The Top-Five Rays Prospects by Projected WAR

Earlier today, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Tampa Bay Rays. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not Tampa Bay’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Rays 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 Rays 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.

t4. Grayson Garvin, LHP (Profile)

IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	FIP	WAR
150	6.3	3.1	1.1	4.45	0.5

It isn’t uncommon, when one has published 3000-plus weblog posts of varying quality, that certain of those same posts will fade into obscurity — even for the person responsible for having composed that post. The author, for example, apparently wrote a paean to Grayson Garvin’s breaking ball for the pages of NotGraphs around this same time last year. A surprise, this.

In any case, here’s an example of that breaking ball, thrown to Stefen Romero’s back foot during last year’s Arizona Fall League:

t4. Taylor Guerrieri, RHP (Profile)

IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	FIP	WAR
150	6.6	2.9	1.1	4.38	0.5

Of Guerrieri, Kiley McDaniel writes that “[H]e may have been a tad too confident at times.” With regard to Guerrieri, one also finds that he missed nearly all of 2013-14 to Tommy John surgery — and experienced another elbow-related injury upon his return. The latter sentence is likely unrelated to the former. However, were one a Roman poet named Ovid with some interest in documenting the perils of hubris, those two sentences would represent an opportunte starting point.

t4. Justin O’Conner, C (Profile)

PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	wRC+	WAR
415	.210	.246	.326	64	0.5

O’Conner recorded a strikeout rate of 39.6% over ca. 200 plate appearances in the Rookie-level Appalachian League in 2011. Regardless of a player’s defensive ability, that sort of contact profile is untenable at the major-level. By way of illustration, consider: literally zero qualified batters in the history of all baseball have produced a strikeout rate that poor over a full season. Fortunately for O’Conner, his contract rates have improved, with McDaniel suggesting that he “might have made the most progress of any prospect in all of baseball in 2014.” That’s sufficient for rendering him a better-than-replacement player in 2015, according to Steamer.

3. Hak-Ju Lee, SS (Profile)

PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	wRC+	WAR
550	.224	.287	.300	72	0.7

“At his best,” Kiley McDaniel writes, “Lee [is] a plus defender at shortstop with outstanding hands and range and… a dynamic gap-to-gap approach as a hitter.” An excellent collection of skills, that. Unfortunately, Lee didn’t demonstrate all of them in 2014 — or, at least, not to his previously established levels. Steamer, a statistical model, doesn’t understand the exact nature of Lee’s near total absence from baseball in 2013. Insofar as Lee (a) suffered a leg injury and (b) had relied on his legs considerably, there’s obvious cause for concern. Still, players who profile as even average defensive shortstops (which Lee very possible still is) needn’t contribute much offensively to profile as productive players.

2. Mikie Mahtook, OF (Profile)

PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	wRC+	WAR
550	.238	.292	.351	86	0.7

For a first-round draftee, Mahtook hasn’t ascended very quickly through the minors. Born in November of of 1989, he enters his age-25 season having recorded zero major-league plate appearances. Meanwhile, Anthony Rendon and Joe Panik and Kolten Wong — all college players who are younger than Mahtook — have made non-negligible contributions to their respective clubs. Steamer projects Mahtook as something better than a standard corner outfielder, forecasting a -2.9 Def figure for him over 550 plate appearance in 2015 (as opposed to something more like -6 or -7). Expecting the offensive value to creep that close to average is a less likely prospect, however.

1. Ryan Brett, 2B (Profile)

PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	wRC+	WAR
550	.249	.290	.349	84	1.3

Brett has above-average contact skills and appears capable of playing competent second-base defense. That’s a reasonably encourgaing profile, but also one shared by Cole Figueroa, the former Rays minor leaguer who made his debut last season as a 27-year-old and was placed on waivers in late November. The most notable difference between the two, however, is that Brett appears to feature above-average speed, as well. Probably unprepared for any sort of significant major-league role in 2015, Brett would appear at least to possess the tools of a future league-average player.