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Three Nats Make the BA Top 100

Yesterday, Baseball America released its first of 27 or so Top 100 Lists for 2024. Three Nationals made the list.

Like one of Leonardo DiCaprio’s girlfriends, Cade Cavalli has been dropped from the list. OK, fine: Maybe it’s not because he turns 26 this year. I suppose the Tommy John surgery is the culprit.

Robert Hassell also dropped from the lisst, though injury or not, repeating the level with very little progress is more likely to blame. Elijah Green, who finished with 150K in 83G also fell off the list.

Joining last year’s holdovers – James Wood(11, same as last year) and Brady House(55, down from 54) – is Washington’s first pick of the 2023 Draft, Dylan Crews(6).

Like I did last year, I’m gonna steal from the player capsules that are in progress:

DYLAN CREWS
College World Series champion. Golden Spikes Award winner. The Nats #1 pick (#2 overall). It was quite a year for the 21-y.o., who has supplanted Cade Cavalli as The Coming Thing for Washington. Crews has above-average skills in every facet of the game. If he does have a flaw, scouts say it’s a “slightly elevated in-zone miss,” which may explain the tepid finish at AA. He’s expected to adjust and will probably spend more time in the minors than the Lt. Dan’s would prefer.

JAMES WOOD
Wood led the Nats minors in HRs (26) and strikeouts (173). It’s the latter that needs to be addressed, as scouts have changed their minds about his pitch-recognition skills. He has the speed to play CF and swipe a base or 18 (in 21 attempts) but there are other candidates (*cough* Crews *cough*) and Wood has the arm to play RF.

BRADY HOUSE
The quietest three-level season in recent memory got House off the M*A*S*H unit and back to a position column for his third watchlist appearance. Back injuries are known to sap power, but the 20-y.o. slugged .497 with 12HR in carefully managed 88G. Scouts say he’s still chasing too much off the plate and not drawing enough walks. 2024 would seem to be about improving that as well as showing some durability.

We now return you to your Winnie the Pooh Day celebrations…

29 Commments

  1. I’m pretty surprised by House’s drop on the list. BA have been very high on House (as evidenced by his 54th ranking last year, when some prospect raters left him off altogether). I understand there’s good reason to be skeptical of House; he’s striking out 3.5 times more than he’s walking, and the power still hasn’t quite developed. But, in general, he had a statement of a season, rising 3 levels without the slightest bit of trouble upon promotion. However, I won’t complain too much, as in the end, to me House is appropriately placed in the 50s. It’s just that BA was exceptional in their positivity towards House, so I’d have expected that to come through again in this list.

    Then with Hassell, Cavalli and Green all dropping off the list, and none of the fringe 100, like Susana, Morales, Sykora, maybe even Herz, appearing, it’s a reminder that this rebuild still has a long way to go. The Orioles, Rays, Yankees and Padres, for example, each have 6 players in the top 100.

    1. when you factor in the additions from the 2023 draft House would actually be ranked higher this year against all other players.

      sorry but these these lists are clickbait. since Sickels has ceased publication of his annual guide which includes a grade I’ve lost interest.

      1. Our old PCL nemesis Jose Rojas just inked a farm deal with Yanx to try and be a Soto teammate someday .

      3. There are a couple of, um, minor contenders but the undercurrent of gambling is barely masked. They could remake “The Fan” with an obsessed fantasy-baseball office drone instead a of a knife salesman and no one would flinch.

      4. Did Juan Hillman LHP catch on with anybody after spring release from Nats? Could he boomerang back to a AA contact ?

  3. Hence the collect the lumber ( Wood ) pile in minors .
    Hence CV, Hidalgo ..and of course there is always June upcoming amateur draft .
    Shall be fun seeing crews wearing out that opposite field grid with his eye hand
    Genius .
    DC in DC truly a marvel but not comic Al

  4. Well, the Nats will be fielding two former consensus top-10 prospects in 2024: Senzel and Robles. There are no guarantees in life.

    Rack ’em and stack ’em however you wish, but Wood and House have pretty close to the same level of power potential — and that’s 40+ HR potential at the MLB level. There are maybe four or five guys in all the minors about whom that could be said, and the Nats have two of them. (Some would claim Green is a third, but he’s got to make contact before he can even be considered.)

    Wood just started growing into his power in 2023. House really hasn’t yet, but he’s nine months younger than Wood.

    Crews is never going to have that level of power, so his value is much more in the hopes of a Rendon-like contact Zen.

  5. Interesting in several months to fore see which starters really progress
    Luke Young
    A healthy Seth Shuman
    Oh Susana !
    Healthy Eric Sun Devil lefty
    Sullivan
    Aldo Ramirez still in Witness Protection
    Dawn patrol in the snow for my canine , Luke .
    He’s earned his sliced roast beef

    1. Tolman injuring himself while walking onto the field has to be one of the most bizarre stories of 2023. after overcoming multiple TJs no less. leg injuries are nothing to dismiss in terms of the affect on his delivery, unfortunately

      1. Fred MD
        Tolman hopefully recovers better than Joe Heskith did after sliding into Mike Scioscia at HP .
        Joe wasn’t the same afterwards .

  6. An Aldo Ramirez reemergence at this point would sort of be from beyond the professional grave. It is worth noting, though, that he’ll only turn 23 in May.

    Liam Sullivan fascinates me. Massive dude, lots of K’s, lots of BBs. He was certainly worth a 13th-round flyer.

  7. Rochester April 24?
    Adon
    Rutledge
    Parker
    Herz
    Watkins
    Rivera ( swing man )
    Cavalli should start in warmer climate for sure

          1. I have the same fear about Henry and was shocked when they added him to the 40-man. There are two ways to look at that development: A) they think that he’s improving enough to get back toward relevance in 2024, or B) they thought he’d be easy for another team to stash since he’d be on the IL most of the time.

            I’m a big Henry fan and think he may be the best overall “pitcher” in the Nats’ system when healthy. But as much as he struggled in 2023, I wondered why they didn’t just rest him for the entire season.

      2. Correct on Adon. You would think that they will try to keep him in the MLB bullpen unless he’s really bad in spring training, in which case it shouldn’t be hard to get him through a DFA.

        I would assume that Cavalli will stay in extended spring training in Florida unless he’s MLB-ready (which would be a surprise). It would be malpractice to send a rehabbing arm to the banks of Lake Ontario in April.

        If Cavalli isn’t ready, I hope that Rutledge will be given the opportunity to beat out Trevor Williams for a starter slot in the MLB rotation. I’m a Rutledge skeptic, but I’d much rather see them go with a young arm with promise than a guy who has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he should be in the ‘pen.

        1. I think the best case scenario would be Adon shows he can at least be respectable as the #5 and pushes Williams to the swing man bullpen role.

          he wasn’t without his moments in ’23 but it’s now or never as far as I’m concerned. others are ready to get their shot

          1. It seems a safe assumption that Gore, Gray, and Corbin (like it or not) will be in the rotation. Irvin figures to be as well unless he has an awful spring. So that only leaves one spot, with Williams, Rutledge, and Adon as the most likely candidates, unless Cavalli is healthy. Will has posted the stats showing that Adon falls off a cliff after the 3d inning and promises to be much better as reliever than starter. Williams was significantly better as a reliever with the Mets than he was as a starter. So by process of elimination, this may be Rutledge’s big chance. Presumably Cavalli will be ready at some point to bump the worst performer.

  9. With the Nats signing Joey “Mr. Three True Outcomes” Gallo, who gets dropped from the Nats roster?

    1. The most sensible drop is Strasburg. But we’re about a year removed from sense reigning supreme.

      So Alex Call appears to me to the be odd man out. We can’t afford to carry all three of Robles, Call and Young.

      But we also can’t afford to carry four 3B in Senzel, Alu, Kieboom and Vargas either. I’m still puzzled why we signed Senzel in the first place. We were looking for an alternative to Kieboom, so we signed the most similar player to Kieboom in all of baseball. Except two years older. Meanwhile, we already have Vargas, a very limited and unexceptional player, who is superior to Senzel in every way. One of these guys will need to be dropped, and I fear that the victim will be Alu, who has more upside and flexibility than any of the other 3.

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