Jonathan Aranda’s 2023 season belongs in the Louvre.
You’re probably not familiar with it because most of it happened in the minors, so I’ll sum it up for you this way: a .339 batting average, .449 on-base percentage and 25 homers in just 95 games. The slash line jumps to .376/.465/.690 over the final 58 of those games.
So what, right? Minor-league pitchers are terrible. Minor-league defenses are messy. Minor-league venues are weird. Minor-league equipment is different. Minor-league rules are ever-changing. It’s not so uncommon, then, for minor-league hitters to deliver outlier stat lines without having the skills to back it up.
That’s not what happened for Aranda in 2023, though. His underlying data was just as impressive as the surface-level production. His exit velocities averaged out to 92.2 mph and peaked at 113.0 mph. He walked at a 15 percent clip while striking out at just a 20 percent clip. In short, he impacted the ball like Corey Seager while possessing the plate discipline of Brandon Nimmo.
And I haven’t been able to shut up about since. Aranda to me seemed like the most perfect hitting specimen you could dream up in a lab, and if he could overcome his defensive limitations and the Rays‘ continual roster churn to get an honest chance before he aged out of relevance, good things were sure to follow.
Following the fakeout that was 2024, a season derailed by injuries, I think everyone can acknowledge now that it’s happening. His slash line is .355/.438/.677. His Baseball Savant page looks like Steve Urkel’s report card. He’s the most added hitter in CBS Sports leagues over the past week.
Here’s the problem: He’s just the latest in a procession of emergent first basemen, none of whom has taken himself out of the running at this early stage of the season. What seemed like a troublesome position on Draft Day has now become so bountiful that you may find yourself with more than you can handle. You know you have to offload one, preferably by way of trade, but how can you be sure it’s the right one?
I find myself asking the same question — and in more than one league, actually — so if you came here looking for crystal-clear answers, I’m sorry. Life isn’t that easy. What makes this particular situation so challenging is that I can’t automatically rule out any of Tyler Soderstrom, Aranda, Ben Rice, Spencer Torkelson, Michael Busch or Kyle Manzardo. All are young hitters of some pedigree. None has any glaring red flags. Any of them could legitimately be this good, yet it’s unlikely all of them will be.
Of course, you might think Matt Mervis deserves a mention here, too, but … nah. So I guess that makes one I’m dismissing out of hand.
As for the six in question here — Soderstrom, Aranda, Rice, Torkelson, Busch and Manzardo — I can at least offer my thoughts on each. And, yes, I’ve listed them in the order I “rank” them, but with the caveat that I’ve changed my mind several times just in the past couple weeks.
