Analyzing Royals Fall League hitter metrics
Several Royals were lineup mainstays for the Saguaros.
The Arizona Fall League wrapped up play recently with the Salt River Rafters emerging as champions. The Surprise Saguaros — this year rostering players from the Royals, Guardians, Rangers, Orioles, and Astros — looked to be on their way to winning their third consecutive AFL title. They finished at the top of the standings with an 18-10 record and league-best +30 run differential but fell 3-2 to the Rafters in the championship game. Though they are surely disappointed at falling short of the title, numerous Royals prospects gained valuable experience in the desert this fall.
In roundups in past seasons, I would recap each player’s performance and offer a brief scouting report. I’m going one step further this year. Statcast data was available for most AFL games this year, meaning we can really dig deep on everybody’s performance in a way that wasn’t previously possible. Not every ballpark was equipped with Hawkeye so the data is incomplete, with as much as 25% of some players’ plate appearances not getting Statcast data. These may be small samples, but we can glean a bit more from a small sample of batted ball and swing-take metrics than we could from a simple slash line.
A few resources for reference: this link provides context for Statcast metrics (ie. what is league average?), while this link explains sample sizes and how many plate appearances are needed for metrics to “stabilize.”
Jac Caglianone
Nine months after the Florida Gators took the field for the first time in the spring, Caglianone’s baseball season finally draws to a close. It was a long season for the Tampa native — between Florida, High-A Quad Cities, and Surprise, he accrued 542 plate appearances as well as 338 batters faced on the mound. It was surprising to see him sent to the Fall League given that workload and the fatigue showed early on as he struggled at the dish over the first few weeks. He heated up down the stretch however and got his numbers up to a respectable level. Caglianone finished hitting .236/.300/.449 in 100 plate appearances.
Trying to compare surface-level offensive stats between the Fall League and the majors would be a bit silly. Comparing Statcast data can be more instructive though, especially if we hone in on a few key metrics. Let’s take a look at those key metrics and make a comparison. See if you can guess the mystery players below:
Did you get them right? Player A was Caglianone in Fall League play. Player B was Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in 2024, who posted a 165 wRC+ and finished sixth in AL MVP voting. Both guys regularly smoke the ball — Caglianone’s 53.3% hard-hit rate would’ve ranked 13th out of 252 qualified hitters. The elite raw juice is evident as well, as his 117.3 mph max exit velo would have been the eighth highest in baseball. While the barrel rate isn’t quite as elite, it’s still comfortably within the top ten percent of hitters. No matter which way you slice it, Caglianone spent the fall hitting the ball just as hard as some of the hardest hitters in the big leagues.
The reason why he only managed a .749 OPS in spite of these metrics is borne out in the launch angle. Making hard contact is great, but it’s less useful when the ball is hit on the ground. Caglianone hit the ball on the ground 60.8% of the time he put it in play in the fall. That would have been the highest rate among qualified batters this season. That would greatly limit Caglianone’s ability to consistently access his immense raw power. But he has shown the ability to lift the ball previously — he had a 48.3% groundball rate in High-A after being drafted and a 37.8% groundball rate in his season at Florida in the spring.
The plate discipline metrics are a mixed bag. Caglianone makes plenty of contact with a whiff rate well below the big league average. He was especially tough to beat in the strike zone with a contact rate over 90%. While the contact skills are evident, Caglianone has had issues with his approach since college and that remained the case in Arizona. Put simply, he’s too aggressive. He chases out of the zone far too much and could probably stand to take a few more strikes as well. With elite power and plus contact skills, pitchers won’t be throwing too many strikes to Caglianone. Just take the walks! He may have already started making adjustments for this as his walk rate rose and strikeout rate fell as the fall circuit wore on.
With the season wrapped up, hopefully Caglianone takes a well-deserved break before getting to his offseason training. It will be fascinating to see where he is sent to begin next season and how he is deployed. The Royals said after the draft that he would get a chance as a two-way guy and though he has not pitched since, I imagine he’ll see the mound at some point during spring training. I’m bearish on his future as a pitcher, but I think it makes sense to let him try rather than simply punting on a guy throwing in the upper-90s from the left side.
Overall, Caglianone’s AFL performance confirmed my assessment of him as a position player. He has the potential to be one of the best power hitters in the league with a slick glove at first base. He will enter 2025, likely in Double-A, as a top-50 prospect in baseball and he could be as high as top-20 on some lists.
Carter Jensen
After turning 21 in July, Jensen finished his third full season in pro ball in Double-A Northwest Arkansas before heading to Surprise. He hit quite well all season but seemed to especially enjoy hitting in the desert, tearing the cover off the ball on the way to a .425/.582/.800 batting line in AFL play. For whatever reason, though, he only got 55 plate appearances, slotting third on the depth chart at catcher behind Creed Willems and Collin Price.
Fall League pitchers seemed completely disinterested in giving Jensen anything to hit, with just 38.5% of pitches thrown to him landing in the zone. He was more than happy to take his walks with a 15.9% chase rate that would have been the lowest mark in baseball this season. While his overall swing rate of 35.6% indicates patience bordering on passivity, that mark is probably influenced by the abnormally low number of pitches he saw in the zone, as his zone swing rate of 67.1% isn’t far off the Major League average.
On the occasions that Jensen got a pitch he liked, he did tons of damage. He posted an elite 57.1% hard-hit rate with his exit velo topping out at 115 mph. These numbers probably undersell how much Jensen was crushing the ball as they don’t include his October 29th five-hit barrage in which he fell a triple shy of the cycle. His EV50 — the average exit velo of the hardest 50% of his batted balls — of 106.9 would have been the fourth highest in MLB this year.
Despite elite power-patience metrics, there are some warts to Jensen’s game. His 27.4% whiff rate, while not out of control, was higher than average. Better pitchers than the ones he faced in Arizona can beat him with pitches out of the zone. Additionally, though he elevates the ball regularly, he can be prone to popping up and he only hit the launch angle sweet spot (8-32 degrees) 29.6% of the time, a subpar mark.
There is plenty to like with what Jensen showed this fall, but let’s tap the brakes on anointing him the heir apparent to Salvador Perez. Though he has regularly been young for the level, Jensen is still a career .235 hitter with a 23.3% strikeout rate in over 1500 minor league plate appearances. The 90th-percentile outcome for Jensen as a hitter probably looks something like Kyle Schwarber — a .230 career hitter with a strikeout rate nearing 30%, but enough walks to keep his OBP afloat that is an annual threat to hit 40 homers. It also took Schwarber six seasons, 2108 plate appearances, a move away from catcher, and a change in organizations before he actualized offensively. Cal Raleigh is a decent comp as well, though he is a vastly better defender than either of them. Jensen is one of the better prospects in the system and will likely head back to Double-A to start 2025, but it wouldn’t be shocking to see him sent to Omaha.
Brett Squires
Signed as an undrafted free agent in 2022 after productive years at Oklahoma, Squires spent all of 2023 hitting well in Low-A Columbia. He was off to a strong start in Quad Cities this season before hitting the injured list at the end of June. He would go on to miss the remainder of the minor league season before heading to Arizona for some additional reps. After mostly playing first base in the minors, Squires got regular run in both corner outfield spots for the Saguaros but mostly struggled at the plate, hitting .222/.264/.309 in 87 plate appearances.
Squires ran elevated strikeout rates over the past few minor league seasons while being old for the level, so it’s no surprise to see him struggle to make contact in the Fall League. His 40.1% whiff rate would have been the highest in MLB this season, and his contact rates on pitches both in and out of the zone were worse than average. He also chased 35.7% of the time. This isn’t necessarily a problem — Jackson Merrill just finished ninth in MVP voting with an identical chase rate — but Squires does not have nearly enough hit tool to get away with such an approach.
If there’s one positive indicator here, it’s that on the occasions Squires did make contact, he hit the ball with authority, posting a 53.8% hard-hit rate. Unfortunately, that was largely undone by his 59.2% groundball rate. As it turns out, grounding out 4-3 can turn strong batted ball metrics into a .309 slugging percentage. This may have just been a blip as Squires ran higher flyball rates in the minors, but the hit tool problems remain.
Squires will probably start 2025 in Double-A. It’s hard to see a path to the big leagues here. This is a guy that will be 25 when next season starts that looked mostly overmatched in the Fall League. As a corner guy, there isn’t much defensive versatility, so Squires will have to somehow start making a lot more contact to hit his way up the minor league ladder.
Daniel Vazquez
The top international amateur signing in Kansas City’s 2021 class, Vazquez has spent each of the past three seasons in Columbia. He has consistently been young for the level and has improved over time, though his progress in 2024 was interrupted by an injury that shelved him for a couple of months in the middle of the season. The Royals were aggressive in sending the 20-year-old to the Fall League, where he would be one of the youngest players. Facing his toughest competition yet, Vazquez put up the best numbers of his pro career, slashing .298/.382/.362 in 55 plate appearances while splitting time between both middle infield positions.
Reviewing Vazquez’s data has led me to speculate that the guns in the valley were juiced as he somehow ran a 51.7% hard-hit rate. Even in a small sample, I have a difficult time believing that the dude with a career .270 slugging percentage in the minors was consistently hitting the ball that hard.
In addition to ostensibly smoking the ball, Vazquez sported an anomalously high 37.5% line drive rate that helped fuel a .400 BABIP. He hit the launch angle sweet spot frequently and regularly worked the ball up the middle and to the opposite field. At the very least, it seems like Vazquez understands his own limitations as a hitter, aiming to spray line drives around the field as opposed to gripping and ripping it with 30-grade power.
For most of his minor league career, Vazquez has run solid walk rates and he did so in Surprise, though it’s unclear to me exactly how. His swing rates are roughly average and his whiff rate was worse than average at 33.3%. The only number that really stood out was 41.3%, which was the percentage of pitches he saw that landed in the zone. This seems more like a case of “I bet you can’t throw me three strikes before you throw me four balls” as opposed to actual on-base skills. There are countless examples of low-power hitters with strong walk rates in the minors that don’t translate against pitchers with big league command.
If Vazquez reaches the majors, it will likely be for his glove, which he mostly took out to second base in the Fall lLeague after exclusively playing shortstop in the minors. He has been error-prone in the past but has good tools for the position and could be plus at either spot. Time will tell if he can hit enough to play a utility infielder role in the majors. Vazquez could start next season in High-A and is still a few years away at best, but he will be Rule 5 eligible next offseason.
Stay tuned for part two of this roundup, where we will analyze the pitchers.