2026 Lehigh Valley IronPigs Season Recap

Season Recap

Record: 68-81

A lot of the potential excitement of an IronPigs season revolved around Aidan Miller and Gabriel Ricones Jr. getting healthy and getting some reinforcements from Reading. Miller ended up missing most of the season and never actually getting to AAA. Rincones had a season plagued by injuries and poor play. Then you had Jean Cabrera fall flat on his face, and the interesting arms like Griff McGarry, Andrew Walling, Alex McFarlane, and really everyone but Seth McGarry all either getting injured or not spending much time in Lehigh Valley.

This made for an uninteresting team full of veterans and 40 man detritus who outside of Bryan De La Cruz did not impact the major league club or drive interest. The team was fairly mediocre on the field as well, often struggling with a lack of starting pitching. On some level, this is sort of just the nature of AAA, but that doesn’t make it any less depressing.

Top Prospects

(Prospects will only be featured once with the highest level team they played for)

Others to Know

1B/OF Felix Reyes – For the second season in a row, Reyes put up a monster minor league season. His warts become more evident and harder to ignore this season. He had 90th percentile outcomes in damage when he hit the ball, but he was 1st percentile in chase rate in AAA, and that finally led to his zone contact slipping from plus to average. He can hit everything, but pitchers stopped throwing his strikes and he never adjusted. If he can actually get his chase rate to just poor he could be a corner bench bat, but entering his age 26 season this is probably who Reyes is.

RHP Chuck King – King joined the IronPigs early in the season and ended up being one of their only consistent starting pitchers. He ended the season, 19th in the minor leagues in innings pitched and was 24th in ERA among all AAA pitchers with at least 90 IP (73 pitchers). King is 28 so he isn’t really a prospect, and he doesn’t miss enough bats to really project to be anything meaningful as a major league arm. He throws a pair of fastballs that average a touch under 95, with his sinker being his primary pitch. He then throws a gyro slider and splitter that make up the majority of the rest of his pitches. He also mixes in the baby sweeper that the Phillies have had a bunch of their pitchers throwing this year. Only his splitter generates any real whiff rates, and his fastballs get hit in the zone. Overall he limits hard contact and profiles as a AAA SP with maybe some utility as a bulk reliever/swing starter a couple of times in his career.

1B Keaton Anthony – If you just looked at Anthony’s triple slash line (.282/.363/.472) you might think he is a decent hitter, but the underlying numbers don’t tell the same story. He hit the ball less hard this year, but with slightly better directional damage. His 101.9 90th EV was 33rd percentile among all AAA hitters, which is not going to work well at first unless he is an elite hitter. His contact rates are plus plus for AAA, but they aren’t outlier good, and his chase rate was below average, even if improved this year. If he wasn’t a first baseman, this would be a different conversation, but a short side platoon first baseman that isn’t going to hit for big power is a hard sell.

IF Robert Moore – Moore spent most of the year with the IronPigs not being an everyday player, but ended the season with an interesting stat line (.226/.321/.467). It was the most amount of power that really jumped, and it was from Moore swinging early and often with and emphasis on hitting the ball in the air to his pull side. His chase rate was high, but he hammered balls in the zone and was 99th percentile in swing percent at balls in his zone and fly balls in the air. His raw power numbers were just average and he probably doesn’t make enough contact to be more than this, but it was an interesting change in profile.

Stat Leaders

Pitching