Nationals Arm Race

We’re not even done with the World Series (between the cheaters of Houston and the culturally insensitives of Atlanta) but we’ve gotten our first prospect ranking. It comes to us from Baseball America, who normally has relatively reasonable rankings but for the pre-2022 season has given us some rather “interesting” rankings.

click here for the BA top 10 plus their list of best tools and what not.

BA’s top 10:

Ok. So lets do some reactions.

• Hard to disagree with the top 2. Ruiz was already a better prospect than Cavalli when he got here, and most of the prospect shops i’m seeing have them 1-2 in this order.
• House had such an impressive debut, it isn’t a surprise to see him rocket to #3. This is in line with most other shops.
• Antuna at #4. Really. What exactly did he do this year to merit such a rise? He was 22 in High-A and slashed .227/.307/.385. The last time we saw him in a full season was three years ago in Low-A and he slashed … .220/.293/.331. Wow. Pretty similar, huh? During his defense of this, the BA writer Joe Healy pointed out that, oh well Antuna started out 4-67 and then “got hot.” Ok, even if you remove his 4-67 start he STILL only hit .260 for the season. Oh, and then BA listed Antuna as having the “Best Hitter for Average” in the entire system! No I’m not kidding: a career .238 hitter in the low minors is our system’s best hitter for average, according to BA. Oh by the way, he’s such a bad SS ( he committed 36 errors in 96 games this year) that the team has pushed him to be a corner OF. Great; so now we have a corner OF with no speed (17 career SBs in 246 games) and no power (.367 career slugging). I don’t mean to shower distain on the guy, but I just can’t believe he’s ranked this high by any scouting shop at this point.
• Lara and Henry at 5-6 are pretty reasonable. I’d have liked to see more from Lara this year, but he’s still just finishing his age 18 season. Henry remains an orchid; unhittable when healthy, but frequently hurt. Hurt this year, hurt in college, etc. Of course he’s tearing it up in the AFL; he’s healthy again. I’m already getting shades of Christian Garcia: lights out when healthy … but never healthy enough to count on.
• Joan Adon at #7. What a weird year he had. Throws 17 starts in high-A with nearly a 5.00 ERA and good but not stellar K/BB rates (9 K/9 and a 3/1 k/bb). But he gets promoted to AA nonetheless, where he gives up 20 baserunners in 14 innings to the tune of a 6.43 ERA … but strikes out a ton of guys (24 Ks in 14 innings). On the strength of that, and thanks to an arm shortage he gets moved up to AAA, where he needs 81 pitches to get through 4 innings. But since he’s on the 40-man he gets his MLB debut and throws a pretty solid game against a playoff team in Boston the last weekend of the season, giving up 2 runs on 6 hits in 5 1/3rd innings. Every other scouting bureau has him as essentially an org-guy at this point; Baseball America has him #7. I’m not sure what to think.
• Carillo and Cruz filling out the top 10 is fine: Carillo by all accounts can’t find the plate with his secondary offerings and might end up being a 2-pitch closer. Cruz is young, struggled this year but the promise is th ere.
• That leaves us to Jackson Rutledge. What a fall from grace for Rutledge in 2021; he starts the year as the opening day starter in High-A (ahead of Adon and Cavalli), gets hammered, is dumped to Low-A where he doesn’t fare much better, and then hits the DL for a large stretch. Meanwhile Adon ends the season in the majors and Cavalli makes the Futures game. And to think that some pundits had Rutledge ahead of Cavalli as a prospect. So, what happens next? Is this the next Jake Johannsen? Another wasted high-round draft pick in a decade of them?

Per the post-top10 release chat, some of the names just outside the top 10 include the likes of Tim Cate, Jeremy De La Rosa, Aldo Ramirez, Matt Cronin. This seems about right, these are generally the next few names in the 11-15 range on most lists.