The summer, rich with relevant amateur baseball, has ended. With it ends an important stretch on the player-evaluation calendar, one that is being weighed more heavily with each passing draft. We consider this checkpoint to be a sensible time to revisit our draft prospect rankings and make a sweeping update to the amateur wing of THE BOARD. A link to the 2019 draft board is here, but it can also be accessed through our brand new prospect landing page, which encompasses all of our content (shout-out to Sean Dolinar!) here.

Below we’ve attempted to anticipate some questions readers might have and to answer them as well as possible.

Q. Why is the summer so important for draft evaluation?

A. The high concentration of talent in collegiate wood-bat leagues and in scout-run high-school showcase events (which are designed to be evaluation-friendly) more closely approximates the talent environment of pro baseball. It’s hard to know if a high-school hitter facing a lot of suburban varsity, upper-70s fastballs is actually any good, but watch a prep hitter face Division I breaking balls and 90-plus mph fastballs for eight weeks, and you’re going to learn a lot about him.

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UMP: The Untitled McDongenhagen Project, Episode 2
This is the second episode of a weekly program co-hosted by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel about player evaluation in all its forms. The new show, which is available through the normal FanGraphs Audio feed, has a working name now, but barely. The show is all prospect stuff, but there is plenty of that, as the hosts are Prospect Men. Below are some timestamps to make listening and navigation easier.

0:15 – Uncomfortable Paul McCartney discussion, feat. questionable impressions
1:12 – Update on the guys not from Liverpool
2:38 – Deciding on the name of the podcast
4:00 – New recurring segment: TV Talking Head Auditions
6:00 – Eric’s Take
8:40 – Kiley’s Take
10:30 – Satire is over, as PTI possibly should be
11:45 – TOPIC ONE: Updates to THE BOARD
13:12 – Vidal Brujan (2B, TB, Hi-A) and Brayan Rocchio (SS, CLE, RK), briefly Kristian Robinson (RF, ARI, RK)
19:38 – Luis Patino (RHP, SD, Lo-A), briefly Carlos Vargas (RHP, CLE, RK)
23:15 – Bryse Wilson (RHP, ATL, MLB),
24:11 – Bubba Thompson (CF, TEX, Lo-A)
24:43 – Nolan Jones (3B, CLE, Lo-A)
26:50 – Michael Kopech (RHP, CHW, MLB)
27:21 – Wenceel Perez (SS, DET, Lo-A), Carlos Vargas (RHP, CLE, RK), Cole Roederer (CF, CHC, RK), Josiah Gray (RHP, CIN, RK)
30:22 – TOPIC TWO: Front office scouting staff intrigue
31:03 – How cavemen invented scouting
33:00 – How different team philosophically approach their pro scouting department
34:03 – Something that should really surprise you
39:59 – Houston is the leading example of restructuring a staff
41:38 – Where Houston could get outflanked
43:48 – Delving into makeup and how important it is
47:07 – Running down some staffing changes in the industry
50:15 – Pennsylvania impressions!
53:55 – Minnesota accents!
54:42 – TOPIC THREE: Acuna, Soto, Vlad and the next teenage sensation
58:00 – WHO YA GOT?
1:02:00 – Who are the next potential teenagers in the big leagues?
1:08:00 – Kiley’s first scouting experience with Wander Franco…when he was 14.
1:10:38 – the 2017 July 2 class is looking prettay prettay good so far
1:11:46 – Kiley discovers the limits of technology
1:12:15 – The guys discuss Jibarito (the Puerto Rican KFC Double Down) and discuss Kenan Thompson doing David Ortiz talking about mofongo

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @kileymcd or @longenhagen on Twitter or at prospects@fangraphs.com.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 16 min play time.)

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Over the last several weeks, we have seen and/or sourced opinions on a handful of pro prospects whom we felt should move up our pref list, some of them into the 50 FV tier. Rather than wait until this winter’s full-scale update of each team’s farm system to reflect updated opinions on these players, we’ve moved them now to more accurately reflect our present evaluations (we have thoughts on each of them below) and also because we consider several of them perfect touchstones for discussion this offseason.

We have also shuffled a handful of players on the top 100. Most of the players we’ve moved up haven’t experienced tool change per se but have outperformed similarly evaluated talents; those who’ve moved down thanks, meanwhile, did so largely due to injuries. This isn’t a comprehensive update, just what we consider to be a more accurate snapshot, grabbing the low-hanging fruit. There’s also a handful of players whom we debated moving but decided to leave alone for the moment because Eric will be seeing them a lot in the Arizona Fall League, allowing us to provide a more well informed judgment in the near future. In his AFL preview, Eric names most of these players.

A reminder: THE BOARD is here. We’ll also be updating our 2019 MLB Draft rankings in the coming days.

Moving Up into the 50+ FV Tier

Vidal Brujan, 2B, TBR – Brujan’s speed, bat control, size, and feel for the game are all comparable to the sort exhibited by Ozzie Albies, Nick Madrigal, Luis Urias, and other pint-sized dynamos who seem to be multiplying lately. We had an aggressive 45 FV on him preseason in anticipation of a solid full-season debut, but he blew even us away, stealing 55 bases with 63 walks and 68 strikeouts.

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Introduction to the McDongenhagen Project
This represents the first episode of a weekly program co-hosted by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel about player evaluation in all its forms. The new show, which will be available through the normal FanGraphs Audio feed, doesn’t have a name yet, but reader input is invited. The show won’t be all prospect stuff, but there will be plenty of that, as the hosts are Prospect Men. Below are some timestamps to make listening and navigation easier.

2:13 – What Eric’s been up to feat. reggaeton horn.
3:49 – What Kiley’s been up to feat. self-promotion.
6:31 – TOPIC ONE: September call-ups that will impact the NL races.
7:24 – Arizona Diamondbacks, including a big picture discussion.
13:15 – Atlanta Braves, including a guy you didn’t think we’d talk about.
19:30 – St. Louis Cardinals, including lots of Harrison Bader talk.
22:31 – Chicago Cubs, briefly.
22:58 – Milwaukee Brewers, including Robin Hood talk.
24:26 – Colorado Rockies, eternally confusing, including eye-level science.
28:43 – Los Angeles Dodgers, including Joe Arpaio talk.
29:46 – Philadelphia Phillies, including Scott Kingery symposium.
36:05 – TOPIC TWO: Should we change how we evaluate pitching prospects?
41:45 – Kiley tries to shoehorn more Nassim Taleb into conversation.
46:28 – Objectively measuring command: ¯\_(ｯ)_/¯.
50:02 – Eric compares these challenges to the NFL combine.
52:23 – TOPIC THREE: 2019 MLB Draft overview.
1:01:50 – Eric reveals his West Coast draft fascination.
1:03:06 – Kiley brings this to a merciful end.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @kileymcd or @longenhagen on Twitter or at prospects@fangraphs.com.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 4 min play time.)

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Evaluating pitchers is a real challenge. A combination of experience and knowledge can help one to better understand how variables like velocity, spin, and pitch mix translate to the majors. Even with that information, though, the influence of other factors — like injury risk, like a pitcher’s likelihood of responding to mechanical or mental adjustments — creates a great deal of uncertainty.

Nor is this a challenge that faces only prospect analysts like myself and Eric Longenhagen: even front-office execs who have the benefit of substantial resources — in the form both of data and personnel — have trouble reliably projecting outcomes for otherwise similarly talented young arms.

In my role as a talent evaluator both with FanGraphs and with a few major-league clubs, the question of how best to assess pitchers is obviously one to which I’ve returned with some frequency. In my recent efforts to get some final looks at certain top pitching prospects, however, I began to rethink how Eric Longenhagen and I should approach rankings this offseason. Three prospects, in particular, help to illustrate my concerns.

Tigers righty Matt Manning was the ninth overall pick in 2016, is an athletic 20-year-old who stands 6-foot-6, and was promoted to Double-A last week. In addition to that, he sat 94-96 and hit 98 mph in my look, mixing in a spike curveball that flashed 65 on the 20-80 scale. The positives here are numerous, and very few other minor leaguers could match even a few of these qualities.

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Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Note from Eric: Hey you, this is the last one of these for the year, as the minor-league regular season comes to a close. Thanks for reading. I’ll be taking some time off next week, charging the batteries for the offseason duties that lie ahead for Kiley and me.

D.J. Peters, CF, Los Angeles Dodgers
Level: Double-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 7   FV: 45+
Line: 4-for-7, 2 HR, 2B (double header)

Notes
A comparison of DJ Peters‘ 2017 season in the Cal League and his 2018 season at Double-A gives us a good idea of what happens to on-paper production when a hitter is facing better pitching and defenses in a more stable offensive environment.

Reports of Peters’ physical abilities haven’t changed, nor is his batted-ball profile different in such a way that one would expect a downtick in production. The 2018 line is, I think, a more accurate distillation of Peters’ abilities. He belongs in a talent bucket with swing-and-miss outfielders like Franchy Cordero, Randal Grichuk, Michael A. Taylor, Bradley Zimmer, etc. These are slugging center fielders whose contact skills aren’t particularly great. Players like this are historically volatile from one season to the next but dominant if/when things click. They’re often ~1.5 WAR players who have some years in the three-win range. Sometimes they also turn into George Springer.

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