Across all full-season minor league affiliates in 2019, the list of the top three hitters in K%-BB% looked like this:

1) Nick Madrigal
2) Wander Franco
3) John Nogowski

Madrigal, of course, was the fourth overall pick in the 2018 draft out of Oregon State and is currently ranked as the No. 26 prospect in baseball on THE BOARD. Franco, an 18-year-old switch-hitting shortstop, was considered the top prospect in the 2017 July 2 international signing class, signed for $3.85 million, and is currently the game’s top prospect. Both Madrigal and Franco are high-profile minor leaguers who have been projected to make a future impact in the big leagues for some time.

And then there’s John Nogowski. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Detroit Tigers. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from our own (both Eric Longenhagen’s and Kiley McDaniel’s) 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 the numbered prospects here also appear on THE BOARD, a new feature at the site that offers sortable scouting information for every organization. Click here to visit THE BOARD.

50 FV Prospects

Acquired from Houston as part of the return for Justin Verlander, Perez has advanced command of a four-pitch mix that enabled him to reach Double-A at age 19. He’ll likely have a plus fastball and changeup at peak, while his breaking balls are still works in progress but promising.

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The Pirates are currently only four games out of the last Wild Card spot, and their star center fielder is currently under contract for two more years after this one. Regardless, that hasn’t stopped people from wondering if Pittsburgh should trade Andrew McCutchen, even if the lack of an obvious trade partner makes a deal unlikely. Usually part of the argument is that the team has a near-ready replacement in Austin Meadows.

The 21-year-old center fielder just laid waste to Double-A and is now learning the ropes at the highest level in the minor leagues. His power has finally blossomed, and he looks like the five-tool prospect that’s made him a top prospect ever since he entered affiliated baseball as a top-10 pick in the 2013 draft.

It wasn’t always super easy for the player, though. I caught up with Meadows in the Arizona Fall League last October, when he was coming off an up-and-down season that saw him slug at a below-average rate both in High-A and in the Fall League. We talked about what he needed to work on. Then I asked lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen how well Meadows has addressed those issues, so as to get the best sense of Meadows over the course of the last year.

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You smell that? It’s baseball’s prospect-list season. The fresh top-100 lists — populated by new names as well as old ones — seem to be popping up each day. With the individual rankings coming out, some organization rankings are becoming available, as well. I have always regarded the organizational rankings as subjective — and, as a result, not 100% useful. Utilizing the methodology I introduced in my article on prospect evaluation from this year’s Hardball Times Annual, however, it’s possible to calculate a total value for every team’s farm system and remove the biases of subjectivity. In what follows, I’ve used that same process to rank all 30 of baseball’s farm systems by the surplus WAR they should generate.

I provide a detailed explanation of my methodology in the Annual article. To summarize it briefly, however, what I’ve done is to identify WAR equivalencies for the scouting grades produced by Baseball America in their annual Prospect Handbook. The grade-to-WAR conversion appears as follows.

Prospect Grade to WAR Conversion

Prospect Grade	Total WAR	Surplus WAR
80	25.0	18.5
75	18.0	13.0
70	11.0	9.0
65	8.5	6.0
60	4.7	3.0
55	2.5	1.5
50	1.1	0.5
45	0.4	0.0

To create the overall totals for this post, I used each team’s top-30 rankings per the most recent edition of Baseball America’ Prospect Handbook. Also accounting for those trades which have occurred since the BA rankings were locked down, I counted the number of 50 or higher-graded prospects (i.e. the sort which provide surplus value) in each system. The results follows.
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While it is generally regarded as a basketball conference, the Missouri Valley Conference has had a penchant for producing quality professional baseball prospects.  Wichita State is the most well-renowned program both in terms of collegiate success and high-end talent (Casey Gillaspie, Conor Gillaspie, Mike Pelfrey and Braden Looper, among others), but Missouri State University has had it’s fair share of pro prospects, particularly pitchers (Ross Detwiler, Shaun Marcum, Brad Ziegler, Scott Carroll, Mike Kickham, Pierce Johnson and Nick Petree).

Junior righty Jon Harris is the present iteration of the highly-regarded MSU hurlers, and while he will not be selected as early as Detwiler (6th overall in 2007), the right hander should be off of the board in the top 40 picks.

Harris was drafted out of a St. Louis area high school in the 33rd round of the 2012 draft, and has put up solid numbers since setting foot on campus.  After pitching for the Harwich Mariners of the Cape Cod League this past summer, Harris has received some more buzz, so it was little surprise to see 20+ evaluators, including a handful of scouting directors on hand to see Harris pitch against Jacksonville University two weekends ago.

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University of North Florida OF Donnie Dewees was a largely unknown quantity coming out of high school in Crystal River, Florida.  Three years after going undrafted, Dewees has put himself in position to be selected within the first 100 picks, and given the crooked numbers he has put up thus far, he has a chance go significantly higher.

Background

For the (many) uninitiated, let me give some background on Dewees. The left-handed hitting outfielder quickly worked his way into the starting lineup as a true freshman during the 2013 season, finished with a .347/.429/.535 line in 248 plate appearances, and garnered numerous conference and national awards.  He continued to hit in summer ball, posting a .321/.393/.526 triple-slash with 12 HR in the competitive Northwoods League.

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Joey Gallo is one of baseball’s most promising prospects, but he’s also one of its most polarizing. On the plus side, he’s got major power. He sported an isolated power of .344 between High-A and Double-A last year, which was the highest mark of any minor leaguer with at least 300 plate appearances. But he’s also hindered by chronic contact problems. He strikes out more than almost any prospect we’ve seen before — or at least anyone who’s gone on to be a successful big-leaguer. According to Minor League Central, Gallo’s 64% Zone-Contact% was the lowest of any minor-league hitter with data available from last year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Eddie Butler of the Colorado Rockies is one of baseball’s most highly-regarded pitching prospects. In addition to wielding lights-out stuff, the 24-year-old righty has pitched admirably in the upper levels of the minor leagues. Butler put up a respectable 3.58 ERA in Double-A Tulsa last year, which earned him a three start cameo with the big club.  If he’s not big league ready right now, he’s very close. Given this combination of stuff and performance, it’s no surprise that Kiley McDaniel is a big fan of Butler’s. He ranked him 42nd overall in his top 200 list and gives him a FV of 55 — equivalent to a #3 or #4 starter or a closer.

Despite his redeeming qualities, KATOH hates Butler. It hates him lot. It pegs him for a putrid 0.7 WAR through age-28, which puts him very, very far outside of KATOH’s top 200 list. His KATOH projection was far worse than most similarly-ranked prospects on Kiley’s list.

KATOH’s down on Butler for a couple of reasons. For one, he was a little old for his level last year. If you’re a 23-year-old in Double-A, KATOH’s not going to like you unless you’re dominant, and Butler was much closer to mediocre than dominant. Read the rest of this entry »

Robert Stephenson has tremendous stuff. The former first round pick wields a fastball that can touch triple digits at times, and compliments it with a plus curveball and a usable changeup. His outstanding arsenal of pitches has earned him universal praise in the prospect world. Kiley McDaniel deemed him the top prospect in the Reds organization, as did Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus. John Sickels and Keith Law ranked him #2 in the organization behind Jesse Winker.

Everyone agrees that Stephenson’s one of the most promising pitching prospects in the game. But for all his virtues, Stephenson wasn’t very good last year. His 4.72 ERA and 4.58 FIP were not only worse than the Southern League average, but were much worse — Both marks ranked in the bottom three among qualified Southern League pitchers. That’s not the pitching line of a top prospect, or even a fringy one. A 4.58 FIP is the stuff of a non-descript minor leaguer. Given this performance, its not hard to see why KATOH spat out a meager 2.2 WAR projection for Stephenson through age-28.

Things weren’t all bad for Stephenson, though. On the bright side, he did manage to strike out an impressive 23% of opposing batters, but that good work was washed away by his 12% walk rate and 3% HR% (1.2 HR/9). Clearly, Stephenson’s performance lagged far behind his stuff last year. Kiley McDaniel offered up the following explanation for this disconnect in his write-up on Stephenson. Read the rest of this entry »

Lead prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel turned some heads when he ranked Ozhaino Albies — a 5-foot-9, 17-year-old shortstop — as the top prospect in the Atlanta Braves minor league system. Albies was on the prospect radar prior to Kiley’s ranking, but slotted much lower on most organizational prospect lists this winter. Keith Law, John Sickels, Baseball America, and Baseball Prospectus ranked him 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th respectively. Here’s what Kiley had to say about Albies and his ranking.

Some scouts are already throwing 60’s on Albies hit tool after a huge pro debut, where he hit .364/.446/.444 in 239 plate appearances over two Rookie ball levels with 22 stolen bases and more walks than strikeouts. He continued his assault by impressing the more heavily-scouted instructional league and every scout that has seen him told me they can’t argue with this ranking.

Power isn’t a big part of game and likely will never be, but he does everything else so well at such a young age, that no one seems to care. He has excellent feel for the stike zone and the bat head, plenty of bat speed, knowledge of when to use his gap power and when to keep the ball on the ground, along with easy plus speed and plus everything on the defensive side, enough to comfortably project to stay at the position.  There has to be universal praise for me to go this high on a guy this young and this small that I’ve never seen before, but I think I’ll have him first on this list next year, so I feel fine getting ahead of the crowd now.

Kiley’s definitely the high guy on Albies right now, but KATOH — my prospect projection system — might be even higher. Setting the minimum to 200 plate appearances, the KATOH leaderboard for hitters based on the 2014 season reads thusly. Read the rest of this entry »