Following a stupid .451/.491/.804 performance in the Grapefruit League, the hype surrounding Red Sox outfielder Mookie Betts is through the roof. Scouts are all but penciling him into July’s All-Star lineup, and some of Betts’s peers have even gone as far as to compare him to Andrew McCutchen. And wouldn’t you know it, Betts opened the 2015 season by going 2-4 with a homer and a walk on opening day. Mookie-mania is upon us.

Here at FanGraphs, we’ve been on the Betts bandwagon for a while. Carson Cistulli’s been tracking Betts since July 2013, when he made his first appearance on one of his fringe five lists. An undersized 5th round draft pick with excellent stats, Betts was exactly the type of prospect who endears himself to prospect enthusiasts whose heads are buried in spreadsheets. At that point, Betts was merely a little-known A-Baller with an unusual name.

But last year, Betts took his act to Double-A, and kept right on hitting. He put up a 177 wRC+ in two months in Double-A, and followed it up with a 158 mark in Triple-A. The 5-9 second baseman with the funny name was starting to look like a bona fide prospect, and it was happening in a hurry.

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Just when you thought A.J. Preller was done making moves, he goes and swings yet another blockbuster trade. Once more, the Padres traded away minor league talent in an effort to help the Padres win in 2015. In exchange for Craig Kimbrel and Melvin Upton, the Padres sent big league outfielders Cameron Maybin and Carlos Quentin to the Braves, along with prospects Matt Wisler and Jordan Paroubeck.

Of the pieces headed to Atlanta, Wisler is easily the centerpiece. Kiley McDaniel ranked the 22-year-old righty 41st in his top 200 list last winter, and second in the Padres system, right behind Hunter Renfroe. Kiley gave Wisler a FV of 55, which equates to a #3/#4 starter or a closer.

Wisler’s been one of the game’s more intriguing pitching prospects for a couple of years now. A 7th round pick out of high school in 2011, Wisler wasted no time putting his name on the prospect map. In his first full season as a pro, he posted a 2.36 FIP as a 19-year-old in full-season ball. Wisler followed up his excellent debut with an equally strong 2013 campaign. Split between High-A and Double-A (but mostly Double-A), he struck out an impressive 24% of opposing batters, while walking just 7%.

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For the second year in a row, the Blue Jays headed into spring training with no clear second baseman. Last year, their second base competition featured Ryan Goins, Maicer Izturis, Munenori Kawasaki, Chris Getz and Steve Tolleson. Unsurprisingly, this quintet ranked last in our preseason, second base positional power rankings with a collective projection of 0.1 WAR. Nonetheless, the Jays rolled with this group all season, and things got ugly. Real ugly. Blue Jays second basemen combined for 0.3 WAR last year, and 0.7 of that WAR came from Brett Lawrie, who was supposed to be the team’s third baseman, but filled at second for 32 games.

A year later, not much has changed. Goins, Izturis, Kawasaki and Tolleson are all still on the team’s depth chart, and once again, the Blue Jays checked in at number 30 in our second base power rankings. For the second consecutive year, Toronto’s outlook at at the keystone looks pretty dismal. But unlike last year, there’s reason for hope for Blue Jays fans. While last year’s cast of characters is still around, the team’s opening day second baseman will be someone new: 24-year-old rookie Devon Travis, who secured the job by hitting .352/.397/.463 this spring. Read the rest of this entry »

Making the Phillies outfield isn’t exactly a challenge these days, especially with Domonic Brown slated to start the season on the disabled list. Herrera will likely be flanked by Ben Revere in left and some combination of Darin Ruff and Grady Sizemore in right. Cesar Hernandez is also in the mix, but he’s probably less consequential than any of the players I’ve already named. It comes as no surprise that the Phillies ranked in the bottom four for all three outfield spots in this year’s positional power rankings.

Even so, Herrera didn’t have his roster spot handed to him. He’s earned it with a strong spring. The 23-year-old has hit .321/.356/.339 this spring with 6 steals. He didn’t just beat up on A-Ball pitchers either. According to Baseball-Reference’s opponent quality metric, his average opponent has been a Quad-A pitcher, on average. Spring numbers aren’t all that predictive, but they also aren’t entirely useless. And for players like Herrera with such a limited track record against quality pitching, even the smallest piece of data helps. Read the rest of this entry »

To say Javier Baez had a rocky start to his big league career would be an understatement. After tearing up the minor leagues to the tune of .274/.331/.541, the 21-year-old rookie hit a putrid .169/.227/.324 in 52 games with the Chicago Cubs last year. His on base percentage was the lowest of any hitter who recorded at least 200 plate appearances last year.

Baez’s contact problems were unprecedentedly chronic. Just 59% of his swings resulted in contact, which is the lowest mark we’ve seen in the PITCHf/x era. However, Baez’s Contact% only tells part of the story. It reveals that many of his swings didn’t lead to contact, but doesn’t tell us why. Read the rest of this entry »

Steven Souza destroyed Triple-A pitching last season. In 96 games with Triple-A Syracuse, the outfielder hit a gaudy .350/.432/.590, and and kicked in 26 steals for good measure. All told, his offensive exploits generated a wRC+ of 180, which was the highest of any player with even 100 plate appearances in Triple-A last year.

With that showing, Souza made it clear that he was ready for a new challenge. However, as a member of the Washington Nationals organization, he was blocked by incumbent starters Bryce Harper, Jayson Werth and Denard Span. Additionally, he was competing with Michael Taylor — another hotshot outfield prospect who made a mockery of the minor leagues last season.

Souza’s path to the majors became a lot more clear last December when the Nationals dealt him to the Tampa Bay Rays in the deal that sent Wil Myers to the San Diego Padres. As a Ray, Souza’s only real competition is Brandon Guyer, David DeJesus and Mikie Mahtook. Clearly, the Rays are placing a lot of faith in their rookie right fielder.

Souza isn’t your typical rookie. Most prospects who are projected to have significant big league impacts are in their early 20’s. Souza, on the other hand, will celebrate his 26th birthday in April. Believe it or not, Jason Heyward, Giancarlo Stanton, Starlin Castro and Freddie Freeman — who feel like they’ve been around forever — are all younger than Souza. Still, despite his age, Souza’s gotten a fair amount of hype in prospect circles this winter. Baseball America, John Sickels and our very own Kiley McDaniel each placed him in their respective top 100 lists.

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In their most recent round of roster cuts, the Kansas City Royals optioned outfielder Terrance Gore to High-A Wilmington. Gore was one of seven players the Royals cut this week, and one of hundreds who have been cut from their respective teams this spring. However, Gore differs from most of these guys in that he was a player of some significance the last time meaningful baseball was played: In last year’s World Series. Gore became something of a household name last October, when he served as the Royals designated pinch-runner during their in their unlikely run to the World Series. The speedy 23-year-old appeared in six playoff games for the Royals — and stole three bases — without recording a single plate appearance or inning on defense.

Gore’s blazing speed made him an exciting player to watch last October, and as far as pinch-runners go, he’s about as good as they come. But unfortunately for Gore, pinch-runners can only provide so much value, even if they represent a very important run. Back in 2012, Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus reasoned that Billy Hamilton would be worth just one-tenth of a win over one month of games while serving as a pinch-runner.

Of course, Hamilton has since turned into a nice little player, racking up a respectable 3.7 fWAR last season. However, Gore’s nowhere near the hitter that Hamilton is. By no means is Hamilton a good hitter, but he can hit at least a little bit — He put up a 79 wRC+ in 2014. Gore on the other hand, put up a 57 wRC+ … in A-ball.

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Last week, Kiley McDaniel published his write-up of the Milwaukee Brewers farm system, marking the 25th installment of his “Evaluating the Prospects” series. Once he makes it through the five teams left on the table, he’ll be publishing his ranking of all thirty teams’ farm systems. In anticipation of this release, I thought it would be interesting to create an organizational ranking based exclusively on KATOH — my prospect projection system. The methodology for making this list seems pretty obvious: Simply add up all of the KATOH projections for the players on each team. In practice, however, this isn’t nearly as straightforward as it sounds.

First, I had to decide what to do with players who appeared in only a small number of games. For example, Carlos Rodon — the White Sox top prospect — receives a projection of 7.9 WAR through age-28. That projection seems pretty reasonable for Rodon, but it’s only based on 95 batters faced over 21 innings. That  sample’s not nearly large enough to mean much of anything.

To address this problem, I decided to only consider players who logged at least 200 plate appearances last season (or 200 batters faced for pitchers). This inevitably means that some big-name prospects (like Rodon) wind up being excluded, but there’s really no other way to go about it. KATOH projections are based on 2014 stats, and for guys who only appeared in a few games, the 2014 stats are almost meaningless.

There’s also the issue of knowing the affiliations for thousands of minor league players. My database of 2014 stats includes each player’s organization from the 2014 season, but a lot has changed since then. It would be easy enough to account for the players who were traded, but what about the hundreds of nondescript minor league free agents who changed organizations over the winter? It would be futile to try to figure out where each one ended up.

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News broke on Monday that Zack Wheeler had a tear in his UCL, and would need to undergo Tommy John Surgery. This sucks. It sucks every time we lose an exciting, young arm to injury, and this case is no different. But one man’s misfortune is another man’s opportunity. While unfortunate for both Wheeler and the Mets, Wheeler’s injury helps clear up the log jam in the Mets rotation. It opens the door for a slew of youngsters, who may have otherwise spent a good chunk of the year in Triple-A or the bullpen.

Even after losing Wheeler, the Mets are still able to field a full rotation without turning to any unproven rookies. Dillon Gee will presumably join Matt Harvey, Bartolo Colon, Jon Niese and Jacob deGrom in New York’s rotation. Still, even if the Mets rotation is set for now, we all know that teams almost always need more than five starting pitchers to get through a season. Furthermore, the Mets number one and number two starters are coming off of Tommy John Surgery and old as dirt, respectively. It’s only a matter of time before they will need to dip into their farm system, and luckily for them, they have no shortage of replacements to choose from.

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The Toronto Blue Jays suffered a crippling blow when 23-year-old Marcus Stroman ruptured his ACL during fielding drills last week. Prior to Stroman’s injury, Toronto’s final rotation spot was slated to go to the winner of a competition featuring Daniel Norris, Aaron Sanchez and Marco Estrada. Presumably, at least one of the losers would help fill out the Jays’ bullpen. But sans Stroman, Toronto now needs to use two-thirds of that trio in its rotation, which only weakens a bullpen that was already looking pretty thin. The Blue Jays are scrambling to fill the void.