Angels prospect Kavadas named AFL Offensive Player of the Year

MESA, Ariz. – MLB’s July 30 Trade Deadline had passed five minutes earlier when Triple-A Worcester catcher Mark Kolozsvary approached first baseman Niko Kavadas with a fist bump.

“Congrats,” Kolozsvary said. “We survived the Deadline.”

Kavadas reciprocated, then was getting ready to take the field when he was told manager Chad Tracy wanted to see him.

“I’m like, 'What could this be? I don’t remember doing anything worthy of disciplinary action,'” Kavadas said. “So I walk into Trace’s office and Matthew Lugo and Ryan Zeferjahn are both sitting in the chairs, and at that moment I knew exactly what was going on.”

Kavadas immediately figured out that he had been traded. But he didn’t know how momentous the next four months would be after the Red Sox shipped him, Lugo, Zeferjahn and Single-A right-hander Yeferson Vargas to the Angels for Luis Garcia.

Seventeen days after the deal, Kavadas was batting cleanup in the Majors. The first baseman slammed his first big league home run six days after that, went deep three more times in September and nearly took a Jacob deGrom slider out to dead center field. Then the Angels sent him to the Arizona Fall League, where he capped the most fulfilling year of his baseball career by winning Offensive Player of the Year honors.

Playing for the Mesa Solar Sox, Kavadas batted .329/.462/.700 in 20 games, and he ranked second in the developmental circuit in homers (six) and extra base hits (13), third in slugging and OPS (1.162) and fifth in walks (17).

“The Fall League is awesome,” the Angels' No. 29 prospect said. “It's a big group of really, really talented players that all come together to compete, and to be named the Offensive Player of the Year is an absolute honor.

“I'm very lucky. I had an awesome experience out here in ’22. I had so much fun and I would have loved the opportunity to come back, but most times it only happens one time. So when the opportunity was presented to me, I was really excited to get back out to Arizona.”

Kavadas slashed .239/.417/.435 with two homers in 15 games for the Surprise Saguaros in 2022, and he utilized the same approach in both of his Fall League seasons. He works deeps counts looking for pitches to drive, which yields plenty of homers, walks and strikeouts. That mindset has worked for him throughout his career and helped him win home run titles in the Cape Cod League in '19 and the Atlantic Coast Conference while he was at Notre Dame from '18-'21.

An 11th-round pick in 2021 who signed for double slot value at $250,000, Kavadas finished second in the Minors in on-base percentage (.443), fifth in walks (102) and seventh in OPS (.990) during his first full pro season. He slumped in 2023 (.805 OPS) before bouncing back in Triple-A this year.

The Angels called Kavadas up soon after the trade and made him the second rookie in club history to hit fourth in his big league debut, joining Tim Salmon. He batted .183/.283/.333 in 30 games in the Majors, showing his usual raw power and patience but also striking out 41 times in 106 plate appearances.

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Kavadas said while he faced obviously higher quality stuff in the big leagues compared to Triple-A, the more significant adjustment was learning to deal with better command and more detailed game-planning against him. The Angels sent him to the Fall League with two primary goals in mind: being more aggressive going after pitches in the strike zone and getting his first exposure to playing the outfield since he was in the summer Northwoods League in 2018.

Kavadas will need to produce more consistently at the plate to stick in the Majors. Playing the outfield gives him more options on a club that has 2023 first-round pick Nolan Schanuel at first base.

“Being there and seeing it and getting a taste, you're aware of what it was that got you out, you're aware of what it was that you've had success on,” Kavadas. “Just making sure that you continue to maintain your strengths and make your weaknesses a little less weak is what you can do. So for me, it’s increasing the swing rate, giving myself more opportunities each at-bat.

“I can't continue to take strikes up there because the guys are too good, the stuff is too good, the command is too good. So I think being out here was good for me and just getting me more comfortable and swinging more often instead of looking for maybe a softball-size tunnel, just a 2-3 softball-sized tunnel. I'm always going to be disciplined and I'm always going to be a little more selective as a hitter. But I think just broadening how wide of a zone I'm willing to swing at is going to be good for me.”