Rough Early Season Prospect Tiers

[sveumrules]

Guessing that @Brock Beauchamp will be posting a new prospect voting thread coming up here shortly with the minor league season(s) kicking off and the Yophery Rodriguez trade shaking things up a bit yesterday.

In the meantime, I was trying to somewhat succinctly re-calibrate my own personal rankings with everything we've learned (and some things we've surely forgotten) over the winter and here at the outset between spring training, level placements, injuries, and over-reactions to way too small of samples.

So with all that said, here's what I've got. Who did I miss? How would you break things down?

60 FV (2)
Jacob Misiorowski | Jesus Made
[Two Highest Ceilings In The System]

50 FV (5)
Cooper Pratt | Jeferson Quero | Logan Henderson | Braylon Payne | Luis Pena
[Best Remaining Combinations of Upside and Floor]

45 FV (2)
Robert Gasser | Craig Yoho
[High Floor, Limited Ceiling, Close Proximity Pitcher Mini-Tier]

40+ FV (9)
Chad Patrick | KC Hunt | Bryce Meccage | Bishop Letson | Luke Adams | Eric Bitonti | Mike Boeve | Josh Adamczewski | Jose Anderson
[No Doubt Top 20 System Guys For Me]

40 FV (17)
Jack Hostetler | Manuel Rodriguez | Carlos Rodriguez | Brett Wichrowski | Tyler Black | Ernesto Martinez Jr. | Brock Wilken | Blake Burke | Jadher Areinamo | Caleb Durbin | Juan Baez | Luis Lara | Kenny Fenelon | Brailyn Antunez | Luis Corobo | Juan Ortuno | Josh Knoth
[Fighting It Out For Last Couple Spots in The Top 20 Depending on the Day] 

[Brock Beauchamp]

5 hours ago, sveumrules said:

Guessing that @Brock Beauchamp will be posting a new prospect voting thread coming up here shortly with the minor league season(s) kicking off and the Yophery Rodriguez trade shaking things up a bit yesterday.

Indeed. I'm moving things around a bit this year, trying new stuff. So we had a year-end ranking in... October, maybe? Anyway, my thinking is that nothing (almost nothing, really) changes from Oct-Apr. So instead of doing a spring training vote, I'm pushing that vote back to late April so we get to capture some data from the prospects at their new levels and then vote on it.

[Spencer Michaelis]

Don't have time to format it as nicely as you did, but here's my current OFP breakdown for 40 or better.

Think we are pretty similar, I have a few more in the 45 and 45+ range.

[SF70]

I’d put Payne-Pena in a 55 tier with Misiorowski. Made as the only 60.

 

[Playing Catch]

I know he no longer qualifies as a prospect, but at 24 years old, where would you guys put Priester?

[sveumrules]

28 minutes ago, Playing Catch said:

I know he no longer qualifies as a prospect, but at 24 years old, where would you guys put Priester?

I’d probably put him in the 40+ tier as a “stuff-ier” version of Patrick.

Maybe could see him as a 45 if he’d gotten some better results in his MLB looks.

[Playing Catch]

24 minutes ago, sveumrules said:

I’d probably put him in the 40+ tier as a “stuff-ier” version of Patrick.

Maybe could see him as a 45 if he’d gotten some better results in his MLB looks.

I think his floor is higher than Logan Henderson's, and his ceiling is similar (but with very different profiles). I think limiting flyballs is really key to finding big league consistency. There's simply too many tiny parks.

With that said, I'm probably past the point of straining myself to ignore his NINETY-NINE big league innings.

[sveumrules]

48 minutes ago, Playing Catch said:

I think his floor is higher than Logan Henderson's, and his ceiling is similar (but with very different profiles).

Agree that Priester's floor is higher by virtue of already having made MLB starts, having a multi-pitch arsenal, and being more of a traditional starter's build. I still give Henderson the nod on ceiling though just because of the strike out stuff (best K% in all of MiLB min. 150 IP last two years). 

Using recent Brewers as imperfect comps I'd say Logan is closer to Freddy as five and dive high strikeout kind of starter where Quinn is more like Adrian Houser in the groundball specialist mode.

Going back to 2021, there are 117 pitchers in MiLB with at least 350 IP and Priester's 53.0 GB% is tied for 8th in that sample so he really is top notch at getting grounders. Unfortunately a guy like Connor Thomas (53.9 GB%) being a couple spots higher on that same leaderboard is an example that not all grounders are created equally.

[Playing Catch]

18 hours ago, sveumrules said:

Unfortunately a guy like Connor Thomas (53.9 GB%) being a couple spots higher on that same leaderboard is an example that not all grounders are created equally.

That's correct. When a premium-looking, first round pedigree type of 24-year-old pitcher is able to generate grounders, one can dream for more. I think we're all confident that Connor Thomas' ceiling isn't as high as Priester's.

Also, if Houser had Priester's curveball, and the Brewers current infield, I suspect his numbers would have looked a lot better.

[markedman5]

Lots of Brewers……

 

[Playing Catch]

20 hours ago, markedman5 said:

Lots of Brewers……

 

Including an Adamczewski sighting in a Top 100 list. No idea who this guy is... is he a poster here?

[Austin Tatious]

That’s an insightful list but hopefully Letson gets on there for him soon.  The evaluator  knows what’s he’s looking at.