Daily Prospect Notes: Top 100 Prospects List Update
Kevin Goldstein and I have updated the pro portion of the Top 100, which means we quickly reviewed the placement of players in the 50 FV tier and above, and considered who was not yet in those tiers but should be based on how they’ve looked during the first month of the 2021 season. I still have three total org audits to do — Milwaukee, Oakland and the Cubs — before I start peeling graduates off the list. Those will be completed shortly. You can find the updated list here.
Also, if you missed it, Kevin and I updated our draft rankings and posted a Mock Draft on Monday.
The lone change up near the top of the 100 is Riley Greene moving into the top 20; he’s in the mix with several other similarly-aged players with the talent to be consistent All-Stars, like Bobby Witt Jr., Julio Rodríguez, and Corbin Carroll.
DL Hall moved into the 55 FV tier on the strength of his stuff. He’s still walking a fairly high rate of opposing batters but just on the strength of his three plus pitches, could be a Haderesque relief weapon even if he can’t start.
Triston Casas and Noelvi Marte, who a scout told us took one of the best BPs he’s seen from a teenager, both moved into the 55 FV tier. Casas’ move is significant because it’s very rare for no-doubt 1B/DH types to slot above the 50s. We like him more than we did the prospect versions of Rhys Hoskins and Pete Alonso. Marte has a chance to move into the cluster of players that Riley Greene has entered by continuing to perform on paper, especially if he gets a mid-season promotion and keeps hitting.
Hunter Greene has shown no ill-effects after the odd posture and delivery change he exhibited at last year’s alt site. He’s healthy and throwing as hard as ever. He moves up from close to 100th overall to close to 50th overall, but remains in the 50 FV tier. His breaking ball quality and command are both still unexceptional.
We split the difference on Alek Manoah. Kevin has him inside the top 40, while I have him closer to the back of the 100 near pitchers we both agree have significant relief risk.
Jarren Duran’s swing change has borne fruit in a significant way when it comes to his batted ball output. His instincts in center field are still not great but he has improved to the point of viability.
Other players moving into the back of the list include Cade Cavalli, Roansy Contreras, Shea Langeliers, Jordan Walker, Dillon Dingler, and Brett Baty. Cavalli is putting to bed notions that his four-start stretch of dominance in college was just a fluke. First round college arms should be paving over A-ball hitters but Cavalli has been utterly dominant and is reinforcing confidence that his 2020 breakout at Oklahoma (coming off injury) can be sustained. He also showed up to camp with way more arm strength than expected and that, too, has held. Langeliers fits with Taylor Walls on the list: great defenders at premium positions who have one note offensive profiles suitable at their position. Walker moves in next to fellow elite power prospect Oneil Cruz. Dingler is an ultra-athletic catcher with power. Baty trades places with Mark Vientos as corner bats who need to perform, which Baty has.
Hector Yan, LHP, Los Angeles Angels
Level & Affiliate: Hi-A Tri City Age: 22 Org Rank: 17 FV: 40
Line: 6 IP, 2 H, 2 BB, 0 R, 10 K
Notes:
This was, by far, Yan’s best outing of the year (he’s had several open mic-level bombs) and came after extended rest. Remember, he was put on on the Angels 40-man after a strong 2019 season and then immediately started to regress. Last night’s start came against a Spokane team featuring lots of good Rockies hitting prospects.
Rodolfo Castro, 2B, Pittsburgh Pirates
Level & Affiliate: Double-A Altoona Age: 22 Org Rank: 34 FV: 40
Line: 2-for-4, HR, 2 K, CS
Notes:
This was another prospect Kevin and I discussed for placement in the 50 FV tier based on the strength of his on-paper start, as Castro has hit .301/.351/.534 so far this year. He’s a sweet-swinging, switch-hitting infielder with power from both sides of the plate, but his plate discipline has long been an issue and remains one. There’s risk of Castro bottoming out against big league pitching because of his tendency to chase but he has impact talent and is close to the big leagues, so he should be in a FV tier of impact even if we’re skeptical of him being a true 50.
Jose Miranda, 3B, Minnesota Twins
Level & Affiliate: Double-A Wichita Age: 22 Org Rank: 20 FV: 40
Line: 3-for-6, HR
Notes:
Speaking of guys who like to swing a lot, Miranda is in a similar bucket as Castro in that he has a special offensive skill (his feel for contact rather than raw power) that is undercut by an aggressive approach. Miranda is playing all over the infield, fitting best at 1B/3B and less so at 2B/SS. The Wichita affiliate is new and we don’t know what the offensive environment there is like or whether it’s inflating Miranda’s power output. He’s already approaching his career high for single-season homers.
Eric Longenhagen is from Catasauqua, PA and currently lives in Tempe, AZ. He spent four years working for the Phillies Triple-A affiliate, two with Baseball Info Solutions and two contributing to prospect coverage at ESPN.com. Previous work can also be found at Sports On Earth, CrashburnAlley and Prospect Insider.
Did Cal Raleigh merit consideration for being moved up?
I’m also curious about this. I’m an M’s fan…so intensely biased. But he’s mashing against AAA. I would think catchers that mash at AAA and are not terrible defensively almost automatically become top 100 prospects.
Weird that the Pirates called up Castro from AA, but I think he was already on the 40-man. Still, between Erik Gonzalez, Cole Tucker, and Phil Irvin it’s weird they didn’t have someone else to cover third base.
Whenever I think of Castro I also think of Rodolfo Sanchez. He’s actually doing pretty well, although now he’s a 22 year old in High-A. I think he probably needs to get on the 40-man this winter or be traded because he’ll definitely be in AA before the end of the year. It’s a good problem to have.
I agree Contreras looks great. The Pirates looked like they had won the Taillon trade before the year started and even with Yajure struggling a bit I still think they are going to.
I don’t think it’s weird they called up Castro considering those other three you mention are awful to varying degrees. Managements love affair with Erik Gonzalez continues to mystify Pirates fans, Tucker has never really hit and needs a swing change. Do you mean Phil Evans? He’s basically functioned as a four corners guy and he’s quite terrible in the infield. So why not Castro?
aaaagh, Phil Evans. Who is Phil Irvin and why do I keep mixing them up?
I think it’s weird because he’s not in AAA yet. Sometimes skipping players over a level works, but just for a game it seems not very helpful for the player’s development. And while I do think the ship has probably sailed on both Gonzalez and Tucker why are they still around if not for times like that? (I suspect you do not have the answer either)
Phil Irwin was a fringe up and down guy for the Bucs about 6-7 years ago till he got hurt. Maybe him. It’s weird how guys get stuck in the memory bank.
Yeah I don’t have the answer. The use of Gonzalez bothers me more, especially because I’d rather see if they can unlock something with Tucker. He’s damn near half a decade younger than Gonzalez. As for the one game call up, maybe it was a last minute thing. Maybe Indy was on the road. Single game call ups like that for position players often make me think it’s a proximity thing.
There’s also a Phil Ervin who was with the Reds for a few years, then went to Seattle and is in the minors for the Braves, so it’d be easy to mix Evans up with him and then mix Ervin with Irwin. Anyway Castro got called up for an interleague series in Detroit; looks like the game he got in, they were giving Newman the day off so Evans was at first and Gonzalez at short while Moran DHed.
My ears perked up when you mentioned an “irvin” because I was just looking at the Pirates’ best player to have a last name starting with each letter (thinking of what could have been with Conner Uselton) and, by fWAR, Irwin, Cesar Izturis, and Travis Ishikawa are tied with 0.1 WAR. Brandon Inge is probably a top five I player overall but he was below replacement with them. Their J performance is shockingly awful; the best seems to be Garrett Jones with 4.9 fWAR.
Appreciate this Top 100 digest! I’d also be interested to hear more about the guys with down arrows next to them, and how your outlooks have changed there
Thanks for all the updates, guys. I am still kinda confused as to how this all works. Couldn’t you give Castro a 45 or 45+ on the board? It seems like you guys say players are playing well (Joe Gray, Miguel Vargas) but don’t move them up at all.
One quality that diminishes the credibility of prospect rankings is the inertia present in a ranking assignment. Thus, Roansey Contreras moves all the way to spot 104 after dominating hitters in AA while Grayson Rodriguez sits at 28 with a higher FV even though both pitchers are the same age, pitch in the same league and have similar rate stats. Max Meyer sits at 25, has inferior rate stats, pitches at the AA level and is older. The issue is not Rodriguez and Meyer’s rank an FV category assignment. The issue is the confidence one can place in an evaluation system that produces discrepancies such as this.
I write this criticism here because Fangraphs prospect writers seem immune to the hype that attaches to some prospects. I am also aware that scouting and talent evaluation will not produce results with very high confidence levels. But those qualifying remarks do not resolve the issue raised above.
I think it should be pretty obvious you can’t scout the stat line that exclusively. Eric incorporates a lot of info from team scouting departments. I think that lines up pretty well with the evaluation we can intuit from the Taillon trade. Unless you’re suggesting that teams are also subject to the same bias ? Or that Taillon was worth a top 30 prospect in baseball ?
I watched Contreras pitch this year. His stat line reflects his talent. He also had his way with Torkelson, Greene and Dingler last night. Stat lines refer to talent realized as production. Contreras passes the eye and stat tests.
I do not need to provide an explanation for Cashman’s mistake.
disagree — the inertia is a selling point. you can sort minor league leaderboards to get at what you want.
results over some interval are (X) * talent + (1-X) * randomness. contreras’ results have been great! but, the FG prospect staff’s goal is to say something about the former component of those results. great results should (and do! see: contreras breaking into the 100) spur reassessment, but a Y% improvement in results does not imply a Y% improvement in talent.
Actually, his reveald talent level changed. Therefore, accepting the inertial dampening of a prospects movement through a ranking system means accepting the presence of systemic bias and error.
I see what you are doing, you are quite possibly right, but you still better off .. just making your own list, or using the discrepancies you spot and exploiting them in some way… gambling, fantasy league etc. Also, are you as smart about players you haven’t seen pitch? Its challenging to see everyone, and stay up to date on major jumps forward in talent. RC Kd 7.7 per 9 in 2019, now its 12.8 in 2021. Excuuuuuuse everyone for not anticipating that. Also Meyer has debuted in pro ball at AA in 2021, and RC signed with the Yankees 4 years ago. Where would you rank the three?
I do not need to have seen every comparable pitcher to criticize a ranking of a pitcher who had physical improvements that account for significant performance improvements. I need only assume a middling correspondence between capability and results and, based on that assumption, question the consistency and accuracy of a ranking system that ignores performance.
I would not rank prospects using an ordinal rank. That type of ranking system generates a false expectation of precision, false and misleading. The FV categorical ranking system is superior to the ordinal system, although ordinal systems do provide site traffic.
I did not criticize anyone for failing to anticipate Contreras’ performance and talent gains. I criticized a ranking system for misidentifying his current talent level as revealed by this list.
If you’ve got it all figured out, why do you care? Is it important to you that everyone knows you’ve got the correct take on one single prospect?
Eric’s noted Contreras’ velo bump in earlier writeups. It’s real and it’s reflected in a jump in his evaluation. And yeah, that ranking will probably go up if, by year’s end, Contreras demonstrates a skill he hasn’t yet: keeping up the improved stuff and results over a full season. A frenetic evaluation system that places huge weight on a ~6-week sample without considering what came before wouldn’t be one I’d find a ton of value in. I’m perfectly capable of reading the stat line on my own.
I care because reasonable criticism contributes to an increase in our common understanding of these matters.
Actually, you criticized the credibility of the system and the list in general… an EL just about this player. Thats why I asked “have you seen every player?”. Its possible you have seen RC pitch more recently that than EL or KG have, because they have to cover the whole league and you dont. You didn’t just criticize judt this evaluation. Also, I watched a few recent clips of RC, and he looks really good, but not necessarily a slam dunk 1-3 starter, more like a 3, 4, or 5 in my eyes. I think yoiur arrogance is unwarranted. Rodriguez has climbed based on consistent health and performance, and Meyer has done little to dampen any hype he earned as a top pick in 2020. Hes jumped right into AA and done well.
I criticized the rationality deficit — Identified as inertia — implicit within this evaluaion system.
Check your eyes
Maybe it’s because Contreras didn’t post rate stats close to Rodriguez’s level until this season. Do you think six weeks of Contreras being awesome is enough rank even with Rodriguez after not being close for two full seasons? That seems awfully rich to me.
Yes. His rate stats reflect an impressive velocity increase and this improvemen has endured into the 2021 season.
The 2021 season is 6.5 weeks old. Contreras has made 7 starts. 5 of them were good-to-dominant, 1 so-so, 1…not so good. “Enduring” is a weird word to use in this context.
Evaluations can and do change after 7 starts (and this one has). But pop-up guys fade and track record matters too, as do other things (for instance, Rodriguez’s size/frame advantage and projection for four above-average pitches).
I’m sure there are plenty of places where you can find exuberant takes on your team’s new pop-up prospect. They may not even be wrong. But ankle-biting on the ranking of a single guy who only recently broke out as if it invalidates everything EL and KG do is obnoxious.
Will you go out on a limb and predict a Contrares fade?
Eric has always, always been more conservative moving players up and down than other public analysts. This sort of makes sense because you don’t want to overreact to small samples and because the basics (such as pitch grades) usually don’t change that rapidly, but it does mean that sometimes he misses spectacularly on some players.
For what it’s worth, there are a few players who I thought should be higher or lower but usually these were players where I was consistently higher or lower on that player. So I’m really skeptical of the top grades that Royce Lewis and Cristian Pache have earned in recent years, and so when I see that they’re struggling I think to myself “what is it going to take for Eric to move off of them?” But then I realize I was never that high on them to begin with.
You probably were skeptical about Jazz Chisholm too
I was! Still am, although not nearly to the same extent.
I’m still very skeptical of Jazz Chisholm. His April was great, but one month doesn’t eliminate all the red flags he has in his game
Conservative movements reflect the inertia built into the system. That was my point. I just noticed because I am a Pirates’ fan.
I think I need to stop using prospect lists as a mirror which reflects the value of a prospect. If a prospect performs and passes the eye test, the we fans can draw our conclusions based in that.
I think there are ways to state that a prospect is going to over or underperform without questioning the entire concept of the list. Eric sources his list with a whole bunch of industry types, so it is helpful to see what others think too.
The lists provide information. But I suspect some reflect prospect hype to an unacceptable degree. I closely follow the FG lists because I trust EL, KG and KM, that their evaluations are well-considered.
But can you point to convincing analysis that prospect list inertia is misguided, putting too much faith in past rankings and thus missing the mark too often by keeping guys up who should be down or not moving up guys who have raised their stock?
Your thesis basically treats inertia as a given mistake; I would think you first need to prove that inertia is bad, and then you can judge the credibility of any given entity’s typical prospect lists based on how much inertia they display. What if inertia demonstrates an insulation from putting too much stock into the very recent past, and is in fact a good thing? I’m not saying that is definitely the case, but conjectures must be investigated before treated as valuable.
Inertia is a resistance to change when change would occur had inertia not prevented it. If a reason does not exist to move a prospect ranking then the lack of change is not due to inertia. If, on the other hand, we see prospect A move slightly due to a change in output that output and other qualities show him to be superior to prospect B (Meyer), then we might wonder if the ranking system expresses bias (inertia) in the ranks it assigns to specific players. The word bias as I use it here does not refer to hatred or any other thing like that. It refers to a cognitive distortion that produces inertia within the ranking system.
The comparison of Contrares to Rodriguez and Meyer reveals that bias. One or more among the three is undeserving of his ranking based on revealed talent, that is, performance.
In other words, inertia is, by definition, a mistake, because it is revealed as a deviation from a player’s correct ranking. When a revealed and expressed talent level of a prospect changes, the ranking of that prospect should change with it. The new ranking should capture the talents of the prospect and of the players to which he will be compared. If they do not, because of a cognitive bias expressed as inertia, then the inertia is a mistake.
Is he a better prospect than Wander Javier though?
FIFTEEN MINUTE DETENTION AFTER SCHOOL
OTOH Contreras is a 5th year pro while the other two are a 3rd and first year (though NCAA should be considered a pro level league)
Inertia is a feature, not a bug.
A given rankings should reflect pedigree (perceived baseline and career long talent and potential) as well as results, and results include both present and past. It’s tempting to weight present results too heavily, greatly overriding past results and ignoring pedigree, but that isn’t the way it should be.
I would venture that if you took a typical top 100 list, and then two years later had someone make a brand new list without any knowledge of past rankings and based primarily on recent production and basic pedigree facts (such as draft position or signing money, age, etc) – the earlier top 100 list would easily outperform in overall total MLB career production than the newer more restricted one. Your comment seems to advocate for the latter, and I would argue that that is a mistake.
Even if not true, inertia doesn’t call credibility into question – unless one can prove that inertia steers wrong most of the time. Anecdotally, I think otherwise…there have been plenty of cases of highly ranked prospects hitting a bump (even a bad bump) in their development, not moving too much in the rankings, and then re-validating that ranking with a rebound a year or two later. If anything, someone whose rankings change too much too often would be the one lacking in credibly, on the basis of this history.
I think one thing you have to consider to ‘numbers’ mean very little. i.e., the writers have stated previously that all 50FV prospects are in a ‘tier’. So by moving Roensy to the 50FV bucket he could be ranked as high as 50 or so or as low as 120, but he’s in that ‘tier’. Maybe he’s not in the FV55 tier with Meyer and Grayson yet, but it’ll take more than 7 starts to move him higher. Also, no worries on the FV50 tier. As a Rays fan McClanahan came from this tier and 0.4 WAR and a 3.19xFIP through 38 IP is pretty good for a rookie so…with pitching you always get more movement in rankings and evaluations for all prospects and young players due to injuries, improvements, etc. 50FV is pretty damn good I guess is what I’m saying.
Tristan Casas is a monster, didn’t realize how well he was doing in AA. This is the kind of prospect I prospect for, the ones you can build a first division starting lineup around. Everything else falls in place when you lock that down
He reminds me of a young Rizzo
Same, just an ideal skillset and physical tools (including size and physicality) for the position. True 1B prospects like that are so rare but if you hit on one its an easy decade starter barring disaster
Have you heard anything on Jack Suwinski, I remember liking his HS swing but he had disappointed till this year. Has had a huge power surge out of nowhere
Miranda doesn’t terribly interest me, but the “approaching his career high in homeruns” line caught my eye. He’s also walking more than he has since he was in rookie ball in 16 and he never strikes out. If he unlocked some power, he could force interest.
Miranda has interested me very much, ever since 2017 when he posted an isolated slugging over .200 with a strikeout rate under 10%. Rookieball or no, that is an exciting power/contact combo for any prospect, much less a teenager. (That was his age 18/19 season.)
And now, finally, he’s doing it again but in AA. Isolated slugging of .226 while fanning just under 11% of the time. If he keeps this up much longer he’s an easy top 100 prospect for me, maybe as high as top 40-50.
I say this in part because we DO actually know whether or not the Wichita ballpark is inflating Miranda’s power output. I can’t for the life of me figure why Mr. Longenhagen would think this information is somehow elusive. Home/Road splits are freely available for minor leaguers, and Miranda has homered once every 20 at-bats at home…and once every 14 ABs on the road. Slugging % of .538 at home and .529 away. So, no home park inflation to factor in.
I’m guessing he was concerned about small sample size, but that is definitely interesting to note!
Because Kevbot034’s intuition is correct: park factors take a fair while to stabilize, so Miranda’s current splits by themselves are the next thing to meaningless for judging the effect of his environment on his stats.
I cannot agree with your logic, Mariner, re park factors. Whether a specific hitter has played a week, a month, or a year in a certain hitting environment, you can always tell immediately whether the home park has helped HIM.
Granted, I agree with you 100% that one cannot tell what a given ballpark factor is, over a tiny sample size. But you can always tell whether or not a park has helped any given individual, over any sample size, simply by comparing home & road. That’s axiomatic. If his home performance is not better than his road, then by definition his home park has not helped HIM.
And looking at Jose Miranda’s numbers, we see that Wichita has not helped him, compared to road ballparks.
I’ve caught a fair bit of the action for Wichita on MiLB tv and most of his homers I’ve seen have been bombs, well over 400 ft. There’s no park inflation for that. And he’s among the leaders for league adjusted stats.
Also it shouldn’t be totally shocking to see a prospect who’s always had a powerful frame and seemed like he should have been able to tap into more power do so as he develops in the upper minors.
There’s been some organizational chatter that he’s supposedly been focusing on refining his approach, though he still certainly swings plenty. The prospect note on him for past years has always pretty much been that the stats don’t quite meet the eye test. Seems fair to at least pay attention when the stats do catch up
Great stuff, as always. I thought Josh Winder might pop up onto the grid. He’s been crushing AA this season. So far, the increased velo and stuff he gained during the year off seems to be holding steady.
I understand that you didn’t look at anyone under 50 FV and it’s only been 13 games, but I’m chomping at the bit to see if/when Diego Cartaya is placed in the top 100 now that he is tearing the cover off the ball and all the in-person reports are glowing.
Thanks for the update! Was any consideration given to decreasing Nate Pearson’s ranking?
Didn’t previously guys like Arozarena and Carlson who have exhausted rookie status come off the board ? At what point does that happen now? After the draft? End of season?
From the first paragraph: “I still have three total org audits to do — Milwaukee, Oakland and the Cubs — before I start peeling graduates off the list.”
I just noticed JJ Bleday got moved down. He’s not exactly tearing up AA, so I’m not surprised, but what’s going on with him?
I enjoy these lists but continue to be astounded how a player who has already shown to be a quality major league performer can be buried at #343 on the list. I am speaking of Garrett Whitlock. Even last night when he actually gave up a couple of runs he was victimized by a couple of bleeders and some poor defense. Just when does performance count?
Hasn’t he lost his rookie status? Which means he’s coming off completely once Eric starts peeling off graduates (as noted above).
All I know is that he was on the list at #343 which is clearly absurd.
A bit of a deer in headlight rankings on all these SPs. Trevor Rogers and McClanahan are ranked 110 and 127, that’s enough to walk out the door. Understandable conservative ranking movement overall but we missed 2020 and many players are displaying improved/diminished stuff/skills and good and bad. We really think Nate Pearson is a 101 upgrade from Rogers! Not at all…
Opps didnt see where was gonna take of the grads, my bad there…Still BA update moved alot of dudes around. All good…
Any specific reasoning for Priester’s drop from 55 to 50?
Where do we think Garrett Mitchell slides in when Mil’s rankings come out? Looks like the real deal.
I’ll be interested to see Brayan Buelvas’s writeup when the Oakland list comes out. The K’s are alarming but I’m a sucker for teenagers making the jump all the way from DSL/AZL to full-season and performing. Looks like he hasn’t quite bumped himself up to the 50 tier for you folks yet.
Trevor Rogers being top 5 in the MLB in ERA wasn’t enough to move him up? Nevermind I guess I misunderstood the note about graduates, I guess they weren’t considered for movement.