Coming into the 2013 season, Aaron Hicks looked like he might have finally put it all together. The former first-round draft pick was coming off a highly productive season in Double-A, where he hit .285/.382/.459 with 13 homers and 32 stolen bases. Then came Spring Training, where Hicks looked like a man amongst boys, hitting an absurd .370/.407/.644 with four dingers and three steals while playing excellent defense in center field. The five-tool player that the Twins had spent so long cultivating was finally bearing fruit. Minnesota handed Hicks the starting job in center field over Darin Mastroianni and set him free to light the world on fire.

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The last two weeks, I have discussed two precocious prospects–Mets shortstop Amed Rosario and Rays righthander German Marquez–who were born in 1995. The idea of professional baseball players born in the middle of the 1990s probably still takes some getting used to for many casual observers, but indeed, we may be less than three years from seeing the first pro baseball player born in the 2000s.

Players like Rosario and Marquez hold a lot of intrigue, but they also are buried in short-season leagues, far from the majors, and thus also below the general prospect mainstream. This week, however, I’m going to examine a player born in 1995 who already has broken through into the mainstream consciousness: Royals shortstop prospect Raul Mondesi.

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Last week, I talked about the youngest regular position player in the Appalachian League: Mets shortstop Amed Rosario, who was named the circuit’s top prospect by Baseball America after the season. Sticking with the youth theme in the Appy, this week I’m going to focus on the league’s youngest regular starting pitcher, 18-year-old Rays righthander German Marquez. Marquez did not appear on BA’s top 20 postseason Appy prospects, but with solid performance (3.50 FIP), a nice arsenal, and plenty of time and room to develop further, I’d argue he deserves to be placed squarely among the circuit’s most intriguing players, and is definitely a player to watch.

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Down in Arizona to get one last fix of baseball before the lean winter months, I had the distinct pleasure of getting to watch Alex Meyer pitch three innings of shutout ball against the AFL East All-Star lineup — while sitting behind two excellent young fellows from Trackman baseball. There’s very little PITCHf/x in the minor leagues, and usually competitor Trackman’s data is proprietary and under lock and key. But in Arizona, the company enjoys its best chance to openly market their radar-based approach to pitch tracking, and the numbers their system provided were an interesting guide to a dominant outing by the Twins’ best pitching prospect.

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Analyzing prospects in short-season leagues can often be a confusing and fruitless endeavor. All three of pro baseball’s three large development hurdles–the jump to full-season ball, the jump to the upper minors, and the jump to the majors–remain in front of such players, and projecting how raw 17-21-year-olds are going to handle those difficult transitions years down the line cannot be done with much certainty. Still, there are plenty of relevant prospects in the short-season circuits, and today I’m going to discuss the first of a few that I personally viewed in the Rookie-Advanced Appalachian League in 2013: Mets shortstop prospect Amed Rosario.

Rosario had the distinction of being named the top prospect in the Appy by Baseball America, which immediately pegs him as someone to watch. So does his birth date: November 20, 1995. He was the youngest position player to open the year at the Rookie-Advanced level, which says a lot about how advanced he is for his age, even if the numbers he posted (.241/.279/.358 with a 43/11 K/BB, 3 HR, 2 SB, and a .941 fielding percentage in 58 games) veer closer to “problematic” than “exciting.”

But a player’s ranking on prospect lists and his raw numbers (particularly at such a low level at such a young age) do little to shed light on what sort of player he may become. For that, we have to turn to visual evidence.

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James Paxton, Enny Romero, Danny Duffy, Derek Holland, David Price, Chris Sale, Brad Hand, Martin Perez, Francisco Liriano, Jon Lester, Clayton Kershaw, Gio Gonzalez, Scott Kazmir, Matt Moore, Ross Detwiler, Patrick Corbin, Kris Johnson, Hector Santiago, Tony Cingrani, and Cole Hamels. A distinguished group of twenty, is it not?

The above list constitutes all lefthanded MLB starting pitchers who averaged 91.5 mph or more on their fastballs in 2013. As you can see, it consists largely of two groups: good, established MLB starters and unproven but exciting young guys who only got a few starts in the majors during the past season. Almost none of these guys have neither exciting presents nor exciting futures, and thus, anyone who projects to join this relatively selective club merits a closer look. One such pitcher is Pirates southpaw prospect Joely Rodriguez.

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The 2013 Hickory Crawdads were undoubtedly one of the most star-studded low-minors teams of the past decade. The Rangers’ Low-A affiliate, they had Joey Gallo, who became the first teenager in half a century to hit 40 homers in a season…and did it in just 113 games. For much of the season, though, Gallo trailed teammate Ryan Rua in the minor league home run chase (Rua finished with 32, 29 of them coming in 104 games with Hickory). They had Jorge Alfaro, who many consider one of baseball’s top catching prospects. They had Nomar Mazara, who holds the record for the highest signing bonus by a Latin American amateur, at $4.95 million. They had 2012 first-rounder Lewis Brinson, second Dominican bonus baby Ronald Guzman, and for much of the year, had pitcher C.J. Edwards, the headline prospect in July’s Matt Garza trade.

While all of those players (and relievers Alex Claudio and Jose Leclerc) hold considerable intrigue on their own, there was no 2013 Crawdad who left a stronger positive impression on me than outfielder Nick Williams.

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Every year, there are always several prospects who emerge from obscurity to post majestic statlines in the lower levels of the minor leagues. As such a player strings together an extended period of statistical superiority, questions of his legitimacy as a potential impact player arise–do the numbers merely reflect hollow dominance of fatally flawed, cupcake opponents, or are they a sign of a player emerging as a prospect to watch?

In the immediate aftermath of such a statistical rise, there is always a need for firsthand observation of the player to contextualize both his present excellence and future potential. One player very much in this mold is White Sox pitching prospect Adam Lopez.

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A player can’t be drafted fifth overall, sign for $7.5 million, and not retain extremely high visibility for his minor league career. This is especially true of a player drafted into a franchise with a recent history of struggles that has sent its fanbase constantly scouring the farm system for signs of hope. Add in the prospect in question being a local high school multi-sport hero, and you have a player who will constantly be under the microscope.

That is the situation Royals outfield prospect Bubba Starling has constantly found himself in in his professional career. He was the fifth overall pick in 2011 and passed up a football scholarship at Nebraska for the massive bonus. Many reported that he had five tools, but like many multi-sport high school hitters, he combined impressive athleticism with rawness.

Two years into his career, Starling has had mixed results that have led many to question whether it’s time to jump off the bandwagon, while others point to his relative youth (he’s still just 21) and hold out hope for stardom. I did get to see Starling three times in the 2013 season, and today I’m going to take my shot at projecting him.

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Yankees pitching prospect Rafael De Paula entered the season cloaked in mystery. There were three basic things known about him to the general prospecting community. First, despite being a coveted international free agent, he didn’t sign a contract until he was almost 21 due to maintaining a false identity, being suspended, and taking a long time to acquire a visa in the aftermath of the incident. Second, once he finally was officially a professional, he went out and tore up the Dominican Summer League in 2012, with a 1.46 ERA and 85/18 K/BB in 61 2/3 innings. Of course, his advanced age made those statistics even less relevant than typical DSL numbers, which mean little on the prospecting scene to begin with. What was more important was the third fact, which was that he supposedly had good stuff.

I saw De Paula show that stuff on April 21 against Hickory, where he threw five hitless innings with ten strikeouts. Today, I’m going to examine what allowed him to roll through South Atlantic League lineups with ruthless efficiency in the first half of the year, but also look at some of the rough edges that contributed to a drop in production following De Paula’s promotion to High-A at midseason.

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