Been hearing mostly conservative takes about Wander Franco the past couple days, but can we just set the hedging aside for a moment and ponder Wander’s potential?
When an incomparable player comes along, like Shohei Ohtani for instance, the tried and true path of downplaying possibilities and leaning into what’s come before just falls short.
Wander Franco can exceed our imaginations, especially those of the people predicting the worst because it’s typically the right way to play it when a prospect comes up. We might forget that Mike Trout slashed .326/.399/.564 with 30 HR and 49 SB as a rookie. People often site his previous season, where 135 plate appearances as a 19-year-old didn’t pan out great: .220/.281/.390. 19-year-old.
I’ve often mentioned Trout in discussing Wander because he’s a player with few physical comps, and Mike Trout left a powerful impression on me the first time I saw him in Cedar Rapids. I saw him play a lot there that year, making my escape for 380 South every chance I got. Even badgered my wife to join me for one, as I would later do again when Byron Buxton suited up in CR.
I didn’t get down to see Wander the one time he came through my corner of the flyover. I’d helped organized a home league trip that fell apart last second, and I didn’t wind up going. Still, I’ve seen him play on MiLB.tv a lot more than I saw those guys in person, and I feel confident saying we haven’t really seen his type. He is unique among all the prospects I’ve watched.
I’ve heard .265 with 6 home runs and 4 stolen bases. That’s not happening.
We heard on the Razzball podcast, The Wander Years, that it could be about .305 with 13 homers and a handful of steals. That sounds plausible.
One factor that’s tough to build into the Wanderlust is he’s rarely (if ever) seriously studied his opponents. It’s just not feasible on the minor league schedule. The six-game series setups this year have created the first genuine chance for intraleague familiarity among competitors. In Tampa, Franco will have all the hitting resources he can imagine and several he hasn’t even considered. When a prospect plays better as a rookie than he ever had in the minors, this homework-based edge is one of the primary drivers of that leap. Wander is a worker.
The only outcome that would surprise me is failure because this guy has never failed. More likely he hits .350 with 20 homers than ends up back in Durham. I’d also be surprised if he ran a whole lot. That’s gonna take time. He’s gonna hit even without a lot of high-level reps, but base running against elite players is a different learning curve entirely, and his Olympus-level hand-eye coordination doesn’t help him there. I don’t care though. I don’t have Wander for the steals in 2021. Wish I had him in more leagues, but I do have him in that home league, which has ten hitting categories and rewards extreme plate skills. Michael Brantley is a mainstay in the top 20 overall finishers. Wander will soon join him. Which means he’ll soon be leaving Prospect World forever.
So who’s the number one prospect now, or next, we should say, after Wander’s truly gone from the prospect list collective? Who’s the king of the mountain on Day One A.W.?
Well there’s an elite group lining up to take that spot: Vidal Brujan, CJ Abrams, Julio Rodriguez, Bobby Witt the younger, Adley Rutschman, Spencer Torkelson and Marco Luciano, to name some leaders in the clubhouse.
On my latest Top 100 Prospects list, Brujan took the two spot, and I wouldn’t change that today. Tork and Witt would jump Corbin Carroll, who’s not disqualified per se but can’t exactly claim the throne from the trainer’s room. The Flying Rutschman will be the non-fantasy number one for the same reason he can’t be the fantasy number one: catchers matter more to real games than our games. Julio could charge through AA and take over the discussion, but he’d have to get there first, and Seattle has inexplicably left him in High A, where he ended 2019. So really it looks like Brujan, Abrams, Witt or Tork, the Four Non Wanders, on the day Franco passes 130 at bats. Brujan should be shortly behind him on the graduation stage. The other six guys in this conversation figure to be minor leaguers entering 2022, so one of them will likely inherit the Winter-continental belt in a consensus sense. I think it’s CJ Abrams. How about you?
Non segue to some non-Wander wonderings:
I watched Tampa Bay RHP Peyton Battenfield make his AA debut from June 16, and I don’t mean to shock you, but Tampa might have something here. They twirled Battenfield away from the Astros when Houston wanted Austin Pruitt, and man I’m not sure you can do better than getting an arm that the Astros drafted then Tampa wanted to get from them and worked with in their own Ray way.
This kid pitches with ace-level energy. He’s back on the mound and firing pretty quickly every time, building momentum with even his alpha walk around the mound following a strikeout. Pretty fun to watch. I’ll bet the confidence comes from the fastball, which stays up in the zone and has good horizontal movement. On rare occasions, a hitter seems to have a chance against the heater, at which point Battenfield breaks off a merciless curveball.
That’s all he needed, so that’s all we really got that night, when Battenfield pitched 5 innings, recording 8 strikeouts and allowing 2 hits. As per his usual in 2021, nobody walked. His season line across two levels: 36 innings, 20 hits, 5 walks, 57 strikeouts, good for a 0.69 WHIP and 1.25 ERA.
Pick him up where you can.
One tangential thought that spawned during the game: Ford Proctor can fuckin catch. He switched from middle infield in 2020 and played some games where he could find them, but he’s still listed at SS/2B most places you look. Whenever a Montgomery pitcher has a big night, I’ll be looking to see if Proctor was behind the plate. I can’t remember the last time I saw a guy stealing strikes so casually, leaving the majority of the mitt in the zone every time he receives a pitch in the shadow zone to either side of the plate. It’s no exaggeration to say I was mesmerized. He hasn’t hit this year, but that’s perfectly understandable given the level of difficulty in becoming a catcher at AA, and he’s hit well in the past. I’ll take the gamble on Proctor whenever he finds his groove in the batter’s box.
Sometimes you feel like a noot. Sometimes you don’t.
St. Louis OF Lars Nootbar’s got, well, at bats. Presumably. And if someone offers you a nootbar, you’re probably gonna say “sure” and discover what it is as you go along. And that’s where we’re at here. A lot of people like Lars, especially Steven Universe, and that counts for something in my book. Makes perfect sense that he came out of the pandemic stronger, and that the added man strength was just the edge he needed to let his plus plate skills loose in games. He might not be up for long, but he could be a big boost if he maintains some version of the success he was enjoying in AAA: .329/.430/.557 with five home runs in 22 games.
Los Angeles (NL) OF Zach Reks punched his ticket on the Dodger shuttle between AAA and MLB. Was back in the minors the day after he wasn’t. Way it goes in L.A. He’s struck out more frequently than Jo Adell this year, for what it’s Wuertz.
Minnesota SS Nick Gordon is a perfect five-for-five on stolen base attempts in just 16 games. He’s hitting .316 but hasn’t been walking enough (2.4 percent) to push any of the club’s regulars to the bench. Injuries and/or trades just might take care of that for him. Minnesota has 31 wins and 42 losses. They’ve yet to really take a breath in the playoffs during this otherwise fun few-season run for the team. 2021 presents them with an opportunity to shuffle and sell some pieces. If they take it, Gordon could find himself with an expanded role in a hurry.
Thanks for reading!
I’m @theprospectitch on Twitter.
