S2E19: Demystifying the DSL A’s

One major theme of the A's minor league system's August has been the widespread promotion of pitchers from one level to the next, especially in the teams' starting rotations. With only a few weeks remaining in the 2023 minor league season, I look at fourteen recently-promoted pitchers across the system and discuss what led to each of them getting the call, how their early returns in their new assignments have gone, and where their recent developments put them in the A's organization's pitching picture down the stretch and looking ahead to 2024.

In the second Q&A episode of the 2023 minor league season, I fielded sixteen questions about different topics across the A's system (and beyond), ranging from macro topics such as putting the organization's starting pitching and top position players in context, to anticipating key offseason events like the Rule 5 Draft and Arizona Fall League, to discussing the progress of several specific players at different levels and stages of performance.

This week's episode is an Excessive Prospect Analysis Podcast first: a chat with someone else, namely Jesse Goldberg-Strassler, the tremendous lead broadcaster of the A's organization's High-A affiliate in Lansing. Jesse was incredibly generous to take a full podcast's worth of time out to talk with me about a wide range of subjects delving into both on- and off-field aspects of minor league baseball. We spend the first 1:10 or so of the conversation focusing on various aspects of broadcasting and the role folks in Jesse's position play in shaping our understanding of what goes on with the teams they work for. We get into Jesse's particular path to his current position and broadcasting acumen, his broadcast philosophy, all the things that go on behind the scenes in a broadcaster's day, the minor league broadcast audience, and plenty more. For the rest of the chat, we discuss various topics around the Lugnuts team: find out how several of the team's new players have looked, what trends Jesse's noticed in being around the team every day, his take on the biggest stories of the 2023 Lansing season, what you might expect from Lugnuts players in batting practice, and learn about some of the cool things some of the squad's players have done off the field as well. Even as closely as I've followed the Lansing team this year (like all A's affiliates), and as familiar as I've become with Jesse's broadcasting style, I learned so much from him about so many different things in this conversation, and I'm sure you'll find plenty of insight from it as well.

Following last week's breakdown of the players and trends from the A's Arizona Complex League affiliate, this week examines the other A's Rookie-level team, that of the Dominican Summer League. I discuss the team's overall performance from a number of angles and put it in conversation with A's organizational trends at the Rookie levels and the development of international players specifically, then discuss the skillsets and underlying talents fourteen different DSL players are showing early in their pro careers.

The final week of July finds the Athletics' Arizona Complex League affiliate in a time of transition. When this episode was recorded (on July 24), the organization's 2023 draftees had yet to make their professional debuts, but it was clear they were imminent, and they indeed began playing the following day. While we wait on the early results of the draft class, I wanted to spend an episode examining the players who have been playing for the ACL team over the previous seven weeks; next week, I'll be focusing on the organization's other Rookie-level players, those in the Dominican Summer League. Since the show is thus preoccupied with Rookie-level developments over this episode and the next, I begin this episode with an overview of important considerations in evaluating players at this early and often mysterious stage of their professional careers. I then discuss fourteen players who have made interesting impressions during the ACL season, including three recent promotees up to the Low-A level. Throughout, I reflect on the talent on this team as a whole and what it might mean for the possibility of this group of mostly international signees supplementing the 2023 draft class in forming an improved team in Stockton next season. Since this episode is quite lengthy, here are some timestamps for particular player analyses and topics if you want to navigate this discussion for more specific information: 0:00 Intro 3:25 Overview of Important Considerations in Rookie-Level Evaluation 32:40 The ACL Pitching Staff, Overall 34:20 Tzu-Chen Sha 53:30 Luis Morales 1:08:15 Jesus Silverio 1:14:25 Brayan Restituyo 1:24:50 Dairon De Jesus 1:30:35 Camilo Hernandez 1:38:35 The ACL Position Players, Overall 1:46:10 Yeniel Laboy 1:55:00 Angel Rivera 2:09:10 Angel Arevalo 2:23:15 Joseph Rodriguez & Moises Gallardo 2:34:15 German Ortiz 2:39:35 Mario Gomez & Javier Pariguan

In this jam-packed midseason special, it's time to take stock of where things stand as a whole in the A's system as we prepare for an influx of new talent into the organization via the draft. Assessing exactly where Oakland's or any specific MLB organization's minor league system stacks up relative to their competition is a challenging task, but I attempt to do so in several ways, both looking at the system as a whole and many interesting (and surprising!) trends within it. The episode is divided into three sections: In the first section (starting at 0:00), having recently released my Midseason A's Top 50 Prospects list, I first discuss the tiers of talent in the system and how they stack up, at least on an initial vibe check. I also look at notable movers up and down the list and what areas of strength and weakness in the system the list reveals. In the second section (starting at 49:05), I first discuss the particular challenges of coming to specific conclusions about a minor league system and the pluses and minuses of my vantage point vs. those of national prospect writers when it comes to such a task. I then take a look at how the A's system has performed this season overall in a statistical and win-loss sense and how that compares to its historical performance. Finally, I take an extended journey through assessing how the system got into its current state, dissecting the positives and negatives we can discern from the A's minor league talent acquisition history in the last decade. The conclusions I (tentatively) reach may surprise you; they've certainly snuck up on me in recent weeks, and I'm still wrestling with their strength. The final section of the show (starting at 2:20:05) then highlights the biggest stories of the last three months of A's minor league baseball and previews key threads for the 2023 minor league season's final eight weeks.

This week, I conclude my recent rundown of notable developments at the full-season affiliates in the A's system. In the first half of the show, I examine the factors that led to Jonny Butler's June breakout that saw him recently promoted to Midland, then look at five talented Lansing players looking to follow suit and conquer the High-A level more fully. In the second half, I turn to the complicated issue of analyzing the position players at Triple-A Las Vegas in a way that removes the inflation provided by the Aviators' extremely hitter-friendly home park and the Pacific Coast League as a whole. I go into detail about the exit velocities and swinging strike rates of every player on the Las Vegas roster and how they compare to those of the players above them in Oakland, before turning to more detailed breakdowns of the team's top prospects both in the field and on the mound.

This week's episode provides updates on a number of notable Midland RockHounds before turning to discuss a collection of Lansing pitchers. How are each of Midland's top four offensive prospects faring, and what does each need to do to cement their progress through the Double-A level? What's behind the recent success of Joey Estes and Ryan Cusick on Texas League mounds, and what do Blake Beers and Jack Perkins need to do to reach similar heights there? What separates Jacob Watters' and Joelvis Del Rosario's impressive stuff from attaining equally impressive results? How legitimate is Tyler Baum's recent success? What are the two most effective bat-missing pitches in the A's organization? The answers to these questions, and others, may surprise you.

The podcast is back after a week off, and on this week's episode, I detail the numbers and tools behind the excitement generated by eight relatively inexperienced A's prospects, ranging from Lansing down to the ACL team. Who leads Oakland's 2019 draft class in career ERA, and why have you probably not heard of him? What's behind Henry Bolte's surge of production over the past several weeks? Now that he's finally healthy and competing in Stockton, how does Gunnar Hoglund look? Has a new candidate for the best non-Mason Miller fastball in the organization suddenly emerged from nowhere? These are just some of the questions I get to the bottom of this week.

This week's episode offers an in-depth look at the two Rookie-level affiliates in the A's system, laying out some overall themes to watch for at the Rookie level while also giving some information and scouting notes on many key players on these two rosters.