Looking at Numbers From the 2025 International League

Minimum 400 induced swings.

Creating these lists at the Triple-A is a pain. Why? Players bounce around.

Geoff Hartlieb played for three teams last year, while Codi Heuer spent time between the Rangers and Tigers’ organizations. So, these lists can vary depending on what league (IL or PCL) one considers a player to be from.

The top ten includes some familiar names. Roddery Muñoz and Matt Pushard were both Rule 5 Draft picks this past December. Forrest Whitley was a former first-round pick.

There are also two elite pitching prospects here: Quinn Mathews and Robby Snelling. Snelling showed big velocity once more at the Triple-A level and put himself in a strong position to make his MLB debut next year. The left-hander was one of the big pieces that went to Miami in the Tanner Scott trade.

Mathews, meanwhile, walked 74 batters over 94 innings. However, he picked up plenty of strikeouts (107) along the way.

Flipping the script

Let’s flip this around and look at the biggest swing-and-miss hitters:

Carson Williams is going to be a very interesting name to watch in 2026.

Williams will likely get rope in the Rays’ infield next season, especially now that Brandon Lowe is with the Pirates. However, the swing-and-miss in his game hasn’t gone away.

Spencer Jones, meanwhile, posted a Whiff% above 40% in the International League, much like he did in Double-A.

Bullet hitters

Now that we’ve reached the Triple-A section of this endeavor, the hard-hit numbers will look more normal (not statistically normal per se). Here are the hitters who had the highest Hard Hit% in the International League:

Yeah, Basallo can hit the ball hard. The same can be said for Owen Caissie.

Barrels

Next up, the barrels:

Minimum 100 batted balls in play. We note that some of our data may conflict with data found in the Minor League section of Statcast, as we tried to calculate Barrel% based on historical MLB data.

It’s amazing to think that many of the names listed above had an impactful year in the Minors — and the Majors.

Basallo, Sal Stewart, Carter Jensen, and Roman Anthony all had success to some degree in the Majors after their respective clubs promoted them to the Majors. It’s also worth noting that Basallo, Jensen, and Stewart retained their rookie eligibility.

Groundball machines

Lastly, the best ground-ball pitchers:

Hurston Waldrep’s splitter became one of the best offspeed pitchers in the Majors last season. But before Waldrep established himself as a big leaguer, he posted one of the best ground-ball rates in the IL.

So did Cade Cavalli, who also finished last year in the Majors.

Note: For our Triple-A articles, we amended our calculation of whiff rates, as we included four tip bunts to align with Statcast.