Player Breakdowns: April 14th
Charlee Soto & Jonah Tong
Charlee Soto (MIN)- Low-A:
Charlee Soto had his changeup mastered on Saturday. I’ll admit, I went into the start expecting a raw talent who didn’t have much polish over the pitch but was impressed with the command and fade he got on the pitch.
The fastball played extremely well because of the command of his split-change and sat mid-90s and averaged 95.6 mph. He had a silly 90% whiff rate on the changeup. Through two starts Soto’s split-change is averaging nearly 17 inches of horizontal arm side break.
Soto’s final line for the night was 4IP 0H 0ER 1BB 7K. He even picked off the only batter he allowed on via walk.
Here is how easy his first inning was and when I knew he’d be cruising the rest of the outing (if only they stretched him out a bit further than 49 pitches in his 2nd start):
Here is the rest of his outing - 2nd through 4th inning:
Here is what I wrote about Soto in my Projecting the Future Series:
Taken with the 34th overall pick in the 2023 draft, Soto is built like he’s going to be an absolute tank. If you squint from a distance he almost looks like Jhoan Duran in that Twins uniform. That’s how thick he is. And he uses it to his advantage. He’s a power pitcher with a heavy fastball and a heavy mid-to-upper 80s changeup to go with a sharp slider.
All three are looking like potential plus pitches and I want to apologize to Soto in advance when he rockets up the rankings next year and is inevitably a consensus top 15 arm in the prospect pool.
It looks like I’ll be on the end of apologizing to him in advance — the stuff looks undeniable. A heavy mid-90s fastball with a split-change that he has solid command of. Mix in a sinker, cutter, and slider and we have a good arsenal going forward for the 19-year-old.