Colby Thomas, Harry Ford Headline 10 Statcast Standouts (June 30)
Image credit: Colby Thomas (Photo by Bill Mitchell)
Every Monday morning, we 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 the strengths and weakness of Bryce Eldridge and Samuel Basallo, two young phenoms with 40-home run upside. This week, we’ll discuss:
- Colby Thomas’ breakout
- What to expect from Harry Ford
- Emmet Sheehan is more than ready
- Small differences in pitch metrics = big boost in performance
- Moises Ballesteros needs to improve his pitch selection
- Can Justin Crawford succeed with a ground-ball oriented approach?
- Blaze Alexander adding a shocking amount of power
- Kai-Wei Teng’s transition to the bullpen
- Colson Montgomery’s spectacular raw tools
10 Statcast Standouts
Colby Thomas, OF, Athletics
Geoff Pontes recently highlighted Thomas as one of 10 standout hitters in June. The A’s have churned out a lot of high-quality major league hitters, and Thomas may be their latest player dev win. We have an almost equal amount of 2024 and 2025 data for Thomas, allowing us to see where he’s grown as a player. On the surface, his numbers look broadly similar, but underneath the hood, there are substantial improvements.
The 2024 version of Thomas struggled to make both contact overall—especially against fastballs—and consistently-hard contact. The most exciting parts of the profile at that point were the top-end exit velocities and optimized launch angles, which allowed Thomas to be a damage-quality monster.
Let’s fast forward to 2025:
The most important change is the zone contact rate, which went from a well below-average 79.6% to a slightly above-average 84.9%, with notable gains against fastballs. The approach is largely the same, though he’s trimmed his swing rate a tad, which has helped reduce his chase somewhat. He still chases too much against non-fastballs, but he’s made significant strides in his ability to get to those pitches and is able to do significant damage against them. This will be harder to replicate at the major league level, but it will mitigate the chase somewhat.
The other notable change to his profile is the big improvement in exit velocities, which are now above-average. These improvements appear to be at the expense of some launch angle, but it looks to be a very welcome trade-off. With these changes, Thomas is looking like yet another major player development win for the Athletics.
Harry Ford, C, Mariners
Ford is somewhat blocked at the catcher position, however, his metrics suggest he is going to be a quality major league hitter:
Ford’s best contact comes in the air, which is usually a strong indicator of power potential. However, his raw power is probably slightly below-average, which limits his potential there somewhat. His calling card will be plus-plus-or-better swing decisions, with the combo of both above-average in zone aggression and extremely low chase rates. Ford makes enough contact that this should all work, but it hinges on whether his sublime approach can translate to the majors without other standout tools.
Emmet Sheehan, RHP, Dodgers
Sheehan dazzled last week:
Sheehan’s fastball is the heart of his arsenal, with plus velo and plus ride making it an almost double-plus pitch. In Triple-A, it’s generating a ton of whiffs in zone and looks every bit like a high-quality major league fastball. The splitter/changeup is another plus-or-better pitch. It comes in with negative vert, giving it tremendous vertical separation from the fastball. Sheehan’s slider comes in at a blistering 88 mph. It is absolutely chewing hitters up and getting whiffs on more than 67% of swings at Triple-A, suggesting this might be a double-plus pitch. He also drops in an occasional curveball, but it’s mostly a three-pitch mix.
Sheehan has a fantastic arsenal, with three plus-or-better pitches. He should be a rotation piece soon for the Dodgers, at least until Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell return.
Riley Martin, LHP, Cubs
Martin has taken a huge leap this year from a performance standpoint, and he may finally be on the cusp of making his major league debut. He’s added a bit of ride and velocity, as well as a small increase in his zone rate. It adds up to a cut-ride fastball that is performing at a much higher level than it did last season.
With pitching, small differences in movement and velo can have enormous impacts performance-wise, and we may well be seeing that with Martin. He mixes in a hard curve at 85 mph and a gyro slider at 88, but his success or failure will hinge on the fastball, which he throws 66% of the time. There has been talk of the Cubs trading for a bullpen piece to bolster their team down the stretch, but if they look within the org to fill the need, Martin might just be the guy.
Moises Ballesteros, C, Cubs
Ballesteros is such a good hitter that he can make a ton of contact almost no matter where the pitch is located. This allows him to be extremely aggressive, perhaps to his own detriment. Let’s take a look at how that manifests against fastballs:
We see a lot of hard contact above the zone but also a lot of whiffs well above where he should be swinging, including several that resulted in swinging strikeouts. He can get to most pitches above the zone, but he’ll likely need to be more selective against major league pitching.
It appears that he does most of his damage middle-in against sliders, where he’s absolutely crushing those pitches. He’ll make a ton of contact in-zone but swing over some buried sliders.
Ballesteros’ numbers and metrics support the notion that he’ll hit for a high average in the majors, with at least 15-home run power. However, it does look like he needs some time to improve his approach, which will help him fully tap into his natural talent.
Justin Crawford, OF, Phillies
Crawford hits the ball reasonably hard, but his average launch angle is substantially below-average. This begs the question: Can this combination of plus-plus contact and average power, with 2-3 degree average launch angles, work at the major league level?
It’s hard to find a perfect comp, but a player who resembles Crawford from a contact and power standpoint is DJ LeMahieu circa 2022 & 2023:
Crawford might struggle to get to LeMahieu’s 10-15 home run power, but the rest of his game could be somewhat similar. While it’s easy to write off a player because of a major flaw, there are many ways to be successful in the majors, and it’s not unprecedented for a player to succeed with an extreme groundball tendency.
I think Crawford’s strengths will make it all work, and he has a flawless track record of success at every level since his first full season in 2023. I’ll take the pedigree, bloodlines, performance track record and contact metrics and say all those factors outweigh the launch angle flaw in the profile.
Blaze Alexander, SS, Diamondbacks
Alexander in 2024 did two things well—make great swing decisions and make his best contact in the air:
However, below-average raw power and terrible contact rates usually portend struggles at the major league level. Fast forward to this season, and Alexander is showing massive improvements in his power metrics:
That’s an increase of almost four mph across the board, which equates to going from 45 on the 20-80 scale to roughly 65. That’s a significant change, similar in magnitude to what Corbin Caroll was able to do. He’s managed that while also maintaining roughly-equivalent contact rates, both in the zone and out. More importantly, he’s still making better contact in the air than on the ground, suggesting he has a lot of potential as a damage-on-contact merchant.
It seems the D-backs have transformed yet another player of small stature into an exit-velocity darling, which is something worth paying attention to.
Kai-Wei Teng, RHP, Giants
Teng’s 5.15 ERA looks very poor on the surface, but his 34.6% K% is elite, and his 3.40 FIP and 3.36 xFIP suggest he’s mostly run into some bad luck. The Stuff numbers also suggest the strikeout potential is real.
Teng’s four-seam fastball is fringy, with average velocity and below-average shape, but it plays up due to synergies with the sinker, which comes out of the hand with identical spin and release characteristics. He uses the sinker as his primary fastball against righties, and the four-seam as his go-to against lefties, but he mixes in both enough that they can play off of each other.
The changeup gets great depth, but doesn’t get the whiffs the shape would suggest it should. It’s a good pitch from a stuff perspective, but there may be other factors limiting its effectiveness.
His sweeper, on the other hand, is a dominant pitch. He’s comfortable using it against righties and lefties, though it performs much better when he has the platoon advantage. He mixes in a curveball, as well, which bites down and is likely difficult for hitters to pick out from the sweeper.
Teng has a starter’s arsenal, which should help him succeed against major league lineups that won’t have had the luxury of seeing him a few times to gain familiarity. Ignoring the ERA, Teng is quite good and ready to make an impact out of the Giants’ bullpen.
Alex Freeland, SS, Dodgers
Freeland is the quintessential “professional hitter”. He doesn’t have loud tools or tear the cover off the ball, but he’s extremely patient with very low chase rates while being very aggressive against fastballs. This allows him to do damage against all pitch types and succeed despite an underwhelming contact rate.
Freeland’s exit velocities suggest roughly 55 grade-or-better raw power, but given the launch angles, this looks more like a 15-20 homer per year bat with great on-base skills. That’s extremely valuable from the shortstop position.
Colson Montgomery, SS, White Sox
I have a simple way to describe Montgomery’s Statcast card: Ooh-la-la.
Montgomery is showing sublime power—though he sometimes doesn’t fully tap into it—with tremendous launch angles and an above-average zone contact rate. The raw tools here are incredibly tantalizing. It’s exceedingly rare to combine 70-grade raw power with great launch angles and at least average zone contact. It’s even rarer when it’s a player who has a chance to play short.
While there are are some weird quirks in the profile—especially the average exit velocity compared to the other velocity metrics and the massive difference between his zone contact and chase contact rates—the tools here are enormous, and the metrics are much improved compared to last year.
Montgomery has now seen over 3,000 pitches at Triple-A, so it may be time for the White Sox to let him figure things out against major league quality pitching. The road might be bumpy, but the destination is exciting.
