Today, we continue our look at the Top 10 prospects for 2017 in each of the six leagues. The lists have been created by blending potential playing time, MLB-readiness and overall skill to take a stab at predicting the most valuable rookies for the coming season. Recently, we reviewed the NL East, the NL West, the NL Central, and the AL West.

Top 10 Prospects for 2017: AL East
 
1. Andrew Benintendi, OF, Boston: Benintendi has already received a lot of press and is easily the favorite for AL Rookie of the Year. He already has 34 games of big league experience under his belt and has yet to look fazed. He’s hit well and shown promise in the field. Benintendi is not a huge guy but he’s shown extra base pop and could eventually threaten 20 homers to go along with his 30-40 doubles in a full season. He should also regularly come close to producing a .400 on-base percentage with his ability to hit for average and tendency to walk more than he strikes out. He’s going to be a beast and reminds me of Mike Greenwell in his prime.

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Today, we continue our look at the Top 10 prospects for 2017 in each of the six leagues. The lists have been created by blending potential playing time, MLB-readiness and overall skill to take a stab at predicting the most valuable rookies for the coming season. Recently, we reviewed the NL East, the NL West and the NL Central.

Top 10 Prospects for 2017: AL West

1. Jharel Cotton, RHP, Oakland: Acquired from the Dodgers last year as part of the return for Josh Reddick, Cotton has made huge development leaps since the beginning of 2016. After bouncing between the bullpen and starting rotation in the Dodgers system, Cotton has settled into the rotation with the A’s and looks like a steal. He has a low-to-mid-90s fastball and backs it up with a plus changeup. If he can improve his breaking ball and continue to show good control, he has a chance to really thrive in his big home ballpark (He got tagged for 24 homers in ’16). After throwing 165 innings last year, he could be good for 180+ although the club will want to be cautious with the modestly-built pitcher.

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I have been breaking down the prospect Hit grade over the past few weeks. Now it’s time to find what’s usable for projections. One aspect I continue to find is that a plate discipline component seems to not be incorporated into the Hit grades. For this reason, I created a minor league Plate Discipline grade and used it with existing data to hopefully better map out a hitter’s future potential.

To start with, I used Walk Rate (BB%-IBB%) minus Strikeout Rate (K%) as a measure of minor league plate discipline. I grouped the values by the low minors (any A ball) or the upper minors (AA and AAA). Then, I gave the players a 50 grade for each level’s average plate discipline and a 60 for one standard deviation from the median. Here are the results:

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I don’t mean to over-hype anyone. Or maybe I do. I don’t know. I seek to provide an adequate amount of hype and keep things in perspective. That said, I’m pretty excited about Josh Bell. You may know him, you may not; he’s slated to be the Pirates’ primary first baseman, maybe with a little bit of backup outfielding thrown in. Josh Shepardson talked about him and his general skill set in November. Bell’s young and a several-time top prospect, although the highest he ever reached on any given list was MLB.com’s, at No. 34 overall prior to 2015. Nothing to sneeze at, but he never carried the same hype as, say, Yoan Moncada currently does. He’s Eric Longenhagen’s No. 50 prospect this year and KATOH’s No. 25. Knowing the gory math that goes into KATOH, I’m very partial to it. Also, all of this suggests I’m not early to any kind of party here. I’m reluctant to claim as much. I just can’t help but produce my own tributes every now and then.

Bell walked more than he struck out last year. As a rookie. That’s what gets to me. Not that it’s never been done before, and it’s not like it was a huge sample size — 153 plate appearances. I found plenty of examples in the last 25 years to compare; Bell’s rookie season is almost a dead ringer for that of Doug Mientkiewicz, a first-ballot Surname Hall of Famer but otherwise mediocre ballplayer with a decent three-year peak.

Where Bell diverges from Mientkiewicz — and everyone else, for that matter — is his hard-hit rate (Hard%). Mientkiewicz decidedly did not hit the ball hard. Among rookies since 2002 (because that’s as far back as our batted ball data from Baseball Info Solution dates) who notched at least a .130 isolated power (ISO), none hit the ball as hard as Bell. Again, small samples, but this is already a decent list to top.

When we expand the sample from rookies to all hitters in that same timeframe, things become even more interesting. Here’s a list of every hitter, in no particular order, who, in any given season, minimum 150 PAs, achieved (1) more walks than strikeouts, (2) an ISO better than .130, and (3) a hard-hit rate better than 33 percent.

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Today, we continue our look at the Top 10 prospects for 2017 in each of the six leagues. The lists have been created by blending potential playing time, MLB-readiness and overall skill to take a stab at predicting the most valuable rookies for the coming season. Recently, we reviewed the NL East and the NL West.

Top 10 Prospects for 2017: NL Central

1. Josh Bell, 1B, Pittsburgh: Bell entered the year as the favorite to play everyday at first base for the Pirates in 2017 but a terrible spring (.409 OPS in 43 at-bats) likely shortened his leash and he’ll need to start hitting to keep his spot given his defensive limitations. Veteran first baseman John Jaso remains on-hand in a part-time role but he could easily move in and take the lion’s share of the playing time. Bell has a chance to produce good power and above-average on-base numbers if he can sort out his swing. He remains one of the favorites for Rookie of the Year in the National League.

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A couple of weeks ago, I examined the prospect Hit tool grade and how it provides useless information as it is currently being distributed. It’s time to dive back in. First, I am going to answer a couple questions which have come up on the topic and then get into my recommended changes.

Are there any systematic differences between Baseball America’s grades and those from MLB.com?

This study was easy. I grouped all players who had grades from both sources in the same season and I found the average differences.  The following table contain the averaged difference of the Baseball America grade minus the MLB.com grade for the 154 matched pairs.

The final differences are small with Baseball American being higher on power while MLB.com is higher on Speed and Defense.

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Today, we continue our look at the Top 10 prospects for 2017 in each of the six leagues. The lists have been created by blending potential playing time, MLB-readiness and overall skill to take a stab at predicting the most valuable rookies for the coming season. Last week, we reviewed the NL East.

Top 10 Prospects for 2017: NL West

1. Hunter Renfroe, OF, San Diego:  The Padres should have opportunities a plenty for rookies in 2017 and both Renfroe and Manuel Margot (see below) could see lots of playing time. This 25-year-old rookie really started consistently tapping into his raw power in ’16 and went deep 30 times at triple-A. He then had a scorching 11-game debut in the majors with another four long-balls. He has some swing-and-miss to his game due to an overly-aggressive approach that also leads to low walk rates but Renfroe’s power could eventually go nicely in the middle of the Padres order.
 
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Today, we begin a look at the Top 10 prospects for 2017 in each of the six leagues. The lists have been created by blending potential playing time, MLB-readiness and overall skill to take a stab at predicting the most valuable rookies for the coming season.

Top 10 Prospects for 2017: NL East

1. Dansby Swanson, SS, Atlanta: The former first overall pick of the 2015 amateur draft needed just 127 games of minor league seasoning to earn a shot at the Majors with the Braves. His first 38 games in the Majors produced close to one win in value. The 23-year-old infielder hit more than .300 but he struck out almost once per game and his .383 BABIP is likely going to normalize. He’ll play everyday for the Braves in 2017 but expect an up-and-down year. When the dust settles, I could see 10-15 home runs and a similar number of steals to go with a .270 batting average.

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It is Bold Prediction season here at Fangraphs and I am ready to improve on my 2.5 correct out of 10 from last year.

This year I decided to do mine a bit different. I have been vacation and busy preparing for my trip to New York for Tout Wars, where I will be crashing/helping out with the festivities and harassing/getting to meet fellow industry colleagues. So, I decided to focus on players and themes that I felt I have not been able to touch on as much on my podcast or here at Rotographs. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier in the offseason, I examined out how reported Hit tool grades compared to actual MLB batting averages. I called the process a “mess” but figured it had some value. When I implemented the formula on MLB.com’s 2017 grades, commenters had the following to say about the projected batting average values:

“… not enough differentiation there in my opinion”
“… adjust your outputs to create more difference..”
“… hoping the table would be more conclusive…”
“…way too tightly grouped to the mean…”
“…it’s better to have no projection than to project everyone to be average…”
“… regressing too much to the mean…”
“… hit tool grades should be ignored…”
“…hit tool is undervalued in prospect analysis…”

I have no issue with the hit values being regressed to the mean. What I do have a problem with is if the hit tool is not measuring the correct factors. I needed to find out if reported hit grades provide any value. The following is a detailed look at how the hit tool is graded and how it fails to predict one simple factor, a hitter’s ability to get hits.

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