Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Gabriel Maciel, CF, Arizona Diamondbacks (Profile)
Level: Low-A   Age: 19   Org Rank: 18   FV: 40
Line: 2-for-4, 2B

Notes
The 19-year-old Brazilian has hit in every July game in which he’s played and is riding an 18-game streak, including multi-hit games in eight of his past 10. Maciel was hitting .249/.336/.305 on July 1 and is now at .291/.367/.338. He’s a plus-plus running center fielder with very limited physicality, but he understands what his offensive approach has to be to reach base and he has played well-executed small-ball throughout his pro career. There’s risk that this style of hitting won’t play against better defenses and that Maciel winds up as a bench outfielder.

Dylan Cease, RHP, Chicago White Sox (Profile)
Level: Double-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 9   FV: 45+
Line: 7 IP, 1 H, 1 BB, 12 K

Notes
This was the best start of Cease’s career. He has posted a 10% walk rate since being acquired by the White Sox, while big-league average is about 8%. Cease is a pretty strong candidate for late-blooming fastball command. He missed a year of development due to a surgery and will receive every opportunity to work with different coaches and orgs throughout his career as long as he throws as hard as he does. It might click at any time. But for now it’s realistic to assume that when Cease debuts in the next year or so he’ll probably be pitching with 40 control. Is there precedence for success among starting pitchers with a plus fastball, plus curveball, and a fringey collection of other stuff? Charlie Morton and German Marquez are two very encouraging examples, Sal Romano less so. Sean Newcomb looked like he’d have to be that guy but his changeup came along. It will take a pretty specific approach to pitching, but Cease should be fine with what he’s already working with.

Touki Toussaint, RHP, Atlanta Braves (Profile)
Level: Triple-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 7   FV: 50
Line: 8 IP, 2 H, 4 BB, 0 R, 8 K

Notes
You could apply much of what I just said regarding Cease to Touki, but we’re higher on Touki than Cease, ranking-wise, because his curveball is better, he hasn’t had a surgery, and he is a level ahead of Cease at the same age.

Hans Crouse, RHP, Texas Rangers (Profile)
Level: Short-Season   Age: 19   Org Rank: 8   FV: 45
Line: 7 IP, 6 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 12 K

Notes
Crouse’s delivery looks weird and causes his fastball to play down a bit because he doesn’t get down the mound. While he had below-average fastball control when I saw him in the spring, he has just four walks combined in his past five starts for Spokane. Yet another plus fastball/breaking ball prospect with stuff nasty enough to overcome other issues.

Read the rest of this entry »

Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Luis Rengifo, MIF, Los Angeles Angels (Profile)
Level: Triple-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: NR   FV: 45
Line: 3-for-5, 2 2B

Notes
Rengifo slipped through the cracks of our offseason team prospect lists, as he was traded from Tampa Bay to Los Angeles after we had finished the Angels’ writeup but before we had finished the Rays’. It’s turned into a fairly significant failure of process, as Rengifo has traveled three levels throughout the year, walking more than he has struck out while swiping 37 bases. Rengifo profiles as a max-effort utility guy who contributes in many subtle ways. Chone Figgins comps were being made before Rengifo was traded to the Angels and now seem more prescient — if perhaps a bit overzealous, as Rengifo doesn’t have that kind of elite speed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Baltimore’s deadline purge of big-league mainstays continued Tuesday night as they sent LHP Zach Britton to the division rival Yankees for a trio of pitching prospects: RHPs Dillon Tate and Cody Carroll, as well as LHP Josh Rogers.

Barring something unforeseen, all three of the new Orioles have a probability of contributing at some level in the majors, as all three are upper-level arms with at least playable big-league stuff. As seemed to also be the case in the Manny Machado deal, Baltimore has (consciously or not) prioritized quantity and probability over potential impact as they begin their rebuild in earnest. Other than a fully realized Tate, none of the pitchers acquired for Britton is likely to be more than a role-playing big leaguer.

So let’s tart with Tate, as he’s not only the player with the best draft pedigree but also the deal’s most volatile piece. He entered his junior year at UC Santa Barbara having thrown just 46 collegiate total innings as an underclassman — this due to having worked out of the bullpen as a sophomore and having barely worked at all as a freshman. But he had the best stuff on a staff that also included Cleveland rookie Shane Bieber and enough strike-throwing ability to start, so he was moved into UCSB’s rotation and asked to throw more than twice as many innings in one season than he had in his entire career to that point.

Read the rest of this entry »

Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Starling Joseph, OF, Texas Rangers (Profile)
Level: Short-Season   Age: 19   Org Rank: NR   FV: 35+
Line: 3-for-4, HR

Notes
Joseph is a physical 6-foot-3 outfielder with plus raw power. He’s raw from a bat-to-ball standpoint due to length and a lack of bat control, but the power/frame combination here is interesting for a 19-year-old. Joseph has a 67:10 strikeout-to-walk ratio in domestic pro ball and is as high-risk of a prospect as you’ll find, but he has the power to carry the profile if he ever becomes sentient in the batter’s box.

Read the rest of this entry »

Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Luc Rennie, RHP, New York Mets (Profile)
Level: Low-A   Age: 24   Org Rank: NR   FV: 30
Line: 7 IP, 4 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 14 K

Notes
Rennie is four appearances deep into his first year back in affiliated ball since 2015, when he was with Baltimore. He’s spent the last several seasons with Evansville in the independent Frontier League and was injured for a portion of that time. He was dominant for the Otters this spring and signed with the Mets earlier this month. Last night he pitched the game of his life and struck out 14 hitters, a Columbia franchise record, with most of them coming on a plus upper-70s 12-6 curveball. Rennie has five pitches. His fastball has natural cut, he has a two-seamer, an average mid-80s slider, that curveball, and a below-average changeup. He’ll run the fastball up to 95 but sits 90-92 and mixes his breaking balls well. Rennie is carrying a 0.83 ERA through 21.1 innings at Low-A.

Read the rest of this entry »

The prospect package acquired from Los Angeles in exchange for Manny Machado is deep on warm bodies who are likely to wear a big-league uniform and produce some kind of value. One or two of those new Orioles has a realistic chance of producing two wins or better annually and making enough noise to drown out the howls of a fanbase that’s losing its most talented player since Cal Ripken.

The collection of talent sent to Baltimore is headlined by 21-year-old Cuban OF Yusniel Diaz and 22-year-old righty Dean Kremer, the latter of whom had recently been promoted to Double-A. Up-and-down utility infielder Breyvic Valera, 21-year-old reliever Zach Pop, and 21-year-old breakout performer INF Rylan Bannon were also acquired in the deal.

Diaz, whom Kiley and I saw this weekend at the Futures Game, is a career .288 hitter who leaves behind a .314/.428/.477 slash line at Double-A Tulsa. Diaz homered twice on Sunday, once to right-center, once to left-center, and had one of the better batting-practice sessions on the World team.

For all that, Diaz hasn’t exhibited much over-the-fence power as a professional, even during his 165-game stay in the Cal League between 2016 and -17. He’s an all-fields line-drive hitter who keeps his hands inside the ball and peppers the right-center-field gap. He’s much more likely to display doubles power in games, which could cap his ceiling a bit, as the offensive bar in left field, where Diaz projects due to speed and arm-strength limitations, is quite high.

Read the rest of this entry »

Because they feature such a high concentration of pitching talent and because everyone’s stuff plays up in short stints, Futures Games are often fast-moving, low-scoring affairs. Since the game’s inception in 1999, for example, a team has scored three or fewer runs on 18 occasions. That was not the case on Sunday, however, as baseball’s top prospects combined for eight home runs. In the end, Team USA defeated Team World by a score of 10 to 6.

The end result of a prospect showcase like the Futures Game is essentially meaningless. Batting practice and infield/outfield drills, which occur before the cameras even turn on, are more informative. But, to me, the scouting-related feats of strength and athleticism seen throughout Sunday’s festivities (which I promise to address further down) were secondary to another development — namely, the number of and the performances by the game’s African-American players.

Only 7% of big leaguers are African-American, which is way down from about 27% during much of the 1970s. Articles about the declining number of black athletes in baseball have been written so frequently over the last half-decade that I assume readers are at least somewhat familiar with the issue, but if you’d like background, USA Today conducts the annual census. Like any shift of this magnitude, a confluence of variables is probably at the heart of what has caused this decline. Some of those are probably cultural, and this aspect of the decline is one about which people are quick to speculate , but, as a 29-year-old white guy, I’m not exactly qualified to discuss the African-American experience and how it does or does not intersect with baseball.

But I know the scouting process and, like many systems and processes in the United States, it has grown increasingly less suited for economically disadvantaged people — and people of color in this country are disproportionately poor. Showcases and travel ball are becoming a more significant aspect of scouting and player development in youth baseball. These cost money for the participants — to say nothing of flights to and from places like Florida and Arizona for several tournaments a year, mandated hotels in these locations, and the cost of breakable wood bats and other equipment. To take one example, each of the 328 teams participating in this week’s 2021 Class/Under 15 World Wood Bat Association Championship in Atlanta had a $2,500 entry fee, and it costs spectators $55 for a tournament pass and $5 to park. Baseball is a skill-based game and those skills are best refined against high levels of competition, but it’s expensive for an individual kid to play the kind of high-level baseball that helps develop those skills.

When I broach this subject with people in baseball, I’m met with some resistance from individuals who think the game is incentivized to mine as much talent as possible and that, poor or not, talent will be discovered. And while I agree with this premise, I think there are young athletes in this country who have the physical capability to play professional baseball but whom the scouting industry will never discover because that talent is never cultivated.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

The 2018 MLB Draft’s signing deadline passed last week, and more teams failed to sign their early picks than is typical. Ultimately, four of the top 36 selections opted not to enter professional ball, all from the prep ranks. Those players are as follows: RHP Carter Stewart (Atlanta’s pick at No. 8), SS Matt McLain (Arizona at No. 25), RHP J.T. Ginn (Dodgers at No. 30), and Gunnar Hoglund (Pirates at No. 36). Scouting details on those individuals can be found on THE BOARD.

This has left those teams with one fewer prospect in their system than anticipated (all four teams get a compensation pick in next year’s draft), but more significantly, it moves a handful of premium talent into future draft classes. This year’s crop of unsigned high schoolers now serves as a preview of the college talent pool for the 2021 draft, but there are also a few 2020 prospects who are eligible early because they’re old for their class. There’s also a possibility that some could find their way into the 2019 draft class if they opt to attend junior college. We’ll reclassify players on THE BOARD as they change.

With that in mind, we thought it reasonable to present snapshots of each of the next three draft classes based on how we have the players graded right now. The industry’s evaluation of the 2019 class is already underway in earnest (Team USA, Cape Cod, and prep showcases are all occurring as we speak), and we’ve lined up a short list of the class’s top names thus far over on THE BOARD. Our 2020 list is mostly composed of the players we regarded as the best college freshmen this year, though we know of a few high schoolers who look like early first-round talents, too. The 2021 list is just a ranking of the high schoolers who didn’t sign in this year’s draft, exactly as they appeared on our 2018 draft board. We’re skeptical of prep players who have popped up this early because it’s often the result of physical maturity, but we don’t think that’s the case for Pennsylvania high school RHP Kevin Bitsko, whom we have evaluated similarly to the lean projection arms who are 40 FVs on the July 2 list.

We’re still too early in the process to make conclusive statements about the talent level of the 2019 draft class as a whole, much less the 2020 or 2021 varieties, so all this could change. As it stands now, however, the 2019 class collectively appears to lack the depth of the 2018 crop. By this time last year, we had a rough idea of how deep the high-school pitching was and knew that the Southeast had an overwhelming volume of talent. College hitting is the strength of next year’s draft class, and there’s lots of depth to the college crop in general, but the prep class lacks the quantity of players who are regarded as in-a-vacuum first rounders that one customarily sees at this point. Moreover, the college pitching class lacks a guy who looks like a top-five or -10 selection right now, though Casey Mize didn’t fit that criteria last summer and then ended up going first overall to Detroit in June.

Read the rest of this entry »