Scouting Travis Bazzana, Braylon Doughty and other Guardians, Orioles prospects

New York Times

12 hours ago

Travis Bazzana was the No. 1 pick in the 2024 MLB Draft, as Cleveland signed the Australian-born second baseman to a bonus that came in about $1.6 million under slot and allowed them Guardians to go over slot for several subsequent picks.
Bazzana debuted last year in High A, started out strongly, then faded a little bit at the end of a very long season, while his team won the Midwest League championship. His 2025 season hasn't gone well, largely because of an oblique injury that kept him on the IL in Double A for two months. He's been back for seven games now, and still performing below expectations, with a .258/.361/.426 line this year, and more frequent questions about whether he can stay at second base or if his swing will work to produce the sort of power he showed in college.
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I saw Bazzana on Friday with Double-A Akron at Harrisburg. It was an 0-for-4 night with two strikeouts (one called on a pitch that was above his elbows because the ump was completely fooled by a hacky frame job), and I saw both the defensive and power concerns. His first step at second base is just slow; his hands are fine and he does get himself into the best position possible, but I don't see many middle infielders who are this heavy-footed — and it didn't help that the guy to his right is extremely light on his feet.
His swing is pretty uphill, about as steep as anyone I've seen in the minors in the last few years, so he puts the ball in the air a ton — but it's more pop-ups and flyballs than you want and not as many line drives. He still controls the zone well, chasing pitches well out of the zone just 10 percent of the time, and there's some power here against right-handed pitchers.
I'm just not seeing the same upside, either in the scouting look or in the data from this year, that Bazzana appeared to have on draft day. If you're looking for a glimmer of hope, though, I think anyone would have said the same things about the swing and the defense of Dustin Pedroia even through his first stint in the majors in 2006, so there is some precedent for this profile succeeding, just from the right side.
One of the players Cleveland signed with the bonus pool savings from Bazzana is right-hander Braylon Doughty, currently pitching well on comically low pitch limits in Low A for Lynchburg.
Doughty has a hammer breaking ball and commands it better than his fastball, dropping it in for called strikes almost at will and spinning it hard away from righties for chases. When I saw him on Saturday at Delmarva, he was 90-94 and was willing to pound the fastball inside to right-handed batters, as well. He didn't show a changeup and used the breaking ball against lefties in typical changeup situations.
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He threw four no-hit innings on exactly 60 pitches … and came out of the game. It wasn't his season-high in innings or pitches, he wasn't laboring in any visible way, and as far as I can tell it was just about him hitting an arbitrary number in the box score. I have been vocal about the harms of over-pitching guys, but I don't know of any evidence that under-pitching them keeps them healthy. Baltimore tried this with Grayson Rodriguez, to (cherry) pick one example, and it didn't prevent his injury this year or another one last year.
In Doughty's case, he didn't even turn over the Delmarva lineup a second time, facing just 14 batters, with the lone baserunner a hit batsman, getting six strikeouts out of the 13 outs. I think Doughty's got a big-league out-pitch and really looks like a starter. I'd like to see him stretched out a little bit — this is less than he was throwing once a week in high school — since he's already got that swing-and-miss offering, both to build him up for starting work and to push him to develop at least one more pitch.
Bouncing back to the Double-A game for a moment, the shortstop for Akron was Angel Genao, who is all energy and athleticism and fast-twitch on both sides of the ball. Genao missed the first two months of 2025 with a hand injury and his power isn't back, but the left-handed swing looks great and he smoked a line-drive single to right for his one hit in three at-bats, along with a walk.
He's also got at least a 60 arm (on the 20-80 scouting scale) and showed a quick first step to his left on multiple plays. He may yet outgrow shortstop but he won't move off for lack of physical ability.
Catcher Cooper Ingle was the No. 2 hitter for Akron and took a lot of pitches — he didn't swing until the 10th pitch he saw at the plate, walking twice on the evening. He has a short swing that lines up with his high contact rates, and he does hit the ball hard enough to keep his batting average up. I think he's a future everyday catcher, or perhaps a platoon one as he still hasn't had any success against lefties other than walking.
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Delmarva started right-hander Chase Allsup, their 2024 fourth-round pick, in Saturday's game. Allsup was 96-99 with four pitches, all of which were probably 45s, although the curveball has some promise.
Allsup was a starter at Auburn who threw strikes but gave up a lot of hard contact; in his half-year in pro ball, he's been extremely wild, walking 14.6 percent of batters at a level where he's older than most of the hitters he's facing. Lynchburg's lineup on Saturday didn't have any hitters with even a .670 OPS on the season — yes, OPS is a flawed stat, but in this case it tells enough of a story — and Allsup walked three and struck out three in five scoreless innings.
Lefty Andy Fabian came in after Allsup and threw gas as well, although the delivery is a disaster. He was 95-96 with a very hard downward-breaking slider, but he over-rotates so badly that his front foot lands well on the third base side of the mound, and he can't see the plate at release because his head moves so much.