NationalsProspects.com

Initial 2019 Player Reports Completed

I’ve made the first pass of writing capsules and essays for the 2019 Watchlist and Player reports.

I’m giving the Minor League Baseball Analyst another shot but it may be more indicative of how slow this offseason is than anything else. That it allows me to punt on some players is a nice side effect, I’ll have to admit, but I don’t feel like I did that as much as I did when it was strictly BA and Sickels.

When the books arrive, I’ll finish ’em up, edit those that need it, and then lock ’em down. After that, the 2019 Watchlist becomes reference material for the rest of the season.

As always, feel free to discuss in the comments…

24 Commments

  1. Should be interesting to see MAC Jenkins effect influence on some guys most noteably Malvin Pena with his head swivel correction .
    Chisholm trail should pass through Hagerstown .
    Perhaps a name to climb on the Latin noteable list ?? Ro Sosa with his 2b/ C history ??
    Garcia , Antuna and Sanchez truly fit in the gaps in infield depth chart

      1. Davey must know him from Tampa days.
        So Snyder. Goeddel. No Sierra no Dominguez .
        Maybe one more OF for F troop

        1. Spring fall out and down effect , Luke ?
          If Harper signs then Eaton possibly traded.
          Stevenson ends up on F troop pushing Converse Taylor to Harrisburg to man CF with Hunter Jones ??

          1. F-troop so far ?
            Snyder, Hernandez , Goeddel, Keller, Bautista , Taylor , Wilson , Reynolds , Bengie G, Davidson, YoAdrian Sanchez, Gushue , Severino , S Kieboom, Lowry Converse Taylor
            But there are probably some AAA/AA elevator decisions by last minute signings or level needs

            Example : Harper signs making Stevenson a possible AAA repeater moving Taylor and or RaffieB to AA with Jones , Agustin , Wiseman and the Pride of College Station , Nick Banks
            I would imagine Raffie recovery is on schedule so maybe he is closer to D.C. In Burg making Sundberg Potomac OF with Canning and ( tomatos from the audience ) Kameron Esthay who has some pop but the average low bar .

          2. Let’s not talk about Harper. Hopefully, the “radio silence” of the past few weeks means that the Nats have finally moved on. Given the way the top end of the free agency market has turned out this year, with the best offer for Machado so far being around $75 million less than originally estimated and came from a bad team, even the Nats’ original $300 million offer to Harper would have been a huge overpay.

        2. Anyone want to play in Fresno? In the summer? Boy, one thing is certain it’ll be waaaaaaay different from Syracuse and the land of Hiawatha and glacier made lakes.

  2. Interesting writeups. Personally, I’ll be watching Andrew Istler and Jacob Condra-Bogan in addition to these watchlisted names…I heart relievers who limit baserunners, even if they are getting kinda old for prospects.

  3. I think Ward is more deserving than a sort of honorable mention in the Watchlist.

    Just because we’re tired of hearing his name, doesn’t mean he’s any less a prospect. For example, he’s younger than just about every single one of our top pitching prospects, including recent draftee Wil Crowe. And unlike guys like Hernandez and Davidson, the Nats have moved him aggressively and don’t seem to have forgotten about him. Plus, with our nonexistent 1B depth in the upper minors, he’s pretty much an injury away from the big leagues.

    I’d also agree with SaoMagnifico about the inclusion of Condra-Bogan and Istler, plus Jhon Romero and Tanner Rainey, who are also easy to forget about.

    1. Ward has played 272 games at AA (i.e. not a small sample size), repeating the level twice, and has shown minimal progress. When I saw him, he could barely outrun a catcher and from what the scouts saw last summer that’s still true. They did him no favors by waiting so long to shift him over to 1B, especially when his virtual defensive twin (Matt Skole) had just come up the ladder. As I’ve stated many times in the past, the Billy Rowell argument (“But he’s still young”) is simply unconvincing, especially when it’s the first thing brought up.

      As for the relievers, it’s hard not to notice that they’re all 2018 acquisitions…

      2. Ward had one of the 5 best offensive performances in the Nationals farm system last year. It wasn’t that he was just young. He was young and good, which was something Matt Skole could never claim.

        I just think there’s a lot of prospect fatigue in the mix with Ward. Imagine if next season, Pablo O’Connor went on an absolute tear, got promoted three levels from Hagerstown to Harrisburg before the ASB, and put up a .259/.376/.456 line in AA. We’d be drooling over him. And yet, he’d be at the exact same age and spot as Drew Ward was this season.

        But O’Connor won’t get promoted three times. Even with a very good start, he’ll play half a season in Hagerstown, and then the second half in Potomac, and he’ll end up a year or two further behind Ward developmentally, but his stats won’t be tainted with a couple poor seasons. I could write a similar story about Blake Chisolm, Aldrem Corredor or Jacob Rhinesmith.

        Despite all the words I’ve just written about it, this isn’t that big of a deal. But I’ll be rooting for Ward like our other rare HS project/prospects- Hood, Souza, Taylor and Reetz.

        1. The key difference in your hypothetical is that O’Connor is athletic and can play all over the diamond. Ward is slow, has an iron glove, and is defensively limited to corner infield spots. Hitting enough for a superutility or up-the-middle guy is not necessarily hitting enough for a 1B/3B.

          1. Is O’Connor athletic? I’d assumed by the fact that he’d played almost exclusively LF, that he was another bat-first corner OF, but that was probably just that, an assumption. Any scouting reports on his defence?

      4. Still think you write for baseball prospectus on the side …

        “The 2013 draft hasn’t yet yielded any harvest for Washington to reap: Only one player has made it the big leagues so far, and that’s Nick Pivetta, who was traded to Philadelphia a few years ago. Ward was the team’s second pick from that class, but the outlook for him producing any major-league fruit soon isn’t great. His glove isn’t strong and likely won’t be enough to let him last at the hot corner, so he’ll have to forge his way forward with his bat. This unfortunate circumstance makes it a shame that he didn’t progress as much as hoped at the plate in his second go-around at Harrisburg last year. The key to sprouting will be unlocking his power potential, but he’ll have to figure it out sooner rather than later, as a team will only try watering the same seed at Double-A so many times.”

  5. Prospect rankings are great but who jumps up and surprises as a top prospect.

    The Nats need a Jordan Zimmermann in the system. I’m hoping that Denaburg and Cate make their move.

    1. An under-the-radar guy, but Aaron Fletcher put up a 34:4 K/BB in his first pro season that has me dreaming. Maybe we had our hopes pinned on the wrong Houston lefty? Maybe.

      Jackson Tetreault is a quintessential “if he could add 2-3 mph more to his fastball…” prospect. He turns 23 in June and is still rail-thin. The bones are there, but they need some meat on them.

      Lotta smart analytics folks seem much higher on Sterling Sharp now than they were last winter, even though his numbers at Double-A this year weren’t anything special. Eyes will be on him and Wil Crowe in the Harrisburg rotation to start 2019. I imagine both get at least a cameo at major league camp as well.

  6. Lots to catch up on here. I’ll kind of split the difference on Ward because I think he’s done enough at the plate that, when combined with still being relatively young, he still has some value. However, I was never that high on him in the first place, so my bar for him has been lower. I always thought he was overvalued by a lot of folks as he seemed 1B-limited (even while scuffling at 3B) and really needed T-Mo-like 30 HR power to offset those limitations. He’s got a lot more power than Gutierrez ever did (someone I really thought was overrated at a corner position), but he also hasn’t had anything close to a 30-HR breakout. Maybe the thin PCL air can inflate his stats.

    Ward is also a good reminder of how risky it is to draft high schoolers. Reetz is another, as is the departed Blake Perkins. It often takes forever, and a lot of ups and downs (Souza, MAT), before you can tell whether you’ve got something.

    O’Connor — he played 2B at Azusa, and they stuck him in LF at Auburn, so presumably he’s got at least some mobility, although I would guess not much of an arm.

    I share Sao’s optimism on Fletcher. I’m not particularly on the Tetreault bandwagon yet, though. He does have a big frame that could fill out late.

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