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 »

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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 »

Over the weekend, I saw two New York-Penn League games. The first was Friday night’s matchup between the Lowell Spinners and the Staten Island Yankees; the second was Sunday afternoon’s matchup between the Tri-City Valley Cats and the Brooklyn Cyclones. Below are some notes about players from each game.

Lowell Spinners (BOS)

Noah Song, RHP, Top 100 Rank: N/A, Org Rank: 12

Song graduated from the Naval Academy this past spring with uncertainty surrounding his required military service time, which is the main reason why he wasn’t taken until the fourth round of the 2019 draft as a senior. As of this writing, Song must serve two years of active duty before being eligible to petition to serve the remainder of his time as a reservist. In late June, President Trump signed a memorandum ordering the Pentagon to develop a policy similar to the one in effect prior to 2017 that allowed Griffin Jax to pitch as part of the World Class Athlete Program and could permit athletes like Song to defer their service obligation due to what was described as a “short window of time” to compete. Though no one is certain if or how this proposal will be actioned, if it is, it looks like the Red Sox got a steal.

Song had a record-setting senior season at Navy, leading the nation in strikeouts with 161 in 94 innings pitched. He’s a lean 6-foot-4, with a simple, rhythmic, on-line delivery. He has a short arm action that sees him pinch his arm up near his ear a bit, but it is loose and he repeats it well. His fastball worked 94-97 mph on Friday with good life, showing ride through the zone and some tail. It comes out of the hand well and looks like it might play slightly above its velocity through the zone. He threw two different breaking balls. The slider was too slow, working in the low-to-mid 80s, and had horizontal tilt with proper slider action, but was a short breaker that looked a bit like a cutter at times. It touched average and, if thrown harder consistently, can sit there. He threw just one curveball and it was a 74 mph roundhouse type that was below average, though sources have indicated that they’ve seen better ones. He threw a handful of fading changeups against left-handed hitters that were average as well. Read the rest of this entry »

We have a sizable collection of players to talk about this week because the two of us have been busy wrapping up our summer looks at the 2020 Draft class over the last couple weeks. This equates to every prospect added to or moved on THE BOARD since the Trade Deadline.

Top 100 Changes
We had two players enter the 50 FV tier in Diamondbacks SS Geraldo Perdomo and Padres C Luis Campusano. Perdomo is in the “Advanced Baseball Skills” player bucket with players like Vidal Brujan, Brayan Rocchio and Xavier Edwards. He’s added visible power since first arriving in the States and had as many walks as strikeouts at Low-A before he was promoted to the Cal League, which has been Campusano’s stomping ground all summer. He’s still not a great catcher but he does have an impact arm, big power, and he’s a good enough athlete that we’re optimistic he’ll both catch and make the necessary adjustments to get to his power in games down the line.

We also moved a D-back and a Padre down in RHP Taylor Widener and 1B Tirso Ornelas. Widener has been very homer prone at Triple-A a year after leading the minors in K’s. His fastball has natural cut rather than ride and while we still like him as a rotation piece, there’s a chance he continues to be very susceptible to the long ball. Ornelas has dealt with injury and swing issues.

On Aristides Aquino
Aristides Aquino was a 50 FV on the 2017 Reds list; at the time, he was a traditional right field profile with big power undermined by the strikeout issues that would eventually cause his performance to tank so badly that he became a minor league free agent. A swing change visually similar to the one Justin Turner made before his breakout (Reds hitting coach Turner Ward comes from the Dodgers) is evident here, so we’re cautiously optimistic Aquino will be a productive role player, but we don’t think he’ll keep up a star’s pace. Read the rest of this entry »

50 games into his major league career, Yordan Alvarez has a 183 wRC+ and has been worth 2.3 WAR. Let’s take a look at what we might be able to reasonably expect from the 22-year-old slugger moving forward. Here is how Alvarez compares to the rest of the league:

When you hit the ball hard and at a good launch angle often, and draw walks often, good things generally happen in the batter’s box. This has been true for Alvarez thus far. According to Statcast’s Erdős number calculations, among the most similar hitters to Alvarez this year are Christian Yelich, Pete Alonso, and Jorge Soler.

Of course, most of the hitters on the major league leaderboards are several years older than Alvarez. At just 22-years-old, he is currently sixth in the major leagues in barrels per plate appearance, behind such hitters as Mike Trout and Joey Gallo, and ahead of hitters like Yelich and Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger. In barrels per batted ball event, he is ninth. No one above him on either list is his age. Alvarez’s xwOBA (.420) is sixth in baseball and also better than two other young bat-first prospects with above average batted ball profiles. Juan Soto, last year’s offensive wunderkind, currently sits at .410, while Keston Hiura is at .365. Soto, who is younger than Alvarez, doesn’t hit the ball quite as hard or do so as often as Alvarez, but he draws more walks. Hiura, who about 10 months older, hits the ball harder more often, but also draws fewer walks and swings and misses more. Read the rest of this entry »

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C.J. Chatham doesn’t fit the stereotype of the modern-day hitter. At a time when driving balls in the air is all the rage, the 24-year-old Red Sox prospect channels Wee Willie Keeler. Contact-oriented, Chatham believes in hitting ‘em where they ain’t.

“When they shift me, I don’t care where the pitch is; I’m going to go the other way and get a hit,” Chatham told me early in the season. “I might even break my bat, but I’ll squeak it through the space where the second baseman isn’t standing. A lot of my hits are through the infield that way. That’s kind of what I do.”

The approach has its merits. Chatham was leading the Double-A Eastern League in batting average (insert large grain of salt here) when he was promoted to Triple-A Pawtucket yesterday. His slash line was .297/.332/.401; last year, those numbers were .314/.355/.384 in High-A. Pair those lines with a solid glove at the shortstop position, and the lack of power — 12 home runs in 1,015 professional plate appearances — can largely be overlooked. Or can it?

He’s doing his best to ignore the skeptics. Read the rest of this entry »

12:23

Kiley McDaniel: There was some important content on the FG prospects social channels today   FanGraphs Prospects @FG_Prospects   One of the top prospects we’ve captured on the high speed is Kiley’s puppy Scout 7 Aug 2019

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