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T-Rat Talk: Kay-Lan Nicasia

Switch Hitter Brings Powerful Swing, Strong Defense to Wisconsin
By Kyle Lobner
April 25, 2025

Timber Rattlers outfielder Kay-Lan Nicasia waited a long time for his first opportunity to play in the Midwest League, but he certainly made a strong first impression when he got there.

Timber Rattlers outfielder Kay-Lan Nicasia waited a long time for his first opportunity to play in the Midwest League, but he certainly made a strong first impression when he got there.

Nicasia was born in the Netherlands, but his parents were both from Curacao and he returned there with his family when he was four months old. He later moved to Florida and was playing high school baseball there when the Brewers selected him in the 16th round in 2021.

The Brewers have taken their time moving Nicasia through the organization: He made his professional debut in the Arizona Complex League after being drafted in 2021 and returned to that level in 2022 to transition from the infield to the outfield. That 2022 season put him on some evaluators’ prospect radar, with Eric Longenhagen of FanGraphs describing him as a “very well built switch hitter with a swing that’s geared for lift.”

Still only 21, Nicasia spent the 2023 season with the Carolina Mudcats under future Timber Rattlers manager Victor Estevez, where he finished fifth on the team in games played and third in stolen bases with 27. He opened the year there again in 2024, but any hopes of advancement that season came to an early halt when he suffered a season-ending injury in May. The Brewers assigned Nicasia to Carolina again to open the 2025 season.

“For me basically it was just a baseball game and you never know where you’re going to end up,” Nicasia said. “So wherever baseball takes me, I’m cool with it. I’m just going to do my best every day and try to make it to the big leagues.”

Nicasia’s wait to move up, however, was almost over. He played just three games in his third season with Carolina, connecting for a double and a home run, before getting the call that he had been promoted to Wisconsin.

“I was at home,” Nicasia said. “I was brushing my teeth and my manager at Carolina (former Timber Rattlers hitting coach Nick Stanley) called me and told me about it.”

Nicasia said his first call after getting the news was to his mother, a phone call he described as “amazing.”

“My mom wasn’t surprised. My mom told me that she wanted me to come here, so she wasn’t surprised that I was coming here this year because she knew I had the chance to come here and play baseball here,” Nicasia said.

It didn’t take long with Wisconsin for Nicasia to have a big day. He’s a switch hitter but in recent years he’s had more success batting right handed, and he got the opportunity to demonstrate that as Quad Cities sent two left-handed pitchers to the mound to face him in his second game with the Timber Rattlers. The first one was Frank Mozzicato, the #7 overall pick in the 2021 draft, and Nicasia hit his 91 mph fastball deep into the night in right center for a solo home run.

Nicasia was not done, however. He came to the plate again in the top of the tenth inning with the bases loaded to face Nate Ackenhausen and hit a similar pitch a long way in a different direction, hitting a grand slam to left center to all but seal a 9-4 Wisconsin victory.

“I think he’s made a good first impression, especially when he hits right handed,” Victor Estevez later told the Timber Rattlers Review podcast. “He has more contact and more power on the right side. He still needs to figure it out from the left side. He’s athletic, he’s got some power, and it’s just a matter of him figuring out to swing at more strikes and make more contact.”

For Nicasia the day was special for another reason, though: It was his 23rd birthday. He said he had never hit a home run on his birthday before, but on this occasion he celebrated his big day with the first multi-homer game of his professional career.

“So it was a great gift that day. And I had two. A home run and a grand slam. It was amazing,” Nicasia said.

As he came to the plate in the tenth inning of that game with the bases loaded, Nicasia said he made a small birthday request.

“I asked God just, ‘Give me something good.’ And he gave me a grand slam,” Nicasia said.

Not all of the news from Nicasia’s first month with the Timber Rattlers has been good, however. He suffered a finger injury on a broken bat after just six games with Wisconsin and was placed on the injured list earlier this week.

“I’ve just got to make sure my finger is good first, then start going back to baseball,” Nicasia said.

Across four professional seasons Nicasia has seen time at seven defensive positions, including all four in the infield and three in the outfield. Despite moving around a fair amount and only settling in the outfield in 2023, Nicasia said defense is the strongest part of his game. On the offensive side, meanwhile, he was very specific about what he needs to work on.

“Hitting off speed,” Nicasia said. “Trying to stay with my body in the right position while I’m hitting and concentrate a little bit better.”

Being a switch hitter gives Nicasia an advantage at the plate but also certainly adds some difficulty from a developmental perspective. It’s hard enough to develop one swing to hit professional pitching, but Nicasia has two.

“It’s challenging, but he’s still got to put the same effort in on the left side as the right side and figure it out day by day,” Estevez said.

The numbers across baseball suggest that reaching the game’s highest level as a switch hitter is more difficult than it has ever been before. Over the last ten full years (excluding 2020) there have been 1397 instances where a batter made at least 500 plate appearances in an MLB season, but just 180 (12.9%) have come from switch hitters. That’s the lowest percentage over a similar span since 1974-83. There are only a little more than half as many switch hitters in the game now as there were from 1986-95, when over 21% of the game’s regular hitters batted from both sides.

While he waits to get back to swinging the bat Nicasia is also eager for the warmer days ahead in the Midwest League. Like most professional baseball players Nicasia comes from a significantly warmer climate, and he said the weather has largely kept him from getting out and seeing much of his new home at this point.

“It’s cold. I’m bad with cold, so I stay in. They told me it’s going to be nice, that I’m going to have a lot of fun with the team and it’s going to be fun here. But the main thing is cold. It’s cold,” Nicasia said.