Prospect roundup for May 14 mlb.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mlb.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
60
We now have a reasonably-sized big league sample with which to help us answer the question of whether Hayes will be merely very good, or will hit for enough in-game power to have a Scott Rolen-ish career. The data does some pushing and pulling. In about a month, Hayes hit a whopping .376/.442/.682, ranked fourth among all hitters with a 195 wRC+, and led all NL rookies with 1.7 WAR even though he only played in 24 games. And Hayes was hitting the ball hard. His big league average exit velocity (just shy of 93 mph) and HardHit% (55%) were both above what he posted in the 2019 minors (91 mph, 48%) when he only hit 10 homers over a 100 games. But his .450 BABIP is unsustainable and, per Statcast, his xwOBA (.356) came in well below his actual wOBA (.464), indicating that he was also the beneficiary of some luck. There’s no accounting for how big league pitching might expose a weakness and begin to adjust to Hayes, even if it’s just to limit his power output rather than get him o