A's Spring Breakout spotlight: Henry Bolte
This year Major League Baseball is doing something pretty cool by bringing the focus to some of the top minor leaguers around the game in what they're calling "Spring Breakout." Essentially, it'll be a game played between teams of every organization's top prospects with the games being played from March 14-17. For the A's, their game will be on Friday, March 15 against the San Francisco Giants at 4:05 as Game 2 of a doubleheader. The first game will be a regular spring training contest.
The full roster for the A's can be viewed here, but each day this week we're going to spotlight one member of the A's Spring Breakout roster. Today, that player is outfielder Henry Bolte.
Bolte was drafted out of Palo Alto High School in the second round of the 2022 Draft and spent last season in A Ball with the Stockton Ports patrolling center and right field. It's not too often that you get a consensus in top prospect rankings, but both Baseball Prospectus and MLB Pipeline have him slotted at No. 12 in the A's system. Pipeline has him as a 55 power guy with a 65 run tool on the 20-80 scout scale.
Last year he hit 14 homers, stole 32 bags and drew 62 walks in 112 games. Those are all solid stats and the A's would certainly like to see more of that profile as he continues to rise up the ranks of the farm system.
There are also some flaws that will need to be addressed. In a brief stint in the Complex League in 2022 he struck out 48.7% of the time, and he followed that up with a 33.4% rate in Stockton last season, among the highest in the league. That's a lot of strikeouts for the lower minors. Still, he hit .257 with a .356 OBP thanks to a 12.6% walk rate, so there is potentially some upside here.
Bolte is still just entering his age 20 season, so there's plenty of time for him to develop into quite an interesting big leaguer. He has the tools--potentially five of them--that could make him a huge impact player for the A's for years to come. Whether or not he reaches that potential will depend on how much refining he can do at the plate.
Pipeline says that he has trouble on off-speed pitches out of the zone, while BP mentions a "hole in his swing."
The A's needed to take a big swing on a guy in the draft that wasn't fully polished but has the tools to really be an impact player. They took that swing on Bolte a couple of years ago. He looks destined for Lansing to begin the year, where the ball doesn't tend to fly early in the season. That may be enough to help him work on the parts of his swing that have been giving him trouble.
Spring Breakout will be available to stream on MLB.tv and looks to be available on NBC California and ESPN+.