Looking for Detailed Prospect Reports in 2004, become a member today.

2003 Prospect Central: Volume Eighteen

By Aaron Gleeman

Hello and welcome to Prospect Central.  This week I will look at five prospects who recently made their major league debuts.

RICH HARDEN – SP

Organization: Oakland A’s

Acquired: Oakland’s 17th round pick in 2000 draft.

Throws: Right

DOB: 11-30-1981

Rich Harden - the man on every fantasy player’s mind.  I discussed Harden way back in Prospect Central: Volume Two, about four months ago, and said the following:

“Oakland’s ‘Big Three’ of Barry Zito, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder have combined to go 113-46 with a 3.24 ERA over the past two seasons and they will soon be joined by a fourth ace, 21 year old right-hander Rich Harden.

If you are in a league with a reserve list or minor league system, Rich Harden would be a great guy to stash away for a few months.  When he comes up in July and pulls a Hudson/Zito down the stretch, you’ll be happy you grabbed him.”

Well, whaddya know, Harden came up in July – the 21st to be exact – and, if his first two starts are signs of things to come, he’ll definitely be pulling a “Hudson/Zito down the stretch.”  Hopefully, some of you guys listened to me and stashed him away, because now is the time to reap the benefits.

Harden’s MLB debut was a great one.  He pitched seven innings against the division-leading Royals and gave up just one run on four hits and two walks.  He struck out four and had an amazing 15/1 ground ball/fly ball ratio.  His second start, last Saturday night, was more of the same.  He again went seven innings and again gave up just one run, this time on seven hits and one walk.  He struck out three and had a 12/6 GB/FB ratio.

Harden is the real deal.  His “stuff” is impeccable and his minor league track-record is nearly flawless.  In fact, in some places it is flawless.  Harden started the year at Double-A Midland and made two starts, pitching a total of 13 innings – without allowing a single hit or walk.  That’s right, he started the year with 13 perfect Double-A innings, before being quickly promoted to Triple-A.

He wasn’t perfect at Triple-A, but he was close enough.  Harden went 9-4 with a 3.15 ERA in 88.2 innings at Triple-A, striking out 91 while walking 35.

Harden certainly isn’t going to be able to maintain a 1.29 ERA for the rest of the year, but there’s no reason why he can’t be a very good pitcher over the remaining 60 games or so.  As rookies, Tim Hudson went 11-2 with a 3.23 ERA in 21 starts and Barry Zito went 7-4 with a 2.72 ERA in 14 starts.  If Harden stays in Oakland’s rotation for the rest of the season, he’s looking at a total of about 13-15 starts on the year.  He’s already 1-0 with a 1.29 ERA and I think a reasonable estimate for him would be somewhere around 6-3 or 7-4 with an ERA in the low 3.00s.  And that is what I would consider a conservative estimate.

If, for some inexplicable reason, Rich Harden is still available in your league, keeper or otherwise, grab him and grab him right now.

Gleeman long-term grade: A+

RENE REYES – OF

Organization: Colorado Rockies

Acquired: Signed by Colorado as an un-drafted free agent from Venezuela in 1996.

Bats: Switch

DOB: 2-21-1978

Rene Reyes is in his seventh year of professional baseball and last week, on July 22nd against the Dodgers, he made his MLB debut at the age of 25.  Reyes has performed well throughout his career, but is just now getting his first taste of the majors for two main reasons. 

First, he has not been promoted very aggressively by the Rockies.  After he hit .429 in rookie ball in 1998, the Rockies started him right back at the same level in 1999.  He promptly hit .361 and was promoted to Single-A after 22 games, but the fact that the .429 didn’t get him a promotion to start the year is interesting, to say the least.  In addition to non-aggressive promotions, Reyes missed the entire 2000 season with a knee injury, which slowed his rise to the majors significantly.

Reyes hit .350 at Single-A Asheville in the second-half of the 1999 season and, after missing the entire 2000 campaign, spent all of 2001 back at Asheville.  He followed up the .350 from two years earlier by hitting .322 there, but was not promoted, spending the whole year in Single-A, a place he had already dominated.

Reyes has played all over the field in his pro career, but lately has been in the outfield.  With another organization, he may be playing first base, but Colorado has this Helton guy that people seem to think highly of.

Reyes is old for a “big-time” hitting prospect just making his major league debut, which is okay, because he isn’t really a big-time hitting prospect.  As long as he sticks with the Rockies though, where he’ll have a chance to play half his games in Planet Coors, he could certainly do a nice job impersonating a big-time hitting prospect.

He has a tremendous career batting average in the minors, but his career slugging percentage is just .475 and he doesn’t draw any walks.  He also doesn’t hit many homers and his defense is good, but not great.  In other words, he’s a nice hitting prospect, a guy who could certainly be a valuable starter on a team – and he’s already 25.

For fantasy purposes however, Reyes is a great guy to grab.  As I said, as long as he stays in Colorado, he is a great bet to put up some huge numbers.  Whether it is Preston Wilson and Jay Payton this season or guys like Vinny Castilla, Todd Hollandsworth and Neifi Perez in the past, mediocre offensive players come to Colorado and have breakout years all the time. 

With Reyes’ ability to hit for high batting averages and his decent doubles power, he could very easily contend for a batting title if he gets to play everyday with the Rockies.  That won’t make him a great player in real life, but it’ll make him pretty good in your fantasy league. 

Reyes spent this year at Triple-A Colorado Springs, which is just about the closest thing to the hitting environment of Coors Field, and hit .343 with very little power and very little plate discipline.  He should eventually be able to do the same in Colorado.

Gleeman long-term grade: B

RYAN WAGNER – RP

Organization: Cincinnati Reds

Acquired: Cincinnati’s first round pick (14th overall) in 2003 draft.

Throws: Right

DOB: 7-15-1982

Ryan Wagner was taken with the 14th overall pick in this June’s draft by the Reds and he made his MLB debut on July 19th, making him the first player from the draft to play in the big leagues.  Before the draft, Wagner was hyped as a guy who could make an impact in the majors very soon and the Reds immediately started talking about him moving very quickly as soon as they drafted him.  That said, I don’t think anyone expected him to be pitching in Cincinnati a month later.

Wagner is a big-time power pitcher with awesome “stuff.”  Just a few short months ago, he was a sophomore reliever at the University of Houston, where he put up extraordinary numbers.  Wagner pitched 79.1 innings for Houston, with a 1.93 ERA.  That’s impressive, but what is amazing is his strikeout/walk ratio: 148/21.  Those are crazy, video game type numbers and, coming from a guy in just his second year of collegiate competition, they are unbelievable.  Wagner gave up just one home run all season, opponents batted .147 off him and he struck out 16.8 batters per nine innings.

He cruised through the minor leagues, appearing in a total of nine games between Double-A and Triple-A.  Overall, he pitched nine innings with a 2.00 ERA and struck out 10 batters, while walking just two.  His first few games in the majors have been even more impressive.  Through Saturday, Wagner had appeared in three games, pitching a total of 4.1 innings with a 0.00 ERA.  Opponents were hitting just .077 off him (one hit in 13 ABs) and he had a 5/0 K/BB ratio.

Normally, I like to have a little more professional track-record to go on before I declare someone a great prospect, but Wagner is the type of player for whom an exception can be made.  Everyone felt prior to the draft that he was basically MLB-ready, his brief stint in the minors didn’t disprove that and his time in the majors so far certainly hasn’t either.

If Wagner stays in the bullpen, he’s got future closer written all over him.  It does seem like a bit of a waste to put such a young and promising pitcher in a spot where, at most, he’ll be pitching 70 or 80 innings a season though.  To their credit, the Reds have said they may be interested in trying to convert Wagner into a starter as early as next season.  If he can handle the workload, he’ll be a good one and can be even more valuable than he would have been in the bullpen.

I suspect Wagner is available in most regular leagues, as well as many keeper leagues.  I suggest you grab him up, because he’s going to have value this year and definitely in the future.

Gleeman long-term grade: B

CHIN-HUI TSAO – SP

Organization: Colorado Rockies

Acquired: Signed by Colorado as an un-drafted free agent from Taiwan in 1999.

Throws: Right

DOB: 6-2-1981

Chin-Hui Tsao was signed out of Taiwan in 1999 and dominated the South Atlantic (Single-A) League in 2000.  He then had Tommy John surgery, missed significant parts of both the 2001 and 2002 seasons, and now appears to be picking up right where he left off in 2001.  Before being called up, Tsao was 11-4 with a 2.46 ERA at Double-A.  He had an amazing 125/26 strikeout/walk ratio and had given up just 88 hits in 113 innings.

Chin-Hui Tsao is a really good pitching prospect, one of the best in all of baseball.  He also has the unfortunate luck of being a really good pitching prospect in the Colorado Rockies’ organization, which is not totally unlike being a really nice deckchair on the Titanic.

You can win ballgames as a starting pitcher for the Rockies, as Jason Jennings and Shawn Chacon have shown recently and Pedro Astacio has shown in the past, but your numbers are going to be really ugly, no matter how good you are.

In the 10-year history of the Rockies (prior to this season), a pitcher has won 12 or more games in a season 10 times.  The ERAs of those ten seasons are: 5.04, 5.28, 4.52, 5.41, 5.20, 6.23, 6.21, 4.68, 5.27, 4.00.

Jason Jennings was really a very good pitcher last season.  He pitched 185.1 innings, went 16-8 on his way to winning the National League Rookie of the Year award.  And he had a 4.52 ERA.  In fact, no pitcher in Rockies history has pitched 150 or more innings in a season and had an ERA below 4.00.  Not one, in 10 years.

This year is more of the season.  Shawn Chacon was selected to the All-Star Game and currently sports an 11-5 record – he’s also got a 4.17 ERA.  Jason Jennings and Darren Oliver have both been very good starters for the Rockies this year and have combined to win 17 games thus far – their ERAs are 4.84 and 4.81.

It’s just impossible to be a starting pitcher for the Colorado Rockies for any extended period of time and walk away from the experience with an ERA that doesn’t look bad.  Chin-Hui Tsao is a great prospect and I think he’s going to be an excellent major league pitcher, but he’s still going to have an ugly ERA if he stays with the Rockies, those are just the facts of life.

All that being said, if you don’t mind the high ERA or if you are in a Diamond-Mind league (or something similar) that adjusts performances for the ballparks players play in, Tsao is definitely worth a pickup.

Gleeman long-term grade: B+

MARK MALASKA – RP

Organization: Tampa Bay Devil Rays

Acquired: Tampa Bay’s eighth round pick in 2000 draft.

Throws: Left

DOB: 1-17-1978

Drafted in the eighth round of the 2000 draft out of the University of Akron, Mark Malaska had a very good 2001 season at Single-A, pitching 157 innings with a 2.92 ERA and a great 152/35 strikeout/walk ratio.  For a young pitcher, those numbers would have been outstanding, but Malaska was fairly old for the league, so they were merely nice.

He followed that up with another nice season in 2002, pitching 162 innings split between Single-A and Double-A, with a 3.28 ERA and a 143/40 K/BB ratio.  The better part of last year’s performance came at Single-A, where Malaska had a 2.96 ERA in 91 innings, while once again being fairly old for the league.  Once he moved to Double-A, he continued to pitch well (3.69 ERA), but his strikeout rate plummeted and his walk rate shot way up.

The D-Rays converted him from a starter to a reliever this season and the results were pretty good.  Combined between Double-A and Triple-A, Malaska pitched 48 innings with a 44/12 K/BB ratio, before getting the call up to the big leagues.  He got his first career major league win last Saturday against the White Sox, pitching 2/3 of an inning in relief, while giving up “only” one run in a 10-6 game.

Malaska is like a lot of pitchers throughout minor league baseball in that he has decent stuff, knows how to pitch and has performed well throughout his minor league career.  Like many other guys, he’s a bit old for a prospect, doesn’t make scouts drool and doesn’t project to be anything particularly special.  Malaska, like dozens of other pitchers all over baseball, can be an effective pitcher in the major leagues, but he just needs a chance to prove himself.

When you don’t throw 95 MPH or have a great pedigree, you don’t get too many chances to prove yourself and, when you do, you better pitch well, or it could be your last chance.  Whether or not Malaska pitches well in the limited time Tampa Bay is likely to give him is a crapshoot, as anything can happen in 20 or 30 innings, if he is given even that much time.  He’s a decent pitcher, certainly nothing special and there are tons of others just like him throughout the minors and quite a few in the majors too.  I think he could carve out a nice career as a lefty out of the bullpen.

Gleeman long-term grade: C

Looking for Detailed Prospect Reports in 2004, become a member today.

Archives: 

Volume 1  JERIOME ROBERTSON – SP COLBY LEWIS – SP KURT AINSWORTH – SP GARY KNOTTS – SP JOSH STEWART – SP  OSCAR VILLARREAL – SP MARK TEIXEIRA – 3B/1B

Volume 2  ERICK ALMONTE – SS  ROCCO BALDELLI – OF JEREMY BONDERMAN – SP  RICH HARDEN – SP AARON HEILMAN – SP JESSE FOPPERT – SP

Volume  3  COCO CRISP – OF ALEXIS GOMEZ – OF JOHN-FORD GRIFFIN – OF GRADY SIZEMORE – OF B.J. UPTON – SS HANLEY RAMIREZ – SS

Volume  4  JASON GRABOWSKI – OF/C/3B/1B AARON TAYLOR – RP LEW FORD – OF  JASON LANE – OF  FREDDY SANCHEZ – 2B/SS ROBB QUINLAN – OF

Volume  5  JEROME WILLIAMS – SP CLAUDIO VARGAS – SP CHASE UTLEY – 2B/3B JODY GERUT – OF JASON BAY – OF

Volume  6 GERALD LAIRD – C ANDREW GOOD – SP KIRK SAARLOOS – SP TODD SEARS – 1B WILLIE HARRIS – OF/2B JOSE REYES – SS

Volume  7 Top Ten Hitting Prospects

Volume  8 Top Ten Pitching Prospects

Volume  9 JOHNNY ESTRADA  – C BUBBA CROSBY – OF ROB STRATTON – OF JUSTIN DUCHSCHERER - SP ESIX SNEAD – OF CHONE FIGGINS – IF

Volume  10  DONTRELLE WILLIS - SP ANTONIO PEREZ – SS/2B JASON PHILLIPS – C/1B JASON YOUNG - SP PAT STRANGE - SP

Volume  11 NICK SWISHER – OF/1B ANDY MARTE – 3B PRINCE FIELDER – 1B BRAD NELSON – 1B/OF JUSTIN HUBER – C

Volume  12 DAVID KELTON 3B/1B/OF JHONNY PERALTA – SS/3B  ZACH SORENSEN – IF  MIKE NAKAMURA – RP  EDGAR GONZALEZ – SP

Volume  13  MATT KATA – 2B  FRANCISCO SANTOS – 1B/OF JOSE VALVERDE – RP  MARIO RAMOS – SP BO HART – 2B

Volume  14 DAVE MATRANGA – IF  RODRIGO ROSARIO – SP  BRANDON CLAUSSEN – SP  CARLOS VALDERRAMA – OF  CARLOS RIVERA – 1B

Volume  15 CODY ROSS – OF DAN HAREN – SP JIMMY JOURNELL – SP MIKE GALLO – RP NATE BUMP – SP

Volume  16 LAYNCE NIX – OF LUIS TERRERO – OF  EDWIN ALMONTE – RP  JASON STANFORD – SP CHRIS MEARS – RP

Volume  17 ALEJANDRO MACHADO – IF VICTOR DIAZ – IF RYAN SNARE – SP WILL SMITH – OF ADRIAN GONZALEZ – 1B

Volume  18 RICH HARDEN – SP RENE REYES – OF RYAN WAGNER – RP MARK MALASKA – RP CHIN-HUI TSAO – SP

Volume  19 RYAN HANNAMAN – SP JOE VALENTINE – RP KENNY KELLY – OF PHIL DUMATRAIT – SP

Volume  20  GARRETT ATKINS – 3B  JIMMY GOBBLE – SP JON SWITZER – SP JOSH HALL – SP AARON LOOPER – RP

Volume  21 DERNELL STENSON – 1B/OF NEAL COTTS – SP J.J. PUTZ – RP JON ADKINS – SP

Volume  22  JOSE LOPEZ – SS  JASON STOKES – 1B   MIGUEL CABRERA – 3B  JEFF MATHIS – C  CASEY KOTCHMAN – 1B

Volume  23 JUSTIN MORNEAU – 1B JOSE REYES – SS  VICTOR MARTINEZ – C JOE MAUER – C  MARK TEIXEIRA – 1B/3B

Volume  24  JEROME WILLIAMS - SP  JEREMY BONDERMAN - SP JASON ARNOLD - SP CLINT NAGEOTTE - SP ADAM WAINWRIGHT - SP

Volume  25 GAVIN FLOYD - SP SCOTT KAZMIR - SP  FRANCISCO RODRIGUEZ - RP RICH HARDEN - SP  JESSE FOPPERT - SP

Volume  26 RICKIE WEEKS – 2B  BOBBY CROSBY – SS KHALIL GREENE – SS EDWIN JACKSON - SP MATT RILEY - SP

http://www.InsiderBaseball.com

Click here for details of our 2004 Member access package

Aaron Gleeman analyzes minor league prospects exclusively in the Fantistics Insiderbaseball.com member area.

Please feel free to inquire about any of our products: info@fantistics.com