Random Baseball Analysis 1: SS Gabriel Arias, Cleveland Guardians
Just a quick 1000 words about a toolsy shortstop prospect in the Cleveland Guardians farm system
23-year-old shortstop Gabriel Arias quickly became one of my favorite prospects in the Cleveland farm system after he was traded in a nine-player trade between Cleveland and San Diego, which was the 40th trade they’ve conducted in the past three or four years in case you were wondering. Cleveland has a great eye for infielders, especially shortstops, and getting the seventh-ranked shortstop prospect in a San Diego Padres farm system that was the first or second-best in baseball at the time made me make sure to study the data I had available and keep tabs on Arias whenever Minor League Baseball made its return.
After his convincing performance during the 2021 MiLB season as one of the youngest players in all three Triple-A leagues, Arias has me buying even more shares of the possibility that he is a productive big leaguer and hopefully, this impromptu article will lead you to do the same.
Arias’s athletic 6'2'’ frame offers a combination of above-average raw power and speed. He possesses a plus-plus graded glove at shortstop and a top-of-the-scale arm to go with it. A couple more factors are pedigree and a respectable track record against opponents who are also skilled.
One of the top two prospects in the 2016 J2 class coming out of Venezuela, Arias has a long history under the spotlight that goes back to his days playing for Venezuela’s 14U team at various tournaments across the globe against the world’s best in his age group. Before becoming a professional player, Arias trained under Ciro Barrios, a trainer whose program produced current Venezuelan MLB players Gleyber Torres and Willson Contreras. He was one of the centerpieces of the San Diego Padres 2016 J2 class, receiving a 1.9 million dollar signing bonus to become a professional player at the age of sixteen tears old.
During his first two years in the San Diego farm system, he was very lackluster statistically although showing flashes of why he got a seven-figure signing bonus as a teenager with power to all fields and glovework at the six that would be adequate in the big leagues.
Arias was fast-tracked through the system and the bet paid off as he put up a 120 wRC+ while being the youngest player in all three High-A leagues at nineteen years old. The infielder accumulated many skeptics because of his high strikeout and low walk rates during the early stages of his MiLB career, and he also experimented with several adjustments and training methods to improve his swing/hitting approach.
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