Eric Longenhagen Prospects Chat: 1/30/26

Eric A Longenhagen: Hey everyone, good to be with you again on a crisp Friday morning in the desert.

Eric A Longenhagen: Please go check out the Phils scouting reports: Philadelphia Phillies Top 34 Prospects | FanGraphs Baseball

Eric A Longenhagen: and the Angels Los Angeles Angels Top 36 Prospects | FanGraphs Baseball

Eric A Longenhagen: And for the newbs, see that there’s all sorts of other cool stuff on The Board The Board | FanGraphs Baseball

Matt: Since the Angels list just went up from Brendan, curious if you have any “system overview thoughts” about the Angels system?

Eric A Longenhagen: I think it’s a little more fun than it is good. I really like the toolsy international guys, I like Alvarez, Quintero, Flores (all potential top 100 guys twelve months from now), they find hard throwers that don’t always develop in other ways but sometimes they do (Jose Soriano turned out to be good)…

Eric A Longenhagen: TGA is a Pick to Click for both Brendan and I. It’s not a bad system, my instincts are that it’s in the middle third of systems, but probably toward the bottom of that third.

Eric A Longenhagen: I really think their draft strategy is too narrow. There’s definitely something to be said for polished players getting to the bigs quickly, and it was one thing to do that during the Trout and Ohtani window, but now they’re too often punting on upside with their early picks. They’ve balanced somewhat with high schoolers later in the draft, but dudes like Will Smith and Bo Bichette go after the 1st round all the time, give yourselves the opportunity to end up with them.

Rodger: Is Ryan Ward a classic quad A guy or should he be traded to a team that can give him an opportunity?

Eric A Longenhagen: I think he’s an above replacement player so maybe not classic Quad A guy who can’t do anything in the bigs. I do think it’ll take him trickling down to a rebuilding team for him to get a lengthy shot, and that he could have a 3 year window of good numbers if that happens

Rodney – Buckeye AZ: 2027 Dynasty rank for each player if things go good:  Stewart, Benge, Emerson, Snelling and Tong

Eric A Longenhagen: Emerson (supplants Crawford and is the everyday SS in a potent lineup), Benge (stays in CF and it’s okay, swing actually works, top of the order guy in a potent lineup), Stewie (stays at 3B enough to qualify, rakes), Tong (strikes improve, two monster pitches), Snelling (rock solid no. 4)

Rodger: Who is a slightly less heralded arm that could have Misiorowski type ascension with a midseason call up? Klassen? Hopkins? Wiggins?

Eric A Longenhagen: It might just be Bishop Letson if you’re looking for Miz-like traits

Eric A Longenhagen: Maybe Brooks Auger? like if I’m mining really deep for guys who could be Miz for the reasons Miz is Miz, Extension is where you start looking

Vic: Who makes a bigger impact this year Wetherholt or McGonigle?   I appreciate these chats!

Eric A Longenhagen: I’ll say KMac because we’re talking potential impact on a postseason race

Matt D: Thanks for doing these chats! Curious what you think about Kristian Campbell as sort of post-hype/recent grad. I think it is far too early to give up on the kid personally. Did anything change your outlook from last year?

Eric A Longenhagen: Swing has changed, set-up looked different in Puerto Ricko. Swinging it hard but late a lot of the time. I’m worried about him.

RH: Do you know if there is a constituency in the rrom for negotiations fighting to keep 4 levels of affiliated Milb? I have lost hope for A- coming back

Eric A Longenhagen: It has tended to be the behavior of the union to slowly agree to things that cause the rights and privileges of the amateur and minor league players to erode. Now that minor leaguers are unionized, they can advocate for themselves more than before, but even if it doesn’t happen in the next CBA I have to imagine that over time we’ll have fewer affiliates, dev will be outsourced to college baseball as much as possible, etc.

JP: Aidan Miller ETA? And how soon will Philly regret the Trea Turner contract that goes through 2033 when he will be 40?

Eric A Longenhagen: Probably end of ’26, late enough that he retains rookie eligibility in ’27. Trea led the league in hits this year right? There’s always been part of me that wants to see him in CF, and maybe at a certain point Philly’s best alignment will be Miller at SS (he’s not great there, I don’t love Turner there either despite what the numbers say but he’s better than Miller) and Trea in CF. Most long term deals feel bad at the end. They’ve come close to winning it all with this guy so it’s hard to say it was a bad decision.

Eric A Longenhagen: Like a lot of teams at some point they’ll need to rebuild. Pretty natural.

Jonathan: If you were running a team’s scouting department and were inexplicably given 2-3x as big a budget as the next-largest scouting budget in baseball, how would you try to best create competitive imbalances in favor of your team?  Hire more experienced scouts?  Hire more scouts, period, to get greater coverage?  Invest in technology for your scouts?  Better synergy with PD, S&C, etc.?  Other stuff?

Eric A Longenhagen: Money alone can’t accomplish *all* of that stuff. And remember it’s just the scouting department with crazy money in your scenario so the PD, R&D, etc. stuff I can’t really touch. We would definitely have scout super team and the department would be big. I’d maybe try to hire every single public-facing prospect person to create a huge vacuum just to see what’d happen in that space. There aren’t many of us.

Greg: What percentage of the way to getting the most accurate possible individual defensive stats are we?

With modern technology we are able to measure positioning, range, ball flight trajectory and exit velo, throw speed/accuracy, transfer times, pitch framing, etc.

It seems like at this point we have more or less all of the important inputs we will ever have, no? I understand this may differ by infield, outfield, catcher, pitcher

Eric A Longenhagen: It depends how you want to look at it. There are nuances in the quality and cleanliness of players actions that signal more about their ability than just whether the ball was seen to first base in time. But also, all that kinda matters is whether it got there in time. So Alcides Escobar can pick a tough hop with the sexiest glovework you’ve ever seen, and Dan Uggla can get down on a knee, the ball hits his body, he gets up and still has time to make the play, and they’re both outs. And there are definitely some people who only care about it in a binary sense like that.

Eric A Longenhagen: So shorter answer is that yes, more of defense is quantifiable than in the past, there are still things the etch isn’t assessing that are meaningful to me when I’m parsing players, but those things might only be meaningful on the rare occasion when they’re the difference between an out or not and some people thin kthat’s rare enough not to care so much.

Lord Thunder: The ZIPS projection for Thayron Liranzo was beyond brutal. What was behind his horrible year at Double-A and what are the chances of a significant rebound?

Eric A Longenhagen: My gut is to stay on him because catchers sometimes just have seasons like this, but Brendan and I have Tigers on our docket here shortly and we’ll have a more conclusive answer shortly.

BI: Last chat you mentioned they might do a 10 round draft with no hs players eligible + take away one of the A levels so I got a couple questions within that. First do you see teams targeting more HS players over the next 2 drafts since that won’t be allowed. Secondly, if the draft is being changed, do you see the IFA system getting tweaked at all? Lastly how would taking out an A level effect development, you saw taking away short season ball really affect some HS and Latin players

Eric A Longenhagen: I didn’t say anything about rounds

Eric A Longenhagen: “First do you see teams targeting more HS players over the next 2 drafts since that won’t be allowed?”

Eric A Longenhagen: No, that doesn’t make sense to me. If anything, “taking a bunch of HS kids and then they develop for a year or two and now you can only take college kids” creates a clog of same-aged players. If there’s going to be a response to no HS players, it’ll be one year of HS players reclassifying to sneak into the last draft with HS players.

Eric A Longenhagen: “Secondly, if the draft is being changed, do you see the IFA system getting tweaked at all?” It’s been talked about before and I imagine the league will try. Teams are operating as if it won’t change because that’s the way to best stay prepared. If it changes then everyone starts from scratch, unless there’s a wink wink and everyone just drafts the players they already agreed to deals with, which would be hilarious.

Eric A Longenhagen: “Lastly how would taking out an A level effect development, you saw taking away short season ball really affect some HS and Latin players”

Eric A Longenhagen: I think the quality of baseball at Low-A was impacted severely by removal of the short season leagues, and I’d have to think High and Double A would be impacted if Low-A is excised.

drplantwrench: tyler bremner is not the pick i would have made, but i think the selection might be overhated.  hes a year removed from being the best pitcher in college, did fine last year despite really extenuating circumstances.  sure there were higher upside but higher risk choices, but the angels cant afford that luxury cuz they need help ASAP (because arte wont spend).  am i validating a bad choice or did the angels maybe not do something wrong for once?

Eric A Longenhagen: IDK how much it’s “hated”, I was pretty heavy on Bremner  for well over a year and think it was totally justified to take him where he went. It came out of left field not in a talent sense, but in that we basically didn’t have mock draft dope that it was possible. We all would have done better to put Bremner with LAA based on their tendencies rather than the intel we all got, which turned out to be B.S.

Eric A Longenhagen: Because it caught us off guard from a mock standpoint, I fear it came off to the internet that it was wild from a talent standpoint. It wasn’t, he’s good.

Potato: Falvey news is weird timing, right?

Eric A Longenhagen: It’s normal when you’ve had an ownership change for something like this to happen not long after. So it’s not weird in that respect. The timing relative to the rest of the baseball calendar is kinda weird, but from what I can tell, since Zoll became GM he’s the guy all the ops decisions you associate with a baseball exec have gone through. There’s not like a clunky baton pass or anything happening here, this isn’t a house cleaning.

Eric A Longenhagen: I don’t think.

wheelhouse: do the yankees have anywhere near enough position player depth to justify trading away dominguez and/or jones? not that either guy is some budding superstar, but in the scenario where grisham, stanton, and even bellinger are gone after 2027 it seems very possible they’d regret having dealt one of them for, i dunno, a middle reliever

Eric A Longenhagen: You can think of both of those guys as being on a three-year clock to show the org they’re actually good. They’ll get enough opportunities during that time to make it obvious I think. The Yankees tend to make late-drafted pitchers better pretty quickly and then that’s who they trade.

Salty: It’s a big advantage in deep dynasty leagues to identify teams whose drafting/PDev is on the upswing before the masses notice.  Thinking a team like Baltimore in the past, and more recently, Detroit.  Looking ahead, I think Colorado might be the next team to take that jump.  Would you agree, or is that a bit premature, and maybe there’s another org you think might fit that role?

Eric A Longenhagen: I agree. I ended up with Rockies in my Diamond Mind draft (24 teams, 40-man rosters, keep 25 at the end of the year) for exactly this reason, I view them all as essentially benefitting from a change of scenery.

JKD: What is a realistic set of expectations for Jonah Tong, this year and next? Looking just at the results, it’s easy to dream but he’s also just a pretty small guy with some unorthodox stuff going on. Nolan McLean is pretty easy to understand as a future (and potentially present) Dude but I can’t quite wrap my head around Tong.

Eric A Longenhagen: I’m with this, too. I like Tong but think it’s below average feel. His fastball plays in a way that’ll allow hit to be okay. The Lincecum comps are not helping to keep expectations in a realistic place.

Ben: How would you generally evaluate Brian Barber’s tenure as scouting director? The inability to develop relievers have drained the system in recent years (soto, estevez, duran) but its difficult to parse if thats a development or drafting issue. Also theres been a pretty brutal lack of impact bats come up through him (miller, stott as exceptions).

Eric A Longenhagen: I think it’s going okay and I don’t love Nori or Burkholder. Remember that they had to have guys to trade for those relievers you mentioned. They drafted and signed those guys. Klassen, Tait…they’re not in the system anymore but they’re good.

Guest: Any thoughts on potential latest unheralded Yankee pitcher to come out of the lab as surprise prospect?

Eric A Longenhagen: We’re about 6 weeks away from knowing who that is.

Lord Thunder: Does Shunpeita Yamashita still have the highest ceiling among NPB players who might come over to the States?

Eric A Longenhagen: I think so. Nasty power pitcher no 2/3 type

Jonny: Is there a player comp for Hayden Alvarez if he hits 75% of his right tail outcome

Eric A Longenhagen: Terrence Long

Alec: This may just be an obvious answer given the FV grades, but when factoring in distance from the big leagues and the organizations they’re in do you feel better about Jean Cabrera or TGA going forward with their respective clubs?

Eric A Longenhagen: TGA has like no. 3 starter upside but is years away, Cabrera I think is a backend starter right now. So I wanna value TGA more than Cabrera but I don’t want to stuff TGA up there with guys who are gonna be no. 3 starters tomorrow. This is why the 45+ FV tier exists.

Eric A Longenhagen: To create a value placeholder for these high upside guys who we know have risk but are potentially good enough to be untradeable.

Jonny: Do you think Edward Florentino will hit?

Eric A Longenhagen: Yes

Oaktown Blues: Jesus Made hit 6 HR last year, while Leo De Vries hit 18. If you’ll forgive my scouting of the stat lines, why are you so much more confident in Made’s power potential, long term?

Eric A Longenhagen: Better hit tool with which to access the power

Potato: When is Prospect week this year? Any new supplementary contributors or articles we can look forward to?

Eric A Longenhagen: After the Super Bowl starting midweek and spanning into the middle of the following week

Eric A Longenhagen: No new additions, it’s me and Beeg in a full time capacity and James as contributor. Others from the site will chip in with prospecty content but not on grades or rankings

Nils: How many 50 FV+ prospects would you expect in an average year?  How about this year?

Eric A Longenhagen: There are fewer than 100 of them who will actually be that good, but we hit the gas pedal in places where they *might* be that good as an industry, which I think is fine. For my style that’s like 110 guys per year. I think we’re in that area this offseason, maybe even a little more.

Dax Kilby’s Grandmother: Are you a Dax Kilby believer? Lots of hype!

Eric A Longenhagen: Was I the highest on him pre draft?

Eric A Longenhagen: hold on lemme look

Eric A Longenhagen: I had him 23rd The Board | FanGraphs Baseball

Eric A Longenhagen: Carlos had him 75th (no shade, Carlos is great, just stating facts here) 2025 Top MLB Draft Prospects

Eric A Longenhagen: Kiley had him 51st 2025 MLB draft rankings: Top 150 prospects, mini-mock draft – ESPN

Eric A Longenhagen: Pipeline had him 62 2025 Top Baseball Draft Prospects

Eric A Longenhagen: i’m struggling to find keith’s, cmon Times

Eric A Longenhagen: Schusterman just has these in a spreadsheet somewhere

Eric A Longenhagen: 65th 2025 MLB Draft top 100 prospects: Ethan Holliday, Liam Doyle top a class with depth – The Athletic

Eric A Longenhagen: SO yes, I like him

Big Fan: Braves fan here and I’m always lamenting that the farm system is near the bottom of MLB, while teams like the Dodgers and Mets draft late but are closer to the top.  I know the quick ascension of many prospects impacts lists, and winning games not farm system awards matters, but are there glaring ways that the Braves farm system and player dev machine needs to get better?

Eric A Longenhagen: I wish they would stop doing one big $4 million guy internationally

Eric A Longenhagen: They haven’t hit on their big money Int’l guys

millville meltdown: will a well-applied mascara save a prospect with otherwise poor makeup

Eric A Longenhagen: I could do back shaving tutorial videos

Eric A Longenhagen: I once used part of my bike lock to reach back there myself. The pandemic was a weird time.

David: Hit tool question for Lazaro Montes. Looking at his walk rates and his contact %, is his issue mostly just missing pitches or are their also swing decisions issues as well. No one is perfect at swing decisions just wonder if it mostly ‘just’ missing pitches or are their other issues.

Eric A Longenhagen: In-zone miss is where his data is scariest, including fastballs right down the middle. He’s near or at double the big league average.

Eric A Longenhagen: His chase stuff is fine, at or slightly better than the big league average even as you look at his splits with two strikes, against breaking balls, what have you.

Mas Datos, Por Favor: Do teams keep track of each scouts grades on players and then later on cross reference those with actual player outcomes? If you did that, you could get a rough idea of scout x is really good at catcher D, but bad at game power eval, etc.

Eric A Longenhagen: Some do, some do it relative to bonus amount so there’s quicker feedback.

Bryan Ramos: Very low chances a bad 3B project teams keeps me from heading to Charlotte? Red Sox and Angels like ex-White Sox (Romy and Yoan). Nationals and Rockies bad at 3B too.

Eric A Longenhagen: Who values defense most from that group? Rockies would be interesting. Milwaukee prefer him to Seigler?

Mas Datos, Por Favor: Do you also track some of your tool grades and compare later on to see where you strengths are and where you can keep improving?

Eric A Longenhagen: yes, properly valuing guys with incredible command and knowing when a guy is a good enough hitter to outperform their raw power are where I’ve struggled to be accurate

Eric A Longenhagen: I’m probably best at defense and “binary no” hit tool guys.

DAVEC: Who is your pick between bat first guys Ryan Clifford or Jacob Reimer for “best” prospect?

Eric A Longenhagen: Reimer

Roch Cholowsky: (I was 36th on the FG 2023 list with a 45 FV. Have I “proven” my bat so far? Again caveat need to do it again this season)

Eric A Longenhagen: Yeah, feel for tucking your hands in and barreling stuff on the inner half is way better now than HS, when you were longer and scarier. Body hasn’t trended great, though.

SCJH: The “maxed out” tag in scouting reports always fascinates me. What’s the best result you can think of from a guy you considered physically maxed out at a young age?

Eric A Longenhagen: Devers, Kirk, Jean Segura, Schwarber, Joc, even guys like Adam Eaton were kinda maxed. They can be good, but you see how that group trended defensively. Kirk is amazing but catching is a different thing than playing a position.

ProsserInTorts: Franklin arias a midseason 60fv if the rumored added strength manifests itself in an ev bump, more lifting and pulling?

Eric A Longenhagen: The prospect in the current group most likely to be Maikel Garcia

ProsserInTorts: more likely to ever become a 55fv: marcus phillips or juan valera?

Eric A Longenhagen: Phillips for me, more starter-y in body and delivery. Valera it’s straight gas but violent and wild.

Michael – FG since 2016: Keith law thinks jumping Konnor Griffin into majors is a ridiculous idea.   First person saw that expressed caution WRT griffin.  After Jac C I’m concerned with rushing him as well.  What say you?

Eric A Longenhagen: Think about how they handled Skenes. Late ’26

Insert Witty Name Here: What’s the highest extension you’ve seen from a prospect? We know about basketball players turning into TE’s, but would someone who has freakishly long arms get enough extension where the fastball would look 105+?

Eric A Longenhagen: The only guy whose name you might not know a all is Griffin Kilander in the BoSox system. The oher guys you’ve heard of. Logan Gilbert, Serwinowski, Miz, Letson, Aroldis Chapman, Gervase, Glasnow

Panini Senior Bowl: Any standouts of yours from Senior Bowl practice?

Eric A Longenhagen: The kid from John Carroll who was a serious basketball player and then started playing flag football, the kid from Florida who weighs 380 and broke the grip strength tester, a bunch of O linemen, the corner from Tennessee. I just watched the first day and have the other sessions recorded

Eric A Longenhagen: but I’ve been listening to mcshay and the rogers/sikkema pods

Eric A Longenhagen: while i write top 100 blurbs

War2D2: Hi Eric! Thanks for all you do! Keith Law had his top-100 come out recently, and I was surprised that Jaxon Wiggins was nowhere to be seen (he also wasn’t on KLaw honorable mentions list). Has his stock fallen or is he one of those high-variance guys that people are all over the place on?

Eric A Longenhagen: I think having him toward the back based on injury history is fine, Keith has him about that spot

Matt: I really enjoyed Brendan’s Angels list, but can you classify Samue Aldegheri’s time in the Majors as a “cup of espresso” instead of a “cup of a coffee” going forward- from a fellow Italian. Grazi!

Eric A Longenhagen: An oversight from our italian-speaking prospectorino

Eric A Longenhagen: prospectorando?

Eric A Longenhagen:

TameImp: Is Dax Kilby a 2b guy eventually or outfield?

Eric A Longenhagen: OF

Jacob from Earth: Is Camelback Mountain to Phoenix attractions as speed is to prospect grades (visually appealing, get’s people excited, very rarely delivers on the promise)?

Eric A Longenhagen: That’s a pretty good comp. The Musical Instrument Museum is plate discipline

Panini Senior Bowl: Since you painted the picture above, what does a farm run by you, BG, Callis, Mayo, Collazo, Kiley, Law, etc. look like?

Eric A Longenhagen: Too Many Cooks | Adult Swim

Eric A Longenhagen: Okay ‘Graphites, I’ve gotta prep for a call with James and Brendan to do Prospect Week work. I’ve also just been informed Catherine O’Hara died, which is terrible.

Eric A Longenhagen: So I’m gonna go. Talk next Friday, your questions were outstanding again this week. Thanks for coming, see ya.