Andrew Painter, Jacob Misiorowski Headline 10 Statcast Standouts (May 12)
Image credit: Andrew Painter (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)
Every Monday morning, we’ll highlight 10 players who stood out to us based on their underlying Statcast metrics. Data will usually be through Saturday of that week, but may include some data from Sunday games. These are not full scouting reports, but often serve as good early indicators of prospects who might be ready to break out or are demonstrating MLB-ready skills.
Last week, we did a deep dive on Bubba Chandler‘s arsenal and command and talked about the improvements in raw stuff that Zebby Matthews has made to boost his pitch quality. This week we’ll discuss:
- Will Andrew Painter end up with six plus pitches?
- Jacob Misiorowski’s secret for better command
- Otto Kemp’s major league comp
- A former Top 100 prospect who is finally pitching again
- Eli’s favorite relief pitching prospect
- Four more Phillies prospects to know about
- Trying to understand Franco Aleman’s success
10 Statcast Standouts
Andrew Painter, RHP, Phillies
Painter ranked 14th in Baseball America’s most recent Top 100 Prospects update and the fifth-overall pitching prospect, just behind Chase Burns and Chase Dollander and ahead of Noah Schultz. Personally, I have Chandler and Painter as the two top arms in the minors. Chandler has the classic pronator arsenal of fastball, slider, changeup and curveball. That’s more than enough to dominate when you have the quality of stuff that he does.
Painter, however, has shown the ability to be a pitcher with a potentially much wider arsenal. Let’s take a look at his short-form movement chart and dig into why:
Painter’s fastball isn’t quite as dominant as Chandler’s, but it’s an easy plus pitch, coming in at 96.6 mph with almost two inches of ride more than expected given his arm slot. He’s also been up to 100, indicating he’s pitching comfortably below his max, which is generally considered good for maintaining a pitcher’s health.
Surprisingly, he’s throwing the pitch almost 60% of the time. That’s not an indictment on the fastball. Rather, the rest of his arsenal is so incredible, he would probably benefit from upping his usage of those pitches.
The chart above shows five pitches, but hiding within the purple sliders are a couple of elite sweepers with nearly 20 inches of glove side movement. Those two pitches get tremendous amounts of seam-shifted wake and grade out as 80s from a pure stuff perspective. Pitchers who can throw a top-shelf sweeper usually can throw a plus sinker, as well. I fully expect a sinker to be added to his arsenal at some point as he evolves as a major league pitcher.
The changeup, thrown at 90 mph, looks a lot like the fastball from a movement perspective, making it very hard for batters to pick it up. It’s a tiny sample, but batters have a 100% whiff rate on the pitch this year. Given the movement profile of this changeup, we could also see him a splitter or kick-change that would kill vertical ride and sit closer to the zero IVB line, along the lines of what Clay Holmes added this season.
The cutter, slider and curveball all blend together from a movement and velocity perspective, making it incredibly difficult for batters to read the pitch type out of the hand. These are all distinct pitches with some fascinating properties. The cutter at 90 mph has mostly vertical spin, meaning it has similar spin to the fastball but gets a healthy amount of seam-shifted wake to help it cut glove side. The gyro slider is thrown just 4-5 mph slower, but he gets on top of it, getting almost the opposite spin axis, helping it dive down below bats while looking a lot like the cutter out of the hand.
He rounds out the arsenal with a plus-plus curveball that looks a lot like the slider with even more depth and another 4-5 mph velocity differential. If we count it up, that’s already six plus-or-better pitches to go with the hallmarks of a pitcher who can both get plus vertical ride on the fastball and leverage seam-shifted wake effects—key components of having a great sinker, sweeper or changeup.
Painter is the rare pitcher with the potential to have six (or more) pitches that all grade out as plus or better. With some pitchers, we have to dream on them adding certain pitches. Painter’s already got what looks like six, and he’s just getting started on his career.
Jacob Misiorowski, RHP, Brewers
It’s reasonable to be skeptical of a singular reading, so we wouldn’t blame you if you saw a 102.3 mph reading and raised your proverbial eyebrows. Rest assured, this is legit, as he also hit 101 mph several times that evening, including another pitch over 102. I have those pitches as more than two runs per 100 pitches better than average, which is about as elite as it gets.
Let’s a take a look at his arsenal:
On the season, his fastball hasn’t quite been the double-plus-to-elite pitch he flashed this week, but it’s still a great pitch that provides an excellent base for the rest of his arsenal. The key for Misiorowski may not be the fastball—it might just be the slider/cutter.
To explain why, let’s take a look at his still somewhat questionable fastball command:
This chart translates to a well below-average 40.8% zone rate. That’s a small improvement over 2024 but not enough to ease concerns that he lacks the requisite command to be a starter long term. Part of the issue might stem from the huge movement profile of the pitch, with big two-plane movement (both horizontal and vertical) making it a hard pitch to command.
The Brewers did something very interesting—they found him a pitch he can zone up when he needs to:
We see a much cleaner command chart for the slider, as the pitch doesn’t move a lot east-west, making it easier to locate. It’s more of a hard cutter than a slider.
There’s further hope on the fastball command front, as well. Here’s how the pitch looked in his most recent start:
Command has long been the question for Misiorowski, and he’s showing the kinds of improvements you want to see. It will likely still be a somewhat bumpy ride, but from a pure stuff perspective, he’s one of the best arms in baseball. The Brewers look committed to giving him every chance to start, which is looking like a very wise decision so far.
Otto Kemp, 3B, Phillies
Kemp’s power metrics are superb. It’s rare to see +4 mph exit velos paired with launch angles above 21 degrees. They fully support both his .939 slugging on contact, as well as his OPS of 1.079 in the early going. The 10 home runs he’s hit in 37 games this year is about what you’d expect given those power metrics.
A few weeks ago, I highlighted three older players who looked like they added significant exit velocity in the offseason. Kemp may be another one of those older breakout prospects, which is perhaps becoming a trend in baseball. He’ll swing and miss a lot, so he’s not a sure-fire bet to succeed in the majors, and his swing decisions against sliders, breaking balls and offspeed pitches are less than ideal.
All in all, he might end up looking a lot like Adolis Garcia, with perhaps less chase.
Cade Cavalli, RHP, Nationals
Cavalli’s velo isn’t all the way back, but he still has enough juice that both his fastballs aren’t too far off from being average pitches. This has always been the challenge with Cavalli: poor fastball quality despite the velocity. Fortunately, he recognizes this and has settled on the simple solution to throw his excellent curveball 44% of the time. That may or may not work in the majors as a starter, but Griffin Canning is demonstrating that it is possible, leading the way with his excellent “deathball.”
I’m curious if Cavalli could throw a cut fastball a little harder than the 92 mph slider you see on the chart above. I think that shape might work well as his primary fastball variant, and then he can skate by with three fastball shapes of varying quality and throw the curve 45 to 50% of the time. Ultimately, this might end up being a back-of-the-bullpen profile where he can air out the fastball to 100, mitigate the shape concerns and toss the curveball in half the time.
Zach Maxwell, RHP, Reds
Maxwell’s stat line isn’t the prettiest this year, but he still has one of the best combinations of raw velocity and vertical ride of any fastball in the minors. The challenge for him has been erratic command of the slider:
This has limited him to using it only 15 to 20% of the time, allowing batters to sit on the fastball. It may serve him well to split usage 50/50 while he’s in Triple-A, maximizing his in-game reps with the aim to up the command of the pitch. He may also be well-served adding a bridge cutter to mix 5-10% of the time to keep batters off the fastball/slider pair. The stuff is outstanding, and when it comes to future bullpen arms, always bet on stuff quality.
Justin Crawford, OF, Phillies
Crawford is never going to be an “elevate and celebrate” type of hitter, but he’s managed to get his average launch angle from “absolutely terrible” to “somewhat playable.” The rest of the profile is quite good, with excellent bat-to-ball skills and roughly-average raw power.
Crawford hit .332/.392/.467 in 2023, .313/.360/.444 last year and is currently hitting .321/.390/.409 this season in Triple-A. He has the speed and line-drive oriented contact profile that suggest his high BABIPs are likely sustainable. That’s a robust track record of performance.
Average-to-plus contact, along with average raw power and 70-grade speed would be a future star, but his route running will have to improve dramatically for him to reach that outcome. All in all, this is a batter with significant major league bloodlines, good metrics outside of the launch angles and a three-year track record of performance that I think will mostly translate to the majors. Bet on the bloodlines.
Mick Abel, RHP, Phillies
That’s one of the crispest arsenal charts I’ve seen in while. It has five distinct pitches, all of which get a healthy amount of whiffs. Abel has been a prospect for a long time, but he finally appears to have figured things out and is pitching very well at Triple-A this season.
The changeup looks like his best stuff pitch, and you can see that he gets most of his whiffs when he gets to the 0″ IVB line and below. Outside of that, it’s a complete arsenal of roughly league-average pitches that will all play up because of the arsenal interactions.
With this many pitches, I think it’s quite likely he’ll add a bridge cutter around 92 mph to further mask the slider and four-seam. The command on the fastball still isn’t great, but he throws 99 mph and has made huge strides compared to last year, increasing his zone rate by about 6%. He’s looking like a quality midrotation arm or better and may be pitching his way back into Top 100 Prospects contention.
Eduardo Tait, C, Phillies
Tait hits the ball incredibly hard for a player his age, but he’ll need to dial back the aggression somewhat as he moves up the ladder. He’s making a ton of high-quality contact on chase pitches, but that’s likely unsustainable at higher levels of play. The zone contact and questionable flyball exit velocity suggest he has a long developmental road ahead of him, but the potential for an impact player at the catcher position is there.
Aroon Escobar, 3B, Phillies
There’s a trifecta of metrics that, when I see all three, I immediately think “future big leaguer.” They are: zone contact (with a special emphasis on zone contact against the fastball), swing decisions (zone minus chase) and at least average exit velocities (ideally with optimized launch angles).
Escobar ticks all those boxes and then some while showing eye-popping pitch recognition against breaking balls and offspeed pitches. That’s coming against Class A pitchers, but you’d be hard pressed to find such a clean swing/no swing profile at any level. The only pitches he chases are fastballs, sinkers and cutters, and he does more than enough damage against those pitches.
He is whiffing above the zone against four-seam fastballs, so he might need to improve those swing decisions. Given his impeccable judgment against non-fastballs, I’d lean towards him either learning to hit those pitches or learning to lay off the ones that are too high for him to reach.
Franco Aleman, RHP, Guardians
Aleman continues to dominate whenever he’s on the mound. While his sinker isn’t a great pitch from a stuff perspective yet, he can toss it in the zone and get whiffs. Here’s his chart from 2024 and 2025:
I can’t explain it. Will it work against MLB-quality hitters? I really don’t know, but it’s worked at every level he’s pitched at, including Triple-A, where he’s posted 38 strikeouts in 24.2 innings. I’ll be watching raptly when he gets called up, as we often learn the most from outliers like Aleman.
