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This is a series of scouting thoughts on high-school prospects eligible for the 2017 MLB Draft based on observations from summer showcases. Today’s positional group is right-handed pitchers. Links to other positional groups appear below.

Previous editions: Catchers / Corner Infielders / Middle Infielders / Center Fielders / Left-Handed Pitchers.

Hunter Greene, RHP, Notre Dame HS (CA)

Height: 6’4, Weight: 200, Commitment: UCLA

This kid might go 1-1 and he’d be the first high-school righty in the history of the draft to do so. His fastball is absolutely electric, sitting in the mid-90s and touching as high as 98 with good extension and movement that plays in the zone. I think Greene’s heater would be effective in the big leagues right now and, though the rest of his repertoire is middling, his body and athleticism make the entire package worthy of top-of-the-draft considertation.

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This is a series of scouting thoughts on high-school prospects eligible for the 2017 MLB Draft based on observations from summer showcases. Today’s positional group is corner infielders. Links to other positional groups appear below.

Previous editions: Catchers / Middle Infielders / Center Fielders / Left-Handed Pitchers.

The position du jour is corner infielders. This is a weird group. I shuffled the names around quite a bit before publication and am still not sure that I’m okay with what I have because beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder when it comes to all of these prospects. Without further adieu…

Adisyn Coffey, 3B, Delta HS (IN)

Height: 6’2, Weight: 170, Commitment: Arizona State

Coffey had the coolest looking bat at Area Codes and put on quite a display with it, making hard, airborne contact in several at-bats. He has above-average bat speed and great feel for generating lift because of a cute little backside collapse that creates some uppercut in the swing without overdoing it and eating away at his ability to make contact. Coffey loads his hands quite high and it can take a good bit of time for his barrel to find the baseball in the hitting zone, but he moves the bat around pretty well, I like his chances to hit and, eventually, hit with some power.

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This is a series of scouting thoughts on high-school prospects eligible for the 2017 MLB Draft based on observations from summer showcases. Today’s positional group is center fielders. Links to other positional groups appear below.

Previous editions: Catchers / Middle Infielders / Left-Handed Pitchers.

Center field is a difficult position to play. It requires special straight-line speed but also the ability to read ball trajectory off the bat and hunt down said ball while making in-flight adjustments at a full sprint. As it is such a difficult position to play, not many humans are capable of it and this year’s group of high-school prospects are no different. Below are most all the prospects I’ve seen during summer showcases who I think have a prayer to remain in center field. For the uninitiated, the players who have their own sizeable sections are ranked in the order in which I’d draft them were I forced to do so today, while the players below that are just in alphabetical order.

Jordon Adell, OF, Ballard HS (KY)
Height: 6’3, Weight: 200, Commitment: Louisville

Jordon (or “Jo”) Adell has the best hit/power combination among high schoolers in the 2017 class and has a non-zero chance of playing center field. If that sounds like a player worthy of consideration in the draft’s top 5-10 picks, that’s because it is.

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This is a series of scouting thoughts on high-school prospects eligible for the 2017 MLB Draft based on observations from summer showcases. Today’s positional group is middle infielders. Links to other positional groups appear below.

Previous editions: Catchers / Left-Handed Pitchers.

If this is the first post in the series that you’re checking out or just need a refresher, the players who have full paragraphs below are listed in the order I prefer them based on my summer looks. That order will very likely undergo changes between now and June. This year’s group of middle infielders is a little cloudy. The top two prospects for me who are arguably capable of playing SS/2B are likely to be picked at other positions; other than those two players, the group lacks a splashy talent worthy of top-10 or -15 consideration.

Scarce though quality shortstops may be, we’ve been fortunate to have at least one talented enough to merit top-20 consideration in each draft this decade (’10: Manny Machado, ’11: Francisco Lindor: ’12: Carlos Correa and Addison Russell, ’13: J.P. Crawford, ’14: Nick Gordon, ’15: Brendan Rodgers, ’16: Delvin Perez would have gone top 10 if not for failing his pre-draft drug test and Gavin Lux went 20th overall), but that streak may end this season. Players “of note” in the second section are listed in alphabetical order.

Royce Lewis, ATH, J Serra HS (CA)

Height: 6’2, Weight: 188, Commitment: UC Irvine

Lewis played all over the place throughout the summer and is such a good athlete that I think, with time, he could make it work at whatever position he was asked to, save for maybe shortstop. I like him best in center field but also saw him work at second base, where his actions, especially around the bag, are raw but workable. Regardless of position, I think his bat is worthy of first-round consideration. I’ll talk more about Lewis when we cover the outfielders because that’s where I think he ends up, but there’s a non-zero chance he’s drafted as an infielder and I wouldn’t disagree with it.

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Yesterday, preliminary rosters for the 2016 Arizona Fall League were released. Below I’ve provided a brief rundown of the many of the more prominent or interesting names included in this year’s class. Between now and October 11th, when the league kicks off, rosters will inevitably change — just as they will throughout the course of the league itself. If I’ve written about a player below recently because they were traded or because I’ve seem them lately, I’ll have a link to that report tagged in the post.

East Valley Teams

Mesa Solar Sox (CHC, CLE, MIA, OAK, TOR)

Franklin Barreto and Ian Happ are the big names in an infield chock full of bat-first infielders. Yairo Munoz and Yu-Cheng Chang (report) fall into that category, as well. Mesa’s outfield has perhaps the most impressive collection of talent since Scottsdale’s Mike Trout/Bryce Harper/Gary Brown triumvirate from 2012. Cubs OF Eloy Jimenez has easy 70-raw-power projection. Indians CF and 2016 pop-up guy Greg Allen (report) gets a chance to prove that his breakout year is for real (I think it is), while Cleveland OF Bradley Zimmer and Toronto OF Anthony Alford, two high-upside talents with serious swing-and-miss issues, have a chance to receive instruction from a new set of coaches as they attempt to close holes in their offensive profiles.

Sleeper: Marlins RHP Jeff Brigham fell in the 2014 draft because of concerns about his size and health but has been up to 99 in the past and pitched well in the FSL this year. I also like Cubs C Victor Caratini’s bat.

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In February of 2015, 19-year old Cuban infielder Yoan Moncada agreed to a contract with the Boston Red Sox that included a $31.5 million signing bonus. In the 18 months that have elapsed since then, the baseball world has anticipated his arrival to its biggest stage and, this weekend, it’s going to get what it wants.

While we’ve all understandably been following and analyzing his progress and development in anticipation of things to come, possibly lost on us has been that Yoan Moncada is already a significant historical figure in baseball’s history. His departure from Cuba with the country’s unexplained blessing came at a time when the public was just beginning to understand what his predecessors and their families endured during their defections just as relations between the island and the United States began to change. He symbolizes the end of a historic era of Cuban baseball excellence, the most remarkable talent in a wave of defectors who have left the country, at least momentarily, dry.

His delivery to America and, eventually, the major leagues was preordained. There was too much money on the table for all parties involved for Moncada to take a bow behind an isolated archipelagian curtain. Unlike several supreme Cuban baseball talents who preceded him, American baseball fans are fortunate that they don’t have to ask themselves, “What if?” as they do with players like Yulieski Gurriel, Jose Contreras and Orlando Hernandez who debuted stateside past their primes, in their 30s. They instead have been asking, “When?”

Moncada’s relevance extends beyond international baseball popular culture and deep into the business end of things. He is so talented that, at the age of just 18, he shined a very public light on a multi-billion-dollar business’s flaccid and discriminatory system designed specifically to suppress the wages of teenage Latin American ball players by single-handedly pushing it to its limit. He forced Major League executives to confront a once-in-history scenario, a stoned sports fan’s hypothetical question about loopholes and generational talents: “How much money is the best teenager on the planet worth, up front?”

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