Jason Heyward - OF Atlanta Braves
The Braves boast one of baseball's top prospect in 19-year-old Jason Heyward. Already 6-4, 220 Jason won't be 20 until August 9th but the 14th overall pick in the 2007 draft entered the 2009 season as Baseball America's #5 prospect.
An elite athlete, Heyward has a refined swing and pitch recognition skills well beyond his years. Jason finished his A-ball tour with nearly a 10% walk rate and K rate well below 20% and his High-A zone rates are already headed towards them this season despite a level jump.
Last season we got a peek at the power that everyone believes he will develop in spades. It almost seems at this point that his power development is just a matter of Jason deciding that he is going to drive the ball. Heyward has strong contact ability and he obviously has the physical tools to hit with power and he's still just a teenager.
Heyward still has some things to learn of course and he'll need to adjust to more sophisticated pitching as he jumps levels and of course he'll need to learn how to adapt when ask to by better competition, but there really are no worrisome flaws in his game right now.
It's hard at this point to declare that any other offensive prospect has a higher ceiling than Heyward. Given his age, his architecture, and his skill set, it's difficult to even set a ceiling here. All you can do is sit back and enjoy watching this kid grow up.
We should see him crack AA this summer and Heyward could actually become a fantasy factor in camp next year at 20 years old.
If your league has a minor league component or room to speculate on your roster, this kid must be owned.
Long Term Fantasy Grade - A+Seas Lvl AB XBH HR SB AVG BB% K% OBP SLG 2007 R 27 5 1 1 .296 6.9 14.8 .345 .556 2007 R 16 1 0 0 .313 5.9 31.3 .353 .375 2008 A 449 44 11 15 .323 9.8 16.5 .388 .483 2008 A+ 22 2 0 0 .182 8.3 18.2 .240 .273 2009 A+ 61 8 3 0 .279 10.3 21.3 .357 .508
Jeremy Hellickson - SP Tampa Bay Rays
After three strong campaigns touring the A level after being drafted out of high school in the 4th round of the 2005 draft, we were curious as to how Jeremy Hellickson would fare in AA last season.
At 6-1, 185, Jeremy is less than the ideal size you want to see in right-handed pitching prospects and entering last season Hellickson was basically a two-pitch starter. I wrote last season that he has been getting by on a decent low-to-mid 90s fastball, a good curve, solid command and a good feel for pitching ... but the game was about to ask him for more.
Jeremy responded well to the level jump even though he slightly under aged for the level at at 21 years old. He was still stingy with the walks at 1.8/9 and almost surprisingly manged to hold his K rate at at 9.4. That's impressive.
Overall Jeremy posted a 4-4, 3.94, 1.31 season in 13 starts and 75.1 IP at AA. Opponents did hit .283 off of him with an unfavorable .341 BHIP% ... His 1.31 WHIP seemed to support his 3.94 ERA but he needed a very favorable 81.3% strand percentage to get there.
Jeremy also needed to develop a third pitch and that was his change up with which he made very strong gains last season. That is now a viable third pitch and Hellickson has moved on to AAA this season and maintained all of his strengths and even significantly improved some indicators while jumping a level. Again ... impressive.
The now-22-year-old has come of age. By most accounts his change up is even a bit more than passable and he's getting AA hitters to miss with his curve which makes his good (but not great) fastball play up. His command is MLB-ready and we haven't seen the drop in K rate that we expected when he got to this level. The pitching factory has just turned out another one.
His barely-missing-a-beat success at AA and his development of a third pitch earns him a full grade more than I gave Jeremy last summer (prior to his AA promotion) ... with an even higher grade possible by the time roster expansion rolls around.
Long Term Fantasy Grade - B+Seas Lvl W L ERA IP K/9 BB/9 HR/9 AVG WHIP 2006 A- 3 3 2.43 77.2 11.1 1.9 0.4 .201 0.91 2007 A 13 3 2.67 111.1 8.6 2.8 0.6 .217 1.09 2008 A+ 7 1 2.00 76.2 9.7 0.6 0.8 .228 0.90 2008 AA 4 4 3.94 75.1 9.4 1.7 1.7 .341 1.31 2009 AA 2 1 1.93 28.0 10.6 2.5 0.3 .186 0.93
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