Two days ago I presented some Z-score spreadsheets for Low-A hitters. You can think of the scores as a very crude measure of what the players' age and 2018 statistics indicate about their measurable prospect value.
As a brief summary, I am using a group of statistics that formed the basis of Chris Mitchell's KATOH projection system - statistics that correlate with projectable MLB WAR, namely: age, K%, ISO, BABIP. That might seem like a weird set of stats so I would encourage you to read the discussion in the previous post for the method, rationale, and the admitted shortcomings (LINK). I am displaying BB% for now because I will use it when we get closer to the majors.
I'll continue to climb the minor league ladder today and reveal the lists for the Midwest League and the South Atlantic League. These are baseball's two A-Ball leagues. I used a 150 PA threshold this time, up slightly from 100 PA used in the short season leagues. I'll also discuss the Blue Jays relevance, and I think there are some Toronto prospects worth discussing on these lists.
Here are the spreadsheets for these lists, with 219 and 177 players ranked (LINK).
Midwest League
Here is the top 20 from the Midwest League in 2018:
This top 20 passes the sniff test for me. There are lots of legitimate dudes here and names that you probably already know, like Kiriloff, Lewis, Arauz, Marsh, Ornelas, Jones, Lazarito, and others.
Kevin Smith was a statistical GOD last year. You already know that he caught a lot of helium, but this really puts it in perspective. This list even ignores position which would give Smith a good boost since he is apparently a viable shortstop. We're also neglecting to give proper credit to speed here, except as it may be reflected in BABIP - KATOH used a SB% formula but I have chosen not to for simplicity and other reasons, and Smith did run a fair amount in 2018. What a dude. It's not obvious to me that people are as excited as they should be about Kevin Smith, even if the numbers weren't as fantastic in Dunedin.
Chavez Young rides modestly positive input scores across the board to a sum that ranks very highly (there are 219 qualified players on my list, so he is in the 7th percentile). I'd like to see him elevate the ball more next year.
Samad Taylor slides in at a respectable 39th out of 219. His BABIP was interestingly low for a guy with plus speed and an above average ISO. Maybe he got unlucky in the batted ball last year and is flying under the radar right now, despite being a lot of pundits' pre-2018 breakout prediction in the system? Or maybe his flyball-heavy approach - he and Smith lead Lansing in FB% - is to blame and he'll need to either develop a bit more power or bring down his launch angle a few ticks (*gags) so he doesn't fall into that uncanny launch angle valley.
One player who really gets dunked in cold water by this method is Ryan Noda, who slides in at 52nd despite being the best officially qualified hitter in the league by wRC+. Noda gets dinged for being old and having a K rate worse than the average rate of my sample. He also gets no benefit from the elite BB rate, which I am ignoring in A ball because Chris Mitchell told me to. Are people irrationally excited about the Joey Votto of the MWL? Yes. Yes they are.
South Atlantic League
The top 20 from the SAL looks like this:
Chad Spanberger!!!
Chad's numbers before he left the SAL were absurd and he ranks in the upper tier of SAL statistical prospects based on this method. The scouting reports on Chad are basically, "70 power with strikeout issues and little defense or speed - a pure 1B profile ." The power was on full display in the ISO and probably in the .355 BABIP too. The strikeout "issues" appear wildly overblown, as Spanberger actually bested the sample mean here, which is quite a feat for someone with a .264 ISO; he didn't actually sacrifice much contact in order to hit 22 homers in 92 games. The Oh trade was very good for Toronto, and Spanberger might actually have been the key to it and can, perhaps reasonably, be considered a better prospect than Forrest Wall.
Like the MWL list, the above top 20 seems to pass the sniff test. I'm not familiar with all of these names but certainly some, and I know players like Garcia, Cruz, and Melendez have received a lot of love recently.
Please add a comment below if you have any information to share about any of the other hitters showing up on these leaderboards.
Cover Image: Marshall Dunlap on Flickr (Link)
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He's more of a Paul Goldschmidt