Home › The Cardinal Nation Forums › Open Forum › Vote here for 2020 top-50 Cardinal prospects
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September 16, 2019 at 6:06 am #106340LeeParticipant
7 – Woodford
8 – Williams
9 – Nunez
10 – JuniorSeptember 16, 2019 at 6:29 am #10634114NyquisTParticipantCalling it here:
#7 Thompson
#8 Woodford#9 Rondon
#10 Nunez
Voting now open for #11 – #12 – #13 – #14.
September 16, 2019 at 6:33 am #10634214NyquisTParticipantUpdated:
#1 Carlson
#2 Gorman
#3 Knizner
#4 Arozarena
#5 Montero
#6 IHerrera
#7 Thompson
#8 Woodford
#9 Rondon
#10 NunezSeptember 16, 2019 at 6:34 am #10634311. Williams
12. Cabrera
13. Torres
14. Fernandez
September 16, 2019 at 7:32 am #10634611- Cabrera
12- Garcia
13- Torres
14- FernandezSeptember 16, 2019 at 7:41 am #106348#11 – Junior Fernandez
#12 – Jhon Torres
#13 – Justin Williams
#14 – Genesis CabreraSeptember 16, 2019 at 7:43 am #10635114NyquisTParticipant11. Oviedo
12. Torrez
13. Cabrera
14. JuRodriguezSeptember 16, 2019 at 8:45 am #10635311. Torres
12. Sosa
13. Williams
14. FernandezSeptember 16, 2019 at 8:54 am #10635511. Torres
12. Fernandez
13. Cabrera
14. Justin WilliamsSeptember 16, 2019 at 9:13 am #10635611. Jhon Torres: This guy has sky high potential. I think the organization expects him to be a contributor in the big leagues within a few years. Scuffled in Peoria, found his footing in JC, and should get another shot at Peoria in 2020.
12. Junior Fernandez: Once his minor league career took off it really took off. After seemingly hitting a plateu the first couple of years in pro ball he hit the fast track in 2019 making it all the way to St. Louis and seeing high leverage situations. He could be a potential closer in the future.
13. Johan Oviedo: He had an excellent half season at Palm Beach this year although he scuffled a little bit at Springfield. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him have a strong 2020 in Springfield and Memphis and be on the verge of St. Louis by the end of 2020 or early 2021. With a sturdy 6’6″ frame he could be a solid number 3 or 4 starter in the big leagues.
14. Adolis Garcia: He has the most raw power in the entire Cardinal minor league system and has the strongest OF arm in the system. He just oozes talent. He would already be in the big leagues if he could control the strikeouts. At his age he needs to figure that out soon. Some have compared him to Jorge Soler. I think that is accurate as is the comp to Yasiel Puig. If he can get the K rate down to 30% or under he will be in the big leagues. If not, he will continue to be a AAAA player.
September 16, 2019 at 9:16 am #10635811. Justin Williams
12. Junior Fernandez
13. Genesis Cabrera – He was the fourth youngest pitcher in AAA with 99 IP. Has great stuff as seen in his 24.4% K%, but still walks too many as seen in his poor (but improved) 9% BB%. Combining these, his 15.4% K-BB% was the seventh best in AAA of pitchers with 99 IP. Only one of those with a better K-BB% was younger.
14. Justin Toerner – An unexpected fast-riser from the 2018 draft as a 28th round pick. He’s been almost exactly the average age for his level until AA this year, where he was a little younger. His performance prior to AA across two seasons was outstanding (509 PA: 140 wRC+, 151 DRC+). Then in AA, his performance was about average (199 PA: 103 wRC+, 109 DRC+).
I like that his walk rate remained consistently excellent at 14% across both levels this year, but don’t like that his strikeout rate increased from 21% to 27%. Though it could largely be attributed to the hitting environment in Palm Beach vs. Springfield, it was nice to see his ISO improve from .098 to .157 with the move to AA. I would be remiss not to mention that he was one of the hottest hitters in the minors through the first month of the season (96 PA: 1.081 OPS).
+++
I suspect that from Toerner on, some of my rankings might diverge a bit from the masses, so I want to provide an explanation. For my rankings, I created a spreadsheet to consider four categories in evaluating prospects (1. proximity to majors, 2. age compared to level, 3. current year performance, and 4. previous year(s) performance). All are weighted equally. Batting performance is an average of wRC+ and DRC+; pitching performance is an average of cFIP and DRA-. It’s not infallible and I’ve largely refrained from manually adjusting the resulting ranks. What has resulted is a unique list, surely. It has also been fun to write up so far as it’s forced me to take a closer look at some players I wouldn’t have otherwise given much attention.
September 16, 2019 at 10:36 am #106364Cabrera
Torres
Williams
GarciaSeptember 16, 2019 at 11:51 am #10636911 Fernandez
12 Cabrera
13 Torres
14 GarciaSeptember 16, 2019 at 12:50 pm #106370LeeParticipant11-Williams
12-Torres
13-Fernandez
14-CabreraSeptember 16, 2019 at 1:20 pm #106372Jeske, so how do you normalize age and proximity to the majors with performance? Does it make sense to give last years performance equal weight to current year performance?
September 16, 2019 at 1:48 pm #10637711-Junior Fernandez. Power fastball-change guy with a developing breaker. He’s probably a long term big league arm in any role.
12-Jhon Torres. Admittedly this is based on potential, but he’s been very good since coming over to St Louis. He should fare a bit better in Peoria than he did this season.
13-Genesis Cabrera. There’s still a chance he works as a starter, but if not he has the stuff to be a good bullpen guy. The obvious comp is Felipe Vasquez, but that’s the absolute best case scenario for the bullpen.
14-Justin Williams. He was excellent at the end of the season, but the injury that caused him to miss the start of the year is a bit concerning. All AAA stats come with a grain of salt this year so it’s possible he’s more the guy we saw in 2018 than this year. If that’s the case he may have a niche as a lefty 4th OF type.
September 16, 2019 at 4:15 pm #10638111. Justin Williams
12. Edmundo Sosa – This was the best season of his minor league career. He’s ready for the majors. He’s as consistent as they come. He either gets traded or pushes Paul DeJong over to 3b.
13. Junior Fernandez – He’s now in the show and will stay there. Reliever or not, he’ll have a long career and that counts for something.
14. Jhon Torres – I’m not completely sold on him yet, so next season will be a ‘yes I am’ or ‘no I’m not’ a prospect statement for me.September 16, 2019 at 6:28 pm #106388A lot of rinse and repeat here:
11. Genesis Cabrera – Given the refinement that he needs on his command and control 10-15 is about right. It’s just really hard to not be excited about a left hander with a power fastball/slider combo. If the change up comes along sooner than later he’s a legit #3 starter as early as next year.
12. Junior Fernandez – Power FB with a C/U that I think is underrated. It’s a potential wipeout pitch.
13. Jhon Torres – Big power potential with currently above average ability in a corner OF spot. If he is able to continue his growth and maintain his athleticism, he has All-Star upside. Out performed Nunez in JC this year though 1 year older. Frankly Nunez and Torres are pretty much linked together in my mind.
14. Justin Williams – Has been well above average at every level with the exception of 2018. Showed glimpses at the end of the year of returning to that form by punishing AAA pitching. It would be handy to have another capable left handed option in the line up or even on the bench. Still a lot of upside as he was 3 years younger than the league average for AAA.Pretty Interesting Top 10. Honestly there are a number of really exciting prospects after this year’s draft.
September 16, 2019 at 7:45 pm #10639311. Justin Williams
12. Garcia – I think he’ll be traded this offseason. There isn’t room for him to in the Cardinals’ crowded outfield, and there are teams that will really want him because of his unusual power and his overall athleticism. But the FO will not let him go for cheap.
13. Junior Fernandez – He has the look, the mound presence of a closer. I don’t see another pitcher in the bullpen that has that going for him right now, except possibly Cabrera, and he might stay as a starter.
14. Genesis Cabrera – He’s much improved this year, and he’s a power lefty. Have there been any other major league players with the first name, ‘Genesis’?September 16, 2019 at 8:30 pm #106411Mudville, I’m with you on Garcia. He seems tailor made for the A’s or Blue Jays, which are both teams that seem to work well with the Cards FO. I could see him fetching a young pitching prospect, lottery ticket type in the Oscar Mercado trade vein (whom I love seeing succeed in CLE by the way.)
September 16, 2019 at 8:41 pm #106414Jeske, so how do you normalize age and proximity to the majors with performance? Does it make sense to give last years performance equal weight to current year performance?
It’s not a perfect system by any means. I’ll try my best to explain. It considers each of the 4 components independently (proximity, age/level, current year, and past year(s)).
Proximity is simple: AAA = 5 points DSL/GCL = 0 points
For age/level, I used this chart as a baseline: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/minor-league-leaderboard-context/.
For performance, I use stats that are scaled to league average, so the performance score is simply their performance compared to league average across all levels. For batters, 150 RC+ or higher = 5 points; 88 RC+ or lower = 0 points. (No “extra” or negative values). Pitchers are the opposite. Lastly, the maximum performance score for a complex league is 4 instead of 5.
As for equally weighting the current year with past year(s), I think this works out okay in the end. There are many examples of a player bouncing back from a poor year due to injury or just taking some time to adjust to a higher level of play (where a good past performance value will help hold up a players’ value). Likewise, there are many examples of a player having a breakout after previous years of average or below production (where a poor past performance value will help temper expectations some going forward).
For example, here’s a some approximate scores for a few (very different types of) players using this method: (Prox, Age/Lvl, Current, Past)
Carlson: (4.25, 5, 4.75, 1.75) 15.75
Arozarena: (4.75, .5, 5, 3) 13.25
Montero: (4, 4.5, 0, 4) 12.5
Toerner: (3.5, .25, 3.5, 4.25) 11.5
Nunez: (1.25, 5, 0, 4) 10.25
Sosa: (5, 2, .5, 1.5) 9
Mendoza: (0, 1, 4, 4) 9
Garcia: (5, 0, 0, 1.75) 6.75This makes it look a little clearer than it actually is as it gets really crowded in the middle. I hope this helps to understand, even if some of my rankings seem a little wonky.
September 16, 2019 at 10:17 pm #106446That’s a good system. I’m curious how many people on here have developed an analytical system for rankings. I came up with a spread sheet that subjectively ranks prospects as well. I then averaged my rankings with “Expert Rankings” from MLB.com, The Cardinal Nation, Fangraphs, Baseball America, Birds on the Bat, and Prospect 1500 (I thought it would be interesting to have a fantasy spin). I actually have an average of every Cardinals Top Prospects list I could find but only used those 6, mainly because they had post draft lists. My subjective categories are Ceiling, Probability, Current Performance, Age/League, Organization (promotion), Level, Injury, and 40 man roster bonus. I weighted all of these by how I viewed their importance and came out with a subjective top 100 or so. I think it does a good job of breaking prospects into tiers. So mine clearly breaks out Carlson, Gorman, and Knizner as Tier 1, with Montero, Arozarena, Cabrera, and Fernandez as Tier 2, and Herrera, Torres, Thompson, Nunez and Williams behind them. I made a few changes based on my personal preferences for my vote on here, but it was a good place to start.
September 17, 2019 at 5:18 am #10646011. Cabrera
12. Oviedo
13. Junior F
14. TorresSeptember 17, 2019 at 6:09 am #10646314NyquisTParticipantIf you are following the other participants this round, you’d know that the race is tight. I don’t remember four players dominating the tally in one round as this one.
We’ll keep this open to get the last few voters.
Thanks to all for your continued participation. It makes for a more accurate poll, IMO.
September 17, 2019 at 6:17 am #106465No analytical system here and I am an analytical person. But I see prospect rankings as more art than science. My rankings can change daily (though not much).
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