If you look around my minor league rosters, you’ll find a few organizations extremely well represented, especially the Red Sox, Brewers, Mets, and Dodgers. My favorite way to play this game is to identify competent developmental teams and lean into that. It’s not like I refuse to roster someone from a bottom-feeder; I just zoom in more closely on great organizations and give tie-breaker preference in that direction. Perhaps that understates the reality of how my rosters end up looking. For example, I have five minor league pitchers on my Razz 30 roster: three Red Sox (Yordanny Monegro, Juan Valera, Eduardo Rivera) and two Dodgers (Sean Linan, Christian Zazueta).
My hitters are more spread out. I have two Cubs, two Cardinals and then one from the Brewers, Dodgers, Guardians, Pirates, Padres, and Royals. The Cardinals are one of the orgs on the move this year. They overhauled their hitting program this off-season and are getting good results from a lot of their young hitters. I’ve featured Rainiel Rodriguez in this space before, and he’s still a quick pick-up wherever you can fit him, but this week I’m looking at OF Joshua Baez (21, A+), a 2nd-round pick out of high school in 2021 who has struggled to make contact as a professional. He has generally struck out at a 35 percent clip in his time with the club, but this year, he’s down at 21.4 percent through 38 High-A games after posting a 35.5 percent K-rate in 71 games at the level last season. It’s by far the lowest strikeout rate of his young career, and the slash line reflects that. He’s at .317/.404/.483 with four home runs and an eye-popping 20 stolen bases. That’s a lot of steals for anyone, but Baez is a 6’3” 220 lb power hitter for whom swing-and-miss has kind of been the only question up to this point. He has been caught stealing just twice, and while he’s not a burner in the Chandler Simpson sense, he clearly has the will to run after swiping 29 bases in 86 games last season, and stealing bases in 2025 is as much about will and skill as it is about wheels.
One last reason to pop Baez onto a roster: he’s been incredible this month, slashing .385/.484/.590 with three homers and 14 stolen bases over his last 20 games. I’m not ready to say every Cardinals prospect needs to be monitored the way you might watch young Dodgers, but I’m leaning in for now.
In a similar vein, you might be okay if you only ever rostered Mets pitching prospects. The latest one to pull my attention is RHP Irving Cota (21, AA), who skipped High-A this week to throw five shutout innings in his Double-A debut. He allowed just one baserunner and recorded five strikeouts. A spindly 6’5” 175 lbs, Cota signed out of Mexico in the 2023 international class and pitched pretty well right away, but he’s made a leap this year, recording a 0.66 WHIP through 28.2 Low-A innings. He was piggybacking and throwing a couple innings at a time until his final Low-A start, during which he threw five scoreless innings and allowed just one hit. My guess is the front office believed Cota wouldn’t face significant resistance at High-A and didn’t want him to invite sloppy habits born from easy dominance. So far so good on that front.
Another tall hurler caught my attention this week: Red Sox LHP Eduardo Rivera (21, A+). At 6’7” 237 lbs, Rivera makes a big first impression and follows that up with double-plus velocity and a dynamic curveball. An 11th round pick by Oakland in 2021, he struggled with throwing enough strikes to project as more than a middle-inning type, which led Oakland to release him after four High-A games in 2024 that saw Rivera walk ten batters in 8.1 innings. Boston picked him up and reset the mechanism, sending Rivera to the complex league to focus on mechanics over outcomes. And as is often the case, the enhanced focus on process over results wound up creating enhanced results. Rivera recorded at 1.99 ERA in 22.2 innings with the Low-A Red Sox, allowing just seven walks against 30 strikeouts (25.6 K-BB%). The team sent him back to the site of his High-A failures to open this season; Rivera has responded with a 0.83 ERA, 0.65 WHIP and 34.6 percent strikeout-minus-walk rate through 21.2 innings. He’s allowed zero hits in his last 9.2 innings and just five hits (0 HR) on the season. He’s so far under the radar he was free in the Razz30 and would probably be a minimum-bid pickup in your league if you’re interested.
Milwaukee continues to develop intriguing kids at the lower levels. Brewers OF José Anderson (18, A) appears to be next in line. I got outbid by a buck last week in a 15-team dynasty because I thought two bucks would be enough. Don’t pinch pennies here like I did. Milwaukee already waved Anderson on to Low-A after he crushed the complex league for ten games, slashing .333/.467/.750 with three home runs and three stolen bases. It’s not going great through six games at Low-A (.174/.296/.261) but I’m inclined toward holding him for at least a month or so to see how he handles the challenge.
I mentioned him in the opener, so I should circle back to discuss Dodgers RHP Christian Zazueta (20, A), another recent Razz30 pickup who cost me nothing. Lower-minors arms are not great investments for a lot of dynasty leagues. In a 15-team mixed with 20 spots, around 300 players rostered, I’d prefer to wait until a pop-up guy reaches Double-A before bumping someone off the squad for him, but it pays to treat Dodgers’ players a little differently, so I’ll probably have Zazueta on a few claims lists this weekend. A prototypical frame of 6’3” 163 lbs gives Zaz a lot of room for muscle, and he’s already throwing solid stuff. The real allure here is in the repeatability and command, as plus athleticism keeps Zazueta on balance throughout his delivery and creates some deception on his current mix of fastball, slider, changeup. Through 41.1 innings, he’s got a 2.18 ERA and 1.04 WHIP with 47 strikeouts and 11 walks. He got knocked around in 52.1 innings at the level last year (1.41 WHIP), so the team might want to leave him in the slow-cooker, but I’m thinking 100 low-A innings is probably enough to wave this guy along to High-A. He’s been especially good his last two times out, allowing zero runs and one walk with 15 strikeouts across 11.2 innings.
Thanks for reading!
