SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - Kevin Bazzell has been the man in the seat for some of the nastiest pitches in the Arizona Fall League, and the Nationals prospect isn’t shy about what he’s seeing.
Bazzell has caught Jarlin Susana repeatedly in recent weeks, first on Aug. 11 with High-A Wilmington during Susana’s rehab outing after last year’s lat surgery, then again on Sept. 12 with Double-A Rochester, and three more times in the Fall League. The latest came Wednesday for Salt River, when the 6-foot-6 right-hander punched out six and gave up one earned run on one hit and three walks over three innings.
That kind of front-row look has left Bazzell impressed.
“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 was sitting at 100-101 mph with both his four-seamer and sinker on Wednesday, touching 102.4. He had already reached 103.8 mph in his Fall League debut on Oct. 3, and his 39 fastest pitches in the league this season have all come in at 101.3 mph or higher.
Bazzell also pointed to Susana’s mid-80s breaking ball - “a power curveball,” in his words, though some systems label it a slider - as another plus-plus weapon. MLB Pipeline’s No. 66 overall prospect has also been working on a sweeper and a mid-90s cutter, and he threw the cutter for the first time Wednesday.
For Bazzell, catching that kind of heat is part challenge, part education.
“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.”
The defensive work has come a long way for Bazzell, whose path to catcher has zigzagged plenty. He spent time at shortstop growing up, then moved behind the plate at Rockwall-Heath High School in Heath, Texas, while future first-round pick Jett Williams, now the Mets’ No. 10 prospect, handled shortstop.
Bazzell shifted to third base when he got to Texas Tech in 2023, started there for a season, then moved back to catcher in 2024. That return helped push him to the Nationals in the third round of that year’s Draft, thanks in part to above-average arm strength.
His receiving has changed too. In his first full season last year, he used both a traditional stance and a one-knee-down setup. Under the Nationals’ new player-development leadership group in 2026, he has moved fully to the one-knee-down approach.
“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.”
Bazzell’s season also included a frightening moment on April 11, when a pitch struck the left side of his face while he was with Wilmington. He suffered a broken left orbital bone and didn’t get back into the Blue Rocks lineup until May 7.
Six months later, he’s back in gear and back in the box, taking triple-digit fastballs to the mask with no hesitation.
“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.”
The Fall League isn’t only about catching rockets. Bazzell is also trying to keep the bat moving after a strong offensive season.
He hit .287/.389/.470 with nine home runs and a 125 wRC+ across 66 games between High-A and Double-A, a sharp step up after he failed to homer in 84 Single-A games in 2025. His adjustments have centered on driving the ball in the air and to the pull side with more force, and the results back that up: his ground-ball rate dropped from 51.2 percent last year to 34.9 this summer, while his pull rate climbed from 33.3 percent to 52.8.
There’s plenty on Bazzell’s plate in the desert. What he’s not doing is daydreaming about stepping in against Susana while he’s the one doing the catching.
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