Lazaro Armenteros went from a highly touted international signing, debuting in the A's system in 2017, to falling completely out of the A's prospect rankings on MLB Pipeline in recent years. At 24 years old, he is headed to the A's 40-man roster, per Martín Gallegos.
His addition to the roster will make it so that he will be protected from December's Rule 5 Draft. That draft is how the A's have landed Mark Canha and more recently, Ryan Noda. It can be a good place to pick up some talent, and the A's felt like Armenteros had shown enough improvement this past season that he could have been a target of another franchise.
At nearly every level he has been a well above average bat if you look at his wRC+ totals. The lone exception was back in 2021 when he was first promoted to High-A Lansing and hit .195 with a .267 OBP and four homers in 56 games, giving him a 58 wRC+. He repeated the level in 2022, playing another 56 games, and hit .261 with a .376 OBP, ten homers, and a 138 wRC+.
This past season he made it all the way to Double-A and set a new career-high in walk rate (15.3%) in 96 games, hit 14 homers, swiped ten bags, and held a 124 wRC+. He also spent a couple of weeks in Lansing, mashing six bombs, giving him 20 home runs total on the season.
The biggest jump forward in 2023 had to be in cutting down his strikeout rate, taking it from absurdly high to just pretty high. In his second go-around with Lansing last season he put up much better numbers, but he also struck out 43.4% of the time. This season in Double-A, that rate dropped more than ten percent, down to 32.8%. It's still high, but the team must like what they're seeing from Lazarito and believe he can continue to knock that number down. If he could keep it in the mid-twenties as he continues to climb the organizational ladder, that would be ideal.
Back in 2019, before some of the shine had worn off on Armenteros, he was ranked as high as the A's #5 prospect by Pipeline. The only players ahead of him were Jesús Luzardo, A.J. Puk, Sean Murphy, and Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray. New World Series champion Jonah Heim was all the way down at #29 that year.
The addition of Armenteros to the 40-man doesn't mean that he is all of a sudden going to be the player fans have been dreaming on for seven seasons now. What it does mean is that he's making progress towards becoming a big leaguer and the A's want to see what he does next.
A few weeks ago we mentioned the possibility of Armenteros being added to the 40-man roster along with some of the other players that would need to be protected. The deadline to protect players from the Rule 5 Draft is November 14.
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