Are we underrating Manny Banuelos?

too many great pitching prospects to be in top-10, but he should def b in the top 20

I’ve seen him pitch a couple of times and never saw that 93-95 MPH fastball people were talking about, he sat at 89-91 and hit 94 once for me and that was a stadium gun and you know those are fast. He has a great changeup, but his command of his pitches was below average.

Player A (Age 21): 114 IP in AA, 9.47 K/9, 4.03 BB/9, 3.74 FIP; 28 IP in AAA, 10.93 K/9, 6.43 BB/9, 3.84 FIP.

Player B (Age 20): 95.1 IP in AA, 9.98 K/9, 4.70 BB/9, 4.01 FIP; 34.1 IP in AAA, 8.13 K/9, 4.98 BB/9, 3.90 FIP.

Both players are also undersized lefties with a mid-90s fastball.

Player B is Banuelos this past season, and Player A is Mauricio Robles in 2010. Who? Exactly. He snuck onto the back end of some top 100 prospect lists that year, and didn’t even make most of them. If Banuelos were not on the Yankees, he might be ranked in the top 50, but that’s probably a stretch. Banuelos on team X would probably be more of a 50-75 guy at best.

with the full caveat that I rarely make any extended non-Cubs list, so simply basing my comments of general perception on how it seems fans here feel.

But the ceiling is plenty high (I mean … in a ridiculously best case scenario, some seem to think the curveball can be plus, and if that’s the case, that’d be three plus pitches). There seems to be enough people that feel that the problems for him, control wise, resided with him having to adjust to his new found power.

Considering age, ceiling, and the fact that he had decent control before this year, I think, for now, that you give him some benefit of the doubt on turning the control/command around. Now, there have been arms that hit AA and they simply couldn’t get away with stuff they did in A ball, and thus, we get a more accurate view of their command/control, but it’s one year in AA right now.

Now, that said, is he a top 10 pitching prospect and a top 20 prospect? In general, on the latter, I’d probably put him a bit lower than top 20, but I always felt 40 seemed a bit low (again, never make a full list). For the former, I’m not sure.

mlb.com, scout, and project prospect are overrating him. I have him right around where John has him. I have him at a B. He’s nowhere close to a top 10 pitching prospect, probably in the 40-50 range for me.

than Banuelos and is 25 spots lower than Banuelos on the community prospect list. Banuelos got a B from John, and Barnes got a B+. Addison Reed is also way better than Manny Banuelos and is 27 spots lower. Banuelos is part of the Yankee hype machine. I’m glad John dosen’t fall for the Yankee hype machine like most prospect rankers

is also better than Banuelos in my book. Here’s a list of people the community ranked below Banuelos who I would rank above
Jake Odorizzi
Brad Peacock
Nestor Molina
Garrett Richards
Noah Syndergaard
Trevor May
Tyrell Jenkins
Drew Hutchison
Keyvious Sampson
Chad Bettis
Matt Barnes
Addison Reed

Fox’s scouting has him as there #9
PP has him #9
MLB has him #13
Scoutingbook.com has him as #16 and still the 2nd best southpaw
baseballnewshound has him as one of their 6 best starting pitching prospects

the lowest I’ve seen him ranked so far is #26.

With Banuelos, I think that despite the perceived act of professional sites and likewise "overrating" him, I think every fan and wannabe scout might actually underrate him by just as great a margin.

Lefties that throw low-mid 90′s is pretty damn good, the guy throws just as hard, if not harder than many SP in the league right now that can be considered #3 caliber and above.

I do understand the gripe about command, but considering this is a new occurrence for Banuelos it’s not even improbable to think that he’ll regain his control (which from what I’ve found online most of his problems stem from nibbling at the strike zone than actual lack of command…we actually saw a brief example of this in his ST games last year)

but I think Banuelos has a chance at going Tyler Matzek/Andrew Brackman/ Drake Britton/Stolmy Pimentel next year. The two Red Sox prospects were weird, their walk rates weren’t that bad last year, but they skyrocketed this year and they had awful seasons. Brackman had a high walk rate, but Banuelos was even higher. Banuelos resembles Matzek a little. Both tremendously outperformed peripherals. Matzek did have a little worse walk rate, but he also had a better K rate

bringing up Perez in this conversation?

he does not sit in the mid 90s. Ogando and Verlander were the only 2 who did that last season. When I saw him he was at 89-91. His curve was average. His change up was his one good pitch and he had bad control. Since his stats don’t back him, and John has him as a B, I don’t have any reason to think he’s a top 30 pitching prospect.

but since he probably sits at 91, that’s like Cliff Lee speed, and Banuelos has awful control, Lee has amazing control, Lee has way better secondary pitches. Cliff Lee with 5 BB/9 and Banuelos’ secondary pitches is a replacement level pitcher.