10 Observations: Roansy Contreras and Luis Ortiz big league future

latest 10 observations looks at Roansy Contreras, Luis Ortiz and Matt Gorski, among other things.

Photo Credit: Ryan Palencer

Murphy 9/12: I like when the affiliates get a chance to face a major league pitcher on rehab. It gives a chance to see how far away, or maybe even enhance what needs to be worked on. Obviously this really applies to the upper levels more than the lower, but it’s still nice to see.

That being said, it was especially nice to see how some of the Altoona hitters reacted to face Shane Bieber on Tuesday. From what I saw, two players immediately stuck out as people who stayed in the at-bat and even made some solid contact - Jase Bowen and Matt Fraizer.

Murphy 9/12: You can say the box score wasn’t the prettiest for Roansy Contreras on Tuesday, but he looked fine to me out there watching the game. The fastball velocity absolutely has me confused, but if he’s locating it, the pitch does have the movement to succeed regardless.

The defense hung him out to dry, and somehow both runs were still earned (they didn’t credit Nick Gonzales with an error but I felt he could/should have made that play), and everything ‘unraveled’ after that.

Murphy 9/13: I think Nola and myself were among the first two to jump on the Sean Sullivan hype train after he was drafted, and funny enough it was before we even started to interact.

He’s had an up and down season this year in Altoona, but has been really solid down the stretch. Watching his start on Wednesday, it was the off-speed pitch that really stood out to me.

While he doesn’t have an overpowering fastball, he has great command of it, and if he can really get the secondary stuff to play well, I still feel like he can be a back end starter, at least for a short time period.

Murphy 9/14: ‘Closer’ Kyle Nicolas has a pretty good ring to it, right? That’s the hint that the Indianapolis twitter page made after he got a two inning save on Wednesday.

I saw Nicolas pitch on Easter Sunday last year in Richmond and he pitched four perfect innings. He’s always been a pitcher I’ve been high on, just based on the pure stuff. This is probably always the path he was going to have to take, but at this point, with how much they are using the bullpen in Pittsburgh - he may be the single most player I’m interested in seeing get a shot that hasn’t yet.

Murphy 9/14: I saw MLB Pipeline did an article on one player they’d like to see from each system play in the Arizona Fall League, with Termarr Johnson being their pick.

For me it’d be Matt Gorski. We kind of know what he is at this point, but I still would love to see him get more at-bats against as good competition as possible. He was robbed of a lot of Triple-A time last year because of an injury, as well as an appearance in the AFL.

Maybe this year he makes that back up.

Murphy 9/15: At the end of the day, there isn’t too much that can be said when your combined stat line over your last two starts look like this - 13 IP, 5 H, 2 BB, 12 K - but looking at this from a pure developmental point of view, something interesting to point out when it comes to Jared Jones’ month of September.

He’s kind of reverted back to relying on just two-pitches - the fastball and slider.

Of the 262 pitches he’s thrown over his last three starts, 232 of them have been the fastball or slider. He’s nearly at a 50% usage just with the fastball (48.8%).

Granted, his fastball is elite, easily capable of reaching the upper 90s and has great shape metrics on it.

Just something to watch that he’s slowly going away from his other two pitches.

Murphy 9/15: Not to sound too hyperbolic, but that was perhaps I’ve seen Omar Cruz look on the mound since the Richmond series last year where I saw him live.

Fastball looked like it had a little more zip on it (Nola pointed it out first), with the curve and change up looking good as usual. Also looked like he might have been throwing a slider against lefties as well.

Murphy 9/16: When Luis Ortiz was promoted last year and started getting a lot of attention by the fanbase and eventually national media, I told myself I wasn’t going to buy into all the hype because simply, I didn’t see it while watching him in the minors.

Of course in the off-season I went ahead and bought into the hype, and yet here we are.

Maybe the strikeouts and swing and miss play up out of the bullpen, but at this point I’m not even sure I buy Ortiz as a major league pitcher right now. The walks are too high, which if he was striking out a lot of hitters you could probably live with it, especially as a reliever.

He has a 13.9 K% compared to a 12.2 BB%. The fastball velocity isn’t the issue - according to Baseball Savant it’s in the 84th percentile. Looking at his pitch heat map, they are all thrown right down the pipe.

This off-season will be big for Ortiz, but not sure I like the outlook as it looks now.

Murphy 9/17: I really believed his Tuesday outing was better than what the box score originally said, but there was no hiding what happened on Sunday for Roansy Contreras.

It was rough, it was ugly, and I’m close to sharing the same sentiment I do above to Ortiz, I’m just not sure Roansy is someone that is going to be able to pitch in the majors right now, barring a big overhaul in the offseason.

Nola 9/17: It was a bit of an odd year for Matt Gorski, but on Sunday he reached the 20/20 milestone, for the second consecutive season as noted by Anthony.

After an abbreviated 2022 Triple-A debut of two at bats, Gorski returned to Double-A in 2023. He had a couple injury stints during the year, but had nearly 400 plate appearances with a wRC+ of 97 in the Eastern League. He surprisingly dropped his K% to around 25%, but his walk rate under 7% has kept his OBP under .300 for the season.

The jump to Indianapolis has gone well, mostly as he’s stayed healthy. The power has continued to move along with him, but unfortunately the wrong side of .300 OBP has followed as well. In a perfect world, he would return to the around 10% walk rates he had in High-A and Double-A in 2022, but Gorski may still be able to carve out a 4th OF role with his power and defensive capabilities in the OF.