FG 2022 Top 114 Prospect List

E

Enscheff

Well-known member
FG releases a ranking of all 50+ prospects, and in 2022 they have decided there are 114 of them:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2022-top-100-prospects/

Only 2 Braves made the cut:

#70 Lango (50) - "he has plus raw power and the potential to whack 20-plus home runs annually. His combination of power and glove work could make him one of the more valuable catchers in baseball"

#72 Pache (50) - "he’ll be a Gold Glove contender. He has the raw power to pull out 20 annual homers...we anticipate he’ll be a glove-only, nine-hole hitter at the start"

So Lango is the low batting average "field general" catcher with some HR pop that sits in the 7th hole for 5+ years, and Pache is the slick fielding CF who hides at the bottom of the order. Pretty much what I see both of them being.

I'm a little surprised Harris didn't make the cut, which means he's still in that 45+ tier immediately below the 50s. The "LHH Acuna" hype was obviously ludicrous, and a .798 OPS with 7 HRs in A+ from a guy who probably moves to a corner probably didn't warrant a bump in prospect status. However, reports on his hard hit rate plus his 18% K rate and ~50% grounder rate suggest to me he is a swing change away from hitting a lot more HRs...and the ISO creeps up towards .200.

To me, he is the exact opposite situation as Waters. Harris can actually hit, and needs to tweak some things to get to his power more. Waters simply can't hit, and no amount of tools will cover that up.

Don't send Harris to a team like the Dodgers or As and let him become a 3+ win player for them after they fix his approach. Get some dev guys who can do that fixing.
 
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When you say Lango is the 'low batting average field general with some pop' are you envisioning something like Mike Zunino?

Agree on Harris, although I definitely think he could stick in CF. Perhaps the one Acuna comp that actually makes sense for Harris- good enough athlete to play a serviceable (probably slightly above average) CF if you needed him to or could be used as a real weapon in RF.
 
I could see Zunino as a reasonable comp, though I hope the hit tool is a bit better than that (35% K rate is pretty rough).

Zunino is an odd player I've never really looked at before. He has 3 amazing seasons (when he gets good HR/FB luck) sprinkled in amongst mostly mediocre seasons (when he doesn't have good HR/FB luck). I hope Lango isn't quite that volatile.
 
CJ9 said:
ZIPS top 100 prospects has four Braves prospect in it that weren't in the top 114 - Elder, Muller, Strider, Harris. Plus Langeliers in there as well. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/zips-2022-top-100-prospects/
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This seems much more in line with what I would expect.

Muller is not ever going to be anything more than a back end rotation pitcher but I feel good about him being able to get to that level.

I still don't get why Grissom is being excluded from these rankings. Something must be way off because guys with a contact/power with high walk rates are super rare.
 
CJ9 said:
ZIPS top 100 prospects has four Braves prospect in it that weren't in the top 114 - Elder, Muller, Strider, Harris. Plus Langeliers in there as well. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/zips-2022-top-100-prospects/
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This makes sense considering ZiPs doesn't even consider the youngest prospects in the sport since there is no data to use for projecting them. For example, Jack Leiter, currently the 24th ranked prospect in the game, isn't even considered for this list. So yeah, take out a bunch of the best young prospects, and of course the remaining older guys will move up. Harris making it into the bottom part of such a list is completely expected.

The interesting thing to me is the arms that ZiPs sprinkled in (Elder, Muller, Strider). Considering all the hits the author brags about are hitters: "Among the players ZiPS liked considerably better than everyone else were Joc Pederson (No. 2), Ozzie Albies (No. 49), Trea Turner (No. 43), J.T. Realmuto (No. 41), Brandon Nimmo (No. 40), Jorge Polanco (No. 63), and Trevor Story (No. 89)", I am going to post a hot take...

ZiPs does a poor job projecting pitching prospects because it doesn't properly weigh in their injury risk.
 
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Enscheff said:
This makes sense considering ZiPs doesn't even consider the youngest prospects in the sport since there is no data to use for projecting them. For example, Jack Leiter, currently the 24th ranked prospect in the game, isn't even considered for this list. So yeah, take out a bunch of the best young prospects, and of course the remaining older guys will move up. Harris making it into the bottom part of such a list is completely expected.

The interesting thing to me is the arms that ZiPs sprinkled in (Elder, Muller, Strider). Considering all the hits the author brags about are hitters: "Among the players ZiPS liked considerably better than everyone else were Joc Pederson (No. 2), Ozzie Albies (No. 49), Trea Turner (No. 43), J.T. Realmuto (No. 41), Brandon Nimmo (No. 40), Jorge Polanco (No. 63), and Trevor Story (No. 89)", I am going to post a hot take...

ZiPs does a poor job projecting pitching prospects because it doesn't properly weigh in their injury risk.
Click to expand...

If that is indeed true, I guess it's at least reassuring that all of the Cobb County players Zips likes (Elder, Muller, Strider) are knocking on the big league door. Doesn't mean they won't see injury subsequently impact their careers, but they've at least made it far enough to be considered legitimate, if back-end, big-leaguers.
 
jpx7 said:
If that is indeed true, I guess it's at least reassuring that all of the Cobb County players Zips likes (Elder, Muller, Strider) are knocking on the big league door. Doesn't mean they won't see injury subsequently impact their careers, but they've at least made it far enough to be considered legitimate, if back-end, big-leaguers.
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Maybe, but the implied usefulness of such a list is to determine how the value of these guys compares to the value of established MLB players, and to each other. I would be willing to bet anyone any amount of money that no MLB front office thinks Elder is more valuable than Lango.
 
Enscheff said:
Maybe, but the implied usefulness of such a list is to determine how the value of these guys compares to the value of established MLB players, and to each other. I would be willing to bet anyone any amount of money that no MLB front office thinks Elder is more valuable than Lango.
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I totally agree re Elder versus Langeliers. However, while most prospect lists imply a utility of "determin[ing] how the value of these guys compares to the value of established MLB players", I think Zips' list is a little different, just by nature. Besides your theory about pricing in injury risks, it also seems to have a bias towards reasonable-floor production at MLB. So a guy like Bryce Elder probably has a narrower band of expected future performance, while Langeliers—with some offensive question-marks and so much of his value tied into defense—probably has a much wider range and thus more risk in either direction.

But Szymborski has always seemed pretty realistic about what Zips can and can't do; and he even says in his preamble that "it does a decent job of identifying future major leaguers", which to me is a qualifiably different task than "determin[ing] how the value of these guys compares to the value of established MLB players," since the latter means making different kinds of bets regarding ceiling and floor.
 
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And guys like Elder/Muller who are probably surefire 1-2 win SPs tend to have a larger value to teams like the As who can't afford to drop $10M on 1-2 win FAs. The Braves can afford those guys (we will likely see them grab a #4 SP and an average LF via FA within a week of the lockout ending), so 1-2 win guys like that have much less value to the Braves than to the As.

This is why I'd love to see AA package a collection of those 1-2 win guys to get an impact talent like Olson. The As typically convert an impact MLB player into several low end MLB contributors, and then hope one of those guys develops into a 3+ win guy...it's literally the model they've used for decades.
 
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