Over the winter, FanGraphs lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen wrote the equivalent of a novel in the form of 30 organizational prospect lists. Each list included a writeup and scouting grades for every prospect receiving a FV grade of at least 40 — that is, the equivalent of a bench player or middle reliever. For each team, roughly 20-25 prospects (give or take) met this criteria.

Of course, every organization features many more than just 20-25 minor leaguers. What about them? Using my KATOH projection system, I attempted to find the best of the rest. Just as I did last year, I’ve identified the players with the most promising statistical profiles who missed Eric’s 40 FV cutoff.

I think this goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: these are non-prospects of the worst kind. They were ranked below the future utility players, below the future middle relievers, below the toolsy teenagers who were overmatched in Rookie ball, and below the flame-throwing relievers with hideous walk rates. I’m scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel here.

Why am I writing about them, then? Well, because nobody else is, and my math suggests they’re at least worth keeping an eye on. So I decided to round them all up and put them all in an article that will generate an embarrassingly low number of page views. The sad reality is that most of these players will never amount to much. Just about the entire baseball industry has looked at them and said “org guy,” and the baseball industry is usually right about these things. But every so often, an org guy grinds his way to the majors, and the players listed below seem like decent bets to do so.

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With Andre Ethier, Logan Forsythe, Franklin Gutierrez, Joc Pederson, Rob Segedin all on the DL — and both Chase Utley and Scott Van Slyke struggling to do much of anything — the Dodgers have called up Cody Bellinger to strengthen their lineup. Bellinger is a powerful first-baseman-turned-outfielder who spent the past few weeks mashing .343/.429/.627 at Triple-A at the tender age of 21. Like most first basemen, Bellinger’s power is his biggest asset. He belted 26 homers between Double- and Triple-A last year and has amassed a remarkable 120 extra-base hits since the start of 2015. He’s already hit five out this year, tying him for third among Triple-A hitters.

There’s much more to Bellinger than his homers, however. He’s also a 45 runner who already has seven steals to his name in 2017 and has played all three outfield positions as recently as last year. That same athleticism earned him a 60/70 fielding grade from Eric Longenhagen over the winter. Clay Davenport’s defensive numbers graded him out as a +8 defender across 78 games at first last year.

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Over the winter, Eric Longenhagen had very nice things to say about Padres outfield prospect Manny Margot. He ranked Margot and 23rd overall in baseball. He also gave four of Margot’s five tools a grade of 60 or higher. Margot’s power was the only tool that didn’t receive a plus grade. Eric assigned Margot’s game power a present grade of 30 (or three to five homers per year) and a future grade of 40 (10-12 homers per year). In sum, he projected Margot to do everything but hit for power.

Nine games into the season, Margot has not adhered to those power grades. He already has three dingers to his name, tying him for eighth in baseball. His .343/.396/.686 batting line works out to a 182 wRC+. The guy who was supposed to do everything but hit for power is hitting for power. Eric said the following in his write-up of Margot, which is starting to look prescient.

It’s possible Margot may learn to elevate the ball more regularly as he matures, and if he does he’ll become a star-level player.

Yes, it’s only nine games. And, yes, punchless hitters sometimes bunch a few homers together by pure chance. Noted bunt machine Mallex Smith hit two in one game, for example, but few noticed because it didn’t happen in the first week of the season. But Margot is doing something very different than what he’s done in the past, and if he keeps doing it, he could be a bonafide star.

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A few weeks ago, lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen published FanGraphs’ top-100 prospect list. Baseball America recently performed a similar exercise, as did Baseball Prospectus, Keith Law, MLB.com and John Sickels.

On the whole, there’s a lot of consensus among these rankings. Although the order varied, all eight of Andrew Benintendi, Dansby Swanson, Amed Rosario, Alex Reyes, Gleyber Torres, Eloy Jimenez, Yoan Moncada,  Brendan Rodgers and Austin Meadows ranked within each outlet’s top 20. Fifty-nine players made every single top 100. The point of this article, however, isn’t to celebrate those similarities, but to point out the differences. In what follows, I identify the prospects that each outlet ranks higher and lower than the “establishment,” and look at how the various outlets compare to each other. Brace yourselves for an onslaught of tables and plots.

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List of Lists

Firstly, here’s the consensus prospect list. I hard-coded all unranked players as having ranked 210th, since Sickels ranked just over 200 names. The “Avg. Rank” column below is a simple average of all the rankings.

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The Reds’ pitching staff was absolutely dreadful last year. Their rotation and bullpen were both the worst in baseball. With a ghastly -0.5 WAR, their staff was the worst since the 1800s, which basically means it was the worst of all time.

Not much has changed since last year. Here’s the current depth chart for the Cincinnati rotation:

Name	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	BABIP	LOB%	ERA	FIP	WAR
Brandon Finnegan	171.0	8.2	3.9	1.4	.297	73.0 %	4.42	4.66	1.4
Anthony DeSclafani	136.0	7.7	2.4	1.2	.305	72.8 %	4.06	4.14	1.9
Scott Feldman	133.0	6.1	2.6	1.3	.305	69.6 %	4.65	4.65	1.1
Robert Stephenson	119.0	8.9	5.5	1.5	.301	71.8 %	5.07	5.25	0.5
Bronson Arroyo	117.0	5.0	2.2	1.8	.299	68.8 %	5.34	5.44	0.1
Homer Bailey	93.0	7.6	2.8	1.2	.309	70.7 %	4.37	4.27	1.1
Cody Reed	81.0	8.3	3.1	1.3	.306	72.8 %	4.24	4.38	0.9
Tim Adleman	37.0	6.6	3.0	1.5	.300	70.3 %	4.90	5.03	0.1
Austin Brice	19.0	8.0	4.2	1.3	.306	70.8 %	4.79	4.88	0.1
Amir Garrett	9.0	7.9	4.7	1.3	.303	71.6 %	4.77	4.94	0.1
Keury Mella	9.0	6.4	4.2	1.4	.306	69.1 %	5.27	5.32	0.0
Nick Travieso	9.0	6.4	4.0	1.4	.301	69.4 %	5.12	5.23	0.0
Total	933.0	7.4	3.3	1.4	.303	71.3 %	4.62	4.72	7.4

Brandon Finnegan is at the top, which is fine, I guess. After that, however, things go downhill in a hurry — especially with Homer Bailey and Anthony DeSclafani slated to open the year on the DL. For example: both Bronson Arroyo and Scott Feldman are apparently not only still pitching, but are penciled in for 250 innings in Cincinnati’s rotation. The rest of the list is made up of unproven youngsters. Each of them has some promise, but none have had much success in the major leagues, either. Hence their middling projections.

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Earlier this morning, Eric Longenhagen rolled out his list of the top-100 prospects in baseball, with Red Sox-turned-White Sox prospect Yoan Moncada at the top of his rankings. Helpfully, Eric’s rankings include the FV grade for each player, so that we can see that he really does see a difference between Moncada and the rest of the pack, as Moncada was the only prospect in the sport to garner a 70 grade.

As Eric notes in his piece, the grade is really the more important number here, as the ordinal ranking can create some false sense of separation, where players might be 20 or 30 spots apart on the list but offer fairly similar expected future value. The FV tiers do a good job of conveying where the real differences lay, highlighting those instances when Eric actually does see a significant difference between players, versus simply having to put a similar group of prospects in some order regardless of the strength of his feelings about those rankings.

But while the FV scale is helpful in binning players, it doesn’t do much to convey the differences between the tiers themselves. How much more valuable is a 60 than a 55? Or is a team better off with one elite 65 or 70 FV prospect or a multitude of 50-55 types? These are interesting questions, and ones that teams themselves have to answer on a regular basis.

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On Tuesday, I published KATOH’s 2017 top-100 list. Naturally, a lot of good players missed the cut. But one omission seemed particularly egregious, relative to the industry consensus. KATOH’s disdain for this player has elicited a few comments in recent months.

From this week’s top-100:

From our Rockies list in November:

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This very minute, the author has published an episode of FanGraphs Audio in which lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and that same dumb author play the first inaugural edition of the Over/Under Prospect Game. The rules of the game are discussed in greater detail within the pod episode. In short, though, this is how it’s played:

• Contestant A nominates a rookie-eligible player.
• Contestant A also sets an over/under figure for that player’s WAR in 2017.
• Contestant B chooses the over or under.

For sake of simplicity, we limited the game to 10 nominations total, five by Longenhagen and five by me. The only criterion for a nominee was that he retained his rookie eligibility entering the 2017 campaign.

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At long last, the Dodgers found a solution to their hole at second base, acquiring second baseman Logan Forsythe from the Rays on Monday night in exchange for top pitching prospect Jose De Leon. This came after months of rumors around a trade involving De Leon and Brian Dozier. The Dodgers had a surplus of starting pitchers and an opening at second, so it was only a matter of time before they dealt the unproven De Leon.

De Leon’s first crack at the big leagues — a four-start cameo in September — didn’t go quite as well as many had hoped. But he breezed through the minors over the last two years. He broke out in a big way in 2015, striking out an absurd 35% of opposing hitters between High-A and Double-A while walking just 8%. That performance made him a consensus top-30 prospect the following winter.

De Leon battled injuries in the first half of 2016, but began dominating again once he returned to the field. In 16 starts at the Triple-A level, he once again posted a strikeout rate well over 30%, along with solid walk and home-run numbers. De Leon proved himself at the highest level of the minors at the tender age of 23. Pitchers who meet that standard often go on to have success in the majors, especially when they miss bats as prolifically as De Leon did.

De leon grades out exceptionally well by my KATOH system. It projects him for 8.1 WAR over his first six seasons by the traditional method (KATOH) and also 10.1 WAR by the method that integrates Baseball America’s rankings (KATOH+). He’s the 13th-highest-ranking prospect by KATOH+ and the third-highest-ranking pitcher.

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Rob Kaminsky got off to a rocky start in 2016. His delivery compromised by a balky back, he put up plenty of clunkers. Over his first 10 outings for Double-A Akron, the Cleveland pitching prospect allowed 30 runs in 45 innings of work. He also spent time on the disabled list. All in all, Kaminsky was a wreck.

Then things turned around. Buoyed by mechanical fine-tuning that accompanied his rehab sessions, the young southpaw was a stud from mid-June onward. In his last 17 starts, Kaminsky allowed two-or-fewer runs 14 times. Over that span, which included the Eastern League playoffs, he hurled 103 frames and saw just 30 runners cross the plate.

Despite his rebound — and having pitched the entire season as a 21-year-old in Double-A — Kaminsky is going in the wrong direction with regard to prospect rankings. He’s plummeted all the way to 26th on Baseball America’s Indians list after coming in at No. 9 a year ago. Our own prospect guru, Eric Longenhagen, has Kaminsky 14th, which is six spots lower than he was 12 months ago.

How did the 5-foot-11 left-hander’s season unfold, and what looms in his future? Here are answers to those questions, courtesy of Kaminsky himself, and Dave Wallace, who was his manager in Akron.

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Wallace: “If I had to pick one story from this year — pick a specific player — [Kaminsky] would be it. He was absolutely our bulldog down the stretch, and in the second half in general. But in the first half, there were some games that weren’t pretty. He had some significant delivery adjustments that needed to be made. And they weren’t easy.”

Kaminsky: “I would have benched myself, with the first half I had. Everything that could have went wrong, went wrong. I was pitching terrible, and I was pitching hurt. But there were some days I actually felt alright and still got hit around, so it’s not something I can completely blame on the injury. I need to take some ownership of my performance.”

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