Hey y’all! Happy Cavan Biggio, Josh Naylor and Kevin Cron Day! I wrote about Biggo in this Stash List. In deeper leagues, I would take a flyer on Cron over Naylor. Cron has a better path to playing time and is absolutely smashing the ball. This week’s Stash List, though, should be an interesting one.
The 2019 MLB amateur draft is just over a week away! The Prospect Stock Watch has been devoting time to reviewing the 2018 draft. Earlier this week, we reviewed the second round of the draft. Today’s piece is going to look into which players have so far represented the best value from the third, fourth and fifth rounds.
This piece will naturally favor college picks as they’re generally more advanced and many of the prep players taken in later rounds of the draft require extra time in extended spring training before joining full-season ball. This piece looks at players’ results as well as the potential ceilings they possess based on their tools.
Best third-round pick: Terrin Vavra, SS, Rockies
When the year began, I would have hedged my bets towards Tristan Pompey or Kody Clemens being the steals of the fourth rounds. But Pompey posted a strikeout rate near 50% in High-A ball and earned a trip back to extended spring training to work things out. Clemens is still in High-A but he’s struggled to hit consistently and his 25% strikeout rate is high for someone who’s not a power hitter. That leads us to Vavra, who was drafted out of the University of Minnesota, and with less pedigree – although his brothers played pro ball, too. The middle infielder has shown good pop and a solid plate approach with a BB-K of 21-36 in 41 games. The line-drive rate sits at 24% and once Vavra gets a little stronger, he should start to hit even more balls over the fence. It remains to be seen if Vavra can stick at shortstop but he appears to have the offensive profile to stick at a number of different positions.
Runner Up: Owen Miller, SS, Padres
San Diego though enough of Miller’s strong pro debut in 2018 to jump him over High-A ball and assign him directly to Double-A. He’s barely missed a beat with a .301 average, and has now hit .300 at every level he’s played out. The downside to Miller is that his ceiling is somewhat limited with modest power and limited stolen base acumen. With that said, and although just 13 of his 52 hits have gone for extra bases, he has generated a 27% line-drive rate so there could be more gap pop (ie. doubles and triples) to come as he matures. He’s even more likely to end up at second base, or serve as an offensive-minded utility player.
The NFBC kicked off their Memorial Day 2nd Chance leagues last night with three drafts completed and we now have some average draft position (ADP) data to digest. I have my 2CL (is that a cool abbreviation for “2nd Chance League”?) this Friday evening and I’ll be streaming it live on Twitch if you have any interest in watching it. I want to dive in on the biggest fallers here today with some caveats. Or at least one major caveat: my cutoff is the first 15 rounds.
I want to see who is still be taken with some expectation of performance while sustaining a major fall in their cost. The actual biggest droppers without limits are the obvious injury guys. The single biggest fall from the spring Rotowire Online Championship leagues (12-team format to stay consistent with the 2CLs) is Travis Shaw who has the double whammy of injury and severe underperformance. He’s gone from the 95th player chosen on average to the 362nd last night, a colossal 267-pick drop. Miguel Andujar (347th), Jameson Taillon (312th), Luis Severino (280th), and Nathan Eovaldi (390th) are also unsurprisingly amongst the nine players with a 200+ pick dip.
5/23/19
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As we wind down the second month of the season, stat lines are beginning to take shape and we certainly feel like we know more about how the season will unfold. There are definitely some things happening early on that you can put some weight into, but we still have four months left in the season, too, meaning a lot will still change.
Through May last year, Zack Wheeler had a 5.40 ERA, Luis Castillo was at 5.49, Jameson Taillon was at 4.53, and Masahiro Tanaka was at 4.62. German Marquez was at 4.21, but that would balloon to 5.53 five starts later and of course we know that from there, he absolutely went off. Afterthoughts like Mike Minor, Danny Duffy, Mike Fiers, Derek Holland, Lance Lynn and even Alex Cobb all had ERAs north of 5.00 and were left for dead through May before finding extended periods of fantasy relevance throughout the summer. Minor was downright all-formats viable from June on.
Let’s look at some of the biggest strugglers through two months and discuss what the future might have in store for them.
(in descending order by ERA)
The first step is admitting you have a problem:
Remember Kelvim Escobar? Used to draft him yearly hoping for health. Gregory, Jorge, Placido… I'm a full-blown Polancist. Fan of all 3.
— Paul Sporer (@sporer) May 22, 2019
5/21/19
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 20, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER20!
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In Tout Wars this year, have been graced with four suspect closers but they’ve caused me to ponder how to handle the “riches”. The issue is that they are not stable and I’d not be surprised if all four were out of a job next month. I polled my Twitter followers to see which one they had the most faith in.
I have the following four closers in @ToutWars. Who do you think will have the most Saves at your season's end?
— Jeff Zimmerman (@jeffwzimmerman) April 24, 2019
Find someone that loves you as much as Franmil Reyes loves his bat:
and they say true love doesn't exist 😂 pic.twitter.com/WbCTKii3W9
— MLB GIFS (@MLBGIFs) May 21, 2019
