Today, we continue our look at the Top 10 prospects for 2017 in each of the six leagues. The lists have been created by blending potential playing time, MLB-readiness and overall skill to take a stab at predicting the most valuable rookies for the coming season. Recently, we reviewed the NL East, the NL West and the NL Central.

Top 10 Prospects for 2017: AL West

1. Jharel Cotton, RHP, Oakland: Acquired from the Dodgers last year as part of the return for Josh Reddick, Cotton has made huge development leaps since the beginning of 2016. After bouncing between the bullpen and starting rotation in the Dodgers system, Cotton has settled into the rotation with the A’s and looks like a steal. He has a low-to-mid-90s fastball and backs it up with a plus changeup. If he can improve his breaking ball and continue to show good control, he has a chance to really thrive in his big home ballpark (He got tagged for 24 homers in ’16). After throwing 165 innings last year, he could be good for 180+ although the club will want to be cautious with the modestly-built pitcher.

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Keon Broxton managed to break his nose, but if you watch this, you’ll realize things could have been much worse.

Keon Broxton hit in the face though the extra flap thankfully seemed to take *some* of the brunt. He’s out of the game. pic.twitter.com/Md2uF2ZxtO

— Paul Sporer (@sporer) April 6, 2017

With the injury, the centerfielder will not be placed on the disabled list. If something does change, Kirk Nieuwenhuis will get the start in Broxton’s place. If that’s the case, the idea of Nieuwenhuis is better than the reality.

He has guts, I’ll give him that. He swiped eight bags last season, but he’s been caught stealing a lot as well. He struggles against lefties and even if he did start against Brett Anderson, it’s Brett Anderson.

On the Agenda

1. News and Notes
2. Stump the Schwarb
3. Probable Pitchers

News and Notes

–Sonny Gray will throw a bullpen session Friday which is the next step in his rehab process after straining his lat. This is following a session he tossed on Tuesday and was reported to be returning to a major league uniform by the end of April.

-Phillies outfielder Daniel Nava hit two home runs off of Reds starter Rookie Davis Thursday. There’s no fantasy value there, but we are certainly proud of him.

–Collin McHugh left his rehab start with Triple-A Fresno Thursday after only one inning. Bryant-Jon Anteola of the Fresno Bee reported McHugh threw 26 pitches, but after some warm-up tosses prior to his second frame, “he called for the trainer to come to the mound and was removed from the game.”

He was supposed to throw 85 pitches, so this limit cannot be great news.

Stump the Schwarb

A healthy Kyle Schwarber is a good Kyle Schwarber. The Cubs have been having him bat leadoff, and it seems to be working. In nine plate appearances so far he’s slashing a .333/.556/.500 line with a .443 wOBA. I know, it’s a small sample size, but it’s fun for a bit to have those numbers.

Probable Pitchers for the day

Steven Wright @ Detroit Tigers

Max Scherzer @ Philadelphia Phillies

Ubaldo Jimenez vs. New York Yankees

Shelby Miller vs. Cleveland Indians

• Oakland was up four runs heading into the eighth inning today and they called on Santiago Casilla with Kole Calhoun, Mike Trout and Albert Pujols due up. If it was a smaller lead we likely would have seen higher leverage extraordinaire Ryan Madson in that spot (heart of the lineup) but with four runs it was Casilla. Casilla retired the side 1-2-3 and in the ninth handed the ball off to Sean Doolittle who allowed a base hit but struck out three in the process. As we have mentioned in these parts this week, Madson is the “closer” but on days where the eighth inning is a higher priority we will likely see Casilla and Doolittle in the ninth, and likely in that order.

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4/6/17

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer
• @enosarris
• @jasoncollette
• @almelchiorBB

Leading Off:

• How do you handle April in fantasy baseball?
  • Paul’s ESPN Insider piece

Notable Transactions/Rumors/Articles/Game Play

• Garrett Richards biceps cramp cuts start short
• Junior Guerra strained calf out 6 weeks
• Seth Lugo has UCL tear
• Roberto Osuna cervical spasm

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I have been breaking down the prospect Hit grade over the past few weeks. Now it’s time to find what’s usable for projections. One aspect I continue to find is that a plate discipline component seems to not be incorporated into the Hit grades. For this reason, I created a minor league Plate Discipline grade and used it with existing data to hopefully better map out a hitter’s future potential.

To start with, I used Walk Rate (BB%-IBB%) minus Strikeout Rate (K%) as a measure of minor league plate discipline. I grouped the values by the low minors (any A ball) or the upper minors (AA and AAA). Then, I gave the players a 50 grade for each level’s average plate discipline and a 60 for one standard deviation from the median. Here are the results:

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Fans instinctively know there are many types of batted balls. We’ve even given them names over the years: bloops, worm killers, Baltimore Chops, fly balls, rockets, frozen ropes, etc. Some of these names have been adapted to standardized stats, fly balls, ground balls, line drives, and pop ups, while the others have been been relegated to flowery language used broadcasters and personalities.

We have stats for fly balls, pop ups, ground balls, and line drives here on fangraphs, and occasionally users break these down a little more into infield fly balls, fliners, and outfield fly balls to narrow in on specific traits that may be interesting at the moment. But, personally, and you may feel the same way, I’ve never been quite happy with this system. It is too narrow, the categories are too broad and generic.

I created my versions of xOBA, xBABIP, and xStats on the premise of eliminating ‘types’ of batted ball from the analysis. Instead, it focuses entirely on balls with similar launch angles and exit velocities. It works pretty well, I think, but sometimes you want to sort and filter batters by specific traits. Batted ball types are one way to do this.

There are two ways to measure batted ball type with Statcast. First, you can go strictly by launch angle. Second, you can combine launch angle and exit velocity. In a sense, I already do the latter, which I call Value Hits and Poor Hits. These balls characterize the most and least valuable batted balls, combining launch angle and exit velocity. So you can sort and filter players this way.

The former option, launch angles alone, is what I will be focusing on here. I have three goals for this exercise:

• First, each category to have a unique set of features. If they are too similar, you may as well lump them together.
• Second, each category should have a relatively large number of results. I don’t want one batted ball type to represent, for example, merely 1% of batted balls.
• Third, the categories should have good year to year correlations, and hopefully quickly stabilize during the course of a season.

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Half a week in the books. How’s your team doing? I wanted to write a SELL, SELL, SELL!! piece but that seemed a tad premature. So instead, let’s check in on Dallas Keuchel, a divisive player entering 2016 and once again in 2017. With concerns swirling around the Houston lefty given last year’s undeniable decline in both performance and health, I was eager to see him pitch the Astros’ opener against Seattle.

Coming off his 2015 Cy Young campaign, Keuchel was a polarizing figure. A ground ball pitcher with impeccable command, detractors fretted about his lack of velocity. Well, if his cheddar was in short supply to begin with, the fromagerie was flat out barren in 2016. Keuchel lost a tick on the gun, averaging 88 mph on his fastball through his first 10 starts. But that wasn’t all. His pitches were down nearly across the board.

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It’s the first Thin Thursday of the season. The overall schedule is relatively deep with 12 games. However, it’s all split into weird contest sizes. Prices listed are for FanDuel.

AGENDA

1. Saltman and K-Pax
2. Weather Reports
3. Pitchers to Use and Abuse
4. Fade Fade Fade
5. SaberSim Says…
6. TDG Invitational Returns!

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Yesterday, I discussed five players whose spot in the batting order was a surprise, to me at least, and perhaps everyone else as well. I didn’t include everyone though, so let’s take a look at six more hitters whose value is in line to change if these new lineups stick.

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There were some ninth-inning adventures on Wednesday, but of the 10 relievers with save chances in the final frame, eight managed to come through.

Then there was Sam Dyson. In last night’s bullpen report, Benjamin Pasinkoff made note of Dyson’s meltdown in the Rangers’ season opener against the Indians, as well as his diminished velocity. Whereas Dyson averaged 93.9 mph on his fastball on Monday, this time around he raised it up to 94.7 mph. However, he lost the strike zone, walking Abraham Almonte and Carlos Santana back-to-back, and throwing strikes on just 10 of his 22 pitches. Francisco Lindor made Dyson pay for the walks, hitting a grand slam that left him with a blown save.

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