The Top-Five Dodgers Prospects by Projected WAR

Earlier today, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Los Angeles Dodgers. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not L.A.’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Dodgers’ system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in the Los Angeles system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

5. Joe Wieland, RHP (Profile)

IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	FIP	WAR
150	7.3	2.5	1.1	3.99	0.7

Wieland has been well acquitted by the projections for some time now, having produced considerably above-average strikeout- and walk-rate differentials through much of the minors but having been delayed en route to any sort of substantial major-league trial by an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery and which caused him to miss much of the last two seasons. He enters 2015 with his health, however. Given the Dodgers’ rotation depth, Wieland is a candidate to begin the season in Albuquerque. Alternatively, he might join the bullpen, in which capacity he’d likely post better per-inning numbers than his projections here indicate.

4. Alex Guerrero, OF (Profile)

PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	wRC+	WAR
550	.244	.283	.396	92	0.8

Guerrero made the majority of his Cuban league starts in the middle infield and also did that last year at Triple-A Albuquerque, too. Were he expected to complement his offensive skills with even just average second-base defense in the majors, his projection would skew much closer to two wins. As a corner outfielder, however — in which capacity he was deployed over the course of a few September starts last year — as a corner outfielder, the expected offensive production is insufficient. He’s probably not a starter, in other words. That said, as a competent hitter with some defensive flexibility, he also profiles as an actively helpful bench player.

3. Corey Seager, SS (Profile)

PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	wRC+	WAR
550	.231	.274	.359	79	1.0

In his Dodgers list, Kiley McDaniel lists Corey Seagar as a third baseman. That’s a position at which the latter has recorded just one minor-league game ever, but it’s also the one — given his size and defensive tools, it appears — the one to which he’s probably best suited. The projection here presupposes average shortstop defense — which is probably a bit optimistic, in other words. More notable than that slight discount, however, is that Seager is forecast to produce about a win already as a 21-year-old.

2. Austin Barnes, C/2B (Profile)

PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	wRC+	WAR
415	.235	.297	.351	86	1.6

Barnes was a fixture over the second half of last season among the author’s weekly Fringe Five column — not merely because of his compelling defensive catcher/second-base defensive profile but also because of his exceptional control of the strike zone. Over 200 plate appearances with High-A Jupiter, he produced walk and strikeout rates of 9.5% and 12.5%, respectively — figures upon which he improved (14.4% BB, 10.3% K) in an even larger sample following a promotion to Double-A. Plate-discipline metrics become reliable rather quickly and also seem to translate into promising offensive projections — which, in conjunction with Barnes’ positional adjustment, also translates into a promising overall projections.

1. Joc Pederson, OF (Profile)

PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	wRC+	WAR
550	.224	.310	.391	101	2.0

Only two players are projected by Steamer to record 20 homers and 20 stolen bases per 600 plate appearances in 2015: Carlos Gomez and Steven Souza. Were 19 and not 20 a more appealing arbitrary cutoff, for some reason, Gomez and Souza would be joined by Pederson as baseball’s top power-speed players. As former Cub and Oriole Corey Patterson was genetically engineered to demonstrate, that profile doesn’t automatically translate into lengthy and productive major-league career. Among the 96 players who produced 20-20 seasons between 2004 and -13, however, only four players recorded a season WAR total below 2.0 — i.e. the WAR figure an average player would produce. That’s also roughly the WAR figure Pederson himself is projected to record in 2015 given a full season of play — which, barring the unexpected, he’s expected to do.