At 48-57, the Atlanta Braves are nowhere near this year’s playoff race. Braves fans can look forward to a brighter future, however, as Atlanta placed nine prospects on KATOH+’s most recent top-100 list. Ozzie Albies, who is arguably the most promising of those prospects, made his big league debut last night, starting at second base.

Although he’s a 20-year-old who was born in 1997 (!), Albies’ minor-league performance suggests he’s ready for another challenge. He slashed .285/.330/.440 at Triple-A, with an exciting 21 steals. Despite his small stature, Albies popped nine homers in Triple-A, resulting in a respectable .156 ISO. Albies’ offensive performance would be compelling for any infield prospect. And coming from a 20-year-old middle infield prospect, it’s extremely compelling.

Albies has been a consensus top-100 prospect since 2016, since his strong 2015 campaign put him on the map. KATOH had always liked Albies, even before it was cool, pegging him as one of the top prospects in baseball when he was a 17-year-old in 2014. Interestingly, Albies was a punchless, high-contact hitter back then, but he’s gradually sacrificed contact for power as he’s worked his way through the Braves system. The 8% K%, 048 ISO Albies who tore up Rookie Ball in 2014 scarcely resembles the 20% K%, .156 ISO guy the Braves just promoted. But regardless of what it looked like, Albies always had offensive talent to go along with his speed, defense and extreme youth.

My KATOH system pegs Albies for 12.9 WAR over his first six seasons by the stats-only method, and 13.8 WAR by KATOH+, which incorporates his No. 25 prospect ranking from Baseball America. Those marks place him 6th and 2nd, respectively, among prospects. Those point estimates don’t tell the whole story, however, as KATOH sees some serious star potential in Albies, giving him a roughly 1-in-4 chance of racking up over 20 WAR over the next six years. For reference, Robinson Cano, Dustin Pedroia and Ian Kinsler were the only second baseman who crossed that threshold in the six-year span that ended in 2016.

To put some faces to Albies’ statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps. I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Albies’ Triple-A performance and every 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.