Arizona Fall League Week 3 highlights: Dax Kilby, Justin Lamkin and six others stand out

By Vancouver Television Sports Desk

Hitters kept turning over extra-base damage in the desert during Week 3 of the Arizona Fall League, where 29 home runs were hit by 22 players. The league’s slate also featured a broad spread of production on offense, including dozens of multi-hit showings. Three players reached a 1.700+ OPS during the week, and six posted a 1.500 OPS or better, according to the league’s Week 3 performance recap.

Pitching trends were equally prominent. Across the third week, 64 pitchers recorded scoreless appearances, including 10 starting assignments that produced shutout stretches. The week’s headline pitching performance came from Justin Lamkin (KC No. 8), who delivered a perfect outing for Surprise, going 4 1/3 innings with no baserunners, no runs and four strikeouts.

For the week’s top position-player standouts, Dax Kilby of Salt River stood out at shortstop. The Yankees prospect and MLB No. 78 performer went 7-for-18 in Week 3 with four runs, two doubles, a triple and a home run, driving in two runs while walking once and striking out twice. The recap notes that the 19-year-old shortstop, listed as a 2025 first-round pick, registered his second AFL homer during Week 3, a 107.1 mph, 419-foot shot, and also hit a triple that included a recorded 29.0 ft/sec sprint speed.

Kilby’s Week 3 production added to his current Fall League line for the season, with the recap stating he has slashed .311/.353/.622 through 11 contests for Salt River. The league coverage also highlighted that Kilby reached base in all 32 games he played for Single-A Tampa during the regular season and that he missed most of the minor league season with a hamstring injury before returning in the desert.

On the pitching side, Lamkin’s dominant stretch for Surprise became the focal point of the Week 3 shutout work. The Royals left-hander’s stat line in the Week 3 spotlight was 1 start, 4.1 innings, zero hits, zero runs, zero walks and four strikeouts. The recap describes how Lamkin retired 13 consecutive batters before exiting in the fifth, with his newly developed curveball featuring prominently by accounting for three of his four strikeouts.

The league’s overview also connected Lamkin’s performance to his season track record before a shoulder injury, noting that he had posted a 2.04 ERA and a 0.93 WHIP through seven starts prior to injuring his throwing shoulder in late May. In the Fall League, the recap adds that he has allowed one run on one hit over his past 8 1/3 frames spanning two outings before the Week 3 highlight.

Another pitcher named among Week 3’s top performers was Briggs McKenzie, a left-hander for Glendale. In the week’s featured start, McKenzie logged 5 innings with two hits, zero runs, one hit batter and two walks while striking out four. The league recap states that entering Week 4, McKenzie was the youngest pitcher on the circuit and one of only two hurlers to complete five or more innings in a start, and the only one to do it without allowing a run.

Jared Thomas, an outfielder for Salt River, was among the Week 3 position standouts for his run production and extra-base output. The Colorado prospect went 5-for-13 with four runs, two doubles and two triples, driving in nine runs while adding two walks and four strikeouts, and the recap notes he also swiped a base. It also highlights that Thomas recorded RBI in all five of his hits during the week and that his nine RBIs led the Fall League for Week 3.

The league coverage also described Thomas’ health path, saying he broke his left hamate during the 2025 season and underwent surgery after competing in the desert the previous fall. In this second stint for 2026, the recap notes he has “cemented his health” by producing seven exit velocities above 100 mph, including four during Week 3.

Speed and extra-base timing were central to Tai Peete’s Week 3 inclusion from Peoria. The St. Louis prospect went 7-for-16 with seven runs, three doubles and three triples, scoring a combined five stolen bases over four games and driving in one run. The recap states Peete’s triples sparked a streak that included four straight contests with a triple beginning with his final Week 2 game, making him the first Fall Leaguer to do so since at least 2005.

The Week 3 highlight for Peete also included a specific historical marker for his fastest triple, listing a home-to-third time of 11.21 seconds on a Thursday three-bagger. The league recap notes that the 11.21-second run was the fastest home-to-third this season in the Fall League and that it was followed by a relative order check among his own triples as the top four in that run category.

Rounding out the Week 3 list was catcher Jack O’Dowd of Salt River and outfielder Yerlin Confidan of Peoria. O’Dowd appeared in three games and produced a stretch that included three separate multi-hit moments, capped by a two-homer outburst to begin the week. In the highlighted Week 3 stat line, he went 6-for-13 with three runs, two doubles, three home runs and six RBIs, while striking out four times. The recap states his Week 3 surge raised his Fall League total to five home runs, the most on the circuit at the time of the Week 3 review.

Confidan’s week was highlighted as a power-focused performance from Peoria. The Cincinnati prospect went 7-for-12 with four runs, two doubles, a triple and a home run while driving in three runs. The recap also describes specific hit-quality detail from Week 3, including a 116.7 mph grounder on Monday that reached the outfield wall quickly, along with recorded sprint speed of 27.6 ft/sec for a triple run. In addition, it notes that over his next two games, five of his six hits cleared 105 mph exit velocity, with three going 110+ mph, and that through 10 games this fall he ranks tied for 10th among all hitters with a 58.3 percent hard-hit rate.

With Week 3 now complete, the league’s weekly leaders reflect a blend of offensive volatility and pitching sting: 29 home runs, multiple players in the 1.700+ and 1.500+ OPS tiers, and a total of 64 scoreless appearances across starts and relievers. The seven named performers—Kilby, Lamkin, McKenzie, Thomas, Peete, O’Dowd and Confidan—captured the most notable swings from the league’s third week of play.