Houston has finally cut bait on Jose Abreu, who will collect another $30 million from the club over the next season and a half. Jonathan Singleton has been tabbed by manager Joe Espada to be the everyday first baseman moving forward, but that’s just, like, his opinion, man. Singleton is a free agent at season’s end, and Joey Loperfido is right there in Triple-A. He has struck out at a 39.5 percent clip in 43 major league plate appearances, but he’s also slashing .333/.381/.436 with a 138 wRC+ over that stretch. Singleton’s wRC+ in 174 plate appearances is 92, which drops to 79 if we look at just the last month. I’m all for the revitalization of a man’s career, but I’m skeptical that’s what we’re seeing here. Abreu has been bad enough that even Singleton is an upgrade, but it doesn’t make much sense to eat $30 million just to play Jon Singleton everyday while Joey Loperfido waits in the wings during what might be a lost season. As of Saturday morning, Houston is 32-and-38, eight games behind Seattle in the division and six games out of the wild card race.
Orioles 3B Coby Mayo homered during his second rehab game with High-A Aberdeen. Now that he’s healthy again, we can resume waiting to see him in the majors. The list of guys demoted by Baltimore this season (Holliday, Kjerstad, Stowers, Norby) would be a bumper crop of prospects in any other organization.
Speaking of Orioles SS Jackson Holliday, the club put him on the injured list with inflammation in his right elbow. Perhaps this can explain some of his struggles this season. He was still playing great for a 20-year-old in Triple-A, for what it’s Weurtz, slashing .270/.433/.466 with a 1.00 BB/K rate, but we might have expected more than seven home runs in 50 Triple-A games, although I suppose we wouldn’t have expected him to get 50 Triple-A games.
It’s taken Rays RHP Shane Baz a little bit to find his sea legs after losing almost two seasons to Tommy John surgery, but he shouldn’t be in the minor leagues much longer after another excellent outing on Friday. He’s now thrown 15 innings in June and has a 1.20 ERA and 1.00 WHIP with a 22-to-5 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Zach Littell has given the club all it could hope for and more during his time as a rotation mainstay, but he gave up eight hits, seven runs and two homers in two innings against a beleaguered Braves squad on Friday, which inflated his season-long WHIP to 1.38. Another week like this, and we’ll reach the point where it’s organizational malpractice to start Littell over Baz. Tampa is having to scratch and claw for every win this year in a way we haven’t seen in a while, so they can’t really afford to fart around with their prospects the way they might like.
Red Sox SS Kristian Campbell (21, AA) is so locked in right now he’s rewriting his prospect profile. A fourth-round pick out of Georgia Tech at 132 overall, Campbell was promoted from the complex league straight to High-A in his draft season and opened the 2024 season at that same level. He forced a promotion after 40 games and looks ready for his next challenge after just ten games in Double-A. He homered twice on Friday night and is slashing .390/.468/.707 with five walks and five strikeouts. Feels like he’s mid-leap as his talent tries to find its level. It’s a rare enough phenomenon in the game that it’s probably my favorite thing about this gig. Is a player just on fire right now, or is he truly ascending to a new level in a sustainable way? Let’s find out.
Tigers 2B Hao-Yu Lee (21, AA) is in a similar bucket as he continues to heat up like Conan on Hot Ones. Over his last 32 games, he’s slashing .333/.410/.642 with nine home runs, two stolen bases and a 14.6 percent strikeout rate. Over his last 16 games, he’s at .422/.474/.750 with five home runs and a 13.2 percent strikeout rate. I haven’t seen every game of Lee’s by any means, but he appears to be leveraging his contact skills to hunt for pitches he can pull, and we’ve seen how this kind of approach can work if someone (Isaac Paredes) really commits to it.
At 5’7” 195 lbs, Cubs C Moises Ballesteros (20, AA) presents a small strike zone with plus contact skills, and he’s about ready for a promotion to Triple-A if he remains on the timeline the team has used for him before. He played 87 games across two seasons in Low-A, 56 games in High-A, and now 60 games across two seasons in Double-A, where he’s striking out just 14.6 percent of the time this season while slashing .305/.379/.505 with nine home runs. Over his last 15 games, he’s at .414/.455/.707 with four home runs. Could he become an option for redraft leagues? The Cubs have been atrocious at catcher this year. Miguel Amaya is hitting .190 with a 57 wRC+. Yan Gomes is at .149 with a wRC+ of 16. Amaya’s been okay on defense, and it’s pretty common for a young catcher to lose his skis for a season or two in the majors, but Ballesteros looks like something special with the bat, the kind of cat who just hits right away and catches a ton of love from the fans along the way. You might be thinking of Alejandro Kirk as a comp here, and that makes some sense, but ironically enough, this guy has less deadweight. Ballesteros features a sweet lefty swing that looks much more athletic than Captain Kirk’s to me.
Mariners OF Lazaro Montes (19, A) has been incredible with the Low-A Modesto Nuts this season, but his teammate SS Michael Arroyo (19, A) has been similarly impressive of late. He’s slashing .311/.470/.662 with seven home runs, six stolen bases, 18 walks and 18 strikeouts over his last 19 games. My guess is they get promoted together after their All-Star break.
Happy Father’s Day!
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