Photo by Jake Stephens/TalkNats
Last week, we got Forensicane‘s Top-50 Washington Nationals prospect report, and this week we finally get MLB Pipeline‘s Top-30 prospects for the Nats. They were the last of all of the main evaluators reporting the top prospect rankings.
The rankings between MLB Pipeline and Baseball America in the Top-9 were very similar. We give a look at the best dozen prospects. Here is a side-by-side:
Both rankings seemed very similar until you see who was left off of their Top-30. Like we said before, this is the year for do-overs in the system for any players who have struggled due to coaching issues.
Of course you could question the logic on ranking pitchers Travis Sykora, Landon Harmon and Alex Clemmey between MLB Pipeline and Baseball America. From the MacKenzie Gore trade, both evaluations had Gavin Fien and Devin Fitz-Gerald in the exact same spots at five and nine respectively. Both sites had the third player in the trade, pitcher Alejandro Rosario, at No. 15 and No. 16 in their respective rankings. The 4th piece in the Gore trade, Yeremy Cabrera, was ranked in the 20’s on both sites, while the final piece, Abimelec Ortiz, was 24 in MLB Pipeline and unranked on Baseball America.
Ranking prospects and farm systems are based on a healthy dose of formulas and projections that come from statistics in varying sample sizes and a lot of subjective analysis. The farm system rankings that were all over the place in how they were placed. Maybe Keith Law of The Athletic was too bullish on the Nats’ system placing them at №6, and Baseball America was too passive at №16.
Baseball America had a lot of criticism of the Nats farm system, past and present, and on too many Nats prospects they had issue with swing & miss issues, groundball rates, pitch recognition, and chase issues. Click here for the video clip. Now this was more about the past system, but obviously some of those issues are seen with Nats at the MLB level and a few prospects from the old regime who are still in the minors. The full video is here on their assessment of the Nats now and over the years:
In order for the Nats to become a drafting and player development monster as President of Baseball Operations Paul Toboni wants to reach, they have to show marked improvement this year and going forward. The bar was very low before.
Adding in new personnel from trades and the draft could help, but you have to draft to your development strengths and then develop well. The upside draft picks where you draft power over contact and strike zone discipline has been a problem. But maybe the bigger issue was that the Nats thought they could fix these players who they drafted with known flaws. Here was a Baseball America analysis of Elijah Green right after the 2022 draft. The swing & miss issue was front and center.
The latter rounds in the draft are when you take greater risks and pick players with some flaws. If they were flawless, they would be first round talent. But picking the deadly flaws in lack of contact for hitters, and lack of control of the strike zone for pitchers are a problem — and the inability to fix them at the development level is the reason the failures mounted for over a decade in the Nats system.
The pick of Eli Willits, and even Seaver King the year before, was almost a divergence of going for contact over power. The last pitcher the Nats took in the first round, Cade Cavalli, actually commanded the strike zone. Amazingly, we are just over four months away until the next draft class. The Nats pick 11th in the draft this year.
The next few months we will see how the new coaching and development staff do with the current players. If they succeed where the previous groups failed, this will mark the beginning of progress towards the development monster that Toboni wants and this team needs. Time will tell the story — it always does.
