Other clubs: Astros, Braves, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Indians, Orioles, Reds, Red Sox, Rockies, Royals, Tigers, Twins, White Sox.

Despite only recently being regarded one of the worst farm systems in the league, the Brewers now have a wealth of talent that can be used to build up the next winner in Milwaukee. They project to have solid pitching and outfield depth for the foreseeable future, while the immediate term will see a sizable influx of quality players hopefully gearing up to fill important roles on the next competitive Brewers team. It may be another year before they can really start expecting to take steps toward the playoffs, but the Brewers have quality depth if not true studs, which can breed a few surprise impact players.

Some of the more bold rankings in this massive system include a few lows and highs. I see Michael Reed as a legitimate starting outfielder whose power is an inevitability, hence he ranks more highly here than anywhere I’ve read. The organization is convinced his power will come around, as well. I also like Josh Hader and Isan Diaz’s chances of reaching the 50-grade threshold. Rymer Liriano makes a surprise appearance in the 45 FV pod. The only thing I can say about it is maybe he won’t pan out, but there’s enough potential there that I don’t know how you essentially cut a guy like that…

Nathan Orf is a hustler who may not seem like much of a pure athlete, but his hit tool carries his value into this list for me. As for some lows, I recognize the potential value Jacob Nottingham and Gilbert Lara possess, but I just don’t have faith in either’s hit tool panning out in the long run. Lara is super young and Nottingham has his raw power, so neither is a lost cause, but I’m looking at it in terms of most likely outcomes.

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Other clubs: Astros, Braves, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Indians, Marlins, Orioles, Reds, Red Sox, Rockies, Royals, Tigers, White Sox.

The Twins have done a tremendous job of stockpiling minor-league talent, and currently deserve consideration for top farm system in the league. Even with Miguel Sano and Eddie Rosario graduating to the majors, this collection of players has a crazy diverse mix of floor and upside, polish and potential, offense and pitching… there aren’t many weaknesses you could find within it. The worst thing you could say is they don’t have many power bats in their upper minors, but the addition of Byung-ho Park and the rebound of Byron Buxton will limit issues stemming from a lack of immediate offensive help.

There are a few surprises here that you should notice. One is the inclusion of Park to this list, despite having played professionally in Korea. He’s still a relatively unknown quantity, and obviously he hasn’t exhausted his rookie eligibility, so here he is! If you disagree with the decision to include him, close your eyes and scroll past it, or enjoy the “free” content.

One high rank and one snub may bother some readers. LaMonte Wade had a nice half-season debut after being a relatively unknown college pick out of Maryland, but it came against Rookie-ball competition, where college players are supposed to do well. I like enough of what he brings to the table offensively and defensively to think he’s more than just a guy who was placed too low to start his career. Adam Brett Walker sits at the end of the 40+ FV group here, which was kind of a stretch if you take the likely future 35 hit tool grade literally. I just don’t see him making enough contact for his power to work, but I do recognize he could have a future as a platoon or bench bat with some improvements.

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Other clubs: Angels, Astros, Braves, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Indians, Orioles, Reds, Red Sox, Rockies, Royals, Tigers, White Sox.

To start off, a brief programming note: I’m going out of alphabetical order here, as inside information trickles in at different rates. I’ll be jumping around to different teams as soon as I get a suitable amount of corroborating sources for each.

With regard to the Marlins, specifically, they don’t have a ton of impact offense waiting in the wings, but there is a plethora of pitching reinforcements — mostly in terms of depth but some with high ceilings — at all levels of the minors. It’s interesting to think about what this group will do in the next few years, having enough potential to turn out a number of surprise contributors but not enough blue-chippers to rank highly among the league’s best farm systems.

Tyler Kolek has struggled a bit as a professional, but his talent makes him the best prospect in the organization. It seems I’m the high guy on Chris Paddack, but his placement only sticks out here because of the lack of certainty among other prospects around him. There aren’t a ton of other surprises elswhere, with a reasonable argument to be made about anyone outside the top-four or -five guys to either be in the top 10 or at the bottom of the list.

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A cornucopia of promising young hitters lost their rookie eligibility over the course of the 2015 season. Carlos Correa, Kris Bryant, Francisco Lindor and Kyle Schwarber are just a few of the most notable names. Each of them were consensus top prospects, and each looks primed to have an excellent big league career.

However, there was another youngster who eschewed his rookie eligibility with much less fanfare, yet whose future may be nearly as bright — at least according to the stats. As you probably deduced from the title of this piece, that player is Mets second baseman Dilson Herrera. Herrera’s minor league performance yields a KATOH forecast of 10.1 WAR over the next six years. Were he still prospect eligible, he would have landed 12th on KATOH’s top 100.

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A month ago, I put out the most recent version of KATOH’s top-100 prospect list. The top of the list looked like this:

1. JP Crawford
2. Jose Peraza
3. Orlando Arcia
4. Corey Seager
5. Ozhaino Albies
6. Julio Urias
7. Max Kepler
8. Ruddy Giron

Seven of those eight players are consensus top prospects. Baseball Prospectus and Baseball America ranked each of the first seven in their top 100s this winter, while six of those seven — excluding Peraza — cracked Keith Law’s list. Crawford, Arcia, Seager, Albies and Urias didn’t just make those lists, but ranked very close to the top. And then, ranked eighth overall, is a prospect excluded from all the industry’s most notable top-100 lists: Ruddy Giron.

Who?

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Flashback to February of 2006. Lindsay Lohan has never been to jail, Steve Irwin’s alive and well, and we still have three years of Bieber-free living to look forward to. More importantly, though, Baseball America has just put out its annual top 100 prospect list.

Now that a decade’s passed, and we know how each of these players turned out, let’s look back at some of these players’ prospect years. Perhaps there are lessons to be learned — statistically or otherwise — from their case studies that might be useful in evaluating today’s prospects. Keep in mind that these players are all just anecdotes. They represent merely a few data points among thousands, and therefore shouldn’t be used to draw any sweeping conclusions. But still: real-world examples are always fun, and names and faces are a great way to bring macro-level trends to life.

Below each name, you’ll see three WAR figures. The first is that player’s historical KATOH forecast — that is, what KATOH would have projected given the relevant prospect’s minor-league numbers. The second was calculated using the formula derived by Jeff Zimmerman in this year’s Hardball Times Annual applied to each player’s 2006 BA ranking. The third is that player’s actual (positive) WAR total throughout the period of time forecasted by KATOH. (So for players 22 and younger, that’s thru age-28. For players 23 and over, it’s the first six years.)

Essentially, you have KATOH’s projection, BA’s projection, and what actually happened. I tried to glean some sort of lesson from each of these case studies, even if the lesson wasn’t particularly ground-breaking.

1. Delmon Young, OF (Profile)

KATOH: 13.9 WAR
BA: 20.3 WAR
Actual: 3.6 WAR

Just like everyone else, KATOH was all in in Delmon. It was kind of hard not to be. Young hit .322/.388/.538 as an 18-year-old in A-Ball, and then slashed .315/.354/.527 between Double-A and Triple-A. And he stole bases, too. He had it all, or at least it looked like he did.

His one flaw was his plate discipline. Both his strikeout and walk numbers left a little to be desired, but dwelling on those numbers feels like nitpicking. His 7% walk rate was certainly acceptable, and his 19% strikeout rate wasn’t terribly concerning (even considering that 19% then might be equivalent to 22% now). When a player is so good at everything else, you can let things like that slide. You kind of have to, or else you’d be down on nearly every prospect.

As you know, Delmon never panned out. The plate discipline was the biggest culprit — although his weight problems certainly didn’t help, either. As of this writing, Young is a 30-year-old who’s been without a team for the better part of the last year. He was a replacement-level player or worse for most of the last decade.

Lesson
I guess the takeaway is to be wary of hitters who have great tools and minor-league numbers, but also possess an unrefined approach at the plate. Although, I’d be lying if I said I could have seen this coming. The strikeout rate was a warning sign, but the truth is that 19-year-old Delmon Young gave us little warning that we were in for a decade of replacement-level play. More often than not, players as talented as Young make the necessary adjustments. Sometimes they don’t.

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Previous editions: Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati  / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City.

Earlier this week, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. In this companion piece, I look at that same LA farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. The Angels have the second worst farm system according to KATOH, edging out only the Marlins.

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Other clubs: Astros, Braves, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Indians, Orioles, Reds, Red Sox, Rockies, Royals, Tigers, White Sox.

Let’s get this out of the way up front: this is not a high-potential system. Joe Gatto sits at the top of these rankings because someone had to. That’s not meant to demean Gatto’s abilities, or anyone else’s in the Angels’ minor league pool, but it’s just a product of owner Arte Moreno’s and upper management’s decisions the last five years. Most of the top talent has been included in trades to bring in less volatile assets at the big league level. A lot of early picks have been given up to sign present-value free agents, and the draft philosophy has been mostly focused on safety rather than upside.

That said, the system isn’t designed terribly to the end of supplementing their strategy for the parent club. They get their stars from outside the organization, and they will be able to fill in the gaps with a lot of role players, upside bench bats and decent pitching depth that this group should be able to provide. So while, in a vacuum, the system may seem like a disappointment, it just puts a little more pressure on the front office to make sound major league signings and hold them over for a few acquisition seasons. Management deserves credit for bringing in some projectable talent in the last couple drafts, with many of them figuring to restock the upper levels of the minor leagues in due time.

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Previous editions: Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati  / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston.

Yesterday, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the Kansas City Royals. In this companion piece, I look at that same Kansas City farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. The Royals have the 20th-best farm system according to KATOH.

There’s way more to prospect evaluation than just the stats, so if you haven’t already, I highly recommend you read Dan’s piece in addition to this one. KATOH has no idea how hard a pitcher throws, how good a hitter’s bat speed is, or what a player’s makeup is like. So it’s liable to miss big on players whose tools don’t line up with their performances. However, when paired with more scouting-based analyses, KATOH’s objectivity can be useful in identifying talented players who might be overlooked by the industry consensus or highly-touted prospects who might be over-hyped.

Below, I’ve grouped prospects into three groups: those who are forecast for two or more wins through their first six major-league seasons, those who receive a projection between 1.0 and 2.0 WAR though their first six seasons, and then any residual players who received Future Value (FV) grades of 45 or higher from Dan. Note that I generated forecasts only for players who accrued at least 200 plate appearances or batters faced last season. Also note that the projections for players over a relatively small sample are less reliable, especially when those samples came in the low minors.

1. Cheslor Cuthbert, 3B (Profile)

KATOH Projection: 4.1 WAR
Dan’s Grade: 40+ FV

Cuthbert hit .277/.339/.429 as a 22-year-old in Triple-A last year, which earned him a late-season cameo with Kansas City. Cuthbert likely won’t be a star, but he makes a lot of contact, plays a semi-premium defensive position and is young enough that he still has time to improve. Statistically, he looks like a future everyday player, and those don’t grow on trees.

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Other clubs: Astros, Braves, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Indians, Orioles, Reds, Red Sox, Rockies, Tigers, White Sox.

The Royals’ farm system has taken a lot of hits in the past couple years as the organization sought to augment the parent club with pieces for a pair of postseason runs. Though there’s a lack of sure-fire impact talent, they have a nice group of prospects who possess the floor of a nice complementary player and reasonable upside. At the end of writing this list, I came away more impressed with their minor league players than I thought I would. There’s a lot to like on the pitching side in particular, though they have a lot of bats who could be excellent additions to their big league lineup. Overall, you can see the influence their big league philosophy has on the types of players they target, with a lot of solid defensive talents who possess good speed.

Some surprises on the list include keeping Kyle Zimmer at the top. The reports I’ve heard give Zimmer a great chance at getting a full, healthy season in this year, and his potential as a frontline starter hasn’t gone away. Raul Adalberto Mondesi slips into the 45+ FV group for me because I want to see him turn his tools into in-game production before totally buying in, but the potential there is as good as anyone in the system. I project Foster Griffin and Ryan O’Hearn higher than most, as I like a lot of what they both bring to the table, though Griffin is much more unproven at this stage.

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