Tim Elko, Nate Eaton Headline 10 Statcast Standouts (April 21)
Image credit: Tim Elko (Photo by Bill Mitchell)
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 highlighted a Brewers slugger with eye-popping metrics and talked about one of Matt Eddy’s breakout prospects. This week we’ll discuss:
- A White Sox slugger who has improved dramatically
- What Nate Eaton tells us about Red Sox player dev
- A 103 mph sinkerballer
- The best pitching prospect in the minors
10 Statcast Standouts
Tim Elko, 1B, White Sox
I’m seeing a trend emerging in baseball: players adding significant power later in their careers. We’ve seen a long stretch of time where pitchers have found ways to throw harder with sharper pitches. We may be witnessing a new wave in which certain batters are able to train themselves to hit the ball much harder, sometimes many years into their careers.
Yesterday, I marveled at how much power Corbin Carroll added, and he is a shining example of this trend. Today, I’ll highlight three Triple-A batters that have done just that, starting with Elko. I love writing about the next wave of baseball talent, but I have a special place in my heart for the players who most professional fans don’t know about.
Elko caught my eye this week with this two-homer game:
I can’t stress enough that the difference in talent between an average major league hitter and a very good Triple-A hitter is often very small. If you can hit Triple-A pitching, you’re one of the best 2,000 batters in the entire world. Ok, I’ll step down from my soap box and talk to you about the incredible year-to-year transformation Elko is showing in the early going.
Here he was 2024:
The 2024 version of Elko showed some promise with great damage on contact, mostly due to how hard he hits the ball. His chances of being a major league contributor were at risk, however, as he wasn’t making enough contact with a well below-average 74% zone contact rate (roughly 9-10% under the major league average).
And here’s the 2025 version of Elko so far:
Elko leads all Triple-A batters in an extremely important metric: average exit velocity on balls hit at a 20-degree launch angle or higher. He leads with a 102.4 mph average, about 2 mph ahead of Roman Anthony. With that kind of hard contact in the air, it’s no surprise he’s absolutely smoking balls when he connects.
There’s another nuance to Elko’s analytical profile that is rather important: He is hitting the ball much harder in the air than on the ground. When he hits it hard, his launch angles are considerably higher than when he miss-hits the ball. These two metrics go hand-in-hand and strongly suggest an approach that is optimized for flyball-oriented contact. This was true last season, but appears to be in sharper contrast this year.
Last season, Elko topped out in exit velocity at 112.7 mph. He’s now exceeded that twice so far in 2025, including an eye-opening 116.7 mph groundout and this 114 mph blast against a slider:
Last season, I probably would have described Elko as having 60 to 65 raw power that would play as 55 to 60. This year, he’s pushing 70 or higher in-game power given the flyball EV and raw exit velocity numbers.
Swinging harder usually comes at the cost of more swing-and-miss. Somehow, Elko has been able to make massive strides in his bat-to-ball, as well. If you scroll back up Elko’s 2024 card, you’ll see a lot of purple for his in-zone contact on sliders, breaking balls and offspeed pitches. He was also chasing those pitches out of the zone a lot. That meant pitchers could simply challenge him with non-fastballs, and he’d either chase or miss, or swing through it in the zone.
This year, he’s making a ton of contact against those same pitch types in-zone, absolutely crushing them when he puts them in play. Most importantly, he has dramatically reduced his chase rates on these pitch types. This strongly suggests a giant leap in ability against non-fastballs. All of these improvements add up to much better swing decision metrics and a zone contact rate that went from almost 10% below average to 4% above average.
It appears Elko is making “the leap,” and his early-season 1.078 OPS is fully supported by his Statcast metrics. I can’t wait to see what he’ll do against major league pitching.
Nate Eaton, 3B/OF, Red Sox
Eaton spent seven years with the Royals, the last three toiling away in Triple-A. He also logged 178 plate appearances in the majors across 72 games between 2022 and 2023. The Red Sox scooped him up with a clear player development plan to increase the chances of him being a major league contributor.
Why am I writing about Eaton, you ask? After all, he’s now in his third season of Triple-A with a wRC+ below 90, including this season. It’s because Eaton might provide us some insight into what the Red Sox player development and acquisition teams are doing.
Here was Eaton in 2024:
Last year, Eaton demonstrated two carrying tools: the ability to make contact and the ability to hit the ball in the air. It stands to reason the Red Sox felt Eaton was a great candidate for bat speed training, with the hope that boosting exit velocities and marrying them to his launch angles could unlock a viable major league contributor. Given the cost to acquire him was virtually free, it’s a mostly risk-free move. Eaton signed in November, so they had plenty of time to work with him.
Let’s take a look at the shocking gains Eaton has made with the Red Sox in 2025:
Eaton went from a 90th percentile EV of 102 mph to an above-average 105 mph. His maximum exit velocity across 2023-2024 was 109.1 mph, which he’s now eclipsed by three mph. These two data points point very strongly to bat speed gains developed in the offseason.
This is a massive change for Eaton, so it’s no surprise his launch angles have regressed to major league average his zone contact has dipped. He’s also struggling to make consistent contact. The profile here is still likely not a major league-quality player (yet), but it’s highly instructive as to what the Red Sox are doing. Eaton is listed at 5-foot-11 and 200 pounds and was able to boost his raw power by at least two grades. This is a trend I’m seeing pop up, and Eaton is a shining example of it. If the rest of Eaton’s game snaps back to what it looked like last year, it might just all come together for him.
Tanner Murray, 2B/SS Rays
Murray caught my eye during opening weekend, and he’s the third example today of an older prospect who has found a way to pulverize baseballs.
Murray has two batted balls this year over 112 mph and has eclipsed 110 on six occasions already this season. I was curious how this has evolved over Murray’s career, so I reached out to BA’s Geoff Pontes, who helpfully provided the following breakdown:
| year | Max EV | 90th EV |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 112.4 | 109.9 |
| 2024 | 113.4 | 105.2 |
| 2023 | 106.5 | 102.1 |
| 2022 | 106.5 | 101.9 |
| 2021 | 109.3 | 103.5 |
We see quite clearly that Murray vastly increased his power between 2023 and 2024, going from well below-average to well above-average. That’s a leap from roughly 30-grade power to at least 60-grade raw power. Like Eaton, Murray is also not a huge physical specimen, being listed at 6-foot-1, 190 pounds. It shows that even the normal-sized humans can make these leaps in power.
The swing-and-miss will likely limit him somewhat, but he’ll more than make up for that with how hard he hits the ball and his ability to handle multiple positions on the infield.
Luis Mey, RHP, Reds
Mey threw a sinker 103.2 mph. He’s now eclipsed 102 mph six times this season, so we can be confident this isn’t measurement error. Mey is still walking too many batters, so the jury continues to be out on if he’ll have enough command to pitch in the majors, but teams will always be patient with a guy who can throw this hard.
Bubba Chandler, RHP, Pirates
Chandler’s smooth, athletic delivery had me hooked at the Futures Game last year. Not only does he pass the eye test with flying colors, but his data was just as good, if not better. That was last season, when he was averaging 96.8 mph on his fastball and topping out at 99. This year, he’s averaging 98.2 mph and has topped out at an incredible 101.5 mph. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg for Chandler, because under the hood, his improvements are arguably even more impressive.
Chandler’s boosted the spin rate on his fastball by about 100 rpm and tweaked his spin axis, getting about an inch more vertical ride on the pitch compared to last year. Combined with the increased velo, it’s helped his fastball go from roughly 0.5 runs/100 better than average to 1.1 runs/100 better than average. It’s no surprise the pitch is getting 41.8% whiffs per swing and 18.7% whiffs per pitch—a sharp increase from last season’s 30.5% and 14.8%. To top it all off, he gets above-average extension on the pitch, as well.
Chandler’s primary secondary was a bullet slider at 86-87 last year. This year, the pitch is essentially the same, but it’s now coming in at 88 mph, making it another plus-plus pitch against both righties and lefties.
The changeup underwent a subtle tweak, as well. It now has slightly more horizontal spin axis, allowing it to get an elite 18 inches of horizontal break and more seam-shifted wake movement. This pitch also grades out plus-plus from a pure stuff standpoint.
The curveball is now sharper, coming in three mph harder while also dropping more than the 2024 version. He’s not getting a ton of chases on the pitch, but we only have 23 curveballs to look at so far. He’s also upped the spin rate by about 130 rpm, which is likely the primary factor behind the added depth.
Chandler in 2024 was already arguably the top pitching prospect in baseball. Chandler in 2025 has made every single one of his pitches better. When he finally gets promoted—possibly along the same May timeline the Pirates employed with Paul Skenes last year—he could immediately be one of the best pitchers in baseball.
Moises Ballesteros, C, Cubs
Ballesteros can flat out ball. There are certain analytical profiles that just scream out “high-probability major league bat” and this is a prime example. He does a good job at pretty much everything, especially on the bat-to-ball side. While the zone contact will likely regress some against MLB pitching, Ballesteros shows no holes in his swing, as he makes tons of contact in and and out of the zone and does a lot of damage whether he chases or attacks in-zone pitches. When you can do that, it doesn’t matter all that much that you have above-average chase rates.
I have but one nitpick: Ballesteros’ batted-ball quality is worse on fly balls in the early going, which might limit his upside somewhat. However, the rest of the profile is solid gold, and points to a catcher that could be a 55 hit/55 power guy.
Greysen Carter, RHP, Yankees
This offseason, BA tagged Carter as a name to know beyond the Yankees Top 30. Here’s what we wrote:
Speaking of that fastball:
The fastball, despite touching 100.7 mph, isn’t a great pitch, as it has terrible shape. And he only averaged 96 mph with the pitch—not nearly enough to wash away shape concerns. What makes Carter intriguing, however, is the sweeper, which is quite inconsistent shape-wise and gets mislabelled as a cutter and a curve. The pitch gets a solid amount of seam-shifted wake movement (movement that deviates from what the spin axis would suggest). This tells me he might be a good candidate for a sinker, keeping the fastball as mostly a bridge pitch between the two. He’d still have an arsenal that would be suspect against lefties, but a sinker-sweeper arsenal works great out of the bullpen if he can consistently sit around 98.
Will Robertson, OF, Blue Jays
In 2024, the analysis on Robertson was straightforward: good pop, terrible contact.
Fast forward to this season:
The power profile is arguably slightly better, but more importantly, Robertson has made huge strides in his swing decisions. He’s upped his in-zone aggression while reducing his chase, resulting in a dramatically improved zone-chase rate. It’s only 133 pitches, so it may all be a mirage, but that was the improvement Robertson needed to make himself a viable major league bat.
Carson McCusker, OF, Twins
If you only looked at McCusker’s size (6-foot-8, 250 pounds) and top-line metrics, he’d look a lot like Aaron Judge. Unfortunately, that’s where the comparison ends, as McCusker struggles to make contact against even Triple-A quality fastballs. His swing decisions against breaking balls provide some promise, but he’ll need to make a lot more contact to make it all work. Still, if you want to dream on upside, not many players can do what McCusker does.
Chandler Simpson, OF, Rays
If you have 80-grade speed and an 89% contact rate, you’re going to get on base a lot. Simpson is going to be a lot fun to watch wreak havoc in the majors.
BONUS: Ernesto Martinez Jr., 1B, Brewers
I’m going to write a brief blurb about Martinez Jr. every week until he gets called up, but I don’t want to crowd out my self-imposed budget of 10 players per week.
Martinez Jr. is maintaining elite exit velocities and an optimized average launch angle, which he pairs with a zone contact rate north of 90%. He’s also now pushing into a more robust sample of 287 pitches through Saturday. He’s doing an incredible job fighting off pitches he does chase, which is unusual for a slugger his size. We’ll check back in next week if he’s still mashing for the Sounds instead of the Brewers.
