Support, Resistance, Price Targets, and Momentum

Is Bubba Chandler and Advanced MLB Destroyer?

After a decade and a half of analyzing baseball prospects, a lot of my time these days is spent analyzing stocks.

This involves monitoring levels of support and resistance, along with price targets and momentum.

Let’s use Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) as an example, and I’ll add the disclaimer that this isn’t investment advice.

AMD has been surging in price over the last month.

On July 7th, the stock was priced at $134.80 per share. The price closed last Friday at $172.51, for a return of nearly 28% in just over a month. This surge in pricing has led some analysts to raise their price targets, with some predicting as high as $230. TipRanks shows an average price target of $180.73 when combining the targets of 37 Wall Street analysts.

Over the last two weeks, AMD has touched that average price target a few times. It hit $179.82 on July 29th, and $180.73 on July 31st. The price has also gone down in that timeframe, hitting a low of $160.62 on August 6th.

Will that $180.73 average target be the ceiling for AMD? Will it go higher toward the loftier projections of $230? Or, will it go down to the low-end price targets of $120?

I know what I think, but I’m not here to give you stock advice. This is a post about baseball.

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Baseball prospects are given a scouting grade in the 20-80 scale, reflecting their future potential. I like to break this down as follows:

• 20 - Career Minor Leaguer

• 30 - Career Minor Leaguer who can make the upper levels (AA/AAA)

• 35 - Career Minor Leaguer who could get a cup of coffee in the Majors

• 40 - The minimum to stay in the Majors, with the upside of a bench player

• 45 - Long-term Major League potential, with the chance to start

• 50 - Major League starting potential, with average upside

• 55 - Major League starting potential, with above-average upside

• 60 - Major League All-Star potential

• 65 - Major League All-Star potential, with the chance to have elite years

• 70 - Elite Major League upside

• 80 - Hall of Famer

Most prospect projections don’t go beyond a 60-grade, with very few players being projected at 65 or 70. I think that’s fair. Setting the expectation for any individual player to be one of the best in the game, before they’ve even played in the Majors, is a lofty projection. Even if that player becomes an above-average starter, they’re going to underperform the original “price target”.

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Bubba Chandler is a right-handed pitcher in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ system.

Chandler was drafted out of high school in July 2021, and given a signing bonus of $3 million. This was above the standard slot price for a third round pick, with Chandler being paid so much due to his perceived upside. He had a commitment to Clemson to play both baseball and football, but the belief at the time was if he got into a Major League Baseball organization and focused only on baseball, he could eventually be a top prospect.

That happened.

Chandler is currently graded a “60” by MLB Pipeline, which means he’s a potential MLB All-Star starting pitcher. I’m sure if I averaged the grades of every prospect evaluator, the “price target” for Chandler would be around 60. He’s the number two prospect in the Pirates’ system, with most outlets projecting a 2025 arrival in the Majors.

That hasn’t happened, yet.

Chandler started the 2025 season in Triple-A, and had good numbers the first two months of the season. He had a 2.03 ERA in 48.2 innings, with 69 strikeouts, 21 walks, and held opponents to a .541 OPS.

Keep in mind, this is largely against players whose current talent level resides in the 30-40 range of the scouting scale. Chandler would face a more difficult task going up against 50-60 level talent on any given night in the Majors. Thus, you can’t take the Triple-A numbers as an indication of what he would do in the Majors. They simply provide evidence to answer the question “Has Chandler’s present grade exceeded minor league levels?”

Over the last two months, Chandler has struggled. He has a 5.52 ERA in 44 innings since the start of June. His strikeout rate isn’t nearly as elite — still averaging a strikeout per inning, but down from the start of the season when he averaged over 1.5 strikeouts per inning. His walk rate has gone up, from 3.9 BB/9 the first two months of the year to 5.1 BB/9 over the last two months.

The “price target” for Chandler’s long-term grade is a 60, and like stocks, this doesn’t mean he’s going to wake up one day and be a 60. That target is just the ceiling projected for his upward momentum.

Baseball doesn’t have a great system for grading the current value of players. Even the 20-80 scale for long-term projections is flawed and archaic.

For Chandler to move up to the Majors, he would need to provide evidence that his current grade exceeds the grade of Triple-A players.

The first two months of the season suggested that Chandler was beyond the 30-40 current grade range of most Triple-A players.

The last two months suggest that Chandler is still within that 30-40 grade range.

Neither of these current grades change his “price target”, though they do impact the perception of how far away he is from hitting that targeted 60-upside.

If Chandler was a stock, his first two months suggested a current grade above 40, possibly into 45-50 range. The last two months would suggest he’s currently dipped into the 35-40 range.

But human beings are a bit more difficult to quantify.

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Stocks are largely influenced by the market sentiment, which is determined by actual purchases.

If the market is “bullish” on a stock, with more people anticipating a price increase versus a price decrease, the price will be driven up by those bullish investors buying and holding the stock at a greater rate than the bearish investors selling. This is called support.

If the market is “bearish” on a stock, with more people anticipating the price to go down from a specific level, the price will tend to go down due to more sellers than buyers. This is called resistance.

Let’s go back to the example of AMD, looking at the trends over the last week.

After hitting a high point of $179.68 on August 5th, AMD dropped over the next few days. Within 12 hours on August 5th, the stock had dropped $17 in value, falling to $162.46 by 9 PM that evening.

During a volatile time like this, it’s difficult to establish true support and resistance ranges for a stock. AMD showed that it had strong resistance from that top price of $179.68, near its ~$180 average price target. If AMD was a baseball prospect and that price target represented 50-grade upside, the market essentially said “This is not a 50-grade prospect, yet.”

In the days to follow, AMD rebounded. After dipping below $160 the morning of August 6th, it went up above $166 by 10 PM that evening. The next day, it took a massive jump in price, surging above $170. This was the market saying “Wait, this also isn’t a 40-grade prospect.”

Over the last two days of the most recent trading week, the stock has appeared to stabilize between these two extremes. It reached a low of $171.07 on Thursday afternoon, and hit that low again at $171.15 on Friday afternoon. The high on Thursday was $173.35 at noon, and the stock went higher on Friday, hitting above $176 in the morning, before dropping back down and stabilizing in the $172-173 range.

Right now, the market is trying to figure out the current grade of AMD.

Predicting the current price of a stock is no easier than predicting the current grade of a baseball prospect. The stock price is going to either go up, down, or sideways. The movement is ultimately determined by how many bullish buyers and how many bearish sellers meet on the battle field on any given day.

This week, if there are more bullish investors who view $172.50 as a value, compared to bearish investors who project the price to go below that point, AMD’s stock price will go up. If the bearish investors outnumber the bullish investors, the stock price will go down.

AMD, like every stock, is at the mercy of support and resistance levels.

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Baseball prospects don’t benefit from the same marketplace support and resistance.

This phenomena exists, but has no bearing on their current placement in the minors.

After Bubba Chandler put up good numbers during the first two months of the season, there was a lot of marketplace support among fans and analysts wanting to see him in the Majors. That support has faded over the last two months with Chandler’s struggles.

In the case of a baseball prospect, the market sentiment means very little. Only the organization that controls a player’s future can determine the true support and resistance.

The ultimate form of support by the Pirates would have been a promotion to the Majors after those first two months. This would reward Chandler’s performance, and give him a shot to face the potential resistance that a Major League lineup would provide.

Under this scenario, it’s possible that Chandler would fail against the resistance of 50-60 grade MLB starters, showing that his current grade was below 50. However, it would also give him the opportunity to prove that his current grade was 50 or higher, which is an opportunity he will never have in Triple-A.

Technically, the ultimate form of resistance would be demoting Chandler to Double-A. This is extremely unlikely, even with the struggles over the last two months. But let’s look at another form of resistance: Perceived resistance from the lack of a promotion.

If the Pirates don’t promote Chandler after his Triple-A success, which they didn’t, it could be perceived by the player as resistance. Chandler is at a ceiling that he can’t break through. The Pirates want him to be a 50+ grade player, but he has no chance to prove that he is at that level until the team promotes him to the Majors. Until that promotion, Chandler might believe he’s ready, but if the Pirates keep him in the minors, it’s them saying that his current grade isn’t as high as he believes.

The Pirates offer the ultimate support and resistance for their players, and if a player is not promoted after performing well, it could lead to a classic case of “doing too much” — where a player pushes their effort level to try and achieve a higher level of performance to change the minds of the decision makers. By pushing beyond what was leading to success, the player can break the approach which was leading to that success.

You could make an argument that the Pirates should have shown support to Chandler by promoting him after his first two months. The Pirates did show support to a different pitcher around this time, promoting Mike Burrows at the end of May.

Burrows currently has a 4.45 ERA in his first 62.2 innings in the Majors, which is below the MLB average ERA of 4.15. Burrows typically gets 45-50 “price target” grades, and his current MLB performance shows he’s already meeting the low-end of that target range — with some early indications that he could reach the high-end of this projected grade and become an long-tern MLB starter.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing that the Pirates gave a chance to Burrows when both he and Chandler were pitching well in Triple-A. They only had one rotation spot available. Burrows is three years older than Chandler, which means it’s more important to immediately test his current grade in the Majors. While fans want to see evidence that Chandler is progressing to his future 60-grade target, it’s not crucial that he provide that proof during his age-22 season.

If the theory goes that Chandler could struggle from a lack of support via a promotion after good results, that same theory would hold true for Burrows. And Chandler has more time in his career to recover from “resistance” than Burrows.

Chandler did tell the Post-Gazette in May that it was “frustrating” that he hadn’t been promoted after his first two months. He said that he was ready, but the Pirates clearly disagreed. The Post-Gazette was recently in Indianapolis, but Chandler wasn’t made available to media this time around.

I’m not going to go into the recent history of the Pirates making their top prospects unavailable to media when there could be a report that shines negative light on the organization.

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Here’s what I know about Bubba Chandler.

Chandler is a player who sets high expectations upon himself, but he’s also got the ability to turn humble, willing to scale those expectations back to more realistic levels in the short-term. When things aren’t working, he regroups and gets back on track. He’s confident to a high degree, but unshakable by the lows.

I’ve had the opportunity to interview Chandler a few times during his pro career, including an extensive sit-down interview while he was pitching in High-A Greensboro in 2023. At the start of that season, Chandler set high expectations for himself. He wanted to be an All-Star in High-A and wanted to earn a promotion to Double-A.

By the start of July 2023, Chandler had a 6.79 ERA in 62.1 innings. He wasn’t an All-Star, and wasn’t in line for a promotion to the next level.

The Pirates gave him a 12-day break between starts. During that time, Chandler went home and sat on a pond fishing for a week, while mentally reviewing what went wrong. He set goals for the second half of the season. Those goals were less about high accolades, and more about his performance over the final two months of the season.

After his return, Chandler put up a 1.85 ERA in 43.2 innings in Greensboro. He was promoted to Double-A at the end of the season, where he made a debut with five shutout innings, allowing one hit and striking out eight.

I’ve since left the reporting scene, in part because I don’t want to deal with the psychological little boys who run the show like children at 115 Federal Street. If the Pirates can make Chandler unavailable to the Post-Gazette, then an independent reporter such as myself has no chance of cracking their propaganda wall.

Since leaving the scene, I’ve seen evidence that Chandler still has high expectations for himself. For example, after Paul Skenes was announced the 2025 Opening Day starter, Chandler sent him a text telling Skenes that Chandler would surpass him as the Opening Day starter in 2026.

Skenes might be the best pitcher in Pirates franchise history. He’s in the conversation as one of the best pitchers in the game today. Paul Skenes is the Nvidia of MLB pitchers. Chandler setting his expectations of being better than Skenes is lofty.

I personally wouldn’t want a pitcher as talented as Chandler to have any other mindset.

If Chandler held the belief that he would never be as good as Skenes, then inevitably he would never be as good as Skenes. Chandler might not end up better than Skenes, but by pushing for that personal ceiling, he’s got a great chance to reach that 60-grade target the industry projects for him.

A valid question is whether Chandler is pushing to be better than Skenes immediately.

While that would be amazing for the Pirates, it’s not necessary for Chandler’s long-term success. Skenes entered the Majors last year with one of the best performances for a rookie in MLB history. That earned him the Opening Day starter role in 2025. Chandler’s text to Skenes was likely a confident joke, with some belief and drive behind it. But Chandler’s success isn’t going to be measured by replicating the success of Skenes, nor is it going to be measured by having an immediate impact.

I have no concerns about Chandler, even with his recent struggles. He’s already shown that when he struggles, he will regroup and get back on track, pitching with results that reflect his talent level.

If he does rebound this year, it would be inexcusable for the Pirates to not give him a shot in the Majors, even for just a brief look to test his current grade against better talent.

There’s also the possibility that Chandler could benefit from the support of a promotion, without needing to show a rebound in the minors. He would just need to have the mindset that he doesn’t need to put up historical results to be successful.

Even if Chandler was promoted tomorrow and put up an ERA of 4.00 for the remainder of the season, that would confirm a current grade of 50+, with the chance for him to improve in the Majors next year.

But that would run into another issue with baseball prospects and market sentiment.

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Just like a stock, a baseball prospect shouldn’t be expected to reach their price target overnight.

If you’re bullish on AMD, to the point of the loftiest 70-grade $230 upside, you aren’t looking for the stock to reach $230 in the next week, or even in the next month. You’re looking for a stable level of support, with gradual advances against resistance. If AMD maintained $172-173 support, then increased to a high of $180+ this week, while establishing a higher level of support around $177-178, that would be a positive step toward that eventual $230 ceiling.

Baseball prospects operate in a different system.

Chandler, for example, can’t show his true present grade until the Pirates promote him to the Majors. Even if he repeats his performance from the first two months of the season, it’s still a theory that his current grade is 50+ until he gets an opportunity to prove that grade in the Majors. Keeping Chandler in the minors is a level of resistance.

Stock price movement isn’t just about support and resistance, but momentum over time.

AMD was priced above $200 in March of 2024, and was around $170 in early October 2024. From there, the price dropped steadily, reaching a low below $80 in early April of this year. The momentum was steadily down for a year, and investors don’t easily forget that — especially if they bought at the high points and lost money during the fall.

Since the low point, AMD has been trending up, showing positive momentum to reverse the previous negative momentum. Each jump is typically preceded by a period that tests support and resistance.

• In May of this year, AMD jumped from around $102 to around $118 by the middle of the month. It remained in the $110-118 range from mid-May until about mid-June, when it jumped to $126-129, before soaring to $143.

• From there, it dipped back, testing support after such a big jump. For the first ten days of July, AMD was testing $134-136 support ranges, before eventually returning to that $143 range and breaking above, hitting $160 by July 17th.

• Once again, it dipped to test support, ultimately finding the bottom at around $155 on July 22nd. That was followed by a massive jump that took the stock up to around $180 on July 30th.

Last week’s drop can be seen as one of two things. It could be a continued trend of current momentum — with a temporary dip to test support levels, before blowing past that late-July resistance to a new high point this year. Or, it could be the mark of another downtrend like the stock saw last year from similar highs.

I know what I believe, but again, this isn’t investment advice, or an article about stock movement.

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Baseball players operate in the same non-linear manner of improvement as a stock.

Going back to the example of Chandler, he’s had a two month dip in 2025 after an early surge at the start of the season.

Long-term, Chandler has been surging up in value ever since the end of that 2023 season. There were some dips along the way, but long-term he’s continued progressing toward his “price target” of a 60-grade upside. The momentum from Chandler is positive, even if the short-term movement is negative.

I will give investment advice in this case.

I think what we’re seeing from Chandler over the last two months is just a temporary dip. It’s not a reversal that will see him decline in long-term value, with a decline from his 60-grade projection. It’s just a momentary test of support, before he eventually breaks through resistance levels and continues his upward momentum toward above-average or All-Star potential.

Chandler, for me, is a Buy.

If you’re in a fantasy baseball league that deals with prospects, he’d currently be “Undervalued” compared to his long-term value. He might have been “Overbought” in those leagues earlier in the year with his great start to the season. I would buy the dip created by his recent struggles.

The Pirates don’t need to worry about this. They control Chandler’s rights, and they’ve held him rather than trading him. Fantasy baseball reflects the stock market with overall market sentiment driving a player’s value. Real baseball deals with long-term holdings.

The Pirates do need to worry about two things. One is the impact of the momentum and their decision on Chandler. The struggles from Chandler began after he wasn’t promoted. His comments to the Post-Gazette at the time suggest that he was negatively impacted by their decision. That doesn’t just go away.

There is also market sentiment factored in when a player reaches the Majors.

If Chandler reaches the Majors with lofty expectations, and he puts up just average numbers, there can be a drop in support by the fans, media, and analysts.

Oneil Cruz is the best example of this. Cruz hasn’t reached his lofty upside from when he was a prospect. The fan and media expectations on him were high, due to the fact that the Pirates built their team in a way where Cruz needed to reach his lofty upside for the team to contend.

Cruz has performed in a way that could be graded as a 50-55 current grade over the last two years. The problem is that fans want to see his 60-65+ “price target” that his prospect grades promised.

This inevitably has an impact on the player and the team. Fans, and even media, go to Twitter and express disappointment whenever Cruz isn’t performing like an elite MLB player. Media questions to Cruz and the team are based on the desire for him to reach his upside, rather than celebrating the level at which he’s currently performing.

Cruz is a human being, and could react negatively to the sentiment that his performance so far, while being the best on a team with bad overall position player results, is not enough. The Pirates are run by human beings, who could have their own reactions and plans impacted by this market sentiment.

If a prospect like Chandler was promoted to the Majors, it would represent a sign of support by the team. And that might ease the frustrations he had with the resistance from not being promoted. However, Chandler would then enter a field of play where the larger market sentiment plays a factor, with a more difficult form of resistance.

I wrote recently about how Mitch Keller was being highlighted as one of the worst pitchers in the game in 2022 after just 200 innings in the Majors. That was unfair, but it’s what happens when a team like Pittsburgh puts all of their fan hopes on unproven prospects. Since the 2022 season, Keller has been one of the better pitchers in the game, and one of the best innings eaters.

The odds that Chandler will also face adversity over his first 200 innings are higher than the odds that he will replicate what Skenes did in his rookie season. That early career volatility will subject Chandler to the market resistance the fans in Pittsburgh provide. Fans in every market expect every prospect to arrive with consistently great results similar to Skenes. That outcome is imperative for Pirates fans.

Chandler is getting a taste of that market resistance now, with fans and media monitoring every start of his struggles in Triple-A. The Pirates could offer him support with a promotion, but that would be the last big push of support they could offer, and he won’t be free from resistance in the Majors.

If Chandler was promoted to the Majors and struggled, just for a short period of time, the team support would turn to keeping him in the Majors through those struggles, as fans looking for immediate results would offer resistance by calling for him to be sent down to the minors.

And just like when AMD fell from previous highs last year, when Chandler eventually climbed his way back to the Majors under the above scenario, there would be fans who would be hesitant to buy in, after being previously burned by his first impression. This would cause resistance to persist.

Long-term, Chandler has shown positive momentum, and I believe that positive momentum will continue well into his MLB career.

The problem is that once he reaches the Majors, he’s going to be subjected to very short-term reactions, which mostly only offer bearish sentiment.

Fans turn to sports as an outlet for entertainment. They accept positive results as the standard, and quickly sell off negative results out of panic.

One week of good results can turn a fan into a WallStreetsBets poster proclaiming that a player is about to go to the moon.

One bad week of results can produce the same extreme reactive results, with fans shorting the player all the way down to the depths of their career.

And no one cares to think long-term, because sports are a short-term escape from the long-term grind of real life.

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Chandler will always have my support, as he’s already ticked my scouting boxes as a player who will reach his “price target” over time.

The reality in Pittsburgh is that players typically only have 4-5 years with the Pirates before they become too expensive — regardless of performance. This increases the short-term demand for immediate results and “to the moon” fantasies.

The other reality is that this team and their lack of spending on established MLB players places a huge emphasis on prospects being the driving force to a competitive team. Like an investor only dealing in penny stocks, the Pirates force a higher demand from their prospects than a normal team’s portfolio would require.

Both of these realities, combined, provide a level of potential resistance for any Pirates prospect. They not only need to contend with the resistance of Major League talent for the first time in their careers, but they need to deal with the fan expectations in Pittsburgh to be better, faster, than prospects in any other market.

The Pirates have created an economic system that requires their prospects to be Advanced MLB Destroyers.

Fortunately, I think Bubba Chandler can live up to those demands.

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Until the next time I go live…

-Tim Williams