The Arizona Fall League is a place where mostly unknown prospects can become known. Where good prosects can become great ones. Where…eh, I’ll save you the rest of the speech. The AFL is a magical land where prospect stock can shoot straight up. That still might not be enough of a set up for this. Let’s just talk about Cubs outfielder Nelson Velazquez.
It’s been rocket after rocket off of Velazquez’s bat and his stock is through the moon. His average exit velocity thus far in the AFL is just over 92 MPH. In all honesty this article was supposed to slow down the hype train. I’m happy to inform you that that’s not what’s about to happen. This is pretty much just going to be a hype piece.
Story time. The words were written, the videos ready, I was concerned about how pull happy Velazquez seemed. Which was working to provide some pop, but overall it concerned me what would happen as he continued to climb the ladder. I was bouncing this off of some other prospect minded people and then I saw this tweet from the AFL.
That is pretty convincing to the opposite field. One event does not make a trend, but this did get me thinking about Velazquez’s season. Yes, he does pull the ball A TON. I’m not saying he doesn’t. It would be very hard to considering he is tagged with a 59.6 Pull% this year in AA. However, it seemed like he was trying to go the opposite way the more and more as the season went on. A lot of those turned into outs, but changing approach isn’t easy to do. All of this is conjecture on my part, just a trend I think I’m seeing. That said, Velazquez’s final hit of the season was a single to the opposite field, which I’m counting as a point in my favor.
So, yes, Velazquez pulls the ball a lot. And it seems like he might be working on that. He wouldn’t be the only one in the system to make strides in that area this season. Look at Jordan Nwogu. Still, that doesn’t answer the question of why Velazquez was able to suddenly burst onto the scene. Let’s not forget he debuted for the Cubs organization in 2017. Prospect growth isn’t linear, but there’s usually something that clicks that can help explain the big jumps from players.
It was Bryan Smith from Bleacher Nation who tackled that one. He even made a handy side by side video to help illustrate it.
A high school draftee, there was always going to be expected growth on the frame. The interesting part here for me is the flatter bat path. An example of flat bat path in the majors would be Randy Arozarena. To be as immediately clear as possible, that was not a comp. Just a swing to think about. Almost intuitively, flatter bat paths don’t like steeper pitches. But they can mash fastballs. I love that change for Velazquez. Let’s look at a couple more swings where he crushes the baseball.
Both of those swings resulted in homeruns. They are from the same game, too. You can see another angle for the flatter bat path. Velazquez pulled both of these balls, and they were both in different parts of the zone. They also showcase why I like the change with his swing. The hands are quick to the ball here. It’s going to be hard to beat him with velocity, even up in the zone, as showcased with that second swing. He also has a pretty compact swing. As long as he hunts fastballs, which he likes to do, this should work. And, frankly, it has. The whiffs are likely always going to be a part of his game, even before the change, so what’s happened is that Velazquez is setting himself up to hit what he should be able to hit best with his natural abilities.
These changes are good and they are helping to capitalize on the strengths in his game. Velazquez’s offensive profile is carried by his power, which is easily plus raw. It probably approaches that level in game. He’s hit home runs up to 111 MPH off the bat. That opposite field shot was 105 MPH. He can absolutely mash, there’s no question about it.
There are hit tool questions, though. Velazquez struck out 25.5 percent of the time across 137 AA plate appearances. He struck out at a 33.7 percent clip in 288 Hi-A plate appearances. The contact questions remain with a contact rate around 65 percent in the AFL. This comes with an ability to draw walks, too.
Beyond the numbers, Velazquez does swing and miss a lot. Any count, any location, he is liable to swing right through it. There is reason to worry about the hit tool because of it. Especially because the pitching will only get better as he climbs the ladder. The strikeouts went down at the higher level and the walks went up. That could signal a potential approach change that worked.
There is one aspect to Velazquez at the plate and it becomes glaringly obvious pretty quickly: he fights. It doesn’t matter what the outcome of the at bat is. If you pick out a few Velazquez at bats from the season to watch, one of them is going to show him fouling pitches off.
There may be whiffs, but with his back against the wall he will not go down easily. On a random game in August he struck out four times. Three of those strikeouts included at least one foul with two strikes. The first of those strikeouts came on a 3-2 count. There were four pitches he fought off before going down on strikes.
This is what changed my mind about Velazquez. I get the power, I get the performance. Give me a guy who will fight with all he’s got. Sometimes he can turn this into hits, sometimes it’s an out. But he’s giving himself a chance and I love it.
Putting the pieces together, what is Nelson Velazquez? That’s where I kept getting tripped up when I wanted to finish this. It’s easy to look at it and slap a Kyle Schwarber-type comp on him. Big power with some hit tool concerns. The numbers might end up looking very similar between the two, so it makes a degree might make sense why it would be my first thought. I’m bad at comps. They go about it differently, of course. Velazquez pulls the ball way more and takes less in the grand scheme of things for that to be a perfect comp.
What he does have going for him is a really good arm. Velazquez has been racking up outfield assists in the AFL. That gives him some viability in the outfield, which makes him less of a DH only type like that offensive profile might suggest.
Velazquez should be legitimately able to handle a corner, which is good. There also could be a universal DH coming which is good. Both would help his arrow point up. Speaking purely from an offensive standpoint, there is a legitimate argument to be made that his ceiling is with plus power and a fringe hit tool. It’s really pretty when it all comes together, and I think this angle shows that.
At the end of the day, I still think the hype for Velazquez is too big for the potential outcome. I do think that there is some legitimacy to the rise, though. He is a seriously talented hitter who is in the conversation for being a top 10 prospect in this Cubs system in my mind. There just isn’t enough there to point towards an impact bat in Chicago day in and day out. Enjoy this though. He is doing something that not a lot of prospects do and that is put on a show and steal the headlines. This AFL performance is why, but don’t be fooled. He was good in the regular season too.
If he gets a hand of spraying the ball with consistency, watch out. That is the wild card in this whole profile. The whiffs will stick. The fastballs can get crushed. But if he’s using the whole field to do it, that will open up so many doors for him offensively. The Cubs have been doing really good things with their hitters, and Velazquez has the chance to be one of the bigger success stories from that.