Baseball’s 50 Top Prospects: 30-21
30. Lewis Brinson, OF, Texas Rangers
Coming into this season, Brinson had a lot of helium, and interestingly, a lot of consensus, as Baseball America ranked him #16, MLB.com #16, and Baseball Prospectus #15. Much of this was predicated on a “changed” swing in 2015 that resulted in drastically reduced strikeout rates and better contact. The issue is that the “old” swing is back again this season.
Brinson is a guy who absolutely oozes natural talent. He has incredible speed, and he has light tower power to go along with it. The issue for him has always been the swing and miss and the lack of contact in his long swing that has quite a bit of moving parts in it. Last year, it required Brinson to really perfect all the pieces of the swing, and, to his credit, he held that “perfect” swing for nearly the entire season, including the Arizona Fall League, but you started to see the wheels come off in the Puerto Rican Winter League.
Brinson is a true center fielder who can track down balls very well, and the Rangers love him out in center field, and they could very well live with the lower average and strikeouts, knowing they’d get the power and speed along with the defense, but currently, he’s hitting .219 with a .273 OBP in AA, and that could be hard to play, even with those other aspects.
29. Josh Hader, LHP, Milwaukee Brewers
Only MLB.com even had Hader on their top 100 list, but to their credit, they had him a ways up the list at #61. Hader’s looked like arguably the best pitcher in the entire minor leagues this season for the Brewers between their AA and AAA teams. So far, between the two levels, Hader has totaled a 1.87 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, and 30/99 BB/K ratio over 77 innings.
That’s not a misprint – 99 punch outs in 77 innings. Hader’s been part of two July deadline deals, but he’s seemingly found a home in Milwaukee. His build, arm angle, and long limbs resemble White Sox ace Chris Sale, and obviously the results track similarly this year. Due to his lower arm angle, he’s struggled at times to get on top of his off-speed pitches, but he’s doing that much better this year, especially with the slider. His fastball reaches the upper 90s in short bursts and sits 93-96 in game.
I was talking with a scout that’s seen Hader up close a few times and has been in the game for a while. He stopped me cold as I was asking about Hader specifics, and he said all I needed to know – “Ben, if
was 6’3 instead of 6’10, this is what he’d be”. My own viewing had Hader a top 40 guy for me, but that comment moved him up quite a bit for me.
Next: #28 & #27