A mere 13 months ago, the Houston Astros selected Alex Bregman with the second pick in the amateur draft. Tonight, he’ll suit up for the Astros, after he gave Houston no choice but to call him up to the show. The 22-year-old hit .311/.412/.589 in the minors this year, including a .356/.387/.685 showing during his 17-game pit stop at Triple-A. Last season, his junior one at LSU, Bergman slashed .323/.412/.535 and, unsurprisingly, had little issue adapting to life in the pros. He closed out his draft year by hitting a strong .290/.358/.408 across two levels of A-ball.

Bregman pairs exceptional contact ability with ample power and a good walk rate, making him an all-around offensive threat. Bregman owns a minuscule 10% strikeout rate as a professional, yet has still managed a .200 ISO. Very few hitters possess Bregman’s combination of contact and power.

As if that weren’t enough, Bregman also provides value through means other than his hitting. The Astros have given him time at several positions this year in anticipation of his promotion, but he’s a shortstop by trade. That suggests he could be a fine defender at just about any place further down the defensive spectrum. He’s also swiped 20 bases in his year as a professional player, indicating good (or, at least, usable) speed.

As you probably imagined, my newly re-vamped KATOH system is head-over-heels for Bregman. He’s easily the top prospect in the land according to my math. Both KATOH (which considers stats only) and KATOH+ (which also incorporates prospect ranks) peg him for more than 17 WAR over his first six years in the big leagues.

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Back in January, I made some tweaks to my KATOH projection system, and have been using that updated model for the past several months. That model was unquestionably better than the previous versions, but it left me unsatisfied. While it addressed many of the flaws from previous iterations, there was still a lot of information it wasn’t taking into account.

I’ve been plugging away behind the scenes, and finally have a new version KATOH to share with the world. In what follows, you’ll find some detail on the new model, including its notable updates. I’ll be using this model in all of my prospect analysis from this point forward. Below, you’ll find a quick run-through of the notable tweaks, followed by an updated top-100 list.

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Added Features

Choosing projection window based on level, rather than age

In my previous model, I projected out based on a player’s age. If a player were 22, I projected him through age 28; If he were 24, I projected through age 30. This resulted in KATOH undervaluing players who were old for their level. The goal of KATOH is to predict the value a player will generate during his six-plus years of team control. By projecting a 22-year-old through age 28, KATOH failed to capture some of that value in cases where the 22-year-old was still in A-ball.

This time around, I chose my windows based on level, rather than age. I projected the next six seasons for players in Triple-A. I did the next seven for players in Double-A, eight for A-ballers, and nine for Rookie ballers.

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We all knew Dan Vogelbach’s days in the Cubs’ organization were numbered. His lackluster range limit to first base, and if we’re being serious, even that’s a stretch. He didn’t have a future with the Cubs. Not only do they lack a DH, but they also have more quality hitters than they have lineup spots. A trade was imminent, and the Cubs finally pulled the trigger on Wednesday night, dealing the 23-year-old slugger for unheralded — yet effective — reliever Mike Montgomery and Double-A hurler Paul Blackburn. Triple-A pitcher Jordan Pries also heads to Chicago in the deal.

Dan Vogelbach, 1B, Seattle (Profile)

KATOH Forecast for first six seasons: 2.8 WAR

Vogelbach offers zero defensive value, which means he’ll need to hit a lot to get by in the big leagues. To his credit, however, his exploits in the minors this year suggest he might hit enough to make for a productive DH. He’s slashed a gaudy .318/.425/.548 in Triple-A, and has little left to prove in the minor leagues. KATOH isn’t crazy about Vogelbach on account of his defensive limitations, lack of speed and iffy contact numbers. Vogelbach’s power is excellent, but the other facets of his game threaten to chip away at his value.

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Less than a month ago, the Washington Nationals called up top prospect Lucas Giolito, with the hopes that he’d fill a hole in their rotation. However, as often happens with promising young pitchers, Giolito looked a bit overmatched in his first taste of the big leagues. He recorded more walks than strikeouts in his two starts with Washington, and was subsequently sent back to the minors to further refine his breaking stuff. Giolito will surely be back sooner rather than later, and still appears to have a bright future ahead of him. For now, though, the Nationals are turning to another electric young arm: hard-throwing 22-year-old Reynaldo Lopez debuts tonight against the Dodgers.

Lopez was signed out of the Dominican back in 2012, and his stuff has landed him on top-100 prospect lists for a couple of years now. But up until this season, he his minor-league performance hadn’t quite matched up with his stuff for any extended period. He spent the 2015 season in the High-A Carolina League, where he posted a mediocre 4.09 ERA. His peripherals suggest he pitched much better than that, but his 23% strikeout rate still underwhelmed.

He opened 2016 at the Double-A level, and soon began missing bats at a rate commensurate with his stuff. His 30% strikeout rate is tops among qualified Double-A pitchers this year. He also managed to keep his walk rate under 8%. Though he wasn’t super sharp in his two most recent starts at the Triple-A level, the body of Lopez’s 2016 campaign bodes well for his future in the bigs.

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Almost right after after treating us to Tyler Glasnow day, the Pirates are giving us another promising debutante to fuss over. First base prospect Josh Bell will debut for Pittsburgh in tonight’s game against the Cubs. Bell crushed Triple-A pitching this year to the tune of .324/.407/.535.

Bell posted a healthy .212 ISO in Triple-A this year, but in years past, he’s hit for an underwhelming amount of power — especially for a 6-foot-4 first baseman. Between 2014 and 2015 combined, he managed just 16 homers, and didn’t exactly compensate with loads of doubles and triples. Instead, he made lots of contact, which resulted in loads of singles. Read the rest of this entry »

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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