The Washington Nationals recently welcomed Juan Soto back to Nationals Park. It was a reminder of their World Series run and a potential glimpse into the future, with Dylan Crews joining James Wood on the big-league roster. Three of the five players the Nationals received for Soto in 2022 are on their big-league roster and a fourth — Robert Hassell III — is moving up to Triple A this week. The fifth player in the deal is still in A-ball but is far from an after-thought. I saw Jarlin Susana pitch this past weekend for High-A Wilmington. I also recently saw Orioles’ top pick Vance Honeycutt with Low-A Delmarva.
Notes below on both prospects, as well as some notes from a game from early July involving Guardians and Phillies prospects.
Jarlin Susana’s stats catching up with his stuff
Right-hander Jarlin Susana was the fifth player the Nationals acquired in the trade that sent Juan Soto to the Padres — the other four being two major-leaguers (C.J. Abrams and Mackenzie Gore) and two much more highly rated prospects (Hassell and Wood). Susana has always thrown hard, but 2024 is the first year where the 20-year-old has shown some promising results to go with the premium stuff, with 147 strikeouts (34.5 percent) in 98 2/3 innings between Low A and High A.
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I caught his last home start of the year for Wilmington on Saturday, which was also his first pro outing with double-digit strikeouts, and it was a mixed bag: He does have two plus pitches, and the velocity is absurd, but the command and control still lag well behind.
Susana sat 99-101 for the full five innings on Saturday, with all of the four-seamers I registered coming in at 97-102 (that’s from my gun, not the scoreboard). He held the velocity until the end of his outing, and did the same with his hard slurve, topping out at 91 with the majority of them in the 88-90 mph range. He absolutely blew up the very young Aberdeen lineup, with 22 swinging strikes in 83 pitches, as they could neither catch up to the velocity nor adjust to breaking stuff that was often out of the zone. He gave up seven hits in the five innings, but three never left the infield and only one was hard-hit. The Wilmington defense did Susana no favors.
Jarlin Susana dials it up to 102 mph en route to a career-high 10 strikeouts at High-A!
See AlsoC-Note - What is a C Note Money - Finance ReferenceC Programming Language Tutorial - GeeksforGeeksWhat Is a C-Note? Definition, Meaning, Originiation and Evolution - Training for Financial ServicesExclusive: Top Ukrainian pilot killed when US-made F-16 fighter jet crashed | CNNA new addition to the Top 100 Prospects list, the @Nationals 20-year-old (acquired in the Juan Soto deal) is up to 147 K's in 98.2 IP this year.@WilmBlueRocks | @Nats_PlayerDev pic.twitter.com/FrlgSbwF2F
— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) September 1, 2024
That said, Susana also got away with a lot of poor location, and I’m not sure he really has a plan of attack beyond throwing very hard with just those two pitches. (He threw a couple of two-seamers at 95-97, and at least one changeup, but more than 90% of his pitchers were either the four-seamer or that in-between breaking ball.) He comes from a low three-quarters slot that makes him very tough on right-handers, but lefties have a .418 OBP off him this year and he can’t locate either of his primary pitches to his glove side.
He won’t turn 21 until March, so in the context of his age he’s doing extremely well — we’re not waiting on stuff and he’s performed at two full-season levels now. I do think he’s going to run into trouble next year between the below-average command, which is at least in part a function of the delivery, and the lack of a real weapon for left-handed batters.
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Swing-and-miss issues continue for Vance Honeycutt
The Orioles took centerfielder Vance Honeycutt with their first-round pick this year even though the UNC slugger struck out 83 times as a junior, which I believe is the most ever for a player selected in Round 1.
He’s an elite defender in center, quite possibly an 80, and has easy plus power, but he misses so much in the zone — many pitches that he really should be able to hit — that I didn’t think he merited selection that high, even with two exceptional tools.
Against Salem, he struck out twice, with several ugly swings on fastballs and sliders, and tapped out weakly twice to the pitcher, along with one double that he didn’t even square up but that still traveled far enough to produce extra bases. He’s struck out 37.5 percent of the time so far in his 32 PA in Low A, a tiny sample but also consistent with his previous history in college. He showed that incredible defense again, gliding to flyballs from left-center over to right-center, and with at least 20-homer upside there’s the ceiling of a solid regular here — but he has got to make a lot more and better contact to get there.
He’s one of several Orioles prospects who will be moving up to High A this week.
Notes on Cleveland prospects Parker Messick, C.J. Kayfus and more
Going even further back in the notebook, I saw Cleveland lefty Parker Messick pitch at Double-A Reading shortly before the All-Star break and … I’m going to have a hard time with this one, because it’s a bad body and a bad delivery with a lot of effort, but hitters just do not see the ball well and he’s struck out nearly a third of the batters he’s faced so far for Double-A Akron.
Messick was 88-93 early, losing that top end by the fourth inning, with a four-pitch mix where no single pitch was better than average. The slider was short and sloppy, and he didn’t spot his changeup well, often just flopping it up there — technical term, sorry — and relying on the fact that hitters don’t see the ball behind his body. This stuff very often ends up homer-prone, especially for a guy who’s already flyball-heavy, so even with his plus control, I still think he’s going to top out as a fifth starter.
#Guardians 23yr old LHP prospect Parker Messick allowed just one earned run tonight striking out five Bowie batters over 4.2 innings of work for Akron.
Line – 4.2(IP) 5H 2R 1ER 4BB 5SO (94 Pitches 55 Strikes)
Messick owns a 2.13 ERA in 12 outings now since his promotion to… pic.twitter.com/172kRY4G0a
— Guardians Prospective (@CleGuardPro) August 30, 2024
C.J. Kayfus was Cleveland’s third-round pick last year out of Miami. He destroyed High A in the first half of 2024, and has hit a respectable .262/.371/.484 in 59 games for Akron. This is pretty consistent with what I saw from Kayfus in college — he has a good idea at the plate, will take some walks, and has plus power, but it’s just average bat speed. He did triple off a 96 mph fastball later in the game, but it was as dead-red as it gets and it was probably a catchable fly ball. For some context, data from Synergy Sports show Kayfus seeing 42 fastballs of 95 mph or harder in Double A, with one hit and seven whiffs.
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Right-hander Lenny Torres, Cleveland’s second pick (sandwich round) in 2018 out of a high school in upstate New York, has had a nice season in Akron’s bullpen, although this wasn’t a great look. He was 93-96 with a fringy slider at 81-83 and walked the No. 9 hitter with a five-run lead. His lack of a breaking ball was a concern out of high school, but at the time he was still 17 and you could be optimistic he’d develop one given time. Now he’s throwing the four-seamer almost 70 percent of the time and he’s very flyball-prone, which isn’t a great formula for major-league success.
Notes on Jean Cabrera and other Reading Fightin’ Phils
The Fightin’ Phils didn’t have much at the time I saw them beyond some velocity. Starter Jean Cabrera was 94-96 with two- and four-seamers, which come from a high three-quarters slot. He was also going heavy on the changeup, but the second time through the order he was much less effective.
Right-hander Andrew Schultz, their sixth-round pick way back in 2019 out of the University of Tennessee, was 96-97 but could only throw it to his arm side, going glove side with an 89-91 mph cutter. He has a Keith Foulke-like delivery where you can see the ball all day long.
Right-hander Dominic Pipkin was 95-98 with a cutter/slider at 87-88, still showing a super-fast arm, but he only made two more appearances after this one before returning to the injured list, where he’s spent most of the season.
(Photo of Susana: Jim Rassol / USA Today)
Keith Law is a senior baseball writer for The Athletic. He has covered the sport since 2006 and prior to that was a special assistant to the general manager for the Toronto Blue Jays. He's the author of "Smart Baseball" (2017) and "The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves" (2020), both from William Morrow. Follow Keith on Twitter @keithlaw
