Welcome back to another edition of Live Looks, folks. It was a very busy week for me with not only baseball (Complex games and Team USA 18u) but also from a personal standpoint as my wedding is officially less than a month away now. So, I was only able to take in 1 game while Palm Beach was in town. Sorry, Cardinals friends! The good news is that I made it count by ensuring to catch one of the Cardinals’ more exciting young arms -- and no, it’s probably not the one you’re thinking of.
RHP Dionys Rodriguez
Rodriguez is a pop-up prospect for the Cards this season and a good one at that. He’s been relatively dominant for a kid who just turned 21 this month, posting a 3.62 ERA over 64.2 innings with 84 Ks and a 1.08 WHIP. He’s got a medium-sized frame and looks the listed 6’0, 188lbs with a few pounds of projection remaining, but not much. The shoulders are broad with long arms and a higher waist - it’s a good pitcher’s body. Rodriguez shows good athleticism on the mound with a loud delivery that features a high leg kick and long arm action that drops down and back behind his torso, gets good scap retraction, and finishes with moderate to high effort from a ¾ slot. He does a better job of repeating than I expected, but when he gets out of sync, it’s tough for him to find the release again and he struggles to throw strikes in the meantime. He doesn’t necessarily hide the ball well, but between all the moving parts and his quick arm, the ball seems to jump on guys a bit out of his hand.
The stuff is definitely the calling card for Rodriguez. He features a high-octane fastball that touched 96 multiple times in the 1st and lived at 93-94 throughout the 6-inning stint. It showed solid carry at the top of the zone and flashed some good ASR. Very much an in-between fastball that gives you a little bit of both ride and run. Hitters couldn’t do much with it, especially when elevated. Fouling it off seemed to be the best they could do. His most-used secondary is a gyro slider that sat 81-86 that he threw to both lefties and righties. It got cutterish at times when he threw it harder, but remained effective. He was able to land it for more called strikes than chases/whiffs and it seemed to function as an offering to induce more weak contact than strikeouts, which gives me concern that he doesn’t have a true swing and miss pitch beyond the fastball. A changeup rounded out the arsenal, but he threw it just 3 times on a night he unloaded 100+ pitches which likely tells you all you need to know. It had decent separation, sitting 86-87 and showed good fade and tumble, but he appeared to lack confidence and feel. He threw it when he felt he had to and strictly to opposite-handed hitters.
All in all, Rodriguez has been quite effective this year and should be given a chance to start for as long as he can continue turning over lineups. The delivery and secondaries give me pause that he’ll be able to start long term, and there’s not much projection left in the body to bank on more velocity coming. That said, it looks like the floor here might be a low-leverage relief which is pretty good, all things considered. Keep an eye on how he fares at A+ in 2022.
OF Patrick Romeri
Romeri was probably the unluckiest hitter of the night. Despite going 0 of 5, he had a pair of rockets off the bat that were simply poorly placed and found leather. Good process, bad outcome. In fact, it took a good play from the center fielder to rob Romeri of extra bases on a hard liner to dead center.
The swing itself is pretty intriguing. Romeri has a very quiet load where his hands are nearly still before he attacks the ball. The swing plane isn’t flat, but it’s close, which will keep the bat in the hitting zone longer -- but he did show an ability to backspin the ball and get it in the air with force. There’s still some swing and miss to his game due to weaker bat to ball skills, but it’s an approach that I would expect to lead to some solid batting averages and a good chunk of extra base hits in the gaps given his athleticism and ability to impact the ball. He has the look of a 5th outfielder type who has the defensive chops to be passable at all three positions, but likely won’t develop a bat that you’re anxious to get in the lineup.
OF Mike Antico
First things first: Antico is a 23.5-year old, 5th-year senior sign out of Texas, so not only is he old for Low-A, but he’s very old. Expectations for someone his age are to dominate this level. In my look, I would say that he was on that path.
Antico was very aggressive in the zone, attacking the first pitch he liked (and the very first pitch in his first two at-bats) and making solid contact. He smoked a pair of balls over 100 MPH and just missed a third that likely would have cleared the century mark as well had he squared it up - instead it was a high fly ball to right. Despite the aggression, he showed solid knowledge of the strike zone and didn’t expand much. Antico’s loudest tool is what might be a double-plus run grade and the know-how of stealing a bag. I clocked a 4.19 home-to-first time on what was clearly a slow start out of the box for him. He DH’d when I caught him, but he’s got the physical tools of a CF with potential for great range.
OF Ryan Holgate
It was not the best of nights for Mr. Holgate. He opened the game by swinging through the first two pitches he saw - fooled on both pitches - and followed that up by rolling over to the first baseman. Next time up, he fouled off three straight and swung through a 90MPH fastball for a strikeout. He settled in a bit more the third time through and worked a 5-pitch walk (though he appeared to misread the play while running the bases when L.J. Jones doubled) and then popped in his final plate appearance of the evening. Frankly, there wasn’t much to see and perhaps it was just an off night for him. This is the downside to only catching one game - there’s no opportunity to compare the performance to other games in the series.
The body is strong and athletic and there’s undoubtedly enough power in the bat to profile as a corner outfielder at the top level. The question here is whether or not he’s going to hit enough to get there. The swing has some steepness to it, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but he had major bat-to-ball and pitch recognition issues on Saturday night. That combination doesn’t bode well. I’m sure Holgate will tell you that it hasn’t been the pro debut he’d hoped for, but I do think it’s important to keep in mind that this is likely the longest season of his life and it’s very possible that he’s just fatigued. Keep in mind that there was essentially no 2020 season for anyone but MLBers, so many of these guys had nearly 18 months off before coming back and playing a full college season and half a pro season. There’s no need to be too concerned yet.