On Friday the Blue Jays called up Anthony Alford. The move surprised me since he struggled in 2016 with a 29% K% in High-A. He was doing better in Double-A this season (17K%, .393 wOBA) but I figured he would follow a progressive advancement with a Tripe-A stint.

Here’s a quick dive into what we know about his possible production. First here are his available prospect grades.

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At the beginning of the 2017 season, I wrote pieces reviewing the potential impact rookie hitters in each league for 2017. Today, we continue a semi-regular review of how those players are actually performing. The American League East was the first up for review and we hit the NL East today.

1. Dansby Swanson, SS, Braves: Swanson entered the year as one of the favorites for NL Rookie of the Year after performing well in a brief MLB showing in ’16. The 23-year-old infielder has seen his BABIP drop from .383 to .242, though, and that’s dragged down his triple-slash line to just .190/.261/.270.  He’s hitting .255 in May – up from .156 in April – but the swing-and-miss rate is actually up and nearing 30% this month. The team wasn’t expected to win in 2017 so the club can be patient with Swanson but he has a lot of work to do before he’ll consistently produce at even a league-average rate.

2. Koda Glover, RHP, Nationals: Glover was expected to be a key high-leverage reliever for the Nationals in 2017 but an injury knocked him out for close to three weeks. When healthy, he’s shown excellent control with just two walks in 11.2 innings. However, he’s struck out just nine batters and his swinging strike rate is just 8.4% (In comparison, Craig Kimbrel leads relievers at 23.7% and Chris Devenski is second at 21.1%). Glover has some work to do before he’s considered an elite relief option — but the potential is still there.

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I’ve made it almost a month since I made the following declaration on investigating prospect Hit grades:

I am going to stay away from more Hit tool predictions until I have collected every one of MLB.com’s prospect grades from 2013 and 2014, not just the top 100. I probably will not be able to compare many to their major league stats but I can with Triple-A.

I broke my position after collecting MLB.com’s 2013 grades. I ventured forward without the 2014 grades. With this larger and more diverse dataset, I compared the hitters’ grades to their batting average, home runs, and stolen bases in both AA and AAA.

Trying to better understand the Hit tool stems from finding it doesn’t contain any predictive power. When looking at players with different grades, major leaguers ended up posting similar batting averages. I concluded two issues were causing the production to level out.

First, hitters needed a talent and/or production baseline to get into the majors. Some hitters with below average grades were under-graded and produced up to the MLB baseline. Additionally, “better” hitters were over-graded but still had just enough talent to make the majors. This talent convergence tends to average out the grades.

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As I mentioned in last month’s version of this article, I’m no scout, but I do love looking at prospect performances as a key indicator for future call ups and prospects on the rise. I’m once again using the tool I put together that pulls from MLBfarm.com  to show the top prospect hitting performances so far this season, and I’m also going to show the top pitching performances as well. Please note that only players currently in the minors and in the top ten prospects of their organization are listed.

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5/18/17

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 18, 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 SLEEPER18!

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Leading Off: Question of the Day

• Which prospect are you most eager to see come up? (5:00)

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Quick Look: Zack Godley

I’ve had my eye on Godley since spring training when his velocity climbed up a couple ticks. It has stayed up and so has his production. The following is a take on the 27-year-old’s most recent start.

I’m stuck using Arizona’s bad camera angle since all his starts have been at home so far this season. Sorry, it’s far from the best view.

• Sinker(Fastball): 90 to 93 mph with release-side run with some late sink. It’s kind of a unique pitch with all the ground balls and limited sink. It won’t get many swings-and-misses (3% on the season) because of the limited break.

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At the beginning of the 2017 season, I wrote pieces reviewing the potential impact rookie hitters in each league for 2017. Today, we begin a semi-regular review of how those players are actually performing. The American League East is the first up for review with my original projected ranking.

1. Andrew Benintendi, OF, Red Sox: Benintendi has been as good as advertised. He’s third on the club in OPS behind Mookie Betts and Christian Vazquez(!). After striking out 21.2% of the time in his brief 2016 debut, the rookie outfielder has trimmed that by almost 10% to 12.7%. He’s playing solid defence, running the bases well and hitting. You can’t ask for much more from a freshman hitter on a club with high expectations.

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Finally. I’ve always wondered why home-to-first times weren’t publicly available. It seems like every other stat is tracked but not the information every scout is tracking. Now I’ve got my hands on the data to analyze. It’s still not publicly available yet but after quite a bit of nagging, I was able to convince MLBAM to let me have the 2016 season data. Here’s my initial breakdown.

I needed to get the data in a useable format with an idea of the hitter’s top speed. Every hitter doesn’t go all out to first base on every play. I wanted just the top times. The problem with just using the best times was many were bunts. Historically, home-to-first times are calculated from contact on a normal swing to when the batter touches first base. Here is an example with Mike Trout.

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The starting pitcher ranks have been absolutely devastated early in the season with three of the top 10 on the DL (Madison Bumgarner, Noah Syndergaard, and Corey Kluber) and three others haven’t quite been ace-like: Jake Arrieta, Jon Lester, and Johnny Cueto. All of that opening the door for the likes of Dallas Keuchel, Ervin Santana, Jason Vargas, and Mike Leake to ascend into the top 10. Meanwhile, not even the ranks of the top 10 are safe as James Paxton found himself at #8 with a bullet before hitting the DL for a fourth straight season.

Looking at the top 75 SPs drafted in the NFBC, we’ve seen 21 hit the DL (28%). It’s not like the 54 who haven’t been hurt are perfectly expectations, either. In short, the need for starting pitcher is real and seems to be hitting every league size. We’re all turning over every rock for potential production and as these injuries pile up, teams will have to get deeper into their reinforcements making the minor leagues a giant rock to flipped.

I perused the leaderboards of Double- and Triple-A in hopes of identifying some names who could contribute this year. Some are known prospects, others are guys putting up big numbers thus far. Here are 12 names I’m keeping tabs on:

Jose Berrios | Twins

While he’s no longer a true prospect as he exceeded his rookie limits last year, Berrios is still one of the most intriguing arms in the minor leagues. He really struggled in 58.3 innings last year with the Twins (8.02 ERA, 5% K-BB rate), but he still dominated Triple-A (2.51, 21%). He’s been great at Triple-A again this year (1.13, 17%) and now just waiting for his chance to tackle the majors again. I’m not sure if the Super-2 deadline plays a role in Berrios’ call-up anymore after the time he had in the majors last year, but that date will be passing soon meaning there shouldn’t be any other impediments in getting him to the majors. Well, outside of super roadblock Nick Tepesch.

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This week’s Prospect Stock Watch takes a look at a fast-rising Rockies third base prospect, an Astros catching prospect that’s exceeding expectation every step of the way and yet another promising Dodgers prospect.

Previous Prospect Stock Watch:
 May 1 Alford, Funkhouser, Soroka

Ryan McMahon, 3B/1B, Rockies: I’ve been one of McMahon’s biggest supporters since he turned pro but he hit a significant speed bump during his first shot at the upper minors in 2016. His OPS dropped below .860 for the first time in his four-year career when he ended the double-A season at .724. This year, upon a return to the same level, he’s up to .998 through the first 25 games.

McMahon, 22, is always going to strike out a lot – his career rate is north of 25% — but he’s made some adjustments to his swing/approach (as noted in this piece by David Laurila) and is down to 17% so far this year. As well, almost half his hits have gone for extra bases – a trend more in line with his numbers from 2013-15. McMahon is a doubles-machine and ‘the Colorado effect’ could help turn some of those into over-the-fence bombs giving his 20-30 home run potential — especially if the inflated home run rates in the majors continue.

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