David Matoma and tempuring expections from DSL results
How the Dominican Summer League can lead to unfair expectations for young prospects.
To say that David Matoma had an excellent start to his professional career is a bit of an understatement.
In 16.2 innings pitched in the Dominican Summer League, the young right-handed pitcher from Uganda didn’t allow a single earned run and reportedly topped 100 mph with his fastball.
He did all of this before he turned 18 years old.
Not only did that get the attention of Pirates’ fans, but Just Baseball also took note and ranked him as the 15th-best prospect in the system for the 2024 season. They gave his fastball a future value of ‘70’.
It’s always great to see a player get off to such a great start to their professional career, especially at such a young age, but this is another opportunity for a reminder of the long path still ahead of them.
The recent success of some international players in the game only heightens fans' hopes of finding a player within their organization who comes from the bottom to become a contributor at the major league level.
So when a player performs well in the DSL, especially considering the age at which some do it, it’s easy to get too excited about the player.
It’s important to remember how hard a mountain is to climb, working from the DSL to the majors.
Heck, it’s even hard to work your way from the DSL to Single-A, and sometimes even the best performers have issues with making the jump.
Even looking at the past couple of years in the DSL for the Pirates, we’ve seen excellent examples of it.
Alexander Mojica posted an 182 wRC+ and 1.048 OPS as a 16-year-old in the Dominican during the 2019 season, jumped to Bradenton in 2021, and has remained there in the last three years.
While he’s shown a decent walk rate there, the strikeouts have been too high and limited to a batting average barely above the Mendoza line. He’s still 21 years old and will be for most of the 2024 season, but many things must work out for him.
Axiel Plaz was the star of the DSL for the Pirates last year and started gaining a lot of traction in the fanbase and even some national media after putting up a 209 wRC+ at just 16 years old.
His OPS (.596) in the Complex League last year was less than his slugging (.706) in the DSL during 2022. He’ll still be 18 for most of the 2024 season, but it was another rough entry into the next level of the minors.
The Pirates are not guaranteed to bring Matoma over to pitch in the FCL next year. They did bring Andres Silvera over, who also had a solid year in the DSL (2022) as a 17-year-old.
He didn’t pitch much last year in the FCL as they got him acclimated, finishing with just 18.1 innings pitched, and he had some control issues.
This isn’t an indictment on the Pirates’ development or the players - it’s just a reminder that playing professional baseball is hard. It takes time and patience for these players to develop into the players they will become.
Development isn’t linear, some don’t adjust immediately, and the numbers put up in the DSL sometimes put an unfair amount of eyes on players that probably shouldn’t be considered ‘prospects’ for another couple of years.
If Matoma makes the jump to the States this year, he will certainly be an interesting player to monitor to see how he adjusts, it just may come with some bumps and bruises.
There should be an article like this once a year. I did an extensive study over 15 years of DSL results for the entire league and it showed that doing well in the league didn't guarantee anything. The top hitters and top pitchers in the league each year didn't make it to the majors at a higher rate than the rest of the field. Getting one player from the DSL to the majors from each season is the expected number, with two being successful, and that includes guys who made it for a handful of games. There were plenty of teams over that span that used 35+ players during the season and got no one to the majors.
In the last two years, I only looked at DSL boxscores when I had to write recaps. The stats from the league are completely useless. Scouting reports are more important than any stats EXCEPT playing time at key positions, though the scouting reports will likely be able to expand of why that is happening.
That's coming from someone who studied those boxscores for 10+ years. The study of the future results were eye-opening to say the least.
I know the odds are long for Matoma to ever make it, but until he gives up an earned run, he is my hope of a unicorn.