The Prospect Promotion Incentive
Jun 16, 2026 · 59 min · 12 segments
In this episode, Beck and Scully talk pre-arbitration extensions and break down all the promotions across minor league baseball last week. Players discussed: Marek Houston, SS, MIN Eric Hartman…
both went with national corn on the cob day and i know which direction you took this because we talked about it on air but who'd you go with and why
yeah i took a layup of an answer and went with the only uh corn themed minor league mascot that at least i can think of there's a bunch based in iowa which i think would have also been an angle um if i didn't like anybody on the cedar rapids colonels uh who are the twins high a affiliate One name jumped out to me at the top of the kind of OPS leaderboard for the team stats.
That was Merrick Houston, a shortstop prospect for them.
In 48 games this year, he's slashing 303, 373, 444 with five homers, 16 stolen bases, and a 112 WRC+.
He was the 16th overall pick out of Wake Forest in the 2025 draft.
And looks like he could be, you know, a run-of-the-mill average big leader.
And I think that's a good kind of profile for where he was picked, how he came out, and what he looked like in college.
But really put it together well at high A this year.
So I want to shout out Merrick Houston as my corn on the cob prospect comp of the day.
Yeah, he played very well at single A.
Granted, in a small sample, it was just 12 games after the draft last year.
He sort of split time, spent 12 games with single A and then 12 games in high A and was very, very good in single A.
Some of the batted ball distribution has gotten better this year.
He's pulling the ball more often.
He's putting the ball on a line more often.
It's really encouraging stuff.
I don't know that the tools are necessarily there for him to be a standout big leaguer we're talking about.
hit over power certainly um with maybe above average speed but um you know a near 4.5 million dollar signing in the middle of the first round he's a high likelihood big leaguer who could probably stick at shortstop um and and will hit just maybe not for a ton of impact um so i don't know if that feels um you know like uh he's emblematic of a kernel of corn but uh It's a good pick.
I went a different direction.
I wanted to not take the layup because two players on the kernels is maybe a little much.
I wanted to look at people who are playing really well in spite of hitting a lot of cans of corn.
So what I did was I went to the fan graphs, minor league leaderboards, put a filter on only players who have a WRC plus of 150 or better, and then sorted by infield fly ball percentage.
The leader in this category is actually on our rundown for today.
So I did not go with him.
We're going to talk about him anyway, as he was promoted.
both went with national corn on the cob day and i know which direction you took this because we talked about it on air but who'd you go with and why
yeah i took a layup of an answer and went with the only uh corn themed minor league mascot that at least i can think of there's a bunch based in iowa which i think would have also been an angle um if i didn't like anybody on the cedar rapids colonels uh who are the twins high a affiliate One name jumped out to me at the top of the kind of OPS leaderboard for the team stats.
That was Merrick Houston, a shortstop prospect for them.
In 48 games this year, he's slashing 303, 373, 444 with five homers, 16 stolen bases, and a 112 WRC+.
He was the 16th overall pick out of Wake Forest in the 2025 draft.
And looks like he could be, you know, a run-of-the-mill average big leader.
And I think that's a good kind of profile for where he was picked, how he came out, and what he looked like in college.
But really put it together well at high A this year.
So I want to shout out Merrick Houston as my corn on the cob prospect comp of the day.
Yeah, he played very well at single A.
Granted, in a small sample, it was just 12 games after the draft last year.
He sort of split time, spent 12 games with single A and then 12 games in high A and was very, very good in single A.
Some of the batted ball distribution has gotten better this year.
He's pulling the ball more often.
He's putting the ball on a line more often.
It's really encouraging stuff.
I don't know that the tools are necessarily there for him to be a standout big leaguer we're talking about.
hit over power certainly um with maybe above average speed but um you know a near 4.5 million dollar signing in the middle of the first round he's a high likelihood big leaguer who could probably stick at shortstop um and and will hit just maybe not for a ton of impact um so i don't know if that feels um you know like uh he's emblematic of a kernel of corn but uh It's a good pick.
I went a different direction.
I wanted to not take the layup because two players on the kernels is maybe a little much.
I wanted to look at people who are playing really well in spite of hitting a lot of cans of corn.
So what I did was I went to the fan graphs, minor league leaderboards, put a filter on only players who have a WRC plus of 150 or better, and then sorted by infield fly ball percentage.
The leader in this category is actually on our rundown for today.
So I did not go with him.
We're going to talk about him anyway, as he was promoted.
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