Spring training is such a fun time, offering fans their first real look at not only who their team will be sending out in the big leagues but also at the team's future. This is the time of year when prospects see a lot of action as the everyday players ease into the grind of the long baseball season.
Enjoying seeing prospects take the field against big leaguers is one thing. However, making sense of how these prospects perform in camp and what it could mean going forward is a lot trickier. We are still talking about such a small sample of playing time in spring training, where pitchers are still working on things and hitters are still getting up to speed. Good or bad, assessing where a prospect stands based on spring results is extremely difficult.
When in doubt, one should just ask the experts — so that's exactly what we did. After a whirlwind tour of spring training out in Arizona, MLB Pipeline's own Jim Callis stopped by the Baseball Insiders podcast to talk about what he saw and heard on the ground as well as the prospects that he has a close eye on at the start of the 2025 season.
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Jim Callis gives an update on how some top prospects are doing in spring training
It is pretty wild how much running around Callis had to do in the Cactus League to get content put together for the fine folks over at MLB, but that is why he is the man. While he wasn't able to see a lot of the goings-on on the Minor League backfields, he did make sure to relay that by all accounts, Rangers infield prospect Sebastian Walcott looks like he could be special.
"Sebastian Walcott, who is not going to turn 19 until later this week, went 4-9 with three doubles and a homer and looks unbelievable. He's 6-foot-3, I don't know what he is listed at, but he is put together pretty well," Callis said. "You won't call him projectable. He looks like a big league body. If you didn't know and you were just watching him, you wouldn't know he is 18 years old. He looked tremendous."
Callis made sure to also mention prospects Hagen Smith and Noah Schultz as two arms he managed to see in action that were impressive. Predictably, their command wasn't on point early in camp, but the stuff looked good. He also went out of his way to talk about slugging Kansas City Royals prospect Jac Caglianone who seems like a guy that will live and die in terms of his ceiling based on whether he can get his chase rate under control.
We also made sure to ask Callis about Roki Sasaki, who was one of the bigger storylines this offseason before finally signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers. There was some chatter about Sasaki looking for his new team to help him unlock more velocity on his fastball, but Callis seems to think that what he needs is a bit more complex than that.
"He was still good in Japan last year. However, as you alluded to, his stuff ticked down a notch or two," Callis admitted. "His stuff was still good, but it wasn't as good as in 2023. I do think, as good as he is, there are things to improve and the Dodgers are a team that do a good job and spare no expense, whether it is on players, development, or technology, to help guys get better."
"I think it's not so much just recapturing the tick or two of velocity he lost," Callis continued. "The splitter ... nobody can hit that splitter. With the fastball, it's fastball command. If he doesn't locate it well, it can get hit at times. The slider can be a plus pitch, but it can be inconsistent. With the velocity, you want to get him back to where he was, but I think it is more the fastball command and the slider consistency."
Our interview with Callis covered a wide range of topics after that, including catcher Drake Baldwin's 2025 outlook with the Atlanta Braves, where he ranks the Red Sox's big three against other prospect classes (spoiler alert: high), and when he thinks pitcher Bubba Chandler could make his big league debut with the Pittsburgh Pirates. There is something for everybody in this wide-ranging interview, so make sure to give it a watch so that you are as ready as you can be for the start of the 2025 season and the inevitable debates with your friends and family that are coming up fast.