Innholdsfortegnelse for 9-22 MINOR LEAGUE POY/FINAL STATISTICS i Baseball America

JULY 20, 1997 Shortstop and Freshman of the Year Brian Roberts established North Carolina program records with 102 hits, 24 doubles, 47 stolen bases and a .427 average. It’s always been hard for Mike Roberts to admit just how good his son Brian Roberts was. Players who suited up at North Carolina when Roberts was the coach joke about young Brian getting more swings in pre-game batting practice than the Tar Heels did. Coach Roberts wasn’t quite sure that 5-foot-9 Brian was good enough out of Chapel Hill (N.C.) High to play in the Atlantic Coast Conference Then he wasn’t sure if he wanted to coach him. As the old story goes, only when he couldn’t convince other schools to take his son did he agree to coach him at…

For Orioles outfield prospect Austin Hays, a small adjustment helped produce big results. The righthanded batter had a breakout season. It began with high Class A Frederick and continued after his June 22 promotion to Double-A Bowie Hays ranked among the top players in the minors in several categories during his .329/.365/.593 season, finishing tied for second with 32 home runs. His slugging percentage (fourth in the minors) rose from his pro debut in 2016 at short-season Aberdeen to Frederick and then Bowie in 2017 2017. The Orioles drafted Hays in the third round in 2016 out of Jacksonville. Not long after that, several O’s hitting coaches noticed Hays wasn’t properly tapping into his power potential. “The biggest thing is having good separation with my hands,” Hays said. “In college,…

Vanderbilt has established a consistent presence in Baseball America’s recruiting rankings throughout head coach Tim Corbin’s tenure at the school, which began after the 2002 season. The Commodores’ newcomers are the top-ranked recruiting class for the fifth time and extend their record streak of ranked recruiting classes to 13. As well as Vanderbilt has recruited under Corbin, however, it still found a way to reach new heights this year. The Commodores’ 17-man recruiting class includes 10 players who appeared on the BA500 ranking of draft-eligible prospects this spring. Since BA expanded its draft rankings to 500 players in 2012, the record for the most BA500 players in one recruiting class was eight, which Vanderbilt set in 2015. Hauling in this kind of prolific class required a certain amount of luck…

Rarely does a teenage position player spend significant time above Class A. More rare is the teen who excels at multiple levels. Braves center fielder Ronald Acuna, our Minor League Player of the Year, joined select company this season when the 19-year-old produced at a rate rarely seen by a teenager at Double-A and Triple-A. Acuna this season hit .325/.374/.522 in 139 games at high Class A Florida, Double-A Mississippi and Triple-A Gwinnett. That translates to an adjusted OPS+ of 155 and places him inside the top 10 for teenagers since 1987 with at least 200 minor league plate appearances above Class A. The following 19-year-olds were most similar to Acuna based on their excellence at Double-A and/or Triple-A. 1. ALEX RODRIGUEZ, SS MARINERS (1995) A-Rod entered the 1995 season…

There are developmental benefits to adversity if handled the right way, and righthander Sean Reid-Foley is determined to turn his early 2017 pains into long-term gains. Certainly, the 22-year-old managed to rescue his season after a troubling first six starts at Double-A New Hampshire, during which he managed just 15 innings while allowing 14 runs, all but one earned, on 22 hits and 14 walks with 16 strikeouts. Since recording just two against Binghamton at the end of that stretch, on May 4, Reid-Foley had steadily and methodically corrected. Beginning May 10 against Hartford, when he threw five innings of one-run ball and struck out seven, he recorded a 3.90 ERA in 92.1 innings with 79 strikeouts over a 16-start stretch. While that turnaround won’t be fully reflected in his…

Can you predict the future of a 16-year-old? That is, ostensibly, the job of an international scout, with major league teams able to sign amateur players from Latin America each year on July 2 if the player is 16. Even though the Collective Bargaining Agreement—agreed to after the 2016 season—changed the international signing rules, the official signing age remains the same. But in practice, everything has shifted younger. Early deals have long been common practice in Latin America, but as teams hunt for any competitive edge they can get, the market has accelerated to an unprecedented pace. Since the beginning of the calendar year, teams have been busy reaching agreements to sign 2018 prospects. Players for 2019—mostly 14-year-olds who won’t play in an official professional game for three years—are starting…

@BaseballAmerica @BaseballAmerica BaseballAmericaMag ReadBA EDITOR’S NOTE: A WORK IN PROGRESS When we launched a redesign of our magazine earlier this summer, our goal was to significantly upgrade our print product with a glossy cover, better organization and design, and deeper, well-reported stories. Baseball America has long been considered a trusted independent authority on the future stars of the game, so investing more magazine space to those stories seemed to be the right move in order to serve our readers Change is hard and some pieces of the magazine—transactions, obituaries, organization reports—were cut in order to make room for the changes. In announcing the new BA, I wrote in this space that I wanted feedback from our readers and many have written, called, tweeted and sent letters. Some were positive, others…

In his first full season as a professional, Bo Bichette made baseball look easy. The 19-year-old Blue Jays shortstop hit .362/.423/.565 with 14 home runs in 108 games as one of the youngest players in two Class A leagues, winning the minor league batting title while placing himself firmly on the map as one of game’s best prospects. Given his track record at his St. Petersburg, Fla., high school, his performance this season at low Class A Lansing and high Class A Dunedin shouldn’t be a surprise. As an amateur, Bichette stood out even among a group of older, equally talented teammates. As a freshman, he hit fifth on his travel- ball team. The four players in front of him? Nick Gordon, Forrest Wall, Ryan Mountcastle and J.J. Schwarz. That’s…

1. VANDERBILT Recruiting Coordinator: Mike Baxter Top Recruit: LHP Jake Eder (No. 69 on the BA500) The Commodores escaped the draft with their class fully intact and hauled in a record 10 players from the BA 500. As a result, Vanderbilt tops the recruiting rankings for the fifth time (2005, ’11, ’12, ’15) and extends its record streak of Top 25 classes to 13 years. Eder headlines the class and has frontline starter upside thanks to his size and arm strength. His fastball sits around 90 mph and he pairs it with a curveball that is inconsistent, but has the makings of an above-average pitch. Like Eder, righthanders Tyler Brown (No. 213) and Mason Hickman (No. 437) and lefthanders Hugh Fisher (No. 326) and Joe Gobillot (No. 275) all have…

We dedicate myriad pages of this issue to the top prospect performers of 2017, including features on future stars Ronald Acuna, Bo Bichette and Austin Hays and extending to our annual Minor League All-Star Team In this space, we shift gears to cover the lighter side of minor league life, which includes many of the most amusing or downright unbelievable outcomes of 2017. TURNSTILE TIM: Before the season, Baseball America asked minor league executives to sum up their predictions for Tim Tebow’s foray into baseball. Their answer? Profitable. Boy, were they right. Tebow’s presence was felt most strongly at the cash registers in stadiums around the South Atlantic and Florida State leagues. Between the two leagues, games in which Tebow played (or could have played) drew more than 571,811 fans.…

In August, analyst Joe Sheehan examined the nine teams to record .700 or better winning percentages. The two best, the 1906 Cubs (.763) and 1909 Pirates (.724), played more than a century ago and played a far different game, but they helped illustrate his point. The 1906 Cubs lost the World Series, and so did three of the other eight teams to win 70 percent of the time or more. In the last 70 years, since the end of World War II, two of the three teams that finished above .700 did not win it all. The 1954 Indians (111-43, .721) were swept in the World Series by Willie Mays and the New York Giants. The 2001 Mariners (116-46, .716) scraped by the Indians in the American League Division Series…

HAVE A QUESTION? @jjcoop36 askba@baseballamerica.com A recent Prospect Hot Sheet noted that Fort Wayne had “once-in-a-generation” talent. I’m curious if you think the Padres’ low Class A affiliate is the most talented minor league team this year? —LOREN CASUTO A Seeing one elite player in a minor league game will be more memorable down the line than seeing four or five big leaguers who had cups of coffee. But it’s also important for prospects to perform, because seeing a prospect struggle isn’t as memorable as seeing him go 3-for-4 with a home run. From that standpoint, I would nominate Fort Wayne as the most entertaining team in 2017 because it combined prospect pedigree with outstanding performance, led by shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. and righthander Michel Baez. The team also boasted…

“I had an opportunity with (Ken Griffey) Jr., with Alex (Rodriguez), and now Acuna. I mean you can throw him into that lot of guys, for me, at 19 years old. He’s only going to get better. The guys are special when they come around like this.” —GWINNETT HITTING COACH JOHN MOSES, A FORMER MARINERS PLAYER AND COACH “When he does something spectacular, it’s kind of like ‘That’s Acuna.’ You hear guys in the clubhouse who have been there say in the big leagues there’s not many guys like Acuna.” —GWINNETT CATCHER KADE SCIVICQUE “Watching him play, you can see it. This is what he was meant to do from the time he was put on this earth. He was meant to play baseball.” BRAVES ASSISTANT FARM DIRECTOR JONATHAN SCHUERHOLZ…

C DANNY JANSEN | BLUE JAYS Triple-A Buffalo (International) Jansen never played more than 57 games in any of his first four pro seasons, but he finally stayed healthy and began wearing glasses this season. The result was a meteoric rise across three levels, culminating in Triple-A. Jansen’s .884 OPS was best in the minors among catchers with at least 400 plate appearances, and he was the only full-time backstop to record more walks (41) than strikeouts (40). Defensively, Jansen committed four errors and allowed just four passed balls, though he threw out just 24 percent of basestealers. 1B RHYS HOSKINS | PHILLIES Triple-A Lehigh Valley (International) Hoskins was tied for third in the minors with 29 home runs when he got called up by the Phillies on Aug. 10,…