I've been digging into the stats and I think that it is important to fans to realize that while we have left BC, Carolina is not the most hitter friendly league. A regular everyday player by this time in the season should be around 350 PA's by now so that is how I filtered stats. Ray, Erceg, Clark, Diaz, Gatewood, Aviles, and Stokes all qualify. Only 2 qualifying hitters are hitting over .300 1 in the .290's 3 in the .280's 3 including Jake Gatewood hitting in the .270's 1 in the .260's 4 in the .250's That is a grand total of 9 everyday hitters in the league hitting over .270....... 14 over .250 A more inclusive 300 PA's .300+ 4 .290's 4 .280's 5 .270's 5 .260's 4 .250's 4 26 players in the league are hitting over .250 Rankings for the 350 PA's by average Gatewood 9th Stokes 18th Clark 22nd Erceg 23rd Diaz 25th Ray 27th Aviles 28th Sure you wish they were all higher, however, average in the Carolina league is a terrible assessment of a player. Very few hitters are hitting for average in the league....Only 14 every day players are over .250! Important stats to me for assessing a prospect: BB% and K% .....A "professional hitter" like most elites in the Majors will walk 10+% while striking out 22% or less. This shows me a lot of the style hitter they are. I like OBP guys who also make contact (more you walk and put bat on ball, usually the better results.) BA- OBP Difference. I don't pay much attention to Batting Average...easy but not great indicator of a players success. OBP can be deeply hit by hitter struggling to hit. So I look at the difference. I want all prospects to at least be .70 higher than BA but prefer them to be over .100 more. ISO- I like power like most people. Like to see how often players are hitting ball hard wRC+ is my favorite and most important stat as it is most comprehensive for a milb hitter. I treat it like WAR. wOBA I also will consider. Looking at our hitters ISO .197 5th Stokes .178 6th Gatewood .156 12th Clark .152 14th Diaz .141 16th Diaz .131 20th Ray For the level being around .15 is solid sign. Only 2 players in FSL have over .150, 11 in Cal League, 14 in Carolina BB% to K% 1st Clark 18.7% ......26% K'ing too much but wow with the walks 7th Diaz 13.8% ......26% Same as Clark with K's needing to drop down but walks are great 9th Stokes 11.2% ...18% Outstanding 13th Ray 10%........31.4% ......well he is walking 15th Gatewood 9.5%....27.4% Awesome growth this season! BB's up and K's slowly going down! Too low Erceg 5%.... 17.6% ugly bb% but he doesn't K much OBP (over BA) Clark - 3rd highest OBP in league at .377, .140 over BA Gatewood 8th at .347, .075 over BA Stokes 12th at .343, .090 over BA Diaz 14th at .337, .110 over BA Ray .307 and .075 over BA Erceg doesn't like walks do .277 and .040 over BA wRC+ 7th Gatewood 123 8th Clark ...... 122 10th Stokes... 120 16th Diaz.......104 Ray 86 and Erceg 79 Overall looking through all this, Batting Average says almost nothing about what a player is doing. All 6 of these guys are hitting not far apart in terms of average but are nowhere close to hitting the same. Ray and Ray have been very not good all season. Considering they are the two oldest of the six, that is disappointing. Ray doesn't make contact, Erceg doesn't walk or get on base. Both are hitting lighter than the other 4. They simply have not played well and ARE what their average tells you. Gatewood, Clark, Stokes are 3 of the top offensive players in the league. Literally block out Clark's batting average and you'd be in love with him as a prospect! If he could drop his K's down to that 20-22% range, He'd be even higher on him. I think it is absolutely insane how much a 20 year old gets trashed on here and written of simple because his batting afverage isn't high enough for them....its a joke. Gatewood has been consistently outstanding all season. Stokes is a sleeper! Kid can play baseball! Diaz is not far off the three. He is a little behind the others but not playing terrible. Lot of positives when you look at the numbers. Still think he has the most upside on this roster at the plate but needs to cut down K's and have some better luck. Both him and Stokes have pretty low Babip's.