Archive for Prospects Week 2021

Below is my list of the top 100 prospects in baseball. The scouting summaries were compiled with information provided by available data and industry sources, as well as from my own observations.

As I’ve noted while publishing my team lists, because there was no minor league season in 2020, there are some instances where no new information was learned about a player. Players whose write-ups have not been meaningfully altered begin by telling you so. Each blurb ends with an indication of where the player played in 2020, which in turn likely informed the changes to their report if there were any. As always, I’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside of a given org than those within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, I’ve primarily focused on data from there, and the context of that data, in my opinion, reduces how meaningful it is. Lastly, in an effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both on my lists and on The Board: MIRP, or multi-inning relief pitcher, and SIRP, or single-inning relief pitcher.

And now, a few important things to keep in mind as you’re perusing the Top 100. You’ll note that prospects are ranked by number but also lie within tiers demarcated by their Future Value grades. The FV grade is more important than the ordinal ranking. For example, the gap between prospect No. 3 on this list, Adley Rutschman, and prospect No. 29, Josiah Gray, is 26 spots, and there’s a substantial difference in talent between them. The gap between Heliot Ramos (No. 61) and Luis Matos (No. 87), meanwhile, is also 26 numerical places, but the difference in talent is relatively small. You may have noticed that there are more than 100 prospects in the table below, and more than 100 scouting summaries. That’s because I have also included 50 FV prospects whose ranking fell outside the 100; their reports appear below, under the “Other 50 FV Prospects” header. The same comparative principle applies to them.

You’ll also notice that there is a Future Value outcome distribution graph for each prospect on the list. This is an attempt to graphically represent how likely each FV outcome is for each prospect. Before his departure for ESPN, Kiley McDaniel used the great work of our former colleague Craig Edwards to find the base rates for each FV tier of prospect (separately for hitters and pitchers), and the likelihood of each FV outcome. For example, based on Craig’s research, the average 60 FV hitter on a list becomes a perennial 5-plus WAR player over his six controlled years 26% of the time, and has a 27% chance of accumulating, at most, a couple of WAR during his six controlled years. I started with those base rates for every player on this year’s list and then, with the help of Kevin Goldstein (who assisted with other elements of this list as well), manually tweaked them depending on our more specific opinions about the player. For instance, Jose Garcia and Trevor Larnach are both 55 FV prospects, but Garcia’s approach makes him very volatile, while Larnach is a surer bet to hit. At the same time, if Garcia ever develops a better approach, his power and ability to play a premium position give him a ceiling that Larnach can’t reasonably attain. My hope is that the distribution graphs reflect these kinds of differences.

For a further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, please read this. If you would like to read a book-length treatment on the subject, you can purchase the book I co-wrote with Kiley, Future Value.

Read the rest of this entry »

Grayson Rodriguez is a top-100 prospect thanks to a four-pitch mix that includes an explosive high-spin heater. As electric as that mid-90s offering is, it’s not the most eye-catching item in his arsenal. The Orioles’ top pitching prospect throws a changeup with screwball characteristics. While not technically a screwball — Juan Marichal and Mike Norris come to mind — the movement profile is anything but run-of-the-mill for a right-handed change. At age 21 with a bright future ahead of him, Rodriguez is armed with a unique pitch.

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David Laurila: You’ve developed a good changeup. What makes it effective?

Grayson Rodriguez: “The way I like to attack with my fastball sets up my changeup well, how it moves and what it looks like out of my hand. As I’ve learned how to throw it with TrackMan and Edgertronic cameras, I’ve figured out a way to get the ball to spin exactly how I want it to. Those things have really helped me, because my changeup is different from a lot of other guys’. It’s almost like a screwball. Hitters don’t see it as much as they do a normal changeup.”

Laurila: How do you get the screwball action?

Rodriguez: “At my release point, my wrist is pronating a lot more than normal. If you break down my hand movement and wrist position — break everything down in slow motion — it’s really turning over. It’s kind of an aggressive, violent turn-over. You don’t see that very often. My ball, on an axis, is spinning at about 3 o’clock to 3:30. If you were to picture that on a clock, it’s almost like a left-handed slider, or a left-handed curveball.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve always struggled to understand the “ceiling” projections that accompany prospects. It’s not that I don’t get the concept — 95th- or 99th-percentile outcomes aren’t the same for everyone, and that’s interesting. And it’s not that I don’t think some prospects have higher ceilings than others. It’s merely that I have a hard time discerning which types of prospects have the greatest chance of being superstars. For every Bryce Harper where the talent smacks you in the face, there’s a Mookie Betts. Fine, it’s not a one-to-one ratio, but plenty of prospects exceed their supposed ceilings, and I’m no good at figuring out which ones are the most likely to do so.

Because of this deficiency, I’ve always looked at prospects slightly differently. I tend to look for players who have a good chance at becoming average regulars, assuming that the best way to find prospects who’ll go completely ham and turn into MVP candidates is to find as many minor leaguers who have the skills to make the big leagues as possible.

This process has led to some successes — like Eric Longenhagen, I was optimistic about Randy Arozarena when the Rays acquired him in 2019. It has also led to some failures — like former FanGraphs editor Carson Cistulli, I’m still waiting for Max Schrock to ascend to batting-title contention. This year, I’ve been working on putting a little more intellectual rigor behind my process, and Eric and Meg Rowley were kind enough to let me share the Prospects Week stage to yammer on about it.

As befits any Ben Clemens project, I used a combination of statistical modeling, careful observation, and semi-rigorous gibberish to synthesize a group of hitters I’m interested in. If you want to ignore the methodology and just get to the sweet, sweet list, I totally understand, but for everyone else, let’s talk about that “statistical modeling” part.

The natural impulse when looking at minor league statistics is to apply some kind of translation. Strike out 15% of the time in Double A? You’ll strike out 23% of the time in the majors. Nine percent walks and a .330 BABIP? That’ll be 6% and .295, thank you very much. Then you add a little age-related improvement dust, and bam, major league prediction. One problem with that method: it’s terrible and doesn’t work. Read the rest of this entry »

Typically, we roll out most of our international amateur free agent reports during Prospect Week, which falls just five months ahead of those players’ usual signing day on July 2, with a few more trickling in as the signing date approaches. The lingering effects of the pandemic mean the next signing period likely won’t begin until January 2022, but there are still fresh scouting reports on The Board for your perusal. You’re going to want to open that up in a new tab as you read this article, because I’m going to reference some names to illustrate how players who aren’t eligible to sign for another 10 months are still impacting how teams are behaving right now.

The pandemic and its financial fallout caused MLB to push the start of the 2020 signing period from July 2 to January 15, 2021, allowing owners to avoid having to spend a collective $150-plus million on signing bonuses in the middle of a summer without big league ticket revenue. Of course, there were other long-term financial incentives for owners to do this as well. Pushing the signing period also likely delayed the free agency of whichever star players emerge from that international class by a year. Instead of signing in July and coming to the US for 2020 Fall Instructional League — where they’d be seen by the front office and perhaps put themselves in a position to receive an aggressive assignment the following year — players who signed in January might not arrive in the States until instructs this year, if they do at all. So rather than be on the Juan Soto fast track and make their big league debuts as teenagers, whichever young phenoms might emerge from this most recent group will likely reach the big leagues, and therefore free agency, at least a year later because of how the COVID dominos fell. The altered signing timeline and delayed pro development could end up costing someone tens of millions of dollars.

Those financial incentives extend to the upcoming signing class. Further delays weren’t set in stone when the Players Association gave the league the right to change the start of the next few signing periods, but because of these incentives and the desire to have a full, 11-month window for 2021 signings rather than condense it into six months, the class that was supposed to sign in July of 2021 is now very likely to start signing in January of 2022. And if that next signing period is also going to be 11 months long, it will extend into December of 2022, just as this year’s is set to stretch to December (there’s always a couple weeks gap between the end of one signing period and the beginning of another). Stash that in your brain for a few paragraphs from now. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to Prospects Week 2021, the latest installment in FanGraphs’ annual pre-season spotlight on our sport’s future, and my annual opportunity to experience a dissociative fugue state.

While the NCAA baseball season starts this weekend, 2021 draft looks have already been going on for a few weeks as junior college ball began a couple weekends ago, and Division-I teams have been playing intrasquads to gear up for the season. As with last year, this year’s draft is going to be affected by COVID-19, though it’s likely going to be affected in different ways. Later this week, Kevin Goldstein and I will publish a conversational piece about how we think this year’s draft will be impacted by our current societal circumstances, and how it will be scouted.

But today is about the updated player rankings for the next three drafts, which are now available on The Board, both as individual classes and in one summary view, along with full player scouting summaries. There’s rarely a big, sweeping update of prospect rankings at this site. Like a sourdough starter, The Board is a living, breathing thing, and I often update it with notes in real-time while I’m at the field. For draft coverage, that water wheel of info begins this weekend. (For pro notes, the process will begin again after all of the org lists have been published.) Read the rest of this entry »

0:00 Introduction
0:45 How To Access The Board
1:20 Three Ways To View The Board

We have a great many data and research tools on FanGraphs. Some people are well-suited to clicking around the site, exploring on their own, and learning how to navigate FanGraphs that way, but others might benefit from a written, audio, or video tutorial. It is my aim to provide a version of that in this post. This first tutorial covers The Board, and gives an overview of some of the prospect evaluation methodology that has been used at the site. The transcript you’re reading now has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Due to the size of the text, this tutorial is best viewed in YouTube’s “Theater Mode,” or in full screen. In the header of each section below, you’ll find a link to the relevant section of the tutorial so that you can easily click around to specific topics.

You can find a link to The Board on the site’s Prospects menu header, or from the Prospects home page. There are three main ways to view The Board. There is a “Scouting Only” section, a “Stats Only” section, and a chocolate/vanilla swirl version (“Scouting + Stats!”) that features a mix of both old school scouting tool grades and a collection of telling statistics (K%, BB%, OBP, SLG, etc.). Read the rest of this entry »