Scouting Aidan Miller, Max Anderson, Jett Williams, Enrique Bradfield Jr. and more

New York Times

02-06-2025

I caught a day game in Reading last week to get a look at a couple of hitters in the Fightin Phils' lineup and that of the Double-A Erie Seawolves. I got a two-hour pitchers' duel, with the final score 1-0, and the hitters I was there to see went a collective 1-for-11.
Phillies shortstop Aidan Miller is in my top 10 prospects now, despite a soft start to his 2025 season, as I remain confident he's going to stick at short and that he's going to hit.
Advertisement
He started the year in Double A even though he won't turn 21 until next week, and had just one year of pro ball under his belt before 2025. After a slow April, he hit better in May, with a .274/.358/.417 line on the month. I saw none of that, unless you count the foul home run he hit down the third-base line, after which he popped up on a slider. He's got bat speed, he swings hard, and he doesn't expand the zone much at all — his outs and even his one whiff in this game were all on strikes.
Miller played excellent defense at short, showing great instincts, nailing a runner who tried to go second to third on a groundball to short, with a 60 (out of the 20-80 scouting scale) arm. He has to keep hitting, of course, but I do believe he's going to do so.
Detroit infielder Max Anderson has been hitting well all season for Erie, spurring at least one reader to ask why he wasn't on my ranking of the top 50 prospects in the minors from last week. The short answer to that is that it's a ranking based on long-term outlook and potential rather than short-term performance, but in Anderson's specific case, it's that his game is really limited beyond the hit tool. He will get to the majors and probably play for a while because his ability to put the ball in play and do so hard enough to sustain solid or better batting averages is real. He's hitting .339/.378/.554 through Friday's games with just a 16.1 percent strikeout rate. As you can infer from the triple-slash line, though, he doesn't walk (5 percent on the dot) and swings at a lot of pitches beyond the zone. And while he does hit the ball pretty hard, his hands are so far out from his body that he doesn't have great control or direction, so there aren't a ton of line drives here and I question whether that .200+ ISO power is sustainable.
In the field, he has no position. He was standing at second base and had very limited range, even ceding a play to the shortstop on his side of the bag at one point. He's built like a catcher, but as far as I know, he's never played back there, at least not since high school. If you back all of this up and just assume he'll still hit .300 even with the approach and swing questions, just without many walks and maybe more of a .450-ish slug, that's an above-average regular if he sticks at second base and maybe not a regular at first base or DH.
He's an outlier in many ways, but if you sum up all of the probabilities here, the expected value is probably an average regular or below. Oh, and the runner Miller threw out trying to go second to third on a grounder to short? That was Anderson, with the TOOTBLAN.
Thayron Liranzo is off to a lousy start for Erie, and it wasn't a great day for him at the plate, with some bad whiffs on pitches he either should have hit (90 mph in the zone from a right-hander) or laid off (several sliders down below the zone). He was fine behind the plate, not challenged in any way, and he does have bat speed. He got off to a terrible start last year as well, pulling out of it in May, so maybe he's just someone who needs a longer adjustment period. His swing decisions in this game were bad, and that lines up with his year to date, unfortunately.
Advertisement
I also went down to Bowie, Maryland, to see the team now known as the Chesapeake Baysox — and sometimes as the, uh, Oyster Catchers — but got just six innings and change before the rains returned, ending that game. (Their game Wednesday was rained out, and as I'm writing this on Saturday afternoon it's pouring here in Delaware again.)
The Mets' Double-A affiliate, the Binghamton Rumble Ponies, were in town, and their top prospect at the moment, shortstop Jett Williams, was leading off. He looked very good at the plate, like his injury-marred 2024 season never happened, driving the ball well and running plus again. It's a big swing for a fun-sized guy — the Rumble Ponies had two players in their lineup who were 5-foot-6, Williams and Wyatt Young, so I felt seen — and Williams is going to have to max out his strength to make this swing work; otherwise it's a lot of flyouts, because he swings like he's going to hit it 450 feet. He doesn't chase much at all, and he barely puts the ball on the ground, which are good things as long as you have enough juice for those balls in the air to at least be doubles, not outs. He can play shortstop, but that's academic as long as he's in the Mets' system.
Binghamton centerfielder Nick Morabito was 1-for-3 with an infield single that went about 10 feet, showing off plus speed, and he was caught looking on a pretty good pitch to hit. He was tentative in center field, so the speed isn't translating into plus range.
The one prospect in Chesapeake's lineup was Enrique Bradfield Jr., Baltimore's first-rounder in 2023, who is recently back from a hamstring injury. He bunted in his first at-bat, I think an attempt to drag a bunt that failed, which would probably have made me scream if I were the Orioles' farm director — this kid needs to swing the bat, not advance the runners. I got one proper swing from him, where he completely collapsed his back side and was swinging uphill, popping the ball up.
Orioles right-hander Levi Wells was their fourth-round pick in 2023 out of Texas State, then showed up last year with more velocity, bumping 97. This year, he's sitting 97-98 on the four-seamer and bumping 102, with a cutter, slider and curveball rounding out the arsenal. It's an odd package, though, as none of the pitches actually misses bats — the fastball doesn't have a lot of life or movement, the cutter is hard but also not that sharp, and the curveball might actually be the best offering of the bunch even though it's the slowest.
Advertisement
Mets left-hander Zach Thornton, their fifth-rounder last year out of Grand Canyon, is having a terrific season so far, with a 2.30 ERA since his promotion to Double A. It's all deception, though; he comes from a high slot with some cross-fire action, mostly 90-92 with nothing to miss bats in the zone.
(Top photo of Miller: George Kubas / Diamond Images via Getty Images)