Below are some changes we made to The BOARD in the past week, along with our reasons for doing so. There’s more info on all the players below on The BOARD. All hail The BOARD, prostrate yourself before it and bask in its infinite wisdom and benevolence and dynamic farm system rankings.

Note that with the trade deadline upon us, Kiley and I have been focused on seeing and making calls about players from contenders’ systems, since those are the teams most likely to move prospects in the coming days.

Remember these changes are announced as they happen by our Twitter account, @FG_Prospects.

Moved Up

Ryan Jeffers, C, Minnesota Twins:
After amateur scouts were skeptical about Jeffers’ ability to catch long-term, he has turned into a good receiver. He’s an offseason Top 100 candidate.

Bryan Mata, RHP, Boston Red Sox:
Once upon a time, Mata and Cubs righty Jose Albertos were almost identical prospects. Both had been teenagers who had unusually advanced stuff, including swing-and-miss changeups, but concerning control. For a stretch, each of them had stock-altering strike-throwing regressions, from which Mata has emerged and appears beyond, while Albertos’ season is grounded.

Alexander Vargas, SS, New York Yankees:
Vargas had $3 million on the table from Cincinnati but rather than wait until 2019 to sign the deal like the Reds needed him to, he got $2.5 million from the Yankees last year. It’s looking like quite the coup now. Vargas, still 17, was one of a handful of Yankees DSL prospects brought up to the GCL after very few games. He’s a projectable, athletic, switch-hitting shortstop with surprising power for someone his size and age. We moved him up just shy of the FVs of the late first round high school shortstops from this year’s draft. Read the rest of this entry »

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Kiley McDaniel: video from Luis Patino from the Futures Game:   FanGraphs Prospects @FG_Prospects   Padres RHP Luis Patino is our 10th-ranked pitcher and 31st-ranked prospect in the minor leagues. Here’s our footage from the Futures Game when he sat 96-99 mph w/cut, mixing in a plus slider, at least an average changeup and starter traits, despite his youth (19 y/o) & loud stuff 24 Jul 2019

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In November of last year, Craig Edwards published new research on how to value prospects by Future Value tier. We’ve used that research in conjunction with our prospect evaluations to assess the value of all 30 teams’ farm systems and arrive at our farm system rankings. Starting today, those rankings and valuations are available to view on The BOARD in the Farm Ranking tab. These rankings will automatically update as we move prospects between Future Value tiers, prospects change systems following a trade, or prospects graduate and lose prospect eligibility.

Within that tab, you’ll find:

• A team’s rank
• The value of a team’s system
• A count of how many prospects a team has on THE BOARD
• The average dollar value per player in a given system

We also break down how many pitching and position player prospects each team has within each Future Value tier. You can also sort on each batter and pitcher column within a given tier. Two-way prospects are split (0.5/0.5) between the batter and pitcher tiers for valuation purposes, as you can see below.

To navigate to the players contained within a particular team’s FV tier, just click on the number in the team’s row within that tier.

You’ll be automatically directed to the relevant part of THE BOARD — in this instance, Minnesota’s 13 hitting prospects with a 40 FV.

There’s some wiggle room in this otherwise fairly objective method of rankings farm systems, as two organizations with the same monetary total could end up being separated by which club has the higher per-prospect average. As we’ve discussed in the Trade Value Series and other places, all things being equal, teams would prefer that their WAR accumulate in as tight a time frame — and be concentrated in as few players — as possible. We don’t yet have an empirical way to express this, so for the time being, let’s say the the bonus you can give a system for concentration maxes out at about 10%.

We have a meaty roadmap of features we’d like add to the farm system rankings (more crosstab metadata on the makeup of a farm system, historical values, etc.), along with new columns and features we plan to add to THE BOARD before next season begins. Let us know what’s on your wishlist of new features to added by the wizard Sean Dolinar and the dark overlord David Appelman in the comments.

Read the rest of this entry »

Below are some changes we made to The BOARD in the past week, with our reasons for doing so. All hail the BOARD.

Moved Up

Ronny Mauricio, SS, New York Mets:
We got some immediate feedback on Monday’s sweeping update, which included more industry interest in Mauricio. The average major league swinging strike rate is 11%. Mauricio has a 12% swinging strike rate, and is a switch-hitting, 6-foot-4 teenager facing full-season pitching. It’s common for lanky teenagers to struggle with contact as they grow into their frames, but Mauricio hasn’t had that issue so far.

Oneil Cruz, SS, Pittsburgh Pirates:
One of us was sent Cruz’s minor league exit velocities and they’re shockingly close to what Yordan Alvarez’s have been in the big leagues. Of course, there remains great uncertainty about where Cruz will end up on defense, and hitters this size (Cruz is listed at 6-foot-7) are swing and miss risks, but this is a freakish, elite power-hitting talent.

Marco Luciano, SS, San Francisco Giants:
This guy has No. 1 overall prospect potential as a shortstop with 70 or better raw power. He belongs up near Bobby Witt, who is older but might also be a plus shortstop while we’re still not sure if Luciano will stay there.

George Valera, OF, Cleveland Indians:
Valera is torching the Penn League at 18 and a half years old, and we’re not sure any high school hitter in this year’s draft class would be able to do it. His defensive instincts give him a shot to stay in center field despite middling raw speed, and his swing should allow him to get to all of his raw power, so it becomes less important that his body is projectable. He would have been fifth on our 2019 draft board were he playing at a high school somewhere in the U.S., so he’s now slotted in the between JJ Bleday and C.J. Abrams on our overall list. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

We all know factors beyond talent — be it contract length or value, a team’s competitive window, or a player’s social fit within the org, among others — have an impact on how trades balance and are agreed upon. Just being mindful that these factors exist, and that we’re not always privy to them, can help us to square what we perceive to be a context-free gap in the talents exchanged. But can we bridge what is, based on our evaluations, a sizable gap in this weekend’s Rangers and Rays prospect-for-prospect trade?

Rangers get:

2B Nick Solak, 50 FV, No. 93 overall prospect

Rays get:

RHP Peter Fairbanks, 40 FV

This deal looks very good for Texas in a vacuum based on our evaluations. Kiley and I both think Solak, who is a career .290/.382/.453 hitter in the minors and has raked since his freshman year at Louisville, is going to be an average everyday second baseman, while Fairbanks is a 25-year-old reliever who has had two Tommy John surgeries, a demographic we rarely rank at all. Read the rest of this entry »

I spent the July 4th weekend in Cape Cod this year, which is far from the worst place to be for that holiday. Beyond the pleasant weather and plentiful beaches there was, of course, lots of baseball being played in the prestigious Cape Code League. Below are some of my observations of a few of the college players I saw.

Harwich Mariners
Daniel Cabrera, OF, LSU

Cabrera opened a lot of eyes as a freshman in Baton Rouge, hitting .315/.405/.525 with 36 strikeouts against 34 walks in 63 games. He followed up with a sophomore campaign that saw him hit 12 home runs but also decrease his walks (24) and increase his strikeouts (54) in 59 games. He steps into this 2019 Cape Cod League campaign ranked 21st on THE BOARD for the 2020 draft.

Cabrera has a smooth and polished left-handed swing with a good path to the ball. He gets into his back hip well and transfers weight quickly, and has a handsy, athletic-looking swing. In my look, he showed solid average bat speed and an aggressive, pull-oriented approach geared for power. Cabrera’s aggressiveness was a negative in this look – he expanded the zone on several occasions against pitchers with below average fastballs – enough so that I think there’s a chance it holds him back from reaching his peak potential hit tool. A swing like Cabrera’s could project as one of an above average hitter, but I think he settles more in the 45-grade hit range with a propensity to swing and miss. However, the power should play at least average and I would be comfortable projecting more. It is likely more 55-grade power than anything above it, but the ball jumps off his bat and his hands’ quickness should allow him to jump on hittable pitches and drive them more often than not. Read the rest of this entry »

The two of us recorded a podcast during which we combed through our Futures Game notes. This announced update to THE BOARD is that discussion made real on the site. All of the guys with new FVs are noted below, along with brief notes on why their FVs changed. If a player moved within their FV tier, there is a stock up or stock down arrow on THE BOARD. The updates noted here don’t include players who have been added to our rankings and went from 35 FV to 35+ FV, since that happens pretty often. We’re also fully updated to reflect recent trades. Lastly, if you’d like to see who is set to graduate from the list next, check the right sidebar on the FG Prospects homepage. And remember to follow @FG_prospects on Twitter for live BOARD updates.

Moved Up

Jo Adell, CF, Angels and Bo Bichette, INF, Toronto Blue Jays (60 FV to 65 FV):
Both move up due to increased confidence that they’ll be stars, with the ZiPS updates Kiley received for the Trade Value Series also helping. Adell seems fully recovered from a scary ankle and hamstring injury suffered during spring training, and he’s hitting .376/.442/.673 as a 20-year-old at Double-A. Bichette has a 116 wRC+ as a 21-year-old at Triple-A and Toronto seems inclined to leave him at shortstop.

Yordan Alvarez, DH, Astros (50 FV to 55 FV):
Alvarez is generating huge power with ease and comfort. Houston’s handling of his playing time while the team was in Colorado is an indication that he’ll offer no defensive value while his skillset is that of an older player, but his offensive tools are a cut above some of this year’s more productive DHs.

Drew Waters, CF, Braves (50 FV to 55 FV):
Waters continues to rake as a young-for-the-league, up-the-middle prospect, and while the .459 BABIP isn’t sustainable, scouts are split on him vs. Cristian Pache long-term, so they’re a little closer on our list now.

Nate Pearson, RHP, Blue Jays (50 FV to 55 FV):
Pearson belongs in the same FV tier as Sixto Sanchez as they each have monster stuff, questionable builds, and no track record of pitching for a full season. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »