MLB Prospects: Top decision reminds of a recent dilemma

Baseball America became the first to release its list of the top 100 MLB prospects. The debate at #1 is intriguing this year, but it isn’t that long ago a similar debate happened.

Today, Baseball America released their full top 100 MLB prospects, just ahead of Keith Law of ESPN releasing #51-100 of his top 100 MLB prospects list. We don’t know the top prospect for Law quite yet, but Baseball America likely surprised a number of people by putting Ronald Acuna #1 overall.

This season there is a debate over who should be the #1 overall prospect, and Baseball America released an article (subscription based) on the debate over how to get to the top overall prospect among Acuna, Vladimir Guerrero, Jr., and Shohei Ohtani.

This reminds me tremendously of the debates that happened before the 2012 season. That year, there was a dominant pitcher who had worked his way all the way to the major leagues and a pair of teenage outfielders vying for the #1 overall position.

Let’s take a look at the two trios and how they compare…

2012: Bryce Harper, Matt Moore, Mike Trout

In the 2011-2012 offseason, Harper was the guy who had about as much hype as any player has ever received as an amateur, gracing Sports Illustrated’s cover before he really needed a razor because of his skill on a diamond. After going #1 overall in the 2010 draft, he’d done nothing but impress.

He opened the 2011 season in low-A and bumped straight to AA, hitting a combined .297/.392/.501 with 17 home runs as an 18 year-old before dominating the Arizona Fall League, hitting .333/.400/.634 with 6 home runs against some of the best prospects in the game.

Moore had been drafted in 2007 out of high school in New Mexico by the Rays and brought up through their meticulous program, moving one level at a time. That was, until 2011.

In 2011, Moore jumped up AA and AAA and worked his way to the Rays in September. He went 12-3 over 27 starts in the minors, throwing 155 innings with a 1.92 ERA, 0.95 WHIP, and a 46/210 BB/K before striking out 15 over 9 1/3 innings with the Rays at the major league level.

Trout had dominated AA in 2011 at 19 years old, hitting .326/.414/.544 with 18 doubles, 13 triples, 11 home runs, and 33 stolen bases in just 91 games. However, then he was called up to the majors, and he struggled, hitting .220/.281/.390 over 40 games, then in the same AFL season that Harper dominated, Trout hit .245/.279/.321 with a 5/33 BB/K ratio.

The lists

When the top prospect lists came out that year, those three were consensus as the top three guys, but no one could quite get nailed down who was the guy that was the top guy – was it the guy who appeared the ace starter? the long-hyped top draft pick? or the teen who’d just dominated AA?

Here’s a list of how six of the more prominent ranking sites had the three stacked up:

• Baseball America: 1. Harper, 2. Moore, 3. Trout
• Baseball Prospectus: 1. Moore, 2. Harper, 3. Trout
• Fangraphs (Marc Hulet at the time doing prospect coverage): 1. Moore, 2. Harper, 3. Trout
• John Sickels of Minor League Ball: 1. Harper, 2. Moore, 3. Trout
• Keith Law of ESPN: 1. Trout, 2. Harper, 3. Moore
• MLB Pipeline: 1. Moore, 2. Harper, 3. Trout

So of those lists, Moore had 3 #1’s, 2 #2’s and 1 #3. Harper had 2 #1’s and 4 #2’s. Trout finished with a single #1 and 5 #3’s, which shows exactly how predictive prospect lists are!

2018: Ronald Acuna, Vlad Guerrero, Jr., Shohei Ohtani

This year’s batch is farther away, with no major league time among the three, though two of the three project to spend a lot of 2018 at the major league level. Let’s take a look…

Acuna shot up the minor leagues last season moving from high-A to AA to AAA and seemed to improve as he climbed the ladder. He hit .325/.374/.522 across the three levels with 31 doubles, 8 triples, 21 home runs, and 44 stolen bases. He then went to the Arizona Fall League and tied the record with 7 home runs and won league MVP and top prospect awards.

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Guerrero is well known because of his father. He is a very different hitter than his father, however, with an incredibly powerful bat, but also with elite plate discipline, leading all of the minor leagues in on base percentage in 2017.

At 18, Guerrero played at low-A and high-A in 2017. Combined, he hit .323/.425/.485 with 28 doubles, 2 triples, 13 home runs, and 8 stolen bases, with a 76/62 BB/K ratio.

Ohtani has really been the biggest story of the offseason. The debate initially as to whether the two-way star would come to MLB was the first big story, then it was the bidding war for Ohtani, and now it’s how the Angels will use him.

Ohtani could be a frontline pitcher or a quality hitter in the middle of a lineup, which is a dynamic prospect, but of course coming over from Japan, exactly how that will translate is difficult to gauge.

Next: Should Cardinals trade Kelly?

While we may see all three end up #1 on a major outlet’s list this year, that really doesn’t discount either of the two as this is a paper-thin margin, and even if everyone ends up with Guerrero #3 as BA did, just remember that the guy finishing 3rd in 2012 was Trout!