It’s strange that this year’s draft is already over and that some teams took as few as three players. Now we move into $20,000 undrafted free agent signing mode, a totally unprecedented exercise. In the coming days, I’ll add the drafted players to their new teams’ prospect lists over on The Board; you’ll see them on the 2020 Updated list on the Prospect List tab after I do. The farm system rankings will change as I do that. You can already see the approximate Top 100 landing spot for the 50 FV and above draftees on the MLB Draft tab of The Board.

Odds

Texas Rangers
Texas’ draft will be the talk of the industry today. After taking Justin Foscue in the first round (Fosuce was in the mix throughout the middle of round one) the Rangers went off the board (well, public boards anyway) and picked a bunch of six-figure high school types throughout the rest of the draft.

In round two, it was Tennessee prep outfielder Evan Carter, a high school two-way player committed to Duke. What I have on Carter at the moment is that he’s fast, has a big, rectangular frame, and that he has good bat speed but a swing path that may not work. This is next to nothing, and we’ll all learn more about Carter in the coming days. Based on what I know right now, he sounds like a 35+ FV prospect, a $600,000 type of high schooler. I also have a 35+ FV on Tekoah Roby, the club’s third rounder, who was up to 94 last summer, flashed a 55 changeup, and has a medium frame. Fourth rounder Dylan MacLean is an athletic, projectable lefty from Oregon whose stuff has coveted vertical action. His fastball was in the mid-80s last summer, up from the low-80s early the spring prior. It’s likely he’ll throw harder as he matures based on the frame and athleticism, or that we’d know he were throwing harder this spring had he played (and that Texas does, but successfully hid it), but he’s the kind of prospect who ends up in the honorable mention section of a team’s prospect list. Finally, their fifth rounder was Thomas Saggese, a contact-oriented SoCal high school infielder. A handful of teams were on Saggese, also a 35+ FV prospect, who could hit enough to play second base everyday. All of these kids are actual prospects, but unless we learn something new about a couple of them (Did MacLean have a velo spike? Did we whiff on Carter as an industry?), this draft will feel odd, and I wonder if Texas’ new stadium has impacted their financial situation and that that may mean they aren’t spending their whole pool. Read the rest of this entry »

With most every other professional sport moving forward with a plan to resume play, baseball’s unsettled future sticks out like a sore thumb. Inevitably, battle lines have been drawn; the owners claim poverty and hardship, the players toe their pro-rata line while dangling various season lengths and inducements, and each side claims the other is intransigent and negotiating in bad faith (one side’s argument is much stronger than the other’s as far as that’s concerned).

One of the key arguments the owners have made is that their teams aren’t profit centers. It’s never couched in exactly those words, but that’s the primary gist of the argument. When Tom Ricketts spoke about the Cubs’ finances, he focused on a specific point: that the team isn’t hoarding cash.

“Most baseball owners don’t take money out of their team. They raise all the revenue they can from tickets and media rights, and they take out their expenses, and they give all the money left to their GM to spend,” he said, in regards to earlier comments by Scott Boras. Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt approached it from a different angle in discussing the team’s real estate expansion, saying “we don’t view (Ballpark Village) as a great profit opportunity.”

I find both of these quotes quite interesting, not for what they reveal, but rather for how precisely they are formulated. Ricketts focused on cash — dollars that flow from team coffers to owners’ bank accounts. DeWitt focused on the profitability of real estate ventures, profit being a notoriously nebulous concept.

Before going any further, I’ll note that both Ricketts and DeWitt are within their rights to posture heavily, or even lie in substance, with these statements. How productive that approach is (eh) and how well it sits with us (not very!) are questions worth considering, but they’re allowed. They’re not under oath, and they’re in no way required to open their books. Parties bluff and lie in negotiations all the time, and both of these statements are, at their core, negotiations with the players using the public as intermediary.

But let’s take them at their word. This seems to be the core issue the owners are asserting: they aren’t taking home any money from their teams, even in good times, so they can’t be expected to take a loss when times get tough. No cash when times are good, cash loss when there’s a recession; the math doesn’t add up. In almost every public statement, owners mention this exact sentiment. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, that was fun. Let’s do it again today, please. Wednesday night was full of some big surprises early and a few later on, all of which are covered below. I’ll start moving drafted players onto their new teams over on The Board once I wake up, so make sure to take a peek at the farm system rankings as they currently stand — they’re about to change as the new prospects get moved over. Briefly, before I dive in, here are the states from which the most players were drafted yesterday:

**Editor’s Note: This piece initially incorrectly stated that the Baltimore Orioles had absorbed their four corners area. It has been corrected. FanGraphs regrets the error.**

The lone surprise there is Arizona, notable because a couple of teams (the Yankees) have either “absorbed” their four corners area recently or have considered it, meaning they let go of their area scout there and had other scouts fill in, thinking the area doesn’t have enough talent to justify having that extra scout. Four kids from the area went on Day 1, and with a lot of junior college spillover expected next year (there are lots of southwest JuCos), it seems especially foolish for other teams to really consider such cuts. Plus, there’s so much low-level pro ball here, baseball for which amateur scouts have a great context since the players are about the same age as their usual coverage. That makes turning over rocks on the complex backfields inexpensive since most of the four corners scouts live in Phoenix. Okay, I’m done. On to my team-by-team analysis. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

My day-of mock goes through the first Competitive Balance Round, and includes a name for Houston’s first pick of the draft at 72. My first mock draft can be found here; my other Draft Week mock is in the navigation widget above. As always, full reports for the 2020 class can be found on The Board.

1. Detroit Tigers- Spencer Torkelson, 1B, Arizona State

2. Baltimore Orioles- Austin Martin, CF, Vanderbilt
As discussed in my previous mock, there’s still a chance Baltimore cuts a deal here. The pool of names if they do is Heston Kjerstad, Patrick Bailey (who seems the most likely of these players to slip to a place where cutting a deal for $4.5-ish million here makes sense), and Nick Gonzales.

3. Miami Marlins- Asa Lacy, LHP, Texas A&M

4. Kansas City Royals- Zac Veen, OF, Spruce Creek HS (FL)
There’s late movement here, including the sudden inclusion of Emerson Hancock, but I think a bat is more likely. Veen and Gonzales are possibilities. The Royals also explored going under slot with Kjerstad, which would make them the stopping point for a lot of seemingly falling players (many of whom are advised by Scott Boras) in the comp round and Round 2.

5. Toronto Blue Jays- Max Meyer, RHP, Minnesota

6. Seattle Mariners- Emerson Hancock, RHP, Georgia

7. Pittsburgh Pirates- Nick Gonzales, 2B, New Mexico State
Pittsburgh could try to cut a deal with Bailey. I’ve also heard high school righty Mick Abel mentioned here but think those chances are remote.

8. San Diego Padres- Robert Hassell, CF, Independence HS (TN)

9. Colorado Rockies – Tyler Soderstrom, C, Turlock HS (CA)
Sounds like Soderstrom would be under slot, which, as with KC, makes sense for the Rockies because they have several early picks. Kjerstad and Reid Detmers are also possible here.

10. Los Angeles Angels- Reid Detmers, LHP, Louisville
I’ve heard Ed Howard’s name here but think college players are more likely and that any of these are good value: Bailey, Kjerstad, Justin Foscue, and Detmers. I’ve also heard Cade Cavalli is in the mix, but his track record is shorter than the other guys’.

11. Chicago White Sox- Garrett Crochet, LHP, Tennessee
If Bailey doesn’t go before this, I think he’s in the mix. The same goes for Abel.

12. Cincinnati Reds- Heston Kjerstad, OF, Arkansas
In order of what I think is likely: Hassell if for some reason he’s here, then Kjerstad, then Abel.

13. San Francisco Giants – Justin Foscue, 2B, Mississippi State
I wonder if they’d consider Bailey here since he and Foscue are similar: younger up-the-middle college players who performed on paper.

14. Texas Rangers – Aaron Sabato, 1B, North Carolina
Sabato has homes all over the teens.

15. Philadelphia Phillies – Cade Cavalli, RHP, Oklahoma

16. Chicago Cubs – Patrick Bailey, C, North Carolina State
As the draft approaches, Bailey is the one college hitter who appears to be slipping down the board, and I think a team with a track record of drafting safe college players will just take him. I also have the Cubs attached to Alika Williams, though I’m not sure if they’d cut for him here or if that’d be in Round 2.

17. Boston Red Sox – Mick Abel, RHP, Jesuit HS (OR)
It sounds like even though Boston doesn’t have a second rounder, they’re looking to take advantage of teams generally avoiding high school players and might cut a deal here to scoop some of them up later. A hot rumor here is that Arizona high school shortstop Carson Tucker or righty Tanner Witt might go underslot here to facilitate that. I think that’s a contingency plan for if Abel is gone.

18. Arizona Diamondbacks – Bryce Jarvis, RHP, Duke
Jarvis’ stuff works much like Zac Gallen’s, and a host of other pitchers the D-backs have either drafted or traded for.

19. New York Mets – Austin Hendrick, OF, West Allegheny HS (PA)
The Mets moved on older, falling high schoolers last year and were willing to alter draft strategy to do so, which they might again.

20. Milwaukee Brewers – Garrett Mitchell, CF, UCLA

21. St. Louis Cardinals- Nick Bitsko, RHP, Central Bucks East (PA)
I think St. Louis is doing work on high schoolers who might fall here: Pete Crow-Armstong, Abel, Ed Howard and Bitsko. They have later comp picks that give them flexibility to go over slot here if they need to, which they probably would for Bitsko. If his number is near $4 million, then he probably slides to the comp round.

22. Washington Nationals- Cole Wilcox, RHP, Georgia
Any of the falling Boras guys make sense here (Hendrick, maybe even Tanner Burns) based on Washington’s history of taking them.

23. Cleveland Indians- Peter Crow-Armstrong, CF, Harvard Westlake HS (CA)
I think Jordan Walker is in Cleveland and everyone else’s mix from here on and if Cleveland wants him, the team probably need to do it here.

24. Tampa Bay Rays- Ed Howard, SS Mount Carmel HS (IL)
The Rays have the picks to diversify their group and typically incorporate some upside-oriented players.

25. Atlanta Braves- Nick Loftin, SS, Baylor
Atlanta puts a premium on defensive fit and Loftin plays short and is model-friendly.

26. Oakland A’s- Clayton Beeter, RHP, Texas Tech
If Beeter throws strikes like he did (very suddenly) this spring, then he could help Oakland’s bullpen this year, and I think they have strong incentive.

27. Minnesota Twins- Jordan Walker, 3B, Decatur HS (GA)
Walker’s power and age make him model-friendly, and that’s a fit with Minnesota.

28. New York Yankees – Jared Shuster, LHP, Wake Forest
I have them on college pitching. Beeter if he’s here, maybe Bobby Miller.

29. Los Angeles Dodgers- Tanner Witt, RHP, Episcopal HS (TX)

30. Baltimore Orioles- Dax Fulton, LHP, Mustang HS (OK)
Baltimore has the pool space to try to move Bitsko here (the bonus number would have to be big enough to scare away St. Louis, Tampa Bay, and maybe Cleveland) and it fits with what Mike Elias did while in Houston. If Bitsko gets popped before this (as in my mock) then Fulton becomes the favorite.

31. Pittsburgh Pirates- Bobby Miller, RHP, Louisville
I expect Pirates decision-makers saw Miller shove when they were in to see Detmers this spring.

32. Kansas City Royals- Jared Kelley, RHP, Refugio HS (TX)
If KC likes a lot of the college arms left on the board, I think they take a falling high schooler knowing a college guy they like will be there at 41.

33. Arizona Diamondbacks- Christian Roa, RHP, Texas A&M (
I think they’d take Howard if he’s here. Roa is here for the same reason I mocked Jarvis to the D-backs earlier: fastball traits Arizona clearly likes. I think Jordan Westburg is also a possibility here.

34. San Diego Padres – Carmen Mlodzinski, RHP, South Carolina
I have SD on college arms here.

35. Colorado Rockies – Dillon Dingler, C, Ohio State

36. Cleveland Indians- Alika Williams, SS, Arizona State
Cleveland loves contact-oriented middle infielders and Alika is in this range for many analytically-inclined teams. Walker is possible if he’s here.

37. Tampa Bay Rays – Slade Cecconi, RHP, Miami
Alika seems in play here, too, if available.

…

72. Houston Astros – Elijah Cabell, OF, Florida State
Houston loves measurable power and Cabell has among the most in the entire draft.

Every year in the draft, teams select ultra-talented baseball cyborgs who look like movie stars and project as potential future big league stars. Some of them even have sweet names — Spencer Torkelson sounds like a mid-career Arnold Schwarzenegger role, a screwup with a heart and biceps of gold. These draft picks are the way bad teams get good, the core building blocks of future juggernauts.

Every year until now in the draft, teams made many more picks. Some of them turn into legends. Some of them are major contributors right now. Most of them don’t pan out. There’s a fourth category here as well. Some of these late-round draft picks have short but non-zero major league careers.

Matt Adams, the example my mind first heads to in this category, was a 23rd round draft pick. He won’t make the Hall of Fame. He won’t make an All-Star game. He’s also accumulated 5 WAR in the big leagues already. In a league where 5 WAR on the free agent market will run you upwards of $30 million dollars, that’s a heck of a find.

I can’t tell you who the next Matt Adams is. If there was a draft-eligible player who was likely to have his career, he wouldn’t go in the 23rd round, or be signed as an undrafted free agent this year. Some team would snap him up. Instead, today I’m throwing darts. I hope to find a few position players who might be overlooked in a five round draft but who might hit enough, in some cases relative to their position, to make an impact in the major leagues at some point in their careers.

Of note, I do mean “hit enough.” I looked for these players in the statistical record, combing over college numbers looking for performers at smaller schools or ones who were overlooked for myriad other reasons. I have no doubt that there are pitchers who fit the bill here as well, but I can’t easily access velocity and spin rate data, something any team looking at these players could likely find either from old Perfect Game performances or from scouting. Given that, we’ll stick to college bats.

I’m going to highlight eight hitters. All eight might amount to nothing in the majors. Heck, that might even be the most likely answer. But they’re all doing something interesting, something that gives them a chance to stand out from the pack. They all have warts, too, of course; again, most of these players will go undrafted in this year’s abbreviated setup. And I’m not claiming to have scouting insight on these guys; I’m surveilling from a distance and guessing. These aren’t major league locks, and heck, I might be completely off. But here are a few names you might be excited to see your team sign after the draft. Read the rest of this entry »

Like many of you, since March I’ve been experiencing time dilation while interacting with the gravity of our global situation. The pandemic itself, as well as the institutional frailty — and human stupidity and ugliness — it has exposed has been, to borrow a prospect writing cliche, eye opening. Unless you tied your sheets together and rappelled out of your socially distanced bedroom window to CSBI or a Prep Baseball Report event over the weekend (which I would find distasteful but also be extremely jealous of), it has somehow been three months since anyone in our industry has seen live baseball. It has felt like forever and an instant all at once. For those who derive their sense of self from the game, or who use it as a three-and-a-half hour respite from the daily drone, I imagine baseball would have been an especially welcome refuge from the global circumstances that have instead become psychologically unavoidable in its absence.

I’m hopeful we’ll get our collective acts together and that eventually there will be some better long-term outcomes for our planet as a result of this, but right now it sucks. And so here’s a two-day dose of what you need: a draft. Like everything else it has been altered, maybe forever, and it will feel bizarre to those who have been through the exercise before, but it’s still a draft. The entire industry has had to feel around in the dark looking for ways to deal with the many quandaries that arose as a result of the shutdown. Not everyone is going to have solved them. That will make the draft interesting and entertaining. The lives of many young people and their families will change for the better this week, either instantly or as their careers blossom. Some of the players drafted tomorrow will become so good that your grandchildren will know their names. It’s an unavoidably optimistic exercise. I hope you enjoy it and that this piece and the other work here at FanGraphs helps you engage with it on a deeper level.

My player evaluations and rankings are here. My latest mock draft is here. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is my second 2020 mock draft. The first pass can be found here and is suggested reading as context for the top 13 or so picks. The full 2020 Draft Board can be found here.

Teams’ boards are entirely built now, and the focus of orgs and scouts has shifted toward assessing the signability of individual prospects so there aren’t high stakes mathematical puzzle pieces being smashed together on the fly on Wednesday. The higher a player is ranked, the more likely it is that someone higher up on a team’s organizational ladder is the one talking to the advisor. Some medical reviews are also underway.

I’ll do one more mock for Wednesday morning and, if necessary, a mock of just names with teams just ahead of the draft.

1. Detroit Tigers- Spencer Torkelson, 1B, Arizona State
No change up top, as the overwhelming industry sense remains that Tork goes here. If something unexpected occurs and negotiations break down, I’d have Lacy the favorite to go based on Detroit’s tendencies. Read the rest of this entry »

The NPB season is currently slated to start on June 19th, with hopes of playing a 120-game schedule followed by a condensed playoff docket. The 120 isn’t arbitrary. Per the league’s bylaws, that’s the number required for a season to be considered official. In a normal year, each NPB team plays 143 games.

The MLB season? That remains an unanswered question. It is also an angst-inducing question. As everyone reading this knows all too well, there may not even be a season.

Frank Herrmann knows baseball on both sides of the planet.The Harvard-educated hurler is heading into his fourth NPB season after playing professionally stateside from 2006-2016. As you might expect, he’s monitoring not only what’s happening in Japan, but also what’s happening back home.

“The schedule alignment here is essentially the opposite of what is being proposed by MLB clubs, who want fewer regular season games with longer playoffs,” Herrmann told me via email from Chiba, Japan. “Like most things, the motivation in both cases is money. NPB doesn’t have the lucrative TV deals that MLB does. Japanese teams rely heavily on ticket sales, merchandise, and concessions to generate income and offset salaries. There have been discussions to incrementally allow fans into games starting as soon as July 10. More regular season home gates for each team, stretching into mid-November, affords teams the best chance to cover losses.”

Salary structures and legal language weigh heavily into that equation. As Herrmann pointed out, high-end salaries in Japan are “more in the $7-8 million a year range, as opposed to the $30Ms in MLB.” Moreover, NPB contracts differ from those in MLB in that they “lack a specific clause for national emergencies, therefore players have been receiving their full salaries since February.” Herrmann expects NPB will add such a clause once the season is completed. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Los Angeles Angels. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed, you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It can be found here.

Other Prospects of Note

Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.

Depth Arms
Adrian De Horta, RHP
Zach Linginfelter, RHP
Matt Ball, RHP
Luke Lind, RHP
Davis Daniel, RHP
Adrian Almeida, LHP

De Horta and Ball were spring NRIs. De Horta, 25, sat 92-96 last year and has an average curveball. Linginfelter was the club’s ninth rounder last year and, at his best, would be in the mid-90s with an above-average slider, but not consistently. Lind and Ball are both 25 and live off of fastball deception. Daniel, the club’s seventh rounder last year, was up to 96 at Auburn and had a very pretty 12-to-6 curveball, but he blew out early during his draft spring and needed TJ. Almeida was a Minor League Rule 5 pick a few years ago. He’s one of the hardest lefty throwers on the planet (93-97, touch 99), but he has 20 command.

Cherubs
Erik Rivera, LHP/OF
Jose Reyes, CF
Edwin Yon, RF
Kevin Maitan, 3B

Rivera, 19, is being developed like Holmes, where he’s still doing a mix of hitting and pitching. I like him better on the mound. He’s an above-average athlete with some breaking ball feel, and he was up to 94 in the bullpen this spring after sitting at about 87-88 as an amateur. Reyes is another well-built lefty stick with good secondary tools, but the bat looked light to me last year. He’s only 19. Yon was a Minor League Rule 5 pick last year. He’s about 6-foot-6 and has huge power. His lever length is a problem but he missed a lot of time with a gruesome leg injury and I think he’s got a puncher’s chance to break late. Maitan is still only 20, but I can’t find anyone who’s still in on him.

System Overview

This system has the two big fish at the very top, a third who is tracking like one (Adams), and then a bunch of young, toolsy, risky sorts with big ceilings. There is not a lot of depth in the system, which has lost Luis Rengifo, Griffin Canning, Jose Suarez, and Matt Thaiss to graduation in the last year. The Angels have also traded some prospects, though not always for the right reasons. They sent a host of interesting college-aged arms to Baltimore for Dylan Bundy (they’d all have been toward the bottom of the list), and last year’s first rounder, Will Wilson, was sent to the Giants as part of a Winter Meetings salary dump that in retrospect was a tip that Arte Moreno was starting to cry about the ops budget.

All of baseball thinks Moreno’s mandate to furlough scouts was distasteful and cheap, and especially demoralizing given the timing, since the affected area scouts would have all been paid just once more before the draft. People in baseball seem less inclined to want to work for the Angels going forward.

Other org tendencies? Age and athleticism seem to be drivers in the draft room. The pro side hasn’t had many opportunities to act like buyers in recent years, but in the cases when they have (Sandoval), they’ve often hit. The Angels have also made a habit of signing post-hype players who have been released, like Adrian Rondon, Michael Santos, Gareth Morgan, and several other past prospects of note.