I was thinking about ways to display projections as a sort of prospect list, and wanted to try this out:Rank players by their projected WAR in their age 25 season. Only players who have an age 25 season in their future need apply, so there will be no Ohtani*, Judge, or Trout.

*All bets are off if Ohtani invents time travel, and I would not put it past him.

I did not use an MLB playing time qualification, so if a team brings a young player up early, like Zach Neto, he stays on the list until he ages off. So it's not so much a prospect list, but a young talent list. KC's is headed by a player who is not only a top 2 MVP candidate, but who has already earned a 300 million dollar extension.

Do the ratings make sense? Yes and no. I saw the Astros ranked dead last, and then compared who I have on the list to their MLB top 30 list. The Astros have only 4 players who have a positive WAR projection for their age 25 season. At least I mostly have the right guys:

Jacob Melton (MLB #1)

Brice Matthews (MLB #3)

Luis Baez (MLB #3)

Anthony Huerto (not rated).

The rankings above are from the Astros top 30 on MLB.com. Their #2 prospect is catcher Walker Janek, their first rounder in 2024. Janek does not project well because in 25 games in advanced A ball, he's hit .175. That's OK, players making their debuts don't always succeed right at the start. He's got a low reliability projection. I'm not saying he won't turn into the Astros starting catcher down the road. The stats just don't have enough info to say that right now. 

Huerto is a system shortcoming. He is only 18, has played 8 games above rookie ball. I don't use rookie ball stats in my projections, but there he hit only .151 in 40 games. If I did, he would probably not project as any kind of prospect. He'll have a very low reliability rating on the projection.

The Angels as an organization rank 20th out of 30. This is for position players only, I haven't done pitchers yet. The three best are already starters in the big leagues - Neto, Schanuel, O'Hoppe. Nelson Rada, the 18 year old who played all year in AA, and Christian Moore, the top 2024 draft pick, join them on the list.

Young position player organization ratings:

This is a work in progress. When I stopped working for a team, I lost my data source. The data sources I used 14 years ago no longer exist. I still might make some tweaks to the playing time calculation and some other things.

I view the projected innings pitched as an over/under. I would be happy if half the pitchers had more than my projection, and half had less. You probably won't find anyone in there with over 180 innings. Even if everything goes right, how many pitchers these days hit 200? Maybe 3 to 5, and just barely over. But it does not take much to go wrong - say one stint on the injured list, and you have no chance at 180. 

Here's the top 10, starting with the rookie phenom Paul Skenes:

Where's Ohtani? a bit below that group at 3 WAR in 133 innings. But he is a better hitter than the rest of this group.

This year we've had 48 hitters take the mound. Their totals:

AB 358

HR 15

BB 41

SO 3

AVG .330

OBP .412

SLG .542

BABIP .303

Always amusing to see that while these guys are totally ineffective, on balls in play they get nearly identical results to the real pitchers. Only one player showed anything close to real velocity: Brandon Crawford. The rest just lobbed the ball up there.

Crawford showed a fastball around 86-89 MPB, which would have been about average 40 years ago, and there are still a few pitchers who can be effective with that kind of arm. They have something he doesn't though, command and control. Crawford gave up 6 baserunners and 4 runs in 1.1 innings, he didn't strike anyone out.

The 3 strikeouts: Jake Bauers struck out Jerar Encarnacion with a 72 MPH heater.

Ben Rortvedt struck out Tyler Fitzgerald with a 76 MPH fastball that was foul tipped.

Vidal Brujan struck out Isaac Paredes with a 74 MPH curveball, or at least that's what Statcast called the pitch.

Santander is the leading homerun hitter for the Orioles, with 41. He's 29 this year and will be a free agent once the Orioles finish in the playoffs, unless they extend him.

He does not hit for a high average or take a huge number of walks. His speed is a bit below average, around 26 feet per second this year.

On defense he makes a good number of exciting plays. I can't say that I've seen more than a few. Although I live in the Baltimore area I am a cord cutter watching baseball on MLBTV. For Oriole games I mostly follow on the radio.

Santander makes a lot of plays where the play looks in doubt to the announcing crew, but Anthony runs it down and makes a diving catch. Looking at statcast however, he isn't terrible, but just a few runs below average. What is likely happening is that he gives a great effort and makes plays look spectacular, but if he was faster he'd make the catch look easy. Here's a 6 year projection on him, but I don't think his next contract will go that long. His profile - great power, low average, not a great defender - is similar to Teoscar Hernandez. Teoscar got a one year deal last fall.

Here's his projection:

And my contract prediction: 3 years, 62 million. 

I have some PBP data for AAA in 2024 and spent a day adding in fielding ratings. Here are some of the leaders and trailers by position.