Three minor-ish trades went down on Friday night. The Mets acquired A.J. Ramos from the Marlins for Merandy Gonzalez and Ricardo Cespedes; the Nationals acquired Howie Kendrick from the Phillies for McKenzie Mills; the Orioles acquired Jeremy Hellickson from the Phillies for Garrett Cleavinger and Hyun Soo Kim.  Below are the projections for the prospects who changed hands. WAR figures account for the player’s first six major-league seasons. KATOH denotes the stats-only version of the projection system, while KATOH+ denotes the methodology that includes a player’s prospect rankings.

None of the players dealt last night are top prospects, and as a result, their likelihood of outcomes graphs are heavily skewed towards “no MLB”. Kyle Glaser recently found that fewer than one in five prospects traded at the deadline contribute more than one positive WAR season. All three of these pitchers seem like good bets to fall into that bottom four-fifths.

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The Yankees acquired Jaime Garcia from the Twins for prospects Zack Littell and Dietrich Enns. You may remember that the Twins acquired Garcia less than a week ago. For their trouble, the Twins seemingly got a better return for Garcia than they gave up to acquire him. I have Huascar Ynoa projected for 1.9 WAR (by both KATOH and KATOH+), which is about half as much as Littell and Enns combined. It’s worth noting, however, that the Yankees are facing a 40-man roster crunch, so dealing Littell and Enns clears space for other prospects.

Below are the projections for the Twins’ newest prospects. WAR figures account for the player’s first six major-league seasons. KATOH denotes the stats-only version of the projection system, while KATOH+ denotes the methodology that includes a player’s prospect rankings.

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Philadelphia made a pair of trades Friday, sending Howie Kendrick to Washington for LHP McKenzie Mills. They also traded RHP Jeremy Hellickson to Baltimore for LHP Garrett Cleavinger and OF Hyun Soo Kim. Philadelphia also received bonus pool money from both clubs.

Baltimore gets
RHP Jeremy Hellickson

Washington gets
2B Howie Kendrick

Philadelphia gets
LHP McKenzie Mills
LHP Garrett Cleavinger
OF Hyun Soo Kim
International Bonus Slots

Mills is a 21-year old, big-bodied lefty with advanced changeup feel. He was an 18th round pick out of Sprayberry HS (GA) in 2014 and then spent each of his first three pro seasons in either rookie or short-season ball. Mills struggled with control. His strikeout and walk rates — 20% and 12%, respectively, in 2016 and 28% and 5% this year — have both drastically improved this year and he’s having more success as the season goes on despite having already doubled his innings total frmo last year.

As far as the stuff in concerned, Mills is a deceptive 88-92 with downhill plane and could have an above average changeup at maturity. His below average curveball has shape but not power. He can locate it, and his other pitches, and projects to have starter’s control/command. He has K’d 118 hitters in 104.2 innings with Low-A Potomac and is a potential backend starter.

Cleavinger, a 2015 3rd rounder out of Oregon, is a pure relief prospect with a low-90s fastball and loopy, twisting curveball. His command is very erratic and, while he has premium loogy funk and repertoire, it needs to develop significantly if Cleavinger’s to have a steady big league role.

The Phillies also acquired $1 million in international bonus money yesterday General Manager Matt Klentak’s post-trade comments indicate that money will be speculatively used to as yet unidentified or available talent on the international market. The Phillies were originally allotted a $4.75 million bonus pool for the international period and spent a significant amount of it on five players, including SS Luis Garcia ($2.5 mil) and four other players who all signed for around $500k each.

Philadelphia sent All Star reliever Pat Neshek to Colorado on Wednesday night in exchange for three prospects. Let’s refresh:

Colorado gets
RHP Pat Neshek

Philadelphia gets
SS Jose Gomez
RHP J.D. Hammer
RHP Alejandro Requena

Gomez, a 20-year old infielder at Low-A Asheville, is the owner of a .316 career batting average and indeed scouts like his feel to hit. Gomez doesn’t get much out of his lower half and is a bit undersized, and thus very unlikely to hit for much power barring a mechanical change, but he has good hand-eye coordination, above average bat speed and a chance to be a plus hitter at peak.

An average runner with an average arm, Gomez lacks the high-end athleticism typically found at shortstop and is not a lock to stay there. He’s already seeing time at second and third base, two positions where Gomez will likely lack the power to profile every day should one of them become his long term defensive home. He projects as a bat-first utility player.

Hammer is a 23-year old relief prospect with a plus, running fastball that will touch 97. He was a 24th rounder out of Marshall last year and had struck out 47 hitters at Low-A before a late-June promotion to Hi-A Lancaster. Hammer’s arm is lightning quick and while he shows some feel for locating his fastball to his arm side with consistency (in part because it naturally runs that way), his command is currently below average. He also has a power slider (I’ve had scouts call it a slider and curveball, and the way its’ described makes it sound like a hard slurve, so I’ll call it a slider) that flashes average. He projects as a middle relief piece but could be more if a better secondary pitch can be coaxed out of that arm speed and, as a Colorado high schooler who then went to a college not typically associated with baseball, perhaps that’s coming late.

Finally, 20-year old Venezuelan Alejandro Requena is a pitchability who had posted a 2.85 ERA this season at Asheville. He sits in the 88-92 range with his fastball which he locates readily to both sides of the plate and he has a loopy, fringey curveball that he can lob in for strikes to get ahead of hitters or bury in the dirt when ahead in the count. He could max out as a backend starter but is more likely to fall in the starters 6-10 range teams typically need to dip into during the course of a season.

As far as FVs go, Gomez is a 40 for me, projecting as a utility man with a better bat than usually found there. That’s a 45 at peak with Gomez’s proximity from the Majors diluting the mark. The other two are, in FanGraphs prospect parlance, honorable mention prospects worth continued attention.

On Tuesday night, the Red Sox sent two prospects to San Francisco in exchange for infielder Eduardo Nunez. Those prospects were RHP Shaun Anderson and RHP Gregory Santos.

Anderson was a 2016 3rd rounder out of Florida, and another of the seemingly annual example of the Gators’ embarrassment of pitching riches, as Anderson has a starter’s repertoire but pitched out of their bullpen. He works an upper-80s cutter under the hands of left-handed hitters, has a low-80s slider with more loop that he runs away from righties, and he can turn over a fringe to average upper-70s curveball. He also has a formerly rarely used changeup that is now flashing average. The slider and cutter are effective when located properly, but all are fringe to average pitches purely on stuff.

Anderson’s fastball sits 92-94 and will touch 96. I’ve received mixed opinions about his strike-throwing ability, with some scouts thinking it’s suitable for continued projection as a starter while others found it lacking, citing frequent misfires resulting in fastballs and sliders left up and out of the strike zone. Single-A hitters have been willing to offer at these, upper-level hitters may not.

The range of outcomes scouts see for Anderson is relatively narrow. Some see him as a backend rotation piece, others as a reliever. Both place him in the 40 FV range.

Santos turns 18 in late August and was pitching in the DSL for the second straight year. He has yet to harness his terrific arm strength, sitting 92-96 with life. Santos joins a growing number of hard-throwing Latin American arms in the low levels of San Francisco’s farm system.

With Zack Wheeler joining the Mets’ small army of pitchers on the disabled list, the team will turn to 23-year-old Chris Flexen tonight against the Padres. Unless you’re a Mets fan with a deep interest in prospects, there’s a good chance this is your first time hearing Flexen’s name. I’ll admit that I was unaware of him until a couple of days ago when I came across his name while formatting KATOH’s most recent top-100 list.

But despite his obscurity, Flexen has undeniably earned this opportunity with the way he’s pitched this season. He started the year on the DL after having a bone chip removed from his right knee, but has been utterly dominant since returning. In three High-A starts, he pitched to a 2.81 xFIP with a 25% strikeout rate. He was even better in Double-A, spinning a 2.43 xFIP thanks to a 29% strikeout rate.

It’s been a long slog for Flexen, who was originally drafted by the Mets in the 12th round way back in 2012. After a couple of lackluster seasons in the lower levels, he underwent Tommy John Surgery in 2014. He pitched decently in 2016, his first full year after the surgery, but did so with a sub-17% strikeout rate. There was little reason to suspect he was on the verge of a breakout in 2017.

Eric Longenhagen included Flexen in his preseason Mets list, but only in the “Honorable Mention” section. He saw him as being worse than a 40 FV — the equivalent of a spot starter or middle reliever.

He sits 91-94, touching 96, with an average curveball and fringe change. He has a big, sturdy, inning-eating frame but has already had a surgery, and there are scouts who’d like to see if the fastball plays consistently at 96 out of the ‘pen . Others think he’s more of an up-and-down starter.

Eric provided an updated scouting snippet last month.

He has been 92-96, flashing an above-average slider and throwing all four of his pitches for strikes.

Because of scouts’ pessimism, there’s a sizable gap between Flexen’s stats-only KATOH forecast and KATOH+, which incorporates his (lack of) preseason prospect rank. The stats-only version projects him for 5.6 WAR over his first six years, which is good for 66th overall and 13th among pitchers. But that forecast drops to a meager 2.8 WAR once the scouting data is layered in. KATOH+ sees him as a near-certain fringe-player.

And since it looks noticeably different, I also made a stats-only graph. This one gives him a much more realistic chance of racking up more than 4 WAR.

To put some faces to Flexen’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps. I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Flexen’s 2017 numbers and every historical season since 1991. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues. Please note that the Mahalanobis analysis is separate from KATOH. KATOH relies on macro-level trends, rather than comps. The fates of a few statistically similar players shouldn’t be used to draw sweeping conclusions about a prospect’s future. For this reason, I recommend using a player’s KATOH forecast to assess his future potential. The comps give us some interesting names that sometimes feel spot-on, but they’re mostly just there for fun.

It’s tough to know what to make of Flexen. While his small-sample 2017 numbers have been exceptional, he’s never pitched anywhere near this well before, nor was he ever seen as much of a prospect. But then again, this might simply be an instance of Flexen finally being healthy for the first time in at least three years. I look forward to watching tonight to see how he fares against big-league hitters.

With Dexter Fowler out of commission after suffering a wrist strain, the Cardinals have promoted top prospect Harrison Bader to take over center-field duties. Bader had been crushing Triple-A pitching to the tune of .297/.354/.517, though those numbers are inflated by the run environment of PCL. In his big-league debut last night, Bader doubled and scored the winning run.

Even after accounting for the effects of the PCL, Bader has hit for a healthy amount of power this year, belting 19 homers in 97 games. There’s more to Bader than his power, however. Eric Longenhagen rated him as a 60 runner, which parlays into good baserunning and center-field defense — Clay Davenport’s numbers consistently have him above average in center.

Bader profile isn’t all roses and sunshine, as his strikeout and walk rates both leave much to be desired. These metrics suggest he may have issues getting on base in the majors. Eric also voiced concerns about the prospect of Baders’ swing working against major-league pitching.

Bader has plus bat speed and some raw power, but it’s hard for him to utilize it in games because his swing is so flat and linear. He has to really adjust his lower half to move his barrel up and down in the hitting zone and, while this worked at Double-A, not everyone thinks it’s sustainable in the big leagues. Additionally, Bader has trouble seeing the ball against right-handed pitching, especially breaking balls, over the top of which he often swings. It’s more of a 40/45 hit/power profile which doesn’t play everyday in a corner, but Bader was an above-average runner for me in the Fall League and plus during the season for some scouts with whom I spoke, so some orgs think he can moonlight in center field.

No outlet has ranked Bader in their top 100, presumably for the reasons Eric laid out in his write-up. But my KATOH system disagrees with this assessment. My system pegs Bader for 5.7 WAR over his first six seasons by the stats-only method and 4.5 WAR by KATOH+, which incorporates his prospect ranking. Those marks place him 61st and 73rd, respectively, among prospects.

To put some faces to Bader’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps. I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Bader’s 2017 performance and every season since 1991. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues.

Please note that the Mahalanobis analysis is separate from KATOH. KATOH relies on macro-level trends, rather than comps. The fates of a few statistically similar players shouldn’t be used to draw sweeping conclusions about a prospect’s future. For this reason, I recommend using a player’s KATOH forecast to assess his future potential. The comps give us some interesting names that sometimes feel spot-on, but they’re mostly just there for fun.

Bader his flaws, but he also has a lot going for him. Most notably, he’s a 23-year-old who’s now succeeded at the highest level of the minor leagues. Sure, his numbers were helped by the PCL. But even if this year’s numbers are largely smoke and mirrors, Bader remains a speedy center fielder with power and passable defense. Those can be quite valuable.

With the trade deadline swiftly approaching, it’s time for some updated KATOH rankings. I know you’re not here to read about assumptions and caveats, so I’ll keep the non-list part of this article short and sweet.

• For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, but due to their objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated.
• KATOH+ incorporates Baseball America’s midseason top-100 list and Eric Longenhagen’s preseason FV grades for players excluded from BA’s list. Stats-only KATOH does not consider prospect rankings.
• These projections account only for minor-league stats. While I’ve done work with college players, I have not yet attempted to merge college and minor-league data. These projections also do not account for any major-league performance.
• All players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced in 2016 and/or 2017 were considered.
• This isn’t “Chris Mitchell’s Top 100 List,” and certainly not “FanGraphs’ Top 100 List.” This is simply the output from my far-from-perfect statistical model.

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Thoughtless and bad editor Carson Cistulli overlooked this post when Chris Mitchell submitted it on Friday afternoon. That’s the reason it’s appearing on Tuesday.

The Mariners and Cardinals completed one-to-one swap of outfielder Tyler O’Neill and lefty Marco Gonzales on Friday. As Dave Cameron has pointed out, this represented a case of the Mariners trading away future upside for some much-needed, immediate rotation depth. A move of that type is understandable given the state of the Mariners’ rotation and their position in the Wild Card race, but KATOH thinks the gap in value between these two prospects is quite large.

Below are the projections for the three players whom the White Sox receive. WAR figures account for the player’s first six major-league seasons. KATOH denotes the stats-only version of the projection system, while KATOH+ denotes the methodology that includes a player’s prospect rankings.

*****

Tyler O’Neill, OF (Profile)

KATOH: 7.1 WAR (34th overall)
KATOH+: 6.0 WAR (52nd overall)

O’Neill elevated his prospect stock last season, when he slashed .293/.374/.508 at the Double-A level. But he’s had a tougher time at Triple-A this season, hitting only .244/.328/.479. Part of that, however, has to do with playing in a park that’s tough on right-handed hitters. Eric Longenhagen gave him a 50 FV over the winter and listed him as an honorable mention on his top-100 list.

O’Neil is a three-true-outcomes prospect who’s homered, walked, or struck out in over 43% of his trips to the plate this year. His power is his biggest strength, as he’s belted a remarkable 75 homers since the start of the 2015 season while also kicking in 76 doubles and triples. But all that power comes with a lot of strikeouts, as evidenced by his 27% strikeout rate this year.

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Monday’s six-player swap between San Diego and Kansas City only saw one prospect moved, AZL infielder Esteury Ruiz, but left-hander Matt Strahm had only just exhausted his rookie eligibility before succumbing to a knee injury and is divisive enough in the scouting community to merit some discussion here. A reminder of the players involved:

Padres get

• LHP Travis Wood
• LHP Matt Strahm
• 2B Esteury Ruiz

Royals get

• RHP Travor Cahill
• RHP Brandon Maurer
• RHP Ryan Buchter

Let’s first touch on Strahm, who ranked 72nd overall on my top-100 list entering the season. A misdiagnosis of an injury that ultimately required Tommy John caused Strahm, who was drafted out of a junior college and wielding relatively newfound velocity at the time, to miss two years of pitching. That background caused some (including me) to forgive some of Strahm’s issues — chiefly his inconsistent command — in anticipation of late-coming progress due to a previous lack of reps. Strahm turns 26 in November and has continued to have issues throwing strikes, largely because his mechanics are very inconsistent. Additionally, Strahm’s stuff hasn’t always been crisp this year. At times he’ll touch 96 with his fastball and sit 93-94; he’s been 89-92, touching 94 at others, though. He works with multiple breaking balls — a mid-80s slider and a more vertically oriented curveball that sits 77-81 — generating in excess of 3000 rpms at times, and they’re both lethal when Strahm is locating them.

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