Unfortunately that is the part of the "prospect evaluation" process that us armchair folks struggle with. There are a lot of folks on here that look at a stat line and think they can make an informed decision on what kind of prospect a guy is. Corey Ray and Luis Ortiz are examples. The concepts of tools and projection is a difficult one for us to grasp especially in this age of instant information so we tend to focus on production. I don't disagree that Diplan is an interesting comp, which might say more about the quality of Diplan and our reliance on stat lines to evaluate players than it does about the mediocrity of Medina. Either way, the Phillies value Medina highly (assuming reports are correct) and there appears to be an industry consensus around his projection. Corbin Burnes is probably the better comp when talking about trade value. At least people could look at the entire stat line and a player's performance over his career to make a judgement instead of just picking out the 2018 ERA. Medina's ERA is high but the BB/K ratio is 2.88 and the numbers over his professional career are very good. 327 1/3 innings, 3.27 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, 2.85 K/BB ratio, 8.2 K/9, 2.9 BB/9, 0.6 HR/9. There is not a single alarming number there. Going to Diplan and his WHIP was 1.45 last year and has gone up to 1.54 this year. K/BB ratio under 2 this year and under 2 for his career. BB/9 ratio is a hideous 5.5 this year and is a fairly ugly 4.7 over his professional career. I had made the mistake a couple days ago of saying Medina might have slipped into the Luis Ortiz class and out of the top 100. But after doing a review, which was not only looking at the stat line but also going around the internet and looking at scouting reports (+ the Baseball America handbook), I think Medina is firmly in the back half of the top 100 prospects. Exactly. Sometimes those scouting reports are hard to find if the prospect isn't really highly touted, but they do exist and they add a TON of context.