September call-ups, both high-profile and totally innocuous, have been trickling in over the transaction wire for the last several days. As always, there are some that will have real impact on the playoff race, some that are interesting for the purposes of player evaluation, such your usual spare lefty reliever and catcher (by far the most common types of September additions), and some teams with no new names at all. Below I’ve compiled notes on every player brought up by National League teams since the start of the month, no matter how inconsequential, and I slip some rehabbers and August 31st acquisitions in here, too. It’s a primer for you to get (re)acquainted with players who might impact the playoff race or seasons to come.

Contenders’ Reinforcements

Atlanta Braves — INF Johan Camargo, RHP Chad Sobotka, RHP Jeremy Walker, LHP A.J. Minter, RHP Bryse Wilson

Camargo didn’t hit with the big club at all this year, not even in late July or all of August when he was handed pretty regular at-bats filling in for an injured Dansby Swanson. But he hit .483 over the few weeks he was down in Gwinnett after Swanson returned and Camargo was optioned. He’ll be a versatile, switch-hitting bench piece for the stretch run, and he projects as that sort of premium bench player long-term.

Sobotka and Walker were optioned to make room for the multiple relievers Atlanta acquired at the deadline. Sobotka, who sits 94-98 with life and has a plus, 2900-rpm slider, posted a 16-to-2 strikeout to walk ratio at Triple-A since being sent down. You may see him pitching big innings this month. Walker has been throwing 25-pitch, 2-inning outings with three days of rest in between. He may be on mop-up or long relief duty. Read the rest of this entry »

At the end of June 2017, observers could have seen Gavin Lux’s performance as a 19-year-old in the Midwest League and been underwhelmed. Despite a solid 11.1% walk rate and 18.7% strikeout rate, the 2016 first-round pick was hitting .211/.304/.303. The skepticism that often surrounds high school position players from northern states followed Lux through his amateur and early professional days, and the Kenosha, Wisconsin native did little to allay those concerns.

Meanwhile, believers took a glass-half-full view of his performance at that point. A cold-weather player who shows good plate discipline and bat-to-ball ability in full season ball is nothing to scoff at; a middle infielder with athleticism and feel to play has a high floor. And the makeup for which Lux was lauded was thought to be a potential developmental separator, as the shortstop continued to gain strength and make swing tweaks.

Fast forward to the present day, a bit more than two years later, and the Dodgers have called up the 21-year-old, who notched his first two major league hits in his debut on Monday. After recovering in the last two months of 2017 to hit .244/.331/.362 with 27 stolen bases in the Midwest League, Lux turned on the burners. In 2018, he torched the Cal League through 88 games, hitting .324/.396/.520 with 41 extra-base hits. He made a 28-game cameo in the Texas League that year as well and continued to rake, hitting .324/.408/.495. Read the rest of this entry »

I attended more games here in Busan, South Korea for Days Three and Four of the WBSC U-18 World Cup. These are my thoughts on some of the prospects I saw.

Theo Millas (Canada), RHP

Millas is an LSU commit. Listed at 6-foot-4, 200 pounds, he has a very good pitcher’s frame and he looks every inch of an intriguing projectable high school guy. He also recently participated in the 2019 Under Armour All-America game, along with some of the other top high school prospects who will enter the draft next year. Millas has an easy delivery with a fluid arm action. It’s not necessarily the best tempo I’ve seen, but he isn’t overly slow either. I would be interested to see if he’s willing to increase his stride length to take advantage of his height. There’s a little stiffness in his front leg when he lands, but it’s not a huge concern for me. Against Korea on September 1, however, Millas was not his best self. While his fastball was advertised to be in the low-90s, he sat mostly in the 86-88 mph range. The pitch showed some late life, but Korean hitters were able to square it up for hard line drives all over the field. His curveball also seemed loopy, and Korean IF Jang Jae-Young squared it up pretty well for a hard, 2-RBI single. Based on all the accounts I’ve read of Millas, it felt like an off day for the righty, as he allowed six runs without recording an out before exiting the game. Millas looks like an arm who could benefit a lot from few years more worth of development.

Austin Hendrick (United States), OF

Hendrick is already known as one of the top prep draft prospects for 2020. He is currently rated eighth on THE BOARD. As expected, Hendrick flashed some serious tools during practice before the United States’ night match versus Japan. During batting practice, he displayed a smooth yet powerful swing that produced strong line drives all over the field. He has a short stroke and he times it with a little hitch and bat tip during his load. Such traits might be a concern for many hitting coaches, but Hendrick seemed to time it well enough to make it work. His hands were impressively quick, as he showed a plus ability to turn the barrel into the zone. As an outfielder, Hendrick displayed an easily above-average arm, if not plus.

As Eric and Kiley have noted in their report on Hendrick, “Hendrick is old for the class but evokes Cody Bellinger in frame and swing. As you can imagine, with the ultra-athletic swing comes with some swing-and-miss to go with the power.” That swing-and-miss tendency showed during the game. In his first at-bat against Japanese LHP Yuki Hayashi, Hendrick struck out swinging on three offspeed pitches. He seemed to favor driving the ball hard instead of making square contact. Hendrick ended up going 0-for-4 with four strikeouts. Despite a poor game performance, his tools displayed in batting practice and his physical talents seem to justify his high draft stock status. It will be interesting to see how his hit tool progresses coming into next year’s draft and how teams may evaluate his ability to handle pro pitching. Read the rest of this entry »

I am currently in Busan, South Korea for the 2019 WBSC U-18 World Cup, where 12 countries have teams featuring some of their best young talents. Friday, August 30 was Opening Day and, besides an occasional breeze, it was quite sunny and humid. Below are notes on a few of the notable players I saw.

Chen Po-Yu (Taiwan), RHP

The 17-year-old Chen is far from an unknown at this point. According to the international prospect section of THE BOARD, he could be looking at a seven-figure signing bonus in 2020. A major league scout told me that, at this moment, Chen is the most “complete package” among the pitching prospects out of Taiwan. Needless to say, a large group of major league scouts swarmed behind home plate to see Chen pitch against Panama.

Even before his start, Chen’s delivery stood out to me during his bullpen. He has an easy, fast-tempo motion that was direct to home. He finished well towards the home plate, setting himself up for good fielding position in case of a batted ball. He also showed good tempo between his pitches and rarely seemed hesitant to throw any of his pitches.

Chen’s fastball sat at around 89-91 mph throughout the game. He maintained the velocity late in the game when he broke 80-pitch mark. In general, he showed a good feel for commanding the pitch in different parts of the zone. In the second inning, he left some pitches up, which led to some hard contact. When he located his heater well, however, he was able to get called strikes or set up his secondary pitches. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

The 2019 Arizona Fall League rosters were (mostly) announced today, and we’ve created a tab on THE BOARD where you can see all the prospects headed for extra reps in the desert. These are not comprehensive Fall League rosters — you can find those on the AFL team pages — but a compilation of names of players who are already on team pages on THE BOARD. The default view of the page has players hard-ranked through the 40+ FV tier. The 40s and below are then ordered by position, with pitchers in each tier listed from most likely to least likely to start. In the 40 FV tier, everyone south of Alex Lange is already a reliever.

Many participating players, especially pitchers, have yet to be announced. As applicable prospects are added to rosters in the coming weeks, I’ll add them to the Fall League tab and tweet an update from the FanGraphs Prospects Twitter account. Additionally, this tab will be live throughout the Fall League and subject to changes (new tool grades, updated scouting reports, new video, etc.) that will be relevant for this offseason’s team prospect lists. We plan on shutting down player/list updates around the time minor league playoffs are complete (which is very soon) until we begin to publish 2020 team-by-team prospect lists, but the Fall League tab will be an exception. If a player currently on the list looks appreciably different to me in the AFL, I’ll update their scouting record on that tab, and I may add players I think we’re light on as I see them. Again, updates will be posted on the FanGraphs Prospects Twitter account, and I’ll also compile those changes in a weekly rundown similar to those we ran on Fridays during the summer.

Anything you’d want to know about individual players in this year’s crop of Fall Leaguers can probably be found over on THE BOARD right now. Below are some roster highlights as well as my thoughts on who might fill out the roster ranks.

Glendale Desert Dogs
The White Sox have an unannounced outfield spot on the roster that I think may eventually be used on OF Micker Adolfo, who played rehab games in Arizona late in the summer. He’s on his way back from multiple elbow surgeries. Rehabbing double Achilles rupturee Jake Burger is age-appropriate for the Fall League, but GM Rick Hahn mentioned in July that Burger might go to instructs instead. Sox instructs runs from September 21 to October 5, so perhaps he’ll be a mid-AFL add if that goes well and they want to get him more at-bats, even just as a DH. Non-BOARD prospects to watch on this roster include Reds righties Diomar Lopez (potential reliever, up to 95) and Jordan Johnson, who briefly looked like a No. 4 or 5 starter type during his tenure with San Francisco, but has been hurt a lot since, as have Brewers lefties Nathan Kirby (Thoracic Outlet Syndrome) and Quintin Torres-Costa (Tommy John). Dodgers righty Marshall Kasowski has long posted strong strikeout rates, but the eyeball scouts think he’s on the 40-man fringe. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year, hapless hitters with premium arm strength get moved to minor league mounds. With the help of Sean Dolinar, who combed the last few years of stats to scrounge up a more comprehensive list of converts than I was otherwise able to remember off the top of my head, I assembled the list below of former position players who are now prospects of note as hurlers. This is not a comprehensive survey of every recent conversion arm in the minors. Instead, these are the pitchers I think are interesting enough to include on an offseason list in some capacity.

Conversion arms who pan out typically put it together quickly. For example, it only took Kenley Jansen about a year after he first toed an affiliate’s rubber to reach Dodger Stadium. He likely threw during 2009 Extended Spring Training, then spent the back half of the summer at Hi-A before making a Fall League appearance. He breezed through Hi- and Double-A the following year, and was in Los Angeles by late July of 2010. Jason Motte started his conversion in 2006 and got his first big league cup of coffee in September of 2008. Joe Nathan’s first pro innings came in 1997; he was first called up to the majors early in 1999. Sean Doolittle threw just 26 minor league innings before the A’s brought him up. (Conversely, Alexi Ogando and Carlos Marmol each took about three years after moving moundward to become big leaguers.)

Who in the minors might be next to have impact, big or small, on a big league pitching staff? Here are some candidates. All of the 35+ FV and above players are now on THE BOARD, if they weren’t already.
Read the rest of this entry »

As we approach the 2019 minor league season’s September epilogue, we’re making our last few changes to THE BOARD before cementing the rankings until offseason lists start rolling out. We focused this week on curating the top 100’s midsection, which resulted in us moving around about 10% of 50 FV and above players, which we’ve found to be typical each time we’ve made a concerted effort to refine the very top of the roughly 1250 pro players on THE BOARD on whom we have thoughts. Note that most of the action is taking place on the seam between the 50 and 55 FV tier, a sort of weigh station for rising potential stars, and players with issues exposed at the upper levels.

Let’s quickly touch on the handful of players in this area who have moved down from the 55 FV tier into the 50s. Recent Marlins RF acquisition Jesus Sanchez continues to have below average discipline and trouble lifting the ball consistently. Perhaps a change of scenery will prove meaningful for one or both of these traits, but they’re relevant issues for a corner outfield prospect.

We also slid Braves pitcher Kyle Wright and Pirates pitcher Mitch Keller down a bit due to our doubts about their fastballs missing bats as currently constituted, despite their respective velocities.

We also dropped some players who we consider higher probability, lower impact types — like New York’s Andres Gimenez, Washington’s Luis Garcia, Philly’s Adonis Medina, Baltimore’s Yusniel Diaz, and Cardinals catcher Andrew Knizner — down below 50 FVs who we think have a wider range of potential outcomes, and more ceiling. Their FVs didn’t change at all, but we prefer players who have more obvious growth potential due to bigger tools, more projectable frames, and other physical traits almost always present in top big leaguers. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

When A.J. Puk debuts today — and even though he has been in the bullpen since late-June, he is likely to pitch this evening against the Yankees — he’ll be the 51st player from the 2016 draft to play in the big leagues. He does so, despite missing more than a year recovering from Tommy John surgery, before every high school pitcher selected in 2016, other than Dustin May. Among 2016 draftee prospects still eligible to be on THE BOARD, Puk is ranked sixth; were I to include graduated players from that draft, he’d be seventh. Nick Senzel would slot ahead of him, but I’d still take the next half decade of Puk ahead of Pete Alonso, who I worry will have an early, precipitous decline phase. Read the rest of this entry »