In Baseball America’s 2018 Prospect Handbook, 21-year-old Kevin Smith is described as having “a high dose of swing-and-miss… with an uphill swing path that helps him lift the ball but also leaves him with holes pitchers can exploit.” Our own Kiley McDaniel echoed that opinion, writing that Toronto’s 2017 fourth-round pick “has a big swing, raw power, and a glove that can stick at short, but a questionable approach.”

Six weeks into his first full professional season, the University of Maryland product has cast aside those red flags and — thanks to some notable adjustments — turned himself into a blue-chip prospect. He’s currently making mincemeat out of Midwest League pitching. In 146 plate appearances with the Lansing Lugnuts, Smith is slashing a scintillating .387/.430/.664, with 19 doubles, a pair of triples, and five home runs.

Smith discussed his game-changing adjustments, and his analytical approach to the game, this past weekend.

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Smith on the Kiley McDaniel and Baseball America quotes: “I think they were [mostly accurate]. After evaluating myself following last season, I knew that I needed to change some things up. My swing plane was kind of a mess. This offseason, I worked on some things to flatten out and be in the zone a little longer, but without losing any of the power I had last year.

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It’s been almost a month since our last (partial) mock draft, so it’s probably time to collect all of our notes and take another try at this. Updated, expanded, and sortable draft rankings will be coming soon, but you can get an idea of the industry consensus rankings from all the clues and team connections below as a teaser. As we’ve mentioned many times before, this draft stands out most for the unusually prep-heavy concentration of talent in the picks 20 to 50 area. For reference, here’s the full draft order.

1. Detroit Tigers – Casey Mize, RHP, Auburn
Mize is still the heavy favorite here, with the backup options appearing to be Georgia Tech C Joey Bart and Florida RHP Brady Singer, while Wisconsin prep CF Jarred Kelenic has faded from contention. Teams outside the top five picks don’t expect to get Mize’s MRI (he missed time last spring with an arm issue and some clubs were worried about his health as far back as high school), and it’s possible no one other than Detroit will get it. GM Al Avila saw the Mize/Singer matchup three weekends ago; saw Bart, Georgia prep CF Parker Meadows, and Wichita State 3B Alec Bohm two weekends ago; and Oregon State 2B Nick Madrigal last week. Mississippi prep RHP J.T. Ginn is a target in the second round, as are any of the leftover prep outfielders, like Pennsylvania prep CF Mike Siani.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Los Angeles Dodgers. 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.

55 FV Prospects

Buehler roared back from Tommy John in 2016 and sat 96-99 with a plus curveball and slider/cutter in his first outing back from surgery. That was harder than he ever threw at Vanderbilt. He threw only five affiliated innings, but the Dodgers immediately began internal conversations about how to get him to the big leagues in 2017. They did, and after a late-summer move to the bullpen, Buehler got a nine-inning September espresso.

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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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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Kansas City Royals. 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

Matias’s exit velos are on par with those produced by Quad-A sluggers who have seven years on him, and he hit a quarter of his balls in play over 105 mph last season. His has a longish swing and possesses poor breaking-ball recognition, the combination of which has led to pretty concerning early-career strikeout rates.

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Fringe Five Scoreboards: 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013.

The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a few years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

Central to the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion among the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above who (a) was omitted from the preseason prospect lists produced by Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com, John Sickels, and (most importantly) FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel* and also who (b) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing on any updated, midseason-type list will also be excluded from eligibility.

*Note: I’ve excluded Baseball America’s list this year not due to any complaints with their coverage, but simply because said list is now behind a paywall.

For those interested in learning how Fringe Five players have fared at the major-league level, this recent post offers that kind of information. The short answer: better than a reasonable person would have have expected. In the final analysis, though, the basic idea here is to recognize those prospects who are perhaps receiving less notoriety than their talents or performance might otherwise warrant.

David Fletcher, 2B/SS, Los Angeles AL (Profile)
As noted in last week’s edition of this same column, David Fletcher has only ever once produced an isolated-power figure above .080 in a professional season during which he’s also compiled more than 100 plate appearances. As things currently stand with Triple-A Salt Lake City, however, Fletcher could fail to record an extra-base hit in any of his next 106 at-bats and he’d still post something slightly better than an .080 ISO.*

*As of Thursday afternoon, at least. Fletcher actually added a stupid double and stupid homer last night, meaning his extra-base drought could extend even longer.

Incredibly, Fletcher has produced these unprecedented power numbers while also striking out at a much lower rate than usual. Which, actually, that’s not entirely accurate: Fletcher isn’t just striking out less often, he’s striking out almost never. In 86 plate appearances entering yesterday, he’d recorded just one strikeout, a figure in close proximity to — some would say the closest proximity to — zero strikeouts.

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Among the comments Kiley McDaniel and I received from people in baseball regarding the updated draft board we published last week is that Oklahoma quarterback and center fielder Kyler Murray should have probably been on it. Evaluators see him as a crude but gifted speedster with good pop for his size who possesses more projection than most because of his athleticism. Murray is performing this year (.290/.390/.520 at publication) on the baseball field despite little prior in-game experience.

While I’ll consider his merits as an athlete more fully in a moment, it seems important to briefly recount Murray’s somewhat circuitous path to the present. A superstar high-school quarterback, Murray was expected to replace Johnny Manziel at Texas A&M as soon as he reached campus. At the same time, though, he was also a first-round shortstop prospect. He removed himself from MLB draft consideration by refusing to do some of the mandatory paperwork and testing for eligibility. He went to A&M, split QB reps there with Kyle Allen as a freshman, then transferred to Oklahoma, where sat out a year due to NCAA transfer rules. In 2017, he held a clipboard behind Heisman winner Baker Mayfield.

All the while, Murray barely played baseball (although he did spend last summer on the Cape). Now, he’s Oklahoma’s starting center fielder and also locked in another quarterback competition as a redshirt sophomore, juggling both sports at the same time.

Discussions about Murray invariably lead to which of those sport he should play professionally — and, as part of that, which path might be more lucrative for him. Because Murray is available for the MLB draft this June but not for the NFL’s own draft until next year, baseball has the opportunity to present its case first.

The size of his signing bonus obviously isn’t the only factor Murray is likely to consider. The prospect of a full year as a starter at a big football school — with the possibility of making a run at a Heisman — is probably appealing to him. The reality of football’s health risks — which, for a 5-foot-11 quarterback, might be even riskier — are also likely present.

That said, we can at least try to see if a clearly superior financial path lies ahead for Murray as he comes to a fork in the road this June. To do this, we have to know some things about each sport’s draft and then get some idea of where Murray might be drafted and how he would be compensated in each case.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Toronto Blue Jays. 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.

65 FV Prospects

Guerrero was identified as an elite talent years before the Jays signed him at age 16, exhibiting an advanced feel for hitting and raw power like his father. Unlike the elder Guerrero, Vlad Jr. has generally developed earlier — already looking too big for third base as a teenager and polishing his tools at a very young stage. Whether Vlad Jr. settles as a fringey third baseman or a first basemen/designated hitter is up for debate, but his easy plus hit and power tools (with ceiling for more) are not and will make his ascent to the big leagues a quick one.

60 FV Prospects

Bichette was a well-known prospect in high school due to his bloodlines (father Dante and older brother Dante Jr., who was a first-round pick by the Yankees in 2011), his big tools (plus raw power), and his loud, max-effort swing. Many teams didn’t take him seriously as a top-two-round prospect, partly souring after his brother busted with a similar swing, but Bo has rare bat and body control along with good enough pitch selection to make his approach work, something his older brother did not.

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