Arizona Fall League Prospect Report — November 10, 2021

Kameron Misner, OF, Marlins — After hitting two home runs on Tuesday, Misner said he was in the Arizona Fall League to continue working on his strengths. As it turns out, one of his strengths is ... well ... strength. Misner has shown himself to be one of the league's premier power bats from the left side, capable of swatting balls great distances with almost comical ease. He exited the day with seven home runs, one shy of teammate Nelson Velazquez (who also homered on Tuesday) for the league lead.

The Marlins prospect was paid a visit last week by the Edwar Gonzalez, one of the system's hitting coordinators. Over the course of a couple of days, the pair continued hashing out Misner's goals from the season and the Fall League. Specifically, Misner was working on honing his approach to better pick pitches on which he could do damage as well as keeping the barrel of his bat in the zone for a longer period of time.

Has Misner improved on both those fronts? Yes. Is there still plenty more work to be done? Absolutely.

"I was just pulling off baseballs," Misner said. "The barrel was in the zone really quickly and out of the zone really quickly. (When that happens) you don't have much adjustability when it when it comes offspeed pitches. I'm working on getting a lot better at it (but) I could still improve a lot on it."

Judging by his play in the AFL, it certainly seems like he's found a way to get his barrel to the baseball more often while producing a great deal of loud contact.

Nelson Velazquez, OF, Cubs — Velazquez has turned the Fall League into a combination of Christmas and Groundhog Day. Like clockwork, he gets up, takes quality at-bats, spits on tough offspeed pitches, makes loud contact and hits a ball a very long way. Then he goes home, goes to sleep, wakes up the next morning and does it all over again. This time, the victim was Peoria righthander and Pirates prospect Roansy Contreras, who was on such an upward trajectory this year that he made his big league debut.

In his first at-bat against Contreras, Velazquez worked the count full before getting a 94 mph fastball on the inner half of the plate. For most players, that might lead to a swing and miss or weak contact. Instead, Velazquez pulled his hands in, got the barrel to the ball and drove it some 400 feet down the right field line for a truly impressive combination of hittability and impact. His eight home runs are the the most in the league, and he also tops the circuit in average, RBIs, and slugging percentage. If he can catch Bryson Stott for the RBI crown, he will win both the traditional and sabermetric triple crowns.

Owen White, RHP, Rangers — The AFL is usually a hitter's league, and this year is no different. That's doubly true now that most of the top arms have departed due to either injury or workload. White is one of the exceptions. He has been tremendous throughout the course of the league, including on Tuesday, when he worked four scoreless, one-hit innings against Scottsdale. White struck out four and walked a pair. For the season, the 23-year-old has gone 4-0, 1.16 with 23 strikeouts in 23.1 innings. He's walked 11 in that time, but four of those free passes came on Nov. 3. With that start removed, White has walked seven over 19 innings.

HITTERS

Prospect Report: Christopher Morel, Nelson Velazquez Go Yard For Cubs

Velazquez and Morel had multi-hit games and Jose Barrero added two hits.

PITCHERS