2018 Orioles Top Prospect List

[Tony-OH]

54 minutes ago, MachoMachadoMan said:

Encarnacion and Carmona both outside the top 20. Both were considered strong gets at the deadline. 

Are Tony and Luke just hesitant to rank high on projection-based prospects or did they see something they didn't like?

Both are very raw players though Encarnacion has some plus tools to work from and looks the part. Encarnacion has the highest ceiling of anyone outside of the top 20, but that plate discipline is scary at such a low level.

[Luke-OH]

1 hour ago, MachoMachadoMan said:

Encarnacion and Carmona both outside the top 20. Both were considered strong gets at the deadline. 

Are Tony and Luke just hesitant to rank high on projection-based prospects or did they see something they didn't like?

Neither showed particularly well after being acquired, so I’d imagine that’s a factor in what team sources thought about them.

 I think both have the type of hands and bat speed that’s hard to teach, but both have significant mechanical changes to make, so it’s more than just physical projection though. 

[Tony-OH]

All 30 prospects are complete now. A few profiles will need to be updated by tonight, but for the most part they are finished. Thanks to Luke Siler for his support in the process and for writing some of the profiles!

[weams]

Just now, Tony-OH said:

All 30 prospects are complete now. A few profiles will need to be updated by tonight, but for the most part they are finished. Thanks to Luke Siler for his support in the process and for writing some of the profiles!

Thanks to you and Luke for the hard work and the excellent writeups. 

[Pheasants]

Tony, How much stronger do you think the system is now? If you were to take last year's list and put  current Dietz or Carmona in it, where would they fit, 25, 20?

[TheDeau52]

Thank you for all of your hard work, very informative!

[Luke-OH]

3 hours ago, Pheasants said:

Tony, How much stronger do you think the system is now? If you were to take last year's list and put  current Dietz or Carmona in it, where would they fit, 25, 20?

I think the best examples of the increased strength of the list are Akin and Lowther. They would both probably been ahead of DJ Stewart last year.

Carmona and Dietz aren’t good indicators because there is a wide variety of opinions on those guys. I think current JCE would have been much higher last year, same with current Adam Hall and Ryan McKenna. Plus, there are guys like Seamus Curran, Gray Fenter, etc that would normally be on this list but have been pushed off by depth.

[Frobby]

From Luke’s midseason top 30, Mullins graduated and Zimmermann and Sparks were omitted on the OH top 30.    The three additions were Kline, Rom and Means.    All in all, we have a number of guys in the 30+ category who are interesting.

[Luke-OH]

All the profiles should be up now.

[ChosenOne21]

I know we have a lot of guys with decent ceilings, but I've been wondering roughly what percent of prospects actually hit their ceilings?

[weams]

18 hours ago, Luke-OH said:

All the profiles should be up now.

Thank you. Great effort. 

[Tony-OH]

On 11/20/2018 at 10:24 AM, Pheasants said:

Tony, How much stronger do you think the system is now? If you were to take last year's list and put  current Dietz or Carmona in it, where would they fit, 25, 20?

The trades and last year's draft added 14 players to our top 30 so that alone shows the improvement. I'm not a big Dietz guy so I'll let Luke see where he thinks he would fit on last year's list. Saying all that, I think the system is definitely improved from last year where more guys with better ceilings than in year's past.

[Tony-OH]

On 11/21/2018 at 12:07 PM, ChosenOne21 said:

I know we have a lot of guys with decent ceilings, but I've been wondering roughly what percent of prospects actually hit their ceilings?

I don't have the numbers, but I would take a guess and say around 10-20%.

A ceiling is if everything goes right for the guy and they really exceed their normal development path. It's a best case scenario mostly accessed on tools and prejectibility.

[Ripken]

Roughly, where do we rank compared to the other 29 teams?

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, Ripken said:

Roughly, where do we rank compared to the other 29 teams?

Depends who you ask.    Fangraphs recently ranked us 28th.   Bleacher Report ranked us 18th.   Baseball America ranked us 20th in early August.