The oddest of the minor leagues, an amalgamation of teams and levels forming together to get a little more work in before the year ends, is about to start. In the Arizona Fall League there are six teams, all made of players from five different Major League team’s minor league systems, generally including players from Advanced A through AAA.
The Indians have switched affiliates again this year, joining the Cubs, Marlins, Athletics and Blue Jays to form the Mesa Solar Sox. The Solar Sox play their home games at the Cubs’ Sloan Field in Mesa and begin their regular season schedule on October 11th against Surprise, ending (hopefully) with a championship game on November 19th at Scottsdale Stadium.
The Indians will send quite the crew to the desert to continue their season including three relief pitchers, one starting pitcher, a catcher, two outfielders and infielder.
Bradley Zimmer
Zimmer needs no introduction as the Indians top prospect heading into the 2017 season. Last year, the Indians sent Clint Frazier to the AFL to work on his strike outs and Zimmer is likely going for similar reasons this year after K’ing in 47 of 129 at bats after his late season promotion to AAA. Depending on the Indians off-season moves, they could have a pretty deep outfield at the Major League level (potentially Michael Brantley, Lonnie Chisenhall, Tyler Naquin, Abraham Almonte, Jose Ramirez and Brandon Guyer) and Zimmer’s play against high level opponents could give the Indians enough confidence to add his name to that list and to potentially move one or two other names (Chisenhall and Almonte).
Zimmer was originally scheduled to play for the Scorpions in the AFL in 2015, but a broken foot kept him out of action.
Greg Allen
A favorite of every baseball fan who has ever seen him play, Allen has already stolen 120 bases in just three professional season making him the fastest Indians base runner this side of Gabriel Mejia. He made the jump to Akron late in 2016 and continued to hit there as well as he did in Lynchburg, batting .297/.419/.406 across both levels.
For his entire career, Allen has been overshadowed by Zimmer and Clint Frazier, but he could be the real answer to the question, “which one is going to be the starting center fielder once they reach Cleveland?” He has little to prove at this point and, barring any crazy signings, could easily begin the 2017 season in Columbus already as the veterans acting as place holders in 2016, Michael Choice, Collin Cowgill and Joey Butler, should all be gone.
Yu-Cheng Chang
Chang has been a solid performer at every level so far in his career, particularly offensively as a short stop, but didn’t gain local recognition until he was announced as part of the ill-fated Jonathan Lucroy trade. Those who knew of him before the deal are happy it didn’t go through as he is currently having the best year of his career, hitting 13 home runs, 8 triples and 29 doubles while batting .262. After spending the entire season in Lynchburg and playing at this level, Chang seems bound for AA for his age 21 season no matter what, but he could certainly work on some things in the AFL. Particularly, he has issues with strike outs (imagine a team with Zimmer, Bobby Bradley and Chang in the same line-up a few years down the line, striking out 150 times a year each) as well as his defense.
In the Arizona Rookie League, Chang was primarily a third baseman once Alexis Pantoja was drafted and signed, but at the higher levels he has always played at short. With Lindor at short through at least 2021 and Jose Ramirez around nearly as long, it wouldn’t be surprising if the Indians try to get him a little more time at third (or another position) during the Fall to make him more versatile.
Eric Haase
Haase is a solid defensive catcher who was working back from injury early this season and only got into 58 games with the RubberDucks. The Fall League will give Haase a chance to make up this time and hopefully improve upon his less than exemplary regular season numbers.
The Indians have few catchers with high expectations beyond Francisco Mejia (Haase was ranked fourth on the Burning River Baseball catcher rankings earlier this year) and Haase could eventually be one of few options that could even be considered for a back-up MLB role. It has already taken Haase six seasons to make it through AA, so hopefully a good season in the AFL will give the Indians enough confidence that his next season can be in Columbus.
Michael Peoples
Peoples is the Indians only starting pitcher heading to the desert after a decent season in Akron with a 3.79 ERA in 152 innings. He is not considered a top pitching prospect for the Tribe and generally they would not want their top pitchers to throw too many innings during the off-season. With a K/9 of 6.6 and a BB/9 of 3.2 over his career so far and many pitchers ahead of him on the Indians depth chart (Ryan Merritt, Shawn Morimando and Cody Anderson to name a few that aren’t already Major League mainstays), this could be a chance for Peoples to get some notice.
Cameron Hill
After the trade of Ben Heller to New York for Andrew Miller, the crew at Burning River named Hill the Indians top relief prospect based largely on his 2.73 ERA in 56 innings in Lynchburg this year. This was actually Hill’s worst season to this point as he holds a 2.23 career MiLB ERA although his 9.2 K/9 in high A was particularly impressive.
Hill ended the season in Akron after an early August promotion and pitched just 11.1 innings, but struck out eight and only walked one. He probably didn’t play enough in AA this year to warrant a promotion to AAA to start 2017 even with a great AFL campaign, but if he is able to dominate hitters of higher levels in Arizona it could go a long way in getting him an early season call-up in 2017 and possibly even a spot in the Major League bullpen before the year is out.
David Speer
Although only in high A in 2016, Speer is the Indians top left handed relief option that hasn’t made his MLB debut. He held an ERA of 1.78 in 2016 in Lynchburg and struck out 60 in 60.2 innings. At the moment he is far from a match-up guy and was used an average of 1.5 innings per appearance. Speer has only been in the system for three years, but is already 23 and as a left handed reliever, could be fast tracked to the Majors. It wouldn’t be surprising to see him in AAA in 2017 and the Majors late that year or early the next.
Trevor Frank
A 25 year old right handed reliever who just finished his second year in Lynchburg, Frank is a little behind schedule and the AFL could get him back to playing with players his own age. He’s never had a bad season and has a career 9.7 K/9 and 2.45 ERA, well deserving of a promotion to Akron in 2017. A great Fall League could make it easier for him to make that a short promotion as a step up to AAA.
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