Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen running slightly later than usual due to travel for the FanGraphs meetup in Denver this weekend. Read previous installments here.

Clay Holmes, RHP, Pittsburgh Pirates (Profile)
Level: Triple-A   Age: 25   Org Rank: 27  FV: 40
Line: 7.1 IP, 5 H, 0 BB, 8 K, 1 R

Notes
Holmes has had mediocre command throughout his career and has generally projected to a bullpen role where he’d theoretically be a mid-90s sinker/slider guy. In the past month, he has thrown 66% of his pitches for strikes and has been locating his slider to the back foot of left-handed hitters effectively. He looks more like a backend starter than a reliever right now, but it’s a four-start run juxtaposed against more than a half decade of fringe control.

Alexander Montero, RHP, Boston Red Sox (Profile)
Level: Short-Season   Age: 20   Org Rank: NR  FV: 35+
Line: 5 IP, 3 H, 0 BB, 7 K, 1 R

Notes
Montero’s presence and early success is a welcome sight for one of the worst systems in baseball. He’s a relatively projectable 20-year-old with a three-pitch mix led by a fastball that’s up to 95 mph and a diving split changeup. Montero signed late for an amateur IFA last summer, inking a deal just weeks before he turned 20. He pitched in the DSL last year and was skipped directly to the New York-Penn League this summer after finishing extended.

Brandon Wagner, 1B, New York Yankees (Profile)
Level: A+  Age: 22   Org Rank: NR  FV: 35
Line: 3-for-5, 2B, HR

Notes
Wagner has had an odd developmental path. He was a chubby high school first baseman from New Jersey who spent two years at a Texas JUCO and became a 6th rounder as he improved his conditioning. He has displayed a career-long ability to discern balls from strikes and is a .365 OBP hitter over four pro seasons. During that time, Wagner has moved his batted-ball profile like a glacier from 50% ground balls down to 40% and has now begun to hit for significant in-game power. Six-foot first basemen with average, pull-only power are still long shots, but if Wagner keeps performing if/when he’s promoted to Double-A, he’ll at least force re-evaluation the way Mike Ford did.

Jackson Kowar, RHP, University of Florida (draft rights controlled by Kansas City)
Level: CWS Age: 21   Org Rank: NR  FV: 45
Line: 6.2 IP, 5 H, 2 BB, 13 K, 0 R

Notes
Kowar was dominant in his College World Series start against Texas yesterday, reaching back for 95-97 toward the end of his start and was flashing a 70 changeup. He also threw 121 pitches.

Jacob Amaya, SS, Los Angeles Dodgers (Profile)
Level: Short-Season  Age: 19   Org Rank: HM  FV: 35
Line: 1-for-1, 4 BB

Notes
Amaya’s tools have a utility vibe because his frame limits his power projection to something around average or just below it, but he’s an average athlete with defensive hands befitting a middle infielder and advanced bat-to-ball skills. If he grows into a 6 bat, which is unlikely but possible, it won’t matter that he doesn’t hit for a lot of game power.

Notes from the Field

I’m just going to drop a bunch of D-backs notes from yesterday’s AZL action. Alek Thomas went 0-for-3 but ground out tough at-bats and spoiled several good pitches while he did it. He also made two impressive defensive plays, one which might have robbed a homer and another in the left-center gap that robbed extra bases. Jake McCarthy looks fine physically (of note since he was hurt for most of his junior year at UVA) and took a tough left-on-left breaking ball the other way for a single in his first pro at-bat. Twenty-year-old righty Luis Frias was up to 96 mph, rehabbing Brian Ellington was up to 97. Finally, lefty reclamation project Henry Owens (Allen Webster, Owens, and Clay Buchholz have all been D-backs for some amount of time during the last year, which isn’t surprising if you know the roots of this current front office) K’d 5 in 2.1 innings with some help from the umpire. He was 87-90 with an above-average changeup, an average breaking ball, and arm slot closer to what he had as a prospect with Boston after he was side-arming last fall.

Shohei Ohtani was supposed to win the American League Rookie of the Year. And, you know, he still might, depending on how he recovers from his injury. His numbers are great, and he deserves a bonus for the degree of difficulty of his job. But Ohtani’s elbow makes me nervous, and I’ve become skeptical about these things. You can’t count on him coming back and looking like himself. And as the award goes, that would open up the door. One prime contender would be Gleyber Torres. Another strong contender would be Miguel Andujar.

And as I look at things, the Yankees might very well run the table. Rookie of the Year voters select three names. Torres or Andujar could finish first. The other could finish second. And Domingo German could finish third. Or, I suppose, second or first, if he had a really good second half. But the point here is that the Yankees have three great and significant rookies. In March, Torres was considered the Yankees’ No. 1 prospect. Andujar was considered their No. 2 prospect. German slotted in at 13th.

A month and a half ago, Travis wrote about German right here. Since then, over 40 innings, German has allowed 28 runs, which is too many. Yet he’s also generated 45 strikeouts, with only a dozen walks. He’s turned in three strong starts in a row, and four times in a row, now, he’s gone at least six innings. I will not be making the point that German is amazing. I will be making the point that he’s probably being underrated. That might just be a consequence of how loaded the Yankees already are.

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I first learned of the existence of Jonathan Loaisiga via the scouting service that is the Fringe Five, proudly produced by Carson Cistulli.

Entering 2018, very few non-baseball scouting professionals knew much of anything about Loaisiga, which is pronounced lo-AYE-siga. There’s been so much trouble with articulating his last name that Loaisigia is OK with “Johnny Lasagna” as a moniker.

Jonathan Loaisiga said that people call him "Lasagna" because they can't pronounce his last name. So Johnny Lasagna it is, Twitter.

— Bryan Hoch ?? (@BryanHoch) June 15, 2018

Loaisiga basically came out of nowhere. He was absent from all preseason top-100 prospect lists, though he did come in at No. 12 on Eric and Kiley’s Yankees preseason organizational list.

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The season has gone pretty well for the Yankees thus far. Sure, the team brought in Neil Walker and Brandon Drury in the offseason and they are currently below replacement level; however, those two were acquired as placeholders for Gleyber Torres and Miguel Andujar, and the two prospects are already succeeding in the big leagues, leaving the performance of the acquisitions moot. Greg Bird got hurt again and Tyler Austin wasn’t great. Giancarlo Stanton has only been good and not great, but Aaron Judge has been great, and Didi Gregorius and Gary Sanchez have been good while Brett Gardner and Aaron Hicks have exceeded expectations. Yankees position players lead the American League in WAR at 13 and are projected to top all of baseball the rest of the way.

On the pitching side, the Yankees have done pretty well, too. Just as they were projected, the bullpen has been the best in baseball, striking out 32% of batters faced. Luis Severino has been one of the best pitchers in baseball with a 2.15 FIP that leads all qualified starters in the American League. After Severino, the rotation hasn’t been good, but with the bullpen, the team’s 9.5 WAR is third in all of baseball.

Fortunately for the Yankees, the team’s good results have translated in the win column up to this point with 40 victories. At this moment, they are projected to win more than 100 games and finish with the best record in baseball. The Yankees may be in an enviable position; however, there are some drawbacks to being an immensely talented, super-rich franchise piling up wins like nobody’s business.

The first drawback is their main rival, the Red Sox. Boston is also an immensely talented, super-rich franchise piling up wins, and only one of these two teams is going to win the division. Despite having the two best records in baseball and the highest playoff odds in the game, the Yankees and Red Sox rank fifth and sixth, respectively, in odds of making the division series. One of the two clubs is going to have to fend for itself in the Wild Card game in what will likely be a 50/50 shot against Shohei Ohtani, James Paxton, or maybe even Justin Verlander. Winning the division is going to affect the Yankees’ odds of winning the World Series by 5%-10%, maybe more.

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When the Yankees promoted Gleyber Torres in late April, they envisioned him helping them on both sides of the ball, replacing an underwhelming Ronald Torreyes/Tyler Wade platoon that was admittedly nothing more than a stopgap, a temporary solution to an infield logjam. Even so, they probably didn’t expect the kind of power outburst that Torres has provided. After going homerless in his first 12 games, the 21-year-old rookie second baseman has clubbed eight homers in his most recent 15. His total leads the team in the month of May — and that’s a team on pace to break the major-league record for home runs in a season.

Though he’s listed at 6-foot-1 and 200 pounds, Torres did not show a ton of in-game power coming up through the minors. His season high of 11 homers was set in 2016, when he was 19 years old and playing at the High-A stops of the Cubs and Yankees. To be fair, with seven homers in 55 games last year, he probably would have surpassed that total had he not torn his left UCL and required season-ending Tommy John surgery in June. The prospect hounds at Baseball America and MLB Pipeline both graded his power as a 55 (above average), with the latter suggesting 20-plus homers annually; our own Kiley McDaniel graded his raw power at 55/60 (present/future) and his game power at 40/55. The 55 is here, at the very least.

From Baseball Prospectus senior prospect writer Jarrett Seidler:

Y’all undersold Gleyber’s power because he didn’t dong a lot in bad parks while he was growing into his brick shithouse body

— Jarrett Seidler (@jaseidler) May 24, 2018

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Fringe Five Scoreboards: 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013.

The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a few years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

Central to the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion among the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above who (a) was omitted from the preseason prospect lists produced by Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com, John Sickels, and (most importantly) FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel* and also who (b) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing on any updated, midseason-type list will also be excluded from eligibility.

*Note: I’ve excluded Baseball America’s list this year not due to any complaints with their coverage, but simply because said list is now behind a paywall.

For those interested in learning how Fringe Five players have fared at the major-league level, this somewhat recent post offers that kind of information. The short answer: better than a reasonable person would have have expected. In the final analysis, though, the basic idea here is to recognize those prospects who are perhaps receiving less notoriety than their talents or performance might otherwise warrant.

Austin Dean, OF, Miami (Profile)
Selected by Miami in the fourth round of the 2012 draft out of a Texas high school, Dean appeared — when Eric Longenhagen published the Marlins list in February of 2017 — to have fallen into a sort of prospect netherspace, possessing too little footspeed and athleticism for center field but too little offensive ability to sustain a corner-outfield role. The Marlins’ assignments appeared to indicate a lack of enthusiasm, as well: after passing all of the 2016 and -17 seasons at Double-A, Dean began the present campaign there, as well.

In this case, however, Dean quickly earned a promotion, producing a strikeout rate and isolated-power mark that still rank second and sixth, respectively, among the 97 total Southern League batters to record at least 80 plate appearances. The early returns at Triple-A have been promising for a player in his first exposure to a new level. In particular, Dean’s contact skills have translated well: among batters with 50 or more plate appearances, Dean’s strikeout and swinging-strike rates place in the 91st and 97th percentile. Meanwhile, he’s produced roughly league-average power numbers. While the offensive burden of a corner-outfield role remains high, Dean could probably survive with slightly less power on contact than most given his bat-to-ball skills.

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We know the Aaron Judge story. He was a prospect whose contact ability was questioned. Would his 80-grade power play in games? After working on a swing adjustment in the winter of 2016-17, however, he dramatically improved his contact rate, posting a remarkable 173 wRC+ last season while nearly winning the AL MVP award.

In the 21st century, there have been only 31 completed or ongoing seasons with a wRC+ better than Judge’s mark. And what’s remarkable is that one of those — though, just a partial season — is Judge’s 2018 campaign, in which he has a wRC+ of 178.

After making one of the most dramatic year-to-year improvements in major-league history, Judge has actually improved through the first quarter of this season, which is amazing in a different way. While making gains is one thing, consolidating them is another, with the wealth of scouting information available.

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NEW YORK – On Thursday night in the Bronx, the Regression Monster clawed back at CC Sabathia, whose stellar work over his previous three starts had been one of several factors in the 17-1 surge that allowed the Yankees to overtake the hot-starting Red Sox and claim sole possession of first place in the AL East. Though no longer able to muster the 95 mph fastball of his heyday, Sabathia’s remade repertoire — along with the smoke and mirrors produced by a .211 batting average on balls in play — had helped him to a 1.39 ERA entering the night, the league’s second-best mark among starters. Alas, the Red Sox teed off on a handful of pitches that Sabathia called “probably too good to hit with two strikes” and allowed a season-high four runs in a rain-shortened four-inning start. The Yankees’ 5-4 loss brought their eight-game winning streak to a halt and at least temporarily ended their sole occupancy of first place in the AL East.

Though Sabathia netted a season-high 15 swings and misses against the Red Sox, he was peppered for nine hits, three of which never left the infield — death by BABIP. Just after he served up a solo homer to Hanley Ramirez to start the fifth, putting the Yankees in a 4-0 hole, the skies opened up and drenched the playing field, causing a 55-minute rain delay and ending the 37-year-old southpaw’s night after just 80 pitches. The Yankees lineup, though held to just one hit by Sox starter Eduardo Rodriguez and reliever Matt Barnes over the first six innings, rallied to tie the game in the seventh, only to fall behind for good via J.D. Martinez’s eighth-inning solo homer off Dellin Betances.

“I felt pretty good, maybe a little too aggressive a couple times with two strikes,” said Sabathia afterwards. Indeed, while he had held opposing batters to a .159/.183/.261 line with two strikes (the AL average is .175/.247/.280), five of the nine hits he surrendered were two-strike hits. Each one led to runs: Mookie Betts‘ game-opening ground rule double, the three straight third-inning hits by Betts, Andrew Benintendi (a double), and Ramirez that keyed a two-run rally, and Ramirez’s solo homer.

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Most of the general public, perhaps even many hardcore baseball enthusiasts, were unacquainted with Domingo German until Sunday. German has never been a top-100 prospect. He is 25 years old and has been a professional for nearly a decade, yet he remained largely unknown. He was, for example, still available in most fantasy baseball leagues as of Sunday afternoon.

But on Sunday afternoon, German went out to the middle of the infield at Yankee Stadium and no-hit the Indians for six innings, striking out nine against two walks. He was taken out of the game by Aaron Boone due only to pitch-count concerns. It was his first major-league start, and he dominated.

Maybe the Yankees, already enjoying a rare collection of young talent, an uber bullpen, a cast of superstar sluggers, and an incredible amount of purchasing power for next offseason, have unearthed yet more wealth.

With Jordan Montgomery leaving his last start because of an elbow strain, this is a chance for German — labeled as something of a ‘tweener — to compete for a rotation gig.

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On Friday night, in just his third major-league start, Walker Buehler delivered on the promise that the Dodgers envisioned when they made him the 24th pick of the 2015 draft out of Vanderbilt. Pitching on a rainy night at Estadio de Beisbol Monterrey, in the opener of the three-game Mexico Series, the 23-year-old righty held the Padres hitless for six innings while striking out eight and walking three. But with his pitch count at 93, one short of his professional high, manager Dave Roberts did not waver in his decision to put the brakes on the kid’s bid for a slice of baseball immortality.

Via the Orange County Register’s Bill Plunkett, Beuhler said that Roberts “told me I was out of pitches and I was out of the game.”

This wasn’t the first time that Roberts pulled a starter who had yet to allow a hit, but it was the first time that his decision paid off in full, as relievers Yimi Garcia, Tony Cingrani,and Adam Liberatore each chipped in a hitless inning, thus completing the 12th combined no-hitter in big-league history and the first in franchise history. Prior to that — and jusy five games into his managerial career, on April 8, 2016 — Roberts had removed Ross Stripling after 7.1 innings of hitless ball against the Giants. The 26-year-old Stripling, who himself was making his major-league debut, had thrown 100 pitches and had walked four batters when Roberts called for the bullpen. Having missed all of 2014 due to Tommy John surgery, he understood the precautionary move, even though it backfired, as reliever Chris Hatcher promptly gave up a game-tying home run to the next batter, and the Dodgers eventually lost.

Things worked out better for the team when Roberts pulled 36-year-old Rich Hill after seven perfect innings on September 10 of that year. Though Joe Blanton surrendered a single with two outs in the eighth, the Dodgers did get the win.

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