Roman Anthony, Jac Caglianone and more top MLB prospects who could be ready to debut soon

There’s a certain rhythm to Major League Baseball’s regular season. March is (increasingly) for Opening Day; July is for trades; September is for expanded rosters and playoff pushes; and so on. 

June, for its part, tends to be for big-league debuts. It used to be, anyway, that most of the game’s top prospects would not arrive until the sixth month of the year because of service-time considerations. That’s not so much the case anymore thanks to some changes made in the last Collective Bargaining Agreement (thankfully, you see fewer and fewer blatant cases of outright manipulation), but old perceptions die hard and June is still the month I associate with arrivals. Besides, there’s a certain logic to it: by the time June rolls around, teams have had a few months to watch their prospects play and develop; they’ve also had ample time to accumulate injuries and exhaust other options. 

With all that in mind, I wanted to usher in the new month by highlighting five top prospects who could find themselves making their big-league debuts before long.

Anthony, my preseason No. 1, continues to bully Triple-A pitchers. Coming into Wednesday, he has hit .321/.453/.518 with seven home runs, 10 additional extra-base hits, and nearly as many walks as strikeouts — all that despite being extremely young (by more than five years) for Triple-A. His average exit velocity against right-handed pitching so far, and I want to stress that I do mean average, is over 97 mph. 

Why isn’t Anthony up? The Red Sox continue to resist the urge to play Anthony at first base, leaving him without a clean entry point to the big-league roster. Rafael Devers is entrenched as the designated hitter, and both Jarren Duran and Wilyer Abreu have done their parts in the corners. That leaves center field as the realistic pathway, but even then, Boston may reason that Ceddanne Rafaela’s elite defense is worth tolerating his bat. I do think that, at some indeterminable point, the Red Sox will have to make a more efficient use of their personnel by putting Anthony or Abreu at the cold corner. If and/or when they reach that conclusion is anyone’s guess, yet I’m including Anthony anyway because he’s a violent sneeze away from The Show.

Caglianone was the most interesting player in last year’s draft class — not only because of his two-way talent (though he’s yet to pitch professionally and I’m not sure that he ever will), but because of a polarizing offensive skill set. I knew teams who had him outside of the top 10 on their preference lists because of the doubts engendered by his swing-happy approach. Caglianone’s boosters pointed to his elite strength and feel for the barrel as reasons to believe. The latter ultimately won out, as he went No. 6 in the draft.

So far, his advocates look right. He’s homered five times in his first six Triple-A games, running his seasonal line to .326/.389/.607 in 44 games. Will his swing-happy approach (he would have one of the five highest chase rates among qualifiers) work in the majors? I’m looking forward to finding out, and based on Kansas City’s outfield play, I suspect that he’ll be receiving the call sooner than later. 

The Pirates have slow-played Chandler’s arrival, giving major-league starting assignments instead to some of their other homegrown pitchers (mostly Carmen Mlodzinski, but also Tom Harrington and Mike Burrows). I have to imagine that’s going to change over the next few weeks. 

Chandler is sitting in the upper 90s with his fastball and sporting a 30% or better whiff rate on two secondary pitches (his changeup and curveball). Through 10 starts, he’s amassed a 2.27 ERA and a 3.05 strikeout-to-walk ratio. To be fair, Chandler has experienced a recent bout of wildness, issuing 13 free passes in his past 18 innings. Once that clears, I think he’ll be ready for takeoff.

Rodriguez is one of the oddest prospects in the minors. Think of him as something along the lines of Adam Dunn … if Dunn were a quality center fielder. He’s more than capable of stinging the ball (especially against right-handed pitching), and he employs an extremely discerning, bordering on passive, approach. 

Combine that last part with some iffy bat-to-ball skills, and you can understand why he’s walked or struck out in 55% of his trips to the plate. I don’t know if Rodriguez’s game is going to port well enough to the majors. I do think that the Twins, be it because of injury or continued underperformance from some of their other outfield options, will have to find out for themselves at some junction over the next few months. 

Teel, the headliner of the return in the Garrett Crochet trade, is hitting .293/.397/.490 with seven home runs and nine additional extra-base hits in 43 games. At first blush, it would make some sense to bring him up and pair him with Edgar Quero in a young catcher tandem. 

Digging a little deeper, though, I found myself of the mind that the White Sox can justifiably leave him in the minors for more baking time. Teel entered Wednesday with a 30.7% whiff rate against righties (he’s a lefty hitter), and a 47% swing-and-miss rate on changeups. I don’t know that another month on the farm is going to help him improve those marks, but I can understand if the White Sox would prefer that he continues to work on that component of his game away from the big-league spotlight.