TT – As we come down to the wire and enter the top five of our August Angel prospect rankings, these two are definitely our most aggressive rankings yet. You won't find either of these guys on most top ten lists of the Angels farm, and certainly not the top five. There are reasons for that, the most conventional being that many prospect links rank on tools, physique and projectability (in a word: "upside") – and credit players less for recent performance, successful or no. This makes some sense, as success in the minor leagues is often transient, and may not be repeatable at higher levels, and Matt Shoemakers don't bloom in country fields for the pickin'.
But the Angels system as currently constituted requires us to take risks, hazard guesses, and drop our lines in uncertain waters. While someone like Tyler DeLoach, drafted in the 26th round in 2012 from relatively unheralded UNC Wilmington, can't even crack the MLB Angels Top 20 list, but a 23-year-old corner outfielder like Michael Fish, who is struggling to put up a .700 OPS in the Midwest League, can, it's time to let the head (ie, recent performance data) find the heart (ie, barely justified optimism), allow the underdog to bound forth, and simply just follow after, pushing one's own path through the grass.
We have to at least take stock of what Tyler DeLoach has done: He leads the farm in Ks (and not by a little). His 151 strikeouts is the fourth best in the minor leagues, period (and he pitches tonight, which could bump him up to 2nd by night's end). He has the lowest batting average against among all qualified Angel starters. His WHIP is second-best, and his ERA fourth-best, among Angel prospects at all levels. He has maintained an SO/9 of 10 or 11 at every level he's pitched at (Pioneer League, Midwest League, Cal League, and now Texas League), and he just seems to get a little more effective each level he rises to. Currently he takes a 1.90 ERA into his fifth start with Arkansas tonight, and while he may blow up in our faces at any moment, we might as well credit him for just how far he's gotten with a fastball that tops out at 90 and command that is, at minimum, still a work in progress. But he's not exactly a soft-tossin' Michael Roth. He's a towering 6'6" lefty who has been a strikeout machine against some of the best prospects in baseball, so let's see if that helium can take him straight up into a swingman's paradise, as the Baseball Godz know the Angels need to borrow a few cherubs from that part of the heavenly map.
Meanwhile, Victor Alcantara does have the tools, though his performance has not always shown them in the best light. Baseball America credits him with the best fastball in the organization, as early as last offseason when the farm had several more arms than it does today. He was chosen for the Futures Game largely on the strength of that high-90s weapon. But his control and command have exposed, well, some issues, and he's been batted about a few times at Orem and Burlington. But he's getting better. In many ways, he pitched better than his mid-4 ERA in the first half showed, and we've seen that regression to the mean in the second half, with a 3.24 ERA since the beginning of July, combined with a perfectly solid .614 OPS against. At age 21, he has the highest ceiling of any right-handed pitcher on the Angels farm at present. The front office would do well to give him the 2-3 years he needs to develop, and not rush to cash him in for a few desperate starts from a Bartolo Colon or Trevor Cahill down the 2014 stretch.
I'll let Ryan take it away with more detailed scouting of recent appearances by our improbable lefty giant and raw righty sharpshooter: numbers 4 and 5 in our countdown to numero uno.
4 - 5
(4) Victor (Alfonso) Alcantara (player page)
RG - The good: man, did I come away enthusiastic after seeing him a month ago. His four-seamer sat at 94-96 with a few 97's mixed in, and that wasn't even the most impressive part. He has a pair of secondary offerings that come in at 88-91 mph, one tailing in hard, and the other cutting down and away with tilt. He got plenty of swings and misses with those two pitches; geared up as they were for the 97 mph heat, the opposition could only flail at the "offspeed." It looked like a viscous 2-seam/cutter combo, but I think that Alcantara's coaches would tell you that they were a slider and a change. He threw a lot of straight change-ups at 84-87 in his warm-up tosses, so maybe he just gets amped up and throws them harder in in-game situations. Regardless of classification, they were monster pitches.
The bad: Alcantara has a very rigid delivery, which gives him a challenging command profile. He keeps things simple by pitching exclusively from the stretch, but then cocks his front side in, collecting his balance in an exaggeratedly closed position. As he begins his stride, his glove elbow locks out in front of him, tilted towards third base, which keeps his body very closed to the hitter and adds deception, but it also yanks his head around and just looks exhausting. His control appears to be improving as this season wears on, but may have trouble going deep into games. He visibly tired out by the 6th inning when I saw him, and the result was a complete loss of command (if not velocity). Despite the command questions, hitters can't get any lift off of him, pounding the ball into the ground at a 56% rate and managing just a miniscule .080 ISO against. The Halos had him pitch out of the bullpen on Sunday for the first time this year, so Alcantara must be up against his 2014 inning limit. He's probably a reliever in the end, but has the best pure stuff of any righty in the system with a punchers' chance at remaining a starter.
(5) Tyler DeLoach (player page)
RG – The guy knows how to pitch. His heater sits mostly in the high 80's, the slider is effective against both righties and lefties, and he has a third viable pitch in his change-up. His always-from-the-stretch delivery is silky smooth; he throws to the plate like he's playing catch. He has a lanky 6'6" frame, which combines with his low armslot and positioning at the first-base side of the rubber to create an extreme angle that gives both righties and lefties fits. He induced a lot of groundballs in April and May (54%), but then exchanged those GB's for popups and K's over the course of the summer. Since his promotion to AA, he's fanned 31% of hitters and induced a 18% popup rate (only 23+ innings, but still). I didn't see any of his Cal League starts, but in Double A he's lived up in the zone and pounded the inner half of the plate, especially against righties.
DeLoach still makes too many mistakes with his command to stick in front of major league hitters - he's walking 10% of the minor league competition, and he's given up some hard contact over the middle of the plate - but man, if he can cut down on those mistakes, his bag of tricks could be very effective at the highest levels. His mid-level projection is a Darren Oliver type, but has the arsenal necessary to turn over opposing line-ups multiple times. At the very least, he'll get long looks as a LOOGY in the coming years.