As the first snows of late fall hit the streets of Chicago there is still baseball out in the Arizona desert where it’s been mid-80s and sunny since I arrived on Thursday. Last night in addition to the perfect
weather, visitors at the Cubs Spring Training home, Sloan Park, were also treated to quite the fireworks display courtesy of the Arizona Fall League Home Run Derby.
There were no Cubs prospects in this year’s contest, but there were bombs. There were dingers. There are players we’ll all want to keep an eye on, both in the division and out of the division, but none of them held a candle to Pirates prospect Tony Blanco Jr..
Blanco put on an absolute clinic of raw power, and it’s hard to overstate the reactions from the crowd as he put up eye-popping numbers in the home run contest, so I’ll just let all of you hear for yourself what it sounded like when he hit a line drive missile 122.9 MPH out to left field:
Blanco is an imposing figure who is built like a Dominican Aaron Judge and even wears the same number. The 20-year-old is every bit of the 6’7” and 243 pounds he’s listed as, making even his teammate (and Home Run Derby runner-up) 6’2” Esmerlyn Valdez somehow look slight by comparison.
To be clear, Valdez is impressive in his own right. He’s also the more polished hitter and closer to the Pirates major league roster. Valdez slashed .260/.363/.409 in 215 Double-A plate appearances last year. FanGraphs lists Valdez as a 45+ Future Value prospect who has a 50/60 game power hit tool and a 60/65 raw power hit tool limited a bit by an overall 30/40 hit tool. Valdez was also impressive last night, with 16 home runs, including this impressive run at the end of the first round:
And to give Valdez credit where it is due, he was not hitting cheap shots:
By contrast, the younger Blanco hit .264/.368/.491 in 125 A-ball plate appearances. He’s listed as a 40+ FV prospect at FanGraphs where his raw power grades out as an absurd 60/80 tool with his game power still developing at 25/70 on the 80-grade scale. His hit tool is currently rated as 20/30 according to FanGraphs. There is room to grow and some doubt he will get there, but there is no doubt that he can hit some nukes of his own. He hit a jaw dropping 24 of them last night including this ball off the roof of the left field patio at the back of the berm:
That 119.7-122.9 mile per hour exit velocity puts him squarely in the Oneil Cruz, Giancarlo Stanton territory of raw power potential. In fact, 122.9 is Cruz’s record for the hardest hit ball in the Statcast Era. There is obviously a big difference between hitting bombs in a home run derby and hitting them against MLB pitching, but thing about exit velocity is it’s all about demonstrated ceiling. Last night Tony Blanco Jr. demonstrated a potential ceiling I’ll be dreaming on as he continues to work his way through the minors.
No offense to any of the other extremely talented participants in last night’s contest, the Pirates prospect duo of Esmerlyn Valdez and Tony Blanco Jr. looked like they were in a stratosphere of their own last night. While there are justifiable questions about both players hit tools, there’s also a lot to dream on if either of these sluggers puts it all together while the Paul Skenes, Jared Jones and Bubba Chandler are anchoring the Pirates rotation.
