Keith Law Ranks Nats’ Top 20 Prospects
The streak of waiting one day too few continues…
Yesterday, Keith Law released his Top 20 for the Nats, and let’s just say it differs from MLB Pipeline and Baseball America:
- Dylan Crews, OF
- Seaver King, SS
- Travis Sykora, RHP
- Brady House, 3B
- Jarlin Susana, RHP
- Kevin Bazell, C
- Alex Clemmey, LHP
- Cade Cavalli, RHP
- Luke Dickerson, SS
- Tyler Stuart, RHP
- Caleb Lomavita, C
- Yohandy Morales, 1B/3B
- Cayden Wallace, 3B
- Daylen Lile, OF
- Andry Lara, RHP
- Robert Hassell, OF
- Kevin Made, SS
- Jake Bennett, LHP
- Randal Diaz, SS
- Robert Cranz, RHP
Bold = 2024 Draft Pick
Italics = 2024 Trade pickup.
Suffice it to write, Law is high on Washington’s ’24 draft. Forty percent of this list was not here this time last year.
I’m a little disappointed that Law had the guts to drop Elijah Green but not Cade Cavalli. I know it may read like I’m picking on the latter, but Cavalli still turns 27 this summer and hasn’t made three starts in the same month since 2022.
A few other nuggets which would not have been in his Top 100 post last month:
…Susana allowed a .407 OBP to LHBs, which he attributes to his low arm slot that gives lefties an even longer look at the pitch.
…Like the Nats, Law likes Bazzell’s bat even at the expense of subpar defense but feels like the Texas Tech pick could close that gap.
…Despite his strong season, Law still sees Lara as a FB/SL reliever that they try to hide from lefties, who, like Susana, tee off on him (.467 SLG%).
…As Todd also noted, Law is higher on Stuart than most, with potential as a starter vs. a middle reliever. He likes his SL and CH more than his variety of FBs that don’t have much life despite his leverage as a power forward on the mound.
…Conversely, Law sees Lile as a 4th OF having barely enough glove to play center and not nearly enough power to play left or right. This would be more concerning if the Nats didn’t have a surplus of OF candidates.
…Unfortunately, one of those (in Law’s eyes) is not Hassell. It’s really hard to argue against his assessment that he “kind of stopped hitting entirely the moment he got to the Nats’ system and hasn’t resumed.”
…Finally, Law thinks Cranz could get a turn in the rotation this summer despite having spent most of his collegiate career in the ‘pen. This isn’t really all that radical, but lately a lot of teams seem willing to pigeon-hole pitchers into a relief role before seeing if they’re capable of more.
I just posted some thoughts over on Todd’s thread, but I found the insight into the players from the 2024 draft super interesting. Many of these guys were completely off the prospect radar. BA, for example, did a pre draft top 500, and guys like Cranz and Diaz weren’t ranked at all. It’s especially astounding because BA just ranked Cranz as the Nats’ 24th best prospect, but wasn’t at all on their radar just a few months prior.
So it’s good to get some better understanding of who these guys profile as. Diaz, in particular, sounds a lot like… Seaver King. A defensive SS with some bat projection from a mediocre college. The difference is King transferred to Wake Forest for a season, and that got him drafted in the first round, while Diaz stayed at Indiana State, and got a lot less eyes on him.
I can disagree with some of the placements (if you read Morales’ description, it sounds like Law is placing him much higher than he is), but I can’t much much to disagree with in the descriptions. It’s a pretty fair assessment of guys like Lara, Susana, Lile, etc. even if I’d err on the more optimistic side.
Your point gets to the heart of my confusion about rating the recent draftees. Cranz only threw 6 pro innings last year. What could Law have possibly seen, if he even saw him at all? Diaz didn’t get rostered. These guys went from off the top 500 potential draftees to like the ~700th best prospects in the whole sport with basically no new information available. It doesn’t make sense.
I suppose it’s possible that they’ve gone back and looked at college tape and realized that they missed something before the draft, but it feels much more likely that these kind of rankings are based on takes from industry sources and not their own independent scouting.
Now that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s worse information, and I have no problem with these evaluators including information passed to them from teams (unless they explicitly said that their takes are exclusively based on independent scouting, which I don’t believe any of these guys claim). But it does mean there’s a layer of motivated reasoning that the journalist needs to be aware of and try to unwind.
Really good interview with Hassell over at FanGraphs: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/sunday-notes-robert-hassell-iii-made-a-lightning-quick-change/
David Laurila had previously done an interview with Hassell back in 2022 that was also enlightening, but if I post the link here it’ll get stuck by the spam filter so just google “Robert Hassell III Talks Hitting”
I have to admit, and maybe this is my pessimistic take, that this article was depressing, albeit enlightening. Hassell talks about how a couple days with the AFL hitting coach, Nic Wilson (of the Rockies’ org), caused something to click with Hassell and seems to have had immediate success. It’s depressing because into his 3rd season, little from Nats coaches seem to have done anything to help. Rather, watching his OPS immediately go from .846 in A+ with the Padres to .548 in A+ with the Nats in A+ in 2022, followed by a combined .645 OPS in 2023 and .647 in 2024 and then jump back to .877 under non-Nats coaches in the AFL, it feels like the Nats coaching staff are doing active harm to Hassell’s plate approach.
Remember, Millas got “fixed” in the AFL as well. And there certainly has been a lot of hitting struggles up and down the Nats’ organization.
That said, as much as we want to believe that there are significantly better coaches out there, there really aren’t very many Kevin Longs, and even he couldn’t fix Carter Kieboom. My mind goes to Giolito, and all the coaches across two organizations who struggled with him (and perhaps one or two with the Nats who really screwed him up [allegedly]). It was his high school coach who finally helped him figure things out, at least five seasons into pro ball.
With James Wood, it was a youth league coach, who had coached him since he was 13, who helped him last offseason to make such huge strides in 2024. (The same coach helped Lipscomb.) Sure wish we could send Elijah Green to him to break some of those IMG bad habits.
That said, an overriding thought as I read through Law’s profiles was that there’s some good talent here, but nearly all of them seemed to need a “something else” that good coaching presumably provide — better pitch selectivity, a shortened stroke, or a better power stroke among the hitters; another pitch, a better approach against LH hitters, better control for the pitchers. Those things CAN be taught, and learned, but all of us can think of plenty of examples where guys didn’t learn them, for one reason or another.