The AFL schedule is different this year, by which I mean it’s worse than ever, with all games at night on Tuesday and Thursday and all games during the day on Friday, so I’ll see nine games in six days rather than the 12 I saw last year in the same week of the season. That means I’ve only seen two teams twice so far as I write this and haven’t seen Glendale yet, although I planned to watch it on Thursday. Also, the pitching here is lighter than in any year I can remember, mostly on the relief side. A typical AFL roster would have a bunch of guys who throw hard but don’t know where it’s going, or have good command/control but fringy stuff. This year, I’m seeing very few of those guys, and a lot of pitchers who have fringy stuff and don’t know where it’s going, which is not what you’re looking for as a scout or a player development guy. Maybe the good pitchers are all hiding in Glendale. Here are some notes on some prospects of significance I’ve seen so far, with more to come after my trip out here is over:
The Tigers took right-hander Jackson Jobe with the third overall pick in the 2021 draft, passing up several players who’ve already reached the majors (Jordan Lawlar, Matt McLain, Sal Frelick) or are now among the best prospects in the game (Marcelo Mayer, who went one pick later to Boston). Jobe missed the first half of 2023 with a back injury but came back throwing extremely well according to multiple scouts/execs, so he was my first target when I arrived in the Valley. On Monday night, Jobe threw four innings for Salt River and was 94-98 mph with a plus changeup (or split-change) at 84-86 that had heavy tumble and two breaking balls, one a 55 at 83-84 and the other maybe a 45 at 89-92. Statcast calls the slower one a sweeper, but it looks like a curveball, while the harder one looks like a slider but Statcast calls it a cutter. I think the latter pitch is new to him, at least since last year. Either way, he’s got at least one breaking ball that works for him, and he can definitely spin the ball — his fastball spin rate was around 2600 RPMs and the sweeper/curve was over 2900. That latter pitch has huge vertical break, which is why I don’t like the sweeper tag — if it looks like a curveball and quacks like a curveball, I don’t care if the velocity is up in the 80s. It’s more descriptive to call it a curveball. And in Jobe’s case, I think it’s going to end up plus, especially if he sticks with that as his primary breaker, although on Monday all nine of his swings and misses came on fastballs (six) or changeups (three).
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The one downside here is that there’s more effort to his delivery than I expected, with some real head-whack at release, and while the delivery is compact he’s so quick through it that I’m not sure if he’s getting all of the power he should be from his legs. The quality of his fastball and changeup is so good that he probably doesn’t need to be throwing 100% all the time, and I hope there’s a way the Tigers can settle him down enough to keep him healthy for the long term. It’s a special arm, and while I always advise against taking high school pitchers in the first round — especially in the top half — based on the high failure rate for that class as a whole, I can also see why any team would have considered Jobe with its first pick.
Right-hander Tekoah Roby was half of the return for Jordan Montgomery at this year’s trade deadline, and on Tuesday he showed three plus pitches in an outing where his command was so bad he couldn’t get out of the first inning. Roby was 93-95 mph with some high ride on the four-seamer, adding a high-spin curveball and a plus changeup with good fade, along with what looked like a cutter at 86-88. The delivery is fine but he looked like he might be overthrowing, trying to get a little more velocity at the cost of pretty much all of his control, with a pair of walks and two wild pitches in his two-thirds of an inning. He should have been out of it with only three runs allowed, but a grounder to second took a crazy hop right over the second baseman’s head, and that was the end of his day. I do still like Roby a ton as a future starter, maybe a mid-rotation guy, but this was a rough look.
Left-hander Cooper Hjerpe was the Cardinals’ first-round pick in 2022, based more on his pitch data than more traditional factors like delivery or pure “stuff.” I mention the delivery because it’s a mess, a high-effort arm action that provides deception but is hard to repeat and puts pressure on his shoulder and elbow, which is why I had him as a second-round talent in that draft class. Hjerpe started this year poorly, with 25 walks in 41 innings in High A, then missed over three months this summer after elbow surgery (not Tommy John), returning to throw just 1 2/3 innings in September. His stuff is still down a bit from college, when he worked once a week as a starter; he was 88-90 with an average curveball and fringy changeup that he left up way too often. He threw two pitches to the backstop and the catcher saved a third one … but he also recorded five outs, all via strikeout, around a couple of hits, so the deception is still there. He’s working in relief here, and that’s his future, with grade 40 control and a huge platoon split (.332 OPS allowed to lefties this year, .828 to righties), as well as the injury risk from the delivery, but the ability to miss bats in one look is real enough that I think he’ll have major-league value.
Some brighter news for Cardinals fans: You’ve heard about Victor Scott, an 80 runner who tied for the lead in professional baseball this year with 94 stolen bases. He’s looked very good out in Arizona, and not just on the bases. He can play the heck out of center field, with great reads that give him unbelievable range coupled with his speed, and he’s shown better contact quality than expected for a guy who showed very little power this year, along with a decent eye at the plate, although there are definitely some adjustments needed here on pitches on the inner third. He’s got a Billy Hamilton floor with the speed and defense, but he’s stronger and makes more contact, which should give him a path to be the regular Hamilton never really was.
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Arizona’s Ivan Melendez has shown huge power out here, including a homer on Wednesday night that left his bat at a 43-degree angle — which is, in general, not likely to be a homer — that got over the fence because he hit it at 110 mph. He’s a butcher at third base, though, and there’s a lot of swing and miss here, on fastballs and offspeed stuff. Melendez struck out 37 percent of the time this year against right-handed pitching, and I’m not sure how that’s going to come down to a level that allows his plus-plus power to matter.
Benny Montgomery was Colorado’s first-round pick in 2021. He had a promising half-season debut around injury in 2022, but struggled this year as a 20-year-old in High A, with a .251/.336/.370 line for Spokane and a 27 percent strikeout rate. Montgomery had a big hitch in his swing in high school, and it’s clear the Rockies have tried to reduce that in the past two years, but he’s got almost a three-part swing now that still has his hands coming down and then tilting back right before he gets his bat going forward. He has bat speed and power, but his timing is way off because of the complexity of the swing now. I’ve seen him twice, but got fellow Rockies prospect Sterlin Thompson once, and saw him square up a couple of fastballs for hard-hit line drives. I’d take him over Montgomery or Zac Veen at this point.
(Top photo of Jackson Jobe pitching in Scottsdale on Oct. 9: Norm Hall / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
