Author’s note: I was busy last night and this morning, so this piece was written yesterday afternoon, before May’s start at Charlotte. (Update: May extended his scoreless streak to 30 innings last night, before surrendering three runs in the fifth inning. His final line was 6 IP, 3 ER, 6 H, 2 BB, 9 K)

As of this writing, four weeks have passed since Trevor May last allowed an earned run. The 24-year-old was terrific in May (pun not intended, but entirely unavoidable), posting a 1.47 earned run average in 36.2 innings, including a 26-inning stretch to close the month in which he surrendered just one unearned run.

Through ten starts, May’s ERA sits at a tidy 2.62, with a 3.04 FIP. He’s striking out just under a batter an inning, and his walk rate has dropped for the second consecutive year, which is a very good sign considering that he’s done so while also getting his first taste of Triple-A:

• 2012 (Double-A) – 4.69 BB/9
• 2013 (Double-A) – 3.98 BB/9
• 2014 (Triple-A) – 3.60 BB/9

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This is my first month on the second-base beat, and I can’t wait to hear who I’ve ranked too high or too low, preferably in caps lock in the comments section below or on Twitter. Either way, caps lock is crucial here. Don’t let me down. Jokes aside, I’ve got over 40 players in these seven tiers, and I hope you find them useful.

TIER ONE

Robinson Cano

Even after two solid months of sub-.100 isolated power, I am still placing Cano in his own tier. The first part of my reasoning here is that, despite the fact that he hit just one home run in each of the season’s first two months, he did everything else so exceptionally well in May that he was still the No. 4 2B for the month. His batting line was a robust .355/.393/.458, he struck out just ten times while drawing eight walks, he swiped a couple bases, drove in 19 runs, etc.

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If you regularly read my work, you may have noticed that I write an awful lot about Astros prospects. The reasoning behind this is two-fold. The Astros have one of the best minor-league systems in baseball, with loads of talent at pretty much every level. Furthermore, I happen to live less than a half-hour away from their Triple-A facility in Oklahoma City, and I’m lucky enough to be able to see these guys play pretty much anytime I want to.

I’ve already written plenty about Jon Singleton and George Springer, and today feels like as good a time as any to discuss Domingo Santana. The 21-year-old came into 2014 as the No. 8 prospect in Houston’s system according to our own Marc Hulet, a ranking more indicative of Houston’s organizational depth than of Santana’s talent.

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In January, I wrote about my optimism regarding Jon Singleton. Coming off a disastrous 2013 season in which he slashed just .220/.340/.347 in Triple-A, he has rebounded in a way that should find him back in the upper tier of prospects. I’ve had the opportunity to see Singleton play quite a bit this year — throughout this piece, I will revisit my remaining concerns about Singleton from four months ago, discussing how the 22-year-old has easily surpassed even my own high expectations in 2014.

The first signs of life came in winter ball, as he led the Puerto Rican Liga de Beisbol Profesional Roberto Clemente with nine home runs. At the time, I wrote the following:

It’s only a 35-game sample, but he hit .268/.396/.537 and he showed more power against lefties than ever before, swatting five homers in just 49 plate appearances against left-handers. While it’s obviously a tiny sample, consider the fact that Singleton had hit just five homers in his previous 443 plate appearances against lefties over the last three years. The one bad trend from his stint in winter ball? His strikeout rate remained a bit high, at 24.8%.

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Following an abysmal 2013 campaign that saw him slash .209/.306/.357, Rickie Weeks entered the 2014 season as Scooter Gennett’s very expensive backup. Last season didn’t exactly come out of nowhere either, as it marked the third consecutive campaign in which Weeks’ weighted on-base average declined.

Weeks has started just 11 games this year, but five of those starts have come in the last nine days. Before anyone goes taking that as evidence that Weeks may be working his way back into the regular starting lineup, I’ll note that four of those five games were against left-handed starters. Still, it’s the largest chunk of playing time he’s gotten all year, and he is absolutely crushing the ball.

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On Tuesday, the White Sox promoted second baseman Micah Johnson from Double-A to Triple-A. In 2013, Johnson split the season between A and High-A, with a brief taste of Double-A, compiling a .312/.373/.451 slash in 601 plate appearances with an eye-popping 84 stolen bases. Our own Nathaniel Stoltz wrote a comprehensive scouting report on Johnson last June, and two of Nathaniel’s statements in that article help place Johnson’s 2014 success into the context of his long-term prospects:

• “Johnson will go as far as his approach and BABIP take him, and a lot will hinge on how well both facets translate to the upper minors.”
• “It will be Double-A Birmingham that will begin to solidify the direction Johnson’s career will take.”

Fortunately for Johnson, and the White Sox, he has responded in a big way, succeeding beyond expectations in the specific areas pointed out by Nathaniel last June. As a result, the perception of Johnson as a prospect needs to be reevaluated and likely elevated.

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Last weekend, the Blue Jays called up consensus top-100 prospect Marcus Stroman, adding him to their bullpen in a middle relief role. It would be silly to expect him to stay in the bullpen for long, as Toronto’s rotation is just too thin and shallow for Stroman to pitch in relief long-term.

Brandon Morrow is already hurt (again), and also hadn’t yet been able to improve on last year’s 5.63 earned run average. Dustin McGowan, having thrown 30 innings so far this season, has already tossed more frames in the majors than he did in any given year from 2009-2013, and hasn’t been particularly good himself (4.80 ERA, 4.67 FIP, 5.41 xFIP).

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This past Sunday, I headed to downtown Oklahoma City to see the Redhawks, Houston’s Triple-A affiliate, take on the Nashville Sounds. The starting pitcher for the Sounds was Jimmy Nelson, the top pitching prospect in Milwaukee’s system. I hadn’t yet gotten the chance to see Nelson pitch in person, and I was looking forward to seeing him do so against a strong Oklahoma City lineup that included Jon Singleton, Domingo Santana, Max Stassi and Robbie Grossman.

Nelson is a pretty imposing figure on the mound, standing 6’5″ and weighing 245 pounds. The University of Alabama product has the type of frame that I can easily picture handling 200+ innings a year; he tossed a total of 162.1 frames in 2013.

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Jesus Aguilar is the very definition of a prospect with more value in fantasy baseball than in real life. Our own Marc Hulet ranked him as the 11th-best prospect in Cleveland’s system last year, and left him out of the top 15 entirely this year. There are plenty of very good reasons for this exclusion, starting with the fact that Aguilar is a bat-only prospect; he has well below-average speed and doesn’t have much of anything to offer defensively.

Furthermore, the 23-year-old’s one plus tool, his power, has mostly been of the five o’clock variety throughout his minor-league career. Listed at 6’3″, 250 pounds (I’d bet my life savings on the over regarding his listed weight), he puts on one hell of a show in batting practice, hitting the ball out of the park to all fields. However, following his 23 homers in A-ball back in 2011, he hit just 15 dingers between High-A and Double-A in 2012, and 16 last year in Double-A.

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When the Milwaukee Brewers selected Taylor Jungmann with the 12th pick in the 2011 draft, he was seen as a polished prospect with an advanced feel for pitching who would move quickly through the organization. If everything went to plan, Jungmann would be in the major-league rotation by late 2013, with a long career as a mid-to-back of the rotation starter ahead of him.

At the time, I wholeheartedly agreed with these sentiments. I saw Jungmann pitch several times during his college career at the University of Texas, and it was easy to see why he was viewed as such a sure thing. He had a mid-90s heater with a sweeping curve that projected as a plus pitch, and a change-up that seemed plenty good enough to avoid nasty splits.

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