Every Monday morning, we highlight 10 players who stood out to us based on their underlying Statcast metrics. Data will usually be through Saturday of that week, but may include some data from Sunday games. These are not full scouting reports, but often serve as good early indicators of prospects who might be ready to break out or are demonstrating MLB-ready skills.
Last week, we asked if Jonah Tong’s fastball is the closest thing to Spencer Strider’s 2023 fastball and took a look at Abimelec Ortiz’s magical trifecta of major league skills. This week we’ll discuss:
10 Statcast Standouts
Carter Jensen, C, Royals
In the process of writing this weekly series, I see a lot of Statcast cards. Every once in a while, I come across a breathtakingly good one:
Do not be fooled by Jensen’s average maximum exit velocity. He posted a 115 mph single in the Arizona Fall League last October, which is in line with his other power metrics. Jensen’s metrics very clearly paint a picture of a batter with 70-grade raw and game power. He has now accumulated a substantial amount of plate appearances at Triple-A, so we can be quite a bit more confident in his analytical profile than the last time we looked at him.
There is a simple formula to being a successful major league power hitter, which Robert Stock eloquently and succinctly described: “Don’t swing at balls. Hit it really hard in the air.”
It sounds simple, but very few prospects excel at either aspect. Jensen, however, is at least a 70 in both objectives. This is not one of those profiles where a player’s Statcast metrics say one thing while their performance on the field says another. Jensen’s Triple-A slash line of .288/.404/.647—good for a wRC+ of 166—strongly supports the plus-plus patience and power that Jensen has shown thus far in his Triple-A career.
The most intriguing part of Jensen’s “don’t swing at balls” aspect are his chase rates against sliders and breaking balls, which are about 15% points better than what the typical player will do against major league pitching.
Jensen’s underwhelming overall contact rate underscores a very important principle: Zone contact is a lot more instructive than contact rates overall. We can see this as a macro trend in baseball, in which teams are emphasizing zone contact, potentially at the expense of chase contact.
The average zone contact rate has increased from 82.5% in 2021 all the way to 83.9% so far this season. Chase contact rates have declined since then, and are below what they were in 2021.
If we were to simply look at Jensen’s overall contact rate, we’d be fooled into thinking he’s going to struggle to make contact. For most hitters, this would be true, as Jensen’s 38.1% contact rate on chase swings would be a death sentence for a hitter without his plus-plus 22.1% chase rate. The thing is, in two-strike counts, it’s sometimes advantageous to whiff on a chase pitch, rather than putting a weak batted ball into play.
Jensen’s disciplined approach forces pitchers to attack him in the zone, where he’s extremely dangerous and shows at least average contact skills overall to go with the aforementioned plus-plus game power. The only aspect of his profile in which he doesn’t stand out is against offspeed pitches, against which he’s showing below average contact skills, elite discipline and about average damage on contact.
There’s one more aspect to Jensen’s profile that really highlights just how good of a hitter he is: He is almost as good against lefthanded pitching as he is against righties.
While it’s a much smaller sample size, Jensen’s 12% chase rate against lefties is elite, and his power would still grade out as a 65 with the same strong zone contact skills. This is a remarkably complete profile, and it comes with a combination of plate discipline, raw power, launch angles and a lack of a platoon issue that strongly suggests future 30-home run upside, if not more.
It comes as no surprise that Jensen has earned his callup. Royals fans, you’ve got a good one.
Rainiel Rodriguez, C, Cardinals
Before we dive into the Statcast data, let’s begin with a couple of highlights:
Rodriguez has a massive lower half, which allows him to have a relatively compact swing but still generate power with good launch angles, including to his pull side:
The other remarkable thing about Rodriguez is how balanced he is. He’s not over-rotating on his home run swings. Instead, it’s a controlled, compact powerful swing, capable of doing damage. Let’s take a look at how that manifests from a data perspective:
It is exceedingly rare for a batter this age to have such a complete, nearly flawless profile. Almost every single one of Rodriguez’s metrics are average or better. The strongest aspect is arguably his combination of plus aggression and plus discipline, suggesting he already has the ability to recognize spin (perhaps the only weak spot being against changeups). Especially important are his elite chase rates against sliders and breaking balls.
While there isn’t a ton of projection left in Rodriguez’s frame, he’s already showing above-average power and doesn’t need to get much stronger to get to plus power or better. With his present ability to get the ball in the air, any gains in the raw power department will be magnified.
A source within the organization described Rodriguez as the “best hitter at 18 he’d ever seen,” which includes some current MLB stars. Rodriguez is making a compelling case, both with his on-field performance and under-the-hood metrics, to join the Top 100 Prospects list soon.
Alfredo Duno, C, Reds
We don’t often do themes in this series, but today, it appears we’ll be looking at a lot of catchers. Let’s continue by comparing Duno’s metrics to those of Rainiel Rodriguez. In doing so, however, it is important to keep in mind that Duno is a year older than Rodriguez and in his second stint at Single-A:
Duno has easy plus power in an athletic 6-foot-2 frame. He combines his physicality with elite plate discipline and impeccable chase rates, and he’s also become a lot more selective compared to last season. In many ways, Duno is exhibiting the Carter Jensen formula: Hit it hard in the air and don’t swing at balls.
The challenge for Duno will be his contact skills, as his 61% zone contact rate against fastballs and 75.8% overall rate are both giant red flags. He has more than enough power to make it work, especially with his discipline, but it will be the key aspect of his profile that will determine his major league potential.
Duno currently ranks as the No. 62 prospect in baseball. If we compare his metrics to Rodriguez’s, Rodriguez, despite being a year younger, has the edge in on-field performance, zone contact and launch angles, while Duno is showing slightly more raw power and better plate discipline.
Axiel Plaz, C, Pirates
We continue our catcher theme with Plaz, who is showing even more raw power than either Duno or Rodriguez to this point:
However, unlike Duno and Rodriguez, Plaz doesn’t do a great job of getting the ball in the air, and he doesn’t have the high zone-contact rate necessary to make a flatter swing work. Still, we’re talking about 70-grade raw power with a chance to stick at the catcher position.
Plaz was recently promoted to High-A, where he’ll finally get a new test after spending almost two seasons in Low-A.
Eduardo Tait, C, Twins
Tait was promoted to High-A a while ago, but he’s a good player to compare to the previous three catchers on this list:
Tait and Plaz have remarkably similar profiles across the board, highlighted by aggressive approaches with plus-plus raw power (that is mostly wasted on the ground) and below-average zone contact. Tait, however, does a much better job getting the ball in the air, so there’s a lot more room for optimism with his profile.
Here’s how I would rank these four catchers based solely on their Statcast metrics in A-ball: Rodriguez, Duno, Tait and then Plaz, with Rodriguez clearly a tier above the other three.
Justin Crawford, OF, Phillies
We took a look at Crawford about a month ago, and his data then looked a lot like DJ LeMahieu circa 2022-23. Since then, he’s improved on his already plus-plus bat to ball and has become slightly more passive, reducing both his in-zone aggression and chase rates:
The recipe for success for a player with Crawford’s low launch angles is to put as many balls in play as possible.
Crawford’s zone contact trend chart demonstrates two key aspects to this recipe. First, we see how consistent he is. Once his zone contact rate stabilized in mid May, he’s kept it above 86% the entire season. Second, If you scan across to all the blue dots, you’ll see that the vast majority of them are at 100%, indicating he has more games in which he doesn’t whiff in the zone than ones in which he does. He also has very few bad games in which he’s missing a lot of in-zone pitches.
What we end up with is a recipe for a .300 hitter who generates most of his value through batting average while also having enough power to luck into a handful of home runs a year, such as this one:
Justin Crawford slugs his THIRD homer in his last four games 😤
The Phillies’ No. 3 prospect tallies his seventh Triple-A jack of the season with the @IronPigs.
(🎥@IronPigs)
pic.twitter.com/qjh1FyAu7C
— Baseball America (@BaseballAmerica) August 29, 2025
Dax Kilby, SS, Yankees
Let’s take a look at player who could potentially be the next Justin Crawford:
Kilby’s negative average launch angles are reminiscent of Crawford’s early career. The rest of the profile is remarkably similar, too: roughly-average raw power, substantially worse exit velocities in the air and tremendous contact rates both in and out of the zone. In Low-A, Kilby is showing a much more passive approach than Crawford is in Triple-A. But outside of that, he’s looking very much like an early edition of Crawford.
Henry Bolte, OF, Athletics
Bolte’s data is extreme. Depending on which metric you look at, his numbers range from 20s to 80s. Bolte’s average flyball exit velocity, for example, is an 80, but he rarely gets it in the air. As for raw power, it’s either a 70 based on the 90th percentile EVs or a 55 if we look at the max, while his in-game power probably a 45 or lower given the launch angles (terrible), average EVs (mediocre) and the hard-hit launch angles (poor, but substantially better than his average). Bolte’s chase contact ability is probably a 20, but he’s slugging .800 when he does make contact on chase pitches.
All told, this is one of the more unusual profiles I’ve come across in this series, and I don’t really know what to make of it. If it makes more sense at the end of the season, we’ll take another look and try to see if there is a more coherent narrative to Bolte’s profile.
Jimmy Crooks, C, Cardinals
Crooks is off to a good start in his major league career:
Before that, Crooks had very quietly put up an above-average batting line at every level in the minor leagues. Here’s his card:
From a raw metrics perspective, Crooks looks like a 40 to 45 across the board (except for the raw power, which is a comfortable 55). While this sounds like a negative review, it shouldn’t. Crooks is an above-average catcher based on his framing skills and ability to control the run game. When you combine that with slightly below-average batting, you get an above-average overall player, given how critical catcher defense is.
Noah Schultz, LHP, White Sox
Schultz lands as our bookend prospect this week. If you are a regular reader of this series, you’ll know that we often reserve this spot for a deep dive on a player with immense upside. Schultz, who measures in at a gargantuan 6-foot-10 and 240 pounds from the left side, fits the bill:
Schultz’s signature pitch combo is the sinker/sweeper pair, which features extreme east-west movement to make for very uncomfortable at-bats for lefty hitters. Extreme horizontal movement is often harder to command, and Schultz has the dual challenge of harnessing both the movement on his pitches and repeating his mechanics at 6-foot-10.
Let’s break down why it’s so difficult to harness this kind of profile. The plate is 17 inches wide, and his sinker averages about 17 inches of horizontal movement (but ranges between 13 and 21 inches). That means, when facing righthanded hitters, if Schultz wants to get his sinker on the inner half, he has to aim almost directly at the batter and trust that the movement of the pitch will get it across the plate.
Against lefties, this allows him to start the pitch off the plate and get a lot of called strikes on the outer half. It also allows him to attack the zone, resulting in an above-average zone rate. Against righties, however, he’s erring on the side of caution, leaning more away from the batter and not zoning the pitch nearly as much.
While sinkers aren’t typically whiff pitches, when Schultz is able to locate his sinker up and away to righties, he can generate a lot of whiffs.
Despite not targeting the pitch down—which would help his groundball rate—Schultz’s movement profile on the pitch (heavy seam-shifted wake drop) induces batters to swing over the ball, as evidenced by the low average launch angles against the pitch.
These data points suggest a couple of things. First, Schultz’s sinker should be effective against both righties and lefties. Second, his willingness to throw the pitch up in the zone should make it play better with his four-seam fastball, which has almost average ride given his arm slot. Schultz is employing a two-fastball approach, with each showing identical spin axes but wildly different movement profiles. He gets about six inches of vertical separation and almost eight inches of horizontal separation between the fastball/sinker pair.
Schultz’s sweeper, meanwhile, has a curious whiff profile:
Against lefties, he gets most of his whiffs sweeping down and away from the batter. Against righties, he gets more in-zone whiffs but isn’t quite as lethal down and in:
The other somewhat surprising thing is the quality of swing decisions lefties are making on his sweeper, especially down and in. This, along with the low in-zone whiff rates against lefties, strongly suggests Schultz is tipping the pitch somewhat, as it should be more difficult for lefties to manage it, especially given the traditional platoon split of a sweeper. It’s possible that this is nothing more than small-sample noise, but it’s definitely something to monitor.
Schultz’s changeup is a fantastic pitch. It gets huge seam-shifted wake depth and tremendous whiff rates. He uses it exclusively against righties, but the pitch should be good enough to work against lefties, as well.
The missing ingredient might just be the bridge cutter. Schultz has flashed a few of them but hasn’t thrown very many. This might help mask the sweeper somewhat and is usually a key pitch for supinators like Schultz.
Let’s summarize what we’ve learned about Schultz’s arsenal
- Sinker: Plus shape, works against both righties and lefties, needs some more command against righties
- Fastball: Sinker spin, but gets six inches of rise and eight inches less run
- Sweeper: Great shape, but doesn’t perform well against lefties, which is curious
- Changeup: Fantastic, could probably use it against lefties, as well
- Cutter: Needs to develop it more
The surface-level results haven’t been there for Schultz this season, but his arsenal is deep and electric. Patience will be required for a pitcher this tall and this young, but when he puts it all together, he has all the tools to be an ace.
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