KATOH’s 2017 Top-100 Prospects

It’s that time of the year again. Baseball America recently published their top-100-prospects list, as have Baseball Prospectus, Keith Law and MLB Pipeline. Eric Longenhagen will be putting out his top-100 this spring, too. Below, you’ll find my KATOH projection system’s take on baseball’s most promising rookie-eligible players.

As usual, hitters far outnumber pitchers on these lists, by about three to one. The reason for this, I think, is two-fold. Primarily, it’s just that even the best pitching prospects are risky. They get hurt; they lose velocity; they move to bullpen — all with little notice. Even the pitchers who do pan out are less likely to sustain their success over several years than their hitting counterparts. Secondly, KATOH does not directly account for pitchers’ velocity (or any other measure of “stuff”). If I were able to include a measure of fastball velocity, for example, I imagine most of the top pitching prospects would project more favorably. There isn’t an obvious scouting analogue for hitters that is glaringly omitted by the numbers.

The first top-100 list ranks prospects by KATOH+, which takes into account players’ performance, age, height and ranking on traditional prospect lists. This is the more “accurate” version of KATOH. As it did previously, this incorporates a player’s rank on Baseball America’s top-100 list. However, this version also folds in Eric Longenhagen’s FV ranking for the players who weren’t ranked by Baseball America, ensuring borderline top-100 guys aren’t dinged as hard as non-prospects.

The second list is the old, “stats only” version of KATOH, that doesn’t account for any sort of scouting. This is an obvious flaw, as there’s a reason people in the industry always say “don’t scout the stat line.” But by considering the stats exclusively, this version is 100% objective. And since it doesn’t downgrade prospects who lack scouting pedigree, it’s good for identifying statistical standouts who have gone unnoticed.

All players with at least 200 plate appearance or batters faced in the minors last year qualify. Enjoy!

(Note: Mark Karaviotis originally appeared due to a coding error. KATOH thinks he’s interesting — 2.2 WAR on both versions — but he’s not a top-100 guy.)

And here’s the “stats only” version.