Nats prospect Kevin Bazzell catching 'the best stuff' in the Minors during the Fall League

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. –- Kevin Bazzell hadn’t caught fellow Nationals prospect Jarlin Susana until Aug. 11 with High-A Wilmington, Susana’s first rehab outing of the season following last year’s lat surgery. Bazzell was behind the plate for Susana once more during the regular season on Sept. 12 for Double-A Rochester and three times since in the Arizona Fall League. The latter included Wednesday’s outing for Salt River in which the 6-foot-6 right-hander struck out six and allowed one earned run on one hit and three walks over three innings.

In other words, Bazzell is getting a front-row seat to one of the best shows in prospectdom, and his review is in.

“I think he's the best pitcher in the Minors,” the 23-year-old backstop said. “Definitely got the best stuff. When he gets in the zone, it's pretty close to unhittable. It's as hard as it's going to be. Really good spin. Today he looked good. I think he looks pretty good every single time.”

Susana's arsenal included a four-seamer and sinker that both sat 100-101 mph and touched 102.4 on Wednesday. (Susana was up to 103.8 mph in his AFL debut on Oct. 3 and now owns the 39 fastest pitches thrown in the Fall League this season, all at or above 101.3 mph.) He also possesses a mid-80s breaking ball -- Bazzell called it a power curveball, many systems tag it as a slider -- that is just as much a plus-plus pitch as the heaters. The backstop noted that MLB Pipeline's No. 66 overall prospect has been working on a sweeper for another breaker and a mid-90s cutter that he unleashed for the first time on Wednesday.

It’s electric stuff across the board, the type Bazzell hopes only makes him better as a defender behind the plate.

“Not a knock to anybody else, but not everybody throws 103,” he said. “So whenever someone's not throwing 103, it just slows the game down a little bit. Now it speeds it up a little bit when he's up there. But I think getting to catch him every day, you have to be really clean with your moves, get set, your glove load has to be really early. So it’s just made everything more fine-tuned, I'd say.”

Bazzell’s own journey to the developmental circuit known as the Fall League has been a fascinating one.

Like many future pros, he grew up getting ample time at shortstop, but when he attended Rockwall-Heath High School in Heath, Texas, he just happened to be there at the same time as future first-round pick Jett Williams (MIL No. 10), who was a better athletic fit at the six. Bazzell moved behind the plate just to stay in the lineup, but in his first taste of collegiate ball at Texas Tech in 2023, he slid back to the dirt as the Red Raiders’ starting third baseman. That only lasted a year before he moved back to catcher in ‘24 and looked good enough there -- with the aid of above-average arm strength -- to go to the Nationals in the third round of that year’s Draft.

In his first full season last year, Bazzell worked both out of the crouch and the one-knee-down stance but has transitioned completely to the latter approach, widely believed to help framing low strikes, under the Nationals’ new player-development leadership group in 2026.

“Last year [when] I caught, I was on two feet for most of the year,” he said. “My glove never touched the ground. I was hovering my glove above the ground, and you know that's completely different than what we're doing now. Now we're on a knee lower to the ground, but also just trying to focus on catching that low pitch. That's something that I wasn't really focusing on. So now I’m putting myself in a better position to make the move.”

That process was interrupted on April 11 when Bazzell was hit by a pitch on the left side of his face while with Wilmington. He suffered, among other injuries, a broken left orbital bone and didn’t return to the Blue Rocks lineup until May 7.

It was a freak accident that would have made many normal humans afraid of the baseball. Six months later, Bazzell -- with the aid of his mask and the other tools of ignorance -- is putting that same face in the direct line of triple-digit heat.

“It was tough, man,” he said. “It was mentally more than physically tough. I've had some setbacks and stuff like that, and it was hard. But I think I grew a lot from it mentally. I got better at baseball, and in a way, it gave me a better perspective.”

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Bazzell's working on more than just defensive work in the Fall League, of course. He hit .287/.389/.470 with nine homers and a 125 wRC+ over 66 games between High-A and Double-A during the regular season, and that’s a notable development after he didn’t go deep at all over 84 Single-A games in ‘25. As is the case with many Nats prospects, he’s focused more on pulling the ball in the air with authority, and to that point, he cut his ground-ball rate from 51.2 percent last year to 34.9 this summer and jumped his pull rate from 33.3 percent to 52.8.

That offensive adjustment gives him plenty to think about during his time in the desert. Just don’t expect him to catch him daydreaming about facing Susana’s elite stuff as a hitter when he’s behind the plate.

“I hope I never have to,” he said. “No, I just want to catch it. That’s it. I’m good at catching it.”