NationalsProspects.com

The NationalsProspects.com Top 10 Position Players


The trend of a consensus on a handful then free-for-all returns with the latest iteration of the NationalsProspects.com Top 10 Position Players list.

This year 21 players were named on 10 ballots (including mine). It was 24 a couple of years ago but only 15 last year.

The top two picks were either #1 or #2 in nine of the 10 ballots, as was the #1 pick. Without further ado, ze list:

  1. Trea Turner
  2. Victor Robles
  3. Wilmer Difo
  4. Anderson Franco
  5. Andrew Stevenson
  6. Christopher Bostick
  7. Pedro Severino
  8. Rafael Bautista
  9. Osvaldo Abreu
  10. Spencer Kieboom

Others receiving votes: Brian Goodwin, Drew Ward, Jose “Orange” Marmolejos-Diaz, Isaac Ballou, Blake Perkins, Jakson Reetz, Rhett Wiseman, Telmito Agustin, Max Schrock, Bryan Mejia, Matt Skole

My prediction that half the names from last year’s Top 10 would be gone proved to be true, though just two could be attributed to trade (Steve Souza) and graduation (Michael Taylor). It would be difficult to characterize the disappearance of last years nos. 4-7 (Drew Ward, Jakson Reetz, Brian Goodwin, and Matt Skole) as anything other than disappointment with their 2015 seasons.

One other interesting trend that ought to be obvious: the Dominican pipeline seems to be producing more interesting players (6 of the Top 10, 8 of the twenty) than the domestic draft.

Next up: The pitchers, which I suspect will be a similar case of three or four that everybody agrees on… then a lament of the lack of lefties… and then complaints about age…

59 Commments

  1. The one surprise for me is that Kieboom is only at 10, would have thought higher.

    The scary part is only 1 of these players is from the Nats draft. Jeesh!

    1. Two were Nat picks: Stevenson and Kieboom. But your point is well taken. Without the Dominican program, we’d be hurtin’ even more than we already are.

      1. These are just NationalsProspects readers picks. Many are still down in short A? C’mon now. Ward is still young. Vettleson and Goodwin still possibilities. Cox and Skole …

    2. Or you could see it as a positive that six of them are IFAs, having ignored Latin America for the past decade.

  2. When your GM only drafts pitchers …. eventually you’re going to look at the farm system and say, “Gee, we’re pretty thin on hitters.”

    1. KW — Thanks for the correction.

      Todd — You are dead on.

      Maybe we should have a draft where only lefthanded pitchers & hitters are selected. Would balance the system.

      1. Isn’t that basically what they did this year?

        From my perspective I don’t care how we get the talent as long as we have what we need on the big league team. Rizzo likes to deal and I tend to agree that high ceiling arms have more trade value than anything else.

    2. If the Nats don’t surrender their first-rounder in the 2016 draft, which could end up being as high as #14 or #15 overall, they’re going to have a shot at one of the top 5-7 college hitters in what is supposed to be a deep draft. I sure hope they use that one on a hitter. Take the wounded-wing college hurler with one of the comp picks in the early 30s.

        1. Yes, there are several LH bats. Nick Banks and Corey Ray come to mind off the top of my head, but there are others.

    3. So, let’s see looking at just the left-handed side of the projected AAA equation? Let’s start with who is Brian Goodwin, Drew Vettleson, Matt Skole and now Zack Cox (3 are first round picks dude!)? To go with Issac Ballou, Caleb Ramsay and Matt den Dekker. Drew Ward is still in Potomac but he’s really very young isn’t he? Still has ceiling.

      So, then Rizzo turned his best right-handed prospect bat (Steven Souza who had issues his first year in the majors) into a starting pitcher (Joe Ross) and a potential lead-off hitter of the future Trea Turner?

      2. I actually laughed out loud when I read this. I was Mejia’s only voter, and ironically probably Mejia’s most vocal critic this season, largely because of his complete inability to walk. As others countered, why bother walking when you’re smacking the heck out of the ball. I’ve sort of come around to this thinking. And I was really impressed with Mejia’s last week of the season. He took 4 walks in his last 6 games, which I took to be a sort of point to prove he could take walks if he wanted. Now I don’t think he can turn himself into Joey Votto if he so chose to, but I think he can maintain a walk rate of about 5%, along the lines of previous seasons (which is still really bad, but not historically bad like his 0.2% rate this year).

        Besides his inability to walk, he looks like the complete package. He’s got HUGE power for a middle infielder, seemingly pretty good defense, he’s managed to keep his strikeouts below 20%, good speed… he sounds just like Wilmer Difo!

          1. Nothing “bad” about Vlad.
            Vladi ended up walking more than he struck out in 4 of his 16 seasons, never striking out more than 95 times in a season, averaging 74 K’s over a 162 games. True he swung at everything, only because he could hit everything.

            Remember a homer he hit that was ankle high fastball . . .

      3. Luke. With all the xmas chores to do.
        We understand if you don’t get around to
        Adding the new names to the Big Board .
        Maybe Chad Tracy assists Troy Gingrich
        With lefty hitters in 2016??
        Bullpen coach ???

  4. Like most fans of the minor leagues I try to set up trades for players especially around winter meetings time. Once I get past Giolito, and Turner it seems hard to find any more prospects other teams seem interested in. Or maybe Rizzo just doesn’t want to go that way. Personally, I like the potential in a number of our prospects. But it just doesn’t appear that Cole, Lopez, Difo, Voth, Fedde, attract any attention. Every time I think of a trade scenario involving these players, I wonder how much the other team would be interested. I get the feeling ‘not much’. At least not enough.
    Luke, I am wondering why, after practically no time at all, my identification information disappears. I then have to fill it in again to post. I’ve posted on this site for years and never had this situation before.

  5. I’m really surprised with the Pedro Severino love. He looks to me to be a younger version of Jose Lobaton, Sandy Leon, Jhonatan Solano, Jesus Flores, Generic Defensefirstcatcher. These types of players are a dime a dozen.

    What’s his best-case scenario? His best minor league season, 2014, where he hit .247/.306/.399?

    That looks a lot like J.T Realmuto’s 2015 season (.259/.290/.406) or James McCann (.264/.297/.387) or Caleb Joseph (.234/.299 .394) or Geovany Soto (.219/.301/.406). Yeah, I’ve not heard of those guys either…

    1. A lot of it is lack of competition for the position players. His worst case of back-up MLB player is better than you can say for most of the players. The best case of 247/306/399 you mention plus good defense, the ability to beat out a double play on occasion, and catch a ball thrown in from the outfield would actually be pretty good for a MLB catcher these days.

      1. THANK YOU. It’s very tiresome to see the fanbase fellate Wilson Ramos because he can hit more than the average catcher. To me, he’s like the shooting guard who scores 20 a game and lets his counterpart score 22.

        2. Luke I am not disputing your
          Big board posting but we agree that
          Michael Brady could be called a swing guy
          @ Burg until G Force moves up??
          Lol you post taylor hill as ahead of taylor jordan
          On Cuse shuttle. Lol.
          Great job through the years with big board and big dogs. Lol

        3. What do you mean? Ramos is unquestionably really good defensively.

          Last season he caught 44% of all base runners (24/54), which is well above league average. He allowed 3 passed balls, second fewest in baseball to only Brian McCann. And it wasn’t like his range was bad and a lot of balls were wrongly getting classified as wild pitches. There were at least 24 catchers who saw more wild pitches than him. Or do you mean pitch framing? Because every measurement on that I’ve seen has Ramos somewhere around average.

          In fact, the only anti-Ramos argument you could make is that his bat sucks. Over the past three seasons, of all catchers with more than 750 total PA, only four catchers out of 34 have been worse offensively than Ramos. Ramos is the living embodiment of a defense-first catcher. Everyone just got excited that maybe a really good defensive catcher might also learn how to hit too. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case.

          Ironically, though, Ramos has put up a slash of .252/.283/.400 over the past 3 years of poor offense, which is still way better than anything Severino has done in the minors.

          3. Blocking the plate has now been prohibited by MLB to avoid injuries. And plays at the plate (where Ramos has botched the throw) has happened like… 8 times at most last season? His excellent blocking errant throws from the mound and stopping attempted base thefts have more than made up for that shortcoming.

    2. Hard to project an A+ level season as “best case” for the major leagues, particularly when he followed it up with .246/.288/.381 at AA this year. I didn’t have Severino in my top 10, for the reasons Will mentioned. He just looks too much like Solano/Leon to me. He’s still young, and has been playing above his age level for several years, so he’s still got a chance to improve at the plate, but he’s got to hit. Right now, I have more hope for Kieboom.

    1. Try Skole 1B AAA
      Cox 3B AAA
      Bostic 2B AAA
      Turner SS AAA
      Keyes OF AAA
      Ballou OF AAA
      Vettleson OF AAA
      Goodwin OF AAA
      Severino C AAA

        1. No, No ,No. Ward’s not ready for AA. He’s very young still, let him master High A before making the biggest move in the minors, from High A to AA.

          1. If he looks good in spring training they might just elevate him to see what happens in Harrisburg. Might just. That’s what I meant. Not sure repeating Advanced A is a good thing for the ego either age notwithstanding. I guess I am saying you never know what player development may decide and they do leave that up to the player and his performance.

          4. It took Michael Taylor repeating a full season at A+ to finally find his swing. I suspect the same will be done with Ward. He’s young enough that he can afford to repeat full seasons at the same level without it derailing his development.

          5. It took Michael Taylor repeating a full season at A+ to finally find his swing. I suspect the same will be done with Ward.

            +1,000 — He’s almost two full years younger than the most-used 3B in Hagerstown last year (Austin Davidson), so him repeating isn’t exactly stunting anybody else’s development.

          6. In the end its all about what’s best for the player. And the loss of Heyward to the Cubs ( I figured Rizzo would be out there on him quickly.) puts the onus on player development to produce a productive left-handed bat or two.

            However, given the progress of Goodwin, Vettleson, Ramsay and Ballou my guess is that now Rizzo will attempt to hedge his bets with a better left-handed hitting outfield prospect through a trade with another franchise. That’s more of a gamble than a 26 year old seasoned veteran.

            As for Ramos I seem to recall Luke criticizing Pudge’s inability to hit yet his defensive prowess was still top notch? I think Severino the better more agile defender and a better play caller. I’d much rather see him starting perhaps with Kieboom backing him up. Doubtless I won’t get what I’d like to see …

      2. Plus den Dekker could end up in Syracuse along with Reed Johnson or Michael Taylor. Should be an interesting AAA roster this season.

      4. Leaving harrisburg with some infield
        Mix of Perez Wooten Norfolk. Sanchez
        Corona ( which night will senators promote that
        Beer label ??) does Pleffner repeat AA with
        Skole / Cox / Ramsey / Keyes Cuse heavy??

        1. Difo returns to Harrisburg. Stephen Perez deserves a promotion don’t you think? David Masters.
          Khyyam, Pfeffner stays due to lack of power. Bautista? Mesa? Raudy Reed? Harrisburg will be about the same as last season?

          Skole, Cox, Ramsey, Keyes (older than Skole) are age appropriate to AAA at this point right? They’ve done their time in AA.

          1. Stephen Perez deserves a promotion don’t you think?
            Um, no. He has hit his ceiling and that he did dramatically worse in 2015 than 2014 at the same level does not bode well.

  8. I don’t quite get this. I’ve posted here since the site started. I don’t make negative comments. Still, the comment I put on this post has been first monitored then taken off. Some issue I don’t know about Mr. Erickson, an issue that the site doesn’t appear to have the decency to address. For the record, I also had Mejia on my top ten.

    1. Jackson – I think I figured it out. And I’m replying publicly as opposed to offline because I think everyone can benefit from this.

      These are my settings. As you can see, I could manually approve each and every comment, but I don’t. It’s set up to only moderate first-time commenters. My logic: The trolls are most likely to inflict their invective on their first post.

      Unfortunately, it’s not keying on email address or IP address, but username… and *groan* it’s case-sensitive. Would you believe that in all the years that you’ve been here, that was the first time you posted with “Jackson/Jeeves?”. Sixteen times previously it was “Jeeves/jackson,” 122 times it was “Jackson Campbell,” six times it was “J. Campbell” — I could go on but your contention that you’re a longtime commenter is duly noted: The total with your email address is 277.

      I suppose that’s a good thing because it would certainly be easy to play nice under one username, then go Trump on another while using the same email address. But I can understand your frustration.

      The alternative is to require logins and registrations, and I’m very reluctant to do that, even though it would offer some extra functionality. I want the site to be both easy to use and unintrusive; I work in online marketing, so I do enough intruding in my day job.

      Bottom line: use the same username and email address everytime you post and try to set up your browser to auto-fill them. Thanks.

  9. Maybe my heavy corners bumped your jackson
    Lol
    It’s all good in nats nation
    Cuse pen should be deep

  10. Maybe my heavy corners bumped your jackson
    Lol
    It’s all good in nats nation
    Cuse pen should be deep

  11. Purke has signed a minor-league contract with the White Sox. The grand over-slot experiment has come to an end. Lombo is also now in the White Sox organization. He’s getting quite a uni collection.

    1. I wish Purke all the best. Now that he’s well past his TJ surgery, here’s hoping he regains his form and finds success. He was a high-rish/high-reward signing for the Nationals thanks to the mileage on his arm from college, and it didn’t work out. That happens.

      I’m curious if the Sox will use him out of the bullpen (as the Nationals did in the last month of the 2015 season) or if they’ll try him in their rotation. It’s possible that could have been a determining factor for Purke; the Nationals appeared to want to convert him to relief (like Sammy Solis), but Purke may believe he’s still a starter.

  12. Thanks Luke. I appreciate the time and effort you put into your reply. From now on I will stick to one name. I will use the name ‘Jackson’. With a capital J. And a small j in my email address.

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