Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, D’Backs, Twins, Astros, Cubs, Reds, Phillies, Rays, Mets, Padres, Marlins, Nationals, Red Sox, White Sox, Orioles, Yankees, Braves, Athletics, Angels, Dodgers, Blue Jays, Tigers, Cardinals, Brewers, Indians, Mariners, Pirates, Royals & Giants

Top 200 Prospects Content Index

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

Draft Rankings: 2015, 2016 & 2017

International Coverage: 2015 July 2nd Parts One, Two & Three, 2016 July 2nd

The A’s made a ton of moves this off-season, turning over their big league roster and moving a lot of prospect pieces around. This is a function of how Billy Beane sees prospects, which are a means to an end of winning at the big league level. Every player is available for the right price and, if you’re known as a guy willing to make trades, teams are more likely to talk to you and let you know when there’s asymmetry in how teams value various players.  Since Beane is always trying to win now and thinks the future is overrated, the A’s, in general terms, tend to pounce on 25-26 year old players who aren’t on lists anymore but still have tools, while trading the shiny new object that hasn’t failed yet.

The amateur talent acquisition has been solid, but this system is more a function of what trades presented themselves in the last few years and the strength of the big league team, than a commentary on whether the scouting/player development executives are excelling.  Picking low in the draft, not having a ton of extra picks and only spending what they’re given internationally means the A’s aren’t the kind of team that this sort of list-making process is likely to reward, which I’m sure doesn’t trouble them.  I have them in a glut of teams around 25th in the org rankings, but I’ll work out the specific slot in a few more weeks when the lists wrap up.

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Yesterday, we gave you a little bit of a tease, giving you a glimpse into the making of FanGraphs Top 200 Prospect List. This morning, however, we present the list in its entirety, including scouting grades and reports for every prospect rated as a 50 Future Value player currently in the minor leagues. As discussed in the linked introduction, some notable international players were not included on the list, but their respective statuses were discussed in yesterday’s post. If you haven’t read any of the prior prospect pieces here on the site, I’d highly encourage you to read the introduction, which explains all of the terms and grades used below.

Additionally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you towards our YouTube channel, which currently holds over 600 prospect videos, including all of the names near the top of this list. Players’ individual videos are linked in the profiles below as well.

And lastly, before we get to the list, one final reminder that a player’s placement in a specific order is less important than his placement within a Future Value tier. Numerical rankings can give a false impression of separation between players who are actually quite similar, and you shouldn’t get too worked up over the precise placement of players within each tier. The ranking provides some additional information, but players in each grouping should be seen as more or less equivalent prospects.

If you have any questions about the list, I’ll be chatting today at noon here on the site (EDIT: here’s the chat transcript), and you can find me on Twitter at @kileymcd.

Alright, that’s enough stalling. Let’s get to this.

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At the end of January, the author published a post here featuring roughly calculated WAR figures for every minor leaguer from 2014. Despite the conspicuously haphazard computation, the results of that effort were ultimately (and strangely) credible. The four players atop the relevant leaderboard from 2014, for example — Kris Bryant, Joey Gallo, Joc Pederson, and Corey Seager — are also the sort who will populate the upper regions of this spring’s top-prospect lists.

Over the course of a subsequent television appearance during which I (notably) cried zero times, I endeavored to explain why — even while batting leaderboards in the high minors, especially, are often crowded with the names of immobile, Quad-A sluggers — why minor-league WAR (or mWAR, for short) might favor actual prospects. One reason, it would appear, is this: while those older sluggers are typically relegated to first base or a corner-outfield spot, organizations will typically deploy their younger and more promising talents at the most challenging positions they can reasonably handle. As a result, those players benefit from a greater positional adjustment and, in turn, better mWAR figures.

Given the relative success of that first post, what I’ve attempted to provide here — made possible largely by my colleagues Jonah Pemstein and Jeff Zimmerman — is a leaderboard featuring the top-35 players by mWAR since 2006. Below that is a link to a spreadsheet containing mWAR figures for over 30-thousand player-seasons, also since 2006.

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As I reported on twitter moments ago, MLB sent a memo to clubs detailing the new process for Cuban players to go from leaving the country to signing with an MLB team. The short version is that super prospect Yoan Moncada is eligible to sign now, after a maddening long delay.

For those new to this topic or if you just want a refresher, here’s a recap of my coverage of this Moncada saga from the start:

– October 3, 2014: Moncada is confirmed out of Cuba, but no one knows where he is.  We assume his whereabouts will become clear soon as he’s the most hyped prospect to leave the island in years. Here I first quote the common “teenage Puig that can play the infield and switch hit” comp and break down all the implications about who can sign him, who is likely to pony up the big bucks, game theory implications and more.

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Even for those among us who, for whatever reason, derive no particular spiritual nourishment from the Judeo-Christian tradition, it’s difficult to ignore the charms and actual, real wisdom provided by the Book of Ecclesiastes from the Old Testament. The author of that particular text is noteworthy both for his concision and his clear-eyed observations, announcing at the beginning of the text (for example), “Meaningless! Meaningless!… Everything is meaningless” and also noting that “All things are wearisome.” Rarely has truth been uttered more truthfully.

It’s also the first chapter of that Book within which the author proclaims, “What has been done will be done again; / there is nothing new under the sun.” For anyone who has ever bothered to produce an idea inside his or her own dumb head, this sentiment resonates loudly. For it’s just as soon as one has completed the manufacture of an idea, that said idea is accompanied by a gnawing sensation — namely that someone else, in some other place, has probably manufactured that idea before.

This happens to me a lot. For example, I recently had the pleasure of discovering that two of my favorite words, when combined together, form an elegant portmanteau to describe that class of dining establishment — Hooters, Tilted Kilt, etc. — known for employing scantily clad waitresses to compensate for the fact that the cuisine is poor and life is terrible. Upon further examination, however, I learned not only that the term breastaurant is already in wide use, but that it has, in fact, been registered as a trademark by a third such dining establishment (something called Bikinis Sports Bar & Grill) with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

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Earlier today, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Atlanta Baseball Club. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not Atlanta’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Atlanta system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in the Atlanta system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

5. Jace Peterson, 2B (Profile)

Two other players besides Peterson — both outfielder Zoilo Almonte and right-handed reliever Juan Jaime — are projected by Steamer to produce about 0.1 wins for Atlanta, as well. Composing whole paragraph for all three of that group, however, would seem to constitute an example of Overenthusiasm in Action. In any case, among the triumvirate, Peterson appears to have the greatest likelihood of finding a half-regular role with the parent club. Despite last season’s vigorously unsuccessful cameo with the Padres (58 PA, -27 wRC+, -0.6 WAR), Peterson nonetheless continued to exhibit above-average contact skills in the high minors — in addition, that, to occupying a place along the more challenging end of the defensive spectrum.

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Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, D’Backs, Twins, Astros, Cubs, Reds, Phillies, Rays, Mets, Padres, Marlins, Nationals, Red Sox, White Sox, Orioles, Yankees, Braves & Athletics

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

Amateur Coverage: 2015 Draft Rankings, November Update, 2015 July 2 Top Prospects & Latest on Yoan Moncada

The Braves’ off-season reload has been well-documented, trading veterans Jason Heyward, Justin Upton and Evan Gattis, along with some smaller deals. 8 of the top 13 prospects on this list have been acquired this off-season, along with their 4th best young big league asset. This targeting of high upside pitching turned a below average system into my 6th ranked system.

It’s a confident bet on the organization’s ability to develop young arms, some with specific issues that the team thinks Roger McDowell can fix along with a bet that the Braves’ pro scouting is better than the competition. Judging from the success the club has had in waiver claims and in the minor league portion of trades, that belief appears to be well-founded. We’ll likely see one or two years of the Braves not being playoff contenders, but the 2017 team is being set up to possible start another long run of success, just as the club’s new stadium is set to open.

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Multiple influences led to the composition of this brief post — and I fully anticipate that the end result will appeal to approximately X readers, where X is an integer less than 1. That said, as my fourth-grade teacher at Broken Ground School in Concord, NH, once told me during an actual student-teacher conference, “Carson, you’re not that special.” Which is to say: there’s a possibility that at least one other person will derive some pleasure from what follows and perhaps, not unlike that same bright star upon which Fievel Mousekewitz and his sister Tanya both wished in 1986 animated musical An American Tail, the current dispatch will allow us to feel less alone in a world populated by talking felines who extort small immigrant mice in return for quote-unquote protection.

Earlier today, my colleague Jeff Zimmerman — a person who, I sense, very much anticipates the return of domestic baseball — asked if I had plans to do any scouting this spring/summer in the the northeast. The short answer is “No” — not because I don’t intend to transport my dumb body to actual games (I do), but rather because, even were I to acquire both a radar gun and a lifetime supply of moisture-wicking polos, I am a mere impostor in this regard.

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One of the big questions when Barack Obama talked about softening relations with Cuba was what impact this would have on Cuban ballplayers. After talking to industry sources, some think we already have a new policy that will speed the process for Cuban defectors to become Major League players.

This new policy is online if you want to read the whole thing, but I’ll excerpt the important passages below, with all of this becoming official in the last ten days:
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Earlier today, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the New York Yankees. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not New York’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Yankees system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in the Yankees system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

5. Ramon Flores, OF (Profile)

McDaniel notes with regard to Flores that, despite entering just his age-23 season, that he’s nearly a finished product. It’s not surprising, then, to see Flores’ name appear here among the Yankees’ top rookie-eligible players. What it also means is that, unlike with other prospects at the same point on the age curve, it’s probably not correct to assume that Flores will improve considerably over the next three or so years. Defensively, Flores receives a projection of about -3 runs — that is, roughly half way between a league-average center fielder and corner outfielder. This, too, supports McDaniel’s assertion that Flores is capable of playing (if not necessarily excelling at) all three outfield spots.

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