I've now presented Z-score spreadsheets for hitting prospects in Low-A, full season A ball, and High-A. 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).
AAA isn't quite as fun to look at so I doubled up this week and we'll be lumping the Eastern, Texas, Southern, Pacific Coast, and International leagues into one article. Here is the LINK for the complete spreadsheets. I used a 150 PA inclusion cutoff again.
The method is changing a bit here - for the first time I'm going to use BB% in the score. Chris Mitchell in his KATOH articles did find that once we get to AA and AAA walk rate does start to become a significant statistic for predicting MLB success. He stated that it is less relevant than the other statistics though, so I am applying a 0.5 multiplier to the z-score for walk rate.
Eastern League
Vladdy's z-score sum from his Eastern League sample is the best score from 2018 from any prospect, in any league, and it's not particularly close. And this is with a BB% that actually hurts him a little bit! It's a consensus (or at least it should be) that Vlad is the best prospect in baseball, but he really is special even as far as #1 overall prospects are concerned.
Bo's wRC+ in the EL ranked 45th among all hitters with 150+ PA, but this system boosts him all the way to 11th. Despite not dominating offensively in 2018 like he did the year before, he's a fantastic looking SS prospect.
Biggio rides his elite ISO and BB% to a 14th place ranking. His scores are somewhat volatile - the K% hurts him quite a bit and the BABIP is basically neutral, which maybe hints at his power being approach driven and not so much based on stinging the baseball.
Santiago Espinal had a leaderboard appearance for the Carolina League and his AA sample also rates well - 32nd out of the 162 sampled players. The other 2018 trade acquisition who played in New Hampshire really hit a (Forrest) Wall in AA after being a leaderboard hitter in the California League, and was a slightly below average player according to this thing I am doing.
KATOH's namesake, Gosuke Katoh, also makes an appearance and underwhelms, ranking behind Wall.
Max Pentecost is in the gutter here and that makes me sad.
Texas League
I said in the A+ article the Ryan McKenna might be the Orioles best OF prospect, but maybe I should take it back.
Some Canadian Content with Thicc Boi Josh Naylor doing his country proud.
I'll also take interest in the two Cardinals at the bottom of the top 20. Andy Young was in the Goldschmidt trade earlier this offseason and Lane Thomas as that ex-Blue Jay prospect who was dealt for international slot money in 2017, the year they signed Pardinho, Miguel Hiraldo, and Leonardo Jimenez, among others.
Southern League
Extended leaderboard for the Southern League because I wanted to get Fringe Five favourite Shed Long's name in there.
Check out the Lowe brothers at #1 and #6! Interesting fact about them: they aren't actually brothers. Nathaniel Lowe's real brother, Josh, was Tampa Bay's first rounder in 2016 though.
It's possible that infielder Luis Rengifo is very underrated on the prospect scene. We'll see another Angels prospect rank well in the PCL list below. Is their farm unfairly criticized?
Has anyone ever heard of this Eloy Jimenez guy?
International League
Danny Jansen is definitely for real. If you haven't noticed the Steamer projections for 2019 yet, he is expected to be a top 10, maybe a top 5, catcher in all of baseball.
Brandon Drury making an appearance means that four Blue Jays 2018 trade acquisitions appear on league top 20s (Espinal, Wall, Spanberger, and Drury). Clearly the Blue Jays have a type. That type being prospects with good projectable statistics.
Dwight Smith Jr., Rowdy Tellez, and Billy McKinney all rank in the top 43 with good but not great scores. Despite the strong 2018 MLB impression and the contact skills I really doubt Rowdy has enough power to be a starting 1B, but I suppose he has Yonder Alonso upside with a similar set of tools.
If you're looking for good news on any other Blue Jays properties in Buffalo, you won't really find it here. Gurriel's score is 61st out of 198 players in the league, so it's at least in the upper third. Steamer likes Gurriel for 2019, for what it's worth, tabbing him as a nearly league average MLB infield talent.
Also, there's that Eloy Jimenez guy again.
You don't see him on the leaderboard because he didn't get enough PAs, but I ran Vladdy's numbers just for fun and his score came out as +7.095 (you can see him at the very bottom of the full spreadsheet). Yes, that means that if he qualified for this list the two best total prospect scores from this entire exercise would have been AA Vladdy and AAA Vladdy.
Pacific Coast League
JD Davis was just traded - maybe he will turn out like that other JD who Houston decided to cut ties with years ago.
Jabari Blash obliterated everyone else in PCL wRC+ this past year but I kind of like how this z-score sum system knocks him down the list at least a little bit based on K% and age.
Franmil Reyes and Kyle Tucker are two of the most fun young players in baseball and they both have extremely strong chances of sticking around. I've loved Tucker since the first time I watched video of him swinging a bat on the Youtube.
More Canadian Content with Tyler O'Neill, who has a similarly volatile profile to Cavan Biggio, with a negative score for his K rate and a slightly below average BABIP, but so much damn ISO that it doesn't matter.
It's nice to see Taylor Ward develop. I like the story there because, if I recall correctly, as soon as his draft happened, a lot of pundits were really slamming the Angels' pick.
Ramon Laureano kind of seemed to come out of nowhere this year to become a fantastic two-way MLB player, but when we look at this information he really should not have surprised anybody and he almost certainly didn't surprise his own team and the Beane counter running it.
Okay, that might be a wrap for these hitting prospect lists. There is a chance that I will do a table for the advanced rookie-ball leagues, but I don't think there is a lot of information in doing it so I am undecided. I'll also attempt to wrap my head around a simple method for the pitchers list, which will involve less statistics (just K% and GS% I believe) but might not as straight-forward because of the GS% aspect of things.
As usual, please toss a comment down below if you have info on any of the names I did not touch on.
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