A couple of weeks into his big-league career, Rhys Hoskins is running a 159 wRC+. Steamer thought he was the Phillies’ best hitter before he even made his major-league debut, and thus far, he hasn’t done anything to make that forecast look crazy.

But, of course, we’re talking about 47 plate appearances. Any results over a 47 PA sample approach worthlessness. If we go back to the first couple of weeks of the season and look at the early leaderboards, when everyone had a comparable number of trips to the plate, we see guys like Chase Headley, David Freese, and Robbie Grossman hanging out near the top of the list. Forty-seven PAs into his 2017, Taylor Motter had a 153 wRC+; he’s run a 45 wRC+ over 188 PAs since.

It’s best to not react too strongly to any two-week stretch, no matter how good or poor it is. Our opinion of Rhys Hoskins now shouldn’t be dramatically different than it was before he was called up. But as he does some things in the majors that he also did in the minors, it’s hard not to notice some emerging characteristics that could make him a really good big-league hitter.

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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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It’s been a rough season for the Phillies, whose record is the worst in baseball and sits comfortably below .400. They’ve trotted out quite a few bad players on a regular basis, including Tommy Joseph, who’s given them four months of disappointment at first base. While Joseph was turning in a 90 wRC+ with poor defense, Rhys Hoskins was annihilating Triple-A. Finally, the Phillies are giving him a whirl at the highest level.

Prior to his call-up, Hoskins hit an insane .284/.385/.581 across 475 Triple-A plate appearances. He belted 29 homers and simultaneously struck out less than 16% of the time. This performance didn’t come out of nowhere, either, as Hoskins slashed .281/.377/.566 and blasted 38 homers last season at Double-A. Those numbers were undoubtedly helped by his home ballpark in Reading, which led many to doubt their validity. But KATOH still loved him because the power numbers were so exceptional and they came packaged with acceptable strikeout rates.

My KATOH system pegs Hoskins for 10.0 WAR over his first six seasons by the stats-only method and 9.4 WAR by KATOH+, which incorporates his No. 69 rank on Baseball America’s midseason list. Those marks place him 14th and 27th, respectively, among prospects. 

Those WAR estimates don’t tell the whole story, however, as KATOH sees some serious star potential in Hoskins, giving him a roughly 1-in-5 chance of racking up over 20 wins over the next six years. For reference, Joey Votto, Paul Goldschmidt, Adrian Gonzalez, Miguel Cabrera and Freddie Freeman were the only first baseman who crossed that threshold in the six-year span that ended in 2016.

To put some faces to Hoskins’ statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps. I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Hoskins’ 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.

Hoskins is limited to first base, which obviously puts a lot of pressure on his hitting. Even if he’s an above-average defender there, as Clay Davenport’s numbers suggest he is, the offensive bar remains extremely high. This is why KATOH sees him as a No. 20-ish prospect, even though his offensive numbers are eons better than most of the hitters ranked ahead of him. Nonetheless, hitters who pair that type of power with good contact skills are quite rare. Throw in that he also draws walks, and Hoskins looks like he could be a pretty special hitter.

Today, the Phillies will add Rhys Hoskins to their roster, bringing him to the Majors as a left fielder after failing to find a trade partner for first baseman Tommy Joseph. A few months ago, manager Pete Mackanin said the two couldn’t coexist on the same National League roster, but after trading Howie Kendrick and losing Aaron Altherr to the disabled list, the team decided it was better to give Hoskins an audition at a spot they needed help than simply bench Joseph to install Hoskins at first base.

I don’t know how the left field experiment is going to go. Based on the outfield performances of other “how bad can he be out there?” first baseman, I’m guessing this will last until Altherr returns, and then everyone will agree they don’t really want to see Hoskins running around the outfield anymore. But despite the possibility of some pretty bad outfield defense, Hoskins still belongs in the Majors, because he’s probably already the team’s best hitter.

From our depth charts, here are the projected rest of season wOBAs for the Phillies position players.

It’s not even all that close, with Hoskins 30 wOBA points ahead of the next best projected hitters. Of course, this projection is entirely based on his minor league performance, so there’s more expected variance around that mean, but it’s pretty obvious Steamer loves Rhys Hoskins. And for good reason; he walks, doesn’t strike out, and hits for power, which are basically the three things you want to do at the plate.

While he’s been a little older than you’d like prospects to be at each level along the minor league ladder, Hoskins’ results have been so overwhelming that Steamer thinks he’s ready to step in and hit big league pitching from day one. As Eric Longenhagen has noted, some scouts have questioned the swing and the power he’ll show in the Majors, but the concerns raised about him are the same ones that were raised about Paul Goldschmidt when he was mostly overlooked as a prospect. You don’t want to project anyone to get to Goldschmidt’s level, but there are some similarities in their scouting profile and minor league performances, so it’s probably best not to buy comments about Hoskins’ limited upside just yet.

If he can hit like Steamer thinks he can hit, he’s going to be the Phillies first baseman for a good long while. And the Phillies offense might be a lot better tonight than it was yesterday.

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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Three minor-ish trades went down on Friday night. The Mets acquired A.J. Ramos from the Marlins for Merandy Gonzalez and Ricardo Cespedes; the Nationals acquired Howie Kendrick from the Phillies for McKenzie Mills; the Orioles acquired Jeremy Hellickson from the Phillies for Garrett Cleavinger and Hyun Soo Kim.  Below are the projections for the prospects who changed hands. WAR figures account for the player’s first six major-league seasons. KATOH denotes the stats-only version of the projection system, while KATOH+ denotes the methodology that includes a player’s prospect rankings.

None of the players dealt last night are top prospects, and as a result, their likelihood of outcomes graphs are heavily skewed towards “no MLB”. Kyle Glaser recently found that fewer than one in five prospects traded at the deadline contribute more than one positive WAR season. All three of these pitchers seem like good bets to fall into that bottom four-fifths.

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Philadelphia made a pair of trades Friday, sending Howie Kendrick to Washington for LHP McKenzie Mills. They also traded RHP Jeremy Hellickson to Baltimore for LHP Garrett Cleavinger and OF Hyun Soo Kim. Philadelphia also received bonus pool money from both clubs.

Baltimore gets
RHP Jeremy Hellickson

Washington gets
2B Howie Kendrick

Philadelphia gets
LHP McKenzie Mills
LHP Garrett Cleavinger
OF Hyun Soo Kim
International Bonus Slots

Mills is a 21-year old, big-bodied lefty with advanced changeup feel. He was an 18th round pick out of Sprayberry HS (GA) in 2014 and then spent each of his first three pro seasons in either rookie or short-season ball. Mills struggled with control. His strikeout and walk rates — 20% and 12%, respectively, in 2016 and 28% and 5% this year — have both drastically improved this year and he’s having more success as the season goes on despite having already doubled his innings total frmo last year.

As far as the stuff in concerned, Mills is a deceptive 88-92 with downhill plane and could have an above average changeup at maturity. His below average curveball has shape but not power. He can locate it, and his other pitches, and projects to have starter’s control/command. He has K’d 118 hitters in 104.2 innings with Low-A Potomac and is a potential backend starter.

Cleavinger, a 2015 3rd rounder out of Oregon, is a pure relief prospect with a low-90s fastball and loopy, twisting curveball. His command is very erratic and, while he has premium loogy funk and repertoire, it needs to develop significantly if Cleavinger’s to have a steady big league role.

The Phillies also acquired $1 million in international bonus money yesterday General Manager Matt Klentak’s post-trade comments indicate that money will be speculatively used to as yet unidentified or available talent on the international market. The Phillies were originally allotted a $4.75 million bonus pool for the international period and spent a significant amount of it on five players, including SS Luis Garcia ($2.5 mil) and four other players who all signed for around $500k each.

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

Michael Kopech, RHP, Chicago AL (Profile)
Level: Double-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: 3   Top 100: 21
Line: 6 IP, 2 H, 2 BB, 1 R, 12 K

Notes
Engineered in a lab by the Abercrombie Corperation and then accidentally exposed to Serum 102 by The Syndicate, Kopech’s superhuman stuff is almost unhittable when he’s throwing strikes and, for his last few starts, he has. Kopech has a chance to have an 80 fastball and two plus secondary pitches, giving him one of the few true top-of-the-rotation ceilings in all of prospectdom.

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Philadelphia sent All Star reliever Pat Neshek to Colorado on Wednesday night in exchange for three prospects. Let’s refresh:

Colorado gets
RHP Pat Neshek

Philadelphia gets
SS Jose Gomez
RHP J.D. Hammer
RHP Alejandro Requena

Gomez, a 20-year old infielder at Low-A Asheville, is the owner of a .316 career batting average and indeed scouts like his feel to hit. Gomez doesn’t get much out of his lower half and is a bit undersized, and thus very unlikely to hit for much power barring a mechanical change, but he has good hand-eye coordination, above average bat speed and a chance to be a plus hitter at peak.

An average runner with an average arm, Gomez lacks the high-end athleticism typically found at shortstop and is not a lock to stay there. He’s already seeing time at second and third base, two positions where Gomez will likely lack the power to profile every day should one of them become his long term defensive home. He projects as a bat-first utility player.

Hammer is a 23-year old relief prospect with a plus, running fastball that will touch 97. He was a 24th rounder out of Marshall last year and had struck out 47 hitters at Low-A before a late-June promotion to Hi-A Lancaster. Hammer’s arm is lightning quick and while he shows some feel for locating his fastball to his arm side with consistency (in part because it naturally runs that way), his command is currently below average. He also has a power slider (I’ve had scouts call it a slider and curveball, and the way its’ described makes it sound like a hard slurve, so I’ll call it a slider) that flashes average. He projects as a middle relief piece but could be more if a better secondary pitch can be coaxed out of that arm speed and, as a Colorado high schooler who then went to a college not typically associated with baseball, perhaps that’s coming late.

Finally, 20-year old Venezuelan Alejandro Requena is a pitchability who had posted a 2.85 ERA this season at Asheville. He sits in the 88-92 range with his fastball which he locates readily to both sides of the plate and he has a loopy, fringey curveball that he can lob in for strikes to get ahead of hitters or bury in the dirt when ahead in the count. He could max out as a backend starter but is more likely to fall in the starters 6-10 range teams typically need to dip into during the course of a season.

As far as FVs go, Gomez is a 40 for me, projecting as a utility man with a better bat than usually found there. That’s a 45 at peak with Gomez’s proximity from the Majors diluting the mark. The other two are, in FanGraphs prospect parlance, honorable mention prospects worth continued attention.

The Colorado Rockies bullpen has seen better days. Dominant at the start of the season, we’ve long passed the point where it could call itself that. In order to help rectify this problem, the team acquired reliever Pat Neshek from the Philadelphia Phillies tonight:

The #Rockies have acquired RHP Pat Neshek from the Philadelphia Phillies. pic.twitter.com/xf3bWwdz8Y

— Colorado Rockies (@Rockies) July 27, 2017

In a subsequent tweet, the full scope of the deal came together. It is as follows:

Let’s go back to the Rockies bullpen for a second, so we can see the impetus for this trade (July numbers are as of Wednesday morning):

Fright. Night. Comparisons to the Titanic’s maiden voyage and the Rockies bullpen are welcome. Except with the acquisition of Neshek, the Rockies are aiming to steer around those icebergs. Neshek has been a top-10 reliever this season, and automatically becomes one of the Rockies two-best relievers, if not their best reliever.

Always a pretty efficient pitcher in terms of walks and strikeouts, Neshek has really maxed out this season, particularly with his strikeout rate, which is at a career-best 30.4%. He is simultaneously getting batters to swing at more pitches than ever and making them miss more than ever, which is a particularly nasty combination.

Neshek is a fly-ball pitcher, which generally you would think of as a bad thing at Coors Field, but Jeff Zimmerman introduced research last week that shows that fly-ball pitchers have been able to handle the home run surge better than ground-ball pitchers. And indeed Neshek has been. His HR/FB is at the second-lowest mark for his career.

Neshek works in a sinker-slider fashion almost exclusively — Pitch Info has his pitch mix as 49.3% sinkers, 47.8% sliders and 2.7% change-ups. If those first two percentages seem high, it’s because they are. His sinker percentage ranks 20th among qualified relievers, and his slider percentage ranks 10th. The only other two qualified relievers who are throwing both their sinker and slider both 40 percent of the time are Peter Moylan and Luke Gregerson.

Looking at that slider usage leaderboard, we find that the two relievers just ahead of Neshek are also Rockies’ pitchers — Adam Ottavino and Greg Holland. Heading into today, Rockies relievers were tied for fourth in the majors and first in the National League in slider usage with … the Phillies. With Neshek heading west to Colorado, the Rockies’ slider usage is only going to increase. If there’s a fly in this ointment, it’s that the Dodgers and Nationals have been crushing sliders this season, but should the Rockies make it that far, it will be fascinating to watch that strength vs. strength matchup.

With this trade, the Rockies should be able to achieve the simultaneous goals of dumping Jordan Lyles at the nearest dumpster fire (they’d want him to feel right at home, after all) and relying a lot less on Ottavino. Ottavino has been striking out hitters at a level better than his career average, but his control and home runs allowed have taken a significant turn for the worse, and it will help Colorado a bunch that they will be able to throttle back his high-leverage usage. At least until he figures out how to get his control back under, uh, control.

Moreover, this is a clear signal from the Rockies front office that the team is interested in competing for the NL pennant right now. As former Purple Row writer Andrew Fisher pointed out on Twitter after the trade was announced, this may very well be the first time the Rockies have acquired an All-Star at the trade deadline in the same season in which said player was an All-Star. While relievers are not usually the most exciting All-Stars, this is still a pretty big deal for Colorado.

Since Neshek is a free agent at the end of the season, it didn’t cost them a ton either. All three players acquired by Philly have interesting things about them, but none of them make you sit up in your chair and say wow. The one who got any prospect heat this spring was Jose Gomez. Here’s what Eric Longenhagen had to say about him last November:

Jose Gomez, SS, 2.8 KATOH+ – A stocky 5-foot-11, Gomez is an average runner with an average arm and could be a 45 or 50 at shortstop at maturity. He has mature bat-to-ball skills and hit well for his age in the Pioneer League this year but lacks power projection because the body is already pretty maxed out. He’s got a long-term utility profile.

Gomez posted a 132 wRC+ in rookie ball last year, and has replicated that this year in Low-A Asheville with a 136 wRC+. This is notable in the sense that Asheville’s ballpark is generally better for left-handed hitters, and Gomez is a right-handed hitter. He has notched 18 steals, but he’s also been caught 11 times, so we’ll charitably classify his baserunning as “raw.” Still, a .324/.374/.437 is a line you’d love to see from a middle infielder. While Gomez has played mainly shortstop this year, he has also started 10+ games at second- and third base, so his prep for that future utility role is already well underway.

The internet, as it is wont to do, briefly became obsessed with J.D. Hammer’s looks this evening. His 38.9% strikeout rate also may be worthy of future obsession, but since he’s compiled it at Low-A and High-A, we’ll hold off on salivating for another few months. Also tamping down expectations is his high walk rate since being promoted to High-A. It is a little disappointing to see him traded away though, as he is a Colorado native, and it would have been a great story had he ascended to the majors in a Rockies uniform.

After three seasons in rookie ball, Alejandro Requena is pitching well for Asheville this season. His 2.85 ERA is tops among Tourists starters, and it ranks 10th among South Atlantic League pitchers with at least 70 innings pitched this season.

The Rockies bullpen started the season flying high, but has since come crashing back to earth. By acquiring Pat Neshek, they have put themselves on much firmer ground as the pennant race starts to heat up. He won’t win them the World Series all by himself. But his acquisition — which cost them three interesting but likely low-ceiling players — signals that Colorado has designs on getting there, and that they will try to get there on the wings of so many sliders.