Welcome to spring....after a fashion. Below are a select smattering of the player projections and comments that will soon be available with the draft software, followed by a bit more detail regarding the specific players in question. Hope you all enjoy it, and start firing questions in anytime. Best of luck in the coming season.
Schuyler
Kole Calhoun - 502 AB, 71 R, 148 H, 83 RBI, 30 2B, 7 3B, 19 HR, 10 SB, 54 BB, 90 K, 295/363/496. With a career minor league ISO of .227, solid contact rates and plate discipline, and an AVG of at least .292 at every minor league stop to go along with solid speed, it is surprising to see Calhoun continue to slide under the radar. A LD rate of nearly 23% last year should probably have been more of a help to his AVG, so some positive movement there can be expected as well.
Most projections have Calhoun coming in somewhere between #55 and #80 in the OF rankings, and as the saying goes (barring injury), I'll eat my hat if that happens. Short of a 23 AB cameo in 2012 over 21 games for the Angels, Calhoun has never failed to produce at any level in AVG, power, or speed. He seemed to get a bit of a power bump at the common age of 25 last year, and lest you think it's a Salt Lake mirage, he averaged a bit better than a homer every 25 AB with the Angels as well. In addition, Calhoun normally posts a pretty solid BABIP due to his speed and hitting style (above .350 in his minor league career), yet last year he only managed a .311 mark in the majors despite a LD rate of nearly 23%. To top it off, the threats to his playing time come primarily from Collin Cowgill and J.B. Shuck, so he probably has a decent-sized leash for any slump. I expect him to be a top-40 OF, and there's upside from there as well.
Christian Yelich - 490 AB, 68 R, 146 H, 62 RBI, 27 2B, 7 3B, 13 HR, 15 SB, 67 BB, 125 K, 298/383/461. Yelich and Stanton are the offensive cornerstones for the Marlins, and Yelich is much more capable of multi-faceted production than he showed in his debut last year. More power should start to show up this year, although his peak is still likely years away.
Yelich hit .300 on the nose after the first few weeks of his rapid promotion to the majors, and in my mind the biggest questions with him are injury-related, not performance-related. There's no doubt in my mind that he will hit for a high average, but the speed and power are obviously very key to his value: they could both be average in a bottom-end scenario (average at peak, not present), or the power could be plus and the speed could be average-plus at best. The way I see it, that means you're looking at a guy that is a .275 hitter with 12-15 HR and a similar amount of steals at the low end, and a .300-plus hitter with 20-25 HRs and 15-20 SBs at the upper end. The power will likely take a few years to reach projections, but a solid average and decent SB totals with some homers mixed in is a likely scenario for the 22-year old in 2014. Most projections have him outside of the top-100 OFs....we certainly do not.
Oswaldo Arcia - 472 AB, 56 R, 122 H, 73 RBI, 22 2B, 2 3B, 21 HR, 3 SB, 39 BB, 141 K, 258/315/447. Arcia was in the top-15 in the majors last year in AVG FB distance at just 22 years of age, so expecting some more power to develop is an easy call. The K rate of 31% was a bit higher than you would expect from his minor league data, while the BABIP was perhaps a bit inflated even by his typical standards, so there may not be much movement on the AVG front just yet, but Arcia definitely has the potential to be a young, impact bat for the Twins.
A 22-year old that finished in the top-15 for FB distance? Arcia is pretty clearly a potential future 30-HR threat, hitting a sizable amount of flyballs with the raw power to get a bunch of them into the seats. Arcia had the lowest HR/FB rate of any of the distance qualifiers above by a reasonable margin, so expecting a few more homers even with similar performance is logical, and then you can throw in a bit more physical maturation and adjustment factor to his first full season in the majors as well. The possibility for a higher average is there with the hard contact that he makes, but I feel that there are a few too many contact issues and flyballs at the expense of line drives for him to continue to post the kind of averages that he did coming up through the system, where he averaged .318 over 6 stops. He's probably a borderline top-50 OF for me this year, which is a good 20-30 spots higher than I've seen him ranked elsewhere.
Mike Olt - 122 AB, 8 R, 25 H, 13 RBI, 4 2B, 0 3B, 3 HR, 0 SB, 14 BB, 44 K, 205/287/311. Olt struggled mightily at AAA after coming over in the Garza deal, hitting just .168, and for the year he struck out 126 times in just 361 Abs, highlighting just how severe his contact issues are. He has some pop and will take a walk, but there are certainly doubts that he will ever make enough contact to be a major league starter.
Most of the other players that are highlighted here are guys that I expect to outperform the consensus forecasts, but Olt is the opposite. The emergence (slight) of Luis Valbuena and the Ryan Roberts signing give the Cubs some options at 2B and 3B, and with Villaneuva, Bryant, and Baez coming up quickly behind him, I don't have a lot of faith in Olt to be able to grasp and hold the job at 3B for the Cubs. Olt flashed some great power at AA Frisco as a 23 year old, and if I thought that might translate to the bigs I would have a different opinion here, but Frisco inflates HR totals by almost 15%. As far as the rest of his game, there isn't much. He has a career minor league average of .258, very little speed, and although he will take a walk that alone isn't enough. At best, Olt will maybe earn a spot and play most of the time against lefties and a little more than that, popping double-digit homers with a low BA and enough K's to start his own wind farm. At worst, he might get a cup of coffee late in the year if he hasn't washed out. I feel that there are many better targets for you at the hot corner.
Jurickson Profar - 470 AB, 55 R, 127 H, 62 RBI, 23 2B, 3 3B, 11 HR, 8 SB, 51 BB, 84 K, 270/342/402. Profar managed a 23.5% LD rate as a 20 year old in the majors, and the Rangers dealt Ian Kinsler to make room for him, so there's optimism here to be sure. The K rate is predicated on his very passive approach at the plate, not his contact ability (5.5% swinging strike%), and the power is still developing and might end up better than expected. The somewhat lukewarm debut while being jerked all over the field might depress his value a bit this year, which is likely a temporary situation.
Let me clear with my stance on Profar: single-season leaguers should be cautious with him, but dynasty leaguers should still be all-in. Profar is still, as of this writing, 20 years old and already has the majority of a big-league season and some postseason experience behind him during which he did not appear overmatched. From August 1 through the end of the year, he somehow hit only .234 despite a LD rate of nearly 26%, and that is from where I think the bulk of his value increase will come in 2014 (aside from playing time, of course). Profar physically appears that he will have some more maturation to do, unlike some players in his age category, so I think that the power may be slow to develop...not that he's likely to be a masher anyway. He eventually forecasts to be a player that contributes in every facet of the game, but I think with the very young age and the fact that his extremely passive approach (41.7% swing rate) may need a slight bit of adjustment, the gains may be more incremental in nature than sudden.
Anthony Rendon - 483 AB, 59 R, 137 H, 68 RBI, 33 2B, 1 3B, 12 HR, 2 SB, 55 BB, 98 K, 284/357/430. Repeated ankle injuries have sapped Rendon's speed and a bit of his top-end potential, but the bat still works just fine as evidenced by the 26% LD rate in his rookie season. Improvement in AVG seems to be a foregone conclusion for 2014, and even though the power is more of the gap variety than over-the-wall, he still should continue to show more pop as well.
If you're sensing a theme here with my affinity for guys that hit a ton of line drives and are still in the "power-increasing" years, you're right on. I know the injuries have sapped a bit of Rendon's speed, but for a guy with a LD rate over 25% and a swinging strike% of just 4.8 to hit just .265 is pretty surprising. I expect a nice bump there this season to be sure....I might expect even more if he didn't take so many pitches (barely over 40% swing rate). You might also say, "Schuyler, the guy hit 9 homers in 54 games at AA....why the low HR rate?" Harrisburg is a pretty favorable park for homers at better than 15% above league average, and Rendon doesn't have a lot of elevation in his swing for the most part, hence the huge LD rate. He may end up with 20-HR power down the road, but for now I just don't see it. I am as big a fan of his as I can be as a 2B that doesn't have a ton of over-the-wall pop or much speed.
Oscar Taveras - 323 AB, 48 R, 95 H, 50 RBI, 22 2B, 2 3B, 10 HR, 4 SB, 19 BB, 49 K, 294/334/467. The ankle injury and the playing time logjam are the only two real question marks with Taveras, who is going to hit and going to hit well when healthy and playing. 332/385/543 is his career minor league line, and he's still just 21. The problem is that the Cards have 5 guys (Adams, Holliday, Bourjos, Craig, and Taveras) that deserve to play every day, but only four spots to put them in. Expect Taveras to start the season in the minors and come up on something like the "Wil Myers timetable", and he should produce as soon as he's given the time.
I don't think anyone has any doubts as to whether or not Taveras will be a star, it's simply the magnitude and arrival time that are in question. The Cardinals have been hesitant with the promotion of some of their hitting prospects the past few years, but as far as I can tell that was for defensive reasons at least as much as anything else. Assuming Taveras is healthy, he pretty clearly has little left to prove in the minor leagues, and at that point we're just into gaming service time, which is something that the Cards have not shown a whole lot of interest in doing over the years....they are about winning first and foremost. Taveras is very likely to be good enough to help them win the second that he is 100% healthy, and as such I expect him to arrive in the majors earlier than most
project. He doesn't have a ton of speed, but he is an absolute force at the plate, and will be worth a gamble in many formats on draft day even going under the assumption that he won't arrive until May or June.
George Springer - 292 AB, 39 R, 77 H, 46 RBI, 16 2B, 3 3B, 12 HR, 15 SB, 33 BB, 68 K, 264/349/462. Springer absolutely destroyed AA and AAA last season, racking up 37 HR and 45 SB while batting over .300......and fanning 161 times. The idea that he's still getting better as a northern-grown talent is appealing, and although there's always going to be swing-and-miss in his game, everything else is so enticing that it's hard to expect him to fall short of being an impact player. The Astros did trade for Dexter Fowler to man CF which will likely buy Springer a ticket to OKC for April, but there may not be much more to prove down there.
I expect Springer to be up and playing RF for the Astros sometime before the break, as the service time issue will probably be critical for Houston. Springer does have some substantial contact issues, but there is a much better track record of guys being able to play through contact issues as they reach the major league level if their walk rate is also strong, which Springer's (14% at two levels in 2013) is. He was very nearly a 40/40 player in the minors last year in just 135 games, and I absolutely do buy into the theory that northern-born players mature a bit more slowly than their southern and western counterparts, simply due to the lack of playing time throughout their formative years. It's even worse when said players then go to a northern college as well, like the former UConn star did. I doubt the Astros will be able to sell their fanbase on keeping him down too long if he even remotely approaches last year's performance, hence my thoughts on the semi-early call-up.
Maikel Franco - 142 AB, 18 R, 39 H, 22 RBI, 7 2B, 0 3B, 6 HR, 0 SB, 6 BB, 31 K, 275/304/451. Franco exploded in 2013, bashing 36 doubles and 31 homers across two levels in just 134 games, cutting his K rate and raising his AVG and ISO from his 2012 A-ball stint. GM Ruben Amaro has hinted that he will look for Franco to compete for the starting 3B spot in spring training, but some more minor league time would probably be helpful if for no other reason than gaming his service time, and Cody Asche may be a lesser prospect, but he's still solid and acquitted himself well down the stretch in 2013. An injury to Ryan Howard, certainly not a far-fetched possibility, is something that could change the timetable here, but for now an assumption that Franco comes up late in the year to stay seems valid.
I included Franco in here because I think there's a better-than-insignificant chance that the Phillies decide to give Franco a lot more ABs in 2014 than anyone expects. Franco only has 69 games above A-ball, but he crushed AA to the tune of a .339 AVG and 30 XBH in those 69 games, and Ruben Amaro is already making noise about having Franco compete for the 3B job come spring training. I like Cody Asche as well, but there really isn't any room for both of them assuming neither can play OF (I would pay to see the already-getting-somewhat-stocky Franco give it a shot). Sad to say, but the nearly inevitable Ryan Howard injury may provide the opening that Franco needs in the short-term, but the big problem is that Howard is under contract for a minimum of three more seasons, and Franco may outgrow 3B before too long. The immense strides that Franco has made the past two seasons have pushed him into the upper-tier of prospects in the game, and while it's easy to see a scenario in which he remains in the minors until the September roster expansion, it wouldn't take much misfortune to have his arrival timed quite a bit sooner.
Addison Russell - 227 AB, 24 R, 56 H, 28 RBI, 10 2B, 3 3B, 5 HR, 7 SB, 22 BB, 70 K, 247/314/374. Russell is barely 20 to start 2014, but it's easy to envision a scenario where he plays well at AA, the A's are in the race and want to inject a bit of offense, and Alberto Callaspo is the low-hanging fruit. Russell does swing and miss enough to give one pause in considering such an accelerated timetable, but a very solid 12% walk rate and a .233 ISO at age 19 are big-time numbers, and Russell has the speed to be a 20/20 threat to boot. He should be an impact player, perhaps as early as the 2nd half of this year, but more likely in 2015 and beyond.
Russell's inclusion on here is certainly questionable, because the odds are that he doesn't sniff the majors in 2014 with the vast wealth of options that the A's have accumulated in the past year-plus. Russell had just 3 games played above A-ball in 2013, and he turns a mere 20 years of age next week, so some more seasoning is more of a necessity than anything (particularly with the 23% K rate in A-ball). Still, the one place where you could see the A's upgrading is at 2B, where Alberto Callaspo was fairly ugly by many defensive metrics last year. Folks might be skeptical of Russell's performance due to the Cali-league environs last year, but Stockton doesn't play as a hitter's park like Lancaster, Visalia, Bakersfield, or High Desert do, so I wouldn't discount those figures too awfully much. His contact issues would make a decent AVG hard to come by in all likelihood, but he has power, speed, and the ability to draw a walk, so he should be able to contribute anyway. I think the odds are still stacked against Russell seeing time in the bigs this season, but if he does he would certainly be a worthwhile flyer, and clearly dynasty leaguers should already have their sights set on him.
