This week’s installment of “Knocking Down The Door” includes five homegrown players—two first-round picks, two second-round picks and one sixth-round pick—who are close to reaching the majors with the team that drafted and signed them to professional contracts.
Josh Bell, 1B, Pittsburgh Pirates (Triple-A Indianapolis): Chad Kuhl’s solid MLB debut on Sunday should ease the calls for top pitching prospect Tyler Glasnow (13 IP, 0 R, 0 H over last two starts) to join the big league rotation, at least for this week. I’m not sure John Jaso’s doing enough (.619 OPS since May 29th) to hold off Bell much longer, though.
The 23-year-old first baseman has been a hitting machine during his ascent through the minors, and 2016 has been no different. Well, there has been one difference. He’s finally starting to show off some in-game home run power (11 HR in 74 games in 2016; 30 HR in 373 games from 2012-15) to go along with the high average (.321) and on-base percentage (.405), which should get the attention of a Pirates front office that isn’t known for quickly moving prospects up the ladder.
With a .356/.422/.644 slash line in June, the switch-hitting Bell has done more than enough to earn a spot with the Pirates and push Jaso into a bench role.
Jose Berrios, SP, Minnesota Twins (Triple-A Rochester): It wasn’t a big surprise that Berrios earned an early promotion to the Majors in 2016. He dominated in Triple-A last season (2.85 ERA, 1.7 BB/9, 9. K/9 in 12 starts) and is considered to be one of the best pitching prospects in the game. It also shouldn’t have been a surprise, however, that a 21-year-old struggled in the big leagues and was sent to Triple-A after four starts.
Now a 22-year-old with two more months of Triple-A experience under his belt, Berrios is making a strong case to rejoin the Twins’ rotation after tossing three-hit ball over eight shutout innings in his last start. It was the eighth time in 10 starts that he’s allowed two earned runs or less and seventh time he’s allowed three hits or less.
Left-hander Tommy Milone did not fare well in his return to the rotation last week, and Tyler Duffey was on the brink of a demotion before dominating the Yankees in his last start. I’m guessing we’ll see Berrios if either Milone or Duffey has a bad start this week.
Austin Hedges, C, San Diego Padres (Triple-A El Paso): It doesn’t matter if Hedges homers in 10 straight games — he’s actually halfway there right now — there isn’t a spot for him on the Major League roster until the Padres can trade Derek Norris, who has an .828 OPS in June and is under team control through 2018. Those numbers are attractive on the trade market.
Norris also has value to the Padres, but Hedges’ recent power surge (seven homers in nine games) is a reminder that they have a big league ready catcher down in Triple-A who many think can be an elite defender and is healthy after surgery in late April to repair a fractured hamate bone.
The Austin Hedges era should begin in San Diego very soon — no, last year’s big league stint when he sat on the bench and watched Norris play almost every day doesn’t count. It just won’t happen until the Derek Norris era ends.
Aaron Judge, OF, New York Yankees (Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre): If a hitter’s walk-to-strikeout ratio is an indicator of his readiness for the majors, then maybe Judge is getting very close.
After walking 16 times and striking out 56 times in April and May, the 24-year-old Judge must be unrecognizable at the plate with his June performance—he’s walked 17 times and struck out only 21 times. While some hitters sacrifice power with a more patient approach, Judge’s power has also increased (8 homers in June; 7 homers in April/May).
Right fielder Carlos Beltran has been the Yankees’ most productive hitter in June, but he’s also 39 years old and needs to start getting off his feet and into the designated hitter spot more often. That designated hitter spot is currently being occupied by 40-year-old Alex Rodriguez, who is not having a productive season. Add those two things up and Judge has a chance to be patrolling the Bronx outfield in the near future.
Brock Stewart, SP, Los Angeles Dodgers (Triple-A Oklahoma City): The Dodgers currently have an opening in their rotation and there is a chance that they go with a guy who started the season in High-A and hadn’t been considered much of a prospect.
Crazy, right? Not as crazy at how deserving the guy is. (Note: Apparently the Dodgers agree, as Stewart tweets that he has been called up.)
A 6th Round draft pick in 2014, Stewart had the misfortune of spending most of his first full pro season in the very hitter-friendly California League, where he posted a 5.43 ERA. He returned there to start 2016 and was rewarded/saved with a promotion after two good starts. The 24-year-old has not stopped dominating hitters since.
After cruising through Double-A with 1.12 ERA, 1.6 BB/9 and 9.9 K/9 in nine starts, the right-hander has been brilliant in three Triple-A starts (2.89 ERA, 18.2 IP, 2 BB 27 K), including back-to-back 10-strikeout games. His next start could come in the majors on Wednesday.
“Knocking Down the Door” is a weekly feature that identifies minor leaguers who are making a case for a big league promotion.
What about Margot?
Team batting average is .316 right now. Batting average of home and visiting teams in games at home park in El Paso is .320. He is hitting .296. He has a way to go to be MLB ready, but he is one of the youngest players in AAA so he has time.
Can’t wait to see Hedges up here.
Dudes already a top 5 defensive catcher easily. Pitch framing and his footwork when throwing guys out was stunning last year. Even if he never gets his bat to come alive he will easily be a defensive stalwart for years to come and will anchor that pitching staff for the young guys. Norris has one draw back- hes not great at pitch framing.
Norris graded out as one of the better framers in the game in the second half of last season, and this year he’s tied with Yadier Molina in the upper half of MLB catchers. I think the defensive questions have been answered, and the bat went from ice cold to pretty darn good, as he batted .156/.198/.247 in March/April, .203/.277/.419 in May, and .274/.321/.507 in June. He came in to the season in better shape to handle a long season, and he’s been rested more. A contender would love to add Norris, and I hope the Padres get a nice little return for him.
Norris ranks 221st on Baseball Prospectus pitch framing stats. baseballprospectus.com/sortable/index.php?cid=1918786 That is the only one I have found that is accurate. He is among the worst at passed balls and number of stolen bases against him over the past 2 seasons. He calls a terrible game. Almost all of our pitchers this year and last saw an increase in ERA and BB with him behind the plate. His big saving grace was that he had a good bat. He stinks so far this year. As a Padres fan, all I can hope for is that he hits the cover off the ball the next couple of weeks so we can trade him.
This year norris caught stealers at a a 34.1% clip and last year 34.4% hes catching above league average amount but he also has more running against them. Last year he caught 44 and was 2nd most in attempts against at 84. Only cervelli had more at 101
We’ll just have to agree to disagree here, then. StatCorner has him at 9th out of the 24 catchers who have caught at least 3000 pitches this season in framing. Is BP more correct than StatCorner? It’s hard to say, but last year both sites liked his performance. Regarding the pitcher stats, I’d like to see those numbers showing how this ragtag group of pitchers performed demonstrably better with Bethancourt back there. Last year, Hedges wasn’t given enough of a chance to develop a decent sample size. Is Hedges the better catcher? Without a doubt. Is Norris a bottom feeder? I hardly think so. He might not hold Molina’s jock, but few do.
For Christ’s sake, THE NUMBER OF STOLEN BASES AGAINST HIM DOESN’T MATTER! ONLY HIS PERCENTAGE OF RUNNERS THROWN OUT MATTERS! GOD YOU’RE PERSISTENT!
And according to Moneyball, trying to steal a base is only worth it if you can succeed 70% of the time or more. Only 66% of attempts against Norris were successful, which means opposing teams would have scored more runs against us last year if no one ever tried to steal against Norris. Why? Because they would have had 44 more outs with which to do damage offensively. And as bad as our defense was last year we needed all the free outs we could get.
Stewart was just called up 20 mins ago
More meat for the grinder. The Dodgers are 2-10 in games started by these unready minor league call-ups.
Urias seems ready minus the innings. Ross pitched decent as well.
Stripling pitched at marginal journeyman level when he was up, which is to say, about as well as Kazmir. He might be better than that in his next tour of duty. Urias can’t make the innings mainly because, like most young pitchers, he wastes a lot of pitches. He’s too young to expect much more, but at the same time, he’s probably another year away from being a finished product. The point being, with all this advertised “depth” the rotation should not be a revolving door. The reality is they have a lot of bodies, by nobody they can make stick.
Okay? When did I say the rotation wasn’t a revolving door?
Urias is not going to be a finished product at 20/21. Kershaw wasn’t a finished product until 23, Koufax was 26/27 when he became the best of his era. He is still a pup and that won’t change next year.
You didn’t say anything about it at all. The depth experiment is not working out. That was my point.
Urias has the makeup to be ready for the rotation next year, quite possibly, or for a swing role. This is what I meant by a finished product, not necessarily that he would be pitching at his full potential.
Do they have pitch/fx available to the public for AAA??
It’s time to sit ARod or preferably release him instead of taking up a valuable roster spot. He doesn’t just look lost at the plate, he looks ridiculous. He’s looking fastball all the way and even then he can’t catch up. Other teams have caught on and throw him a steady diet of sliders and he’s done in three pitches. It’s sad to watch him try and hit.
Like the Dodgers did with Crawford it’s time to let him go. But the Yankees won’t do that. I’m sure they want him to get to 700 HR in a Yankee uniform. They need to pull him aside, ask him to retire, and pay out part of his contract and give him a front office job at a ridiculous pay rate to make up the difference. He’s been bad since last summer and he’s only embarrassing himself and hurting the team. Arod can blame it on his hip and no one would be the wiser. Hopefully he and the Yanks can find a way he ends this misery with some dignity.
Hahahahahaha you’d like that wouldn’t you?
What’s so funny
After this season he’s owned $20 million
How many contracts have been bought out at much higher value?
See the Dodgers, Mets, Angels, Boston in near future for that answer ……
Given that ARod has never turned down an opportunity to make sure he gets his money and also has never been one to step aside for the better of the team any sort of buyout seems unlikely. Maybe trade him for a different bad contract, but otherwise I’d expect him to be a 20 million .250 hitter on the bench.
Not gonna happen. Get over it.
@TheWestCoastRyan Why yes, yes I would like that. That would be why I posted it. Whatever slim chance the Yankees have of grabbing a wild card spot are that much less with ARod taking up a roster spot.
Too bad. He’s not taking a single penny less than what he is entitled to.
throw Tex into that mix as well. Too bad the Yankees wouldn’t DH for Tex and see if the pitchers could hit better
That would be what, $45 million they would have to pay those two if they cut them?
Tex can still play solid first when healthy and gone this year. If anybody needs to end year strong it’s Tex looking for a contract somewhere. Bird at first next year. Make Arod a hitting coach for next 2years for 15 mil and he retires this year with whatever dignity he will have in baseball. They get something maybe more valuable than they will definitely get out of him sitting on bench next year for 20 mil. Let’s see if Judge can play in NY.
Now why would A-Rod want to do that?
It would be nice if your ‘Knocking on the Door’ series had a link to all of the ‘Knocking on the Door’ articles. I’ve really enjoyed the series. Keep them coming!
There are tags at the bottom of every post that you can click on for related content. There’s one for this series. Glad you like it!
Jeff, first I’d like to thank you and all of the contributors for the great and informed work you bring us every day. I’d also like to echo daddydamgerous’ praise for this new recurring series.
All of that said, the tags you mentioned only appear at the bottom of the page on the MLBTR desktop site. Mobile, tablet and (I believe) Trade Rumors app users have no means of acessing these tags – short of memorizing a tag’s url. While filtering by team is easy enough (thanks to the top navigational bar), it would be great if features like “Knocking Down the Wall” had a series hyperlink in the series description which appear at the bottom of these posts.
In a perfect world, this would extend to other recurring features, such as: MLBTR Mailbag, MLBTR Originals, Week in Review, Baseball Blogs Weigh in, and the weekly chat transcripts. However, even if the staff is only willing to do so for less frequent series like “Knocking Down the Wall,” I’m certain I wouldn’t be the only happy mobile user.
Gotcha. I wasn’t aware of that, honestly — I read the site on desktop almost exclusively. I’ll mention it to Tim and we can see if there’s a way to incorporate that.
We do add links for polls and such for this reason.
Thanks Jeff, very much appreciated!
The app does have a solution here! You just need to add a feed for the category you want – Knocking Down The Door, or anything else. On iOS this is done with the gears icon, and on Android with the pencil icon.
Once the feed is added, you can set up notifications for it if you want. So you can actually get a notification through the app each time Jason publishes one of these articles.
Love this series!!
Regarding Berrios, I think it is quite possible (and, honestly, a wise move) that they consider trading Santana to open that spot. They need to let the young guys work it out, then evaluate in the offseason. What’s the difference between losing 95 games and losing 105 games? The same is true of Sano, Park, Buxton…but I digress.
I think the Twins should do as you suggest—across the board. Doubt they would lose a a worse rate than they are playing all the young guys—-including Santana are short, Sano at third, Rosario in left, and perhaps Polanco at second. Time to get whatever you can for yet he vets.
I’ve agreed with that sentiment since about this time of year in 2011. The Twins have some interesting prospects but until they become legitimate major league producers the Twins aren’t going to compete anyway.
I like Derek Norris, but Hedges needs to be the everyday catcher… He finally figured it out with his bat and homering 7 times in 9 games AFTER returning from injury. Padres need to get some trades going and start the youth movement.
I agree. Hedges is looking great,nap maybe Preller will be making some moves at the deadline later this season to try and get him called up.
Wouldn’t mind to see a pushed out the door segment too
Or in special circumstances (like ARod’s) a pushed out the window series.
First base for the Pirates has been nothing but a revolving door and a patchwork of platoons for so long. It would be so great if Josh Bell could come up to Pittsburgh and make the position his own.
I am guessing that is the plan. Pedro Alvarez may be the reason why they are taking their time with Bell. Pedro was admittedly rushed to the majors. No way of telling if that contributed to his woes in the bigs or not but thinking they want to give Bell as much time as they can in the minors to give him the best shot of competing at the major league level and making 1b is own for several years to come.
Kevin Young was pretty good for several years and I vaguely remember Derrick Lee having a solid 2-3 months to start his Bucco tenure before cooling off but I still miss Jeff King now 20 seasons after being traded to KC.
I’m not sure I would call Chad Kuhls debut a solid start: 5 inns and 3 earned with 4 walks (!) and a 5.40 ERA and 6.13 FIP?
Kuhl got in trouble early in the first but worked out of it. The walks were slightly concerning but other than Justin Turner’s home run and double there weren’t many hard hits. Statistically, not a great start but given the situation of getting a win over Kershaw on national TV it was still encouraging.
Yes, encouraging. Also some insight into why Glasnow has not made it up yet. Kuhl’s BB/9 was 1.9 before coming up. Control was his strong point. Glasnow has a BB/9 of 5.1 If you add 2 more walks to his average in the Bigs, nothing good will happen. that homerun and double may have accounted for way more than 3 runs plus a stray single with a couple of guys walked would have added to the run total. That is why Glasnow remains in the minors.
@TheWestCoastRyan – Wow dude you’re like a baseball GENIUS huh? Or should I say like you do – WOW DUDE YOU’RE LIKE A BASEBALL GENIUS HUH? I mean – every time somebody makes a comment you’re right there to correct them with the right answer (AKA you’re answer). I’m surprised that EVERY major league team hasn’t snapped u up to be their manager/star player and head of the front office all wrapped up into one. I mean- they could then go on to win AT LEAST 10 world series in a row!