{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "bskyPostRef": {
    "cid": "bafyreiarznnrfqrusw5crip6lci4lwgmz74oacckdrnxudmx6k5iv2bgru",
    "uri": "at://did:plc:ypcz7mos4thlqmwskf3nqiil/app.bsky.feed.post/3mfewalvtgnq2"
  },
  "coverImage": {
    "$type": "blob",
    "ref": {
      "$link": "bafkreibur5hgi4jouextrrwdbzpbkn7khfbx3kancwdsproguumzxajts4"
    },
    "mimeType": "image/png",
    "size": 4064818
  },
  "description": "Oh. Hi there. Max here, I’m giving you this piece as a small appetizer, a tease, for what’s to come with Hobby+, as it relates to pitchers.\n\nI’ve been keeping a spreadsheet of “Top Prospects without a Bowman Chrome autograph” for many years – after a few years, the ranking formula for hitters was completely dialed in, and it became the basis for Hobby+ last year. Three years ago, I also started making a list for pitchers, but the formula has never felt quite right, so it wasn’t ready to be rolle",
  "path": "/pitchers-we-were-wrong-about/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-02-21T15:18:31.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.prospectslive.com",
  "textContent": "Oh. Hi there. Max here, I’m giving you this piece as a small appetizer, a tease, for what’s to come with Hobby+, as it relates to pitchers.\n\nI’ve been keeping a spreadsheet of “Top Prospects without a Bowman Chrome autograph” for many years – after a few years, the ranking formula for hitters was completely dialed in, and it became the basis for Hobby+ last year. Three years ago, I also started making a list for pitchers, but the formula has never felt quite right, so it wasn’t ready to be rolled out with the hitter side. But I’ve spent some time this offseason retooling things, and I’m now at a place where we will be including that in our 2026 statistical tracking!\n\nIf you have access to the PLive+ App Suite, soon you’ll even see pitchers populated there now based on their 2025 seasons! It’ll be an intentionally soft launch, as there may be a few finishing touches to be put on it. Just keep in mind it’s stat-based. With pitchers, there’s even more factors to consider than hitters than just pure stats. But hey, if Arizona’s Jose Fernandez can return a Top 20 Hobby+ score and still be treated with caution, we can do the same with some pitchers, right?\n\nBut as we’re still nearly two months from debuting that as in an in-season leaderboard (30 IP minimum and all), it’s a bit pointless to do a primer for it just yet. But what I did want to do was break down a few prospects who have made unexpected ascensions since the first time we looked at them in our Bowman previews (based on 2025 numbers).\n\nThis piece also serves the purpose of doing some sort of retrospective, as I didn’t get to that this offseason, and it’s something I enjoy!\n\nWithout further ado here are 5 (well, 6) pitchers we were just...off…on, in our Bowman Preview writeups.\n\n## **Elmer Rodriguez**\n\nIt’s so easy to be wrong about prep pitchers – it's no wonder we had him in Tier None back at the time of 2021 Bowman Draft. In fact, there was no real development from Rodriguez until 2023. There was a 16 month period (early 2022 through mid 2023) where his cards were basically free, whilst in the Red Sox system no less! Of course, it’s easy to be near-free when there’s no autographs to be had (until 2023 where he was an “undesirable” non-1st paper auto subject). Looking at his 2023 season in retrospect, there were signs – good GB%, great job limiting fly balls, and an okay K% – that maybe the kid could put it together to make it as a backend SP, albeit one with command issues. In 2024 the command issues stuck, but his K% ticked up to something significant, as did his ability suppress meaningful contact. That’s when the Yankees grabbed him as a flyer (with IFA money) in exchange for Carlos Narvaez – a minor deal then that now looks quite a bit bigger considering Narvaez’s ascension, but still an even one. That’s because in 2025, it was a true breakout for Rodriguez. He leveled up his K% again, while suppressing meaningful contact even more – he allowed just a .264 SLG on the year, even more ground balls, and only gave up 3 HR in 150 innings. Not a typo. Also impressive is that he shed most of his relief risk by ticking his BB to below 10%. He still has a little work to do in AAA but there’s every indication that he will be at least a mid-rotation arm, and for hobby upside, one with a decent amount of K. It is unfortunate that both of his card options picture him in a rival uniform, but it hasn’t stopped his prices from hitting silly levels considering. Just for a taste, a Green paper auto from 2023 sold for $180 recently. Certainly those will come crashing down once he has RC (perhaps in Update) pictured with the “right” team. If you must buy Rodriguez right now, it’s the Chrome 1st I’d be chasing. But to me, he’s a hold or sell overall. Deservedly, a strong Tier Two name at this juncture.\n\n## **Ben Hess**\n\nSo, in our 2024 Bowman Draft Preview, when I wrote the common sentiment that Hess has a Lance Lynn-type ceiling, I didn’t mean that he’d put it together to immediately look like 2019 Lance Lynn. That’s a bit of a trope-y sentiment – he didn’t put up a ton of innings like Lynn did in his prime (103 for Hess in A+ and AA), but he also had a higher K rate by a full 2 K/9 than Lynn ever did at any level. In comparing his 2024 video at Alabama to what he looked like at Somerset, Hess also seems to have improved his conditioning quite a bit – an important note for a man listed at 255 lbs. Injury concerns haven’t been completely allayed, as he still missed a little time this year, but the performance was quite loud. Walks are still a small issue, but he allowed a sub-.180 average on the year to go with that K% which stood above 30%. Those two things, combined with continued performance once he got to AA, has him up all the way up at #4 on the Pitcher Hobby+ ranks. Other than Rodriguez, he’s behind only Thomas White and Travis Sykora, who have been known commodities for as long as they’ve had cards. In the friendliest (or, another terms, most expensive) of hobby markets, there’s not much sleeper-ness to Hess at all. But, with an invite to big league camp there’s potential for a quick bump in prices before he gets to work, likely back at AA to start. It’s hard now to believe that we had him in Tier None (while we had Bryce Cunningham in Tier Three). He would be in at least in the upper echelons of Tier Three now, and I wouldn’t argue anyone making the case for an inclusion in Tier 2 with the market factor.\n\n## **Jacob Bresnahan**\n\nBresnahan just had cards in 2025 Bowman. It’s not really that our writeup on him was completely off base, but we did not expect him (or anyone who started the year as a teen) to perform so well, and so consistently, the entire season. For 2025 Bresnahan comes in at #8 overall in Pitcher Hobby+, which does consider his lower level and that his innings were throttled on a start-to-start basis – to be expected for a player of his age. He was just really consistent for almost the entire year, and got better as the season wore on. The last time he gave up 4 ER in a start was April of last year, and in fact 10 of his 27 ER came in the first three games (which means his ERA was sub-2.00 from there forward). In _every_ start from May 17 on he struck out equal to or better than a hitter per inning. Overall, he was excellent at both striking hitters out (124 K in 93 innings) and limiting damage (.279 SLG allowed). There are drawbacks though. He was only in Low-A all year – the hitters he was facing aren’t necessarily the most mature. There’s no guarantee that his stuff, although good, will play at higher levels. There’s also no certainty in his command. He only threw 6 innings once, and walked 3 BB or more 8 times in 22 starts. But that’s really it for negatives. We had him in Tier None, but with all the positives he’s shown he’d now squarely be in Tier Three, as we mentioned he had potential to get to. But now, through the rosiest of glasses, that ceiling is even higher. With his base autos sitting at just around $15, he’s still likely worth the shot as a buy.\n\n## **Daniel Eagen**\n\nI’m not going to lie. In Pitcher Hobby+, Bresnahan lives at the top of a group that’s full of caveats, and for entirely justifiable reasons. T.J. Nichols and Juaron Watts-Brown have no autographs. Griffin Herring now pitches for the Rockies. We liked Jonathan Santucci as a Tier Three arm, which is where he is now. The only other pitcher in this group of players who slot into the early teens of Hobby+ is one Daniel Eagen, who I was shocked to find people are not at all sleeping on. It’s not easy for a 3rd Round pitcher from a small school (Presbyterian) in the squarely middling Diamondbacks market to have an auto hit the $20 mark for a base auto, but the hobby has gotten quite a bit sharper in the last few years. I don’t really feel that we really had a great picture of who Eagen was when we wrote about him in our 2024 Bowman Draft Preview, so can you even blame us for pegging him with a risk of 8 with a middling ceiling? That’s certainly nowhere near where he is now. He’s got a surefire mid-rotation _ceiling_ now, and like Santucci would now be a Tier Three name. You can still see the phantoms of why we had him so low though. Because he was so inexperienced against upper level competition, he threw a ton of innings at High-A, only seeing AA for 20 innings. His BB% was a hair higher than you’d like. But you have to like the development. As his fastball isn’t anything special, he generates loads of whiff working mostly vertical with his offspeed offerings. But variations of speed, depth, and the ~30 degrees of horizontal separation between his slider and (new) split are enough to miss bats even at higher levels. If one watches his delivery there is some of the classic “quick armed reliever” to him, and that concern lingers. But the dude threw 119 innings last year. That’s not coming anytime soon. I’m not a buyer in the $20 range, but if he slips up a bit on the surface stats and that affects his card prices, I wouldn’t mind having a few pieces.\n\n## **Zack Thornton and Jack Wenninger**\n\nThe Mets absolutely crushed the 2023 Draft with their college arms. With Brandon Sproat (now Brewer) and Nolan McLean already having debuted, the Amazins’ have another duo lurking in AA who could also be rotation fill-ins by the end of the year. Zack & Jack were the Mets’ 5th & 6th Round picks that year respectively – not an area of the Draft that usually yields a lot of hobby heroes from the Collegiate ranks. And look, we should still be happy if one of these two becomes that – but our evaluations of these guys have squarely missed the mark. Both of these guys would now be in Tier Three. Thornton is still the same guy – only throws in the low-90’s, pitchability profile. He’s just proven that he has a massive amount of baseball IQ, and the ability to execute any of his pitches to the end of getting to a favorable count where he can put hitters away with his breaking stuff outside the zone. That’s led to quite a few more K than you’d think, and he’s been great at limiting hard contact as well. It was only an oblique injury that kept him from separating into the Top 10 of Hobby+. What's more, it's tamped down his hobby profile. The same can't be said for Jack Wenninger, who has already thrown over 250 innings in his two years as a pro. In our writeup we pegged him, essentially, as a projectable one-pitch fastball guy who couldn’t yet maintain velocity deep into his starts. That is…no longer the case. It’s actually not his fastball that’s leapt forward – it’s the change. He’s developed a nasty mid-80’s split that he uses with regularity as a putaway pitch, which hitters have to respect because it tunnels well off his fastball. He also deploys a slider with similar depth and speed to the split as an emergent offering with a different movement axis. His fastball does remain a viable weapon, and he has not only gained velocity but maintained it in the mid-90’s deep into starts. Both of these pitchers will definitely start games in the majors, be it this year or next. Neither are on the 40-man yet, so there will have to be knocking down of the door, probably by Wenninger first since he seems to be ticketed for AAA to begin the year. In the Mets’ market, even a guy with no autos like Wenninger or a pitchability lefty like Thornton (whose base autos are right around $15) will spike on a call-up – it won’t take much.",
  "title": "Pitchers We Were Wrong About",
  "updatedAt": "2026-02-21T15:18:31.000Z"
}