Below are the updated summer top-10 prospect lists for the orgs in the National League East. I have notes beneath the top 10s explaining why some of these prospects have moved up or down. For detailed scouting information on individual players, check out the player’s profile page which may include tool grades and/or links to Daily Prospect Notes posts in which they’ve appeared this season. For detailed info on players drafted or signed this year, check out our sortable boards.

Atlanta Braves (Preseason List)

1. Ronald Acuna, CF
2. Ozzie Albies. 2B
3. Kyle Wright, RHP
4. Luiz Gohara, LHP
5. Kolby Allard, LHP
6. Kevin Maitan, SS
7. Ian Anderson, RHP
8. Mike Soroka, RHP
9. Joey Wentz, LHP
10. Cristian Pache, CF

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With Jay Bruce on his way to Cleveland, the Mets have called up Dominic Smith to play first base for the remainder of the year. The Mets took Smith with the 11th overall pick out of high school back in 2013. He was hitting a smooth .330/.386/.519 at Triple-A this year, although those numbers were certainly helped by the PCL and his home ballpark in Las Vegas.

When taken in the context of his league and ballpark, Smith’s .188 ISO isn’t all that impressive. And while he’s hit for a high average, it hasn’t been due to his making a lot of contact as evidenced by his 17% strikeout rate. Instead, he’s gotten there by way of a .380 BABIP. In sum, Smith is a first baseman with unremarkable power and contact skills. That isn’t to say Smith isn’t an interesting prospect. While his 2017 performance is suspect, his 2016 numbers were much more promising. He made a lot of contact in Double-A last year while also hitting for decent power in a non-PCL environment. It’s also important to remember that Smith just turned 22, making him quite young for Triple-A. And finally, both the metrics and lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen view Smith as an above-average defensive first baseman, which takes a bit of pressure off of his bat.

My KATOH system pegs Smith for 6.0 WAR over his first six seasons by the stats-only method and 5.6 WAR by KATOH+, which incorporates his No. 50 rank on Baseball America’s midseason list. Those marks place him 52nd and 68th, respectively, among prospects.

To put some faces to Smith’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps. I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Smith’s 2017 performance and every season since 1991. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues. Please note that the Mahalanobis analysis is separate from KATOH. KATOH relies on macro-level trends, rather than comps. The fates of a few statistically similar players shouldn’t be used to draw sweeping conclusions about a prospect’s future. For this reason, I recommend using a player’s KATOH forecast to assess his future potential. The comps give us some interesting names that sometimes feel spot-on, but they’re mostly just there for fun.

Smith is a good prospect, but it isn’t entirely clear that he’s ready for the show just yet. Despite his gaudy stat line, his performance has been more good than great after accounting for his environment. Steamer sees him as a 89 wRC+ hitter right now, which is awfully light for a first baseman. But seeing how the Mets aren’t competing this year, they have little to lose by giving Smith 50 games to show what he can do.

It was an eventful 24 hours for the Cleveland Indians outfield. On Tuesday, left fielder Michael Brantley sprained his ankle in a game against the Colorado Rockies, so Wednesday, the team put him on the disabled list and promptly traded for his replacement, Jay Bruce.

Because Bruce cleared waivers last week, the transaction was fairly straightforward. The Mets already knew they weren’t going to get much for him, as every team in baseball passed on taking on the remaining $4 million of his contract. So when Cleveland suddenly needed an outfielder, it represented a chance for the Mets to at least save some money while also freeing up playing time for Dominic Smith at first base. In exchange for assuming responsibility for the remainder of Bruce’s contract this year, Cleveland surrendered just RHP Ryder Ryan, a player so notable that this is the first time his name has ever been mentioned on the site.

Here’s what you need to know about Ryan: he was a 30th-round pick in the 2016 draft and is pitching in relief in A-ball as a 22-year-old. This trade isn’t exactly like the Indians claiming Bruce on waivers and the Mets just letting him go, but it’s basically that.

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Joey Votto hasn’t made a West Coast swing recently so we don’t have original words to annotate here, but he did say some interesting things to Zach Buchanan at The Cincinnati Enquirer this week, interesting particularly because he said that “This has been documented, so this is not anecdotal here,” and that sort of statement is like catnip around here. Let’s provide the documentation.

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Kaz Matsui’s big-league career was fairly unremarkable. From 2004-2010, he logged a .701 OPS, and compiled 5.4 WAR, playing second base and shortstop for the New York Mets, Colorado Rockies, and Houston Astros. His best season came in 2007, when he was the starting second baseman on the “Rocktober” Rockies.

That season, he was worth 2.7 WAR, and formed an incredible double-play combination with a rookie across the second-base bag by the name of Troy Tulowitzki. While Matsui was never much of a hitter in MLB — NPB was another story — no self-respecting Rockies fan will ever forget his Game 2 performance in the 2007 NLDS, when he came a single shy of the cycle; his fourth-inning home run was the biggest play of that game, and kept the Rockies’ famous run chugging along.

Matsui’s seven American seasons were bookended by stints in his homeland, where he’s starred for the Seibu Lions (1995-2003) and Rakuten Golden Eagles (2011-2017). Yes, Matsui — now 41 years old — is still active.

Darrin Jackson knew him when he was just breaking into NPB. The Chicago White Sox broadcaster — at the time a veteran of nine MLB seasons — spent 1995 and 1996 in Japan, as Matsui’s teammate. To say he was impressed with the switch-hitting infielder’s raw talent would be an understatement.

I recently asked Jackson if he could share his memories of Matsui. Here is what he had to say.

…

Darrin Jackson: “I can tell you a couple of things about a young Kaz Matsui. First of all, he was 19 years old when I got there. He had an unbelievable arm. He was also just learning how to switch-hit. He’d only batted right-handed, and they were teaching him how to bat left-handed.

“Every day, for his training, the coaches would be out there by the mound with a basket of balls. They put padding on his right side — his legs, his hips, his shoulder. They would wrap him up, and he’d stand there in the left-hander’s batter’s box. They’d throw balls at him, literally at him, and have him turn into them, turn into them, turn into them. They were getting him used to having balls come at him — seeing the balls that way, and not flying open. They put padding on him to teach him how to stay on the ball, hitting left-handed. I thought that was amazing. And there was more. Read the rest of this entry »

Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Ike Davis, LHP, Los Angeles NL (Profile)
Level: Rookie AZL   Age: 30   Org Rank: He’s 30   Top 100: It’s Ike Davis, guys.
Line: 1 IP, 3 K, 0 H, 0 BB

Notes
He’s not a prospect, but Davis was 88-92 last night and struck out the side in a perfect inning. Davis was a two-way player in college at Arizona State and last pitched as a pro in 2015, during which he made two appearances for Oakland. The Dodgers have frequently tried reclamation projects like this. They moved Stetson Allie — who looks like the pizza-eating stoner son of the cop from Stranger Things — back to the mound this year (he’s only thrown two innings but was up to 99 in the one that I saw) and tried Jordan Schafer as a pinch-running LOOGY. Eventually, one of these laboratory experiments will work out, if only for a brief while.

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The Mets have called up uber-prospect Amed Rosario to take over at shortstop. Rosario his more than earned this opportunity through his performance in the minors. Despite spending just two months at Double-A, the Mets started Rosario at Triple-A this year, and he rose to the challenge by hitting .328/.367/.466.

Rosario’s offensive performance has been impressive, but it’s less impressive after accounting for his environment. He’s played in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League, with half of his games coming in the hitter-friendly Las Vegas ballpark. Still, his 16% strikeout rate coupled with his speed (19 steals, tied for third in the PCL) and propensity for hitting doubles and triples (his seven triples are tied for eighth in the PCL) is encouraging.

Rosario’s hitting isn’t what makes him a stud prospect, however. More impressive than his offensive numbers is that he’s produced them while playing shortstop as a 21-year-old. A shortstop does not need to hit all that much to be a useful big leaguer — the average shortstop has hit .257/.309/.402 (85 wRC+) this year — so any sign of offensive life from a shortstop prospect is encouraging. And since he’s only 21, there’s a very good chance that he will grow as a hitter as he matures. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is a ranking of the prospects traded this month, tiered by our Future Value scale. A reminder that there’s lots of room for argument as to how these players line up, especially within the same FV tier. If you need further explanation about FV, bang it here and here. Full writeups of the prospects are linked next to their names. If the player didn’t receive an entire post, I’ve got a brief scouting report included below. Enjoy.
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Evaluating relievers is difficult given their small sample of work in any given year and their volatility from year to year. But, given the fact that the most active sector of the trade deadline ended up being relievers, it makes sense to put them all in one place and wonder who got the best one. Might there be a surprising answer since the Padres ended up holding Brad Hand’s production on their roster?

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Deadline day kicked off with the Red Sox prying Addison Reed away from the Mets. Below is analysis of the prospects sent to New York in the trade.

Red Sox get

• Addison Reed

Mets get

• RHP Gerson Bautista
• RHP Jamie Callahan
• RHP Stephen Nogosek

All three of the prospects acquired by New York project as relievers. The 22-year-old Callahan and his deceptive, over-the-top arm action had a dominant, walk-less month at Double-A to start the year before a promotion to Triple-A Pawtucket. Since arriving in Rhode Island, he has since struggled a bit with command. He has struck out 36 hitters in 29 innings at Triple-A, but has walked 13. He sits 94-97 and has a short, fringey slider in the 87-90 mph range, and a below-average change-up. Both secondaries project to average and Callahan projects in a middle relief role.

Bautista, a 22-year-old Dominican, is the most explosive of the three, sitting 95-99 mph and touching 100 with his fastball. He was signed back in April of 2013 at age 18 and then missed time that year due to a positive PED test. The following year, Bautista’s career began at age 19 in the Dominican Summer League and he has, more or less, been behind the developmental eight-ball since then. He owns a 5.16 ERA at High-A, largely because of wildness and ineffective secondary offerings — his slider flashes above average, but is mostly fringey, and the change-up is below average. But his arm strength is enticing.

Nogosek was a 2016 sixth rounder out of Oregon. He began his first full pro season as Low-A Greenville’s closer and dominated there until late June, when he was promoted to High-A Salem. Nogosek’s pitching regimen started to include multi-inning outings shortly before the trade. He struck out 18 hitters in 17.2 innings with Salem, walking 10. The righty sits 90-95 mph and will flash a plus slider. He pitches aggressively and projects to have average command.

Of the three, Bautista has the highest upside because he has the best arm. If he ever tightens up his slider he could be a set-up man. Callahan is, obviously, the closest to yielding major league value. Nogosek has the best secondary pitch of the group and the best command projection, too, and is probably the most stable long-term bet of the three, though his lower arm slot might cause platoon issues at upper levels and limit his role.