Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2021 i Baseball America

MEET THE WOMEN WHO ARE BLAZING A TRAIL IN THE INDUSTRY. When looking to keep things simple, Emilee Fragapane likens her role with the Dodgers to something out of “Moneyball.” Of course, as a senior data analyst, she’s become accustomed to finding the easiest way to describe to others what she does and how things work, in a way they can understand. Those kinds of translations also tidily sum up one piece of her vast role of duties with the team. With a background in econometrics and statistics, and experience in all areas of the game, Fragapane is currently in her ninth season with the Dodgers. Over that time, she has transitioned into more of a coach- and player-facing role than ever before, translating and communicating the applications of big…

As the major league season heads for the home stretch, the promise of prospect season nears. By this time of year, most of the top prospects have already been called up. The draft is complete and its players have signed. Even minor leaguers have had time to work through the rust of a disruptive 2020 and better reflect their true abilities. For these reasons, we headed back to the prospect drawing board and rebuilt our Top 100 Prospects ranking from the ground up. For the ranking contained in this issue, we considered only players who were in the minor leagues as of late July. This keeps the feature more evergreen and its focus more on lining up talent for 2022. Out with the old. In with the new. So while…

Vanderbilt righthanders Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter came into the 2021 season regarded as the two best college prospects in the country. Both could have been first-round picks out of high school—Rocker in 2018, Leiter in 2019—but opted to instead to play for the Commodores. As they entered their draft year, both had a chance to be chosen with the first overall pick. As lofty as the expectations were, Rocker and Leiter largely lived up to them. Rocker went 14-4, 2.73 in 122 innings. Leiter went 11-4, 2.13 in 110 innings. The pair tied for the national lead in strikeouts with 179. Both were first-team All-Americans, making them the first rotation-mates to earn that honor in the same year since Rice’s Jeff Niemann and Wade Townsend in 2003. Rocker and…

The stakes seemed higher to Patrick Robey this season. As the head coach at Madison Central High in Mississippi, Robey believes coaching staffs around the country will understand and agree with him. But it wasn’t the games that counted for more. It was the time. Before experiencing the loss of last season to the coronavirus pandemic, it had become easy to take the regular routine of spring and summer baseball for granted. Practices were a given. Motivational speeches from coaches were expected. The roller coaster ride of a championship run was often the most significant emotional toll to be paid. Heading into this year knowing his team would be reunited with a chance to return to some normalcy on the diamond, albeit missing several players who didn’t get the sendoff…

The draft was held in July for the first time, this year piggybacking with the Futures Game on the Sunday heading into the all-star break. While it will take years to accurately assess how each team fared in the 2021 draft, it’s never too early to get excited about a few teams that stood out to us right away. CINCINNATI REDS First pick: 17th overall Bonus pool: $11,905,700 (fourth highest) Perhaps it’s unsurprising for a team with as many high picks as the Reds, who chose 17th, 30th, 35th and 53rd, to make the list of standout draft classes. Still, we loved seeing the up-the-middle bats the Reds drafted early and felt they got several notable values later. UCLA shortstop Matt McLain (first round) was among the top college position…

At 18 years old, Karsten Whitson was given a choice that many who haven’t walked in his shoes would consider a no-brainer. After the righthander was drafted ninth overall by the Padres in 2010 out of Chipley (Fla.) High, the organization offered him upward of $2 million to begin his professional career. Except it hadn’t been Whitson’s childhood dream to become a Eugene Emerald or Fort Wayne TinCap—or even a Padre. He had grown up wanting to pitch in a different jersey. Whitson grew up the child of University of Florida fans and had long dreamed of pitching the Gators to the College World Series. He was firmly committed to play for coach Kevin O’Sullivan. For Whitson, accepting that signing bonus from San Diego meant giving up that lifelong dream…

When former major league outfielder Robert Perez rides his bicycle through the streets of his native Venezuela, he doesn’t get far before he is interrupted. “It’s like I’m the mayor,” Perez said in Spanish. “Everyone wants to say ‘hello.’” There have been better Venezuelan baseball players than Perez, with Ronald Acuña Jr., Miguel Cabrera and Felix Hernandez being but three prominent examples. But perhaps no one is more beloved than Perez, who incredibly played 27 years in the Venezuelan League, all of those winters for Lara, before retiring in 2015 at age 45. His youngest son, Hedbert Perez, may not ever be as popular as his dad, who has a street named after him in Venezuela. But there is a decent chance that Hedbert, an outfielder who is just 18…

Mississippi State is one of the biggest programs in college baseball. It’s the alma mater of Thunder and Lightning—Will Clark and Rafael Palmeiro—as well as Jake Mangum, the Southeastern Conference’s hit king. Longtime Mississippi State coach Ron Polk is known as the Godfather of the SEC for the way he brought the show of big-time baseball to the conference. Dudy Noble Field is an iconic venue and the home of the largest on-campus crowds in the college baseball history. The one thing Mississippi State was always missing, however, was a national championship. From the time Chris Lemonis was hired as head coach following the 2018 season—when the Bulldogs made a Cinderella run to the final four of the College World Series under interim head coach Gary Henderson—he has never run…

In the waning hours of Aug. 15, 2010, A.J. Vanegas spent the day before his 18th birthday as one might imagine any recent college-bound high school graduate might. He hung out with family and talked about what the future might bring. For the Stanford-bound Vanegas, however, that future involved deciding if he would accept a $1.8 million bonus offer from the Padres as the organization sought to buy him out of pitching for his father’s alma mater. “It was always kind of lurking, that decision,” said Vanegas, San Diego’s seventh-round pick out of Redwood Christian High in San Lorenzo, Calif. “It kept building up and building up as we were getting closer and closer. It was interesting, that whole summer.” From an outsider’s perspective, it can seem so surprising that…

SCOUTS IN THEIR OWN WORDS. THE PLAYERS. THE JOURNEY. THE STATE OF THE GAME. Coulson Barbiche began his baseball career working in a minor league front office. He sold tickets, wore the mascot uniform, pulled the tarp or did whatever else needed to be done. He steadily worked his way up and became an area scout for the Blue Jays, where he scouted and signed first-round righthander Alek Manoah out of West Virginia in 2019. Barbiche recently joined the Baseball America podcast to discuss his path through baseball and what he saw in Manoah in college. You can listen to the full podcast on BaseballAmerica.com. BA: You scouted and signed Alek Manoah in 2019. What was it like for you seeing someone who you drafted that high get to the…

AN ANALYTICALLY INCLINED LOOK AT THE GAME With the Futures Game in the rear-view mirror, we took stock of minor league players of the year for all 30 organizations at midseason. The criteria used is simply best performance by a prospect. Statistics are through July 11, the day of the Futures Game and the rough midpoint of the season. ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS ALEK THOMAS, OF DOUBLE-A AMARILLO Thomas adapted to Double-A to deliver a well-rounded .273/.366/.481 batting line with five home runs in 47 games. He led off for the National League team at the Futures Game. Age: 21 ATLANTA BRAVES JESSE FRANKLIN, OF HIGH-A ROME The Braves liked Franklin’s power-speed combo at Michigan and drafted him in the third round in 2020 even though he missed the year with an…

GABRIEL MORENO, C BLUE JAYS AGE: 21. B-T: R-R. HT: 5-11. WT: 195. COUNTRY: Venezuela. ACQUIRED: Signed as international free agent by Blue Jays in 2016. PROJECTED SCOUTING GRADES HIT 55 POWER 55 RUN 35 FIELD 65 ARM 60 Prospect analysis often requires making predictions about an unpredictable game and its unpredictable players. That sense of the unknown is one reason why breakout prospects intrigue us so much. Every year, a player who entered the season as a relative unknown ends up dominating as soon as the first pitch is thrown on Opening Day. The Nationals’ Juan Soto was that way in 2018, when he returned from a series of injuries in the prior season to rip through Low-A, High-A and Double-A in just 39 games on the way to…

The baseball universe is not infinite, even if it seems that way sometimes. From its start in 1981, Baseball America has endeavored to keep one eye on the future. That vision began with founding editor Allan Simpson’s laser focus on the draft and player development. Early BA readers consumed scouting reports for draft picks and rankings of minor league prospects in ways that had never been seen in the public sphere. As it turned out, some major league front offices at the time weren’t as well-informed as the average BA reader. Of course, no such information gap exists today. But that hasn’t stopped Baseball America from staking out more prospect territory. Today, our analysis and rankings of the prospect universe extend to 16-year-old international amateurs, high school summer showcase standouts…

The day after the 2021 draft ended, the first major high school showcase of the summer began. The Perfect Game National showcase brought more than 300 of the top high school players in the country to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., for a six-day showcase from July 13-18. These were the players who showed the best tools in different categories at an event which should give a good overview of the top prep players to watch for the 2022 draft. BEST HITTER Termarr Johnson was the star of PG National. It’s still early, but the uncommitted shortstop from Georgia has the look of a top 10 overall pick in 2022, with tools and maturity in the batter’s box well beyond his years. Johnson has phenomenal bat speed and whips…

The international signing class of 2019 was affected more than any subset of players by the pandemic. With rare exceptions, international free agents from that signing class made their official pro debuts in the Rookie-level complex leagues this summer, nearly two years after signing. International amateurs who signed in the summer of 2019 got to participate in instructional league that fall and informal Tricky League games afterward. But those players were largely on their own in 2020, at least in between minor league spring training and instructional league in the fall. Few IFAs who signed in 2019 were invited to alternate training sites in 2020. What’s more, many Venezuelans were stranded at spring complexes because their home country closed its borders. That means that scouts’ looks at 2019 IFAs this…

Baseball is king at Mississippi State, which is rare in the Southeastern Conference. Now, the Bulldogs are not only kings but also champions after winning the 2021 College World Series. Most Outstanding Player Will Bednar recorded a 1.47 ERA across three CWS starts, while striking out 26 and allowing five hits in 18.1 innings. The Giants drafted him 14th overall in July. The Mississippi State program that rose to prominence in the early 1980s thanks to the exploits of Will Clark and Rafael Palmeiro—combined with the timeliness to offer programming options to a fledgling ESPN—finally won it all in its 12th trip to Omaha. Interest in Bulldogs players by major league clubs has intensified in the past four decades, with more attention being paid in the past 10 draft classes.…

Wherever Jackson Jobe went this year, excitement followed. As the centerpiece for Heritage Hall High, the 18-year-old helped lead his Oklahoma City team to playoffs, then to regionals and finally to a state championship. Jobe had an incredible regular season, then somehow found another gear in the final stretch. As the Chargers’ starting shortstop, Jobe hit .469/.592/.927 in the heart of the lineup with seven home runs and 13 stolen bases in 32 games. On the mound, he went 9-0 with a 0.14 ERA and three complete games over 51.2 innings. He also struck out 122 and walked just five. Those numbers led him not only to be named his team’s MVP, and then to become the third overall pick in the 2021 draft, selected by the Tigers, but the…

Fifty years ago, the greatest All-Star Game ever played took place in Detroit. The 1971 All-Star Game featured 20 future Hall of Fame players, including Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Reggie Jackson and Roberto Clemente. Both managers, Sparky Anderson and Earl Weaver, would be enshrined in Cooperstown as well. Aaron, Clemente, Jackson, Johnny Bench, Frank Robinson and Harmon Killebrew all homered in the game, with Jackson’s legendary shot to right field banking off a light tower on the roof of Tiger Stadium. Juan Marichal pitched two scoreless innings. So did Jim Palmer. The field was so loaded with stars that Pete Rose didn’t even get an at-bat. Tom Seaver and Steve Carlton never got a chance to take the mound. It is not fair to put such expectations on 2021 class…