Minor League Notables & Draft Pick Tracker - April 14th, 2026
45+ write-ups on notables from across all four levels & our Draft Pick Tracker rolls on
LOW-A ARMS
Reed Moring | RHP | Minnesota Twins | Fort Myers Mighty Mussels 5.0 IP / 6 H / 0 ER / 1 BB / 6 K / 70 NP
Five innings. Zero runs. Six strikeouts. One walk. And a max exit velocity against of 114.3 that tells you the contact was real tonight — but the damage wasn’t. Not a shock that the 114.3 mph hit was none other than Bryce Rainer. I’ll make an exception here.
Moring has an interesting arsenal and let me tell you why it matters. The four-seamer sits 92.8 mph with 19 inches of induced vertical break and 11 inches of armside run. The IVB is the thing. Nineteen inches of rise on a 92 mph fastball means this pitch is playing significantly above its velocity reading — hitters are timing 92 and the ball is arriving at a completely different plane than their bat path expects. The avg EV against the four-seamer tonight was 103.0, which looks alarming on the surface until you realize that’s weak contact being forced upward rather than hard contact being driven into gaps. That’s what elite IVB does. It doesn’t prevent contact — it dictates the shape of it.
The slider is the separator. 84.8 mph, 33 inches of drop and a genuine breaking ball offering that posted a 50% CSW rate tonight and held hitters to .180 avg EV against. Fifty percent CSW. That pitch is not getting hit. The cutter at 85.7 with 16 inches of IVB and a 45% CSW adds a third distinct shape, and the curveball sitting 80.5 with 50 inches of drop is the eye-level changer he reaches for when he needs to reset a hitter’s timing entirely. Six pitches. Five of them with legitimate whiff potential. The sinker is the one pitch still finding its role — zero whiffs on five pitches tonight — but it tunnels off the four-seamer at near-identical velocity with different movement profile, and that has long-term value against lefties that I don’t want to dismiss.
Now here’s the conversation that actually matters. What happens when Moring adds velocity? We are never ruling out velocity gains on a young arm. Never. I said it before the season and I’ll say it here again — if this profile gets to 94-95 mph with the same 19 inches of IVB, the slider becomes a weapon at every level of the system and the development conversation shifts from “interesting arm to track” to something considerably more serious. The command is the variable to watch — 40% zone rate on the four-seamer tonight is the one number worth monitoring as he climbs. But the profile is real. The results are real.
Jose Chirinos | RHP | New York Mets | St. Lucie Mets 5.0 IP / 3 H / 0 ER / 0 BB / 5 K / 65 NP
Zero walks. Five strikeouts. Zero runs across five innings and St. Lucie wins 2-0. Chirinos operated with a lower-90s fastball paired with a sinker that gives him two distinct movement profiles at near-identical velocities — already a difficult equation for hitters to solve — and then layered in a changeup with genuine late fade and a tight slider that darts out of the zone at the last possible moment. That’s four pitches with four different shapes and four different jobs. He was throwing all of them for strikes tonight.
The command is the developmental question and I want to be honest about that because it’s a real one. When Chirinos is locating, he’s a different pitcher entirely than when he’s nibbling at the edges and falling behind. Tonight was a locating night — and zero walks in five innings against a Low-A lineup is a pitcher executing a plan, not surviving one. The Mets have at minimum a legitimate reliever or swing-man option in this profile. And if the command holds at the level it showed tonight, the conversation grows into something more interesting. There’s a path to Double-A at some point this season. The stuff is already there. The results are starting to match it.
Aidan Cremarosa | RHP | Tampa Bay Rays | Charleston River Dogs 5.0 IP / 6 H / 3 ER / 0 BB / 9 K / 76 NP
Nine strikeouts. Zero walks. Three runs allowed. And the number I can’t stop staring at — 21 strikeouts to zero walks across 10 innings on the season. That ratio doesn’t happen by accident. That’s a pitcher with a plan every single time he steps on the rubber, and the plan keeps working.
The velocity profile is still being assembled on my end but what I can tell you is the low-70s curveball is the pitch that’s building the most conviction in this profile right now. It’s loopy — closer to a slurve in shape than a true power curve — with enough sweep and enough drop simultaneously that hitters are processing two pieces of information at once and acting correctly on neither. That kind of breaking ball works differently than a power curve does. Hitters aren’t late on it. They’re early. And a hitter who commits early to a pitch breaking in two directions at once is already beat before the ball reaches the plate.
The three runs tonight are the blemish but the zero walks are the story. Every time. Cremarosa is a control pitcher with a breaking ball that’s giving Low-A lineups real problems and the 21-to-zero strikeout-to-walk ratio says the approach is not a fluke. The intrigue keeps building every time he takes the mound. Don’t sleep on it.
Sean Hermann | RHP | Seattle Mariners | Inland Empire 66ers 4.0 IP / 4 H / 0 ER / 2 BB / 5 K / 72 NP
Nine scoreless innings through two starts. The walks are there — he’s issued a few in both outings — but the damage isn’t following them and that’s the distinction worth making. When the bases get jammed Hermann is making pitches. When hitters have real opportunities to do damage, the ball isn’t finding the barrel. That’s a skill that doesn’t show up in the walk column but absolutely shows up in the ERA.
Two starts is a small sample and I’m not going to overreact to it. But nine scoreless innings in Low-A with the composure to pitch out of traffic is worth filing away. Keeping a close eye as he continues to navigate the level.
LOW-A BATS
Jhonny Level | SS | San Francisco Giants | San Jose Giants 4 AB / 1 R / 1 H / 1 HR / 1 RBI / 1 BB
First pitch of the game. Gone. Third homer of the season. Jhonny Level is not long for Low-A and at this point an argument can be made that he’s one of the best — if not the top — middle infield prospect in the Giants system. The Giants need to make a decision. The bat has already made it for them.
Bryce Rainer | SS | Detroit Tigers | Lakeland Flying Tigers 5 AB / 0 R / 2 H / 1 2B / 0 HR / 0 RBI
114.3 mph scorcher off of Reed Moring. A scorching double to center that traveled 372 feet like a bullet. Let me sit with that for a second — 372 feet on a line drive double is not a normal event. That is not a normal exit velocity at any level, let alone a 20-year-old in Low-A. The power output and the underlying metrics here are not normal for just about anyone. Rainer has been hitting the ball hard all season. The surface results haven’t caught up yet and that’s a luck conversation, not a talent conversation.
The caveat is real and I’m going to name it plainly — the strikeouts need to come down. A bat this electric cannot afford to be relegated to temporary bouts of power surrounded by more sustained bouts of swing and miss. That’s not a profile, that’s a tease. But the tools that produced 114.3 on Reed Moring tonight are not going anywhere. The arrow is pointing straight up on Bryce Rainer. Write it down.