![]() Firm, upper-80s changeups and sliders dart in different directions, and are thrown with 100 mph-looking effort. In addition to the humming fastball, Miller wields three above-average (at least) secondary pitches that he mixes pretty evenly, especially against lefty batters. Given the 2022 performance of some of their young 40-man occupants (strike-throwing issues for Ryan Pepiot, Andre Jackson), Miller might be Los Angeles’ most reliable in-season option to make a start if one or more of their projected starters goes down with injury. ![]() He’s set up to throw about 135 innings in 2023 (assuming a typical 20-inning increase) and, if his annual pattern of promotion is any indication, he’ll be given his first big league opportunity late this year (and push for a playoff roster spot), then compete for an Opening Day rotation job in 2024. Despite some of the length and violence in Miller’s delivery, he’s demonstrated that he can sustain elite velocity deep into each start, throw strikes, and (so far) keep his arm healthy, as his only career IL stint was for an oblique strain. And Miller held upper-90s velocity throughout, sitting 98-99 mph throughout most of his starts and rarely ever dipping below the 96-97 mph band with his fastball, which he also threw for a strike at a 70% clip in 2022. That’s a 31% K% and 8% BB% across twice as many innings as the year before, when Miller was being built back up from the shortened 2020 season. In totality, Miller made 24 starts (if you count his Futures Game outing), worked 113 innings and posted a top-25 K-BB% among minor leaguers who threw at least 100 frames. The quality of Miller’s outings improved throughout 2022 and after some early-season hiccups, he dominated Double-A in July and August and was promoted to Triple-A Oklahoma City for the final month of the season. Cartaya presents the Dodgers with a good problem, as they already have one of baseball’s best catchers in place ahead of him and the two are set to overlap on the active roster during the next three to four seasons. His physicality perhaps gives him a better chance of withstanding that grind than most other prospects. ![]() The bumps and bruises that come with catching 100 games often make it tough for catchers to sustain peak offensive performance, and Cartaya hasn’t been exposed to that yet. Cartaya had a whopping 41% hard-hit rate in 2022, which is already better than that of the average big league starting catcher (he’s 21!), and this is true of Cartaya in most underlying statistical categories and proprietary stats that attempt to measure power output objectively. Power on par with Salvy seems in play here, too. His gigantic frame and plus arm are a big part of where the Salvador Perez comps are coming from. ![]() Cartaya’s exchange is absurdly fast for a player his size, and he actively hunts baserunners when they reach, a threat to throw to the bases at any time. Of course, he has game-changing arm strength. It can take him a while to get to the ground and even when he does, he tends to give up long rebounds that allow runners to advance anyway. His ball-blocking is still pretty rough, though. Whether or not Cartaya does this depends on the pitch he’s called, and sometimes he’ll start from a crouch and drop to a knee as the pitch is in mid-flight. He’s begun to solve the former problem by occasionally catching on one knee with one leg splayed out, à la Carlos Ruiz, which allows him to be lower to the ground and present low pitches moving back toward the zone. He struggled to frame low pitches and one-hoppers would find a way through his wickets. ![]() Power and arm strength have been Cartaya’s headline tools since his amateur days, and despite missing lots of time in the 2020-21 window due to the pandemic and injuries, he has still developed on defense and managed his strikeout tendencies, and played enough in ’22 to reinforce industry confidence in his plate discipline across a larger sample of plate appearances.Ĭartaya’s size was sometimes a problem on defense early in pro ball. His rare raw thump has already begun to manifest in games, as Cartaya clubbed 22 homers in 2022, a season after he dealt with multiple injuries that severely limited his playing time. Now on the 40-man roster, Cartaya is poised to be a power-hitting All-Star catcher who gets eased into the big league waters in 2024 and ’25, toward the back end of Will Smith‘s arbitration years. ![]()
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