Indians Minor League Spring Training report
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The Indians have a farm system on the rise, and its greatest strength is its collection of advanced young hitters. Four of their best will play at High A Lake County this year, despite possessing six games of full-season experience between them.
Outfielder George Valera and middle infielders Brayan Rocchio, Aaron Bracho and Jose Tena all part of a potentially special 2017 international class for Cleveland will play the entire season at age 20. Rocchio and Valera were the youngest regulars in the short-season New York-Penn League in the summer of 2019, when the latter played six games in Low A. Tena hasn t played above the Rookie-level Arizona League, where he formed the primary double-play combination with Bracho two years ago before Bracho moved up to the NY-Penn League for the final week.
Indians Minor League Spring Training report
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95-98 / 101
After an up-and-down freshman year at Arkansas, Rutledge transferred to Houston-area junior college powerhouse San Jacinto and immediately looked like a first-round pick. He had trouble getting on the mound in Fayetteville in part due to his command, which still isn’t great. Rutledge often worked 96-100 at San Jac, mixing in a comfortably-plus slider and a curveball that was closer to average. He would occasionally flash a good changeup, too, but that pitch was a distant fourth offering at the time. That’s not really the case anymore, as Rutledge has hit the breaks on his curveball and spent most of 2020 focusing on his changeup, which had good fade and tailing action during spring training this year.
94-98 / 101
I was too low on Meyer before the draft. I saw him up to 101 mph in his first start of the year when he threw a lot of well-located sliders in the 89-92 mph range and struck out several Oregon Ducks. But his stuff and command waned later in the outing, which gave me relief-risk concern, though I should have realized the context for the look (it was his first outing of the season) was likely at play. He proceeded to dismantle TCU (10 K in 5.2 IP), North Carolina (CG, 1 BB, 14 K), and Utah (8 IP, 15 K) in the following three weeks before the shutdown, mostly with the fastball/slider combo, though he did flash a good changeup on occasion, too. Fold in some of the peripheral projection elements I like to bet on (Meyer was also an important offensive player in college, he’s a great on-mound athlete, and he’s coming from a cold weather school) and you can go nuts projecting on the things (mostly the changeup, command, and in-start stamina) that complete what could be a fro
50
Billed as the best collegiate defensive player in the 2018 Draft, Peña has since added 20 pounds of muscle and now has modest, but relevant power. After looking uncharacteristically mistake-prone during the 2019 Fall League, he was the Dominican Winter League’s best infield defender in 2020 and should be a plus big league defender at shortstop. While he isn’t as deft and precise with the barrel, Peña’s swing shares some common rotational elements with fellow Astro Yuli Gurriel. Peña can pull his hands in and get the fat part of the bat on pitches on the inner half, which should enable him to hit 12 to 15 annual pull shots, maybe a couple more because of the Crawford Boxes in Houston. But the profile foundation here is Peña’s on-base ability and plus glove at a premium position. He’s 23 and hasn’t played above A-ball, but is still a pretty stable prospect, in part thanks to his coming of age in LIDOM.
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