Archive for Prospects

Today at the Prospect Stock Watch we look at a sleeper prospect behind the plate for the Cubs, a first baseman that could impact the playoff race for the Mets, an outfielder that could help fill in the gaping hole in left field for the Astros, and another intriguing arm in the Rays system.

Miguel Amaya, C, Cubs: If you like deep, deep sleepers then keep an eye on Amaya, who could be developing into an intriguing offensive-minded catcher if the early season returns are a sign of things to come. Signed back in 2015 for $1.25 million, the 19-year-old athlete was assigned to full-season ball in just his second season in North America. Amaya is hitting .279 and showing excellent power. Nine of his 17 hits have gone for extra bases (including three home runs). Perhaps more impressively, he’s shown a good eye and has eight walks to go with 13 strikeouts. Defensively, he’s caught just two of 21 runners attempting to steal and he has a lot of work to do behind the plate. It will be interesting to see how the young backstop holds up to the rigors of a full season of catching, although the club has also been giving him some time at first base.

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The Prospect Stock Watch is back for another year. The first month of baseball is dwindling down and with all the weather cancellations it’s really flown by. Let’s have a look at some of the prospects that are off to either fast or slow starts to the year.

Fernando Tatis Jr., SS, Padres: San Diego has been extremely aggressive with this 19-year-old star-in-the-making. He’s shown uncanny in-game power for a teenager and went deep 22 times last year as an 18-year-old hitter in A-ball. The jump to double-A has been quite the challenge for him, though. He appeared at that level last year for 14 games and posted a strikeout rate of 30%. This year… another 14 games so far and another strikeout rate at 30%. Perhaps just as alarming, Tatis Jr.’s walk rate is hovering around a minuscule 2.5%. And he’s even stopped running. After stealing 29 bases a year ago, he has yet to even make an attempt to run. In hindsight, the decision to skip him over high-A ball may have been a mistake. But the good news is that he’s still young, still loaded with tools and should eventually rebound. It just might take him another two to three months to really adjust to the more advanced pitching in the upper levels of the minors.

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I’m going over hitters who are getting regular at-bats who I didn’t consider rosterable in the preseason. It’s now time to see if I missed anything.

Christian Villanueva

Everyone missed on Villanueva to start the season. He got no prospect love anywhere and the only preseason profile I found called him a “utilityman”. I don’t like to miss this badly on a player and set up a filter to find these gems. I’m not sure I can.

To start with, he had a decent Triple-A season hitting .296/.369/.528 and continued the results in the majors.

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To say things have gone very, very well for the Los Angeles Angels so far in 2018 would be an understatement. The club sits quite handily in first place in the American League West division and features two of the most exciting players in all of baseball in Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. The one thing the club hasn’t done exceptionally well in recent memory, though, is develop players. It’s had a bottom third system for quite some time now.

But things are beginning to change for the better. I looked at the Angels Top 10 prospects list back in mid-March and identified a list that was slowly evolving into an impressive collection of players. Today, I’m going to take an early peek at how the top prospect, Jahmai Jones, is doing… along with one player I identified as a “just-missed” sleeper in pitcher Griffin Canning and a third player that I didn’t talk about at all in Taylor Ward.

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In November I used the Prospect Scorecard to take an early look at the top 100 fantasy prospects for both Roto leagues and Ottoneu’s wOBA-heavy FanGraphs Points leagues.  In February I also added a quick fantasy spin on Eric and Kiley’s great preseason work ranking the top 100 prospects in baseball. Later this summer (July) I’ll update the top 100 for fantasy purposes, but today I want to briefly check in on a number of prospects that I think are rising (⬆) or falling (⬇) in value for various reasons in 2018.

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Saying that Dan Vogelbach is on the verge of fantasy relevance takes some storytelling cues from “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” Back in 2016, it seemed like only a matter of time until Vogey was a regular fantasy contributor. In the first half of 2016, Vogelbach hit .318/.425/.548 in Triple-A Iowa, with 16 homers and 18 doubles in 89 games. However, with Anthony Rizzo entrenched at first base, Vogey didn’t seem to have a role with the Cubs, so they dealt him to Seattle in exchange for Mike Montgomery.

Mostly because of his poor defense — but certainly also due in part to his non-athletic body — Vogelbach was never a darling of top prospect lists, but for fantasy purposes he seemed like a relatively sure thing for production in Seattle. As it turned out, he slowed down a bit after joining the Mariners system, hitting .240/.404/.422 over the final 44 games of 2016, and with Adam Lind performing at an okay-ish rate for the major-league club, it seemed Vogey would have to wait until 2017 to strut his chubby stuff in the big leagues.

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The AL East is loaded with talent at both the big league and minor league levels. And the minor league talent is well-distributed throughout each club’s system from top to bottom. Most clubs, with Boston potentially being the anomaly, could receive significant impacts from their systems in 2018.

Previous Reviews:
AL West Top 10s
NL West Top 10s
NL Central Top 10s
AL Central Top 10s
NL East Top 10s

2018 Arrivals:
4. Jake Bauers | 1B/OF | 2018 Level: AAA
5. Willy Adames | 3B | 2018 Level: AAA
9. Justin Williams | OF | 2018 Level: AAA

2019 Arrivals:
1. Brent Honeywell | SP | 2018 Level: Injured
7. Nick Solak | 2B | 2018 Level: AA

2020 and Beyond:
2. Brendan McKay | 1B/SP | 2018 Level: A
3. Jesus Sanchez | OF | 2018 Level: A+
6. Joshua Lowe | OF | 2018 Level: A+
8. Lucius Fox | SS | 2018 Level: A+
10. Austin Franklin | SP | 2018 Level: A

Other Names to Know:
Sleeper: Ronaldo Hernandez, C
Beyond the Top 10 Help in 2018: Yonny Chirinos, SP

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One of the great things about Ottoneu is the high level of engagement by the growing community of owners.  Few topics get the masses talking more than crowd-sourcing feedback on recent league trades, so today I want to highlight a few of the more interesting trades I’ve seen recently to get a pulse on how some player values are already shifting early this season.

As a quick reminder, Ottoneu is a keeper system by design that shifts the balance just short of traditional dynasty leagues, and offers a variety of scoring systems (including H2H this year).

Few players have seen their value shift as wildly as Shohei Ohtani over the past few weeks.  What he’s managed to do to start the season with both the bat (1.286 OPS) and off the mound (97.8 mph fastball) has at least verified that he’s as talented as the world thought he was, but the fact that he now looks less raw than he did just a few weeks ago in spring training tells you everything you need to know about the upward trajectory of his value in fantasy baseball leagues.  If you don’t happen to own Ohtani already, he’s going to be one of the hardest players in the game to acquire over the next 30 days.  He’s young, exciting, and just for the cool factor of clicking between batting and pitching stats on his FanGraphs page makes him the hottest commodity in the game right now, especially if you have the flexibility of slotting him into your daily lineup or your rotation like Ottoneu provides.

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The NL East features the best minor league system in the game in the Atlanta Braves. And it also has one of the worst with the New York Mets. The remainder of the teams in the division fall somewhere in between — although the Nationals could surprise some people with the depth that’s beginning to develop.

Things drop off really quickly for me after the first two prospects on this list.

2018 Arrivals:
7. Chris Flexen | SP | 2018 Level: AAA
10. Corey Oswalt | SP | 2018 Level: AAA

2019 Arrivals:
1. David Peterson | SP | 2018 Level: A+
2. Peter Alonso | 1B | 2018 Level: AA
5. Justin Dunn | SP | 2018 Level: AA
6. Marcos Molina | SP | 2018 Level: AA

2020 and Beyond:
3. Andres Gimenez | SS | 2018 Level: A+
4. Mark Vientos | 3B | 2018 Level: A
8. Ronny Mauricio | SS | 2018 Level: R
9. Thomas Szapucki | SP | 2018 Level: Injured

Other Names to Know:
Sleeper: Gerson Bautista, RP
Beyond the Top 10 Help in 2018: Tomas Nido, C

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Last week I wrote about a few lesser known opportunities within Ottoneu to maximize salary cap space, which is important to understand before your fantasy season begins.  However, by the time you read this post the fantasy season will have already begun, so I want to focus your attention today on strategies that will help you in-season as you attempt to squeeze every bit of value out of your team during what is sure to be a long but very fun Ottoneu season.

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