Green and Gold Futures Prospect Weekly: Burress Arrives With a Bang, Arnold Keeps Dealing at Double-A
By Ethan Price ·
Green and Gold Futures Prospect Weekly covers the last 7 days of action for the Athletics farm system.
Power at Hello: Drew Burress Hits the Ground Running
Twelve games into his professional career, Drew Burress (A, OF, Rank: 2) already looks like a bat who will not need much time to chew through levels. This week he went 7-for-22 with 2 doubles, a homer, 2 RBI, and 6 walks against Single-A competition, pushing his season line at Stockton to a .262/.446/.619 clip through 56 plate appearances. Every one of his four hits through the first week-plus went for extra bases, and the power the Athletics were buying when they drafted him seventh in 2026 is showing up immediately. The 60-grade raw power and elite plate discipline from his college profile at Georgia Tech have carried over with minimal transition friction, which is not a given with wood bats and professional arms.
Burress stands out from a typical college bat landing in the complex or low-A environment with the walk rate doing the heavy lifting alongside the power. He is posting a swing rate of 34.7 percent, among the most selective approaches in the system, and drawing walks at a pace that keeps his on-base numbers legitimate even when the contact is not perfect. There are real questions about how his frame and pull-side orientation will hold up against better breaking balls as he climbs, but nothing about his debut suggests those concerns are urgent. A promotion to High-A Lansing later this summer is entirely plausible, and if the power-discipline combination persists there, the conversation about an accelerated path to Double-A will start in earnest.
Jamie Arnold Is Making a Case
Jamie Arnold (AA, LHP, Rank: 4) put together a clean pitching line this week: 5.2 innings, 6 hits, no earned runs, no walks, and 9 strikeouts. That outing lifted his last-30-day ERA to 2.45 across 25.2 innings with 36 punchouts, a stretch where his whiff rate has climbed to 32.2 percent and his strike rate has crossed 50 percent. Arnold owns a 60-grade fastball sitting 93-95, and the 65-grade slider has been a genuine out pitch against Double-A lineups. When those two pitches are tunneling off the same release point and he is ahead in counts, hitters have very few good options.
The season-long walk total—45 free passes across 108 innings—is the gap between his present profile and a reliable mid-rotation projection. The zero-walk outing this week was encouraging because command volatility has been the recurring obstacle. Over his last five starts the stuff has been at its best, the changeup has been effective, and the results have followed. If he can push that strike-throwing into the second half of Double-A assignments with any consistency, a Triple-A promotion this offseason starts to look like the logical next step. The raw material here is a legitimate mid-rotation starter; the development question is whether the command catches up to the stuff.
Quick Hits
- Johenssy Colome (RK, SS, Rank: 7) · had the most eye-catching week of any hitter in the system. The 17-year-old went 8-for-21 with 2 doubles, a triple, a homer, 4 RBI, 3 walks, and 3 hit-by-pitches across 21 plate appearances, continuing a stretch that has him slashing .344/.517/.609 over his last 30 days at the complex level. For a teenager whose scouting profile carries a 45 hit tool and real swing-length concerns, this production is ahead of schedule. He has a 55 power grade and legitimate physical projection, and both are showing up. The walk and HBP totals also suggest the advanced zone awareness evaluators praised is genuine. The swing decisions and contact quality will face tougher tests, but nothing about this week was supposed to happen this fast.
- Cameron Leary (AA, OF, Rank: 35) · had a week he badly needed, going 6-for-21 with 3 homers and 6 RBI while adding 3 walks at Double-A Midland. Leary is a three-true-outcomes profile with a 55 power grade and a 40 hit tool, and those three home runs pushed him to 11 on the season across 410 plate appearances. He's hitting .214 over the last 30 days with a 63.2 percent contact rate, so the contact struggles remain real, but the power is the carrying tool and it keeps showing up. His 37 stolen bases this season also deserve mention; the 55 speed grade is earning its grade.
- Breyson Guedez (A+, OF, Rank: 17) · drove in 7 runs on 9 hits across 28 plate appearances, adding 2 homers with just 3 strikeouts. He is hitting .359/.385/.521 over his last 30 days with an 83 percent contact rate, which is the highest in the system among everyday players with significant recent samples. The contact-first profile and a 55 hit tool have been the calling card all year; Guedez is batting .310 combined between Stockton and Lansing across 481 plate appearances. The walk rate (25 free passes in 481 PAs) remains the biggest obstacle between him and a legitimate everyday projection, but the barrel control right now is genuinely hard to argue with for an 18-year-old at High-A.
- Devin Taylor (AA, OF, Rank: 6) · posted 3 homers, 7 RBI, and 6 walks against 10 strikeouts in 32 plate appearances this week. The 10 strikeouts are worth watching; his contact rate over the last 30 days sits at 65.9 percent, the swing-and-miss against upper-level breaking balls that the scouting report flags as a vulnerability. Still, he is batting .327/.397/.540 at Double-A Midland this season with 13 home runs and 51 RBI through 282 plate appearances, and the 77 walks in 536 combined plate appearances across both levels reflect a 55 hit tool and plus power that continue to click together.
- Nate Nankil (AA, OF, Rank: 26) · collected 8 hits in 23 plate appearances with 2 homers and 5 RBI in his second week at Double-A Midland. After posting a .210/.327/.305 line at High-A Lansing earlier this season, his early numbers at Double-A read .323/.364/.516 through 33 plate appearances. Small sample, but the contact quality looks different from the Lansing version. His combined season slash of .239/.338/.346 across three levels is still below where a 23-year-old with his profile needs to be, so the Double-A showing needs to hold before drawing firm conclusions.
- Gavin Turley (A, OF, Rank: 22) · went 4-for-19 with 2 homers and 10 RBI. Ten RBI in 19 at-bats shows situational timing even if the contact was limited, and the two home runs fit the 60-grade raw power he brings. He is slashing .293/.408/.431 over his last 30 days at Stockton with a more disciplined approach than earlier in the year. The season line of .214/.348/.374 with 11 home runs still reflects a hit tool that lags the power, but the last month has been a step in the right direction.
- Kade Morris (AAA, RHP, Rank: 18) · returned from the 7-day IL on August 15 after missing over five weeks and tossed 3 innings of one-run ball, allowing 3 hits with a walk and 2 strikeouts. His season ERA at Triple-A Las Vegas sits at 4.46 across 84.2 innings, and the 11.70 ERA in 10 MLB innings earlier this year reflects how little margin exists when a 40-grade command profile meets big-league lineups. The return is good news for his workload, but he'll need a few more outings to establish whether the stuff is back to its pre-IL level.
- Clark Elliott (AA, OF, Rank: 39) · went 4-for-23 with 2 homers, 4 RBI, and 2 walks. Elliott has carved out a patient, low-contact approach at Double-A; he is drawing 77 walks in 381 plate appearances this season, one of the higher totals in the system. The 40 power grade has been outperformed with 7 homers this year, and the two this week both suggest he is pulling power from a flat swing more consistently than his profile would predict. I would take the over on that power grade at this point.
- Bobby Boser (AA, SS, Rank: 31) · went 7-for-28 with 2 doubles, a homer, and 3 walks but struck out 9 times. The strikeout profile at Double-A is the central challenge; his contact rate over the last 30 days is 65 percent with 42 punchouts in 105 plate appearances, the swing-and-miss that makes the 55 power grade hard to access consistently. The season line of .218/.321/.371 at Double-A Midland tells a similar story. There is a power and on-base skill set worth watching here, but the bat-to-ball has to improve for it to matter.
- Cole Miller (A, RHP, Rank: 30) · tossed 3 hitless innings with 2 strikeouts and 2 walks in a relief appearance, a clean line in isolation. The season context is harder to ignore: a 7.26 ERA across 74.1 innings at Stockton with a 19 percent whiff rate and a home-run problem that has produced 13 surrendered over those innings. Miller was excellent in 2025 with a 1.56 ERA in 40.1 innings at the same level before Tommy John, so the developmental arc post-surgery is the real story. Command at 45 and a changeup still coming online are the near-term priorities.