Kiley McDaniel Prospects Chat – 4/20/15

Kiley McDaniel: This is a chat. Let’s chat.

Comment From Keeper? I hardly know her
Does Uribe’s slow start make it likely that Corey Seager comes up early?

Kiley McDaniel: Don’t think they’re going to rush Seager based on short-term need.

Comment From KD
Wisler- up in 2015? Starter or reliever?

Kiley McDaniel: Starter. Don’t think they bring him up in relief unless he sits in AAA all year and a spot doesn’t open up and they just want to get him worked in for Sept…but a spot will open up at some point.

Comment From Bojack Horseman
Has your opinion of Matt Wisler changed significantly since you wrote up the Padres in December?

Kiley McDaniel: His velo was down a tick or two in his season debut when I saw him, but that isn’t a huge concern at the beginning of the year. Everything else was there, so I’ll go see him again in a few weeks.

Comment From Ryan
Greenville had to call up an IF from XST yesterday and passed on Moncada. Any idea what’s going on with him?

Kiley McDaniel: He was planned to spend a few weeks to a month there to get up to speed. Don’t freak out people! He isn’t terrible because he isn’t up yet.

Comment From Cincinnati+Kid
What’s a ceiling and floor comp for Swihart? What kind of counting stats do you picture in 3 years?

Comment From owen
hey Kiley, thoughts on Plawecki?

Comment From Tim
Kevin Plawecki: Ready for the majors?

Comment From Keeper? I hardly know her
Do you think Buxton’s injuries have affected his upside long term, or just taken a year from him?

Kiley McDaniel: I don’t like doing the link dump thing but people keep asking questions that are best answered that way.

Plawecki/NYM List: http://www.fangraphs.com/bl…
Buxton/MIN List: http://www.fangraphs.com/bl…
Swihart/BOS List: http://www.fangraphs.com/bl…

Plawecki is the exact same right now as when I wrote him up and he’s been hot of late, so this is a good time to see what he can do.

I don’t do comps if there isn’t a natural one, but Swihart’s upside as outlined at the link is “.280/.340/.440, 15-20 homers, above average defense” so you can probably tell that matches up well with the state of catching in MLB right now. The floor is backup I guess? Things can go wrong that people don’t foresee, so floor is always a weird concept for me.

Buxton still has the same upside, but players hit that less often than you think. The injuries make it a little less likely he gets there, even if they’re freak things. I’ll see him in a few weeks and expect to be impressed again as usual when I see Buxton.

Comment From RPR
Only two starts and 12 innings, but Zach Lee’s numbers this year have been great. Think he can get back some of his shine after a rough 2014?

Kiley McDaniel: He has a 60 FB and CB after he signed and now they’re both 55 at best and have been that way for years. I don’t think the 60s are coming back, but the command and all that can always improve since he’s a good athlete. Don’t love the east/west elements to the delivery, though.

Comment From Jeff in T.O.
Hoffman make it to the majors this year?

Kiley McDaniel: Doesn’t seem like a good idea to rush him like that in his first year off surgery, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be as good in September as Roberto Osuna is right now. The answer is no, but more due to long-term development issues than talent.

Comment From Lee
Addison Russel ETA? What position does he debut?

Kiley McDaniel: Position matters on need. He’ll be up this year at some point, based largely on need. Russell’s release is a little slow, so he may end up being not as good defensively as Castro, but the glove is a little better. It isn’t an easy situation to predict, especially with Baez and Bryant also in the IF mix.

Comment From His mother
Maryland 2B Brandon Lowe was not on your draft prospects list … are you that down on him , or did you not realize he is eligible (RS soph)?

Kiley McDaniel: Not a tools guy. The list is focused on top 5 round types, so that isn’t damning of his potential, just saying he isn’t that kind of guy.

Comment From mtsw
Do you ever see the rule 4 draft moving to the offseason, like the NBA and NFL draft? It seems like there’s a good argument to make that the draft generates offseason interest in the league but holding it during the season just means coverage and interest in it is overshadowed by actual games.

Kiley McDaniel: Good luck using your “logic” to change baseball quickly. I’m not sure that’s a net positive, given the infrastructure around the draft like short season league that only exist because of the drafted players, but I don’t see big, sweeping changes made quickly to anything in baseball.

Comment From Gman
Plawecki servicable enough to keep the hot Mets rollin?

Kiley McDaniel: Yeah, bro.

Comment From Bobbly Blownilla
How much does your opinion sway this early in the season? Does Wilmer Difo’s hot start mean anything to you?

Kiley McDaniel: If scouts say something is different, then the opinions changes. A couple good weeks of performance on their own mean zero.

Comment From Pale Hose
Kiley – are you going to get back to the logistics of scouting type of articles? I may be weird, but I enjoy those a lot more than scouting reports.

Kiley McDaniel: Now that the list portion of the spring has died down a bit, the idea is to get to more of those things, game reports and an opinion piece I had in mind. Doing 30 orgs, July 2 and the draft was such a time suck that other stuff couldn’t really exist at the same time.

Comment From Jeff
What do the Mets do if Plawecki looks good while d’Arnaud is out?

Kiley McDaniel: I don’t know how many times I can say this, but having too many good players isn’t a problem. It very rarely happens, but these things work out. Maybe those two catchers are great, but a left fielder or first baseman sucks and you can move them around to get them in the lineup and keep their knees fresh. I will never understand why fans worry about this stuff, especially before it happens.

Comment From Jimmer
Do you still see Funk as a #3 type pitcher in MLB or has that changed?

Kiley McDaniel: Maybe 2/3 with the recent velo spike, but yeah that’s the upside.

Comment From Ryan
Starting to feel like Fulmer to the Red Sox. You want to dream on him being like Gray or Stroman, but the delivery screams bullpen. After taking a northern HS arm in Trey ball, could you see them doing the same with Mike Nikorak?

Kiley McDaniel: I think they’re leaning college at #7, but they’ll take the best player. I expanded my thoughts today on BOS and Fulmer in the draft rankings that came out on Friday. BOS/Fulmer looks like a rumor that won’t go away between now and draft day, and that’s who I’d take if the top 5 guys I ranked aren’t there.

http://www.fangraphs.com/bl…

Comment From Carl
If Shohei Otani were in the minor leagues, how high would you rank him as a prospect?

Kiley McDaniel: Like really, really high. Over Moncada and he was 8th.

Comment From Philip
AUSTIN HEDGES AUSTIN HEDGES

Kiley McDaniel: https://www.youtube.com/wat…

Comment From mtsw
Jason Garcia coming in right now in the O’s-Sox game for some mop-up long relief duty. Do you see him as a starter long term?

Kiley McDaniel: Has three pitches, but little track record of anything, so I wouldn’t count on that working out.

Comment From Phillies113
How do you pronounce Jhailyn Ortiz’s name? Is it HIGH-lin? Or JAY-lin?

Kiley McDaniel: Believe it’s B

Comment From Colby
if a hitter can consistently go way deep to his pull side or hit oppo home runs, which if any is a better indicator of the power or hit tool?

Kiley McDaniel: Oppo power in games below MLB is a great indicator of future hit/power success at MLB, particularly if physically projectable. Hitting oppo homers in BP is a godo indicator that oppo game power could be coming and generally positive on it’s own.

Comment From @outfieldgrass24
Archie Bradley has been consistently in the low 90’s in his two starts this spring. After hearing reports about him in the mid to upper 90’s at times, is this who he is now? Does it change his projection at all?

Kiley McDaniel: 90-94 is a couple ticks below where he’s been the past 12 months. He was 92-96 in the AFL this fall. The numbers are good, so I won’t worry about it or argue, just assume he’s dialing it down as some scouts hoped he would to get more consistency.

Comment From Brian S
Does Almora make it to the show before September 1 2015?

Kiley McDaniel: Definitely not before that.

Comment From Jeff
Losing Wright was bad, but is Thor+Plawecki about equal to Wheeler+d’Arnaud? What if Thor is more likely Gee+Montero?

Kiley McDaniel: Mets Math is confusing

Comment From Matt
Matt Olson’s continued to rake in AA. I know it’s a small sample size, but hasn’t he proven that he’s more than a 45/50 overall?

Kiley McDaniel: Would you respect my evaluations if 38 plate appearances in Double-A caused me to change them?

Comment From I Baseball
What are the chances Kyle Tucker falls to 9?

Kiley McDaniel: Decent. In play as high as 5, probably lands right around 10.

Comment From Ryan
How quickly do opinions change on a propsects FV once the games start. Not to say prospect X is hitting .500 after a week so move him up, but I’m sure at some point a high level of production leads to a change of opinion… Right?

Kiley McDaniel: Production would have to be close to a full year at a higher level when the main question about the players is could he perform at this level. Tell me a pitcher is up 4-5 ticks and I need about two outings of that being true to move the guy up. Scouting info is infinitely more sticky and meaningful for that sort of thing and MILB performance, especially when we already have a couple seasons that went into the evaluation in the first place.

Comment From Tim
Love the draft list on Friday. I did notice that local Kentucky boy Kyle Cody has dropped out of your rankings. Where will he go in the draft in your estimation?

Kiley McDaniel: Well he’s the first college pitcher outside the first round, so not exactly out of the rankings altogether. I’d say sandwich round if I had to guess, in that 30-50 range. Has mid-first round ability but command has been bad, off-speed has been inconsistent and the UK coaches have been jerking him around all spring, which isn’t helping.

Comment From Guest
Phillies in on any July 2nd prospects other than ortiz?

Kiley McDaniel: Not that I know about at this point. Last week I wrote two July 2nd articles and that’s all the notable info I have at this point. Only things I’m still sitting on are expanded scouting reports, videos and some lower six figure deals I’ve heard about for teams that aren’t going to spend a ton of money

http://www.fangraphs.com/bl…
http://www.fangraphs.com/bl…

Comment From kak
How would you go about international spending if you were the Red Sox, 12 300K talents, or a carpet bombing of 70 50K deals?

Kiley McDaniel: I don’t like the abstract questions in general, but 70 signings in one year means you’d have to have two DSL teams and you’d have to release every player that wasn’t sent to America, to replace them all with $50K players. That would be really dumb, which is why I’ve chosen to answer this hypothetical.

Comment From Evan
Seems like college lefties always have helium come draft day. Does TCU lhp Alex Young sneak into that 1st round Kiley?

Kiley McDaniel: In the updates I made today, Young was moved into the late 1st round, so yes that’s very possible.

http://www.fangraphs.com/bl…

Kiley McDaniel: Still getting a lot of questions about what I generally think about a prospect, not specifically something that’s happening in-season. For that stuff, use this link to find the team list that player is on and I talk at length about players there.

http://www.fangraphs.com/bl…

Comment From Matt
Any early rumblings of breakout prospects in full season ball, as the minor league season is underway?

Kiley McDaniel: I tweeted about Branden Kline a lot during spring training as he’s took a couple steps forward. I think he’s the best example I have so far of a guy that’s hugely different than the offseason.

Comment From Jonny
Should I be concerned that Josh Bell hasn’t hit any HRs above A Ball(including the AFL) or is it too soon?

Kiley McDaniel: Rule of thumb: if you think it might be too soon to count out a prospect, it’s definitely too soon. Fans are generally very impatient with prospects.

Exception: If the player is your son and you think it might be time to count him out, he was probably released three years ago.

Comment From Vslyke
Surprised to see Cody Martin do this well? And what are the chances that he gets a look in the rotation at some point this year?

Kiley McDaniel: Very surprised. He was Rule 5 eligible and no one took him, then he’s been lights out in the bullpen all year, so he clearly should’ve been picked. Scout called Martin’s CB in relief “a revelation” and I guess the feel/deception is still there, but the added arm speed in relief makes him a weapon all of sudden. About 1-2% chance that a scrapheap AAA starter can do this in MLB relief and looks like he’s one of those guys.

Comment From Griff
If you had to take wild guess, who falls to Texas at 4 in the draft?

Kiley McDaniel: I just wrote 6000 words about the draft and some of those were that there’s a consensus top 3, maybe 5 in this year’s draft. So, I’d guess those consensus top 3 (Rodgers/Tate/Swanson) are gone and you can pick from the rest of them

http://www.fangraphs.com/bl…

Comment From Eddy
Should Marlins fan be a bit annoyed at the team for picking Kolek over Rodon? Seeing the latter come up at a time when the Fish need SP, and the former reportedly struggle, is pretty disappointing.

Kiley McDaniel: I had Rodon 2nd on my board and Kolek 6th, so I didn’t think that was good idea at the time.

http://sbb.scout.com/story/…

Comment From mike
Glad the Sox are looking at Alex Bregman…their system really lacks in infield talent…………………oh wait.

Kiley McDaniel: Fans gonna fan

Comment From Bruce
Will you be announcing your prospect team hire soon?

Kiley McDaniel: It isn’t a hire, it will be a bunch of hires. Already hired one, have a couple more that I’m close on and will be a few more coming. Slow process to work through all of the applications, but I’ll get to all of them.

Comment From DC Crew
How worried should I be about Robert Stephenson’s walk issues, and them keeping him from becoming an above average starting pitcher?

Kiley McDaniel: It isn’t walk issues per se that will hold him back, but his general feel for pitching and sequencing, generally throwing rather than pitching. Still needs to click for him.

Comment From Vlad
Kiley, are you planning to cover some Japanese players? Sorry if you already did and I missed it.

Kiley McDaniel: Haven’t done that other than mention Otani is the best prospect in the NPB. Should do more with them by the end of the season.

Comment From Griff
Nick Williams off to a fast start. Numbers say better approach. Can he sustain it?

Kiley McDaniel: It’s been two weeks! Numbers can’t say anything without 37 qualifiers!

Comment From kak
You just described Swihart as almost exactly Jonathan Lucroy. .287/.353/.451 with 31 HR over 2013-215.

Kiley McDaniel: So, there you go, that’s the upside.

Comment From mike
What odds would you put on Carson Fulmer establishing himself as a starter in the pros?

Kiley McDaniel: I’d say 65-70% or so. Industry as a whole I’d bet would say 35-40% but some scouts may be a little higher than me that know him more personally.

Comment From Proswagonist
Could you give a quick report on Andrew Benintendi? Dude is playing in the SEC and leading D1 in homers. I read an interview where he said he sits offspeed because he can catch up to fastballs, isn’t that odd/rare?

Kiley McDaniel: Last cut from the 1st round list. 60 speed, 50 power, advanced feel to hit, may not hit more than 15 homers in MLB, but profiles in CF and has lots of buzz in the late 20’s to 30’s.

Comment From Sir Nerdlington
Congratulations, you are appointed farm director for my team. I’ve just given you an extra $20M a year to improve our system. How do you spend it?

Kiley McDaniel: Buying a private island for myself because some sucker gave me $20M

Comment From Justin
Could you please assure me there will be healthy players in the draft.

Kiley McDaniel: First rule of this draft is there won’t be healthy players

Comment From DC Crew
Has Shelby Miller shown stuff this year that was comparable to the stuff that made him a highly regarded prospect a couple years ago. And do you think he is anything more than a #3? Thanks

Kiley McDaniel: Upside is #2. Who knows if he gets there but #3 is reasonable exepectation.

Comment From Fred
Thoughts on the Dodgers essentially buying a Comp. B pick for $2M?

Kiley McDaniel: Good for them. Other rich teams should be doing that.

Comment From randplaty
Why would the Padres promote Austin Hedges to AAA even though he couldn’t hit at AA?

Kiley McDaniel: I’m sure they saw something they liked offensively like adjustments as a leading indicator of performance. The two types of players that get aggressively promoted without hitting to league average levels are 1) young slick-fielding shortstops and 2) young, very advanced defensive catchers. This happens a lot with middle-tier prospects and some think Hedges may be Yadier Molina defensively, so he may need to be rushed/challenged to benefit the org and himself the most…not going to act like I know more about their long-term plans for the team or Hedges’ mental approach more than SD does.

Comment From Zona
Meadows is killing pitchers in A+ in first weeks. Can he become top-10 prospect next year and take Polanco job by 2016?

Kiley McDaniel: Wait Polanco was the darling of prospects nerds everywhere like 8 months ago

Comment From Boris
Heard anything interesting about Blake Snell’s hot start?

Kiley McDaniel: Tweeted after his first start that he was up to 97. Could be headed to Double-A soon.

Comment From Brock Samspon
Profile for Jomar Reyes? Are scouts making any comps?

Kiley McDaniel: Huge frame makes it hard to make comps, but there’s some Miguel Sano in there.

Comment From NetPositive
Latest on Dillon Tate. How does this affect his draft possibilities and how this affect the starter or reliever debate?

Kiley McDaniel: Missing a start with a strained lat doesn’t change anything long-term.

Comment From LP
Kiley – What names have you seen linked with the Rangers at #4?

Kiley McDaniel: I wrote 6000 words on the draft today, as a reminder

http://www.fangraphs.com/bl…

and mentioned that Texas has been linked to Chad Smith, but he’s more of a 2nd round target.

Comment From Phillies113
I like the dynamic you and Cistulli have on the podcasts. Not a question, just stating a thing that I have sometimes (an opinion).

Kiley McDaniel: Let’s not make a habit of that, but this one is okay for now.

Comment From Dave
How much do you travel?

Kiley McDaniel: Heading to Montgomery in a few hours for three days there. Target is Mobile’s rotation: Aaron Blair, Braden Shipley, Yoan Lopez. Haven’t seen any of them before.

In-season I’m gone from home maybe 8-10 out of 30 nights because I target games within a few hours of me. In the summer, I’m sometimes gone over half of the month with showcase season and college summer leagues along with minor league stuff.

Comment From Tim
Who are some recent pop up guys we should be talking about in the draft?

Kiley McDaniel: I’m not joking, guys, I wrote a lot about the draft like really recently and mentioned a lot of names

http://www.fangraphs.com/bl…

Comment From John
Kiley, do our work for us… despite having the wonders of the internet at our fingertips and the wealth of knowledge that provides, its easier for you to just answer our questions! We are lazy!

Comment From Oblivious
Any Mike Trouts in the draft?

Comment From Dave
How much do you make?

Kiley McDaniel: I think those three questions are a good representation of the ones I haven’t answered yet. See you guys next week!