Introducing the 2017 Angels top prospect rankings!

Hello there, HH readers! On behalf of my fellow writers here at Halos Heaven, it’s my pleasure to introduce an exciting new journey into the depth that is the Angels farm system this offseason. Our goal is to synthesize all available information (scouting reports, statistics, video, etc.) in order to accurately provide a level of insight on how our prospects are faring and how the system is doing as a whole.

In these rankings and projections, we are attempting to estimate a player’s true talent level that may or may not already be evident in statistical analysis. Of course, there are always details that we cannot capture, as there are many baseball sources we lack the access to and plenty of information is not public altogether.

With that being said, let’s get into how these prospects are ranked.

Methodology

Josh, Jessica, Chase, Carlos, and me (as well as Turks Teeth and rghan, longtime HH prospect hounds) decided to each vote on our top 25 prospects, with each place vote corresponding to a certain point value. 25 is an admittedly arbitrary number, but in this farm system any more than this results in an already diluted batch of prospects.

A 1st-5th place vote is 50-45-40-35-30 points, 6th-10th is 28-26-24-22-20 points, and 11th-25th place is 15-14-13-12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 points. The stark dropoff in points is purposeful in order to differentiate the higher quality prospects - who have significantly more potential and talent - from others on this list.

This table shows what overall grades mean for each player in layman’s terms.

Fangraphs

This one shows what position player grades mean.

Fangraphs

Here’s what a prospect analysis would look like for each player: we’ll use Roberto Baldoquin for this example.

Scouting Report: Baldoquin, signed by then-GM Jerry Dipoto in 2015, was supposed to be the everyday big-league shortstop. Dipoto even said “he looks like a major league player now” and that he looked physically “like a cross between Yunel Escobar and Adrian Beltre.” That couldn’t seem more farther-off in retrospect. With injuries to both hamstrings, knee tendinitis, a concussion, and a lat, Baldoquin hasn’t been able to stay on the field. And when he has been, he hasn’t been able to hit a lick in the hitter-friendly Cal League.

While his run tool profiles as average, he has a decent arm and alright glove. He hasn’t hit at all this year (.198/.274/.233 in 255 PA) and has absolutely no power, with his A+ ball Inland Empire manager Chad Tracy saying he’s had struggles with breaking balls, fastballs, and whiffs on balls out of the zone often, per Jeff Fletcher of the OC Register.

Baldoquin’s work ethic appears to be good, but unless he can show that he can hit (and he shows little signs of doing so) he cannot be a bench or utility player on a big-league team.

The future grade is the most likely scenario for the player, call it the 50th percentile projection if you will. The ceiling refers to what happens when everything goes right in the player development process, similar to a 90th percentile.

Risk refers to the volatility of a player’s future value in regards to injuries, work ethic, and makeup. A higher risk on the 20-80 scale (for risk, we’ll assume 50 is average) indicates a player might be less likely to achieve his projections.

Here is an excellent description of what goes into the player evaluation process.

The rankings will be released in stages of five, with each of us writing one in each set. These will be published over the rest of the offseason as to not overwhelm readers. We hope you enjoy this series.