Scouting the Cubs Return for Yu Darvish
In roughly 24 hours, the San Diego Padres traded away a total of six players who, were they dropped into the amateur draft tomorrow, would come off the board somewhere in the top 50 picks. It’s the kind of talent few orgs have in their systems at all, never mind in such excess that they can ship it away without totally nuking the farm. Rumors that the Padres were in pursuit of Yu Darvish spread through the industry a few days before Christmas, but it’s taken years of focused rebuilding through the draft, international signings, and trades for pro prospects, and the GM himself sometimes roaming the backfields looking at raw, young players, to build toward a week like the one the Padres and their fans have had. On Monday, the rumors became an in-principle agreement to swap Darvish and C/1B Victor Caratini for several exciting young players most recently scouted on the Peoria, Arizona backfields: Reginald Preciado, Ismael Mena, Yeison Santana, and Owen Caissie. I was lucky enough to see more Padres instructs action than any other club’s, and other than Caissie, I’ve had year-over-year looks at all of them.
You can see where I had all the prospects involved evaluated before my Instructional League looks for some context to the movement I’m about to describe, because two of the traded prospects have moved up quite a bit, and a third might still. Let’s start with Panamanian infielder Reggie Preciado, who is the best prospect in the trade and will be on this offseason’s top 100 prospect list as a 50 FV player. Preciado has the overt physical traits that teams have traditionally coveted in the international market. He’s a big-framed (about 6-foot-4) switch-hitter who is athletic enough to stay on the infield. Players like this have a wide range of potential outcomes, and one is for their body to develop in the Goldilocks Zone where they remain agile enough to stay at shortstop, but become big and strong enough to hit for impact power. Though some teams have shown evidence of a philosophical shift in this area, prospects like Preciado are the ones who typically get paid the most money on the international market, and indeed Preciado received $1.3 million, a record for a player from Panama.
When Preciado came to the States for 2019 instructs, he looked like you’d expect a 16-year-old his size to look: raw and uncoordinated. He still had not gained athletic dominion over his frame, and he looked much more like a third base defender than a shortstop. Fast forward a year (because there was no minor league season) to the Fall of 2020 and Preciado now has a batting stance and swing that look an awful lot like Corey Seager’s. It allows him to be relatively short to the baseball despite his lever length, and whether it had to do with the swing change or not, he looked much more comfortable in the box this Fall than he did last year. Because of the missing minor league season, most teams in Arizona brought an older contingent of player to instructs than they usually would, and still Preciado (who is just 17) was striking the ball with consistency and power from both sides of the plate. I still think he ends up at third, but there’s rare hit/power combination potential here and it just takes confidence in one’s eyes to see it might already have arrived. I now have him rated ahead of Cubs first rounder Ed Howard and, barring any more deals, Preciado is likely to rank third or fourth on the Cubs list this offseason. Read the rest of this entry »