![]() ![]() Despite his lack of offense, Howard’s defense at shortstop didn’t falter, standing out in a system overflowing with middle infielders. He best squares up pitches at the bottom of the strike zone, so his adjustment to pro arms has been a challenge given pitchers’ penchant for fastballs up in the zone. His steep learning curve in that regard isn’t surprising at this stage: While his approach was already advanced when he was drafted, he was a Midwestern high schooler at the time, and as with any cold weather hitter, it’s reasonable to allow some added time for his approach to fully adjust to professional pitching. On Howard, FanGraphs doesn’t see a big breakout coming, but they still think the floor is mighty high for such a young, inexperienced player: Contrast with Ed Howard, also a superlative 19-year-old defender, who did not hit much at all this year, but ranked five spots higher. ⇒ It sounds like FanGraphs isn’t ready to project much of a hitter out of Pete Crow-Armstrong until he gets back on the field. You could count James Triantos as a huge jump, too, given that he was a late second rounder who is now already top four in the system with top 100 overall consideration. ⇒ As expected, huge jumps in ranking and grade for Nelson Velazquez, Caleb Kilian, and D.J. Hence the explanation, which was tied to Davis showing continued swing-and-miss after the Triple-A promotion (despite his gaudy numbers there): “We’ve hit the brakes on Davis’ FV a little bit, waiting to see adjustment to his upper-level issues with swing-and-miss before we slap a 60 on him, but obviously Davis has the aptitude to make those adjustments as he’s made several others already.” Note, by the way, that Davis’s strikeout rate at Triple-A dropped to just 22.1%, but (1) that doesn’t always tell you everything about swing-and-miss issues, and (2) I’m fine with saying you want to see him do it for more than 15 games at Triple-A before you put him back in that inner-circle 60 FV range. ![]() So, in the realm of “grade drops,” this is probably as soft as it can possibly get. To be sure, the 60 – which put Davis in the top 10-15 prospects in the game, with the same grade as tip-top outfield prospects like Julio Rodriguez and Riley Greene – was surprisingly strong, and Davis also had ranked as the lowest of the 60s at the time. One thing that jumped out to me was the drop in FV for Brennen Davis, from a 60 at their midseason update down to 55. Pretty good bet that they will be the high service on the Cubs’ system this offseason. At the midseason update, there were 112 prospects at a 50 FV grade or better, so essentially, FanGraphs is saying the Cubs have at least five top 100ish prospects right now. A whopping 25 prospects get the 40+ grade or better (and another 24 were 35+ or 40):Īs you can see, FanGraphs is very high on the young positional guys, especially the Alcantara-Caissie-Triantos-Preciado group. ![]()
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