But I’ll leave the mortem (no need for “post-” – this team’s been dead for quite some time now) for the beat writers in DC. We’re here to talk about the minors.
STATE OF THE FARM
The story of 2018 was two-fold: Juan Soto and injuries. In fact, one has to wonder if Soto would have even happened were it not for the injury to Victor Robles on April 9th. By the month’s end, Soto was in Potomac. By mid-May he was in D.C. Not much else to tell that hasn’t been written about ad nauseum already.
The meteoric rise of Soto took away some of the virtual ink from another player: Carter Kieboom, who caught fire in May after a horrific April and was in AA after the High-A all-star break. Unlike Soto, Kieboom was humbled by AA pitching and did about as well as you might ordinarily expect from a 20-y.o.
Going in the 2018-19 offseason, the focus on the minors from outside our little bubble will be who will replace the free agents (Harper now, Rendon perhaps a year from now) and who’s trade bait. It’s awful to think that way about the guys we follow so closely, but we’re nearly 10 years into the Mike Rizzo era and the pattern is pretty clear: there are number of prospects he’s banking on to make it all the way up the ladder and that number is a single digit that can be counted on a single hand. Everybody else is cannon fodder.
For the immediate future (or until his contract is up after the 2020 season), it would seem to be Robles, Kieboom, and Luis Garcia on his shortlist for position players. Pitchers? Might just be Mason Denaburg. Maybe.
BA TOP 20 LISTS
These are just starting to come in, and thus far it’s just been Victor Robles, the #8 prospect for the International League despite playing just 40 games. Ah, the beauty of incumbency.
DSL NATIONALS
The D-Nats finished with a non-losing record (36-36) for the first time since 2014, which along with $2, gets them a cup of coffee stateside. The good news is that the team was younger than the league average for both position players (17.4 vs. 17.7) and pitchers (18.1 vs. 18.4). As you might expect from a .500 team, they were slightly above average on offense (5.07 R/G vs. 4.92) and slightly below average on the mound (5.09 R/9I vs. 5.08 R/9I) and below average on defense (.946FA vs .954FA).
Obligatory reminder that this is sight-unseen, so take all this with a large dose of sodium chloride; calcium chloride if it’s icy out.
Without further comment or delay, here are the Top 5’s, excluding three-timers:
| TOP 5 BATS | TOP 5 ARMS |
| 1. Geraldi Diaz, C/DH .273 GPA, 29BB |
1. Pedro Gonzalez, RHSP 1.46/2.39/0.95, 9.49 K/9IP |
| 2. Andry Arias, 1B/RF .265 GPA, 28BB, 7-3B |
2. Jose A. Ferrer, LHRP 3.60/1.67/1.30, 15.9 K/9IP |
| 3. Braian Fernandez, CF/LF/RF .266 GPA, 8SB/9CS |
3. Carlos Romero, RHSP 1.19/3.10/0.87, 4.8 H/9IP |
| 4. Viandel Pena, 2B/SS .263 GPA, 47BB |
4. Bryan Pena, LHSP 2.93/3.23/1.32, 0HR in 55⅓ IP |
| 5. Jorge Hurtado, RF/LF .260 GPA, 60K, 7E |
5. Charls Jameson, RHRP 0.31/3.19/1.14, 5.59 K/9IP |
An honorable mention goes to Daniel Hernandez, who just missed the cut for the hitters. No such luck for the pitchers as there were no more teenagers left who had productive numbers. Folks interested in seeing the full team’s statistics can find them here.