When our other prospect writers submit scouting reports, I will provide a short background and industry consensus tool grades.  There are two reasons for this: 1) giving context to account for the writer seeing a bad outing (never threw his changeup, coming back from injury, etc.) and 2) not making him go on about the player’s background or speculate about what may have happened in other outings.

The writer still grades the tools based on what they saw, I’m just letting the reader know what he would’ve seen in many other games from this season, particularly with young players that may be fatigued late in the season. The grades are presented as present/future on the 20-80 scouting scale and very shortly I’ll publish a series going into more depth explaining these grades.   -Kiley

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Evaluating The Prospects: Texas Rangers, Colorado Rockies, Arizona Diamondbacks & Minnesota Twins

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

The Twins have both top-end talent and lots of depth in their system, which will likely rank their system among the best in the league when I get around to that later this off-season. It’s interesting to note that the Twins, known as a team that preferred to draft starters average fastballs and pitchability in the past, drafted almost all relievers with their early picks in 2014.

They drafted 8 pitchers in their first 10 picks last June with scouts projecting all of them to be relievers, though the Twins will develop some as starters for now.  Minnesota now has, by my count, 10 pitchers in the system that have recently hit 98 mph or higher, which is close to the most in baseball, if not the most. Twins execs say it was more situational that they drafted the pitchability type arms in the past, but that there has been a concerted effort to move more toward acquiring power arms, even if they project as relievers.

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A.J. Achter made it. He wasn’t supposed to make it. The 26-year-old right-hander lasted until the 46th round of the 2010 draft and was offered bupkis for a signing bonus. Now he’s stepping onto the big stage. The Minnesota Twins called up Achter from Triple-A Rochester when the calender flipped on Sunday night.

Achter enrolled at Michigan State University after going undrafted out of an Oregon, Ohio, high school. He didn’t sparkle with the Spartans. After going 8-13 with a 4.29 ERA over three seasons, he was selected 1,395th overall by the Twins. Knowing he was a long shot, the education major made plans to return for his senior year.

“I was taken in a round that doesn’t even exist anymore,” Achter told me on Sunday, hours before news of his promotion broke. “They didn’t even offer me a signing bonus. It was, ‘Hey, we drafted you, congratulations, but we can’t afford to give you anything right now – unless you’re willing to sign for a plane ticket.’ I wasn’t willing. I was plenty fine with going back to Michigan State.”

Two months later, following a strong performance in the Cape Cod League, he changed his mind. So did the bean counters. Achter’s work out of the bullpen — he’d been a starter at MSU — and was impressive enough that bonus money appeared in Minnesota’s draft-budget coffers. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to tell you something you’re not going to like. You’re going to think this is stupid, and you’re going to want to dismiss this as rubbish, but, I mean, let’s just get right to the point. If nothing else, this is where we’ll start. Early Thursday, the A’s gave up Yoenis Cespedes and more for Jon Lester and more. A little later Thursday, the A’s gave up Tommy Milone for Sam Fuld. Losing Cespedes opened up a spot in the outfield; adding Fuld plugged it. Here is a fun fact:

Career

Cespedes: 2.9 WAR / 600 plate appearances
Fuld: 2.5 WAR / 600 plate appearances

Obviously, Cespedes has a thousand times more natural talent. Obviously, Cespedes has more potential and a higher ceiling. Obviously, Cespedes is younger. Obviously, that’s a little deceptive because Fuld has spent a lot of time as a defensive replacement. Obviously, we can trust the defensive metrics only so much, and obviously, Cespedes is the more marketable player since he has some of the purest right-handed power in the sport. But here is the general message: Sam Fuld is not far and away an inferior overall player, compared to Yoenis Cespedes. At least, they’re somewhat close. And this year, specifically this year, Fuld’s been worth the same WAR in a fraction of the time. So you can see why the A’s are happy to get Fuld back, a few months after designating him for assignment.

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A couple of weeks ago, I broke from the typical Prospect Watch post setup to write this, which still managed to provide thoughts on and evaluations of two players but in a more freeform space than usual. On some occasions such as that one, I find my thoughts on players get encased in larger thoughts about prospecting in general. In this installment, I bring you another, but it concerns a player of far more repute than 25-year-old A-ball pitcher Dario Alvarez or his reliever teammate Akeel Morris–I’m talking about 2014’s fifth overall draft pick, Twins shortstop prospect Nick Gordon.

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* Update: kind of. Though Morales will surely take opportunities from Hart, they may coexist on the active roster. It’s complicated, but it shouldn’t change too much about the analysis.

There was never any question that the Mariners liked Kendrys Morales. They traded for him in the first place, and he hit. They offered him a three-year contract. They kept in touch with him during the offseason. If the Mariners had had their druthers, they would’ve locked Morales up to return as the team’s DH. But Morales, see, didn’t really want to go back to Seattle:

“He knew it was going to be tough to look for another offer, or another job, but in his heart he just didn’t really want to come back here and be in the same spot … he was taking his chances to see if something was better.”

When a player is a free agent, he gets to decide where he ends up. When a player belongs to a team, however, he can’t control where he gets traded, barring a full or partial no-trade clause. The Mariners couldn’t sign Morales, so he waited and waited and signed with the Twins. The Twins fell quickly out of the race, and now they’ve traded Morales to the Mariners, for Stephen Pryor and salary relief. The Mariners got Morales the only way they knew how to, and now he’ll serve as the rusty DH, in replacement of a rusty DH.

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Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

In this installment of the PW, I’m focusing on three hurlers in the Appalachian League who were just selected in the top three rounds of the 2014 draft.

***

Foster Griffin, LHP, Kansas City Royals (Profile)
Level: Rookie-Advanced   Age: 18  Top-15: N/A   Top-100: N/A
Line: 8.2 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 6/3 K/BB, 1.04 ERA, 5.15 FIP

Summary
More about projection than current ability, Griffin is nonetheless off to a good start in pro ball.

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The surprising part wasn’t that Kendrys Morales signed immediately after he was no longer tied to compensation. The surprising part was that Kendrys Morales signed with the Minnesota Twins, instead of any of the more obvious possibilities. When Morales signed, the Twins were 29-31, and they fancy themselves a surprising potential contender, which tells you something about where the expectations were set a few months ago. The Twins got Morales for about $7.6 million and four months, and the organizational quotes you hear are full of optimism and positivity.

A rundown, courtesy of Rhett Bollinger:

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Trevor Plouffe had a good June 2012 — he hit .327/.391/.735 with 11 home runs — and announced himself to the baseball world in his third season. Unfortunately for him, though, those were good results after a process that didn’t fit him best. It was the slump that came after (.226/.279/.381 with eight home runs) that taught the Minnesota Twins third baseman the tools he needed to become a better player.

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Fact: Phil Hughes has always been a tinkerer. All players are constantly making adjustments, so in that sense all players are tinkerers, but Hughes has been a tinkerer to the extreme. He’s gone back and forth on what pitches he’s wanted to throw, and Ben Lindbergh identified several different versions of Hughes, the pitcher. Adjustments are interesting to investigate, so Hughes hasn’t been dull, although this leads us to the next fact.

Fact: Phil Hughes has seldom been good enough. The former top prospect has a career 12.2 WAR, and for the most part he’s been missing consistency. Because of the inconsistency, there’s been the tinkering, and perhaps because of the tinkering, there’s been additional inconsistency. There’s always been the question of Hughes’ potential. There’s never been a question of whether or not Hughes was a disappointment. Because of his reputation, people were surprised when the Twins handed Hughes a guaranteed three-year contract.

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