Minor League Notables & Draft Pick Tracker - April 9th, 2026
45 write-ups on last night's notable performances & our 2025 Draft Tracker rolls on
LOW-A — ARMS
Kendry Chourio | RHP | Kansas City Royals | Columbia Fireflies
4.2 innings. 0 hits. 0 earned runs. 6 strikeouts. 59 pitches.
No hits. No runs. Six strikeouts. Fifty-nine pitches. And he still had more left in the tank when the Fireflies went to the bullpen. Chourio was untouchable against the Pelicans — a lineup that got exactly nothing off him from the first pitch to the last — and the efficient pitch count tells you this wasn’t a guy grinding through traffic. He was coasting. Chourio sat mid 90s and featured a litany of secondaries that kept hitters off balance. The Royals have more than just “something” here and tonight was an absolute statement performance. Prior to the season, I mentioned that the front runners for top pitching prospect in the game by the end of the season would be Ryan Sloan and/or Seth Hernandez. Kendry Chourio isn’t far behind.
Tyler Boudreau | RHP | New York Yankees | Tampa Tarpons
4.1 innings. 3 hits. 1 earned run. 9 strikeouts. 62 pitches.
Nine strikeouts in 4.1 innings on 62 pitches. That’s the line. That’s the number you sit with for a minute. For context, that pitch count suggests Boudreau was putting hitters away quickly and efficiently — nine punch outs without breaking 65 pitches means he wasn’t working deep counts to get there. The stuff is generating whiffs early, and the results back it up. Speaking of the stuff — Boudreau is throwing a 94 mph fastball with over 19 inches of ride and a sub 10 inch horizontal break. That’s a really good movement profile for this type of arm. He also mixed in his changeup, slider, and curveball to good results — his entire arsenal generating a .138 xwOBA. And something tells me, like with arms in the past, that there is more in the tank for velocity gains. We saw it with Cam Schlittler. When I first scouted Schlittler, he was sitting 93-95 and is now sitting 97-98 nearly 2 years later.
James Ellwanger | RHP | Minnesota Twins | Fort Myers Mighty Mussels
4 innings. 1 hit. 0 earned runs. 5 strikeouts. 50 pitches.
The results line is clean. Now let me tell you why the stuff behind it matters.
Ellwanger’s fastball sat at 96.2 mph with above-average ride and enough arm-side run to miss barrels when he elevates it. It has good bat-missing shape up in the zone — the kind of fastball that doesn’t need to be perfect because hitters are already late on it and can’t lift it when they do make contact. That’s what you want from a power fastball at Low-A.
The curveball is the separator. A power curve spinning at approximately 2,700 rpm that has induced a 0% xwOBA against it — meaning hitters are not squaring it up. At all. Small sample, yes. But a zero is a zero and it means something about the shape of the pitch and how hitters are reacting to it in real time.
Then there’s the changeup — and this is where it gets interesting. The velocity differential isn’t massive, so it’s a power change rather than a slow-it-way-down offering. But the movement profile is borderline elite. Elite drop. Elite fade. The combination of those two movement axes creates a pitch that falls off the table and away from hitters simultaneously, and it’s generated a 50% whiff rate out of the gate. Again — small sample. But 50% is not a number you see from a pitch that isn’t doing something special.
Three pitches. All three with legitimate weapons-grade characteristics at Low-A. The Twins have something here.
Reed Moring | RHP | Minnesota Twins | Fort Myers Mighty Mussels
4 innings. 3 hits. 0 earned runs. 5 strikeouts. 3 walks. 73 pitches.
Reed Moring is an interesting name to note in the Twins system and tonight was the kind of start that makes you want to dig into the profile.
He’s not a pure velocity arm. He is command and shape-driven — and there is a meaningful distinction between the two that gets lost when people evaluate pitchers at this level. Moring’s fastball sits 92-94, specifically 92.9, and carries over 19 inches of induced vertical break. That is a high-riding, high-spin offering that works best when it’s living at the top of the zone — the ride is the weapon, not the triple-digit reading on the gun. When a fastball has that kind of vertical movement profile it becomes genuinely difficult to square up at the letters, and hitters who chase it up are doing exactly what you want them to do.
The secondary arsenal is what makes this profile worth tracking. The gyro-slider is fairly tight with late break — not a big sweeping action, but something that darts late and generates whiffs at the point of contact when he needs an out pitch. The curveball has been the most effective whiff generator in his arsenal and looks like a legitimate second out pitch. The changeup rounds it out with over 11 inches of arm-side fade and enough velocity separation to keep hitters honest — another legitimate weapon.
Four distinct pitches. Each with a defined shape and a defined purpose. The profile is not built for strikeout volume as the primary outcome — it’s built around sequencing, command, and attacking hitters with different looks. The three walks tonight are the one number to watch going forward but the results line — four innings, zero runs — tells you the stuff was good enough to work through any traffic.
And are we ruling out velocity gains in the offseason? No. We never do.
I want to give a shoutout to Corey Schrader aka CRS-One for putting me onto Reed Moring before anyone else. You can find him and follow him on Twitter/X @CoreySchrader — And you can also read his work over at Medium.
Dylan Brown | LHP | Boston Red Sox | Salem Ridge Yaks