Bennett Thompson might be legitimate…
Stat line looks great at the plate. If the power surge is real, he’s an actual prospect.
2025: two homers in 73 games in A ball
2026: three homers in 17 games in A+ ball and he barely missed at least one (a double) for sure.
The right handed hitter has a current line of:
.333/.548/.646/1.194 1SB/0CS 24BB/14SO. 16 hits, 6 doubles, 3 homeruns through 17 games.
At this rate, the 2024 13th round/150k pick will be an absolute steal. He does have 6(!) errors, 4(!) passed balls and has thrown out 19% of would be base stealers in those 17 games. Defense might be an issue.
Bryan Lavastida? He’s in that ballpark now, will be interesting if he can keep up the performance at the plate because a bat like that will play even if he’s ultimately not a catcher.
Yeah, bat could be legit, but it's still A Ball and there are some concerns that will only get answered at upper levels.
Looking at his batted ball data, it's pretty obvious he's bought the company line and like Schnee, he could be one of those that benefits most by going that way.
Thompson was already pull heavy, but his GO/AO was even, so he wasn't a flyball bat. Both has changed, plus he's added linedrives too in the process, so he's getting a lot of flyballs/LD (over 70%, pretty elite) to his pullside a lot (over 70% too, almost too pull heavy, will get exploited moving up).
He's clearly selling out for power, getting the bat out early, but it has only cost him 3-5% of contact rate, which still sits at a decent 78%.
He's also gotten too passive, only swinging at 31% of pitches, so his plan at the plate is clear. Go after and hunt pitches he can turn and mash and spit at most of the rest. Called strikes% has gone up and will get up facing better pitchers, but that's the next developmental bar for the next levels.
Thompson has turned himself from a plus hitter to a power bat while still being a good hitter. This development is reminiscent of Cooper Ingle who was an extreme groundball hitter and has worked to lift more without sacrificing contact. Thompson had a different starting point, but the path is similar.
Defensively, he's a below avg catcher right now. I've noticed he got out-framed by opposing C, who get calls he's not able to frame and I've seen him sail a couple of throws on steals, but he's not been horrible back there and the pitching is doing fine overall, so the game calling seems ok.
At the very least, Thompson can develop into a Fry-like backup C.
And I'd like to point out that the FO may have found a value niche with big conference catchers who had inconsistent careers (offensively) and tumble down draft boards. Both Thompson and Peebles fit that criteria, both legit prospects for being very late rd picks. Cooper Ingle is the blueprint, he just had a much better college resumee and was more high profile, but also de-valued.
Cozart is the antithesis, a meh inconsistent bat (especially wooden bat summer league) off a strong draft year. Skip those in early rounds and draft 2 to 3 of the others later, the system will be better off and more high picks to roll on high end bats and arms. This upcoming draft has a bunch of catchers that fit that bucket, it's pretty deep.
