Prospect Palmegiani on Blue Jays radar thanks to ‘Davis Schneider-mould’ approach

TORONTO – Damiano Palmegiani began the 2023 season representing Canada at the World Baseball Classic and finished it by helping the Surprise Saguaros win the Arizona Fall League championship.

In between, the 23-year-old third baseman born in Venezuela and raised in Surrey, B.C., hit 23 homers with 33 doubles and 73 walks over 128 games, mostly at double-A New Hampshire before a 20-game touch at triple-A Buffalo.

Along the way, he established himself as a potential option for the Toronto Blue Jays as soon as next year.

“This is all stuff you dream about in your head on how it's going to go and what you want to happen and how you want to do in these situations,” Palmegiani says during a recent interview in Glendale, Ariz. “Being able to put myself in these positions and perform through them and enjoy the moment at the same time, I think I'm just proud of how all these steps have come one after the other.”

That they have, as the 14th-round pick in 2021 batted .239/.342/.473 between low-A Dunedin and high-A Vancouver in 2022 and then saw his swing and his approach continue to play at more advanced levels this year, when he hit .255/.365/.478.

His success at the plate is no accident, the product of a methodically thought-out plan that Blue Jays farm director Joe Sclafani says is “kind of from that same Davis Schneider-mould.”

“He just really dominates the zone, makes good decisions, swings at the right pitches, he's got a ton of juice,” he adds. “He's set himself up nicely for next year.”

Buoying that outlook is the way he rolled during his September stint in Buffalo, batting .284/.427/.554 in 96 plate appearances as the Bisons fought for a post-season berth.

While young hitters sometimes struggle making the jump from double-A to triple-A, which houses older pitchers with big-league experience and a better understanding of how to discombobulate hitters, Palmegiani was helped by his meticulous approach.

His process begins with the mindset that “as a good hitter, the best way to have success every day is to control your best pitches to hit.”

“You've got to understand what the pitcher is going to throw and how his pitches are going to look within your approach,” Palmegiani explains. “That's basically what I'm trying to do, minimize as much of his nastiness and put myself in a position where I can get a good barrel on the ball. That's all I can control.”

To prepare for that, he familiarizes an opposing pitcher’s profile, wanting to know “what does his fastball do, does he get under barrels, over barrels, and what kind of off-speed does he throw.” Then, he puts that against “what are you going to feel like in the box that day, and what is a successful at-bat off of him going to look like, which may look different than someone else.”

“I try to simplify down to one feel and get in the box with one feel, and that's it,” he adds. “What I'm trying to do is put myself in a position where I can take my best swing, instead of having to create that best swing by just letting the hands loose and whatever. Like if a pitch is falling away from me, still trying to hit a homer is not what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to get in a position where I can take that quick, short, direct swing, knowing that a barrel is going to result in something hit hard and ideally in the air. This approach is going to help me hit line drives, hit the ball hard and at the end of the day, hitting the ball hard is most important, regardless of where it goes.”

To that end, one of Palmegiani’s goals this winter is to try and expand his hot zones – the areas of the plate where he does the most damage – so he’s better prepared for the more mature arms awaiting him at triple-A and, perhaps at some point, in the big-leagues.

While he has power to all fields, he understands that at the higher levels pitchers are better at living in the low-danger areas of the strike zone. On days the opposing pitcher is especially effective, “I can still create good barrels and bullets, maybe the other way, instead of fighting it off, fighting it off until I get to mine, you know what I mean?”

That work looms and if successful, he’ll become an even more important late-draft find for the Blue Jays, who initially drafted him in the 35th round in 2018 out of Alberta’s Vauxhall Academy before scooping him from the College of Southern Nevada again three years later. Area scout Joey Aversa selected him in 2021 while also grabbing Ricky Tiedemann in the second round, making for a boffo pair of picks.

Before the grind resumes for Palmegiano, though, a break.

He’ll split the off-season between home in B.C. and California with his girlfriend, resting his body after a particularly long year – he played in 150 games between the minor-league season and the AFL – before ramping things up again ahead of 2024.

The goal for him is to “be better than I was this year, next year,” with an eye towards making an eventful 2023 the precursor of even bigger things to come.