The Top-Five Reds Prospects by Projected WAR

This morning, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Cincinnati Reds. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not Cincinnati’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Reds 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 Reds 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. Kyle Waldrop, OF (Profile)

PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	wRC+	WAR
550	.244	.282	.369	80	-0.3

Waldrop began the 2014 season by repeating at High-A Bakersfield and reacted precisely the way a club would want him to — which is to say, by exhibiting greater control of the plate and also producing better contact (or, at least a markedly higher BABIP, which is the best statistical proxy). He retained those improvements following a mid-June promotion to Double-A Pensacola, as well — which, that’s encouraging for a 22-year-old. Given his positional limitations, his future major-league value would appear to depend on the degree to which he’s able to convert his above-average raw power to games. Steamer, for its part, projects him to hit only 13 home runs per 600 plate appearances.

4. Jesse Winker, OF (Profile)

PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	wRC+	WAR
550	.228	.299	.356	83	0.0

Entering just his age-21 season, Winker has already exhibited an advanced offensive approach at every level despite having been two-to-four years younger than his competition in each case — always producing a walk rate within at least four points of his strikeout rate. As his projection suggests, that doesn’t necessarily signal major-league readiness, but what it does indicate is that Winker won’t depend on merely one offensive skill (i.e. just contact ability or just power) to become productive.

3. Seth Mejias-Brean, 3B (Profile)

PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	wRC+	WAR
550	.234	.292	.341	77	0.5

Mejias-Brean possesses the sort of skill set which is likely to earn him more encouraging projections than scouting reports, insofar as he (a) plays a more challenging/valuable defensive position and (b) possesses an offensive approach based less on converting physical strength into game power and more on plate discipline. As a result, his floor his higher than most other prospects’; his reasonable ceiling, lower. McDaniel grades his overall future value as a 40 — which is a one-win, bench-type player. As his Steamer projection indicates, there’s a chance he’s approaching that estimate already now as a 24-year-old.

2. Ben Lively, RHP (Profile)

IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	FIP	WAR
150	7.6	3.8	1.1	4.42	0.5

Lively recorded strikeout and walk rates of 31.5% and 5.3%, respectively, over 79.0 innings in the California League last year — the best such mark, that, among all High-A pitchers who threw at least 50 innings as a starter. In the exact same number of Double-A starts, he struck out fewer (24.8%) while walking more than twice as many (11.8%). That’s likely symptomatic of facing more advanced competition. It’s also probably unsurprising to those who, like Kiley McDaniel, don’t see much more development in Lively’s secondary stuff — and this an even greater vulnerability to major-league batters.

1. Tucker Barnhart, C (Profile)

PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	wRC+	WAR
415	.230	.292	.319	71	0.9

Steamer tends to exhibit some favoritism for catchers who have any sort offensive skills. Barnhart is just such a catcher. While his power is limited, he’s struck out in only about 15% of his minor-league plate appearances — and, indeed, Steamer projects him to record just a 14.6% strikeout rate in 2015. Putting the ball in play that frequently creates a reasonable floor for offensive value. That, combined with the catcher positional adjustment — and, in Barnhart’s case, two or so projected runs saved defensively — conspires to produce useful, if not transcendent, present-day value.