It feels like the season is winding down, but there are still two-plus months left so we will still see plenty of minor leaguers come up and get a shot. Today I want to look at a group of K-BB% leaders who haven’t appeared in the majors yet (min. 70 IP at Double- and Triple-A).

Nabil Crismatt, SEA – 24% K-BB

The 24-year old started his big season in Double-A and has definitely slowed down in Triple-A, despite still striking out 34% of the batters he’s faced in 22 innings there. I’ll defer to Alex Chamberlain for more info on him as he recently featured Crismatt in a Peripheral Prospects piece.

Alex Faedo, DET – 23%

Faedo has improved in a repeat of Double-A, jumping in K-BB% from 15% to 23%. He was ranked 15th in the Detroit prospect list this spring, but these 99 innings have helped his outlook. While he hasn’t hit Triple-A, he might not need much time there before getting a look in the majors. He and the next guy on the list both appeared in Peripheral Prospect 1.13.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hey y’all!  This week’s stash list should be a good one for all of you deep fantasy league players. I’ll be reviewing two pitchers with excellent K-BB percentages, that could help your ratios in a few years. I also bring to you a Houston hitter, that is not Kyle Tucker, unable to crack the Houston lineup. I also profile a very young San Francisco Giant killing low A and begging for a call-up.

I hope you got a chance to read my Top 100 prospects list. If you hadn’t, what are you waiting for?

Read the rest of this entry »

The Prospect Stock Watch is taking a tour around the minor leagues reviewing rising prospects. These are prospects that likely won’t be on Top 100 lists or on your fantasy rosters just yet but they will likely become targets in dynasty leagues over the next year or two. Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve reviewed the National League. This week, we begin the American League with the east division.

Baltimore Orioles

Dean Kremer, RHP (AA): Baltimore is slowly but surely building up a little pitching depth at the upper levels of the minors with lower ceiling guys like Keegan Akin and Zac Lowther. The club also has higher ceiling prospects like DL Hall and Grayson Rodriguez in A-ball. Currently at Double-A, Kremer falls somewhere in the middle. Obtained in the disappointing Manny Machado deal where Baltimore focused more on quantity than quality, this right-hander could easily come away as the best player received in the deal from the Orioles’ perspective (I’m not a big Yusniel Diaz fan). Kremer has enough fastball velocity (up to 95 mph) to be interesting when you toss it together with a couple of above-average breaking balls. His control is ahead of his command but there is potential here for some strikeouts from a player with the ceiling of a No. 3 starter who might settle in as more of a solid No. 4. ETA: 2020

Read the rest of this entry »

Hey y’all!  All of the full-season leagues have had All-Star games and are into the second half of their seasons.  I thought it would be a fun exercise to put together my top 100 prospects.  This list is mostly a fantasy list but also has a real-life winkle in it.  In fantasy, I value batters over pitchers.  I do factor defense but has more of a tie-breaker between players.  I have also removed prospects eligible players currently in the majors and who should remain on the big league club, like Yordan Alvarez and Keston Hiura.  Enjoy!  I’ll see you in the comments and on Twitter.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Prospect Stock Watch is taking a tour around the minor leagues reviewing rising prospects. These are prospects that likely won’t be on Top 100 lists or on your fantasy rosters just yet but they will likely become targets in dynasty leagues over the next year or two. Over the past two weeks, we’ve looked at the National League East and Central divisions. Today, we finish up our look at the NL with the West division.

Colorado Rockies

Grant Lavigne, 1B: Lavigne’s numbers don’t jump out as a first base prospect — especially for one that went 42nd overall in the 2018 draft – but he’s had a respectable season. The assignment to full-season ball was challenging despite his pedigree. Lavigne is from a cold-weather state (New Hampshire) so he didn’t get the same opportunities to play all season long like those from Florida or California. The 19-year-old prospect is finding ways to get on base this year (.368 OBP) despite a .246 average, which has been driven down by his 24% strikeout rate. The K-rate wouldn’t be such a big deal if he was producing power but his isolated slugging rate (ISO) is just .100 through 87 games. Lavigne is hitting line drives and has a 6-4 frame build for home runs but he’s hitting far too many balls on the ground. Once he buys into the launch angle revolution, watch out.

San Francisco Giants

Sean Hjelle, RHP: Tall pitchers usually take longer to develop because they have to learn to repeat their delivery with long levers but Hjelle is ahead of the curve. Standing 6-11, he’s walked just 21 batters in 95.2 innings this year. If all goes well, he’ll have four average-or-better offerings. The most impressive skill he’s showcased so far, though, is his ability to induce ground balls at a rate of almost three times the big league average – which is huge in this homer-happy era. Toss all this together and you could have an innings-eating, mid-rotation arm.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hey y’all!  This week’s Stash List should be a pretty good one.  I dug deep to find guys having great seasons that should be available on most waiver wires.  One guy is a forgotten guy in a recent trade with some power and speed.  One guy is destroying baseballs in A ball and then we have two southpaws putting up some crazy strikeout percentages.

Mason Martin (PIT A) 1B Age 20 ETA 2022

The Pirates picked up Mason Martin in the 17th round of the 2017 draft.  Martin has massive power. After being drafted, he was assigned to the Appy League.  In 127 at-bats, Martin swatted eleven dingers to go along with eight doubles. He picked up ten more in 2018 before being promoted to A ball.  So far this season, in 301 at-bats, he has 23 home runs to go along with 19 doubles. As with most power prospects, Martin has strikeout issues.  The lowest strikeout rate in his professional career was 24.7% and that was in his first taste of professional ball. Martin is a pretty patient hitter, and some might say passive, with double-digit walk rates.  Being a right-handed first baseman, Martin will need to continue to hit to make it to the majors. If you are willing to take the risk, Martin is a power guy to stash in your minor leagues.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Prospect Stock Watch is taking a tour around the minor leagues while highlighting rising prospect values around baseball. These are prospects that likely won’t be on your fantasy rosters or radars just yet but they will likely become targets in dynasty leagues over the next year or two. Last week, we started off by looking at the National League East. Today, we tackle the prospects in the Central Division.

Chicago Cubs

Brennen Davis, OF (A): The second-round pick of the Cubs in 2018 is coming on even quicker than expected. When selected, there was thought that Davis’ hit tool was one of his least developed tools but he hit .298 in his debut and is hitting .302 this season through 36 A-ball games. He’s making an excellent amount of contact for his experience level (18.5 K%) and he’s also showing outstanding patience (11 BB%). Once he adds some more good weight/muscle to his 6-4 frame, he should have above-average power. Davis also has the speed to steal 20+ bases. ETA: 2022

Oscar De La Cruz, RHP (AA): Signed out of the Dominican way back in 2012, De La Cruz has shown flashes of potential but has struggled with injuries and inconsistencies. He also spent parts of four seasons in short-season ball but is finally holding his own in Double-A. De La Cruz has been a starter in the minors but looks like someone that might really take off if shifted to the bullpen. He has an average fastball but the curveball shows plus potential. Those two pitches — especially if he sees a little more fastball velo with the move — could make him a solid seventh- or eighth-inning reliever. ETA: 2020

Read the rest of this entry »

The Prospect Stock Watch is taking a trip around the Majors Leagues. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be diving into each organization to highlight two or three prospects from each club that are seeing their values spike as we move into the second half of the season. The review begins this week with 13 names to know from the National League East.

Atlanta Braves:

Kyle Muller, LHP (AA): A former second-round draft pick out of high school, Muller saw his value dip with a drop in velocity. He’s rediscovered his lost zip and now has an above-average fastball for a lefty – as well as a very good curveball. At 6-6, he’s still learning to control his long levers and has had issues with walks this season (52 in 85 innings). Muller, 21, has a chance to be a mid-rotation innings-eater but there could also be high-leverage reliever potential here if he can find the strike zone more consistently. ETA: 2020

Patrick Weigel, RHP (AAA): A strong 2016 season had Weigel strongly entrenched on my up-and-comers radar but then his career ascent was derailed by Tommy John surgery. He missed part of 2017 and most of 2018 but is back and looking like he never left. The hard-throwing right-hander opened the year in Double-A but has now made nine appearances (eight starts) in Triple-A. His command and control have both been inconsistent as he returns from the long layoff but it’s nothing to be overly concerned about. Because his secondary stuff is just average, he profiles as a fastball-heavy, high-leverage reliever in The Show. ETA: 2019

Read the rest of this entry »

Dictionary.com defines the word commission as “the act of committing or entrusting a person, group, etc. with supervisory power or authority.” I’ve been playing and commissioning fantasy baseball for almost 25 years now and have on occasion abused that authority to influence change within my leagues.  Always with the long-term good of the league in mind, I have encouraged owners to adopt a wide variety of incentive structures that have included elaborate prize payouts, keeper contract systems, supplemental minor league drafts, arbitration and inflation offsets, and a few other random gimmicks.  Furthermore, as a regular member of an active, daily fantasy baseball community, I’ve seen countless other versions of these ideas and have had all the common debates about incentives vs. penalties, owner competitiveness vs. engagement, and all the nuances that make for good, healthy ownership and game play.  In short, I’ve kind of seen it all.

I’m now ready to admit defeat.  Despite my best efforts, there are no universals when it comes to motivating every type of owner to engage fully over the course of a long 162 game baseball schedule.  This revelation should be obvious, and perhaps only fellow commissioners will sympathize with this drive to create the perfect league, but it has taken me some time to finally come to grips with this truth.  To be clear, it’s not that some of these ideas haven’t worked (I have years of anecdotal evidence that they can and do), it’s just that they are usually designed to address the symptoms that plague poor leagues rather than the core issue.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Kansas City Royals may have had one of the best drafts in recent memory as we look back at their 2018 haul. Now, the club was set up well for success when it had four picks in the first 40 selections of the draft thanks to the compensation picks for losing Eric Hosmer, Lorenzo Cain, and Mike Moustakas, but that doesn’t always guarantee success. We’ve seen a lot of teams in recent years whiff with multiple early picks when overthinking things and perhaps not having a great plan mapped out ahead of time.

The Royals were not one of those clubs. The organization had a very clear strategy entering the draft: They were going all-in on college pitching in an effort to rebuild a farm system that had struggled to draft and develop pitching for years – mostly through the high school ranks.

The list of failures is extremely long and features the likes of Foster Griffin, Scott Blewett, Ashe Russell, Nolan Watson, and Garrett Davila when counting only the 2014 and 2015 drafts. Those five prep arms cost the organization more than $10.5 million in signing bonuses. Those five pitchers have also accounted for zero MLB innings to date and two of them (Russell and Davila) are out of baseball. Watson is still in A-ball (and hurt). Griffin and Blewett are pitching in Triple-A but their ERAs are 5.58 and 7.23, respectively.

Fast-forward to the 2018 draft where the Royals waded waist-deep into the college pitching market and came away with 11 college pitchers (and one junior college pitcher) with their first 17 selections spanning the initial 14 rounds of the draft. And eight or nine of their 2018 picks could end up with fantasy baseball value.

FANTASY VALUE: Brady Singer, RHP, 18th overall: At one point, Singer was in the discussion to go No. 1 overall in the 2018 draft so for him to slip down to 18 was a huge win for the Royals. After not pitching any pro innings after signing, he was assigned to High-A ball to begin 2019 and posted a 1.87 ERA in 10 games. Promoted to Double-A at the beginning of June, he’s had a couple of rough games and has a 6.35 ERA in five starts. The balls have been jumping out of the yard more for Singer, who allowed just one homer in 57.1 A-ball innings but has now given up four in 22.2 Double-A innings. Even so, he’s still inducing ground balls at a very high rate and doing a solid job of throwing strikes. His strikeouts are down in Double-A after averaging almost one per inning at the lower level but he’s shown the ability to make adjustments. There is mid-rotation potential here with a chance at being a top-of-rotation guy if he can keep missing bats and inducing ground-balls at an elite rate.

Read the rest of this entry »