Ventura, California —— At the top of this post, watch our scouting video of Cuesta College freshman catcher Aidan Nagle, taken from his at-bats in a recent Cougars’ road game against Western State Conference opponent Ventura College.
Aidan Nagle scouting report — notes & observations
A big, strong freshman from Santa Rosa in northern California, Aidan Nagle is holding his own in a difficult league early on in his college career. Behind the plate, he’s a pretty good receiver with soft hands and something of a nuanced understanding about how to call a game. He’s robotic and rigid at times behind the plate, too—not necessarily surprising considering his age—but that’s something that should smooth out as he continues to grow into his body a bit as he plays out over the next few years.
At the plate, Nagle has a nice, short left-handed stroke that can get good lift on the ball when he’s able to turn on pitches on the inner half of the plate. He’s somewhat undeveloped on coverage, and struggles with off-speed and going with outside pitches, but that, too, is as much a product of his age and relative inexperience as anything.
It’s a somewhat random comp, but Nagle reminds me of Grayson Greiner, the Detroit Tigers‘ catching prospect that we scouted a little bit back during last fall’s prestigious Arizona Fall League. Nagle isn’t as big as Greiner, and he probably won’t develop quite the same kind of power profile, but the Cuesta freshman has that same body type and over-sized feel behind the plate while still making things work defensively with athleticism that gets the job done. Plus, I think there’s some untapped power in Nagle’s body type that might come out in the coming years.
Aidan Nagle scouting report — Multimedia
Again, for a video look at his swing, you can watch Nagle hitting in a few at-bats against Ventura in the video at the very top of this post. If you’re looking for specific swing mechanics, here are our set of Nagle GIFs from that same game on the road at Ventura College:
If you’re still looking for more baseball videos and scouting reports like the one here, please subscribe to the Baseball Census channel on YouTube for hundreds of high-quality college and minor league prospect videos.
In this Aidan Nagle scouting report:
Western State Conference | Cuesta College | Ventura College | Aidan Nagle
Follow Baseball Census on social media:
Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Instagram | Google+ | SoundCloud | Tumblr | Reddit | Giphy
