Each 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 discussed how Carter Jensen is the perfect example of the modern power hitter and marveled at Rainiel Rodriguez‘ sparkling Statcast profile. This week we’ll discuss:
10 Statcast Standouts
Thomas White, LHP, Marlins
We’re going to kick things off with a couple of Marlins prospects. A month ago, we looked at Robby Snelling’s development. Today, we’re going to look at a pitcher and hitter that have also made tremendous development strides.
We’ll begin with White, who struck out 10 batters in his Triple-A debut:
Every strikeout from Thomas White’s Triple-A debut!🔥 pic.twitter.com/U72fNiK906
— Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp (@JaxShrimp) September 7, 2025
Let’s dig into White’s arsenal:
Statcast has White with three pitches (fastball, changeup, sweeper), but it looks like he’s showing five different pitch shapes, including a changeup that is likely a splitter, given the low spin rates.
White is a supinator, meaning he excels at creating east/west movement, so his above-average fastball ride is quite impressive given that context. That he’s up to 98.5 mph from the left side is an added bonus, as well. It’s not an overwhelming pitch—likely a 55 or a 60 from a stuff standpoint—but it’s a fantastic base. For most pitching prospects, it’s critical that they have at least one viable fastball, and White more than checks this box.
Last year, White was throwing a classic changeup. This year, it appears he’s now throwing a splitter instead. The pitch now gets tremendous depth, touching negative vertical break, but it has very inconsistent shape. That can be a double-edged sword, as it makes the pitch harder to command, but also harder for batters to predict.
White has upgraded his sweeper, as well, adding about three ticks of velocity to the pitch. It’s now looking like a major league weapon and, touching 19 inches of sweep with great seam-shifted wake movement. The other two pitches look like a true cutter at 89 mph and a bullet gyro slider at 87 mph. These appear to be more “bridge” pitches for him than weapons at the moment, but they could develop into more impactful pitches down the line.
It appears the Marlins are taking a very patient approach with White’s mix by helping him refine his three primary pitches and slowly working in the rest of the arsenal. Everything about White’s data strongly suggests he could have a great sinker, so don’t be surprised to see that pop up at some point in his career.
Kemp Alderman, OF, Marlins
One of the hardest things to do as a prospect writer is to resist the temptation to overreact to small samples of spectacular performance. Naturally, we’re going to overreact to a spectacular small-sample performance, with our next Marlin in Alderman:
If this was all the data we had on Alderman, it would stack up with almost any prospect in baseball. It’s plus-plus or better raw power based on the 90th percentile and maximum exit velocities but also 80-grade game power in the early going thanks to the elite 96 mph flyball exit velocity and sublime 18.4-degree average launch angle on his hard-hit balls. To top it all off, he’s avoided chasing breaking balls and offspeed pitches, and he is making tons of contact in the zone.
Ok, let’s pump the brakes just a bit. Alderman’s 76.6% contact rate is well above anything he’s done at this point in his career, so it’s unlikely he’s a true talent 90% zone-contact hitter. Let’s take a look at his Arizona Fall League numbers from last year:
When we include the AFL data, we can get a clearer picture and numbers we can be more confident in. First, Alderman appears to have an optimized swing geared for hard-hit balls in the air. This means that, when he makes his best contact, it will more likely be in the air than on the ground. This is how you cook up lots of home runs. Second, a lot of his contact woes are due to poor chase contact.
As we discussed last week, while teams are prioritizing zone contact skills, they aren’t necessarily focusing on chase contact skills. Sometimes a whiff on a chase pitch is better than weak contact. Given Alderman’s plus-plus damage-on-contact profile, even a true talent 80% zone contact rate would be more than enough for this profile to play.
Keep an eye on Alderman—he could fly up prospect rankings with another week or two of this level of performance. The power (raw and game) are very real. If the bat to ball skills can remain respectable, he’s going to be a 30-home run masher.
Yohendrick Pinango, OF, Blue Jays
Let’s switch gears and talk about one of the most important aspects of player development and prospect evaluation for hitters: determining a player’s ability to leverage his athletic tools.
From a simplistic perspective, the two primary athletic hitting tools are how fast a player can swing a bat in a game situation and how gifted they are at getting their barrel on the ball when they do swing.
Baseball, of course, is a lot more nuanced than that. Swing decisions and pitch recognition will impact how hard you can swing and the quality of contact you’ll make. More important than that is your swing path, something that’s begun percolating into the public discourse more and more thanks to Baseball Savant making that data more widely available.
With all of that in mind, let’s take a look at a poster child for the player archetype that most underperforms the base raw power/contact tools:
If we look at Pinango’s raw power, both his 90th percentile and maximum exit velocity metrics point to at least 75-grade raw power, bordering on a true 80. Every two mph above the MLB average roughly translates to 10 points on the 20-80 scouting grade scale. Pinango combines that power with above-average zone-contact rates, and his average launch angle of 13.6 degrees looks like it’s major league average, so he might even be able to tap into his raw power. If we were to look at just these four metrics, we’d be inclined to pound the table and anoint Pinango as a legit, no-doubt Top 100 Prospect.
However, there’s a massive problem. While Pinango’s launch angles are average overall, take a look at his average flyball exit velocity and his average hard-hit launch angle. When Pinango gets the ball in the air (20 degrees or above), he’s averaging a paltry 86 mph on those batted balls. That translates to 35-grade power if we were only looking at that metric.
You read that correctly: Pinango, based on his metrics this year, is perhaps a 75/35 raw/game power-type player. Further, when he does hit the ball hard (95 mph+), his average launch angle is 4.1 degrees, which severely limits his chances of hitting a lot of home runs. Unsurprisingly, this leads to about average slugging on contact, which is what you’d expect given Pinango’s power/launch angle profile.
If there ever was a player who needed a swing change, it’s Pinango. He has the bat speed to be a top-tier hitting prospect and the damage-on-contact potential that could be top-of-the-scale if he had a swing more optimized for more launch angle. Making a swing change like that often comes with added swing-and-miss, but in this case, it would be well worth it.
Travis Bazzana, 2B, Guardians
Travis Bazzana slugs ANOTHER homer tonight 🔥
That’s three homers in his last three games 👀
(🎥@CLBClippers)
pic.twitter.com/VsyrlUKuAl
— Baseball America (@BaseballAmerica) September 7, 2025
On the other end of the spectrum, is Bazzana:
Looking at the raw power metrics, Bazzana is showing roughly 40 to 45-grade raw power. However, his flyball exit velocities and hard-hit launch angles suggest he might have 70-grade game power. While it’s hard to have confidence in such an optimistic grade given the raw power shown in Triple-A, it’s clearly at least plus, no matter the raw tools.
There’s a lot of talk about air pull%, which measures a player’s ability to generate fly balls to the pull side. Generally speaking, I strongly prefer flyball EV and hard-hit launch angles over this metric for a couple of reasons.
First, elite bat speed guys like Aaron Judge and Nick Kurtz will do tons of damage to the opposite field while also posting mediocre air pull% numbers. Second, players make harder contact to the pull side. This means that if a player has a good hard-hit launch angle, he will likely also have the ability to pull the ball in the air. This is not to say that I think air pull% is a bad metric. Rather, I strongly prefer the combination of flyball EV and hard-hit launch angles, especially as they compare to the player’s average EV and launch angles.
Ok, let’s get back to Bazzana. Whereas Yohendrick Pinango averages about nine degrees less on his hard-hit balls, Bazzana averages about eight degrees more on his hard-hit balls. Pinango hits his fly balls almost six mph below his average, while Bazzana hits his almost 4.5 mph harder. You’ll notice that Bazzana’s slugging on contact is well above-average, something that should continue given his optimized approach.
The crown jewels of Bazzana’s profile are his plate discipline and swing decisions. If we scroll down to the bottom line on his chart, we see that his 17% overall chase rate is about 13 percentage points better than the major league average. His 63.4% in-zone swing rate looks underwhelming until we look at the pitch-type breakdown. Against fastball shapes (four-seamers, sinkers and cutters), he’s very aggressive, with a zone-swing rate above 80%. Against non-fastballs, he’s willing to take a strike in the zone and hunt a fastball later in the count.
For a player without standout raw power, getting that little bit of extra juice that the pitcher’s velocity provides helps Bazzana’s power play up just a little. Do not be fooled by the raw power numbers—Bazzana clearly understands how to make the most of his skillset. He could have a career that looks a lot like that of Alex Bregman, who is a three-time all-star, a silver slugger award winner and could be cashing in big time again this offseason in free agency.
Michael Hilker, RHP, Twins
Most of the words in this series are devoted to players who are top 200-type prospects, as they are the ones, generally speaking, who have the standout Statcast data needed to become viable major leaguers. However, the players I most enjoy writing about most are the under-the-radar guys you’ve likely never heard of but still have realistic shots at making the major leagues.
In the vein, allow me to introduce you to Hilker, the 599th pick in this year’s draft. Most of the 598 players selected ahead of Hilker will not make the major leagues. Hilker, on the other hand, may have a realistic shot of getting there. While this may be an extreme hot take given we have a grand total of two professional innings worth of data to work with, if you’ll bear with me, I’ll show you why I’m a believer in Hilker.
It begins with what looks like promising command:
Hilker does a great job of locating his fastball up in the zone or above it, with very few in the bottom half. This is incredibly important, as Hilker has a fastball with elite ride:
Despite poor velocity, Hilker gets almost four inches of vertical break above what is expected given his arm slot. Shota Imanaga has proven you can have a plus fastball even at 90-91 mph when you get that much ride on the pitch. When you combine that with a clear approach (attacking the top of the zone), you’ll get a pitcher whose fastball will play well above the velocity. In a vacuum, this kind of fastball usually outperforms the power fastballs with poor shape.
Hilker’s primary secondary is an 82 mph bullet slider that features ideal velocity and vertical separation from the fastball. He also flashed a bridge cutter at 87, a changeup at 85 and a slow curve at 76 that, while without standout movement, fits well within the arsenal.
Hilker also has a strong track record of throwing strikes, as evidenced by a 171-to-34 strikeout-to-walk ratio over 129 collegiate innings. Given what looks like strong command of a potentially-plus fastball, Hilker looks to me like a potential future major leaguer.
Tanner Franklin, RHP, Cardinals
Franklin has one of the best fastballs in the minors from a stuff perspective thanks to plus velocity (96 mph, touching 99) and 3.5 inches of ride over expected given his arm slot. It’s a good enough pitch to project Franklin as a high-probability leverage arm at the very least.
Outside of the fastball, however, the arsenal needs work, as his splitter doesn’t leverage seam-shifted wake movement. The slider is interesting, but it should probably be closer to 86 to 87 mph, and he might be able to achieve “deathball” shape with it. Franklin also shows a bridge cutter, which is a common part of modern arsenals. The fastball will carry the profile, and if the rest of the arsenal develops, this is a future midrotation arm or better.
Liam Doyle, LHP, Cardinals
Doyle, who made his pro debut on Saturday, has a very similar arsenal to his org-mate in Franklin, only it’s from the left side.
His fastball doesn’t get quite as much ride, but his splitter already has plus shape. Both pitchers have similar slider shapes, which is interesting and may indicate the Cardinals like this particular type of slider. That makes some sense, as stuff models love it, too. Doyle also mixes in a curveball at 81 mph.
Drafting and developing Franklin and Doyle may be a sign of player development and acquisition strategy to keep an eye on in the Chaim Bloom era in St. Louis.
Alex Breckheimer, RHP, Cardinals
Breckheimer is another recent Cardinals draftee with a plus vertical fastball. He caught our attention after the draft, mostly due to his fastball shape, which has translated fully to pro ball.
The curveball is a nice addition, with huge two-plane movement and a ton of depth, especially at 78 mph. He’s throwing a Drew Thorpe-type of changeup, but those are hard to make work without elite deception. The cutter/slider needs more depth or more cut, and it looks to have inconsistent shape.
Breckheimer’s fastball/curveball combo should be pretty good, but it remains to be seen how the rest of his profile will evolve around those two pitches.
Ryan Ward, OF, Dodgers
Plus power with solid contact and solid swing decisions? Sign me up. But wait, you say, Ward is 27 years old, so we must discount his performance, right? Perhaps.
Ward changed his approach between 2024 and 2025 and is now swinging much less, which has helped him become above-average at avoiding chase, especially against non-fastballs. This has led to a career-best 9.4% swinging-strike rate (whiffs per pitch seen), a number far below the 15.5% and 15.1% he posted the past two seasons.
Ward looks very much like an average-or-better major league bat who is patiently waiting for his shot at the major league level.
Carson Benge, OF, Mets
Benge was one of the biggest risers in the latest Top 100 update, so let’s dive into what he looks like from a Statcast perspective:
Benge does a lot of things well. He hits the ball hard, makes a lot of contact, is aggressive in the zone and doesn’t chase too much. However, his power will play down because he’s more of a line-drive hitter than an optimized flyball hitter. As such, his profile exists in something of a middle ground between the above extremes of Yohendrick Pinango and Travis Bazzana.
We’ll check back in at the end of the season to see if Benge’s launch angles improve, as they were better in the lower minors. If he can get to league-average launch angles, he raises his ceiling substantially.
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