A Look At Our Most Recent Flash-In-the-Pan Prospects

 Ok, we are two months into the minor league season and statistical patterns are startng to emerge. 

• guys who started the season in deep slumps (e.g. Angel Martinez) are startng to emerge from them.  Whether the first month and a half is real or whether this latest hot streak is real is still TBD.
• Ditto for guys who had been suspects (e.g., Aaron Bracho) and started hot but now have tailed off.  The next month or two will determine whether they are officially suspects/organizational players or whether they get hot again.  

However, there is a handful of guys who have not had this hot-cold or cold-hot start.  They are guys who were not on any prospect lists I saw but have simply been 'hot' so far.  Prospect geeks like me always like the guys who come out of the woodwork to suddenly become interesting prospects.  Here is a handful of minor leaguers who are delivering so far this year that you might never have suspected, based on their performances in previous seasons.

Daniel Schneeman 

The CLASSIC organizational player, Schneeman was a 33rd round draft pick in 2018.  He was a slick fielding guy who could play the infield and, as with most organizational players, fill up a roster to allow the real prospects to have a team to play for.  In 2018 hit .196 with the only offensive category that showed any promise was his walk rate (22 in 136 ABs).  In 2019 he repeated low A  and hit much better (.287) albeit seeing his walk rate drop (25 in 236 ABs) while being old for his league.  Like most minor leaguers he lost 2020 to the pandemic but came back in 2021, reprising his utility infielder, organizational player position at high A and AA where he put up a decent OPS of .722.   In 2022 he spent almost all the year at AA and got into 112 games but hit .202 while being old for AA.  

Then, in his 26th year on Earth, something clicked.  He has played at Columbus all year and maybe it is the mojo that is created when you play in an extreme hitter's park like Columbus but dang it, the guy is starting to become an offensive juggernaut...sort of.  He has still played in only 35 of the 57 Clippers games this year but he has 'exploded' for an OPS of .896, some pop in his bat (SLG .496) and a career high walk rate  (22 BB in 111 ABs) without any increase in K rate.  

While his SLG may be an aberration created by park factors, the rest of his offensive game looks solid.  If he can sustain this he might be an interesting trade chip later this season.

Korey Holland

Low round (14th, 2018) HS OF draft picks who sign are, by definition, interesting.  Did the drafting team catch lightning in a bottle or was this just another case of a HS kid not wanting to go to college and gambling on what he thinks are his abilities to take the shortcut directly to pro ball and develop there? 

In Holland's case it appeared more and more like it way the latter.  Holland hit 1 HR and stole 12 bases in his first 260 minor league ABs  He did have 49 walks which was interesting but when you SLG under .300 in your first 2 years in the minors it looks like maybe pro ball is not for you.  

In 2021 he became a little more interesting as his OPS went up to .723 as a part-time player at low A.  However, even as a HS draftee being a part-time player  at low A in your 3rd year in pro ball screams 'suspect' instead of prospect.   This label was cemented to Holland's resume in 2022 when playing in high A he only walked 11 times in 254 ABs with 6 SBs and an OPS of .655.  

So here we are at 2023 and Holland is not assigned to a full-season team.  I thought he might have been released or that it could be due to injury but I really didn't know.  

Then I see that he is being assigned to Akron in May, about 45 days into the season.   Sometimes teams do this, throwing a guy onto a team because they need a player at the position he plays.  Most times this is just a temporary thing although sometimes the guy comes out blazing, maybe due to him being fresher than the guys who have been playing at that level and are starting to get ground down by the 6-day a week schedule.  But, generally, they fall back to earth pretty quickly, especially if they are initially signed in that case to a level they haven't player or mastered previously.

Indeed, Holland has come out guns blazing with a .959 OPS  and all the great things that add up to that number (.339 BA, .451 OBP and .509 SLG) in his first 71 PA on the year.  However, having seen him take most of those 71 PA, it looks like there may be something there that wasn't there before, paraphrasing Ms. Potts in the Beauty and the Beast.  

Tyler Thornton

OK, you might ask, how can a guy who posted an ERA of 3.63 at low A last year with 58 Ks in 34 IP with a WHIP of 1.0 last year be considered a flash-in-the-pan candidate for putting up an ERA of 3.12 with 36 Ks in 17.3 IP with a WHIP of 1.2 this year?  

Well...last year he was facing a lot of young hitters in Lynchburg and this year in Lake County he is facing older hitters with him being 1.2 years younger than average for the Midwest League.   He has gotten younger for his league but has gotten better.   The Guardians have, in the last couple of years, started some of their lower draft picks (Thornton, 17th round in 2021) and even some of their higher draft picks (Furman, Messick, Lipscomb from the 2022 draft) at low A in their first full season.  This leads to bloated stats in their first year, which is why the jury was out on Carolina League 2022 pitcher of the year Will Dion until he repeated his great pitching this year.  

Thornton, being a minor league reliever, doesn't even get the acclaim that a guy like DIon gets, which is very little as Dion is on the short side and does it with a below ML average fastball, using his command and guile to get hitters out, something that likely won't play at higher levels unless he ups that FB velocity (see Eli Morgan).  

So when a guy like Thornton puts up eye-popping K numbers in a league he is young for you have to ask yourself is it real or is it Memorex?  

SUMMARY

The rest of the season will give us more information in what we have in guys like Schneeman, Holland, Thornton, Dion and Bracho but unexpectedly good performances does add a little spice to a prospect geek's season...especially in a farm system that is struggling so mightily right now to even put up a legitimate top 10 prospects (I don't think Curry, Gaddis, Allen or Bibee count any more), let alone a top 30.