Minor League Baseball League Top 10 Prospects: Carolina League

With the minor league baseball season over, it’s list season, and we’ll continue the league top 10 lists with the Carolina League

Minor league baseball has concluded its regular season and playoffs at this point, so we will be starting our series of league top 10 prospects here at Call To The Pen. This series will be keyed by Benjamin Chase through extensive video research and discussion with scouts and those within the game. Certainly, there are other opinions on these players and the order, but this is his list. Each list will start with a review of the season for that league and some of the leaders in each league. One note: to be eligible to be on this list, a player must have qualified for the league stat leaders (2.7 PA/league G for hitters, 0.8 IP/league game for pitchers) in order to be considered.

Season Wrap

Hurricane Irma caused the Carolina League to end their season a bit early and have co-champions this season rather than continue to the finals and deciding one champion. Lynchburg captured half of the championship after having the best record in the entire Carolina League by 13 games with 87 wins on the season. The new Texas Rangers affiliate, the Down East Wood Ducks finished with an overall record 15 games below .500, but they won the Southern division in the second half, and they rode that wave to half of the Carolina League title in the first year of the franchise.

Some of the league leaders:
AVG – Ryan Mountcastle, Frederick, .314
OBP – Myles Straw, Buies Creek, .412
SLG – Ryan Mountcastle, Frederick, .542
HR – Ademar Rifaela, Frederick, 24
SB – Sam Haggerty, Lynchburg, 49

W – Triston McKenzie, Lynchburg, 12
SV – Nate Griep, Carolina, 30
K – Triston McKenzie Lynchburg, 186
ERA – Brock Hartson, Lynchburg, 3.06
WHIP – Brock Hartson, Lynchburg, 1.04

Now to the top 10…