Less than a month ago, the Pirates called up top prospect Jameson Taillon from the minor leagues, and slotted him into their struggling rotation. With Taillon now sidelined by shoulder fatigue, the Pirates have once again dipped into their minor-league repository. Today, they’ve called up yet another top-tier pitching prospect in Tyler Glasnow. Glasnow’s spent the past three months putting up sick-nasty numbers with the Pirates’ Triple-A affiliate. In 96 innings across 17 starts, he boasts a 1.78 ERA and 2.94 FIP. He’s struck out a remarkable 30% of batters faced this year, which is tops among qualified Triple-A hurlers. Triple-A hitters proved to be no match for his filthy fastball-curveball combination.

Glasnow’s mowed down minor-league hitters, but many are concerned that his lackluster command will prevent him from succeeding at the next level. That’s a big reason why the Pirates kept him in the minors as long as they did, and why they passed him over for Taillon when they needed a pitcher last month. As lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen noted in a recent chat, “His stuff is hellacious and pitchers with that body type often develop command late, but there’s a non-zero chance Glasnow never throws enough strikes to dominate.”

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It’s raining prospects. The prospect gods gave us Brandon Nimmo and A.J. Reed over the weekend, and today we’re treated with another prospect debut: hard-throwing righty Lucas Giolito. The former first-rounder will take the hill for the Nationals in tonight’s game against the New York Mets.

Giolito pitched exclusively at the Double-A level this year, where he posted a 3.22 FIP and a 23% strikeout rate. That performance is nothing to sneeze at, especially coming from a 21-year-old, but it’s a tad underwhelming when held against his numbers from prior seasons. Giolito showed an exceptional penchant for missing bats at the low minors, but he hasn’t been quite as prolific since he was promoted to Double-A last July. He posted a 29% strikeout rate in 168 innings in A-Ball between 2014 and 2015, but saw that figure dip below 23% in his 118 Double-A innings. His walk rate also ticked up upon reaching the Double-A level.

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The Astros have gotten painfully little production from the first-base position this season. Spring-training hero Tyler White stopped hitting in April, and Marwin Gonzalez hasn’t exactly stepped up to pick up the slack. Houston’s lack of offense from first is a big reason why they’ve underperformed their preseason expectations. In an effort to fill the void, the Astros have called up top prospect A.J. Reed, who figures to get the lion’s share of starts at first base from here on out.

Reed’s hit everywhere he’s played. In 2014, he lead the SEC in both on-base and slugging his junior season at Kentucky, and he closed out his draft year by slashing .289/.375/.522 between two levels of A-Ball. He enjoyed his biggest breakout last year, when he hit an unquestionably gaudy .337/.428/.604 with 34 homers between High-A and Double-A. His performance has deteriorated a bit this year, but he’s still managed a .266/.345/.509 slash line in Triple-A.

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Michael Conforto was supposed to be one of the Mets’ top run producers this year. After storming through the minors last year, the 2014 draftee wound up being a crucial part of his team’s run to the World Series last year. The year 2016 hasn’t been as kind to him, however, which prompted the Mets to send him back to the minor leagues. In his place, they called up another young outfielder: Brandon Nimmo.

If you feel you’ve been hearing about Nimmo for a while, it’s probably because you have. The Mets drafted Nimmo in the first round out of high school way back in 2011: a time long, long ago, when Mike Trout was still in the minors and Matt Kemp was in the midst of an eight-win season. Although he’s been around awhile, Nimmo turned just 23 in March, making him younger than Conforto.

Based on his early performances in the Mets’ system, Nimmo looked like something of a bust. He hit just .259/.382/.374 over roughly 300 games the low minors from 2011 to -13, and then proceeded to hit a miserable .202/.306/.238 in the Arizona Fall League. Most concerning of all, he was striking out in over one-fourth of his trips to the plate.

But once the calendar turned to 2014, Nimmo began living up to his first-round draft pedigree. He broke out in a big way when he slashed .322/.448/.458 in his half-season in High-A. He came back to earth a bit following a promotion to Double-A, but still managed to put up solid numbers across the board, all while keeping his strikeout rate under 20%.

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A few days ago, I shared KATOH’s thoughts on the college players who were drafted (and not drafted) in this year’s amateur draft. There were hundreds of them. Many of the players with very good projections went in the first round, including Nick Senzel, A.J. Puk and Cody Sedlock. But the player with the very best KATOH projection fell all the way to the 10th round. The end of the 10th round. That player is Dakota Mekkes, whom the Cubs drafted with the 314th-overall pick out of Michigan State.

Mekkes was straight up filthy this past season. Pitching in the Big 10, Mekkes struck out a remarkable 96 batters in just 57 innings without surrendering a single home run. The catch is that he pitched exclusively in relief — though he wasn’t used like a typical reliever, and actually pitched more like a starter in some cases. Mekkes averaged over two innings per appearance in relief, and frequently threw many more than that. Most notably, he tossed six shutout innings in an extra-inning game against Maryland. Unlike most college relievers, he wasn’t a one-inning guy, which helps explain why KATOH likes him more than most relievers.

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Collectively, Reds pitchers have been all sorts of terrible this year. Their team ERA (5.45) and FIP (5.62) are both easily the worst in baseball, as injuries to Homer Bailey, Raisel Iglesias and Michael Lorenzen have left their rotation painfully thin. It’s about to get better, though, as top prospect Cody Reed is set to make his big-league debut tomorrow. Since we’ve likely passed the Super Two deadline, he should be up for good.

Reed enjoyed a breakout season in 2015, when he posted an impressive 24% strikeout rate and 2.93 FIP between High-A and Double-A. That was enough to make him a fixture on prospect lists last winter. He placed in the middle third of most top 100 rankings.

Reed built on last year’s success at the Triple-A level this year. Although he’s faced better competition, his strikeout and walk rates have remained on par with last year’s numbers. The end result has been a 3.20 ERA and 3.37 FIP. Not bad at all for a 23-year-old facing borderline big-league hitters.

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Just last week, the Cubs added another productive asset to their already stacked lineup when they called up outfielder Albert Almora. Today, they fortified their juggernaut offense even further by summoning slugging catcher Willson Contreras. Contreras has absolutely destroyed the Pacific Coast League this year. In 55 Triple-A games, he was slashing .353/.442/.593.

Contreras has demonstrated an exceptional combination of contact and power in Triple-A this year. He’s struck out just 13% of the time, yet has also managed to put up a .240 ISO. Some of that has to do with his playing in the PCL, where homers are very common. But a lot of it doesn’t: On a per plate appearance basis, he hit significantly more singles, doubles, triples and home runs than the typical PCL hitter. As if that weren’t enough, he also drew walks and even stole four bases. From a hitting perspective, he did it all. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I published KATOH projections for the players who were drafted out of college in this year’s amateur draft*. As much as I love my projections, they only can only tell you so much about a player. Knowing a player’s projected WAR over a specified period is interesting, but it’s only one number. It simply tells you where a player falls on a spectrum of “good” and “bad.” It tells you nothing about how that player might accumulate those wins, or what he might look like doing it.

*Day one here, day two here, and day three here.

To put some faces to some of the hitters drafted in the first round, I generated some statistical comps using weighted Mahalanobis Distance calculations to college players since 2002. This analysis considers offensive statistics only, so the comps have not been filtered at all by position. The WAR columns refer to that player’s WAR through age 27.

You may notice that Mariners first-round pick Kyle Lewis isn’t included here. Lewis played in a non-elite conference, which has produced very few big leaguers historically. This made generating a KATOH-style projection for him less than straightforward.

*****

2. Nick Senzel, IF, Cincinnati

Proj. WAR thru age-27: 2.0

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On Friday, I published a post projecting the players taken on day one of the draft. On Saturday, I did the same for the players taken on day two. And yesterday, I did the same for those players selected on day three. Over 1,200 players were drafted across 40 rounds in this year’s draft. But KATOH still managed to find a few mildly interesting players who weren’t selected. Below, you’ll find the seven draft-eligible but undrafted players with the best projections. As a reminder, this analysis covers the following conferences: AAC, ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Big West, Pac 12 and SEC. I expect a few of these guys will sign as undrafted free agents in the coming weeks.

*****

Anthony Papio, RSr., OF, Maryland

Proj. WAR thru age-27: 1.0

Papio had a solid season as a redshirt senior. I should note that his projection is partly due to a quirk with my model. The Big 10 model includes a variable that makes it slightly less harsh on older players. But since Papio’s the rare 23-year-old college player, it perhaps credits him a bit more than it should. Still, an .800 OPS with some speed in the Big 10 ain’t bad.

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On Friday, I published a post projecting the players taken on day one of the draft. On Saturday, I did the same for the players taken on day two. Let’s see what my math says about the college players taken on day three of draft, which covered rounds 11-40. The vast majority of these players will flame out in the minor leagues over the next couple of years, and you’ll never hear from them again. But at least a few of them will go on to play in the big leagues.

As a reminder, I only have projections for college players who logged at least 100 plate appearances or batters faced in select major NCAA conferences this year, including the: AAC, ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Big West, Pac 12 and SEC. I do not have projections for high-school players.

Below, you’ll find thoughts on some players of note from rounds 11-40, followed by a giant, sortable table with projections for all drafted players for whom I have projections. The cumulative WAR projections will probably feel a bit low to you. They feel low to me too. For this reason, I recommend you don’t take the projections themselves literally, but instead use them to compare draftees to other draftees.

*****

337. Chad Donato, RHP, Houston

Proj. WAR thru age-27: 2.1

Donato pitched excellently in West Virginia’s rotation. His strikeout- and walk-rate differential was among the best for starters in major conferences. The Astros have several KATOH darlings in this group. Houston’s front office has either hacked my computer or is doing something similar to what I’m doing.

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