The struggles of ranking prospects in a pandemic year

Prospect rankings are a big deal for us at FutureSox. We’ve done them for more than a decade at this point and they are among our most popular content.

Normally, we have them down to a science. But of course, 2020 wasn’t normal. Typically we use a points system akin to AP polls in college sports. Even with the pandemic canceling the 2020 minor league season, we still used that method for our 2020 midseason rankings. We didn’t have new information on most of the prospects since our preseason rankings, but at least there were a number of players who made MLB debuts to alter their stock. We also had some reports and occasional eyes on what was happening at the alternate site in Schaumburg. There was something to work with.

Now that our 2021 preseason rankings are around the corner, we had to do that again with practically no new information on anyone. Nothing drastic changed for most of the prospects who were in the majors at the end of the year (other than discovering Garrett Crochet is not your ordinary No. 11 pick). On top of that, a chunk of White Sox prospects got to play in fall instructional ball in Arizona. Considering that was the only game action for a year for almost all of those players, it’s significant. And we have almost no idea what happened there.

There are no stats from fall instructs. Even the schedule was bizarre with teams starting and ending at very different dates. We do have scouting reports from our own sources as well as what other outlets have gathered, although those are more from team sources than normal, and are therefore inherently optimistic.

This is the long-winded way of saying we needed to improvise. In an effort to combine our own previous knowledge (which is now over a year old for most prospects) with what we’re reading and hearing, we decided to have a Zoom call with our voters. Five of us talked it out to come up with our top 30 rankings.

In the end, we think we have a solid list that combines our own feelings on these players with what is being said about them from instructs. The full list will come out next week, but consider this an early sneak peak for our Patreon subscribers. Here are a few of the toughest rankings we had and why we came to the conclusion we did.

Garrett Crochet vs. Nick Madrigal

Andrew Vaughn and Michael Kopech top the list with Luis Robert graduated. After that we hit a stumbling block. Madrigal was the unanimous fourth rated prospect in our midseason list behind those three. Crochet was fifth, but four of our eight voters had him lower than that. I had him seventh. Oops.

Now that we’ve seen Crochet pitch in the majors, it’s clear he’s an elite talent. His fastball is already one of the best in the majors and his slider is nasty as well. If he can develop into a big league starter, which the White Sox continue to say is their goal, he has frontline potential. However, there’s a chance he remains a reliever, which drastically alters his value.

On the other side, Madrigal is already pretty much at his floor of average regular. He will hit for high average, won’t walk a lot and has almost no power. He should play better defense and not make so many puzzling baserunning decisions going forward. For the most part, in 2020 we saw what he is likely to be.

If Crochet is a reliever, Madrigal probably edges it. But if Crochet is a starter it’s not close. Ultimately, after talking it out, it was clear we all wanted to go with the upside, considering the difference in their floors isn’t that great. Crochet comes in at No. 3 in our rankings with Madrigal No. 4.

Inserting Yoelqui Cespedes and Norge Vera

Any time there’s a new prospect in the system it’s tricky for us to rank them. When it comes to draft prospects, we have some idea of the players based on the in-depth coverage the draft gets. Incoming prospects from other systems have a resume with career performance that we can use to compare them to others in the system.

High-profile international prospects are trickier. There’s generally less information on them and we have to place them solely based on what others are saying about them. Most teenage prospects we can take a wait-and-see approach before even placing them in the top 30. We didn’t have that luxury with the older and more developed Yoelqui Cespedes and Norge Vera.

Cespedes is a 22-year-old outfielder. Vera is a 20-year-old right-handed pitcher. Both signed seven-figure bonuses and jumped straight into our top 10 prospects. That decision wasn’t easy because there are serious questions about Cespedes’ hit tool. Most scouts haven’t seen him since 2019 so we don’t really know what he is in 2021. There’s a lot of boom and bust with him.

Some of our voters like Vera more than Cespedes. He has a 94-97 mph fastball and a big frame to continue to grow into. He may have more upside than Cespedes, but the White Sox gave Cespedes a bigger signing bonus ($2.05M vs. $1.5M).

We talked about potentially moving them higher, but took a more conservative approach. Jonathan Stiever reached the big leagues in 2020 and recent high school pitcher draftees Jared Kelley, Matthew Thompson and Andrew Dalquist presented solid upside. Cespedes comes in at No. 9 with Vera right behind at No. 10.

Placing the younger prospects

Outside of Cespedes and Vera, 14 of our top 16 prospects either played with the White Sox or at the alternate site. That means, at the very least, we heard some new information on all those guys. In some cases, it was scant information, but it gave us something.

After we got past that group, it was time to figure out where to slot in guys like Bryan Ramos, Bryce Bush, Jose Rodriguez and Benyamin Bailey. All four were at instructs and caught the eyes of scouts.

To our pleasant surprise, almost everything said about Ramos was positive. He vaulted into the top 20 at other outlets and we followed suit. He was only No. 28 on our midseason list, with a few of us having him as high as 25. He was behind Bush, Bailey, James Beard and DJ Gladney. Now, he was clearly the top guy of this group.

Bush had a rough 2019, but that wasn’t a surprise given how aggressive his assignment to Low-A Kannapolis was. He stayed in the top 20.

We had to make a minor adjustment on Bailey. His .324/.477/.454 line is the best showing for a 17-year-old White Sox prospect in the DSL in at least a decade. The list of 17-year-olds to put up a .900+ OPS in the DSL isn’t that long. In recent years, it includes the likes of Victor Robles, Rafael Devers and Jaimer Candelario. There’s also a handful of guys who struggled to reach Double-A. His performance was awesome, but there’s still a very high bust rate.

Scouts didn’t love Bailey. There are questions about his defense. He might be stuck in left field or become a DH-type. That hampers his value. Some still love his 6-foot-4 frame and what he showed in the DSL. There’s something there, especially when you get this far down the list, but he’s got a long way to go.

We gave Jose Rodriguez the edge ahead of Bailey for No. 20. Rodriguez plays a premium position, even if he moves to second base from shortstop, while showing big power in the Arizona League in 2019.

Check back to FutureSox next week to see our full top 30 rankings.