Tag Archives: Baseball America

05 Apr

batter up

The Mississippi Braves’ opening day lineup at Pensacola on Friday featured a blend of old and new and speed and power, with three Top 30 prospects — Nacho Alvarez, Drake Baldwin and Geraldo Quintaro — in the top six in the order.
The M-Braves, beginning their farewell season, faced Blue Wahoos right-hander Evan Fitterer, a Miami Marlins prospect in his fifth pro season.
Ian Mejia, second-year pro out of New Mexico State, got the starting nod from M-Braves manager Angel Flores. He went 4-11 with a 4.69 ERA at High-Class A Rome last year.
Ex-Southern Miss star Hurston Waldrep, Atlanta’s No. 2 prospect (MLB Pipeline), is expected to start Sunday’s series finale.
The leadoff batter Friday was M-Braves returnee Cody Milligan, who was injured for a chunk of time but hit .280 and stole 23 bases in 69 games.
In the 2-hole was Alvarez, the No. 6 prospect, a 20-year-old shortstop whom Baseball America rates as the best overall hitter in the Atlanta system. At Rome last season, he hit .284 with seven homers, 66 RBIs and 16 steals.
Hitting third was Baldwin, rated No. 11 in the system, a power-hitting prospect who mashed 16 homers at three levels in 2023. A lefty-batting catcher, he played 14 games (.321, one homer) for the M-Braves late last season before finishing in Triple-A.
Keshawn Ogans, up from Rome, was in the cleanup spot and playing third base. The Cal-Berkley product, 5 feet 8, 180 pounds, hit .266 with nine homers at Rome and .299 in the Arizona Fall League, where he made the Fall Stars Game.
Hitting fifth was first baseman Bryson Horne, who has 28 homers over his three pro seasons and finished his ’23 campaign with the M-Braves, batting .299 in 23 games.
Quintaro, batting sixth and playing left field, is cut from the Ozzie Albies mold (5 feet 5, 155 pounds). The Braves’ No. 28 prospect, he stole 29 bases while batting .251 for Rome last year and has 96 career steals in three minor league years.
Returnee Tyler Tolve, a catcher, was the DH in the 7-spot. He hit .238 with seven homers for Mississippi in 2023. Rounding out the nine were second baseman Cal Conley (.219, 32 steals for the ’23 M-Braves) and right fielder Justin Dean, who has spent parts of the last three seasons with the M-Braves and has 151 career steals.
P.S. Batting ninth for the Blue Wahoos was former Mississippi State star Tanner Allen, the 2021 Ferriss Trophy winner and SEC player of the year who was drafted by the Marlins in the fourth round that summer. He hit .274 in 17 games for Pensacola, the third level he played at in 2023.

01 Apr

poll positions

Slumping East Central Community College dropped one spot in the NJCAA Division II poll, while surging Pearl River CC climbed one spot. Former No. 1 ECCC (33-3 with three losses in its last five games) is now No. 2 behind LSU-Eunice; Pearl River (34-5 with 21 straight wins) moved up to fourth from fifth. Jones (29-5) is No. 7 and Northwest (25-9) sits at No. 17. … Pearl River’s all-around strength is fairly remarkable: The Wildcats are No. 2 in the country in runs and home runs, second in ERA and fourth in fielding percentage. … In Baseball America’s new NCAA Division I poll, which is dominated by SEC teams, Mississippi State (19-10) checks in at No. 19 despite losing two of three (via walk-offs) at Florida, which ranks fourth. Arkansas remains No. 1 after a sweep of LSU last weekend and will host Ole Miss this coming weekend. Former Lewisburg High star Brady Tygart is 3-0 with a 2.51 ERA as the Razorbacks’ No. 3 starter. Madison Central High alum Braden Montgomery, who plays for No. 3 Texas A&M, is the SEC’s player of the week after going 7-for-14 with three homers in a sweep of Auburn. … William Carey University (22-10) has won 11 of 12 and surely will get back into the Top 25 in the next NAIA coaches poll. The Crusaders were preseason No. 4. … Jackson State was ranked No. 2 in Black College Nines’ HBCU Large School poll last week but will surely tumble after getting swept at Florida A&M by a collective 29-5 over the weekend. JSU is 19-8, 5-3 SWAC.

28 Mar

rising river

East Central Community College currently holds the No. 1 ranking in NJCAA Division II, but Pearl River CC is No. 5 with a bullet. The Wildcats swept two games from Hinds on Tuesday to run their win streak to 19. They are 32-5 and 12-0 in the MACCC, alone in first place. ECCC, which won its first 31 games of the season, lost for the second time in three outings on Wednesday, falling to Copiah-Lincoln 3-1 in Game 2 of a twinbill. ECCC is 32-2, 8-2. Seventh-ranked Jones beat Gulf Coast twice on Wednesday to improve to 29-5, 11-1; and No. 18 Northwest sits at 24-8, 9-1, after a sweep of Holmes. But Pearl River, which won the national championship two years ago, is the team of the moment. The ‘Cats belted 11 homers in a sweep of Itawamba on Saturday, then got great pitching on Tuesday from Thomas Crabtree — the league’s reigning pitcher of the week — and J.P. Robertson, former Germantown High star, in the 9-2, 6-1 sweep of Hinds. Hollis Porter, named the NJCAA D-II hitter of the week on Wednesday, homered in Game 1 and drove in three runs in Game 2. The Mississippi State transfer from Hurley is batting .425 with 15 homers, four shy of the school single-season record. P.S. Baseball America’s first projected field of 64 for the NCAA Tournament features four state schools, with Jackson State joining Southern Miss, Ole Miss and Mississippi State. UM and MSU — the national champs in 2022 and 2021, respectively — missed the tournament in 2023.

05 Dec

four months out

The 2023 Mississippi Braves deployed several position players who put up some nice numbers, but there really wasn’t a player who moved the needle on the excitement meter. No Michael Harris II or Ronald Acuna or Dansby Swanson type. Might there be one in 2024? Baseball America ranks three position players among Atlanta’s top 10 prospects, and it’s possible all three could be with the M-Braves when they open on the road on April 5. David McCabe, a corner infielder/DH, is No. 6; catcher Drake Baldwin No. 7; and shortstop Ignacio Alvarez No. 8. McCabe, 6 feet 3, 230 pounds, played at two Class A levels in 2023 and hit .276 with 17 homers and 75 RBIs, then hit .278 in the Arizona Fall League. A college draftee out of UNC-Charlotte, the 23-year-old McCabe is projected as Atlanta’s DH in 2027. Baldwin, a Missouri State alum, is rated as the top power-hitting prospect in the Braves’ system after mashing 16 homers at three levels in 2023. A lefty hitter, he played 14 games (.321, one homer) for the M-Braves late last season before finishing in Triple-A. The most dynamic of those three prospects is Alvarez, the highest rated position player (at No. 8) on Atlanta’s Top 30 by MLB Pipeline. The 20-year-old Alvarez, drafted out of a California junior college, played at High-Class A Rome last season and hit .284 with seven homers, 66 RBIs and 16 steals. BA rates him the best overall hitter in the Atlanta system. Also worth keeping an eye on are infielders Keshawn Ogans and Gerald Quintero, both of whom had solid seasons at Rome in 2023 and could move up. Quintero is a second baseman in the Ozzie Albies mold — 5 feet 5, 155 pounds — who stole 29 bases while batting .251 for the R-Braves. He has 96 career steals in three years. Ogans, out of Cal-Berkley, hit .266 with nine homers at Rome and .299 in the AFL, where he made the Fall Stars Game. … The M-Braves’ best position players in 2023 included infielder Luke Waddell, a Southern League postseason All-Star who batted .290 and stole 26 bases, and outfielder Cody Milligan — injured for a chunk of time — who hit .280. Cal Conley, a middle infielder, has dropped to No. 21 (per MLB Pipeline) on the Braves’ prospect chart after batting .219 (with 32 bags) in 2023. Outfielder Jesse Franklin V — projected by Baseball America as Atlanta’s starting left fielder in 2027 — hit .232 with 15 homers and 21 steals last season and is now rated the No. 22 prospect. P.S. Former Jackson Mets catcher — and MLB manager — John Gibbons and ex-M-Braves outfielder Antoan Richardson have been named to the New York Mets’ coaching staff as bench coach and first-base coach, respectively.

18 Sep

coming attraction

Former Jackson Prep standout Will Warren, now in the New York Yankees’ system, got some well-deserved recognition today from Baseball America in its daily Prospect Report. Warren threw five shutout innings Sunday for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, yielding just two hits and striking out a career-high 10 batters. An eighth-round draft pick out of Southeastern Louisiana in 2021, Warren, 24, has allowed just one earned run over 23 2/3 innings in September. He has struck out 29, walked nine and limited opposing hitters to a .127 average. He is rated the Yankees’ No. 10 prospect by MLB Pipeline, which gives his estimated time of arrival in The Show as 2023. That may not happen, but he is close. The 6-foot-2 right-hander started this season in Double-A and went 3-0 with a 2.45 before moving up to S/W-B. He is 6-4 with a 3.71 in 20 games for the RailRiders. Warren features a mid-90s fastball and a wipeout slider, which MLB Pipeline calls his “best weapon.”

07 Sep

whatever happened to …

Garrett Crochet, the former Ocean Springs High star now in the Chicago White Sox’s system, made his first appearance in a game in two months on Wednesday, when he threw a scoreless inning for Double-A Birmingham. The 11th overall pick in the 2020 draft out of Tennessee, Crochet made a fairly dazzling MLB debut a couple months later. The 6-foot-6 left-hander struck out the first two batters he faced in a 1-2-3 inning and threw six of his 13 pitches at 100 mph or better. He didn’t allow a run in six innings that season and posted a 2.82 ERA with 14 holds and 65 strikeouts in 54 1/3 innings in 2021. He has struggled to stay healthy ever since. He missed all of the 2022 season after spring Tommy John surgery and began 2023 in the minors on a rehab, making his White Sox debut on May 16. No longer throwing 100, Crochet put up a 3.60 ERA in 10 games before going on the injured list with a shoulder problem, which apparently has persisted. Crochet, 24, struck out two of the three batters he faced for Birmingham on Wednesday — a positive sign. Reports are he wants to return to the White Sox before their season, which has gone off the rails, comes to an end. P.S. As the Texas Rangers have gone into freefall in the American League West, their bullpen has been heavily criticized. Don’t point at Mississippi State alum Chris Stratton. Since coming over from St. Louis at the trade deadline, Stratton has a 2.08 ERA, a win and three holds in 14 games for the Rangers. He allowed a run Wednesday — after starter Max Scherzer had been KO’d — but 11 of his 13 other appearances have been scoreless. … Rangers first baseman and ex-MSU star Nathaniel Lowe was ranked as the best defensive first sacker in the AL in a poll of managers, scouts and execs conducted by Baseball America.

02 Sep

watch for it

Featuring an upper-90s fastball and three other pitches, Hurston Waldrep has what Baseball America called “tantalizing upside potential” in evaluating the right-hander’s MLB draft prospects. Atlanta took him with the 24th overall pick in July, and tonight the onetime Southern Miss standout is slated to make his Double-A debut for the Mississippi Braves at Trustmark Park in Pearl. Waldrep, rated the Braves’ No. 2 prospect by MLB Pipeline, has made four previous pro starts, all in A-ball, posting a 1.20 ERA with 25 strikeouts in 15 innings. The Georgia native averaged 13.9 K’s per nine innings in three years of college ball, two at USM and last season with Florida. He went 10-3, 4.16, for the Gators and helped them reach the College World Series finals. When he toes the rubber tonight (6:05) against Rocket City, Waldrep will join a list of Mississippi connections to play for the M-Braves that includes current outfielder Brandon Parker plus Zack Bird, Brent Leach, Van Pope, Jay Powell, Austin Riley, Michael Rosamond and John Thomson. P.S. Colton Ledbetter, a 2023 draftee out of Mississippi State, went 2-for-4 with a run Friday night as Low-Class A Charleston clinched a Carolina League playoff berth by beating Myrtle Beach. Ledbetter is batting .324 in 11 games for the Tampa Bay affiliate. … In MLB, former MSU standout Nathaniel Lowe extended his hitting streak to 13 games Friday for Texas, which lost at home to Minnesota and remained a game back of Seattle and Houston in the American League West. … Hunter Renfroe went 0-for-5 in his Cincinnati debut as the Reds split a doubleheader with the Chicago Cubs. MSU product Renfroe started the opener, playing right field and batting cleanup; he entered Game 2 as a pinch hitter. … Ex-Ole Miss star Grae Kessinger was activated from the injured list by Houston and former Rebels standout James McArthur was recalled from Triple-A by Kansas City as MLB rosters expanded to 28. … Jackson Prep’s Konnor Griffin went 2-for-3 with a walk as Team USA beat Spain 6-2 in the U-18 World Cup at Taipei, Taiwan. The U.S. team is 2-0 in the tournament’s opening round.

09 Jul

summer shopping season

In MLB’s amateur draft, which begins tonight (6 p.m., MLB Network/ESPN) and runs through Tuesday, major league clubs will find the tool shed in Mississippi is well-stocked. In its incredibly comprehensive Draft Preview issue, Baseball America IDs six Mississippi products among the prospects with top five tools in various scouting categories. Ranked first among high school players in strike zone discipline is Cooper Pratt, the Magnolia Heights Academy star pegged by BA as the No. 63 overall prospect in the draft. Pratt, a 6-foot-4 shortstop committed to Ole Miss, hit .468 this season, won a state title and was named Gatorade player of the year. Ole Miss’ Jacob Gonzalez, expected to go in the first round as the first state product off the board, is rated No. 5 among college hitters in strike zone discipline. Shortstop Gonzalez, BA’s No. 8 overall prospect, hit .327 (.435 OBP) this season and .319 (.427) for his career in Oxford. He played on the national title team in 2022 and on two Collegiate National Teams. Two of the best defensive catchers reside in the Magnolia State: Oxford High’s Campbell Smithwick, an Ole Miss commit, is pegged second among high school prospects and the Rebels’ Calvin Harris No. 4 among college players. (Harris can swing the bat a little, too; he hit four homers in a game back in May.) Southern Miss’ Tanner Hall, a first-team All-America this season, has the fourth-best changeup among college pitchers, per BA’s ratings. Hall went 12-4 with a 2.48 ERA this season, 9-3, 2.81, in 2022 and pitched in the NCAAs both years. Ole Miss’ Kemp Alderman is ranked No. 5 in power; the Ferriss Trophy winner belted 19 homers this year and hit .376. At 6 feet 3, 250 pounds, he can mash. Worth noting: Mississippi State’s Colton Ledbetter is ranked as the 46th-best overall prospect by BA, second-highest to Gonzalez among state players. He is expected to attend today’s televised ceremony for the first two rounds. … Pittsburgh has the No. 1 pick. Milwaukee has the 18th (and the 33rd), and Atlanta goes 24th.

27 Jun

that’s a wrap

Now that LSU has pummeled Florida in the College World Series finale to claim the national championship, the college season is officially over. It was not a banner year for Mississippi’s four-year schools, but there were gold medal performances from the two that made the postseason. In NCAA Division I, Southern Miss won a regional on the road and came within one win of a trip to the CWS. In NAIA, William Carey University won a regular season conference title, a regional and two games in the World Series. Bravo. Take a bow coaches Scott Berry and Bobby Halford. Alas, seven state schools had losing seasons, some falling under the category of Major Disappointment (see defending national champ Ole Miss, for example). Here’s a school-by-school look at the records and relevant numbers:
The best
USM — Record: 46-20. Number: 12, the Golden Eagles’ final ranking by Baseball America.
Carey — 49-11. 652 runs.
The rest
Mississippi State — 27-26. 7.01 ERA.
Ole Miss — 25-29. 6 SEC wins.
Jackson State — 28-25. 26 home runs.
Mississippi Valley State — 15-36. 407 strikeouts (by hitters).
Alcorn State — 8-40. 111 errors.
Delta State — 27-26. 12-11 at Ferriss Field.
Mississippi College — 16-33. .256 batting average.
Blue Mountain Christian — 26-25. 10 different starting pitchers.
Rust — 25-25. 14 GCAC wins.
Tougaloo — 11-34. 0-8 start, 1-9 finish.
Millsaps — 22-23. 238 walks (by pitchers).
Belhaven — 21-18. 4 different home-field sites.
MUW — 6-25-1. 27 road games.
P.S. Props to Seth Farni, an outfielder at St. Stanislaus High, for being named a second-team All-America by Baseball America. The Ole Miss commit, who goes 6 feet, 190 pounds, hit .370 with eight homers, 30 RBIs and 45 runs (per MaxPreps) for the MHSAA Class 3A runner-up.

12 May

have a year

Has any team in the state had a better year than William Carey University? Short answer: No. While some of the traditionally strong programs in the Magnolia State have had some struggles, Carey thrived in the Southern States Athletic Conference. Bobby Halford’s Crusaders are 44-9, won the SSAC regular season title with a 22-2 mark, climbed to No. 8 in the final NAIA coaches poll and earned a regional host role in the NAIA Tournament. The Crusaders swept the SSAC individual honors, with Halford — in his 38th season — winning coach of the year, R.J. Stinson player of the year and Andrew Shirah pitcher of the year. Three other Crusaders were named first-team all-conference. Carey fell short of winning the SSAC Tournament but has a chance to make amends in the five-team NAIA Opening Round tournament it will host at Wheeler Field in Hattiesburg starting Monday. The Crusaders will open Monday night against the winner of the Union (Ky.)–Houston-Victoria game earlier in the day. Hats off to Halford, a former Carey player and assistant who has had just one losing season in his long tenure as head coach. He is approaching 1,300 career wins — and has something else to shoot for. He took his 2017 team to the NAIA World Series in Idaho, where they finished third, the school’s best finish since winning the 1969 national championship. P.S. Will Warren, the former Jackson Prep (and Southeastern Louisiana) standout, got some recognition in Baseball America’s daily prospect report. A top pitching prospect in the New York Yankees’ organization, Warren threw six scoreless innings for Double-A Somerset on Thursday to run his record to 3-0 and trim his ERA to 2.45. “Warren may be one of the more underrated pitching prospects in the game,” BA reports.