I’ve been driving around Florida this spring, getting looks at a particularly loaded draft class. I also spent last week at the NHSI tournament run by USA baseball in Cary, NC. NHSI is always a solid event, with at least a half-dozen interesting draft prospects appearing over the four days, but this year featured the best crop in the history of the event. Of the 16 participating teams, almost every one had a potential top-five-round draftee to watch.

I already broke down the players I saw and buzz I heard after week one of the college season, and last Friday I reviewed the college players I saw last month. Now here’s all the notable prep players I saw last month, with video, notes on what I saw, and a preview of the area of the list they will rank when Eric and I release an updated draft list next week. Here are our preseason rankings.

Carter Stewart, RHP, Eau Gallie HS (FL), Mississippi State Commit

I wrote up Stewart and Denaburg’s first matchup in one of the pieces linked above, but they had another one a couple weeks later. The first matchup, which took place in front of a double-digit number of scouting directors, placed them both firmly in the middle of the first round, so it was unsurprising to find over 100 scouts and three general managers at this next game. Stewart opened it sitting 92-96 mph and was holding 92-94, hitting 95 mph in the fifth inning. His signature 80-83 mph curveball, with Seth Lugo-level spin rates, flashed the normal 65 or 70 on the 20-80 scale (go to 0:56 for the best one I got on video), and his changeup — which looks about average in warmups and may project above average with more use — wasn’t used in game. I counted 13 Ks for Stewart through 5.2 innings.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Baltimore Orioles. 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.

50 FV Prospects

Hays had a spectacular 2017 breakout campaign, hitting 32 homers and 32 doubles between High- and Double-A, prompting Baltimore to give him a look in the majors in September. His hands are electric and they allow Hays to turn on just about everything — which is what he tries to do and which is what prompted big-league pitchers to work him down and away last year. It may take an adjustment for Hays to max out his offensive potential, as his overly aggressive approach may be exploited in the majors. That said, he has bat speed and power, and should play an above-average right field fairly soon.

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It’s been a little while since I emptied my scouting notebook of the draft prospects I’ve scouted, so I’ve split it into college and high-school portions. Below are all of the notable college draft prospects I’ve scouted in the last month, with thoughts on what I saw from them and how the industry views them. First, I’ll break down the prospects projected for the top two rounds, with embedded video. For reference, here are Eric and my preseason draft rankings, which will be updated soon. Below the likely first- and second-rounders are potential third- through sixth-rounds picks. Below that group is a collection of possible first- and second-rounders for the 2019 and 2020 drafts, the most recent rankings for which are available here.

Rounds One and Two

Alec Bohm, 3B, Wichita State

Bohm was seen by most scouts before the season as a first-rounder but also the second-best prospect on his own team behind Greyson Jenista (below). This spring, Bohm has clearly overtaken his teammate and had some scouts whispering that he did some things like Kris Bryant the night I saw him against ECU. To be clear, Bohm isn’t seen as that level of a prospect just yet, but he isn’t as far away as you may think. He has 70 raw power and, even at 6-foot-4, 205 pounds, does a great job at the plate keeping his hands tucked in and limiting his hand load to keep his stroke short. Even with with that, he still can do things like hit an opposite-field home run with a flick of the wrist, as you can see in the above video.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Boston Red Sox. 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.

We’d also like to extend our condolences to the friends and family of the late Daniel Flores, as well as the Red Sox international scouting department. We were excited to watch Daniel play baseball and can’t imagine what those who anticipated watching him grow up have dealt with since his untimely passing.

If you were to look just at Chavis’s 2016 stats and with the knowledge that he was only a viable defensive fit at first base, you’d call him a non-prospect. This dip in production was brought about by a broken finger, and in 2017, Chavis was back to taking monster hacks that produce comfortably plus raw power. He’s going to strike out, and he isn’t especially patient, but he has a good chance to get to most of that power and do enough damage to profile at first base. Chavis has the arm for third base but lacks the horizontal mobility to profile there in a vacuum. Boston has shown a willingness to put up with less lateral range on their infield, but a left side of the infield which features Chavis and Xander Bogaerts together is probably too heavy-footed for comfort, even with proactive defensive positioning. Chavis projects to first base and has dealt with an oblique injury this spring.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the New York Mets. 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.

Peterson had a great junior year at Oregon in 2017, showing four good pitches and throwing more strikes than is typical for a pitcher his size. He sits 90-92 with heavy sink, will touch 95, and his fastball plays up because of good extension. He made heavy use of a slider that garners mixed reviews depending on if you’re talking to a scout (who consider it a 50/55) or someone looking at a Trackman readout (40/45), but it missed Pac-12 bats and should be fine even if it doesn’t spin a whole lot.

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The Padres pulled a bit of a fast one on the rest of baseball by scheduling left-handed pitching prospect Joey Lucchesi to start the Friars’ second game of the year versus the Brewers on Friday. The 24-year-old lefty spent last season split between High- and Double-A, netting 148 strikeouts in 139 innings while walking just 33. He spent most of this spring on the minor-league side of camp and only tossed 11 innings with the big club.

Lucchesi appeared within the honorable-mention section of our top-100 list as a 50 FV prospect. We considered him a No. 4 starter who was pretty likely to realize that outcome relatively soon. His stuff is generic. He sits 89-92, will touch 94, both of his breaking balls are average, and his changeup is slightly above.

What makes Lucchesi unique are his cartoonish on-mound mannerisms, many of which aid his effectiveness. He has a drop-and-drive delivery and extreme overhand arm slot, two opposing forces which create an odd initial look for hitters and cause Lucchesi’s fastball plane to be very flat, which is especially effective when he works up in the zone. Typically, pitchers with this sort of arm slot have a difficult time working east and west within the strike zone, but Lucchesi is athletic enough to maintain his delivery while making subtle variations. It allows him to do things like attack right-handed hitters in on the hands with his fastball. He also has a deep, downward-plunging stab as he loads his arm.

The flat-planed fastball works well in concert with the changeup, and both of Lucchesi’s breaking balls play up against lefties because of his delivery’s deception. In a vacuum, he’s a 45 fastball, 50 curve, 50 slider, 50 changeup guy with potential plus command. With the mechanical funk thrown in, though, everything plays up a half-grade or so. Fold into that Lucchesi’s ability to control the run game with a great pick-off move and timing variations from the stretch, and you’ve got a big-league ready, 24-year-old arm despite relatively little upper-level experience. I think he can compete at the big-league level right now.

Lucchesi will also serve as a data point to better understand Padres LHP prospect MacKenzie Gore, as Gore and Lucchesi possess shockingly similar deliveries. Gore, too, gets extremely low to the ground, using a vertical arm slot and stride direction that makes hitters visibly uncomfortable. Unlike Lucchesi, Gore sits 93-96 with a bunch of 55 and 60 secondaries. It’s not feasible to teach such a delivery across a wide population of pitching prospects because so few of them are athletic enough to maintain it. But we might be able to extrapolate exactly how much Gore’s stuff will play up against opposing hitters compared to his raw stuff by watching Lucchesi.

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Philadelphia Phillies. 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.

60 FV Prospects

Hitters like to shorten up against Sixto after he’s blown well-placed, sinking, upper-90s gas past them for strikes one and two, which leaves them vulnerable to any of his three viable secondary offerings later in at-bats. Sanchez sits 95-99, has touched 102, and possesses advanced command. He has a long, cutting slider in the mid-80s and a two-plane curveball, both of which flash above-average, but his best secondary is a ghosting, mid-80s changeup which embarrassed hitters five years older than him at Hi-A last year.

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Recently, I posted notes on Cleveland ace Corey Kluber to give readers some idea of what a pitcher of such obvious talent looks like on a scouting report. Well, I recently ran into Rockies righty German Marquez — a 55 FV on his final FanGraphs prospect list and a 2.5 WAR pitcher as a rookie (which is a 55) — so here’s a similar rundown.

Marquez’s body looks like it’s backed up a bit, but he was still generating premium velocity with ease, sitting 94-96 with his fastball throughout my viewing. It, along with his low-80s curveball, is comfortably plus, and he threw several 70-grade curveballs. Marquez is clearly working on developing two other pitches — an upper-80s slider and mid-80s changeup — that are both below average right now. The change has promising movement, Marquez just lacks feel for it.

Marquez barely threw anything other than his heater and curve last year and was able to succeed anyway because they’re both excellent. If a tertiary offering is his focus this year, it’s reasonable to expect some growing pains and regression, though this is probably best for his long-term development. His fastball velocity has fluctuated a bit this spring (as low as 92 in other outings), but that’s to be expected.

He’s not technically a prospect, but Rockies righty Jairo Diaz looks poised to make an impact in the bullpen this year. Diaz missed all of 2016 and most of 2017 due to Tommy John, but his stuff has been vicious this spring. In two looks at him, Diaz has been 96-99 with a plus slider in the 87-90 mph range.

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