On Friday the Athletics and Rays completed a four-for-two trade centered around 32-year-old lefty starter Jeffrey Springs, who heads to Northern California. The A’s also got lefty swingman Jacob Lopez, while the Rays received wild, hard-throwing righty Joe Boyle, two minor leaguers (first baseman Will Simpson and right-handed pitcher Jacob Watters), and the 36th overall pick in the 2025 draft.

Springs, who is under contract through at least 2026, had a breakout 2022 season when the Rays moved him from the bullpen to their rotation, and he amassed 3.1 WAR across 135 1/3 innings. He got hurt a few starts into 2023 and needed Tommy John surgery, which cost him the rest of 2023 and most of 2024. After he returned from a prolonged, 12-start minor league rehab period, Springs had good surface-level stats in the big leagues – 7 GS, 33 IP, 37 K, 1.36 WHIP, 3.27 ERA – but showed reduced stuff compared to his pre-TJ form. Ken Rosenthal reported that Springs was shut down in September on the advice of his surgeon.

Springs joins an Athletics team flush with exciting young hitters but badly in need of pitching, which they’ve addressed with not only this trade but the recent signing of hard-throwing veteran Luis Severino (analysis here). The trade also adds payroll to the Athletics’ ledger, which they likely must continue to expand in order to avoid a grievance from the MLB Players Association. Read the rest of this entry »

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The major league phase of the 2024 Rule 5 Draft was held Wednesday at the Winter Meetings in Dallas and concluded with 15 players being selected to join new organizations. Below are my thoughts on those players. The numbers you see in parentheses represent each team’s 40-man roster count entering the draft.

Before I get to the reports, my annual refresher on the Rule 5 Draft’s complex rules. Players who signed their first pro contract at age 18 or younger are eligible for selection after five years of minor league service if their parent club has not yet added them to the team’s 40-man roster; for players who signed at age 19 or older, the timeline is four years. Teams with the worst win/loss record from the previous season pick first, and those that select a player must not only (a) pay said player’s former club $100,000, but also (b) keep the player on their 26-man active roster throughout the entirety of the following season, with a couple of exceptions that mostly involve the injured list. If a selected player doesn’t make his new team’s active roster, he is offered back to his former team for half of the initial fee. After the player’s first year on the roster, he can be optioned back to the minor leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the fifth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Joshua Kuroda-Grauer began his professional career this past summer on the heels of a stellar junior season at Rutgers University. The 21-year-old shortstop from New Brunswick, New Jersey, was named Big Ten Player of the Year after slashing a robust .428/.492/.590 with five home runs. Moreover, he swiped 24 bases, had more walks (23) than strikeouts (18), and played well defensively. The first player selected on the second day of the amateur draft — he went 75th overall — Kuroda-Grauer is No. 12 on our recently released 2025 Athletics Top Prospects list.

His pro debut was indicative of his skillset. Over 126 plate appearances across Low-A Stockton, High-A Lansing, and briefly Triple-A Las Vegas, the right-handed-hitting middle infielder slashed .324/.421/.343 with a 123 wRC+, and just as he’d done as a Scarlet Knight, he had more free passes (12) than strikeouts (9). As our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen described in his writeup, “Kuroda-Grauer’s offensive profile is built around his advanced bat-to-ball chops…. [he] is short to the ball with average bat speed.”

Toward the end of the minor league season, Kuroda-Grauer discussed his draft experience, how he’s developed as a hitter, and the role model mindset that was ingrained in him by his two mothers.

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David Laurila: You were drafted in the third round. What were your expectations?

Kuroda-Grauer: “I was told to expect anything from the second to the fourth, so I fell kind of where I thought I’d fall. I’m just really happy and fortunate to be with the A’s organization, especially with the group of guys that came in.”

Laurila: Were the A’s a surprise, or were they a team you knew was on you?

Kuroda-Grauer: “I definitely knew they were interested. When I went out to the combine in Phoenix, I had a great meeting with them. So I wasn’t too surprised, but a crazy thing about the draft is that you can meet with however many teams, but then you get picked up by one that never really talked to you.”

Laurila: You hadn’t been drafted out of high school, correct? Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Athletics. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the fifth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday was this year’s 40-man roster deadline, the date by which players who would otherwise be eligible for the Rule 5 Draft at Winter Meetings need to be added to their club’s roster in order to be protected. In addition to a few dozen players’ big league tickets essentially being punched on this day, there is often a flurry of trade activity as teams with a surplus of rosterable players look to find teams with skimpier rosters with which to trade.

I’ve updated the scouting reports for these newly rostered players over on The Board, which you can find here. There will probably be a couple of guys from this contingent whose grades change between now and when their team’s prospect list goes up on the site, but for the most part, these evaluations are hot off the presses and will hold up all offseason. I go into much greater depth on each player in their Board scouting report than I have here. The commentary below often has more to do with a team’s roster makeup than any individual player. Read the rest of this entry »

Niko Kavadas had recently been named Boston’s Minor League Player of the Year when he was first featured here at FanGraphs in November 2022. Two years later, he’s now playing for the Los Angeles Angels, after the Red Sox traded him at this summer’s deadline as part of a five-player swap. Power and patience are his calling cards. Kavadas was slashing .281/.424/.551 with 17 home runs in Triple-A at the time he was dealt, and while he subsequently struggled after receiving his first call-up — a 77 wRC+ and 38.7% strikeout rate over 106 plate appearances — he did go deep four times.

The 26-year-old first baseman very much remains a work in progress, as evidenced by his having spent the last month-plus playing in the Arizona Fall League. And while assessing progress in an extreme hitter-friendly environment can be tricky, he nonetheless crushed the ball during his time in the desert. Kavadas was named the AFL’s Offensive Player of the Year after slashing .329/.462/.700 with 13 extra-base hits, including six home runs, over 91 plate appearances. We’ll get to why he was there in a moment.

When I caught up to Kavadas prior to a Fall League game in October, the first thing I wanted to know was how the present-day iteration compares to the hitter I’d spoken to 25 months earlier. Read the rest of this entry »