Official MiLB/Prospects Thread

[Spanky__99]

That list is using absurd recency bias. Chase Davis, drafted #21 overall, is the 50th best prospect in all of baseball?

 

It happens every season and gets adjusted by there results, this isn't new?

[Spanky__99]

Stangstag what's going on, you've quoted me twice and I'm not finding anything?

[Spanky__99]

https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article/blue-jays-farm-report-better-pitch-selection-helps-martinez-hit-for-more-than-just-power/

 

All sorts of goodies in this one from Davidi.

 

-Orelvis is expected to join AAA soon.

-Tiedemann back in 3 weeks.

-Alan Roden expected to join AA soon.

-Barriera could be back in a couple of weeks.

 

I read this originally on BA the other day, I guess as a writer for them he has to post it there first as a stipulation to his contract, anyhow, nice little gig for Shi and good for him.

[Olerud363]

Probably because prospect rankings is more than just current results. It's projection, stuff, and potential. Kid literally throws lightning and reliever or not he's going to be nasty. You don't trade kids with arms like that unless you're getting a legit Major League Piece. Mitch White f***ing sucks.

 

Your still forgetting there was another guy in the trade. 21 year old middle infielder with Teoscar Hernandez/Jose Bautista level milb "performance". What I mean is some guys who are where Alex De Jesus is, become very good major league players, just as some guys who are where Fasso is become good players. What are the chances that Fasso or De Jesus become good? I don't know, but not 0 for either.

 

Tango brought up a very good point, in that most arguments have two people answering different questions, you are asking the question was Fasso for Mitch White a good trade? The real question is was Fasso for Mitch White and Alex De Jesus a good trade?

[Spanky__99]

The trade was justified the minute they made it, sure it sucked they had to give up an arm like Frasso, at the time Jays needed starter depth and got a similar prospect back in Alex De Jesus, it's about as simple as that, Jonn.

 

Your still forgetting there was another guy in the trade. 21 year old middle infielder with Teoscar Hernandez/Jose Bautista level milb "performance". What I mean is some guys who are where Alex De Jesus is, become very good major league players, just as some guys who are where Fasso is become good players. What are the chances that Fasso or De Jesus become good? I don't know, but not 0 for either.

 

Tango brought up a very good point, in that most arguments have two people answering different questions, you are asking the question was Fasso for Mitch White a good trade? The real question is was Fasso for Mitch White and Alex De Jesus a good trade?

 

Alex who? lol

[L54]

It's ok. It was a good trade.

 

I think if we collectively as a group continue to say this eventually everyone will say the same thing

[connorp]

I think if we collectively as a group continue to say this eventually everyone will say the same thing

 

And they can ban anyone that doesn’t fall in line

[L54]

And they can ban anyone that doesn’t fall in line

 

Spicy!

[Jonn]

Your still forgetting there was another guy in the trade. 21 year old middle infielder with Teoscar Hernandez/Jose Bautista level milb "performance". What I mean is some guys who are where Alex De Jesus is, become very good major league players, just as some guys who are where Fasso is become good players. What are the chances that Fasso or De Jesus become good? I don't know, but not 0 for either.

 

Tango brought up a very good point, in that most arguments have two people answering different questions, you are asking the question was Fasso for Mitch White a good trade? The real question is was Fasso for Mitch White and Alex De Jesus a good trade?

 

I’m not forgetting about him. He remains what he is. Mildly interesting.

 

We are still years away from knowing the true outcome of the trade.

 

But one thing is true. If Mitch White had an option remaining he wouldn’t be pitching in the Majors right now. The roster crunch will come eventually.

[L54]

I’m not forgetting about him. He remains what he is. Mildly interesting.

 

We are still years away from knowing the true outcome of the trade.

 

But one thing is true. If Mitch White had an option remaining he wouldn’t be pitching in the Majors right now. The roster crunch will come eventually.

 

It’s coming fast. Ryu and Green are on their way and Pop is healthy. They’re going to phantom IL White with a paper cut to avoid admitting defeat

[max silver]

I’m not forgetting about him. He remains what he is. Mildly interesting.

 

We are still years away from knowing the true outcome of the trade.

 

But one thing is true. If Mitch White had an option remaining he wouldn’t be pitching in the Majors right now. The roster crunch will come eventually.

 

Who would be on the major league roster instead of White? Pop hasn't found his form yet after injury, and aside from his there's a load of AAAA types including Hatch, Thornton, Jay Jackson etc. It's not like the team is swimming in more deserving roster candidates at the moment. Had Bass not gotten himself cancelled the White decision would have been a lot harder to make and may have forced the organization to trade or release him, but for now White has actually done a decent enough job in the role he currently finds himself in.

[Terminator]

Has Atkins ever traded a prospect who turned out to be good? He's traded away a lot of them. Surely there has been one, right?

[metafour]

Has Atkins ever traded a prospect who turned out to be good? He's traded away a lot of them. Surely there has been one, right?

 

Lane Thomas.

[connorp]

ConnorP’s hot penny stock pick for 2023, Blaze Jordan, headed to AA as one of the youngest players in the league.

Defense limits his real world value, but looking like a booming fantasy prospect

 

Zack Gelof also headed up to bigs this weekend to possibly be 2b of future for A’s

[Brownie19]

Has Atkins ever traded a prospect who turned out to be good? He's traded away a lot of them. Surely there has been one, right?

 

He's traded for Chapman, Teo, Espinal, Merrifield, Richards/Francis, Matz, Ray, Berrios, etc. while hardly giving up anyone of relevance in return. But he should hang for giving up Frasso. Oddly enough, we should probably be more pissed that he gave up Noda in the Stripling deal.

[Brownie19]

ConnorP’s hot penny stock pick for 2023, Blaze Jordan, headed to AA as one of the youngest players in the league.

Defense limits his real world value, but looking like a booming fantasy prospect

 

But can he scoop it well at 1st?

[Terminator]

Lane Thomas.

 

Yep good call. He traded Thomas to the Cards when he was league average in A+ as a 21 year old for international pool money. Thomas kicked around the Cardinals org for a while before being traded at the deadline for 37 year old Jon Lester.

[Terminator]

He's traded for Chapman, Teo, Espinal, Merrifield, Richards/Francis, Matz, Ray, Berrios, etc. while hardly giving up anyone of relevance in return. But he should hang for giving up Frasso. Oddly enough, we should probably be more pissed that he gave up Noda in the Stripling deal.

 

Yeah Noda ranks up there among the best he's traded as well. But like Thomas, he milled around the org he was traded to for a while before being picked up for free from a 3rd org.

[metafour]

It happens every season and gets adjusted by there results, this isn't new?

 

I never said it was new, but the whole point is that you would think they would catch on at some point. The fact that they need to "adjust based off their results" would seemingly indicate to you that maybe they should be more cautious about ranking prospects who don't even have a professional appearance yet? If you rank someone as the 50th best prospect in all of baseball without them even having played in a Pro game, and then 12 months later you need to drop them off your ranking entirely because they stunk up the joint in freaking A-ball, then that indicates that you should have never ranked them that high to begin with.

 

It's one thing to tell me that yes Paul Skenes and Dylan Crews are already two of the best prospects in the minor leagues. It's something else entirely to suggest that Chase Davis, who had one good NCAA season and then went 21st overall, is all of a sudden a Top 50 prospect. The MLB scouting industry itself doesn't even believe that he is a Top 50 prospect, otherwise he would have been drafted much higher than 21st overall lol. The draft class isn't that strong to suggest that somehow half the players selected in the 1st round are already in the 99th percentile of all prospects (literally hundreds of them) already in the minors. That is an idiotic suggestion.

[Jonn]

He's traded for Chapman, Teo, Espinal, Merrifield, Richards/Francis, Matz, Ray, Berrios, etc. while hardly giving up anyone of relevance in return. But he should hang for giving up Frasso. Oddly enough, we should probably be more pissed that he gave up Noda in the Stripling deal.

 

This is honestly true but should we not be concerned by all these drafted Blue Jays not amounting to anything anywhere lol. Its not like the Jays are streamling prospects into the majors. So it’s not just about keeping the real good ones and shedding the waste kind of situation.

 

Jays have to buy all these players because they can’t make their own most of the time.

[Spanky__99]

I never said it was new, but the whole point is that you would think they would catch on at some point. The fact that they need to "adjust based off their results" would seemingly indicate to you that maybe they should be more cautious about ranking prospects who don't even have a professional appearance yet? If you rank someone as the 50th best prospect in all of baseball without them even having played in a Pro game, and then 12 months later you need to drop them off your ranking entirely because they stunk up the joint in freaking A-ball, then that indicates that you should have never ranked them that high to begin with.

 

It's one thing to tell me that yes Paul Skenes and Dylan Crews are already two of the best prospects in the minor leagues. It's something else entirely to suggest that Chase Davis, who had one good NCAA season and then went 21st overall, is all of a sudden a Top 50 prospect. The MLB scouting industry itself doesn't even believe that he is a Top 50 prospect, otherwise he would have been drafted much higher than 21st overall lol. The draft class isn't that strong to suggest that somehow half the players selected in the 1st round are already in the 99th percentile of all prospects (literally hundreds of them) already in the minors. That is an idiotic suggestion.

 

Personally I think along the same lines in that regard, was just saying it happens every year.

[Brownie19]

This is honestly true but should we not be concerned by all these drafted Blue Jays not amounting to anything anywhere lol. Its not like the Jays are streamling prospects into the majors. So it’s not just about keeping the real good ones and shedding the waste kind of situation.

 

Jays have to buy all these players because they can’t make their own most of the time.

 

For sure - Atkins' drafting hasn't been very good. It's a concern. Luckily - he seems to be good at identifying and trading prospects before their values collapse.

[John_Havok]

Davidi's writeup on Orelvis and a snippet on Tiedemann

 

Lefty Ricky Tiedemann has been up to 96-97 m.p.h. during live batting practices in his build up after a biceps injury and he’s trending toward a return to New Hampshire in about three weeks.

 

https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article/blue-jays-farm-report-better-pitch-selection-helps-martinez-hit-for-more-than-just-power?fbclid=IwAR0wDIbP--s_E6QuVMtPGqKqT5Q0L8G9O5L0UXVjwWK_cXpW7zAK2SO9qpU

 

At the end of last season, after Orelvis Martinez hit 30 home runs as a 20-year-old in double-A, the hard-hitting infielder had reason to feel good about his progress. After all, he’d successfully made the jump to the Eastern League, where he was four years younger than average, and held his own with the New Hampshire Fisher Cats. If he chose to be set in his ways, well, you could understand that.

 

Martinez wasn’t, though, refusing to overlook all the empty at-bats within his .203 average and .286 on-base percentage and just harp on the damage. As he and the Toronto Blue Jays dug into next steps, they made pitch recognition and swing decisions a focal point and after a slow start, a .301/.425/.609 stretch over his last 47 games suggests his new approach at the plate is really starting to take, with a promotion to triple-A Buffalo expected in the coming days.

 

 

 

“Yeah, 30 homers is a good number but I think I can do better than that,” Martinez says during a recent interview in Manchester, N.H., interpreted by teammate Steward Berroa. “I can hit 30 homers with a decent average and be in more situations to hit the ball more, than just having 30 homers with a really low average. I'm always open to receiving feedback and getting better.”

 

Encouraging for the Blue Jays is that the now 21-year-old stuck with it even after an .089/.169/.266 start through his first 22 games, when he was making good contact but not getting results. His strikeout percentage of 28.5 per cent a year ago is down to 19.8 per cent while his walk rate went from 8.1 to 14.2 per cent.

 

If those lock in, especially up a level with Buffalo, the Blue Jays may really have something given Martinez’s prolific natural power.

 

“There were so many times last year that he just swung at the pitchers’ pitches,” says Cesar Martin, his manager with the Fisher Cats last year and this one. “He said, ‘That's on me, I was chasing, trying to hit everything out.’ Now he has a better idea what the pitcher is trying to do to him. And it’s not a secret. The guys have a lot of info on him and everybody knows what type of power he has, so they’re not going to give him a cookie. The patience that he’s showing right now, the discipline is (leading to) a lot of improvements.”

 

A continued emergence for Martinez would be timely for the Blue Jays, who are facing some significant roster decisions at the big-league level in the coming years.

 

Near-term is the imminent free agency of third baseman Matt Chapman and the lack of an obvious replacement, either already on the major-league roster or in free agency, creating a potential window for himself or Addison Barger, another hard-hitting shortstop/third baseman currently at Buffalo, should they make enough progress.

 

What gives Martinez’s emphasis on pitch recognition and selection a chance to really hold is that he doesn’t have to work for his power, a gift he’s come to understand.

 

“Basically the difference is last season, I was going up there to swing hard and sometimes I got out of control,” says Martinez. “So this year I have the same intent to swing hard, but I've been focused more on control, like swing hard, but more under control. That is getting better. …

 

“I'm not going to focus on hitting the ball really far because I know I have that already. I'm just trying to improve myself in a contact way. The swing decisions come with the approach that I have right now.”

 

Martin likes that the gains in his discipline haven’t come at the expense of “his aggressiveness at the plate.”

 

“He's just like, ‘I cannot cover everything,’ you know what I mean?” Martin continues. “It’s ‘I'm going to look for my pitch, if it's in this location, I'm going to swing.’”

[Jimcanuck]

Lane Thomas.

 

If you look under the hood, you can expect significant regression here.

[metafour]

For sure - Atkins' drafting hasn't been very good. It's a concern. Luckily - he seems to be good at identifying and trading prospects before their values collapse.

 

I don't think this is empirically true at all. It is very easy to see failure within your own team, but I think you would be shocked if you looked at the draft history of some of the teams around the league who are presented as "good" in the draft. The Jays by and large have been drafting at the back end of the order year over year, and they also generally don't receive extra picks; despite that they have found elite prospects (you need to appreciate how unlikely it is to find a Tiedemann level talent in the 3rd round) and have generally found guys that are still performing with later picks (eg: Connor Cooke was a 10th round selection and he has an absurd 55 K's in 29.1 IP this season). It's really easy to wash away Nick Frasso as a 4th round pick, but that is a major hit by actual empirical odds.

 

Most picks by and large are going to fail, and this isn't something only reflective of the Jays. It's just easier to see when it's your own team. The Rays for example receive a million extra picks every year, and their flop rate is disgusting. And this is a "model team" that you would assume is just nailing it every year. For example, from 2018 to 2020 their top picks were Brendan McKay, Matthew Liberatore, Greg Jones, and Nick Bitsko. That is 3 complete busts (McKay, Jones, Bitsko were/are horrible) and Liberatore has made the MLB, but he's been utterly horrible. So that's 4 straight years of absolutely nothing, with McKay being a Top 5 pick. Nate Pearson is a success in comparison to those names. It's easy to see Austin Martin and say WTF were they thinking, but look around at the other top picks from 2020: Torkelson has been bad, Kjerstad looks good, Max Meyer bad, Asa Lacy atrocious, Emerson Hancock bad this season while repeating AA, Nick Gonzalez might be something, Robert Hassell is flopping, Zac Veen is horrible, and Detmers has been a success.

 

The Jays record of top prospects flaming out at the MLB level is also not in any way unique to them. The final jump to the MLB is a massive one and this chews up elite prospects every year. I don't think it's indicative of anything to point out that that the prospects they've traded have largely failed for the teams that acquired them. Has CJ Abrams been a big success for the Nationals?

[Brownie19]

That's all fair Metafour. But oddly enough, I think drafting is the primary "knock" on Atkins so far and as you say - it may not actually be that bad - we may just have the blinders on.

[max silver]

That's all fair Metafour. But oddly enough, I think drafting is the primary "knock" on Atkins so far and as you say - it may not actually be that bad - we may just have the blinders on.

 

A huge portion of the fanbase simply isn't aware there are good things happening in the minor leagues this season. I really think that the injuries to key guys has overshadowed the success stories, particularly on the pitching side. When everyone is back healthy the AA staff is stacked with interesting rotation prospects. The highest ceiling guy is obviously Tiedemann who flashes the makings of a front of the rotation stud, but there are other interesting names like Chad Dallas and Trenton Wallace up from High A Vancouver after very successful first halves. Kloffenstein has been a very nice bounceback story as he's found new levels of success early on, and Robberse is said to be the smartest pitcher in the organization.

[Sorrow]

I’m trying to find the article but it was from 2015-2022 for teams that have produced the most MLB talent in the draft and I think the Jays were around 7th with 13% of their drafted players making the big leagues. Top team was around 16% and bottom 7% which I think was the Braves.

[Spanky__99]

Hang onto your hat Metafour...

 

There's 12 players from the FYPD in BA's latest in season top 100 update...

 

Tiedemann has fallen a bit more to 50 as expected, but Orelvis has jumped up big to 67 from 99.

 

67. Orelvis Martinez

Toronto Blue Jays

3B

 

Ht: 5'11" | Wt: 200 | B-T: R-R

 

Age: 22

 

Tools: Hit: 40 | Power: 60 | Run: 45 | Field: 45 | Arm: 60 Skinny: An extremely unlucky 15-game stretch to begin the season has downplayed Martinez’s overall line but since May 1, he has been one of the best hitters in the Eastern League. He’s hit .274/.397/.570 with 14 home runs, an 18.8% strikeout rate and a 16.1% walk rate. The improvements to Martinez’s swing decisions year over year have been significant, and he looks to have tackled Double-A.

 

50. Ricky Tiedemann

Toronto Blue Jays

LHP

 

Ht: 6'4" | Wt: 220 | B-T: L-L

 

Age: 21

 

Tools: Fastball: 65 | Slider: 60 | Changeup: 70 | Control: 55 Skinny: Health has been an issue for Tiedemann dating back to the all-star break last season. He went down in early May with biceps inflammation and is yet to return. When healthy, Tiedemann mixes a mid-90s fastball, a sweepy slider and a devastating changeup that generates swings and misses at a high rate. He has front-of-the-rotation upside if it all clicks.

 

Alex De Jesus is having a very nice bounce back season this year, same double digit BB%, K rate's down nearly 9%, his ISO has sky rocketed over 100 points to .238, has a normal/comfortable BABIP of 317 and a .wOBA of .371 this is great news, he came out ice cold IIRC like Orelvis. Nice.

Edited July 14, 2023 by Spanky99

[metafour]

Brandon Barriera made an appearance in the FCL this morning:

 

2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 2 K