Trending Scoresheet Prospects
The worlds of fashion and sabermetrics don’t intermingle nearly often enough, but it pays to understand what’s on trend around you. Consider this report to be our tribute to Alexander McQueen, or at the very least, to apparel-design major Dallas Keuchel.
To prepare for the final supplemental draft and the offseason, we took a look at which prospects were popular in-season supplemental picks from prior rounds. This helps us quantify prospect helium, which in turn should help us better understand who to trade for, or even give us some additional draft ideas.
To compile the list, we looked at all players who had not debuted as of the July supplemental (and Domingo Santana, who seems like a prospect) and who were not taken in this year’s Rule 4 Draft. Trending prospects are those who have been taken in supplemental drafts most frequently this season, while still remaining available in at least 40 percent of Scoresheet leagues. This means that for many of you, these prospects could still be on the board. Just to reiterate, this is a “wisdom-of-the-crowds” ranking, and we’ll leave our own opinion for the notes section.
We’ll start with the AL list, with notes after the jump.
American League Trending Prospects
1. Blake Snell
2. Domingo Santana
3. Ketel Marte
5. A.J. Reed
10. Franklin Barreto
In the AL, the trade season damaged the value of a couple of the prospects on this list, and Michael Kopech’s “mistake” didn’t help matters either. Of this list, we like Zimmer and Barreto to return the most value. A.J. Reed seems like the most frequently overdrafted player, but we’re skeptical of nearly all first base-only prospects in Scoresheet.
In addition to the trend report, we prepared samples for other leagues of varying depth:
Other Trends
For shallow leagues (players available in at least 25% of Scoresheet leagues): Rafael Devers, Sean Newcomb, Daniel Robertson, Tim Anderson, Matt Olson, Jeff Hoffman
For deep leagues (players available in at least 75% of Scoresheet leagues): Brett Phillips, Brent Honeywell, Michael Kopech, Stephen Gonzalves, Frankie Montas, Bobby Bradley, Eric Jagielo, Derek Fisher, Max Kepler
A few players we like who are available in more than 90 percent of leagues: Jomar Reyes, Javier Guerra, Dermis Garcia, Yairo Munoz, Anderson Espinoza.
National League Trending Prospects
1. Trevor Story
4. Grant Holmes
5. Carlos Tocci
7. Mallex Smith
8. Erick Fedde
10. Touki Toussaint
This list feels much shallower than the American League list. Trevor Story is in a great position, and should be owned if your league hasn’t gotten around to it yet. If you’ve heard our podcast, you know we’ve been banging the Torres drum for some time. The rest of the list actually seems a little on the shaky side, although we like Fedde as far as non-elite non-upper level pitching prospects go. We would probably be more interested in Albies, Rea, and Cecchini off the deeper list than Tocci, Smith, or Coulter, and even some of the extremely deep players such as Robles or Lara seem more enticing.
Other Trends
For shallow leagues (players available in at least 25% of Scoresheet leagues): Jose DeLeon, Orlando Arcia, Hector Olivera, Alexander Reyes, Peter O’Brien, Tyler Beede
For deep leagues (players available in at least 75% of Scoresheet leagues): Deep leagues: Carlos Tocci, Mallex Smith, Ozhaino Albies, Colin Rea, Jordan Patterson, Cody Bellinger, Keury Mella, Tyrone Taylor, Pierce Johnson, Gavin Cecchini
A few players we like who are available in more than 90 percent of leagues: Victor Robles, Ruddy Giron, Tom Murphy, Jose Rondon, Mark Zagunis, Gilbert Lara, Franklyn Kilome
This Week’s Podcast
We reviewed our favorite deals from the busiest trade deadline in a long time, touched on the Scoresheet implications of the crossovers so far, discussed some prospects who are available in deeper leagues, and of course went over the best things we saw this week.
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Ian, believe you meant Adames not Robertson regarding the Price deals.
Love the propect discussion and xover early preview - agree NL looks weak at this point.
I'm a little higher on Alfaro, but only since NL catcher seems so weak - have been struggling for a competent catcher for a few years.
Understood on Alfaro, and I think the value equation differs in NL leagues, where you're buying in on a high-ceiling prospect, than in AL leagues, where Alfaro also costs you a more valuable crossover slot and would therefore need to produce.