Athletics will promote the best hopes Nick Kurtzreports Martín Gallegos from MLB.com. The A already have a vacancy of 40 men, they will therefore only have to make an active movement corresponding to make this official. The club left today so that this move was not known publicly before tomorrow.
Kurtz, 22, is one of the best hopes in baseball. He set up a line .333 / .510 / .725 in three seasons for Wake Forest, which led them to select it fourth in total in last year’s draft. Since becoming pro, Kurtz has continued to crush.
He appeared in 32 minor league games so far, with appearances in Single-A and Double-A last year, followed by a triple-A jump this year. Combined, he has 147 plates appearances. Its 24.5% withdrawal rate is a little high, but it also made walks to a huge clip of 15% and launched 11 circuits. It has a combined line .336 / .432 / .689 through these levels with a 171 WRC +, indicating that it was 71% better than the average of the league.
Arriving this year, even before he started to shake Triple-A, Kurtz was considered one of the best hopes in the League. Baseball America first gave him room n ° 34, although he has since jumped at # 32. Fangraphs put him in # 31, MLB Pipeline A at # 35, ESPN in # 52 and Keith Law of the Athletic in # 35. All points of sale generally praise his combination of power and his work. Although he is only able to play the first goal, he is considered a solid defender in this place.
It is a fairly aggressive promotion, Kurtz having just been drafted less than a year ago, but his figures certainly suggest that he is ready for the show. The question is now to know how to align them defensively. Tyler soderstrom has been the regular to the first goal so far this year and has a large campaign. Him and Cal raleigh are tied at the top of the ranking of Major League Home Run with nine. This helped him produce a line .298 / .362 / .643 and 191 WRC + so far this year.
Using the designated typing spot would be an easy way to regularly bring Kurtz and Soderstrom into the range, except that Brent Rooker is the DH almost every day. Rooker is a huge powerful bat for more than two years now, launching 30 circuits in 2023 and 39 last year. He has already been six so far this year. It removes a lot, but the overall contributions are always enormous. The A clearly agrees because they signed it for an extension of $ 60 million over five years in January.
Rooker has 955 career rounds in the corners of the field, but with a mediocre number. He collected -17 of the defensive tracks saved and -16 withdrawal above the average at that time, which is why them used it as the DH so often.
Soderstrom came as a receiver, but there were questions about the question of whether he could remain defensively. The A did not show much interest in putting it back behind the plate, especially with SHEA LAGELIERS behave well there.
Gallegos recently suggested that the A planned to put Soderstrom in the third row, although it would be a fairly daring movement in season because it has never played the position. The simplest solution for the moment would be to live with the defense of rooker in the left field, by cutting the playing time of Seth Brown And Miguel Andujar there, with JJ Bleday in the center and Lawrence Butler right.
More to come.
