For the seventh year, I’ve run down the Top 100 prospects as seen by the ZiPS projection system. If you’re unaware of what the ZiPS projections are or what they’re trying to do, please consult this article for further information or the MLB.com executive summary. To make a long story short, ZiPS is a computer system that attempts to turn an avalanche of data into a player projection. (The Z stands for Szymborski, because I didn’t realize in 2003 that this project would be useful enough that I’d need to think of a good name.)
I like to think that I’ve developed a pretty useful tool over the years, but don’t get me wrong: a projection system is not even remotely a substitute for proper scouting. While ZiPS and other systems like it can see patterns in the data that can be hard for humans to extract, humans have their own unique tricks. Projecting prospects is challenging. You’re mostly dealing with very young players, some of whom aren’t even done physically developing. They also play baseball against inconsistent competition and have much shorter resumés than established major leaguers.
Having a real baseball season in 2021 makes me feel a lot stronger about this set of projections than last year’s. Last year, ZiPS faced the challenge of projecting prospects based on data when the vast majority of them hadn’t played in an actual baseball game for an entire year. It’s still not as much data as I’d like — more seasons is always preferable — but if we continue to have minor league seasons, we’ll hopefully get back to our pre-2020 level of confidence in the next couple of years. Read the rest of this entry »
On this episode, we review Prospects Week before traveling back to the 1960s with a guest.
At the top of the show, lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen welcomes fellow evaluator Tess Taruskin for her FanGraphs Audio debut. We hear about Tess’s background and how she ended up joining the FanGraphs team before the duo shares what it was like to help build this year’s Top 100 Prospects list. The pair also talk about Tess’s article on the catching prospect landscape, and how the position could be in for big changes in the future should robot umpires arrive. [2:47]
After that, David Laurila welcomes baseball writer Thom Henninger to the program. Thom is the author of The Pride of Minnesota: The Twins in the Turbulent 1960s, and he and David review many of the remarkable stories in the book. They talk about Jim Kaat’s 1967 injury, the arrival of NHL and NBA franchises in the same year, the tragic tale of Bill Masterton, Muhammad Ali and the Vietnam War, and more. We also get anecdotes about greats like Dean Chance, George Mikan, and Mudcat Grant, and how the Twins ran wild on the basepaths under the management of Billy Martin. [33:19]
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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley are joined by FanGraphs lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and national writer Kevin Goldstein for a FanGraphs Prospects Week discussion centered on the site’s Top 100 (or Top 114) prospects ranking, touching on the swift fall of MacKenzie Gore, the scarcity of pitchers toward the top of the list, whether there was a debate about the no. 1 prospect, the future of Adley Rutschman, the glut of catching prospects and how robo umps could affect the position, Oneil Cruz and Elly De La Cruz, assessing injured prospects, the outlook for Joey Bart, the placements of Jasson Dominguez, Anthony Volpe, and Nick Yorke, farm rankings and teams with good and bad systems, disagreements within the prospect team, prospects who just missed and who might make the list next year, and setting realistic expectations (plus a postscript followup on MLB heels and Jimmy Piersall, Casey Stengel, and the fallibility of history).
It’s common for our readers to ask which of the players who aren’t on this year’s Top 100 might grace next year’s. Who has a chance to really break out? This is the piece for those readers, our “Picks to Click,” the gut-feel guys we think can make the 2023 Top 100.
This is the fifth year we’ve conducted this exercise at FanGraphs, and there are some rules. First, none of the players you see below will have ever been a 50 FV or better in any of our write-ups or rankings. Second, we can’t pick players who we’ve picked in prior years, but the other writers can. For instance, Eric picked Wilman Diaz last year, but he didn’t make the Top 100. Eric can’t select Diaz again, but Kevin and/or Tess could if they wanted, though they’ve opted not to. Last year, we decided to make this somewhat competitive to see which of us ends up being right about the most players. Below is a brief rundown of how the site’s writers have done since this piece became a part of Prospects Week; you can click the year in the “Year” column to access that year’s list. Our initials began appearing next to our picks in 2021, with an asterisk denoting the players we both selected. (In the table, the format for that year’s results is “Kevin’s guys (mutual selection) Eric’s guys.”) We don’t count “click echoes,” guys who enter the 50 FV tier multiple years after they were Picks to Click, toward our totals. For example, MJ Melendez was a 2018 Pick to Click, but he didn’t enter the 50 FV tier until this offseason, so he doesn’t count. Here’s how we’ve fared in the past:
We’ve separated the players into groups or “types” to make the list a little more digestible and to give you some idea of the demographics we think pop-up guys come from, which could help you identify some of your own using The Board. For players whose orgs we have already covered this offseason, there is a link to the applicable team list where you can find a full scouting report on that player.
Romo has a huge arm and has performed better from a bat-to-ball standpoint than we thought he would coming out of high school, especially against right-handed pitching. Rodriguez could fit in several of the categories you’re about to explore since his feel to hit is his carrying tool. A 2021 first-rounder, Ford notched 16 hits in 19 games on the complex, 10 of which went for extra-bases. He’s got plus speed and might be a center fielder if he isn’t a catcher. O’Hoppe has elite makeup in addition to a well-rounded toolset.
This group is mostly comprised of well-rounded hitters who play corner positions, except for Butler and Stowers, who historically have been power-over-hit types. Of those two, Butler is the one more likely to find an extra gear through continued adjustment, while Stowers’ huge, fun hacks feel like a cemented style. Harris hit 10 bombs with an .872 OPS at Low-A before being promoted to High-A, where he hit 10 more (and posted a 1.073 OPS) in half the number of games. In 110 games across the two levels, he also racked up 25 stolen bases and 21 doubles, and only struck out 73 times. If he can polish his approach and stay at third base, he’s a good bet to be on next year’s list. Gelof and his odd swing had a great instructs, and he’s an excellent third base defender. Sweeney was 63rd on our 2021 Draft rankings, which was probably too low, as he covers the whole plate and has enough power to be dangerous.
This group includes players who might already be solid big leaguers given their current abilities, but could become impact players if they can change the nature and quality of their contact. (This would also describe Garrett Mitchell, who Kevin picked last year and would have again if allowed.) Crow-Armstrong has already made a swing change, one that was evident in early-2022 backfield activity. The new swing looks like it might better enable him to catch fastballs at the top of the zone, but we won’t know until play begins. De Los Santos has amazing raw power for his age but drives the ball into the ground often, and his epicurean approach may be exposed at the upper levels.
Salas, who could also be in the “Just Missed” Group, is a physical, lefty-hitting shortstop with above-average bat speed and advanced feel for contact. Though his big 2021 SLG% is not emblematic of his actual raw power, he has a good looking swing and feel for the barrel, projecting to have a balanced offensive skillset while he stays at short. A two-way high schooler with an mid-90s fastball, Winn mostly played shortstop in 2021 and hit well enough for him to continue developing as a two-way player for now. He didn’t hit as well after a promotion to High-A, struggling with secondary stuff, and he might eventually end up exclusively on the mound, but for now he’s a 1-of-1 sort of prospect with one of the best infield arms in the game. Ramos torched extended spring training and Complex League ball in Arizona, where he was a little older than a lot of the other players. He was promoted to Rancho and kept hitting for huge power, but pitchers there started to get him to chase. The Dodgers fall instructs were packed with scouts (their group of players there was incredible, and they’re deadline buyers in perpetuity) and Ramos lit it up again, hitting huge, all-fields tanks. Keep in mind that he is Andy Pages‘ age but started 2021 two levels below him. Vaquero, Washington’s $5 million amateur signee from January, has the Vitruvian Center Fiedler’s build, can absolutely fly, and has big power for his age.
Epic Bounce Back Osiris Johnson, 2B/CF, Miami Marlins (EL) Noah Song, RHP, Boston Red Sox (EL)
Gunnar Hoglund, RHP, Toronto Blue Jays (EL) – Full Report
Ty Madden, RHP, Detroit Tigers (KG) – Full Report Nick Nastrini, RHP, Los Angeles Dodgers (EL)
Johnson had a terrible start at Low-A Jupiter, striking out in nearly half his at-bats during the first few weeks of the season. He was sent down and rebounded on the complex (he had a 32% barrel rate down there) and earned a trip back up to full-season ball. He hit a respectable .261/.339/.342 on his second try, pretty good for a 20-year-old who had missed 2019 and ’20. Johnson has huge bat speed, his swing is geared for lift, and he has experience at several up-the-middle positions. If he can be more selective, he could break out. Song had first round talent at Navy but his service commitment, and unfortunately-timed changes to rules around exemptions for military athletes, pushed him to the fourth round. He may have a path back into baseball this year and we wouldn’t be surprised if this guy has stayed in baseball shape. He could move very quickly through the Sox system in a late-inning bullpen role. Nastrini dealt with several amateur injuries, including TOS surgery as a freshman at UCLA, and he couldn’t get out of the first inning in either of his final two pre-draft collegiate starts, but he pitched very well in the California Collegiate League just before the 2021 draft. He flashed plus-plus stuff during the late summer and fall with the Dodgers but also had periods of wildness.
McLain (the Reds’ first rounder out of UCLA) and Tovar both have plus hit tools, fringy power, and play up the middle. McLain has experience in center field and might end up playing several positions and be best at second base, while Tovar is a plus glove at short.
This group was barely outside the current Top 100, and each of us thinks our picks here will check one last box and move onto the list later this year. Bradish and Nelson are on the starter/reliever line. Bradley, just 20, struck out more than 30% of the batters he faced in 2021 (Low- and High-A combined), with a more refined fastball shape than he had in years past and a good slider. He could end up the next in a long line of recent Rays pitching development success stories if he polishes his splitter. Cristian Pache and Drew Waters both plateaued at the upper levels in part because they have aggressive approaches. Harris is also in this vein. There are up-the-middle players with approaches like his, but we’ve begun to wait until they perform at the upper levels, rather than assume they will like we did with Pache and Waters.
Susana is a strapping 6-foot-6, 235 pounds and is just a little bit shy of his 18th birthday. He is already sitting in the mid-90s and has a nasty slider. Raya, an athletic over-slot high schooler the Twins selected in the 2020 draft, still hasn’t thrown a pitch in an affiliated game but he’s been sitting 95 mph in bullpens, has a potential plus-plus breaking ball, and won’t turn 20 until August. Curry commands a fastball that is impossible for hitters to get on top of, while Allen is a classic pitchability lefty. Both are potential low-variance 50s for next year.
Several members of this group are currently starters but we think all of them could be high-leverage relievers at the drop of a hat. Battenfield has a vertically-oriented fastball/curveball attack, and his slider has distinct shape from his curve, looking like a cutter a lot of the time. He can also create action on his changeup. Sitting 92-93 mph as a starter, he could be a great multi-inning reliever very quickly. Pepiot has typical command-oriented relief risk, but an incredible changeup and a hard cutter/slider. Crouse’s funk and moxie fit in the bullpen. Mikolajchak has four pitches but leans heavily on his fastball (which has huge carry) and tilting slider. He is the lone relief-only name here. Solomon seemed poised to break out in 2020, but then he blew out and needed Tommy John. He has been in the mid-90s in the bullpen.
On a per-plate-appearance basis, you can probably guess the top five second basemen from last season. Trea Turner leads the pack, at least if you count him as a second baseman. Marcus Semien is close behind. Brandon Lowe, Jose Altuve, and Jake Cronenworth round out the group, and it’s not a surprise to see any of them at the top of a list of excellent players. Number six might surprise you: it’s Tony Kemp, who quietly put together a star-level season in his second year in Oakland.
As Jay Jaffe noted last year, Kemp isn’t doing it with barrels. He didn’t end the year in the zero-barrel club, but it was a near thing; he managed all of three. He didn’t quite finish last in barrels per batted ball, but the company he kept on that list — he’s wedged between Nick Madrigal and Adam Frazier, with Tim Locastro and Nicky Lopez in close proximity — isn’t one known for its power. That’s hardly a surprise given Kemp’s short stature (he’s listed at 5’6” and 160 pounds), but the lack of power didn’t stop him from compiling a juicy 127 wRC+, third-best on a solid Oakland offense.
How did Kemp do it? Without putting the ball in play, mainly. His 13.1% walk rate was 20th among batters with 300 or more plate appearances, and no one who walked more than he did struck out less frequently than his 12.8% mark (Juan Soto was close at 14.2%, but he might be a robot sent from the future to break baseball, so that’s good company to keep). Read the rest of this entry »
Please note, this positing contains three positions.
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Though the owners could end their self-imposed lockout of the players at any time and allow the baseball season to proceed on schedule, the first week of spring training games has been scrubbed. Odds are that more cancellations are to come, and commissioner Rob Manfred’s February 28 deadline to reach an agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement that would preserve Opening Day is fast approaching. With a newfound sense of urgency that stands in marked contrast to Major League Baseball offering one formal proposal in the lockout’s first 10 weeks, representatives for the owners and the players union have been meeting on a daily basis in Jupiter, Florida this week to discuss core economic issues — and those meetings have lasted more than 15 minutes at a time! But even with the more frequent back-and-forth and some minor movement here and there, including a formal proposal from the players on Tuesday, the two sides still appear to be far apart on the most central issues.
If there’s optimism to be had, let us know, because we could sure use some. In the meantime, here’s an attempt to capture where things stand as of Wednesday morning.
Competitive Balance Tax
The lack of optimism regarding an impending resolution to the lockout centers on the players making the tax “the lodestar” of negotiations, to use Jeff Passan’s term, and so far this week, neither side has budged from where things stood as of the owners’ February 12 proposal. I broke down the recent history of the CBT — the threshold for which has not kept pace with the growth of revenue over the past decade — in my previous analysis in the wake of that proposal.
The short version is that the players believe the CBT functions as a salary cap. With teams’ total payrolls down 4.6% from 2017 (from about $4.25 billion to $4.05 billion), and with most of the biggest-spending teams pulling up just short of the threshold in 2021 — the Phillies, Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, and Astros were all within $4 million of the $210 million bar, with only the Dodgers and Padres paying the tax — one can understand their frustration. In Tuesday’s proposal, the players didn’t budge from their previous position from January 24. While generally preserving the previous CBA’s tiered penalties for teams exceeding the thresholds by more than $20 million and more than $40 million, they’ve sought an increase in the base threshold from $210 million to $245 million, growing to $273 million by 2026. That jump in part makes up for the threshold’s meager growth over the life of the last CBA (from $195 million to $210 million over five years, an average of 2.1%), while revenues grew at a quicker rate. The only real difference in that aspect of their proposal is that there’s no draft-related penalty involved, where the previous CBA bumped the draft place for the highest pick of any team with a payroll at least $40 million above the threshold down by 10 spots (unless it was a top-six pick). Read the rest of this entry »
Kevin Goldstein: Hi everyone. I’m here. Tess is here, Eric is here. We hope you’ve enjoyed Prospect Week and our Top 100 list. Thanks to Eric and Tess for all the work they put it, and thanks to behind the scenes folks on this like Meg Rowley’s gigantic editing load, Sean Dolinar’s crazy great tech work, and Luke Hooper’s wonderful design work.
1:00
Eric A Longenhagen: Hello from Tempe and thanks for joining us
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Kevin Goldstein: Anyway, let’s chat!
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Tess Taruskin: Hey everyone!
1:01
Guest: Luis Medina at 60 overall seems to suggest at least a reasonable chance of becoming a starter?
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Kevin Goldstein: Reasonable chance, yes, but it’s far from a guarantee . . . very far in fact. Stuff is fantastic.
Grayson Rodriguez continues to ascend. Ranked 30th last year, the 22-year-old right-hander in the Baltimore Orioles organization is No. 3 on our newly-released 2022 Top 100 Prospects list. Moreover, he’s the highest-ranked hurler. Blessed with a lethal arsenal of pitches, Rodriguez possesses, in the opinion of Eric Longenhagen and Kevin Goldstein, “the potential to be a No. 1 starter and Cy Young candidate.”
On the eve of last year’s Top 100 release, we ran an interview with Rodriguez that focused on his changeup/screwball. To augment this year’s ranking, we caught up to the fast-rising righty to discuss the developmental strides he’s made since last season, and to ask him what it feels like to be the top pitching prospect in the game.
———
David Laurila: We talked 12 months ago. What’s changed since that time?
Grayson Rodriguez: “I would say the one thing I’m most proud of is that my average velocity has increased. When we last talked, the previous year’s average velo was 95.7 [mph]. This past season, I was able to get it up to 98.5. That [is], up until the last month of the season when it dropped a little bit; in September, it was 96.8. So, getting the average velocity up was big for me. I was working in the strike zone more often with that little extra velo.”
Below is our list of the top 100 prospects in baseball. The scouting summaries were compiled with information provided by available data and industry sources, as well as from our own observations. This is the second year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers.
And now, a few important things to keep in mind as you’re perusing the Top 100. You’ll note that prospects are ranked by number but also lie within tiers demarcated by their Future Value grades. The FV grade is more important than the ordinal ranking. For example, the gap between Julio Rodríguez (No. 4) and Triston Casas (No. 16) is 12 spots, and there’s a substantial difference in talent between them. The gap between Mark Vientos (No. 64) and Patrick Bailey (No. 76), meanwhile, is also 12 numerical places, but the difference in talent is relatively small. You may have noticed that there are more than 100 prospects in the table below, and more than 100 scouting summaries. That’s because we have also included 50 FV prospects whose ranking fell outside the 100. Their reports appear below, under the “Other 50 FV Prospects” header. The same comparative principle applies to them.
You’ll also notice that there is a Future Value outcome distribution graph for each prospect on the list. This is an attempt to graphically represent how likely each FV outcome is for each prospect. Before his departure for ESPN, Kiley McDaniel used the great work of our former colleague Craig Edwards to find the base rates for each FV tier of prospect (separately for hitters and pitchers), and the likelihood of each FV outcome. For example, based on Craig’s research, the average 60 FV hitter on a list becomes a perennial 5-plus WAR player over his six controlled years 26% of the time, and has a 27% chance of accumulating, at most, a couple of WAR during his six controlled years. We started with those base rates for every player on this year’s list and then manually tweaked them depending on our more specific opinions about the player. For instance, Elly De La Cruz and Steven Kwan are both 50 FV prospects, but they are nothing alike. De La Cruz could be a switch-hitting shortstop with plus-plus power or he might turn into Seuly Matias. Meanwhile, Kwan has performed through the upper minors and is almost certain to contribute to a big league team, but doesn’t have nearly the same power potential or high-end ceiling De La Cruz does. Our hope is that the distribution graphs reflect these kinds of differences.
This year’s crop of prospects is a little bit down in the 60 and 55 FV tiers. Typically, the 55 FV tier runs to about the 50th overall prospect on the Top 100 (which again isn’t really a Top 100, so much as a ranking of all the 50 FV and above prospects, but that title is an SEO nightmare), but this year’s group only extends through No. 32. This might be due to random variation in the prospect population, or have to do with the lost year of development in 2020 or the new rules surrounding rookie eligibility, which caused several players to graduate off our lists more quickly than in the past. Jose Barrero and Keibert Ruiz, for example, would have been eligible under the older roster rules. Those guys can be found on The Board’s Graduates section. Or perhaps our evaluations are just wrong.
For a further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, please read this and this. If you would like to read a book-length treatment on the subject, one is available here. Read the rest of this entry »
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