I’ll be in California for the next few days at the Area Codes and some Cal League stuff, but below are some thoughts on three Phillies prospects I’ve seen recently, including Jake Thompson, who debuts today.
I saw Thompson a few weeks ago and he struggled with command. I don’t think strike-throwing is a long-term issue here — at least not so much that it will prevent him from starting — but I do think it impacts the effectiveness of his slider and that the most important part of his development at the major-league level will be locating that pitch where he wants when he wants. It’s often plus and should be so consistently at maturity. Thompson had issues locating it for me for the first half of his start until a mid-game at-bat during which C Andrew Knapp called for six straight sliders. It was a great opportunity for Thompson to find his slider, and it worked: Thompson located it for the rest of his start. It’s his best option for swings and misses to both right- and left-handed hitters. It was anywhere from 83-86 during this particular start though I’ve seen it up to 87 in the past.
Thompson’s fastball sits 90-93 and tops out around 94. His low-80s changeup has average projection, as does his curveball, which is slower and more vertically oriented than his slider. It’s a league-average starter’s profile for me.
Below is my ranking of the prospects dealt during this year’s “Trade Season,” a span of time encompassing the second half of July, essentially from the Drew Pomeranz deal onward. Each tier of prospects is separated by the Future Value grade I’ve placed on them. For further explanation on what goes into FV, please go here. I’ve also included a brief, one sentence summary of each player’s skillset as well as links to the full reports I’ve written here for the site over the past few weeks and hours. Players who didn’t get full write-ups have slightly longer blurbs written in this post. Players with the same FV are ranked within their tier simply in the order I like them.
Dilson Herrera isn’t technically a prospect and is therefore not on the list but his full report is here. Hector Olivera is also not a prospect, not because he’s exhausted his rookie eligibility but because the reports I’ve gotten there, as well as what I’ve seen in person, have been quite bad.
Summary: One of the most electric arms in the minors, Espinoza has a shot at three plus or better pitches and a realistic #2 starter’s ceiling but is still just 18 and obviously risky.
Newly acquired Brewers CF Lewis Brinson has superstar level tools that have been undermined throughout his career by excessive strikeouts. A mechanical tweak in 2015 looked like it had unlocked his prodigious potential and he hit .332/.403/.601 across three levels of the minors before a brief but impressive stint in the Arizona Fall League. Brinson’s 2016 season has not gone as well. Mired by a shoulder injury that forced him out of action for about a month, Brinson has hit just .233 this year and his walk rate has completely evaporated.
I think Brinson has 30 homer potential if he can stay healthy, but that’s a real if. He hasn’t played in more than 100 games since 2013, suffering from the shoulder injury this year, a hamstring issue last year, and a quad issue prior to that.
The mechanical changes Brinson has made over the past 18 months or so are substantive. He began loading his hands lower which enabled him to cut down on the distance his bat needs to travel to re-enter the hitting zone. He’s so physically gifted that he can still generate terrific bat speed in that shorter distance and this change also enabled Brinson’s natural bat control to play with more regularity. I’ve seen him hit homers despite failing to fully extend and I think Brinson has plus game power projection. Reports of late are that Brinson’s hands are loading higher again and that he’s become a little long back to the ball.
The Athletics are moving two rentals in exchange for three very interesting pitching prospects, all of whom have bullpen-worthy stuff at worst — and mid-rotation upside at best.
The headliner of the deal, at least as far as upside is concerned, is RHP Grant Holmes. Holmes, who was committed to Florida, was the 22nd-overall pick in 2014 and signed for $2.5 million out of Conway High School in South Carolina. He touched 100 in high school and was one of the draft’s more advanced prep arms with a more mature body and better strike-throwing ability than many of his hard-throwing peers. After signing, he descended upon the AZL, which was clearly already beneath him at the time, and dominated before moving to the Pioneer League for his last few starts of the season.
In 2015, Holmes’ control went backwards and he walked 54 hitters in 103.1 innings for Low-A Great Lakes. Walks have remained an issue this season (43 free passes in 105 innings). Holmes is an above-average athlete and his delivery isn’t overtly violent or difficult to repeat, but his arm action is long and his release point has been inconsistent. Eventually, I think Holmes will throw enough strikes to start though two straight years of serious control issues are officially concerning.
The stuff is great. Holmes was 92-94 mph and touching 95 for me in April and has generally been in that range all year. His fastball moves, a product of his arm slot, and can be unhittable when he locates it. Holmes’ primary offspeed weapon is his curveball which, when he breaks off a good one, looks like a slider’s caricature. It has two-plane, slider shape and slider velociy (about 79-82) but has the vertical depth of a curveball. It flashes plus but is also inconsistent and can tilt in without much bite.
The package netted by Brian Cashman and the Yankees in exchange for Andrew Miller is headlined by two big names in OF Clint Frazier and LHP Justus Sheffield (both of whom project as average-or-better regulars for me) and supplemented by two potential relievers in RHPs Ben Heller and J.P. Feyereisen.
Clint Frazier was the fifth-overall pick in the 2013 draft out of Loganville High School in Georgia. He was signed away from his commitment to Georgia with a $3.5 million bonus, the most lucrative bonus in Indians draft history. Frazier was a high-effort spark plug with elite bat speed, though he didn’t look like your typical high-upside prep draftee.
Before the draft, most organizations were correctly skeptical about Frazier’s long-term ability to play center field despite some of the run times he was posting (he ran a 6.6-second 60-yard dash at East Coast Pro) because of the way they anticipated his body to fill out. Frazier was listed at 5-foot-11, 185 pounds as an amateur but has grown into a listed 6-foot-1, 190, though he’s probably heavier than that. Despite his likely corner-only destiny, Frazier’s bat speed and advanced feel for hitting made him a worthy top-five selection, even if he had atypical physical projection.
Because of the superhuman circumference of his biceps and his generally muscular physique, Frazier is most often body-comped to Popeye the Sailor Man, a reference I hope doesn’t elude the youngest of our readers. Though he posts some plus run times to first base because of a natural jailbreak, he’s only about an average runner whose middling speed is masked by visible effort and good base-running instincts. Frazier’s speed and feel for center are enough that I think he’d be passable there in an emergency, but I wouldn’t advocate him playing there everyday. I think that, given his size and build just shy of age 22, Frazier is likely to slow down as he enters his prime. His arm strength should allow him to play in either outfield corner (though I think he fits best in left), where I believe he’ll be an average defender at maturity.
Frazier’s 80-grade bat speed has helped him generate a .278/.360/.452 career batting line. He’s hit despite the excessive loop his hands take back to the ball, a mechanical hiccup that I think causes his barrel to arrive late and robs him of the ability to pull the ball consistently. This could dilute his game power a bit, but Frazier is strong enough to muscle some of those balls out to right field anyway, and the new Yankee Stadium will be particularly kind to this flaw. Though his swing features a good bit of effort and Frazier has struggled some with strikeouts throughout his minor-league career, he still projects as an average Major League hitter. Again, the bat speed is the primary reason for this, but Frazier has shown that he has some barrel control and the ability to make adjustments in the middle of at-bats, as well. Reports on his makeup are glowing.
The Padres have continued to load up their farm system with interesting pieces, this time netting power-hitting first-base prospect Josh Naylor and low-level fireballer Luis Castillo in exchange for Andrew Cashner and others.
Naylor, a native of Ontario, stood out during his showcase summer because of his big raw power but wasn’t seen as a potential first rounder until he began to rake against advanced international competition with the Canadian Junior National Team late the next spring. By draft day, there was buzz that Philadelphia was interested in him at 10, but he fell to 12 where the Marlins made him their second big-bodied first-round selection in as many years. I was not a fan of the pick at the time and remain skeptical of Naylor, but he does have some impressive tools that might allow him to clear the high offensive bar required of a first-base-only prospect.
Newly acquired Minnesota Twins LHP Adalberto Mejia doesn’t have the fire-breathing stuff that many of his fellow 2016 Futures Game participants do, but he combines a deep, usable repertoire with advanced sequencing to accrue outs — and was arguably the most advanced arm in the 2015 Arizona Fall League.
Mejia signed with San Francisco early in 2011 for $350,000 and dominated the Dominican Summer League later that year. He was sent directly to a full-season affiliate for his stateside debut the next year as a 19-year-old. In July of 2013, when the Giants needed an arm for a spot start at Triple-A, they were comfortable enough to let Mejia, then 20 years of age, make that start. Over 18 starts between Double and Triple-A this season, Mejia has a 2.81 ERA.
I first laid eyes on Gleyber Torres in 2014 at the Rookie-level Arizona League. He was just about a year removed from signing a $1.7 million bonus the year before and, along with Eloy Jimenez, was that summer’s headliner in Mesa. Torres was polished for his age but he was slight of build and his tools were relatively muted compared to some of the other players from the 2013 J2 class. I put a 45 on him at the time, lacking confidence in his ability to find that happy medium where he could become physical enough to do some damage with the bat while also remaining at shortstop. Since then, things have gone about as well as anyone could have hoped. Torres’ body matured rapidly and he began to make more authoritative contact while retaining a contact-oriented approach and enough range to remain at shortstop. For now.
Torres has above-average bat speed and makes good use of his hips and lower half throughout his swing, allowing him to make hard ground-ball and line-drive contact to his pull side and back up the middle. He can also drive fly balls the other way, though doing so sucks some of the torque out of Torres’ swing and he doesn’t have the raw strength in his wrists and forearms to poke balls into the right-field bleachers regularly. He has solid feel for the barrel and, despite some effort, finds a way to make hard contact with pitches in various parts of the zone. He’s hitting .275/.359/.433 in High-A ball at age 19 (he turns 20 in December) and all signs here point to a future plus hit tool.
Eric A Longenhagen: Good day, sirs and madams. I’m just finishing writing up the prospects in the Chapman deal so give me a few minutes…
2:01
Eric A Longenhagen: I also require liquid refreshment.
2:01
Eric A Longenhagen: Also, holy crap there are a lot of you here.
2:07
Eric A Longenhagen: OKay, let me start by plugging some stuff and letting you know that, after hitting Chicago for the Under Armour game and getting back home to AZ last night, I was forced to eat salad for breakfast. It was really terrible.
Eric A Longenhagen: Dahl callup piece has been filed and is just waiting for editing. Same goes for the reports on the Cubs prospects sent to NYY in the Chapman deal.
At birth, Alex Bregman was touched by the Baseball Gods. He is not very big, not very fast, not especially graceful, and yet he somehow finds a way to do everything you can ask of a baseball player. He turned an unassisted triple play at age four. He was already very clearly the best high-school baseball player in the history of New Mexico before his senior year when a bad hop broke a finger on his right hand, ended his season, and irreparably harmed his 2012 draft stock.
Pre-draft, Bregman’s camp promised he would not sign should teams fail to select him in the first round. The Red Sox called his name in round 29 and were rebuffed. Bregman matriculated to LSU, where his list of accolades grew. First Team SEC, First Team All American, Collegiate National Team. And all of that as a freshman. When 2015 rolled around and he was draft-eligible again, Bregman was a divisive prospect despite his success largely because there was no consensus about his long-term ability to play shortstop. He didn’t have no-doubt shortstop speed and, while his arm was fine for the left side of the infield, it wasn’t the kind of elite arm strength that allows some players to hide their lack of range. Additionally, Bregman had virtually no positive physical projection remaining and wasn’t hitting for the sort of game power at LSU that would allay concerns about his offensive profile should he have to move off of short.
That’s not to say scouts didn’t like Bregman — he’s always been adored — but it’s hard to justify drafting a second or third baseman with fringe to average power projection in the top three picks. None of it has mattered. Houston bought in, drafted him #2 overall in 2015, gave him nearly $6 million to sign and, 13 months of raking later, they have a big leaguer.
