Fantasy Baseball Today - FBT Express - Top 5 Prospects to Stash! Nick Kurtz, Zebby Matthews & More! (4/12 Fantasy Baseball podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 A's prospect, Nick Kurtz, continues to mash at AAA. Let's discuss on Fantasy Baseball Today Express. Welcome in to FBT Express on Thursday. That's not true. Saturday, April 12. We are recording this on Thursday night. I am, for example, joined by Scott White. And let's take a look at five prospects most worth stashing in fantasy right now.

Starting point is 00:00:23 Zebby Matthews of the Twins, Nick Kurtz of the Athletics, Bubba Chandler of the Pirates, Roman Anthony of the Red Sox, and Dalton rushing of the Dodgers. Now, by the time you're listening to this, Zebby Matthews might already be promoted. We know that David Festa started on Friday, but there's talks that they could go with a six-man rotation with the twins.

Starting point is 00:00:44 Nick Kurtz, as I mentioned up top, continues to destroy AAA pitching, but how does he factor into that athletics mix? And Bubba Chandler looks like he might be on the Paul Skeen schedule from last year, Scott. What do you have on those three? So yeah, Zebby Matthews seemed like the obvious choice to replace Pablo Lopez. And there's been a wrinkle thrown in here because the twins have 12 consecutive days with a game.

Starting point is 00:01:14 They decided to promote Festa early instead of just waiting for Lopez's turn and inserting Matthews, push every starter back. Maybe they'll still insert Matthews, maybe not. It won't be long whether it happens this week or not. So Matthews has moved to the top of the prospects. to stash, even though it doesn't technically meet my definition of prospect because he exhausted his rookie eligibility last year. We'll leave that out. We'll leave that out. He's looked great in the miners. Most recent start, he struck out nine, struck out 12 and 9 in a third innings this spring and has an extra couple miles per hour velocity after having elite, elite,

Starting point is 00:01:51 top of the scale control last year. And that doesn't seem to have suffered. He still to strong strikes at a tremendous rate. Zebby Matthews. I'm excited for when he eventually joins the twins rotation. You asked about Nick Kurtz, correct? Nick Kurtz is not quite to the number of games. Wyatt Langford played in the minors before getting called up, but he's having the same kind of run down there

Starting point is 00:02:20 where it's just clear. He's nothing to accomplish, nothing to accomplish in the whole minor league system, even though he was just drafted last year. So it's just a question of how soon the athletics can find an opening for him. Tyler Soderstrom did leave a game earlier this week with a right calf contusion, but was back in the line of the next day. Obviously, he's off to a great start.

Starting point is 00:02:40 So that doesn't seem like the path for Kurtz. I think we'll have some hint that he's about to get called up. If we see Brent Rooker appear in the outfield at least once, that would be nice. Or if we see Kurtz and the miners, Kurtz himself start to dabble with playing the outfields, which seems like the harder path to go. I don't know why they wouldn't just put Rooker there, but they haven't so far. So we'll see. And then, yeah, Bubba Chandler made a couple brief appearances this spring.

Starting point is 00:03:15 Looked a little rusty in his first AAA start. But then the second one looked like the elite pitching prospect. He has struck out eight over four one hit innings, average 98.6 on the fastball. had a 20% swinging strike rate in that contest through 61 pitches total. That was on April 8th. Paul Skeen's last year didn't cross the 60 pitch threshold until April 18th.

Starting point is 00:03:42 Paul Skeens ended up getting called up on May 11th. So does that mean we're in line to see Chandler on May 1st as we'll be at that same stage of building up by May 1st? Maybe. Maybe that's that's, kind of what I'm anticipating. If it doesn't happen exactly on May 1st, okay, soon after, early May, is the point.

Starting point is 00:04:03 As long as his control problems from the past don't resurface and he continues to dominate at AAA. Obviously, the pirates have a need for him and they've shown a willingness to call up an elite prospect on that timeline, as recently as last year. All right, let's take a quick break.

Starting point is 00:04:21 We'll be back right after this. Welcome back in Fantasy Baseball Today, Express Five other prospects who are making noise right now in the minors. Jack Caglione with the Royals, Chase Midroth with the White Sox, Logan Henderson with the Brewers, J.T. Ginn with the Athletics, and Ian Seymour of the Raise. Worth mentioning that Chase Mindroth actually just got promoted by the White Sox. And I think he's a name that should be on your radar in Deeper League right now.

Starting point is 00:04:51 Yeah, I think so too. He reached base at a 4.30. seven clip last year in the Red Sox system. Came over obviously in the garer crochet deal to the White Sox. Now, he wasn't thought to have much pop in his bat at all. And so a lot of times we've seen from prospects in recent years, oh, okay, great, the guys go to getting on base in the minors. But then he gets to the majors.

Starting point is 00:05:16 And if he doesn't have punch in the bat, then Major League pitchers are just happy to their own strikes. And he doesn't end up walking as much as he did in the minors and doesn't end up being useful at all. So that would be the fear for Chase Midroth. But he actually impacts the ball a little harder than the scouting reports would have you believe. Average exit velocity last year, 88.6, maxes 108.1.

Starting point is 00:05:42 Those aren't great, but they're not terrible. They're not like bottom of the scale's exit velocities. And already three home runs this year, it seems like the White Sox have coached them maybe. to elevate the ball in the air more. So he may have optimized to swing for power. And that might give him a path to being a Jake Croninworth type, Chase Midroth, who walks more,

Starting point is 00:06:06 walks more than Croninworth. And that would be a pretty valuable player for fantasy, though maybe not in the White Sox lineup. So there are a lot of reasons to leave him just for deeper leagues, but there is some level of interest there for me. Jack Caglione, let's talk about him for a minute. Obviously, if you're watching this, you're familiar with him. a top draft pick last year,

Starting point is 00:06:28 hits the ball insanely hard. I think I saw just Thursday, he hit a ball 120.9 miles per hour. That's right. Only five players in Stackass history have hit a ball that hard. Major leaguers included, right? Like, are they only talking about major leaguers there?

Starting point is 00:06:46 Yeah, I mean, this is the sort of player who is going to come up and, and break stackass records. He is that good at impacting the baseball. And usually players who are that good at impacting the baseball who hit it that hard, they struggle with strikeouts. That's not Caglione's problem. If anything, he is too good at making contact on everything.

Starting point is 00:07:09 So he swings at bad pitches. But I mean, that hasn't been what we've seen from him so far. He's just mashing everything. He hit 115 mile per hour homeruns this spring. It's continued into the regular season. He's at AA and they don't really have a. an avenue for him. But he's going to force the issue this year, I think, as long as he stays healthy.

Starting point is 00:07:32 And they'll figure out what to do with Vinny Pasquantino at that point. They could probably start both. It would just mean less Salvador Perez at DH. I did want to mention a couple others here. Two of the pitchers, Logan Henderson for the Brewers and J.T. Ginn for the athletics, because there's a good chance. will be making starts for the major league club sooner than later. We did see some of again last year for the athletics.

Starting point is 00:08:01 Great ground ball guy, but not a lot of strikeouts. He looks different this year. Like throwing harder, missing a lot more bats, 11 strikeout effort for his AAA debut this year, and then followed up with an 8th strikeout effort. He never had a start with as many as 11 strikeouts before, and only twice did he reach 8th strikeout.

Starting point is 00:08:25 strikeouts last season. So two starts in, he's already looking like a different kind of pitcher in terms of miss bats while still having an elite ground ball rate. So there may be something to see here with J.T. again, if the swing and miss translates to the majors. And Logan Henderson, guy who had a great strikeout to walk ratio in the minors last year. And in his most recent start at AAA, he had, he had, I believe it was. was, oh gosh, where'd the number go?

Starting point is 00:08:59 Oh, five no-hit innings with eight strikeouts for Logan Henderson. So he's not like a big, well-known prospect like Jacob Mizorowski is, but he may be closer to making an impact on the majors and the Brewers need rotation help. He has a great change up. Seems to have filled out his arsenal with the cutter this year. There may be something to see, like I could see Logan Henderson being the sort of pitching prospect who flies under the radar, just performs well, but doesn't. doesn't get a lot of attention, and then he comes up to the majors, and he keeps performing well.

Starting point is 00:09:31 So that's a name to put on your radar, Logan Henderson. And if you want to read about all these players, you could do that in Scott's Prospect Report, which is live on the website, cbosports.com slash fantasy slash baseball. For more extensive fantasy baseball coverage, listen to our full-length podcast, Fantasy Baseball Today on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else podcasts are found. Thanks for listening to Fantasy Baseball Today Express, and we will be back again next week. Bye-bye.

Fantasy Baseball Today - FBT Express - Top 5 Prospects to Stash! Nick Kurtz, Zebby Matthews & More! (4/12 Fantasy Baseball podcast)

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.