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Dilmer Mejia
Left-Handed Starting Pitcher
5´11´´
160 pounds
Age: 23
SSS rank among all left-handed starting pitchers in the system: 8
The White Sox signed Mejia back in December as a minor league free agent and assigned to High-A Winston-Salem. He’s not an old guy by any stretched, having started his DSL career with the Braves at age 16. He’s also not a big guy, but his numbers have been solid throughout his six professional years — including a 2019 season with the Low-A Rome Braves (8-5, 2.66 ERA, 1.12 WHIP).
But, given it’s a sister site who’s far more familiar with the southpaw, let’s turn it over to Talking Chop, who included Mejia among their Top 5 lefty pitchers in a June 2020 overview:
2020 was an important year for Dilmer but looks like that’s going to be pushed to 2021 unfortunately. Dilmer appeared in 27 games with the first 13 out of the bullpen where he had a 1.42 ERA, .175 batting average against and an opposing OPS of .487. The final 14 came as a starter where he struggled a little more but was still strong — 3.25 ERA and .709 opposing OPS. The only “issue” is that he was a 22-year-old in Low-A, so you would expect numbers like these. On the year he was an impressive 8-5 with a cumulative 2.66 ERA, 7.3 K/9, and meager 1.8 BB/9 rate.
Overall, huge bounce back year for Dilmer and this stoppage in play couldn’t come at a worse time as his developed had been a bit delayed and it looked like he was turning the corner and now there’s likely no minor league season at all. He’s still many years away but if he slowly develops like Philip Pfeifer does he could be a sneaky good bullpen arm in the future.
(Quick note on Talking Chop’s “expected stats” comment about Mejia, he was in fact almost a year younger than league average for Low-A in 2019.)
(Also, do you appreciate our copyediting efforts here a little more after reading that?)