10 Observations: Tsung-Che Cheng showing more power in Altoona

A look at the system over the past week.

Murphy—Carlos Mateo hit triple digits with his fastball in an FCL game this past week. The stuff has looked good for the 18-year-old so far. It is an upper 90s fastball with plus movement at times and a slider with some impressive break.

It’s just the walks that continue to plague him. He walked 30, yes 30, in 12 innings last year in the Dominican. He’s up to 18 in nine this year in the Complex.

He’s one of those ‘if he clicks, watch out’ kind of long-shots, but that’s a lot of cleaning up to do. Mateo is the reminder that many kids throw hard in the minors, it’s the control/command that moves you up.

Murphy—Juan Machado is quickly becoming one of my favorite prospects to watch in the Complex. He walks a ton and immediately looks to steal when he reaches base. It seems like a light-hitting, speed-only profile, but he did have a batted ball that reached 100 mph exit velocity. There is still a way to go, but he’s quickly joining the incredibly crowded outfield picture in Florida.

Murphy—At the risk of being called a box score scout once again, watching Tsung-Che Cheng nuke a ball down the right field line against Richmond on Wednesday, and then seeing it was his sixth home run of the season already, there are a lot of numbers playing into the ‘selling out for contact’ theory on him.

Whether that is the case or not, Cheng hasn’t had the worst start to the season if you look past the batting average. He’s easily on pace for a double-digit home run/stolen base season and playing solid defense at shortstop. The walks are even up, even if the swing, miss, and strikeouts are up.

Edit: Since writing this observation, he has another home run and a game with two doubles.

Murphy—The Pirates have quite the log jam between Greensboro and Altoona when it comes to starting pitchers, so they have had to get creative. One guy that’s throwing out the bullpen right now is Alessandro Ercolani. I don’t think it’s a permanent thing, 20 is too early to make that switch, but this is an excellent way to manage his innings. He’s at 33.1 innings pitched now after throwing 65 last year. So he’s almost halfway to his 2023 mark with more than half the season.

The stuff did look a lot crisper out of the bullpen, his slider got a few really good misses. The main concern with him was holding the stuff deeper into games, and we saw some of what he was capable of in shorter outings. He’s still just 20, so there’s still time to learn how to stretch things out.

Murphy—That wasn’t the best I’ve seen Bubba Chandler (the Tuesday game), but it was close to it. The fastball command was good, leading to zero daily walks. The key for me, as well, was his work against righties, namely, using what looked to be more of a cutter.

It felt like he needed a secondary pitch to emerge to use against right-handed hitters. The cutter/slider has always shown promise, but he struggled with consistency. Lefties are covered with his plus change-up, so seeing something emerge on the other side is good.

Murphy—I’ve seen Carlos Castillo a couple of times this year, once in person, and he’s quickly becoming one of my favorite pitchers in the lower levels. He throws from a lower arm slot and still hits the mid-90s, all at 18 years old. Even the change-up looks promising, although maybe he needs a new grip? Something that can take some spin-off of it.

It gets about six-to-seven mph separation from the fastball and has some good movement—at times, taking some spin off it can go a long way. It makes me think of my conversation with Michael Kennedy, how he went to multiple players about his grip before landing on something Patrick Reilly had shown him.

Add in a legitimate change-up, add some control, and we might be cooking with something here.

Murphy—I don’t like to speak for others, but from the little bit we’ve talked about it, I think that the consensus here at the site has been fairly impressed with Richard Ramirez so far this season.

He’s consistently been a solid at-bat this year, whenever any of us has tuned in and has played some strong defense.

I’m okay with being patient with him, but on a team with Jhonny Severino, Yordany De Los Santos, and Tony Blanco Jr.—Ramirez has still found plenty of opportunities to stand out.

Nola Jeffy - Magdiel Cotto has had a bit of an interesting season. There was a three game stretch in April where he gave up at least one earned run each outing, but other than that, he's given up only two runs (one earned) the rest of the year. He strikes out almost a batter per inning (26 Ks in 27.2 IP), but unfortunately, he also walks (19 BBs) almost a batter per inning. He struck out one in his one inning Saturday night, notching his fourth save for the Marauders. He's been very, very tough to hit, currently carrying a .156 batting average against.

Nola Jeffy - A player most would have forgotten about — and for good reason as he's been MIA — but has piqued some interest is Scott Randall. The return for Diego A. Castillo from the Diamondbacks finally made his professional debut for the Pirates this year, starting with the FCL squad and having moved up to Bradenton.

On Saturday evening, he threw three shutouts to go with five strikeouts. He got his fastball up to 94 mph, averaging 92.7 mph. He generated five whiffs on ten swings with the fastball. During his abbreviated stint in the Complex league, he flashed a promising fastball shape that looks to have carried to FSL so far. He also showed a tight curveball that he was able to spot for strikes.

I'm sure he won't be moved too fast after only just returning, but given his age and more advanced stuff, he should move up the ladder quickly as I'm sure they'll want to see what they have in him.

Nola Jeffy - It’s been a bit of a tough year for hitters across the board, but Tsung-Che Cheng has been getting hotter as the season has gone on.

This past week, he went 7-for-23 with a pair of home runs and three doubles, bringing his total longballs on the season to seven. For the month of June so far, he has a slash of .333/.379/.667 for his best month so far. Eastern League average OPS (not updated with Sunday) is .699 with Cheng carrying a .728 OPS on the season.

Cheng has maintained a high walk rate at 13.2%, while his K-rate has jumped to 26.3%, but everything included he has a 111 wRC+ on the year.

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