Miguel Cabrera and Joey Votto — they’re both cinch future Hall of Famers, as close approximations as any among current major leaguers to the ideal all-around hitter. They have consistently made hard contact to all fields, hit for average and power, and not conceded many free outs to opposing pitchers. And obviously, they’ve done it without any contribution from their legs; it’s been all bat.
Anthony Castro is emerging as one of the top pitching prospects in the Detroit Tigers organization. Two years removed from Tommy John surgery and armed with plus stuff, the 22-year-old right-hander is 9-4 with a 2.70 ERA in 18 starts for the Low-A West Michigan Whitecaps.
Following his last outing, a coach for the opposing team was highly complimentary of Castro’s cutter, which is actually a mid-90s four-seam fastball that has natural cutting action. As the native of Caracas, Venezuela, explained, “It just comes out that way. That’s crazy.”
It’s not crazy to believe he’s ready to prove himself at the next level. As the aforementioned coach told me, “I’m not sure why the kid is still in the Midwest League.”
Castro has taken his family out of their homeland, and for perfectly understandable reasons: with the situation in Venezuela growing increasingly worse, the youngster feared for their safety and well-being.
While writing about Miguel Sano last week, I connected two thoughts that had laid dormant next to each other for a while.
Those thoughts, as follows:
That confluence of ideas led to an innocuous enough question: could we adjust exit velocity for pitch location?
The answer is yes, of course we can. The next question, however, was much more interesting: what the heck does this measure?
Below are the updated summer top-10 prospect lists for the orgs in the American League Central. 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.
1. Yoan Moncada, 2B
2. Eloy Jimenez, OF
3. Michael Kopech, RHP
4. Lucas Giolito, RHP
5. Luis Robert, OF
6. Reynaldo Lopez, RHP
7. Blake Rutherford, OF
8. Alec Hansen, RHP
9. Dylan Cease, RHP
10. Zack Collins, C
This is Ashley MacLennan’s second piece as part of her August residency at FanGraphs. Ashley is a staff writer for Bless You Boys, the SB Nation blog dedicated to the Detroit Tigers, and runs her own site at 90 Feet From Home. She can also be found on Twitter. She’ll be contributing regularly here over the next month. Read the work of all our residents here.
For a team that seemed poised to begin the rebuild process, the Detroit Tigers managed to coast through the trade deadline doing very little. They’ve been promising since the offseason that their goal is to become leaner and younger, but when July 31st had passed, they’d only moved three players. Observers are left asking themselves: have the Tigers done enough to craft a contending team for the future?
The short answer? No.
The more complicated answer is that the team may not have been able to make the moves they wanted, thanks to a market that favored relief pitching over everything else.
It wasn’t a big surprise when Justin Verlander stayed in Detroit at the July 31st trade deadline, because for Verlander, the 31st wasn’t really a deadline. With $28 million salaries for each of the next two years, he wasn’t in much danger of being claimed on waivers; sure enough, he reportedly went unclaimed last week, and is again free to be traded to any team in baseball. And now that prospective buyers don’t have the distraction of other possible options, it might actually be easier for the Tigers to trade Verlander this month than it was in July.
Of course, easier doesn’t mean easy. As Jeff noted a month ago, there appears to be something of a gap between how the Tigers see Verlander and how the rest of the league sees him. Detroit seemingly is shopping him as if he’s still the ace he pitched like last season, not the average-ish starter he’s pitched like this season. And Jeff’s piece laid out why that isn’t a totally unreasonable position.
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.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Cubs traded for Justin Wilson and Alex Avila. Below are the projections for the prospects the Tigers received in exchange for their services. 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.
Jeimer Candelario, 3B (Profile)
KATOH: 4.4 WAR (108th)
KATOH+: 4.3 WAR (83rd)
Candelerio was slashing .266/.361/.507 in the Pacific Coast League this year, with a bunch of doubles and walks. The PCL has surely helped his power numbers a good deal, but his 12% walk rate illustrates that he does a decent job of controlling the strike zone. Defensively, Candelario has been an above-average third baseman this year in the minors. Although he’s been in the Cubs’ system forever, Candelario’s still just 23. A 23-year-old third baseman who can both hit and play average-ish defense is a fine prospect.
To put some faces to Candelario’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps. I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Candelario’s Triple-A performance and every Triple-A 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.
| Rank | Name | KATOH+ Proj. WAR | Actual WAR |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Scott Stahoviak | 3.8 | 1.7 |
| 2 | Joe Crede | 4.0 | 10.0 |
| 3 | Howard Battle | 2.5 | 0.3 |
| 4 | Chad Tracy | 4.8 | 8.0 |
| 5 | Willy Aybar | 3.8 | 2.4 |
| 6 | Gary Scott | 2.8 | 0.0 |
| 7 | Tom Evans | 3.6 | 0.1 |
| 8 | Garrett Atkins | 4.6 | 9.7 |
| 9 | Casey McGehee | 2.8 | 4.5 |
| 10 | Brian Barden | 2.5 | 0.1 |
…
Isaac Paredes, SS (Profile)
KATOH: 5.2 WAR (76th)
KATOH+: 3.6 WAR (104th)
Despite being just 18 years old, Paredes is already in and has held his own in full-season ball, slashing .261/.341/.399 with a 14% strikeout rate in Low-A. That’s encouraging for an 18 year old, but it’s especially encouraging coming from an 18-year-old shortstop. Scouts are a tad skeptical of Paredes, citing a lack of physical projection and athleticism needed to stick at shortstop long-term. KATOH picks up on this too — by way of his height (5-foot-11) and lack of stolen bases — but still finds him very intriguing due to his combination of youth, contact and defense. As a Low-A hitter, Paredes has a long way to go, but he has several characteristics that often portend to big league success.
| Rank | Name | KATOH+ Proj. WAR | Actual WAR |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Raul Chavez | 2.2 | 0.0 |
| 2 | Luis Cruz | 2.1 | 0.0 |
| 3 | Juan Melo | 5.3 | 0.0 |
| 4 | Brent Butler | 3.8 | 0.0 |
| 5 | Pokey Reese | 4.3 | 6.4 |
| 6 | Kenny Perez | 1.8 | 0.0 |
| 7 | Hector Made | 1.9 | 0.0 |
| 8 | Danny Klassen | 4.0 | 0.0 |
| 9 | Victor Rodriguez | 2.8 | 0.0 |
| 10 | Brad Harman | 2.6 | 0.0 |
Late Sunday night the Cubs and Tigers agreed to a deal sending Justin Wilson and Alex Avila to Chicago in exchange for INF Jeimer Candelario, INF Isaac Paredes and either cash or a player to be named later.
Chicago gets
C Alex Avila
LHP Justin Wilson
Detroit gets
INF Jeimer Candelario
INF Isaac Paredes
Candelario, now 23, is a known talent. He has long been a promising offensive prospect, hitting at a .270/.351/.433 career clip in pro ball with a 10% walk rate. He is fluid and comfortable in the box, shows good bat control and hand-eye coordination, and makes in-flight adjustments to offspeed pitches that he’s capable of striking to all fields. He’s a tough out and projects as a plus hitter with average game power. That power isn’t exciting at first base (where many scouts project Candelario to fall, defensively) but it is passable and, with his keen eye for the strike zone, Candelario projects as an average offensive regular at first.
Candelario has an above average arm and has improved his conditioning, so while the general consensus still believes him to be a first baseman, it’s becoming less common for scouts to knock his lateral quickness. That, combined with Detroit’s current big league roster makeup (which has seen butcher Nick Castellanos at third and immovable god Miguel Cabrera at first) and continued advancements in defensive positioning make Candelario’s defensive future a bit foggy, but hopeful. He was just barely off my top 100 entering the year and will be on the updated list in the next few weeks.
| Age | 23 | Height | 6’1 | Weight | 210 | Bat/Throw | B/R |
|---|
| Hit | Raw Power | Game Power | Run | Fielding | Throw |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 55/60 | 50/50 | 45/50 | 40/30 | 40/45 | 55/55 |
Clubs have been asking for Paredes in trades for over a year now. Teams discovered him in many different ways but they’ve all become smitten with the 18-year old “shortstop” for one reason or another. Some clubs flagged him for excellent statistical performance in last year’s AZL when Paredes was just 17 but hit .305/.359/.443 and only struck out in 10% of his plate appearances. Some scout the AZL heavily and were sent glowing reports about his feel to hit. He seems likely to continue to do that. After a hot start, Paredes struggled to hit the ball hard for about a month and owned a .240/.310/.333 line on June 4. He’s righted the ship and has tallied 19 extra-base hits since then and was up to .264/.342/.401 before the trade.
Scouts have varied opinions about Paredes’ defense. He does not project to shortstop for any scouts with whom I have spoken, nor does he for me. Some clubs who entertained the idea of acquiring him last year had plans to move Paredes, who was rather girthy at the time, to catcher. Others have him projected to either second or third base. Paredes has improved his conditioning and isn’t as soft-bodied as he was last year but he remains boxy, square, and simply unlike what the lion’s share of big league shortstops look like when they’re 18. Of course, if he hits the way many in the industry think he will, that might not matter.
| Age | 18 | Height | 5’11 | Weight | 175 | Bat/Throw | R/R |
|---|
| Hit | Raw Power | Game Power | Run | Fielding | Throw |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20/55 | 40/50 | 30/50 | 50/40 | 40/50 | 55/60 |
While Zach Britton is the big name, and Brad Hand has been priced like an even bigger name, Justin Wilson might have actually been the most sought after reliever on the market this week. Basically every contender in baseball wanted him. The finalists were reportedly the Dodgers, Astros, Nationals, and Cubs, and the Tigers really couldn’t have asked for a better group to have bidding up the price on their best trade chip.
In the end, it appears that the Cubs put the offer on the table Detroit liked most. While the deal isn’t official yet, the teams are reportedly reviewing medical information, which means it should be done soon.
The deal is reportedly as follows.
| Player | Position | Age | 2017 WAR | Rest of Season WAR | Contract |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Justin Wilson | RP | 29 | 0.9 | 0.5 | Arbitration for 2018 |
| Alex Avila | C | 30 | 1.9 | 0.8 | Free Agent after 2017 |
| Prospect | Position | Age | Level | Prospect Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jeimer Candelario | 3B | 23 | Triple-A | #4, 50 FV |
| Isaac Paredes | SS | 18 | Low-A | #17, 40 FV |
The strong market for Wilson reflects the way the game has changed. He’s only been a closer for a couple of months now, and he has just 14 career saves. His ERA last year was 4.14. He’s never been an All-Star. Yet all of the best teams in baseball wanted him, because despite the lack of accolades, Justin Wilson is really good.