After their roster was ravaged by injuries, the Yankees promoted a trio of promising hitting prospects last week in Tyler Wade, Miguel Andujar and Dustin Fowler. Fowler, the most promising of the three, was supposed play regularly in New York’s outfield. Unfortunately, his big-league career was derailed as soon as it started in horrific fashion.
The 2017 All-Star Futures Game will take place on Sunday, July 7th at Marlins Park as part of the All-Star weekend festivities. The rosters for the U.S. and World teams were recently unveiled. Below, one can find up-to-date KATOH and KATOH+ projections for the 50 players who were chosen to participate. WAR figures are projected totals for the relevant player’s first six years in the majors. Read the rest of this entry »
On Tuesday, the Yankees called up infielder Tyler Wade in the wake of Starlin Castro’s injury. They dipped into their farm system again on Wednesday, calling up Miguel Andujar (3.6 KATOH, 2.6 KATOH+) to replace the injured Matt Holliday. And wouldn’t you know it, they did it again today. This time it’s Dustin Fowler getting the in place of Tyler Austin.
Fowler is easily the best prospect who was called up this week. He’s demonstrated a rare combination of power and speed in the minors, mashing 12 homers this year to go along with 13 steals. He’s also kicked in eight triples after lacing 15 last season. Fowler doesn’t strike out all that often, either. He’s whiffed 20% of the time this season, which puts him right around league average.
On defense, Fowler has primarily played center field, though he’s gotten regular reps at both outfield corners. He possesses plus speed, which is typically more than enough to man center field, but the metrics aren’t fond of him out there. Clay Davenport’s numbers have him as a -14 defender over roughly a full season of games in center between this year and last. Regardless, he should be more than fine in an outfield corner, which is where New York will likely use him for the time being.
Following Miguel Montero’s kerfluffle with Jake Arrieta, the Cubs designated Montero for assignment today. In his place, they called up Victor Caratini from Triple-A. The switch-hitting Caratini had been tearing up PCL pitching this season to the tune of .343/.384/.539. Needless to say, that’s mighty exciting coming from a catcher. Caratini’s offensive profile is built around an encouraging combination of contact and power. At Triple-A this season, he struck out in less than 15% of his plate appearances while posting an ISO just south of .200. The latter was largely due to his 20 doubles. Caratini has also run high walk rates in the past.
KATOH likes Caratini more than most, projecting him for 5.1 WAR over his first six seasons by stats-only KATOH and 3.7 WAR by KATOH+, which incorporates his prospect ranking. Those marks place him 80th and 100th, respectively, among prospects. Caratini doesn’t even sniff most scouting-based top-100 lists.
To put some faces to Caratini’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps. I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Caratini’s Triple-A performance and every season since 1991. 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.
Yankees second baseman Starlin Castro has landed on the DL after straining his hamstring last night. In a parallel universe, a parallel me is writing this article about Gleyber Torres, whom KATOH+ regarded as the No. 2 prospect in baseball behind Vlad Guerrero Jr. But since Torres’ season recently came to an end, the call-up goes to Tyler Wade, who is an interesting prospect in his own right.
A fifth-round pick out of high school in 2013, Wade put himself on the prospect map when he slashed .280/.343/.353 as a 20-year-old shortstop in High-A. He built upon that with a solid campaign in 2016 and hit an excellent .313/.390/.445 this year. He’s been especially hot of late, slashing .366/.455/.505 with 11 steals over his last 25 games. Wade hasn’t hit for a ton of power in the minors — his career ISO is just .085, though it ticked up to .132 this year — but he does just about everything else offensively, including making contact, drawing walks and stealing bases.
Wade has played shortstop, second base, third base and all three outfield spots this year. However, most of his reps have come at short. He hasn’t graded out well at the position by Clay Davenport’s numbers, but given how the defensive spectrum works, it stands to reason that he’d be fine at second base. The fact that he’s remained at shortstop all the way through Triple-A is telling.
There’s a youth movement taking place in Oakland. The A’s jettisoned both Trevor Plouffe and Stephen Vogt in the last couple of weeks, replacing them with Matt Chapman and Bruce Maxwell. Another big splash came this weekend, when Oakland summoned prospect Franklin Barreto to play second base.
Barreto continued to hit for an encouraging amount of power as a minor leaguer this year, especially considering he played in a park that massively suppresses homers (by PCL standards). However, his strikeout rate spiked from 18% to 30% as he transitioned from Double-A and Triple-A and his stolen-base numbers plummeted. As a result, his KATOH forecast has taken a hit. I have him projected for 4.8 WAR over his first six seasons by stats-only KATOH and 5.4 WAR by KATOH+, which incorporates his prospect ranking. Those marks place him 90th and 55th, respectively, among prospects, down from 18th and 20th in the preseason.
The College World Series begins this weekend, with two games on both Saturday and Sunday. The eight participating teams include Oregon State, Texas A&M, Cal State Fullerton, Louisville, Florida State, TCU, LSU and Florida. A total of 57 players from these schools were drafted by Major League teams this week, including four who went in the first round.
The table below includes vital information about the players drafted who will be competing in this year’s College World Series, including Eric Longenhagen’s top-100 rank and FV grades (click through for individual tool grades and scouting reports) and my KATOH projections.
Now that I’ve projected all of the college players taken (and not taken), I thought it would be fun to see what would have happened if a team picked straight from the KATOH rankings. In practice, this would be a terrible strategy, as KATOH would be picking from a talent pool less than half the size of everyone else’s. Since I only have projections for guys who played regularly in Division 1 this year, a lot of talent would not even be considered. All high-school, junior-college, Division II, and Division III players — plus Division I players who were injured or benched — would not be eligible.
It also doesn’t account for the fact that many of KATOH’s top guys were near certain to fall to the middle or late rounds. Or that some had likely informed teams they were going back to school next year. A competent front office would have drafted accordingly, rather than blindly picking names off of a list. In an effort to compensate for these disadvantages, I gave KATOH the No. 1 pick in the draft and the top pick in the two supplemental rounds, as well. I excluded registered sex offender Luke Heimlich from KATOH’s draft board, as all 30 MLB teams did the same with their own boards.
On Tuesday, I published a post projecting the players taken on day one of the draft. On Wednesday, I did the same for the players taken on day two. Yesterday, I did the same for day three. Today, let’s take a look at what my math says about the players who were eligible to be drafted but weren’t selected.
Below, you’ll find some quick thoughts on KATOH’s top-five hitters and top-five pitchers who weren’t drafted. Below that, you’ll find by a table with projections for all undrafted players who project for at least 0.4 WAR. As a reminder, I only have projections for college players who logged at least 100 plate appearances or batters faced in a Division 1 conference. I do not have projections for JuCo or high-school players. Note: WAR figures are projected totals for the relevant player’s first six years in the majors.
Cody Anderson, LHP, Washington State, 0.9 WAR
A 6-foot-6 lefty from Washington State, Anderson held his own in the Pac-12 this spring. He didn’t strike many guys out, but still managed to put up a 3.40 ERA.
With Josh Reddick sidelined by a concussion, the Astros summoned 23-year-old center fielder Derek Fisher to the big leagues yesterday. The early returns are good: in his debut, Fisher went 2-for-3 with a homer and two walks.
Fisher had more than earned this opportunity, slashing .335/.401/.608 at Triple-A this year. A power-speed threat, Fisher eclipsed 20 homers and 20 steals in both 2015 and 2016, and Eric Longenhagen gave him raw power and speed grades of 60 and 70, respectively. Fisher had a bit of a strikeout problem in the past, but has managed to slice his strikeout rate from 27% last year to 19% this year without sacrificing any of his power.
KATOH loves Fisher, which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise given his excellent performance this year. I have him projected for 8.1 WAR over his first six seasons by stats-only KATOH and 6.3 WAR by KATOH+, which incorporates Eric Longenhagen’s relatively modest 45 FV grade. Those projections make him the 18th- and 48th-best prospect in baseball, respectively.
To put some faces to Fisher’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps for the toolsy center fielder. I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Fisher’s Double-A and Triple-A performance and every season since 1991. 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.
Please note that the Mahalanobis analysis is separate from KATOH. KATOH relies on macro-level trends, rather than comps. The fates of a few statistically similar players shouldn’t be used to draw sweeping conclusions about a prospect’s future. For this reason, I recommend using a player’s KATOH forecast to assess his future potential. The comps give us some interesting names that sometimes feel spot-on, but they’re mostly just there for fun.
| Player | Mah Dist | KATOH+ Proj. WAR | Actual WAR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jayson Werth | 2.9 | 5.4 | 12.0 |
| Steve Hosey | 3.8 | 8.6 | 0.1 |
| Ozzie Timmons | 4.6 | 4.6 | 0.9 |
| Ray McDavid | 4.6 | 3.8 | 0.0 |
| Jack Cust | 4.7 | 5.5 | 5.1 |
| Franklin Gutierrez | 5.2 | 4.0 | 13.1 |
| TJ Staton | 5.4 | 3.5 | 0.0 |
| Wladimir Balentien | 5.4 | 5.0 | 1.0 |
| Trot Nixon | 5.5 | 6.8 | 17.9 |
| Ryan Ludwick | 5.5 | 3.4 | 8.8 |
It’s not immediately clear how, or how often, Houston will work Fisher into their lineup once Reddick is healthy. But Houston would perhaps benefit from shifting some of Nori Aoki’s at-bats to Fisher, giving them an outfield of Fisher, Reddick and George Springer. Regardless, Fisher’s rare combination of power, speed, and contact ability makes his future look incredibly bright. And he made it clear with his 2017 performance that he has nothing left to prove in the minor leagues.