Calaz seemed a pretty easy scout last year, but nevertheless we underranked him. He hit the ball incredibly hard for a 17-year-old, but his contact rate in the DSL suggested better pitching would really undo his swing. Well, he came stateside and hit the ball incredibly hard for an 18-year-old, but made more contact than we expected in the process, making it all the way to full-season ball by the end of the 2024 season. It\u2019s a pretty simple setup with a high back elbow creating a steep swing path that can really do damage in the air when he barrels one in the zone, but while Calaz\u2019s \u2018A\u2019 swing is impressive, there\u2019s really no \u2018B\u2019 swing a lot of the time, which can lead to in-zone whiff if the pitch isn\u2019t where he expects, or topped\/mishit contact even when he tracks it all right.<\/p>\n
The thing is, even Calaz\u2019s mishits sound loud, and there just aren\u2019t a lot of teenaged prospects with this combination of damage potential and minor league production, even if it\u2019s come only in the complex and Cal League. I think there is more in the tank here, too. Calaz has already reshaped his body some from last season\u2014not really a surprise for a 17-year-old getting his first couple seasons of professional S+C work\u2014and I\u2019m more confident he will add even more strength and stick on the grass than I was at this time last year. It\u2019s far more likely to be right field than center\u2014he split time at both in 2024\u2014but that\u2019s better than first base or DH, and while the contact rate is still concerning, if he can maintain even this for another year at a higher level, Calaz will be one of the premier outfield prospects in baseball.<\/p>\n
Calaz continues to show impressive power for his age, now we just need to see if he can hit upper-minors pitching in a year or two. That\u2019s not that hard, tell \u2018em Wash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Calaz seemed a pretty easy scout last year, but nevertheless we underranked him. He hit the ball incredibly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2405],"tags":[5,167,52,38897,4316,4,168],"class_list":{"0":"post-581228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-colorado-rockies","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-colorado","10":"tag-colorado-rockies","11":"tag-colorado-rockies-minor-leagues-and-prospects","12":"tag-coloradorockies","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-rockies"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116097995615812714","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}