Xavier Isaac’s game is built around damage. No. 98 on our recently-released Top 100, the 21-year-old, left-handed-hitting Tampa Bay Rays prospect has, according to our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen, “some of the most exciting power in pro baseball.” Getting to it consistently will be his biggest challenge going forward. As Longenhagen also wrote in his report, “By the end of the season, [Isaac] had a sub-60% contact rate, which is not viable at the big league level… [but] if “he can get back to being a nearly 70% contact hitter, he’s going to be a monster.”
While Isaac’s 143 wRC+ between High-A Bowling Green and Double-A Montgomery was impressive, his 33.3% strikeout rate was another story. The built-to-bash first baseman knows that cutting down on his Ks will go a long way toward his living up to his lofty potential. At the same time, he’s wary of straying too far from his strengths.
“I’ve tuned up my power, and now I need to get my contact up a little bit more,” Isaac told me during the Arizona Fall League season. “It’s like a tradeoff, kind of. I’m going to strike out, but I’m also going to hit the ball a little harder. I have a lot of power, so some of it is about going up there and taking a risk. I obviously don’t want to strike out — I‘m trying to put it in play — but I also don’t want to be making soft contact.”
That’s seldom a problem when he squares up a baseball. Not only does his bat produce high exit velocities, he knows what it feels like to propel a pitch 450-plus feet. He doesn’t shy way from the power-hitter label. Asked if that’s what he is, his response was, “For sure.”
That Isaac’s bombs often go to the gaps, particularly to right-center, is by design.
“I feel like if you’re really on time for a pitch you should be hitting it to center field,” Isaac explained. “If you’re pulling a baseball, you’re early on the pitch. I’m still catching the ball out in front, I’m just staying through the middle of the field. I don’t need to pull the baseball. I’m able to get it out in center, so that’s what I’m looking to do.”
In terms of the pitches he’s looking for, Isaac is like most hitters in that he prefers heaters. Not that he’s seen as many of them as he’d like.
“I’m trying to get a fastball, but I don’t get them a lot,” said the 6-foot-4 slugger, who at 235 pounds in the AFL was roughly 30 pounds lighter than his heaviest-ever weigh. “I was the lowest in my organization for fastball percentage this year. I don’t know the exact number, but it was maybe 32% or 33.”
Respect for his light-tower power being the biggest reason?
“Maybe,” said Isaac. “Kind of that intimidation. Whatever it is, if I can work on hitting the slider better, I can probably get the fastball more often.”
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RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS
Xavier Nady went 10 for 20 against Ben Sheets.
Xavier Scruggs went 2 for 2 against Seth Rosin.
Goody Rosen went 5 for 6 against Xavier Rescigno.
Edgardo Alfonzo went 4 for 5 against Xavier Hernandez.
Xavier Edwards is 4 for 4 against Trevor Williams,
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Three weeks ago, Sunday Notes included Bubba Chandler (No. 23 on our Top 100) looking back at memorable matchups he’s had against Kyle Teel (No. 49). Today we’ll hear from the young hurler on two other high-profile prospects he’s faced in the minors, Marcelo Mayer (No. 57) and Roman Anthony (No. 2), as well as on his own exploits with the bat.
“I think Marcelo has gotten a hit off me,” the top prospect in the Pittsburgh Pirates system told me. “But for the most part, his weaknesses play to my strengths. I’ve got him a couple times. Rome, I was actually his first High-A hit. But that dude’s a great baseball player. He’s going to be unbelievable in the big leagues. He has to be in The Show this year.”
I reminded Chandler that Mayer took him deep last season.
“Yeah, yeah. He did, ” acknowledged Chandler. “I couldn’t remember if it was him, or this other lefty they had in their lineup. But yes, Marcelo hit a homer off me. Back side, down the left field line. Yep. I remember that.”
Chandler has cleared a few fences of his own. Given an opportunity as a two-way player at the beginning of his professional career, he logged 161 plate appearances across the 2021-2022 season. That effort fizzled — he batted just a buck eighty nine — but he did go deep five times. I reminded him of that as well.
“Yeah, I hit a couple of homers,” Chandler said. “But I wasn’t a good hitter. The only times I got hits were when pitchers made mistakes. I never out-talented anyone when I was at the plate. If they executed, I wasn’t going to get a hit, or probably even put the ball in play. Every guy that’s in High-A, Double-A, and Triple-A, is 10 times a better hitter than I was.”
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Christian Vázquez has made his name as a quality defender, but the 34-year-old Minnesota Twins backstop has also taken some big swings over the course of his career. The most memorable of them have come in the postseason with the Red Sox. He shared his favorites when I caught up to him prior to the Twins’ spring training opener yesterday afternoon.
“The homer against New York in 2018 was a big moment,” said Vázquez, referring to Boston’s ALDS-clinching 4-3 win at Yankee Stadium. “It was against Zack Britton and I think the count was 3-1. He didn’t want to walk me. I was batting ninth, so he didn’t want to put me on base for the top of our lineup. He threw a lot of heavy sinkers, but this one was up in the zone and I hit it out to right field. I faced him a lot with Baltimore and New York, and that was my approach against him: hit it to right-center.
“The homer against Tampa in 2021 was obviously big too,” Vázquez said of his 13th-inning walk-off at Fenway Park in that year’s ALDS Game 2 versus the Rays. “I hit it off of Luis Patiño. First-pitch fastball. That one was awesome.”
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A quiz:
Who holds the MLB record for most career assists? (A hint: A middle infielder, he had 2,605 hits and played in two World Series).
The answer can be found below.
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NEWS NOTES
The Kansas City Royals have extended general manager J.J. Picollo through the 2030 season. The team also announced that they are exercising their 2026 contract option for manager Matt Quatraro.
Scott Sauerbeck, a southpaw reliever who played for five teams across the 1999-2006 seasons, died on February 18 at age 53. Drafted by the New York Mets out of Oxford, Ohio’s Miami University, and later acquired by Pittsburgh in the 1998 Rule 5 draft, Sauerbeck made 471 big-league appearances, 341 of them with the Pirates. His career ledger includes 20 wins, five saves, and a 3.82 ERA.
Dave Van Gorder, a catcher whose career spanned the 1982-1987 seasons, died on February 4 at age 67. Playing primarily with his hometown Cincinnati Reds — he briefly donned the tools of ignorance with the Baltimore Orioles — Van Gorder banged out 89 hits, including three that left the yard. John Denny, Andy Hawkins, and Frank Viola were the pitchers he took deep.
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The answer to the quiz is Rabbit Maranville, who had 8,967 assists while playing for five teams, primarily the Boston Braves, from 1912-1935. If you guessed Ozzie Smith, he had the second-most assists (8,375), and 2,460 hits. The Wizard played in three World Series.
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Which of the Cleveland Guardians, Kansas City Royals, Minnesota Twins, or Detroit Tigers will win the AL Central? I asked that question in a Twitter poll earlier this week, fully expecting a four-way horse race. What I got instead was one team’s polling akin to Secretariat in the 1973 Belmont Stakes. The Tigers won by a wide margin, getting 56.5% of the 925 votes cast. The Twins finished second with 26.5%, while the Guardians garnered 10.7%, and the Royals received 6.3%.
Bias may have influenced the results — a fair amount of Detroit fans follow me on the increasingly-troll-tarnished site — but even so, Al Kaline’s old club’s raking in more votes than the other three teams combined raised my eyebrows. Frankly, all four polling at exactly 25% would have been less of a surprise.
As for the Central Division’s fifth team, it’s fair to say that Chicago’s South Side squad is the longest of long shots in the coming campaign. Rich Strike may have won Kentucky Derby at 80-1 a few short years ago, but the White Sox are too many strides behind their rivals to reasonably compete for a title.
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Drew Gilbert has been described as a high-energy player, and it’s a label he readily accepts. The 24-year-old New York Mets outfield prospect told me during the Arizona Fall League season that it’s simply part of who he is. Moreover, he volunteered that it might actually be his biggest strength.
He clearly has other strengths as well. Drafted 28th overall by the Houston Astros in 2022 out of the University of Tennessee, then dealt to the Mets along with Ryan Clifford in exchange for Justin Verlander at the August 2023 trade deadline, Gilbert is almost certainly big-league bound. Even so, he did encounter a speed bump last year. Hampered by a hamstring strain, he had just 269 plate appearances, the bulk of them in Triple-A, and slashed a disappointing .205/.313/.371 with an 82 wRC+ and 10 home runs.
What does the St. Paul, Minnesota native consider to be his biggest strength in the tools department?
“I don’t know if I have a specific one,” said Gilbert. “I could say that I have a strength, or that I have a weakness, but I feel like you’re always improving both of those. I could say that I suck at something right now, but in three months I could be really good at it. And if you give yourself too much credit for something, you might fall into complacency and have other guys pass you up. So, I don’t necessarily look at things as strengths or weaknesses. I just want to be really good at everything.”
Reports generally agree that he possesses neither calling-card strengths, nor serious weaknesses. According to the 2025 Baseball America Prospect Handbook, “Gilbert’s best tool might be his well-roundedness.”
Confidence is among the attributes he’ll take into his third full professional season.
“I don’t like to scout myself — I just like to go out there and compete — but I know that I’m going to be a big-leaguer,” Gilbert said. “It’s just a matter of time.”
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A random obscure former player(s) snapshot:
MLB history includes three players named Randy Johnson, one of whom is a well-known Hall of Fame pitcher. The other two are relatively-unknown former position players. Randall Glenn Johnson played in 204 games for the Atlanta Braves from 1982-1984, logging 129 hits and an 86 wRC+. Randall Stuart Johnson played in 12 games for the Chicago White Sox in 1980, and in 89 for the Minnesota Twins in 1982, logging 62 hits and a 92 wRC+. The former went deep six times, the latter 10 times.
Power was Randall Stuart Johnson’s game, and for one month it looked like he might be a star in the making. In April, 1982, he went 24-for-61 with six home runs while serving as the Twins’ primary DH. His success was fleeting. Randall Stuart did little of note for the rest of that campaign, and the following year he was back in the minors, never to return to MLB. As for Randall Glenn, his career was slightly longer, and somewhat steadier, but ultimately nothing to write home about. Four decades after they donned big-league uniforms, the “other” Randy Johnsons are largely forgotten.
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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE
Matt Mervis is eying a fresh start with the Miami Marlins. Christina De Nicola has the story at MLB.com.
MLB.com’s John Denton wrote about how Masyn Winn has his sights set on becoming the face of the St. Louis Cardinals franchise.
Tommy Lasorda fanned 25 batters and recorded the winning hit when the Canadian-American League Schenectady Blue Jays beat the Amsterdam Rugmakers 4-3 on May 31, 1948. Larry DeFillipo chronicled the contest for SABR’s BioProject.
The catalyst for the New York Yankees’ changing their 49-year-old facial hair policy was likely when closer Devin Williams spoke with owner Hal Steinbrenner and general manager Brian Cashman last week. Chris Kershner and Brendan Kuty teamed up to write about it for The Athletic (subscription required).
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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS
Wally Joyner had 2,060 hits, a .289 batting average, and a .440 slugging percentage. Bob Elliott had 2,061 hits, a .289 batting average, and a .440 slugging percentage. (If you’re not familiar with Elliott, he made six All-Star teams and won AL MVP honors in 1947 playing for the Boston Braves.)
The San Francisco Seals went 100-100 in 1950. The Oakland Oaks won the Pacific Coast League pennant that year with a record of 118-82.
Jason Johnson and Pedro Martinez finished their careers with 100 losses apiece. Johnson had 56 wins, Martinez 219 wins.
Red Ruffing finished his career with 273 wins. while Ted Lyons finished with 260 wins. The Hall of Fame pitchers combined for 100 at-bats against each others and logged 32 hits with just 10 strikeouts.
The Washington Nationals signed Carlos Baerga as a free agent on today’s date in 2005. The switch-hitting second baseman went on to play in 93 games, and record 40 of his 1,583 career hits, in what turned out to be his final MLB season.
The Detroit Tigers signed Tito Fuentes as a free agent on today’s date in 1977. The switch-hitting second baseman went on to slash .309/.348/.397, and record a career-high 190 hits, in his lone season as a Tiger. Fuentes has been part of the San Francisco Giants’ Spanish-language broadcast booth for the past two decades.
Players born on today’s date include Mike Tresh, a catcher for the Chicago White Sox (and briefly the Cleveland Indians) who didn’t see action at any other position in a career that spanned the 1938-1949 seasons. The Hazleton, Pennsylvania native amassed 788 hits, only two of which left the yard. His son, Tom Tresh, homered 153 times while playing for the New York Yankees and Detroit Tigers from 1961-1969.
Also born on today’s date was Fred Kuhaulua, a left-handed pitcher from Waianae, Hawaii who appeared in three games for the California Angels in 1977, and in five games for the San Diego Padres in 1981. Kuhaulua’s lone decision came in the last of his eight big-league outings, a 1-0 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers in which he tossed eight scoreless innings.