Early Thoughts On Pro Debuts From Christian Moore & Nick Kurtz
"It’s now becoming just a little bit easier for me to fall in love with the profile"
After a week off at the beach in North Carolina last week, I’m now back in the office chair.
I’ve spent a lot of time this week getting my 2025 scouting notes organized, but I did check in on the 2024 first-rounders to see who was assigned where and who was having notable starts to their pro careers.
It’s mostly an exercise of examining college hitters. The later draft date means many high school players and pitchers who just threw ~100 innings or so in the spring haven’t been activated yet and might not be at all until 2025, at least for official games.
There are some unofficial bridge league games taking place in the complexes but as of this newsletter only 15 of the 30 first-round picks have gotten into official minor league games.
The two loudest debuts to this point belong to Angels No. 8 overall pick Christian Moore and A’s No. 4 overall pick Nick Kurtz.
Christian Moore, 2B, Angels (Double-A Rocket City)
Draft Rank: 12
It’s no surprise the Angels are moving their first round pick as quickly as they are. It’s been a consistent trend for them to take and aggressively push fast-moving collegians in recent years, and while that’s not a strategy I have particularly loved they have had some success with it.
Moore played just two games with Low-A Inland Empire (where he went 6-for-11 with a homer and two doubles) before earning a promotion to Double-A Rocket City. He’s looked completely at home in the box against professional pitching so far and across 15 games in both leagues he’s hitting .413/.464/.762 with six home runs and four doubles with a 23.2% strikeout rate and 8.7% walk rate.
While I liked Moore quite a bit as a prospect thanks to his consistent three years of production in the SEC, I had some questions about his profile translating to pro ball with two most obvious being:
Was his improved strikeout rate in 2024 a blip or a sign of things to come?
Will he play enough defense at second base to stick at that position long term?
Moore struck out at a 24-25% clip during his first two seasons with Tennessee but during his draft year this spring he cut that rate all the way to 14.5%. It was a huge driver of his draft stock and allowed him to hit a career-best 34 home runs. Moore ranked No. 78 on our preseason list but moved up on each of our six in-season updates.
Chase Davis (2023 Cardinals first rounder) was another player with huge strikeout concerns in his first two college seasons who made a significant jump in that area during his junior draft season, but subsequently has continued to strike out at an alarming clip in pro ball. I had, and still do have to an extent, some similar concerns with Moore. So far he’s made enough contact with strong swing decisions while also putting up impressive exit velocities—always a concern these days when college hitters jump to pro ball.
He’s played second base in each game so far in his pro career and has yet to make an error at the position. I watched each of the available plays he’s made on Synergy and was surprised (in a good way) with a handful of body control plays and sliding grabs, but his arm remains a legitimate question mark and he tends to make routine plays more challenging than they should be for himself and his first basemen.
I’d be surprised if he winds up being anything more than a fringy defender at this point, but even if that’s the case he has the offensive tools to become a productive regular.
Nick Kurtz, 1B, A’s (Double-A Midland)
Draft Rank: 8
One of my first newsletters explored the idea that first basemen selected in the first round were a generally terrifying profile with poor track records. That history has always tempered my excitement about Kurtz’s well rounded offensive approach.
I want to like him a lot more than I’ve allowed myself to. Each time I’ve seen him hit I leave the park thinking I just saw a professional approach and a hitter who checks all my hitting boxes. He makes elite swing decisions, he has strength and power, there’s no obvious mechanical hang up to worry about that I can identify.
His college career was excellent at Wake Forest with a career .333/.510/.725 line, a 1.234 OPS, a ridiculous 24.1% career walk rate and a 16.6% career strikeout rate with 61 home runs and at least 15 homers in each season. The hangups on the profile were/are:
Injury concerns
A lack of wood bat track record in college
The fact that he’s a first baseman with huge offensive threshold to clear.
It’s now becoming just a little bit easier for me to fall in love with the profile because he’s thus far avoided a 2021 Jacob Berry debut—where he looked completely lost from the jump in his pro debut and hit .248/.343/.362 with a 17.5% strikeout rate in rookie ball and Low-A.
Kurtz torched Low-A California League pitchers through seven games and hit .400/.571/.960 with four home runs, two doubles and 10 walks to 7 strikeouts before earning a promotion to Double-A Midland this week. On Tuesday he made his Double-A debut and went 2-for-4 with a double.
The power has never been a question but it’s still be nice to see him homer to the pull-side and opposite field with a wood bat and his exit velocities are as impressive as any first-rounder not named Jac Caglianone so far.
Yes, for both Kurtz and Moore it’s important to remember we’re dealing with extremely small sample sizes, but it’s been nice to see how they’ve gotten started.
Before I get out of here I wanted to point you guys to a few other pieces of content that dropped at BA recently.
Myself and Peter Flaherty hopped on the podcast to chat about 2024 debuts and the 2025 players who stood out this summer. I also took a deep dive into how each team spent their money in this year’s draft. This is a nerdy, in-the-weeds piece for sure, but one I always find interesting.
Here are a few more I enjoyed this week on the site from others:
“A lot of hitting skill is built at a pretty young age,” Bazzana said. “So we ingrain these habits of movement and hand-eye coordination when we first pick up a bat; that’s what your brain knows. So when you try to move like someone else it’s almost like learning a new skill even if it’s the same game.”
“Some guys are bigger and more mobile, others are bigger and less mobile,” he said. “Some are small and twitchy and really tight movers. There’s going to be different movement patterns. Are they loose? Are they fluid? Are they dominant in rotation? Or are they just leg power? There’s all these different things that equate to being a great hitter.”
JJ Cooper reminds everyone that yes velocity does in fact matter (why some people continue to fight against this obvious fact is beyond me):
“Throwing harder, especially when it comes to fastballs, leads to more success for MLB pitchers. If you throw harder, hitters have less time to react, and that makes a hitters’ job tougher. It sounds simple, because it is.
“But it’s a simple truth that many baseball fans seem to struggle to accept.
Peter Flaherty puts together his list of the top 100 transfers in college baseball. A massive effort!
Geoff has another banger where he looks at hitters 21 or younger with some of the most impressive exit velocity data in the minor leagues.