Five former Appy League players poised for breakout MLB seasons in 2019
Ahead of the start of Spring Training, MLB.com's Mike Petriello offered a list of 11 breakout stars whose names fans should know for the 2019 season. His list included five Appalachian League alums - Amed Rosario (Kingsport Mets, 2013), Taylor Rogers (Elizabethton Twins, 2012), Jose Alvarado (Princeton Rays, 2015), Kyle
Ahead of the start of Spring Training, MLB.com's Mike Petriello offered a list of 11 breakout stars whose names fans should know for the 2019 season. His list included five Appalachian League alums -
More from Petriello:
1.
Rosario now has 762 plate appearances of mostly not being very good; his career line stands at .255/.290/.384, or an 83 wRC+ where 100 is league average. Despite that, in June, we ran a piece called "2018's Most Improved Hitters," where Rosario made the list despite a line of only .251/.284/.366 at the time. We said that because of underlying changes to his plate discipline and his hard-hit rate, but little changed production-wise for the next three months.
On Aug. 30, we checked back in, asking if Rosario's breakout was finally getting started, because he'd begun to hit, and never really stopped, putting up a line of .303/.335/.444 from Aug. 9 through the end of the year. Rosario showed huge 2017-18 improvements in strikeout rate (down from 29 percent to 20), walk rate (up from two to five) and hard-hit rate (up from 25 percent to 32 percent). He's still only 23, he was very recently a highly regarded prospect and he still has elite speed. There's more here.
2. Taylor Rogers , LHP, Twins, age 28
In a lot of ways, Rogers just had his breakout season, but we're including him here because A) he still had a 5.48 ERA through the end of May and B) there's just no way you noticed what he did after that if you weren't a Twins fan. As we went into in great detail last month, there was a strong case to make that Rogers was one of the 10 best relievers in baseball last year, thanks in part to a deadly new slider. He enters 2019 on a 28-game scoreless streak; much like his former teammate Pressly last year, he's not going to be so unknown at the end of the year.
5.
Meet Jose Alvarado! He's a 23-year-old pitcher who just had a 2.39 ERA and 80 strikeouts in 64 innings, nice enough numbers, but not ones that truly show how good he became. Over the last two months of the season, his 47 percent strikeout rate was the second best in baseball. (Yes, he struck out nearly half of hitters after Aug. 1.) By an advanced Statcast™ quality-of-contact measure, he was one of the 10 best pitchers in the game over the last two months, as good as
9.
We're cheating here, a little. Maybe a lot. But it's our list, so we get to do that. Tucker isn't exactly an unknown, because he was the fifth overall pick in 2015, and he's currently the No. 8 prospect in baseball per MLB Pipeline. The reason he's here is simple: His 2018 debut was incredibly disappointing, and we don't believe that's the real Tucker. That's partially because we're talking about only 72 plate appearances, obviously, but that .141/.236/.203 line isn't exactly impressive.
But when you look under the hood, the hard-hit rate of 45 percent was fantastic. His expected average and slugging were .268 and .382, not .141 and .203. There may even be more of a path to playing time than you'd think, since new outfielder Michael Brantley can play first base at times. Don't give up on Tucker just yet.
10.
You probably know Laureano mainly for the ridiculous throw he uncorked against the Angels last year, barely a week after he'd come up to the Majors. You know, this one.
So there's that, but Laureano is more than just one great play. He hit .288/.358/.474 in 48 games for the A's, after having hit .297/.380/.524 in Triple-A, but more important than the lines are the skills, because they're kind of loud. Laureano has 92nd percentile speed, the kind that allowed him to steal 43 bases in only 116 games in 2016; you saw the arm and defense; and a 42 percent hard-hit rate was above the Major League average of 36 percent.
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Complete article from MLB.com: 11 guys whose names you need to learn right now