Comparing Statcast Data For Jesús Made, Sebastian Walcott & Leo De Vries
Image credit: Leo De Vries (Photo by Bill Mitchell)
There’s nothing that gets a prospector’s attention like a young and talented shortstop with a bucket full of tools. Early in 2025, it’s become clear that baseball has welcomed a new trio of tooled-up teenage shortstops who fit the description of potential No. 1 overall prospects based on the promising returns of their early professional careers.
On Wednesday, my Baseball America colleague Josh Norris broke down the talented threesome of Jesús Made, Sebastian Walcott and Leo De Vries based on scout feedback from across the industry. In this article, we’ll examine some intriguing underlying Statcast data for the group, none of which is publicly available.
Because of the proprietary nature of the data, we’ll be using numbers as of May 6, or the beginning of last week’s series. Doing so gives us a clean snapshot of the first month of play for this trio of special players.
We’ll be evaluating Made, Walcott and De Vries in a number of key areas. First, we’ll look at plate skills, which can be summarized as bat-to-ball ability and swing decisions. We’ll compare in-zone contact, swing rates and chase rates while examining how the two impact one another.
We’ll then look at power using a combination of exit velocity statistics and launch angles and see how they relate to produce desired batted ball outcomes. Finally, we’ll examine the abilities of each player when it comes to hitting the ball in the air to their pull side and finding the sweet spot on the barrel.
So, let’s dig into the data on baseball’s next wave of standout young shortstops.
Plate Skills
The ability to marry bat-to-ball ability and a discerning batting eye is essential for success as a prospect climbs through the minor leagues. While enough quality of contact can overcome some swing-and-miss or hyper-aggressive swing tendencies, correcting for both is needed for players to develop into potential multi-time all-stars. Hopefully, that’s what we’re looking at with Made, Walcott and De Vries early in their careers.
Let’s take a look at some metrics to show how each player is doing in their quest to combat these issues.
| player | age | level | bat | miss% | IZmiss% | chase% | swing% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jesús Made | 18 | Low-A | S | 26.50% | 20.70% | 22.30% | 40.90% |
| Sebastian Walcott | 19 | Double-A | R | 26.90% | 18.60% | 24.60% | 42.60% |
| Leo De Vries | 18 | High-A | S | 21.90% | 19.90% | 20.20% | 44.70% |
It’s clear to see that De Vries boasts the best overall miss rate, at around five percentage points better Walcott and Made. He does, however, fall in the middle as far as in-zone whiff rate is concerned (though, all three are in the same neighborhood).
Made, the youngest of the three, has the highest rate of in-zone whiffs. But his lower chase rate, like with De Vries, limits his swing-and-miss.
The most impressive thing about De Vries’ swing data is the delta between his 44.7% swing rate and his 20.2% chase rate, accounting for a difference of 24.5%. This shows that a higher rate of De Vries’ swings are coming in the strike zone, mitigating strikeouts and leading to a more stable on-base skill.
None of these hitters by any means have a bad approach, and all three could be argued to have above-average to plus plate skills. However for De Vries, his plate skills and hitting ability are his carrying tool.
Power
Maybe more so now than ever, the ability to hit for at least average, if not above-average, power is increasingly important. It’s also highly unlikely any of these three prospects will ascend to superstardom without hitting for 20+ home run power in peak seasons.
To examine this trait, this we can dig into exit velocity data and hard-hit launch angles. We’ll examine launch angles in their totality and how they relate to power more fully in the next section.
| player | age | level | bat | Avg. ev | 90%ev | max ev | 95+LA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jesús Made | 18 | Low-A | S | 90 | 105.9 | 108.5 | 2.4 |
| Sebastian Walcott | 19 | Double-A | R | 87.6 | 108.1 | 113.3 | 6 |
| Leo De Vries | 18 | High-A | S | 86.1 | 101.1 | 108.6 | 24.6 |
While Walcott’s high-end exit velocity data is clearly superior to Made or De Vries at present, he is the oldest (barely), and it is arguably his carrying tool. Made makes the most consistent hard contact, which is shown in his average EV of 90 mph, which is nearly three ticks faster than De Vries and two and a half harder than Walcott.
That said, high-end numbers tend to be more predictive of home run upside, even if it shows an inconsistency in terms of contact quality. As such, the likely rank in terms of home run potential and upside is Walcott, then Made and then De Vries.
De Vries’ underlying EVs are average for his age and level and are dwarfed by those of Walcott and Made, whose EVs rank as plus to plus-plus. To his credit, however, De Vries shows superior barrel wizardry, as evidenced by an elite 24.6 degree average launch angle on his batted-ball events clocked at 95 mph or higher.
Ball Flight & Launch Angles
It’s not enough to just hit the ball hard—one must marry that hard contact with good angles. Let’s now expand on hard-hit launch angles, pullside launch angles and the ability to combine hard contact with good angles to produce barrels.
| player | age | level | bat | LA | 95+LA | Pull LA | barrel% | xwoba |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jesús Made | 18 | Low-A | S | 5.9 | 2.4 | -3.7 | 13.10% | 0.311 |
| Sebastian Walcott | 19 | Double-A | R | 17.7 | 6 | 6.4 | 11.60% | 0.329 |
| Leo De Vries | 18 | High-A | S | 22.6 | 24.6 | 11 | 25.40% | 0.336 |
When examining the launch angle data, the trend we hinted at in the power section is now made clear.
De Vries has elite barrel control, and this adds to the argument that he boasts a 70 hit tool, which, based on data, is at least a full grade better than Made’s 60 and Walcott’s 55. As far as angles goes it’s De Vries in a landslide, as he displays the highest average launch angle, hard-hit launch angle and pullside launch angle. This culminates in the highest barrel rate and the best expected wOBA based on these results.
Both Walcott and Made struggle to optimize their best contact, but Walcott is closer to figuring this out, which could be a product of his slight advantage in age and experience. Made and De Vries are also impacted by switch-hitting, as Made’s launch angles from the righthand side are slightly higher than those on the lefthand side. These are all things Made will figure out as he gets more at-bats and begins to catch up in professional experience with Walcott and De Vries.
In conclusion, we can see that three of these special players present a variety of impressive skills.
Walcott can be argued as the most complete of the trio despite the worst plate skills thanks to his plus-plus raw power and early signs of improving angles on hard contact. It also figures that De Vries and Made will get stronger and add more pop to go along with their advanced plate skills and, in the case of De Vries, elite angles.
All of these factors keep the conversation on which of the trio will emerge as the most successful an ever-evolving one. At the end of the day, with players as talented as Made, Walcott and De Vries, it may well be just a matter of preference.
