Five Compelling Numbers For Five NL West Prospects
"As easy to dream on as any player"
This week we rolled out updated Top 10s for the D-backs, Rockies, Dodgers, Padres and Giants. That’s the entire National League updated. Next week we’ll start rolling out updated lists for the American League, starting with the AL East.
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Today I’m continuing the five compelling numbers for five players format we’ve done in the last two newsletters. This time for the NL West. The price of admission for this one is just your attention and a few minutes of your time.
Zyhir Hope, OF, Dodgers — 108.5 mph
It’s everyone’s favorite helium prospect, Zyhir Hope.
His 2024 season was a real breakout (.290/.419/.484, 144 wRC+) and he now checks in at No. 4 on the Dodgers list and I’m guessing will be a consensus top 100 type across the industry. Before the 2023 draft I saw a near top-of-the-scale runner with offensive question marks and now he’s… not really that sort of player.
Hope didn’t show those same 80-grade run times this year and looks like more of a left fielder than a center fielder, but he also looks like a completely different hitter than the one who ranked No. 276 in his draft class coming out of high school. His 108.5 mph 90th-percentile exit velocity was second-best among any NL West Top 10 hitter (better than players like Charlie Condon, Bryce Eldridge, Marco Luciano and Dalton Rushing) and he paired that impact with strong contact skills and excellent plate discipline.
Chase Dollander, RHP, Rockies — 114
Those who believed in Dollander despite a draft year in 2023 were rewarded with one of the better pitching seasons in the minor leagues this year. The buttery-smooth righty posted a 2.59 ERA over 23 starts and 118 innings between High-A Spokane and Double-A Hartford, with a 33.9% strikeout rate and 9.4% walk rate.
Dollander has a deep pitch mix but it’s fronted by a 95-97 mph four-seam fastball that has seemingly returned to form. The pitch earned a 114 stuff+ grade on our internal metric, which placed it as the best fastball in the division among top 10 prospects, and the 20.4% swinging strike rate he generated with the pitch is a standout figure.
It’s an ideal combination of velocity from a low release height (65.8 inches) with an extremely flat approach angle (-4.02) and solid control (67.2% strikes). I’m still bullish on Dollander showing even better control moving forward (it’s hard to get the 2022 Tennessee version of him out of my head) but even with just above-average control instead of plus, he’s got front-of-the-rotation upside and looks like one of the best pitching prospects in the game.
Carson Whisenhunt, LHP, Giants — 27.3%
It sounds like Whisenhunt is still toying with a few breaking ball shapes to try and unlock some consistent spin that helps him out, but his changeup has long been a carrying pitch and that remains the case today. Josh Norris gave the pitch a 70 on his scouting report this week, which is consistent with how it was described coming out of the draft in 2022.
Among pitches thrown at least 50 times among this NL West Top 10 pitcher pool, Whisenhunt’s changeup topped everyone with a 27.3% swinging strike rate. Stuff+ doesn’t seem to evaluate changeups too well but, for what it’s worth, he also grades out pretty well there relative to other changeups in the division.
Ethan Salas, C, Padres — 18.48
I thought Ben Badler put together a pretty strong case for why we shouldn’t be jumping ship on Ethan Salas on this week’s Future Projection Podcast. Yes, he hit .206/.288/.311 with a 75 wRC+ with High-A Fort Wayne but we should all remember how incredibly young he is.
As of this writing, Ethan Salas is 18.48 years old. He was the youngest player in the Midwest League and the youngest player in High-A ball this year. There are players in the 2025 high school draft class who will be drafted next July older than Salas. Age isn’t everything, but it’s certainly important when contextualizing his season, and all the tools and skills he puts on display are shockingly advanced for his age.
The swing is clean and workable, he makes a lot of contact, he hits the ball hard and he’s already one of the most impressive defensive catchers you’ll see in the minors. We ranked Leo De Vries just ahead of Ethan Salas on this Padres top 10, but there are convincing arguments for either player and I’d expect both to rank as top-25 prospects in baseball when our updated top 100 comes out.
Adrian Del Castillo, C, D-backs — 17.5%
Ranking Adrian Del Castillo 25th overall in the 2021 draft class as stood out to me as a mistake over the past few years, and has served as an example of how you can get anchored to certain information and not adjust enough in the face of new information.
The D-backs wound up taking him at pick 67 in the supplemental second round and signing him for $1 million—far short of the 25th overall ranking we had him tabbed at. Through no prescience on my part, Del Castillo has made that ranking look a bit better thanks to an excellent 2024 season where he slashed .312/.399/.603 with 26 home runs and 36 doubles with Triple-A Reno and .313/.368/.525 with four home runs in 25 games in the majors.
I’m higher on Del Castillo than others at BA and hope he can wind up being more of the hitter he was billed to be entering the 2021 college season. His underlying batted ball data gives me confidence in that as well, but plenty of people think he’ll be too much of a liability as a defender behind the plate and don’t buy into his major league production.
Moving to first base will significantly impact his value. The arm in particular is a real question and he threw out just 17.5% of baserunners between his time in the minors and the majors. With Arizona that figure was a brutal 7% (he threw out just 2-of-29 baserunners) and he did that despite what appears to be an Arizona pitching staff that was solid on their end controlling the running game.
It’s been the case for me for several weeks now, but the focus remains report writing for the Guardians and Braves chapters of our prospect handbook.
I did carve out some time to write about the 2025 draft class, however, and on Monday published a story on 11 rising prospects to know in the class as we inch closer and closer to the spring season kicking off.
On the podcast front, Ben Badler and I recorded Episode 104 of the Future Projection Podcast which featured NL West organization talk, thoughts on Jac Caglianone’s two-way status and a handful of listener questions about the international market. Peter Flaherty and I continued working through our 2024 draft reviews on the BA draft podcast, this time focusing on the NL East.
Thanks for reading, hope you all have a great weekend!