Prospect Stock Watch: Jeimer Candelario

The Chicago Cubs have a pretty good, young third baseman named Kris Bryant. You may have heard of him. He has two MLB seasons under his belt and his awards shelf already has both a Rookie of the Year and a MVP award.

The club also has one of the top third base prospects in the game in Jeimer Candelario, who is beginning his second year in triple-A. Last season, he hit .333/.417/.542 in 76 games. So far this year, he’s hitting .308/.410/.692 in his first 15 games. And he’s not a recent pop-up prospect, either. He’s been on prospect radars since 2012 when he hit well as a teenager during his North American debut. Inconsistencies, though, plagued Candelario throughout much of his career and as recently as 2016 when he opened the year by hitting just .219 with a .690 OPS in double-A before earning a challenge-promotion to triple-A where he hit much better and saw his OPS jump almost .300 points.

The third baseman began to see more consistency to his game last year by toning down his overly-aggressive approach and he went from walking about 6-8% of the time to 12-13%. His strikeout rate has hovered around 17-18% throughout most of his career — excellent for someone with the type of raw power that Candelario possesses. He’s also been tapping into that pop more consistently in the past two seasons which, combined with the better on-base rate, explains why he’s been more successful. But he’s also been aided by BABIPs hovering near .400 during both of his triple-A stays.

I observed Candelario’s at-bats over a three-day period last week and noticed that, despite his recent successes, he still has work to do to realize his full potential. The switch-hitter is seeing a lot of pitches — 22 pitches in four at-bats on April 16 — but he’s still prone to chasing both up and away as a right-handed hitter. As a left-handed hitter, he is vulnerable both inside and up.

The best pitcher that Candelario faced in the early going was the Dodgers’ 20-year-old phenom Julio Urias. In two at-bats against the lefty, the Cubs’ prospect struck out both times. And in both cases he was his own worst enemy – chasing pitches out of the strike zone with two strikes (up and away outside the strike zone both times).

Arguably the second-best pitcher Candelario faced was right-hander Vance Worley, a 29-year-old veteran of numerous big league seasons. The 24-year-old prospect doubled and struck out against the hurler in their first match-up. Worley started for a second time against the Iowa club five days later and got him to hit into a fly out and a ground out – while also issuing a four-pitch walk.

In contrast, Candelario’s biggest games have come against the likes of Severino Gonzalez, Allen Webster, and Nick Martinez — arguably all fringe big leaguers. Yes, Candelario has a lot of intriguing tools and has had some minor league success, but it’s also important to look at the quality of players that he’s facing during both his successes and his struggles.

From my observations it looks like the young Cubs third base prospect is not ready to contribute at an elite level in the majors. If he were to come up to The Show at this point, I believe he would tread water rather than sink but league-average production — with more swing-and-miss than he’s shown in the minors — would be the most likely outcome for his freshman season. He has enough holes in his approach at this point to be vulnerable to big league pitchers with average or better command.

The best bet for the Cubs, barring an injury to Bryant, would likely be to keep Candelario at the triple-A level into the summer months and use him to acquire some additional pitching depth for another playoff run. With that said, success should come for the prospect if he stays on his current development path. I can foresee his ceiling being akin to Matt Carpenter’s 2016 season: .270 average, .380 on-base percentage and about 20 homers — a three-win player.





Marc Hulet has been writing at FanGraphs since 2008. His work focuses on prospects and fantasy. Follow him on Twitter @marchulet.

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