I was watching the moment Manny Margot stretched to beat out a ninth inning infield single and pulled his hamstring, and I have to confess: I had the thought. The dream, really. And yes I did feel bad about it: that little surge of excitement at seeing a human in pain. Wow that sounds gross. I mean I knew Margot would be okay. This wasn’t a beanball in the face or some nasty outfield collision. Just a typical non-contact injury born from hustle but also perhaps the start of something magical.
Either that or a horrific surprise only a hallucination-laced culture could manifest.
I’m talking of course about the big league debut of Vidal Bruján, which is still mostly hypothetical as I type.
Could be, in the end, he’s just sat in a tent somewhere waiting for today’s double header to end so he can trek back to Durham. Now that would be scary.
Bruján has been my favorite player in the minors for quite a while now. Who’ll take his place if he stays in Tampa to become the July King?
I get asked some questions on a pretty regular basis, and as often as not, the answer could be found in some previous article–sometimes in the body of that very comment section. Makes sense to me. We are a skimming people, on the whole, and while I feel like this space works best if treated as an ongoing conversation, humans can’t very well expect each other to keep track of every little piece of information that floats by on our various rivers of interconnectedness.
I’m starting to think this favorite-player question could be the foundation for a regular feature here. It’s not often asked that way, in fact. It’s more like “which of these lower ranked guys could make the biggest leap up the lists. I try to make clear who I really like via rankings and blurbs, but even so those thoughts are mixed in with other projects. I don’t set much space aside specifically to highlight the players most firmly on an escalator–a term I haven’t used in a minute here but a concept that’s pretty easy to grasp, especially in dynasty baseball.
The Futures Game provides one such example of a fantasy value escalator. As does the Arizona Fall League. As does Spring Training. These value escalators are on the calendar, same days for everyone. Their impact in the echo chamber can be immense, propping up medium-good prospects for years after the eyes of the baseball world glance their way for a day.
Mainstream rankings season is another escalator we can sort of set our watches by. Every year, someone like Michael Busch catches helium for a swath of popular prognosticators and sets off a chain of trade-reactions few would’ve predicted and many would’ve vetoed.
(PSA tangent—skip as needed—please don’t veto trades. Or even complain in your league chats. Just keep grinding like Rob Lowe in an underrated sitcom, and things will all work out in the end . . . easy for me to say, I suppose. I just complain here. But honestly that’s the right place for it. Have a chuckle with your friends. Dynasty leagues are fragile ecosystems and give back much more than they take, stress-wise, across time, if you’ll roll with the beats.)
To regular readers, this list might have a lot of familiar names. I wanted to start with the cream of the crop—the guys I’m rejecting aggressive trade offers to hold or making aggressive offers to obtain. (I’ll explore some deeper darker corners of the prospect ocean next time.)
For today’s purposes, I’m skipping right over my top 24 prospects from last month’s Top 100 Prospects for Fantasy Baseball, La Vida Vidal. Should be more useful that way. If someone’s in my top 25, you can guess I like them. Not much escalator runway left there anyway. In particular, I love CJ Abrams, Corbin Carroll, Jarren Duran, and this next guy from my current top 25.
Tampa Bay SS Greg Jones jumps off the page anytime I’m looking at prospect rankings. He’s typically way too low in my opinion, often outside the top 100 altogether. If anyone can climb from relative obscurity to the top of Prospect Mountain, it’s a guy with 80-grade speed and plus power in a great organization when it comes to developing elite talent. He’s 23-years-old and striking out 29.4 percent of the time in High A, so he brings plenty of risk, but even if the hit tool has its ups and downs, the plus patience (14% BB rate) should make him a prime OBP league piece.
I’ll be in Cedar Rapids to see St. Louis 3B Jordan Walker on Saturday night, and I am excited. It’s tough to fact check this stuff, but I might’ve been the high water mark for Walker for First-Year-Player Draft rankings this winter, but even in my most aggressive mind-murmurs, I wouldn’t have predicted he’d be anchoring a High A lineup just one year after a high school season that barely happened. Walker’s carrying tool is his top-of-the-scale power, but he also brings double-plus, basketball-wing-level athleticism in a 6’5” frame. Also he loves ping pong. That’s not a throwaway line. Table tennis requires elite hand-eye coordination. Should help keep him sharp, silly as that may sound. I ranked him 47th in May, and that looks low today.
Milwaukee OF Joe Gray Jr. was recently promoted to High A where we’ll get to see another few shades of his contact skills. He was by far the most impactful player in his Low A league, slashing .289/.407/.632 with 12 HR and 12 SB, and that line is a little dampened by a tough stretch that saw him hit .157 over his final 11 games at the level. Gray employs an uppercut that might struggle to stay on top of elite spin that commanded up in the zone, but the number of pitchers who can do that just dropped significantly.
I’m a simple man sometimes when it comes to fantasy baseball. If you can run like Hayes and hit like Mays, I’ll clock your pajama sprints anyday. Toronto 2B Samad Taylor has treated 2021 like Willie Mays Hayes treated Major League 2. He came to camp prepared to drop bombs on the league along with the swipes, and that’s exactly what’s gone down. Like Hayes in the sequel, it hasn’t come easily, and Taylor has struck out 64 times in 48 games. While that number is on the decline month over month, it’s still enough to suppress his prospect stock despite the absurd roto numbers: 12 HR, 17 SB, .303/.393/.567 as a 22-year-old in AA.
I’ve mentioned Los Angeles (NL) SS Leonel Valera more than once in these pages, but he certainly belongs on this list as a double-plus power, plus speed prospect who’s currently held back a bit by the kind of swing-and-miss the Dodgers don’t seem to mind. They want impact, and Valera brings that.
If you’re not going to run, you better hit like a billy club to make this list, and Minnesota 3B Jose Miranda does. He’s remade his body since Fall of 2019 and now looks like a bouncer standing outside your favorite night club. Or a boxer who just got into that nightclub by knocking out that bouncer. Had a huge AAA debut with 3 HR on a 5-for-6 night and has been playing well since then. The Buy window is slamming shut in a hurry here.
Tampa Bay 2B Jonathan Aranda: Maybe it’s just my browsers, but I gotta crack the Da Vinci code every time I want to check on Aranda’s game logs. Dude simply will not appear on milb.com search bars. Fangraphs got it figured out, but I couldn’t pull him up there for a spell either. It’s fitting for a guy who’s still available in my 30-team league and probably only owned in my 20 because the Mud Puppies made room for him. He’s not especially impressive outside the batter’s box, but he’s a magician with a wand in his hands, making the leap from High A to AA seamlessly enough this season that another jump to AAA could be right around the corner.
Thanks for reading!
I’m @theprospectitch on Twitter.
