Is the Red Sox kid-outfielder our top prospect this season?
I have been in your shoes. It is late-January, you are running short on time, and scrambling to compile a prospect list deep enough for your 24-team league with 15 farm roster spots. None of Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, MinorLeagueBall, or other prominent prospect sites have released their top-100 list, let alone finished their top-10 team lists. Even if they had, that list isn’t deep enough for you since your league will end up with 360 farm players selected. While extremely beneficial, those sites don’t cater to your league’s settings, where a defensive shortstop specialist is 100% irrelevant. Meanwhile, teams in your league are selecting Japanese pitchers, Cuban teenagers, and American high school juniors that you have yet to read about because you haven’t had time to review every competent source to be found on the internet. Don’t worry, I did the work for you
Ranking prospects is much more of an art than a science. Art is in the eye of the beholder, and so my endeavor is to consider the goals of the readers when building the list. This list, that will be released tomorrow, will be deep enough, wide enough, and shaped specifically for fantasy baseball leagues. When those other sites come out with their lists, you may notice that my rankings are quite a bit different. No need worry, this is not a mistake, and there is good reason as to why my list differs. In fact, there are six distinct ways my list is different; let me explain my ranking philosophy.
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1. This list isn’t overflowing with defensive wizards that have cannons for arms, but can’t hit one bit.
It used to get on my nerves when I would find a top-70 prospect that was available in my league, only to discover that his offensive ceiling was likely that of Daniel Descalso. Who? Exactly. This player (see Carson Kelly) may end up plenty useful as Yadi’s heir in St. Louis, but your fantasy baseball team is definitely going to hurt with a .240/.290/.350 catcher in the lineup. Don’t get me wrong, I still consider Kelly a prospect because his bat may develop (in six years), and his glove will almost certainly earn him playing time. I, however, am not of the party that considers power and hit tool of the same importance as arm, speed, and glove tools. Sure, he may pile up WAR, but he isn’t going to pile up fantasy championship trophies for you. Give me a guy who can pop the ball out of the yard, but has no glove, no arm, and bricks for feet, and I’ll show you a valuable fantasy player. There have been a thousand and one hitters that were hardly considered prospects, all because they couldn’t track down a fly ball gracefully. Do any of these names ring a bell? David Ortiz, Matt Holliday, Jason Bay, J.D. Martinez, Josh Willingham. Yes, these types of players will be much higher on my list than other lists. You’re welcome.
2. Home MLB ballparks are not important when evaluating MLB players, but they sure are for fantasy.
When Franklin Morales was considered a top prospect, it had nothing to do with the fact that he would be getting shelled in Coors Field every other start. If you think about it, the average game in Coors yields 43% more runs than the average ballpark, so even if he gives up 20% more runs than the average pitcher, he is still a useful pitcher for the Rockies. Morales ended up busting and moving to the bullpen, but even if he hadn’t, you don’t want a Rockies’ pitcher on your fantasy team because 20% more runs than the average pitcher isn’t going to cut it. Meanwhile, you’ve got top hitting prospects, like Dustin Ackley and Mike Zunino, who suffered upon being called up from playing their home games in Safeco. Sure, their stats don’t translate well to a neutral ballpark either, but don’t you think their stats would be considerably better if their confidence hadn’t been shredded? What’s more is that their runs and RBI numbers are impacted by being in lineups that don’t produce as many runs (in part because of their ballparks). On FantasyPros’ top-400 worldwide prospect list, Coors pitchers will be regarded as such, and Yankees’ lefties will be regarded as such. It is also worth noting that if a B+ pitching prospect is in the Cardinals’ organization he is much more likely to progress to his potential than a B+ pitching prospect in the Yankee’s organization. This is for several reasons: Yadi calls the pitches in St. Louis, the Yankees send all prominent pitching prospects to the bullpen, the Yankees play against AL East lineups, and Yankees’ prospects (among other big market teams) are vastly overrated by other ranking sources. If Mason Williams had been a member of the Padres’ farm system, you can bet your house he would not have been a top 50 prospect or even a top 100 prospect before his predictable fallout. The bias is evident so we eliminate it in our rankings.
3. The movement of prospect rankings is far more predictable than you might think, so we anticipate and respond proactively.
If you study the trends of prospect rankings you will find a few sure-fire scenarios where you can bet with confidence on movement from season to season. One of these scenarios is when a minor-league player is set to begin his season in one of about a dozen ballparks. If a Mariners’ hitting prospect is starting his season in High Desert, or an A’s hitter in Midland, or just about any batter in the Pacific League, then you can expect his prospect status to flourish. Meanwhile, if a Padres’ pitcher starts in Eugene, a Phillies’ pitcher in Lakewood, or a Royals’ pitcher in Wilmington, then you can expect his stock to rise. These can, of course, be used for the reverse, and there are several more ballparks that heavily influence ranking volatility.
As previously mentioned, certain organizations end up with overhyped prospects. If there is a Yankees’ star bound to break out (see Blake Rutherford) then be ready to see him ranked 20 spots higher than similar prospects. If a player has MLB bloodlines (Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette are two classic examples), then the same can be expected. Another notable cause in movement is that of sophomore minor leaguers. The year after a player is drafted in the early first round, he nearly always jumps 15 to 40 spots in the rankings, even when he puts up pedestrian numbers. As long as the players don’t undergo the knife or walk a thousand batters, they will move up the rankings like clockwork. So why not plan for these glaringly obvious changes and build your rankings around them? After all, a player is worth what his trade value is.
We were able to predict the rapid rises of Alex Reyes, Victor Robles, Gleyber Torres, Triston McKenzie, Yadier Alvarez, Eloy Jimenez, Josh Hader, Domingo Acevedo, Stephen Gonsalvez, Sean Reid-Foley, Josh Staumont, Albert Abreu and of course the new additions like A.J. Puk and Jason Groome. The misses were far and few between. Did we have some special knowledge or get lucky? No. In fact, everyone in the industry could have named each one of those players as likely breakout candidates. The difference is that we rank with the expectation, knowing we will blow it on a couple, but knock the ball out of the park on many more.
4. Players with higher upsides may very well flame out but are overall better values than less risky players.
Other sites don’t account for this. They appear to be more worried about swinging and missing on a prospect, so they move these high-end guys (see Kevin Maitan) up their rankings much slower than I will. Even if Maitan doesn’t have an all-world performance this season, his first national exposure will surely lead to a lofty ranking next season. It is likely only a matter of time before he is the top prospect in the game, so why not just admit it. If you ran 10,000 simulations like Vegas, or FiveThirtyEight does, players like Maitan may bust 30% of the time, but if they reach their potential (8 WAR per season) just 20% of the time, and somewhere in between (3 WAR on average) the other 40% of the time, then you find an average of 2.8 WAR. Meanwhile, you’ve got low-ceiling, high-floor prospects (see Nick Gordon) that have a ceiling of only about 2.5 WAR, but was ranked 20 to 40 spots higher than Maitan because you know what you get with Cecchini.
Also, consider that if you are playing dynasty fantasy baseball, your roster spots are limited. As a fantasy manager, it helps to think about things in terms of Above Replacement Value. If your league is 16 teams with five prospects, that makes just 80 total prospects. This means that at any given time you can hypothetically pick up prospect No. 81 off the waiver wire, and be honest with yourself, your league-mates are not smart enough to select the top 80 prospects, so more likely you can find a top-50 prospect in there or someone who has recently emerged as a top-30 prospect. Let’s conservatively call replacement level the No. 60 prospect in this scenario. If you own prospect No. 48, who is only likely to produce a wOBA .015 above the replacement level player, then you are virtually wasting a farm spot since you can pick up that production off the waivers, and usually from a player closer to the majors. Rather, you should buy a lottery ticket. Even if your shot in the dark prospect has an 80% chance of not panning out, that doesn’t mean you get zero wOBA in those scenarios, it means he is getting you replacement level wOBA since you can just drop him and pick up a replacement level player. Meanwhile, if he breaks out and reaches his potential, you’ve got yourself an astronomically higher wOBA and a steal of a fantasy player. We built the rankings with this logic nested in.
5. Our rankings weigh fantasy impact stronger than other sources, so 25-year-old rookies are actually considered a prospect.
Most systems weight prospects by which season they will begin to make an impact because winning now is more important than winning in the future, but I take it a step or two further, and thus weight impact more heavily. For each season that 17-year-old is on your roster, he is clogging up a farm spot that could be utilized on someone more impactful. Like anything else, Above Replacement Statistics can be used for farm roster spots. If the average farm roster spot warrants a return of “10x” per year, then each season that very young pitcher sits on your roster developing, should count for 10x subtracted from his estimated future value. Or perhaps an easier way to look at it is that if he is only your farm roster for five seasons he better provide 50x value, which is considerably higher than the average 10x value prospect. This means that even though players like Aledmys Diaz were “old” when they made their MLB debut, they will still be considered prospects in this system.
6. 15-year-old Venezuelans, 32-year-old Koreans, and American high schoolers are prospects too.
Before Alex Rodriguez was a 20-year-old MVP runner-up, he was a 16-year-old American high school student that was also can’t miss, superstar prospect. Before Miguel Cabrera was a triple-crown winner, he was a 15-year-old bonafide phenom out of Latin America. Before Yu Darvish struck out 277 MLB hitters in one season, he was a Japanese heart-throb (and their league’s version of the Cy Young winner). Just because these players are not currently under contract by MLB teams does not mean they are not prospects. Some are better prospects that top-five draft picks from last season! They should be considered as such. The way I will rank these isn’t just by where they would rank if they came over, but weighing in the odds of them ever making the jump to the big leagues and how soon it is expected to happen. Shohei Otani would be considered a Cy Young front-runner the moment he signed a half-billion dollar MLB contract, but because he probably won’t come over for another season or two, and might never come over, he drops down our rankings. Think of it this way; in the NFL draft, each pick is assigned a value. Likewise, MLB prospects have this value according to their ranking. Let’s say the No. 5 overall prospect is worth 2,500 value points. If there is an 80% chance he comes over, his value drops 20% to 2,000, which is still a very nice prospect.
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All of these qualifiers and strategies may be confusing. Luckily, you don’t have to compile all of the information and factor in each scenario. I did that for you, so keep this primer in mind and check out our Worldwide Top 400 MLB Prospects Monday the 30th. When something seems odd, consider the methodology that was broken down here.
