The Top 20 Position Players Age 25 & Under

its still too early to make a call on McCutchen’s glove, but what we do have shows him as an average at best defender. Both UZR and +/- are pretty negative on him… but I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt anyway and say he’ll be fine. His glove has always been a little bit of an issue, though. From BP in 2008:

[McCutchen] often needs to compensate with speed to make up for his poor jumps.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=8393

I think there’s at least some evidence that Jennings can be a plus defender. TotalZone really likes him. He’s virtually the same tool set as McCutchen but with better jumps on balls. Jennings’ routes need some work, but I’m much more optimistic that will improve over McCutchen’s jumps.

Basically, I think McCutchen will have a little more power but that Jennings will more than make up for that difference by walking a bit more and playing a better CF. Its certainly not a big difference, though. They’re super close and if someone wanted to flip them I wouldn’t bicker with them.

& thanks for the kind words.

I expected to have him higher. He started off much higher on my shortlist but I kept having to slide him down a little. Not wholly comfortable with having him this low to tell you the truth.

-Travis Snider was an honorable mention.
-Adam Jones was considered… I don’t know that his glove turned out to be anywhere near as good as advertised. I’m also not confident in his bat getting any better. He’s close to this list though. Might be the best player off it.
-I have not nor did I ever have any faith in Chris Coghlan. He’s a bad fielder and I think what you’re seeing this year is a lot closer to his true talent level.
-I’ve similarly never been a believer in Pablo Sandoval. He’s going to have to move to 1B soon enough. Don’t think his bat is anything special there, though he’s a good hitter. I don’t think we’ll ever see him approach what he did last year, where he ran into a bunch of balls. He’s better than he’s playing right now… but I’d rather have the guys I listed and its not particularly close.

Wow, I totally forgot about him when reading this. And I have no excuse, as I’m watching the Phillies/Cubs game right now.

I have to think it was a brain fart from alskor.

I’d find it hard to leave him out of the top 10, definitely. I’ve always been a big Votto guy. Really tough to place him among the catchers, though. I’m thinking right around Rasmus… and I’d really need to think it over more. Tough call.

but he’s a 1B and not even a good 1B defensively. He’s been worth 15.7 runs with bat this year… looking at some of the MLB guys on this list we have Gonzalez 11 runs offensively), (McCutchen (10.2) and Delmon (8.5).

Most of the guys on these list are certainly within shouting distance of Butler offensively. When we look at what those other guys add with the glove compared to the negative value Butler brings in the field… well, I don’t think you could convince me a team would be better off with Butler. Butler would be one of the best hitters on this list… but that’s only half of the game.

and I looked at it. If I thought his batting line (.314/.346/.532) were his true talent level he’d be closer to #1 on this list.

He’s still hit 19.4% line drives on the road and played some pretty decent defense in CF. Then again, I was always high on him as a prospect… and I’m assuming at age 24 he continues to get better as a hitter and refine his approach some.

A 19-year old doing great things in A ball doesn’t rank higher than Andrew McCutchen right now. He’s a superstar in the making.

I explain this more in my intro on the full article… obviously that would be a less than optimal outcome.

I’d like to see more than a .161 ISO and 10% walk rate from my first baseman if he’s supposedly an elite-level player.

The guy has to bat like .330 or he’s only a decent everyday first baseman.

(response to below, too).

Yes, he exploded onto the scene as a fairly valuable player. I think it would be a mistake to assume he keeps getting better linearly. Where can he really improve his game? I have a real hard time thinking his patience or power will improve that significantly. I expect them to get a little better… how much better can we reasonably expect them to get? I don’t want to go so far as to say he’s maxed out his potential by any means… but I’m just not confident that he’s going to improve that much.

He’s in pretty rare company where I’ve placed him… I don’t think its a slight. He’s a very good player.

Elvis is still on pace to walk about 80 times this year. If he makes it to 80 walks, below is the company he will be in. Add this to his outstanding defense.

Here is the complete list of players who have walked at least 80 times at age 21 or younger:

Ted Williams (twice)

Mel Ott (twice)

Al Kaline

Joe Morgan

Rickey Henderson

Eddie Mathews

Jimmie Foxx

Harlond Clift

Donie Bush

Curt Blefary

Ed Yost

but my brother told me the same thing.

For some reason if you own a login and go to the site without logging in it seems to get stuck on the old cached version, showing one story before last at the top. Login and refresh and it updates. I’ve been thinking its a firefox issue… I’ll talk to the guys about it though, thanks.

Paid out the ass for him in my favorite fantasy league. No way am I confident placing him high on this list. Being a 1B really hurts a guy’s value. Like I said above… Billy Butler only made HM… its tough.

Smoak would be in the group just below the HMs right now… he definitely has some upside there, but his platoon problems bother me. I think he’s going to be excellent, but right now I can’t justify him making this list.

Look, I really like McCutchen. His ranking wasn’t as much about his bat as it was about his glove. Most of the other similar players on the list are exceptional defenders. I think McCutchen is a subpar defender despite his speed and that hurts him a lot.

… and its not like he’s hitting poorly or anything. I typically don’t look that much at traditional stat lines… focus a lot on K rate, BB rate, ISO, stuff like that… McCutchen looked pretty good on all those counts… but I do have to admit I’m not sure how much better he will hit than this.

Beckham and Wieters… they are really struggling. I think they’re significantly better than they’ve shown. Hard for me to believe that even if McCutchen is also suffering from confidence issues that he can be anywhere near as much better than his line as Beckham and Wieters could be. There just isn’t the wiggle room there.

My main point here on Beckham and Wieters is that they never struggled in the minors, though. McCutchen did. Wieters and Beckham were both fasttracked and this is the first slump they’ve had since… what? high school? little league? Follow me…?

this is something I am trying to do at my site. I don’t even want to cut it off at 25, I am trying to be able to compare the value of a player in the minors against a major leaguer, not just under 25 guys.
I’ve put in tons of work and haven’t rolled much of it out yet but it isn’t too far off. My list I posted is just one thing. I want to be able to put out a report on whatever someone wants.

I fear you all may be less forgiving when I release my rankings of the pitchers. This one was excruciating to do and I’m still not happy with it. There are a tremendous amount of good young pitchers in the game right now and they all have strong elements that recommend them. There just really isn’t much that separates most of them. Plus… so much of the young pitchers is projection for the future… and that’s a lot of opinion, so its absolutely guaranteed to result in disagreement. Opinions on stuff, opinions on potential, even opinions on severity of injuries w/ regards to the future. The people who have problems with projecting young position prospects over successful MLB position players will be absolutely mortified by some of the pitcher rankings, I’m sure. It was never my intention to be strictly objective here… as I don’t think that is the best way to make a list. Be forewarned that the ranking of pitchers is far more subjective than the position players. The ground we walk on is far less solid and there are far less numbers to support my positions. I’m already annoyed by how the article came out, to tell you the truth. I keep rewriting it, trying to explain my decision further. There is no way to please everyone (nor would that be my goal)… but do bear in mind I abhor people who take controversial standpoints they don’t support in order to gain (negative) attention. I absolutely never do that. I hate reading things like that and I respect the people who read my stuff too much to bullshit them like that.

Back to the point though… really appreciate the comments, thank you all for the feedback and for checking out the site. Its a labor of love for all of us and we deeply thank you for taking the time to check it out. We also respect your opinions a great deal so I’m very happy that this post generated so many comments (even if they weren’t all particularly happy with me!)

Thanks,
Al Skorupa (alskor)

It’s not like a player’s development just stops when he reaches the majors, he’s just developing at a higher level.

Unless you’re McCutchen, apparently. :)

If we assume the positional adjustment for CF→RF is correct (and we should). If you asked me to peg it right now I’d say Cutch is around a -3 CF and Bruce at least around a +5 RF (with a case to be made for higher). Obviously its early in both their careers and that could change… but I prefer Bruce’s glove. McCutchen just doesn’t get good reads or jumps and I’m skeptical how much he can improve that… he’s already using his speed to make up for it as much as possible… and its not like he’s going to get faster.

As for the bats, I’ll take Bruce. Obviously there is some projection in that… but I think you all see where I’m coming from there. I wouldn’t blame anyone for taking McCutchen here… he’s certainly been a hitter so far… as I’ve said, this isn’t about the past but about predicting the future, otherwise I could have just cut and pasted a leaderboard from fangraphs and moved on. My preference is Bruce going forward.

I’m not sure how at this point how he can be rated above McCutchen based on MLB performance.

None of this is based wholly on performance to date. Performance to date has strong predictive value, of course, but more goes into the projection aspect than that.

McCutchen is one of the most controversial players on this list… and I expected that. If I was confident he was a +5 CF defensively he would probably be right above or below CarGo and top 5ish. I’m worried about McCutchen’s defense and I’m not sure how much better he’s going to hit. Even with that, he is really good right now and a good portion of this is me predicting other guys getting better around him.

I love Bruce’s power potential and he is a plus defensive RF, but his offensive performance to date has been a little disappointing

He is posting a career high wOBA in 2010. This is his best offensive season so far.

RJ Anderson came out with a great article on Bruce yesterday:

This is Jay Bruce’s third big league season. He improved from year one to year two and has since improved even more from year two to year three. At age 23, he seems to be on the right track towards projected stardom.

The most glaring improvement for Bruce is his offense.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/jay-bruces-oddity/

Caveat: much of his improvement is BABIP fueled… though that does NOT mean we should chalk it up to luck.