Quote:
Originally Posted by duncan_idaho
I give you all the credit for careful statements, man. Your reasoning here makes sense - thanks for clarifying!
I think it’s reasonable to hope for a lineup centerpiece from that group (my money is on Nunez) and a good starter (money is on Gorman and Carlson, both, actually).
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Nunez is the most fun, but he's the least projectable at the moment. Nobody hits the DSL the way he just hit the DSL; it was truly historic. But...it's the DSL. If you consider it high-level high school ball you're probably not far off the mark.
You just can draw so very little from it. I mean if he were 85% that good in RK ball it would mean more to me than what he did in the DSL. But the good news is that he'll get that shot soon enough. There's a ton of helium there.
I don't even include Carlson in that group of 4, to be honest. He's a completely different animal in that I think he's actually immediately projectable and as sure a bet to contribute in the major leagues as anyone we have.
Montero has more power projection than he's shown but he needs to show it. He's super-young for full-season ball so I'm not too worried, but if we don't see him take a step forward there this year, his ceiling starts to drop and Craig becomes your target mark. It's not the raw HRs that concerns me, it's the lower ISO in general. But 37 doubles in 531 PAs as an underaged player in your first crack at full-season ball is no joke, especially when he played in a couple of fairly tough pitcher's leagues. I don't think he becomes an annual 30 HR hitter but I won't close the book on the possibility just yet.
Torres is that "85% of Nunez in RK ball" that I mentioned. He got to the GCL and man they had no idea what to do with him. The problem there is a really really short sample size. The Cards had a kid named Juan Yepez murdering the midwest league last year over 100 or so PAs and when they moved him up he fell flat on his face. It's reeeeaaaaaal early in the game on Torres but he's less about stats than he is some of the scouting reports that got out once he got into the system. There are some folks that love the guy's swing and raw athleticism for his size.
Gorman...well, he's probably my highest floor, lowest ceiling prospect in the lot. His raw power will get him to the majors. But his K rate is just spooky. Even before he was super-aggressively promoted and hitting very well in RK ball, he was striking out a bit too much. And obviously getting to full-season ball his first year out of HS is impressive as hell and very rare, but he was obviously overmatched. The good(ish) version of Mark Reynolds in Arizona is his disappointing but not terribly unlikely outcome. If you see additional development in his K rates and general plate discipline you could see a peak Troy Glaus type, maybe? Probably not that 8 win monster he was for a season, but the 4-5 win guy he kinda settled into when healthy.
Carlson's gonna be a dude you overlook but holds a lot of shit together for you for years, though. Maybe the Cincinnati version of Paul O'Neill? Just a really good, really overlooked player for a lot of years. Not the post-strike, steroid era version of O'Neill that coincidentally became an MVP candidate in his mid-30s when the juice became rampant, but the athletically underrated, steady offensive weapon and solid defensive ballplayer he was prior to that.