Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Oakland Athletics farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this. -Eric Longenhagen

The KATOH projection system uses minor-league data and Baseball America prospect rankings to forecast future performance in the major leagues. For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, so take these projections with a grain of salt. Due to their purely objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated. Due to sample-size concerns, only players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced last season have received projections. -Chris Mitchell

Other Lists
NL West (ARI, COL, LAD, SD, SF)
AL Central (CHW, CLE, DET, KC, MIN)
NL Central (CHC, CIN, PIT, MIL, StL)
NL East (ATL, MIA, NYM, PHI, WAS)
AL East (BAL, BOS, NYY, TB, TOR)
AL West (HOU, LAA, SEA, TEX)

55 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Has recorded .295 career batting average.

Scouting Report
Barreto was signed by Toronto for $1.45 million back in 2012 and then traded to Oakland — along with Kendall Graveman, Brett Lawrie, and Sean Nolin — in exchange for Josh Donaldson. Bay Area sports talk radio still discusses the deal with frequency and bile, and largely considers Barreto the last hope for salvaging it, though Graveman and his sinker appear to be breaking out this year.

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Seemingly ever since humans gained sentience, we’ve been obsessed with the concept of flight. How powerful birds must have seemed to ancient man, able to free themselves from the constraints of the ground. Joyous was the starling, dancing and warbling through the air. Terrifying was the hawk, diving for a kill. To fly is to move in ways unimaginable for those trapped on the surface. We stared at the sky, the last frontier to be conquered, and dreamed. We told stories of magical heroes and gods who could fly. We sought any way possible to experience it, from the Dark Ages to Da Vinci and on.

By the time we came up with hot-air balloons and gliders and airplanes and helicopters so that we could join the birds in the sky, perhaps we lost a little bit of that wonder. Generations have now grown up with intercontinental flight as a simple fact of life. We still dream of joining the birds in the skies, of flying like Superman. But we no longer wonder if it’s possible. We know that we can fly with mechanical aid. But we’ll never truly join the birds. At least not for more than a few seconds.

It’s a small stroke of genius that the gods put Chris Coghlan on a team named after a bird. And indeed, last night’s Blue Jays came in St. Louis against the Cardinals, who are also named for birds. Teams named for birds play each other all the time, of course. The Jays play in the same division as the Orioles. Almost none of those games, if none at all, have featured a moment like this.

We can’t earnestly call what Coghlan accomplishes here flight. If anything, it’s falling with style. It’s a leap and a near-perfect handspring. It’s something out of a gymnastics exhibition, except Coghlan is wearing cleats and a helmet instead of a unitard. It’s the closest anyone’s come to real, honest-to-goodness flight on a baseball field since Ben Revere achieved liftoff in 2013.

Coghlan didn’t plan on springing over the head of Yadier Molina. Like the most satisfying superhero origin stories, he didn’t know he had the power inside of him. He jumped because instinct told him to, because years upon years of baseball conditioning told him to score that run. Humans are capable of great physical feats when fueled by adrenaline and instinct. They can lift cars, run faster than they ever have before. For a few precious seconds, they can fly. If they’re lucky, they can even stick the landing, like Coghlan did.

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Hello! Yesterday I posted this. In that post, I briefly discussed five outrageously hot offensive starts — specifically, those achieved by Eric Thames, Bryce Harper, Eugenio Suarez, Mitch Haniger, and Aaron Judge. I solicited feedback in the form of a rest-of-season wRC+ projection for each bat. Although I didn’t include every hitter off to a scorching start, I touched on five of significant interest, and your overall participation level has been great. Thank you for that — without participants, these polls would be super embarrassing.

Comments and tweets were left suggesting I run a similar post, focusing on guys who’ve been bad hitters. This has happened because humans love symmetry, and also because it’s just simply the obvious thing to do. So now, same thing, with different players owning very different numbers. Again, the post below doesn’t cover everyone who’s mired in a slump — sorry for those of you who want to read about, say, Carlos Gonzalez or Keon Broxton or Jonathan Lucroy. I’ve chosen five players and stuck with five players, and I’d love it if you’d participate once more. There’s no such thing as a participation trophy, but if there were, you could get one! All for placing an internet vote. (Actually up to five internet votes.)

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Episode 735
Managing editor Dave Cameron is the guest on this edition of the program, during which he discusses the absence of Starling Marte from the Pirates and the absence of Madison Bumgarner from the Giants and, implicitly, the absence of “human behavior” from his behavior.

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Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 39 min play time.)

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The Cincinnati Reds are young and rebuilding, so it’s not too much of a surprise that, this year, they’ve had more players make their major-league debuts than any other team. Yesterday, a pitcher named Ariel Hernandez showed up for the first time. He was tasked with some early innings in relief of an unsuccessful starter. Although it’s never easy to make one’s first-ever big-league pitches, some of the pressure is off when your team’s already losing 10-4.

Hernandez entered in the bottom of the fourth. In this post, I’d like to try something. He entered with one out. It took him six pitches to get out of the inning. Hernandez completed two more innings afterward, but I want to look at those six pitches alone. And here’s the idea: I want to estimate Hernandez’s projected ERA at each instant. That is, I want to take a stab at his rest-of-season ERA given only the information provided to me. I knew nothing about Hernandez before, and the same presumably goes for many of you. He’s working now to fill up a blank slate.

Here goes nothing! Six Ariel Hernandez pitches. His first six meaningful pitches, against major-league hitters.

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Over the last few years, we’ve been called TroutGraphs more than a few times, because we write about Mike Trout a lot. Well, TroutGraphs might officially be taking a year off, because 2017 appears to be the year of ThamesGraphs. Yes, after we put his name in the headline of three posts and a podcast last week, I’m writing about him again today. Sorry, rest of baseball. We’ll get back to you all eventually.

Yesterday, Thames did Thames things, launching two more home runs and drawing two more walks, reaching base four of the five times he came to the plate. His season line is now at .373/.481/.910, and he’s now one home run away from having as many long balls this year as the Red Sox. At +1.8 WAR, Thames has already produced the entire season’s worth of value for which we projected him before the season started, and the consensus was that our projections were wildly optimistic. Apparently they weren’t optimistic enough.

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Previously
Changeup: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Curveball: AL Starters / NL Starters.

Our series focusing on the evaluation of 2016 ERA-qualifying starters’ pitches grinds on. Today, we kill a couple of birds with one stone, with a look at the best cutters and splitters from both leagues.

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