What in the world happened here?
Loidel Chapelli Jr.
Second Baseman
5´8´´
187 pounds
Age: 23
2023 South Side Sox Top Prospect Ranking 24
2024 South Side Sox Top Prospect Ranking 25
2023 High Level Winston-Salem (High-A)
Age relative to high level -0.1 years
SSS rank among all second basemen in the system 5
Overall 2024 stats 80 games ⚾️ 2 HR ⚾️ 20 RBI ⚾️ .233/.318/.316 ⚾️ 33 BB ⚾️ 86 K ⚾️ 17-of-23 (73.9%) SB ⚾️ .982 FLD%
Signed late in the 2022 period, with a rush-job $500,000 bonus, no one had reason to believe that Loidel Chapelli was going to set the DSL on fire. Sure, he had a father who mashed hell out of the ball in Cuba, but that man was a slugging first baseman. His son? Five-foot-eight, in spikes.
And when Chapelli in fact destroyed the DSL in 2022 (.344/.448/.636), you might have been right to say, hey, it’s the DSL while also rolling your eyes in recognition of him playing more than two years older than his level.
Chapelli’s emergence in 2023, however, was something altogether different.
The part about Chapelli’s size, especially given his quicks, is that he’s a fire hydrant of muscle. And short of a strange dip in production last May and June — not to create excuses, but this was the first stretch the second baseman had ever spent Stateside — Chapelli owned High-A, too.
And it’s not like he wasn’t being challenged — Chapelli being assigned to High-A from Opening Day forward was nothing short of a shock. He speedster took it in stride and in fact broke out of the gate as our top minors player in the very first week of all-affiliate play (how about this line: five games, .500/.526/1.000, 2 HR, 6 R, 8 RBI, 1 BB, 4 K, 1 SB).
Chapelli also didn’t wear down over the course of the season; in the second half, when the league had a chance to adjust to him and he was working on playing three times as many games as he’d ever played, his OPS never dipped lower than .831. A lefty swinger, Chapelli hit southpaws even better than righties. He stole bases at a killer clip.
The 2024 season, however, was a shocking about-face. Chapelli, now age-appropriate for the level, repeated a full season of High-A and got worse — terribly worse — in nearly all aspects of the game. His power? Gone. On-base? Flagging. The upward arrow attached to Loidel almost since the moment he signed has flattened, badly. If you didn’t know better, Chapelli peaked in his first month or two of High-A.
Amazingly, Chapelli still ranks average or above compared to his peers, but his ratings have fallen from “future star” to “everyday player.”
Chapelli’s Baseball Cube player ratings
Speed 76 (-1 from last season)
Hitting 68 (-10)
Runs 63 (-17)
Power 61 (-15)
Contact 59 (-11)
XBH 58 (-13)
Durability 57 (+1)
RBIs 50 (-21)
Average 61.50 (-10.88)
Team Winning Pct .381
A year ago, we were so high on Chapelli we predicted embarrassment over ranking him just 25th among our prospects and guaranteed he’d be in Birmingham in 2024. We are embarrassed no more.
The fact that a fairly seasoned player out of Cuba should not be playing a third year at Winston-Salem is the only argument that can be made for Chapelli’s promotion, and that is not a strong one. By merit, Chapelli needs to stay in North Carolina to start 2025 and faces a true make-or-break season in a system loaded with middle infield talent.
100. Cole McConnell, CF
99. Drake Logan, LF
98. Marcelo Alcala, RF
97. Lyle Miller-Green, 1B
96. Jared Kelley, RHRP
95. Adrian Gil, 1B
94. Adam Hackenberg, C
93. Loidel Chapelli, 2B
