Dynasty
Nastiest GIFs
The List
Dynasty
Nastiest GIFs
The List
+

Minor League Pitcher Grades: The Best Arms in the Minors Sept. 7-20

These traded pitchers could make big waves in their new organizations.

Jacob Milham
Dynasty 2 Hours Ago

Keeping tabs on your current baseball dynasty pitching options is hard enough. Looking for the next diamond in the rough on the minor-league side is a job all by itself. Thanks to PLV, we can look at some arms of note and the pitching prospects doing the most in 2026.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some Triple-A standouts from the season so far and check in on a Top 100 arm.

Check out the card tool at: https://milb-pitch-analysis-card.streamlit.app/ and other tools at: https://pitcherlist.com/pl-pro-tools-hub/

 

Top 100 Prospect Spotlight

 

Connelly Early, Washington Nationals

 

2026 Stats (MLB): 17 GS | 91.2 IP | 3.44 ERA | 4.60 FIP | 23.8% K% | 8.7% BB% | 27.3% CSW%

Last Two Weeks (MiLB): 2.2 IP | 2 H | 3 ER | 5 BB | 4 K

 

Was it just one inning? Yes. Was it his first inning in Triple-A all season? Also yes. But the reality is that, after Washington Nationals pitcher Connelly Early is reportedly set to make his team debut this coming week, it is worth looking at what the Virginia native could be bringing in one last start this season.

Early was the Nationals’ return for trading infielder Curtis Mead to the Boston Red Sox earlier this summer. The lefty was rolling through his first full major league season with Boston, with seven wins against five losses and a 3.44 ERA across 17 starts, when an elbow issue flared up against Washington in July. Nine days later, in one of the stranger trade sequences of the season, the Nationals turned around and acquired him from the Red Sox for third baseman Curtis Mead, betting on a pitcher they had just watched get hurt against them. It got scarier before it got better. Forearm tightness during a live batting practice session threatened to end his year entirely, with some fear he might not throw competitively again until 2028. Instead, Washington eased him through a throwing program, and he finally made his organizational debut in September.

The line from that first appearance — one inning, three earned runs — is not one anybody should read into. It is a pitcher shaking rust off a live arm for the first time in nearly two months, nothing more. His first scheduled follow-up start got rained out, which forced the Nationals to get creative about where he throws next, with Triple-A Rochester now in the conversation as they try to squeeze enough innings out of him to make his Washington debut before the season closes. What matters is the pitcher underneath the rust. Early still has that mid-rotation hope for a Nationals organization trying to turn around the public perception of its pitching development.

 

Early’s second outing was slightly longer and of the scoreless variety, even though three walks to two strikeouts still doesn’t scream polished and rustless. Early is still landing the four-seamer in the zone plenty, but he is not getting much swing and miss while averaging 93.0 MPH on the pitch. He is keeping lefties in check with his sinker, with a 29% swinging strike rate across those two outings. He is getting more vertical movement on both fastballs compared to his MLB action from earlier this season, a bright spot to see if he can continue that this week. These breaking pitches leave something to be desired, while his changeup usage is down slightly but the swing and miss is still there.

I would not draw a single conclusion from less than three innings against a pitcher who spent seven weeks unable to throw. The version of Early worth paying attention to is the one who pitched 91.2 innings for Boston with real strikeout stuff and control to match. Dynasty managers should really watch any action he gets to close out the season closely, as a possible buy-low candidate after being out for much of the 2026 campaign.

 

Triple-A Standouts

 

Jackson Ferris, Los Angeles Dodgers

 

2026 Stats: 22 GS | 109.0 IP | 5.12 ERA | 4.48 FIP | 24.7% K% | 11.2% BB% | 29.9% CSW%

Last Two Weeks: 13.2 IP | 0.66 ERA | 3 H | 1 ER | 3 BB | 20 K

 

It has been a stellar run for the forgotten other piece from the Chicago Cubs trade to the Los Angeles Dodgers, first baseman Zyhir Hope. Lefty Jackson Ferris has spent all season in Triple-A, and the early-season box scores showed a 22-year-old pitcher scuffling against more experienced competition. But with double-digit whiffs in six of his last seven outings and only four earned runs allowed across his last six starts, Ferris now has batters scuffling against him as the season winds down.

Ferris has been a different pitcher across his last several outings, none louder than a start against El Paso in which he retired the first 19 batters he faced and struck out a career-high 13 over 7.2 innings, allowing just one hit and one walk the entire night. The fuel behind it has been velocity, with both his four-seamer and two-seamer averaging 93 mph on the season but sitting over 95 in his best recent starts, touching as high as 96.1. He has also simply stopped walking people, an 8.9% rate over his last stretch that would represent a real step forward for a pitcher who has posted a double-digit walk rate in every professional season since the Cubs drafted him in 2022.

The season-long pitch data tells an interesting story about where the swing-and-miss is actually coming from. Ferris’s curveball, the pitch he reportedly lost trust in last year when he could not consistently land it for strikes, has quietly been one of his best offerings all season. That pitch and his slider really carried him through that El Paso start, when he threw one of them 60 times and still posted at least a 50% CSW% on both. It was a dominant outing, but just the latest from Ferris as he closes out the season.

It is easy to see Ferris’ prospect ranking in the teens by many outlets and not consider him a highly valuable dynasty prospect by most managers. But there is something about the pitcher we have seen over this last month that entices me. The reality is he may have a tough time cracking the Dodgers rotation to start 2027, but if he finds a new home via trade this offseason, his dynasty value rises sharply.

 

Issac Lyon, Washington Nationals

 

2026 Stats:  22 GS | 119.2 IP | 3.01 ERA | 3.52 FIP | 22.6% K% | 7.2% BB% | 28.1% CSW%

Last Two Weeks: 9.0 IP | 1.00 ERA | 9  H | 1 ER | 3 BB | 11 K

 

Speaking of trades, I certainly was not honed in on pitcher Isaac Lyon after the Nationals acquired him alongside catcher Harry Ford from the Seattle Mariners. The 10th-round pick was really flying under the radar in a stacked Mariners pitching pipeline. But now, with a new organization and nine months later, Lyon is the one making noise.

Lyon, the son of former major league reliever Brandon Lyon, opened the year in the bullpen at Single-A Fredericksburg before a promotion to High-A Wilmington unlocked something. He posted a 1.33 ERA across six starts there, striking out 22 against just nine walks in 20.1 innings, dominant enough that Washington bumped him up to Double-A Harrisburg by the end of May. He hit a real wall in his first two starts at that level, a 7.71 ERA that looked like the first real speed bump of his season. He has not lost since. Across his last 13 appearances between Harrisburg and Triple-A Rochester, Lyon leads every qualified Nationals minor leaguer in ERA, innings pitched, WHIP, and wins, all while ranking second in strikeouts. His fourth Triple-A start produced four innings of one-run ball with four strikeouts, extending a stretch that has him sitting on 125 strikeouts for his professional career against just 47 walks.

His cutter is something opposing batters struggle to catch up to, whether it is in the zone or being chased 45% of the time. He has allowed just six hits on that pitch in Triple-A while averaging only 89.9 mph on it. It works against both righties and lefties, much like his changeup, which has posted a 30% swinging strike rate over his past four starts. He has struggled to induce silly swings on his slider so far, but it remains a reliable pitch for generating groundballs for the infield to gobble up. His arm slot sitting at 11 degrees only makes his stuff more deceptive in a big league world where that trait can either make a starter uber effective or eventually push him toward a bullpen role.

Lyon’s strong run has come primarily in the season’s latter half, and he is still not a pitcher highly regarded by most evaluators out there. His time in Rochester has produced nothing but good results, though, and some added velocity this offseason should push him into more viable starter prospect conversations. But managers will have to wait and see how the 22-year-old Utah native heads into 2027.

 

John Holobetz, Boston Red Sox

 

2026 Stats: 23 GS | 119.1 IP | 4.07 ERA | 4.05 FIP | 26.3% K% | 7.2% BB% | 28.2% CSW%

Last Two Weeks: 9.2 IP | 0.93 ERA | 6 H | 1 ER | 3 BB | 15 K

 

Let’s just keep the trade theme going, shall we?

When Boston acquired the return for Quinn Priester from the Milwaukee Brewers back in 2025, the headline pieces were outfield prospect Yophery Rodriguez, a competitive balance pick, and cash. John Holobetz, a 2024 fifth-round pick out of Old Dominion, arrived months later as the player to be named later, the paperwork afterthought in a deal most Red Sox fans had already stopped thinking about.

He has not stopped climbing since. Holobetz spent his first full season in the organization working from High-A Greenville up through Double-A Portland, and opened 2026 by throwing a complete game’s worth of quality across his first three starts, a 1.13 ERA and a 23-to-5 strikeout-to-walk ratio that earned him Eastern League Pitcher of the Week honors in April. He capped his Double-A stint the way you want a pitcher to leave a level: five scoreless innings, 10 strikeouts, zero walks, and a fastball that touched 98.1 mph in that same start. Triple-A Worcester got the same treatment in his debut there, one run allowed across 5.2 innings with six more strikeouts and no walks, a win in his first look at the level. His September has been solid, with 19 strikeouts to six walks in three starts, including a career-high 20 whiffs in just 4.1 innings pitched on Sept. 17.

 

 

I have heard that Holobetz lacks one true dominant pitch, something that will assuredly work against him in a future promotion to face big-league batters. But the fastball pairing of his four-seamer and cutter begs to disagree. At a 95.0 mph average in Triple-A on his four-seamer, he puts it in the zone more often than not and records a strike 70% of the time. Meanwhile, his cutter has an absurd 41% CSW% so far in Triple-A and is equally a strike 69% of the time. The changeup is the difference maker, with a 44% chase rate and an easy groundball profile. The overall command makes me like Holobetz’s outlook as a future MLB starter, even if the ceiling is not sky high.

Dynasty managers should already have a pulse on Holobetz amid his strong 2026 season. He jumped into Baseball America’s top-10 prospects for the Red Sox, and the 24-year-old righty has traits that scream back-of-the-rotation starter. While home runs abound at that level, Holobetz’s ability to limit the long ball and a 3.40 SIERA in Triple-A tell me he has something to offer dynasty managers.

Get Premium