double-A rate of $1,020 per week. So, for the six-week season, each player can make $6,120.

“If you want an outside the box idea, the NBA does an in-season tournament … and the team that wins gets money,†one scout said. “I think if you can make it that sort of vibe, where the season is shorter, there’s more of a round-robin playoff format, there’s money in the pot and these guys get ‘a playoff share’ if they win it, I think you might light a fire under some guys.â€

In this particular example, the scout is referring to the NBA Cup, which began in 2023 and guarantees $500,000 to every member of the winning team. College basketball has a similar tournament—the Players Era Festival—which guarantees each participating team $1 million toward its Name Image and Likeness (NIL) pool. The winning team gets an extra $500,000 added to its coffers.

While nobody is suggesting the stakes should be six or seven figures, basketball has provided a blueprint the AFL might consider replicating.

Fix No. 2: Follow The PPI Path

While such a system would motivate the players to extend their season by six weeks, it doesnâ€t provide the organization itself with the same incentive.

For that, a farm director suggested something resembling MLBâ€s Prospect Promotion Incentive, which uses draft capital to encourage teams to get their best prospects to the big leagues sooner instead of holding them back to extend team control by another season.

“What if there was an incentive if your player won (AFL) MVP,†the farm director said. “What about a third-round pick or a fifth-round pick?”

The PPI has already proved to be a boon in the big leagues. Julio Rodriguez winning Rookie of the Year netted the Mariners an extra pick in 2023, which they used to select outfielder Jonny Farmelo. As it happens, both Rodriguez and Farmelo have spent time in the AFL.

Fix No. 3: Reinstate Past AFL Roster Rules

Financial bonuses for players and draft capital for teams might help get higher-quality prospects to the Arizona Fall League, but theyâ€re not the only way to improve the on-field product. Another avenue might be reverting to the AFLâ€s old rules and putting stricter qualifications on the players who could play in the league.

In previous years, spots in the AFL had stricter rules on which players were allowed to participate. Each team was required to send seven players who fit the following requirements, which were listed in the 2017 AFL media guide:

• All Triple-A and Double-A players are eligible provided they are on Double-A or
  Triple-A rosters no later than Aug 15.
• Each organization is permitted to send two Class A Advanced-level players in addition to the current allowance of two “A-exempt” players who are under contract as of Aug. 15. Foreign players are allowed as long as the player is not on his native country’s primary protected player list.
• No players with more than one year active or two years total of credited major-league service as of Aug. 31 (including major league disabled list time) are eligible.
• Each team is allotted 20 pitchers, but only 15 are designated “eligible” each game day.

Those rules have since been removed, and in recent years, the league has been littered with players who have yet to advance past Low-A. Rays outfielder Brailer Guerrero and Marlins infielder PJ Morlando each took part in the 2025 AFL. Understandably, both players struggled mightily. Guerrero, who has just 50 games above Rookie ball, hit .077/.172/.077 with 16 strikeouts in 26 at-bats. Morlando, who played 52 games at Low-A this year, hit .136/.261/.136 with 23 strikeouts in 59 at-bats. Neither recorded an extra-base hit.

“There are players (in the AFL) who played in the Rookie ball, and there are players who played in Triple-A for a couple years and everything in between, which has affected the quality of play a little bit, especially on the pitching side,†the farm director said. “I think there’s something to be said about there maybe needs to be some type of guide, some type of parameter around who qualifies for the Fall League and who doesn’t.â€

Although going solely to upper-level players might not be feasible, a shift to prospects who had at least reached High-A might be a fair compromise. Another way to split the difference might be to reintroduce the AFL taxi squad, which limited a few players on each roster to games only on certain days. Those spots, in theory, could be reserved for lower-level prospects.

Fix No. 4: Expand The Player Pool

If neither of those roster avenues is palatable, then perhaps the league could look into widening the player pool beyond the farm systems of the 30 affiliated clubs.

One league executive suggested that opening the AFL to the top unsigned talents from MLB Partner Leagues might ease pressure on MLB teams to send their own arms while also giving partner league players a chance to audition for all 30 clubs in real game action instead of in controlled environments at training facilities.

The league executive proposed supplementing the AFL with top independent pitchers selected with the help of both new-age data and old-school recommendations.

“You give some of those players a chance to be signed out of there, with the agreement being that if you sign (a partner league player) out of the AFL, they have to complete the season out there,” the league executive said. “You can’t sign them and shut them down.â€

As an example, the executive pointed to Reds righthander Trevor Kuncl, a George Washington alum who pitched for four seasons in the Frontier and Atlantic leagues before signing with Cincinnati prior to the 2025 season. Kuncl, 26, pitched this past season at Double-A Chattanooga and then got more innings under his belt with Peoria in the AFL.

“There’s no reason why you couldn’t have had him pitch at this time last year—before Cincinnati signed him—to basically audition, so to speak, for 30 clubs,†the executive said. “Maybe the player gets a little bit more out of it in terms of a signing bonus.â€

Fix No. 5: Send More Draft Arms To The Desert

The league executive also threw out the idea of teams sending more of their pitchers from that summerâ€s MLB Draft to the Arizona Fall League. The later draft and the earlier complex league season finales have meant pitchers drafted in July now often have to wait until the following season to make their official professional debuts. Increasingly, teams are also opting not to play games during the bridge and instructional league seasons.

Instead, those clubs hold camps designed to get their newest players in front of coaches in a more controlled environment. In this way, they can work on weaknesses in specified training sessions instead of by playing games with other teams in the area.

Teams are already allowed to send that yearâ€s draftees to the AFL—the Nationals sent 2025 second-rounder Ethan Petry to the desert this fall—but sending recently-selected pitchers, even for a little while, might add a little bit more prospect power to the AFL. It could also be a way to get more casual fans interested in the AFL.

With better pitching, the Arizona Fall League has a chance to return to its former glory. It wonâ€t be easy, but with a little creativity and increased resources from MLB and its teams, it can be done.

Now, all thatâ€s left to do is try.

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