Baseball America does a wonderful job of providing access to the future of professional baseball. On Tuesday, Josh Norris provided a synopsis of the tweaks White Sox prospect Zack Collins is applying to his swing and on Friday another cache of video emerged.
In total, 11 players were spotted; some well-known and others obscure
Wow! There is a lot going on with this swing. The reaction from someone near the camera makes it seem like Call put a charge into the pitch but there’s no telling if it was a long fly-ball or a blast.
Call is highly regarded among White Sox prospects but he is going to have to make some dramatic adjustments to his swing. Otherwise, major-league pitching is going to expose the holes in his swing.
Polo was part of the Yankees deal and he looks very strong. His hands get through the zone quick enough to save him from getting fooled too much. One thing he will have to work on is pitch recognition.
We only got to see a few swings but Burger is going to have to work through a stiff arm-bar. His hands are pretty active at the beginning of his swing and after barring his front arm it will be tough to get his hands to the inside pitch with any authority — something he will have to do as a burly third-baseman.
Nolan was an eighth-round selection in 2016 and is a well-built catcher with some pop in his bat. His load is quiet with the potential to find some whip through the zone.
Nunez appears to be a monster for a second-base profile. His hands are sluggish through the zone and he got fooled a few times, but his set-up looks good. If he can work on recognizing pitches and forcing pitchers to give him stuff he can handle he might pan out.
Rivera is a 28th-round pick out of the University of Tampa. He batted .296 in the Arizona Rookie Leauge and appears to be a glove-first player. He is lanky with some projectability but lacks serious strength for a 23-year-old prospect.
Garcia has a big leg-kick that loads his body well but he clearly struggles with offspeed pitches — something all big-leg-kickers are susceptible to.
Beltre is young with a lot of projectability. At 20 years old he already has four professional seasons under his belt and earned a promotion to the Arizona Rookie League in 2017. There is some length in his swing that needs to be ironed out but he batted .325 in 69 contests this season.
Coronado is an outfielder with a very good rotational swing. He has a slight toe tap but gets his foot down in time to let his hands and hips work.
There are a lot of hopes tied up in Rutherford’s success. He was a 2016 first-round pick and highly sought after in the midseason Yankees trade. Rutherford is another leg-kicker, although softer. He is known for a meticulous regiment and a host of performance coaches forming a bubble of measured success he can live in. Many times this kind of micromanagement can create a paralysis-by-analysis quandary, but it appears he needs to cut loose and play. There is a propensity to get extended and pitch recognition seems to be his main task.
Yurchak batted .345 for Great Falls in his debut season with eight home runs. He has a big frame that coaches will aim to wring power from.
- Zack Collins
Collins didn’t show the same quiet approach that he did earlier in the week. A lot can happen in three days and perhaps the coaching staff is allowing Collins more latitude to experiment with a blend of the two extremes.
Something else you might notice about the videos is that Collins spends a lot of time behind the plate. He demonstrates more and more flexibility and softness behind the plate. But there is still a little queasiness about how he absorbs pitches.
