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Following the departures of free agents Melky Cabrera and Colby Rasmus, the Toronto Blue Jays were down two-thirds of last year’s opening day outfield. They filled one of these holes when they traded for Michael Saunders, but have opted to go the internal route in filling the other, turning to the inexperienced duo of Dalton Pompey and Kevin Pillar to handle center field duties.

Pompey easily has the brighter future of the two. Kiley McDaniel ranked the 22-year-old 80^th in our top 200 list, giving him a Future Value of 50, which equates to an average everyday player. Pillar, on the other hand, hasn’t done much of anything in parts of two seasons with the Blue Jays, and at 26, he’s unlikely to get much better than he currently is. Non-roster veterans Chris Dickerson, Ezequiel Carrera and Caleb Gindl are also theoretically in the center field mix, but are likely in camp to provide depth more than anything. Given his competition, the starting center field job is Pompey’s to lose this spring.

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Over the last five years, a lot of good work has been done on valuing prospects. Victor Wang — now employed by the Indians — got the ball rolling in 2008, and his work was followed up by research from by Scott McKinney in 2011 and Kevin Creagh in 2012. Each piece was well done and is worth reading even now, especially if you’re interested in the various rates at which prospect tiers tend to go bust.

But we’re almost into 2015 now, and baseball revenues are exploding, making the valuations from even a few years ago look a little bit outdated. Just in the last year, we’ve seen three Cuban free agents — Jose Abreu, Rusney Castillo, and Yasmany Tomas — sign for around $70 million each, suggesting that teams are willing to pay significant prices for young talent with upside, even when there’s not an established Major League (or even minor league) track record from which to evaluate. We’re going to get an even better look at the market value of a premium prospect when Yoan Moncada is declared a free agent, and the bidding for his services is expected to reach $80 million once the taxes are accounted for, and that won’t even cover any of his future salaries; that’s just the cost of acquiring his rights.

So, helpfully, Kevin Creagh and Steve DiMiceli decided to update their study this week, adding in new data and using updated calculations for the price of a win based on recent inflation. Let’s look at what they found.

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The Arizona Fall League championship game (domestic professional baseball’s de facto funeral for the year) featured superlative performances from a number of prospects that may have piqued your curiosity. Here’s a look at how, after nearly two months of evaluating these players, I feel things will play out moving forward.

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When our other prospect writers submit scouting reports, I will provide background and industry consensus tool grades.  There are two reasons for this: 1) giving context to account for the writer seeing a bad outing (never threw his changeup, coming back from injury, etc.) and 2) not making him go on about the player’s background or speculate about what may have happened in other outings.

The writer still grades the tools based on what they saw, I’m just letting the reader know what that writer would’ve seen in many of the other games from this season, particularly with young players that may be fatigued late in the season. The grades are presented as present/future on the 20-80 scouting scale and I’m in the midst of a series going into more depth explaining these grades.   -Kiley

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When our other prospect writers submit scouting reports, I will provide background and industry consensus tool grades.  There are two reasons for this: 1) giving context to account for the writer seeing a bad outing (never threw his changeup, coming back from injury, etc.) and 2) not making him go on about the player’s background or speculate about what may have happened in other outings.

The writer still grades the tools based on what they saw, I’m just letting the reader know what that writer would’ve seen in many of the other games from this season, particularly with young players that may be fatigued late in the season. The grades are presented as present/future on the 20-80 scouting scale and I’m in the midst of a series going into more depth explaining these grades.   -Kiley

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Perhaps my favorite players to stumble upon betwixt my scouting escapades are the “Conversion Guys”, players who are undergoing a positional change because shortcomings in their skill set force them to find a new path to the Majors if they hope to achieve that dream at all. Most often this occurs when a position player with superlative arm strength struggles to hit so mightily that his employer abandons all hope in his ability ever to learn how and moves him to the mound.

These conversions happen at various stages of development and have any number of useful results. Jacob deGrom moved off of shortstop between his sophomore and junior year of college and is a budding rotational mainstay. Kenley Jansen spent four years catching as a pro before moving to the mound in 2009 and exploding to the majors as a reliever. Tony Pena Jr. moved to the mound at 28 and became a minor league depth arm who ate innings at upper levels for a few years and made Veteran Minor Leaguer Money for a little while longer than he would have if he would’ve been a stubborn, punchless shortstop.

Plenty of these developmental journeys begin in the Rookie-level Arizona League (AZL), where I was lucky enough to observe a handful of them this summer.

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When our other prospect writers submit scouting reports, I will provide a short background and industry consensus tool grades. There are two reasons for this: 1) giving context to account for the writer seeing a bad outing (never threw his changeup, coming back from injury, etc.) and 2) not making him go on about the player’s background or speculate about what may have happened in other outings.

The writer still grades the tools based on what they saw, I’m just letting the reader know what he would’ve seen in many other games from this season, particularly with young players that may be fatigued late in the season. The grades are presented as present/future on the 20-80 scouting scale and very shortly I’ll publish a series going into more depth explaining these grades.   –Kiley

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Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

In this piece, I look at three 18-and-under up-the-middle prospects.

Summary
This athletic, projectable glider has made moderate inroads at the plate and has plenty of time and projection to allow for additional progress.

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Yesterday, it was announced that the Texas Rangers promoted two of their top prospects, catcher Jorge Alfaro and outfielder Nomar Mazara, to Double-A Frisco. Both players arrive in the upper minors with plenty of hype and plenty of youth–Alfaro turned 21 in June, while Mazara is just three months and change past his nineteenth birthday.

From a superficial, looking-at-the-numbers perspective, one might say that both promotions are premature, or at least aggressive. Mazara is just 19 and is being skipped over High-A after hitting a good, but hardly Troutian .264/.358/.470 in Low-A Hickory. Alfaro was at least playing at High-A Myrtle Beach, but he was just hitting .261/.318/.440 and allowed 18 passed balls in 75 games caught.

Of course, current production is far from the full picture of supremely talented players competing against others that are often older. Having seen both play extensively in both 2013 and the 2014 seasons, here I’ll offer some thoughts on Texas’ bold move in promoting this duo, as well as their futures beyond Frisco.

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