Following the end of their Triple-A affiliate’s championship season in the Pacific Coast League, the San Diego Padres promoted a small collection of players to their major-league club on Tuesday. Below are forecasts for the three most notable prospects of that group — Carlos Asuaje, Hunter Renfroe, and Manuel Margot — according to my KATOH system and presented in order of projected WAR.

Note that KATOH represents the WAR projection for the relevant player’s first six years in the majors; KATOH+ is that same thing, except with the player’s Baseball America ranking included as a variable.

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Manny Margot, CF (Profile)

KATOH: 13.0 WAR
KATOH+: 13.6 WAR

Margot’s game centers around speed and contact. The 21-year-old struck out in just 12% of his plate appearances in Triple-A this year on his way to a .307/.355/.442 slash line. He also racked up an exciting 32 steals, while playing elite center field defense by Clay Davenport’s numbers. Margot also isn’t a zero in the power department, as he managed a respectable 46 extra-base hits in the minors this year, including seven homers. He’s one of the very best prospects in baseball by my math, and he’s big-league ready.

To help you visualize what his KATOH projection entails, here is a probability density function showing KATOH+’s projected distribution of outcomes for Margot’s first six seasons in the major leagues.

To put some faces to Margot’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps for the speedy outfielder. I calculated a weighted Mahalanobis distance between Margot’s performance this year and every Triple-A season since 1991 in which a center fielder recorded at least 400 plate appearances. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues. A lower “Mah Dist” reading indicates a closer comp.

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On Monday, the Oakland Athletics promoted a couple of hitting prospects from Triple-A: Renato Nunez and Matt Olson. Both Nunez and Olson came off the bench on Monday to make their big-league debuts. With Billy Butler out of the picture, and Danny Valencia likely soon to follow, Nunez and Olson might see a decent chunk of playing time these next two weeks.

Olson’s numbers have trended in the wrong direction since his 37-homer season in the Cal League in 2014. He slashed .249/.388/.438 in Double-A last year and only managed to hit .235/.335/.422 in the PCL this year. Throughout his minor-league career, Olson has demonstrated good power and a willingness to draw walks. He’s also a 22-year-old with a 6-foot-5 frame, which suggests he may still have some untapped upside. But his underwhelming performance, defensive limitations and 24% strikeout rate don’t bode particularly well for his future in the show.

KATOH pegs Olson for 3.7 WAR over his first six seasons by the traditional method and 2.8 WAR by KATOH+, which integrates Baseball America’s rankings. To help you visualize what his KATOH projection entails, here is a probability density function showing KATOH+’s projected distribution of outcomes for Olson’s first six seasons in the major leagues.

To put some faces to Olson’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps for the newest Brewers prospect. I calculated a weighted Mahalanobis distance between Olson’s performance this year and every Double-A season since 1991 in which a first baseman or corner outfielder recorded at least 400 plate appearances. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues. A lower “Mah Dist” reading indicates a closer comp.

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September call-ups are upon us. Now that the minor-league regular season has come to an end, players are getting called up left and right. Some of those players are organizational catchers and journeyman relievers*, but a few of the recent call-ups are prospects who appear to have promising futures in the Show.

*Editor’s note.

With the long weekend, I’ve fallen a bit behind on projecting the prospects who were called up over the past few days. In what follows, I attempt to make up for lost time by projecting several of the players who have recently gotten the call. In case you missed it, I projected Yoan Moncada last week. As usual, KATOH denotes WAR forecast for first six years of player’s major-league career. KATOH+ uses similar methodology with consideration also for Baseball America’s rankings.

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Last Tuesday, I published a post examining the hitters in this year’s Cape Cod summer league through the lens of my KATOH projection system. Today, I’m back to look at the pitchers. As I did with minor-league players and college players, I deployed a series of probit regressions to see what stuck when it came to forecasting major-league performance for Cape League players. I used those results to generate an expected WAR total — in this case, through age 28. These projections are far from gospel: scouting the stat line is always dangerous, and it’s even more dangerous than usual at the college level, where the samples are small, the players are raw, and the quality of opposing pitching runs the gamut. Nonetheless, statistical performance is an often overlooked component of prospect evaluation, and the performers often go on to exceed expectations.

A couple of caveats. Due to the poor quality of publicly available historical summer-league data, these projections do not directly account for pitchers’ home-run rates, which is obviously less than ideal. Secondly, these projections take into account only what these players have done this summer. Ideally, they’d account for college stats and summer-league stats. I do plan to link these two data sets at some point, but, unfortunately, it’s easier said than done.

Below, you’ll find a few notes on performances whom I deemed noteworthy. Below that, you’ll find a giant table for all hitters who recorded at least 75 batters faced (BFs) in the Cape Cod League this year. The two rightmost columns refers to each prospect’s ranking on Baseball America’s Cape Cod top-30 list and Frankie Piliere’s top-150 list from D1 Baseball.

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What a time to be alive. Not only is 29-year-old Tim Tebow attempting to launch a career as a baseball player, but he held a showcase in front of scouts from 28 teams — and actually managed to impress some of them. The ex-NFL quarterback put on a show in batting practice, which prompted some scouts to spew superlatives about his power tool. The rest of his game was underwhelming, however, including his performance against live pitching and his throwing arm.

When it comes to gauging Tebow’s talent, all we really have is this showcase and the scouting grades that came out of it. He hasn’t played baseball since high school, so we have exactly zero statistical data to use. The logical conclusion seems to be that he isn’t very good. Sure, Tebow was something of a prospect in high school, but a tiny fraction of high-school baseball prospects succeed in the pros, and that’s without having sat out a dozen years.

The responsible thing to do would be to recognize that this is little more than a publicity stunt and that Tebow will probably bust. But where’s the fun in that? Instead, I decided to play around with the shred of data we do have and infer what it might mean for Tebow’s future.

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The college baseball season wrapped up in June when Coastal Carolina defeated Arizona in the College World Series, but most of the top college players’ seasons don’t end when their team’s season does. Players with dreams of going pro often spend the summer months playing in collegiate summer leagues to gain extra reps and exposure. Teams in these leagues are composed entirely of college players, and — unlike at the college level — hitters use wooden bats instead of metal ones.

The most well known of these leagues is the Cape Cod Baseball League, which aptly takes place along Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The Cape attracts most of the best college players, and many of today’s stars spent their college summers playing there. Josh Donaldson, Evan Longoria, Buster Posey and Mark Teixeira are just a few notable alumni.

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Last night, Dansby Swanson, 2015’s first overall pick, debuted for the Atlanta Braves. After destroying High-A pitching to the tune of .333/.441/.562 in April, Swanson spent 84 games at the Double-A level. He hit a less exciting, but still respectable .261/.342/.411 at the latter stop.

During his brief stay in the minors, Swanson didn’t stand out in any particular area offensively, but was better than average across the board. He posted a healthy 11% walk rate this season, a .151 ISO, and made enough contact (recording an 18% strikeout rate) for it not to be a concern. Even his 13 steals indicate a guy who’s fast, if not exceptionally fast.

Swanson is a good hitter, but his bat alone doesn’t make him a particularly exciting prospect. What really sets him apart is that he’s a good hitter who also happens to play a mean shortstop. Eric Longenhagen noted yesterday that he thinks Swanson will be a plus defender at short. The data support that observation. In just 105 minor-league games at short this year, he’s been a +19 defender according to Clay Davenport’s model.

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Teoscar Hernandez has always possessed an enticing combination of power and speed. His primary flaw, however, has been his inability to make contact. In 2014, he belted 21 homers and stole 33 bags, but struck out 28% of the time. Last year, he posted 17 homers and 33 steals with a 24% strikeout rate. The end result was a .219/.275/.362 batting line. More often than not, hitters who strike out that frequently don’t carry their success over to the big leagues, and it wasn’t at all clear that Hernandez was ever going to make enough contact to make it work.

But a funny thing started happening this year: Hernandez has seemingly learned how to avoid the strikeout. He opened the year at the Double-A level, where he hit .305/.384/.437 with a 17% strikeout rate. Following a promotion to Triple-A, he slashed .313/.365/.500 with a 16% strikeout clip. Despite the added contact, he still managed 10 homers in just over 100 games — plus one more in Houston on Friday. Read the rest of this entry »

Just hours after Alex Rodriguez walked off the field following his final game (in pinstripes, at least), the Yankees made the following string of transactions.

And just hours after making those transactions, both Aaron Judge and Tyler Austin had already homered in the big leagues. Out with the old, in with the new.

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Earlier this week, the Cardinals called up a promising young arm in Alex Reyes, who’s already enjoyed some success out of St. Louis’ bullpen. Another promising young arm is set to debut for the Cardinals tomorrow, as 22-year-old Luke Weaver will get the start against Cubs. What should we expect from him?

One thing we know for certain is that Weaver was undeniably excellent in the minors this year. In 13 starts this year — most of them at Double-A — he pitched to a sparkling 1.30 ERA and 2.11 FIP. He struck out an impressive 28% of opposing batters, while walking fewer than 4%, which is equally impressive. It wasn’t the first time he tasted success either, as he pitched well last season in High-A, albeit with a more underwhelming 21% strikeout rate.
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