Last year I posted my thoughts on several college outfield, infield, and catching prospects, players who weren't on many or any top-100 lists but still stood out from the pack. That effort went well enough, so I'm writing up a few more for this year's draft, starting with catchers this time. I'm including with each player's basic information (name, year, school) my preseason rating of that player, a 0-100 number. I will include at the end of the article a brief note on methodology for those who are interested. My assessment of these players has changed somewhat, of course, but the preseason rating is the starting point for each player, modified now by what they've done in 2018.

Matt Duce, Sr., Dallas Baptist (54.25) - Right off the bat, I admit, I'm stretching the definition of "under the radar". Duce is a fairly well-regarded prospect, drafted but not signed by the Mets in the 14th round last year. He was on my list last year, though, enjoyed a strong Junior year in 2017, and still isn't getting the kind of attention I'd expect for one of my top 5 seniors entering 2018. Duce last year gave up a few walks (down to a still-good 12%) for increased power, lifting his HR to a solid 9 in 265 PA and his ISO to .221, and cut his strikeouts a bit to retain his typical near-even strikeout-to-walk ratio. The resulting .333/.424/.554 line, at Dallas Baptist, makes him more a solid hitter than an exciting one (it's a pretty good place and level for a hitter), but consistently solid work in the Cape Cod and Northwoods Leagues encourages us to think he's got a future as a pro hitter. He will probably be better at getting on base than hitting for power as a professional. Duce's defense is a question, but I doubt a problem. He's seen time at 3B and DH the past two years as the Patriots have given rather punchless defensive savant Garrett Wolforth playing time at catcher. Duce, though, seems to be regarded fairly well himself -- he made the MVC's 2016 All-Defense team at catcher even though he only played part-time, and the opinions I've found suggest he has a strong arm -- and his numbers aren't bad. He caught 27% of basestealers last year, 33% in 2016, 2 of 5 this year. His passed ball total this year seems high, but it's a pretty small sample. Of course, the ability to play 3B might have its own value in a player who projects as a backup in the majors barring a significant step forward in power or defense. Duce is off to a slow start in 2018 (.240/.374/.438) but that's mostly due to a fluky batting average; his underlying skills haven't changed (Ks up a bit, ISO down slightly, but HR rate nearly the same, walk rate way up, K/BB a little better than usual). He remains one of the better Senior signs available in '18, a player likely to have his name called late in the first ten rounds and more likely than the typical money-saving pick to make a major-league contribution.

Nick Fortes, Jr., Ole Miss (39.75) - As the preseason grade suggests, I've been slow to warm up to Fortes as a prospect. His .319/.382/.486 line in just 159 PA last year suggested more a nice college player and later-round pick than a serious prospect. His offensive game featured contact (under 10% Ks) over patience (7.5% BB) or power, an impression reinforced by his Northwoods Lg. performance (2 HR, 12 BB and K in 227 PA). His strong batting averages compensate somewhat, but he's also a 1B/C, and "questionable defensive catcher with limited power and patience" isn't a draft profile that interests me a lot. Fortes' 2018 slash stats are so far almost identical to 2017's, but he's made real strides as a hitter this year. A collapsing BABIP (down 87 points this year) has held his averages down, but he's cut his Ks a bit, more than doubled his BB rate, hit half again as many HR, and lifted his ISO over .200; I now feel confident he'll generate enough OBP to have a chance as a pro hitter. If he's a 1B, though, that probably doesn't matter, as he won't have the power to be interesting there. I didn't think, coming into the year, that Fortes could make it at catcher; he was getting more playing time at first down the stretch in 2017. This year, though, he's gotten around two-thirds of his playing time behind the plate. He's always had oddly good CS rates (about 40% for his career) for someone who hasn't consistently played the position, his size (6'-0", 210) works there, and back in 2015 he produced the same sort of pop times as guys like Grant Koch and Joey Bart. In sum, Fortes is getting more time at catcher, and there's no current reason to think he can't stay at the position. If he does, his high-contact approach and developing secondary skills, proved in as difficult an amateur league as exists, make him an interesting draft prospect.

Phil Capra, Jr., Wagner (44.50) - Like Duce and Fortes, Capra is a prospect if he can catch. Unlike the first two, I'm not at all confident the thick-bodied Capra can stay at the position. There's a lot about catcher defense that escapes my ability to evaluate it given the available information, but what I can see isn't promising. Capra caught only 15% of basestealers last year, up to just 21% this year, he has played a lot of first base at Wagner, and his stat line contains more E's and PB's than I'd like. He remains a fun player to follow, though, because he can really hit. After a decent performance as a Freshman regular (encouraging in itself), Capra raked last year. He made the same sort of contact as Fortes, walked in nearly 14% of his PA, and hit .351 with mid-range power. So far this year he seems to have made the solid decision to sell out for power. His K rate has jumped to a (still-decent) 14.4%, the payoff being a HR rate that has nearly doubled, hiking his ISO to .271. He still walks more than he strikes out, resulting in a pretty .344/.449/.615 line. The problems are obvious: he's hitting in the low-level NEC, he did not look good last summer in 93 PA in the NECBL, his nice summer '16 performance in the Hamptons League was in the Hamptons League, and if he can't play catcher as a pro it's not clear where he could play. Still, his bat will probably get him drafted at some point, and he's at least a fun organizational player to watch. If pro coaching can help him develop as a defensive player, he could even become a prospect.

Also of note: Colin Simpson, Jr., OK St. (49.00) is another not-really-under-the-radar player after what he did to the Jayhawk League last summer (.451/.500/.797, Baseball America's #1 prospect in that league). He's got a lot of power, his defense has taken a step forward in 2018, and he's making a case to be drafted in the first five rounds . . . Ryan Jeffers, Jr., UNC-Wilmington (47.25) can really hit - power, patience, solid contact, he's done it all for two seasons now. It's the CAA, and his summer numbers haven't been great, but he can definitely hit. Unfortunately, at 6'-4", 225, and with iffy defensive numbers he may not really be a catcher. He seems to have a good arm, though, and if he can play RF (or find a way to stay at C) he's still awfully interesting. If he's a 1B, maybe. . . . Chase Illig, rSo., West Virginia (52.75) is my system's idiosyncratic catcher pick for 2018. His BB and CS rates as a part-time rFr in 2017 looked good, and he impressed me and BA in the WCL last summer, hitting 15 HR. He's still hitting for power in 2018, but may be overdoing it, as his poor K rate has jumped even higher and he's hitting .200. He's also more DH than C right now, and we'll probably want to wait and see what 2019 brings before getting too interested. Still, there's something here worth keeping an eye on. . . . Tyler Cropley, Sr., Iowa (38.50) doesn't do a lot that jumps out at you - after 2 CC seasons, his Jr line wasn't terribly impressive (.268/.371/.459), but he's been very good this year (1.041 OPS). Letting a little air out of that given his experience, we have a little power, a quality approach at the plate, pretty good contact, respectable athleticism for a catcher, and average or better throwing (36% CS '17, 33% this year). Not scintillating, but solid, and thus at least an organizational soldier with a chance to be one of the lucky Seniors to get drafted (in the first ten rounds) then shafted (on the bonus).

Those are a few of the college catchers eligible for this June's MLB draft who strike me as interesting beyond their press clippings. I'll be writing about outfielders in a day or two. In the meantime, let us all know which non-Top Prospect catchers look good to you.

Specifically, these are the catchers outside popular top prospect listings who looked good (near or above 40.00) coming into the year and have continued to be interesting in 2018. I arrived at the numerical ratings using a method I've been working on since 2008, one that uses a broad range of information to create tiered lists of prospects at each position. I'll describe that method briefly below for anyone who may be interested (or irritated at my choices, and curious how I got it so wrong).

I begin by rating each player from 0 to 10 (10 being the best) in six categories for hitters, five for pitchers, based on statistical performance; thus, statistics form the method's baseline. The categories are Power, Patience/Plate Approach, Athleticism, Defense, Average/Contact Rate, and Subjective for hitters, Control, Strikeouts, HR rate, Stuff, and Subjective for pitchers. For example, for a hitter, a HR rate of over 7% is a 10, although I would modify that down slightly if it weren't supported by a similarly strong doubles total. For some of these categories the statistical basis is clear (HR modified by other XBH for Power, BB% modified by K rate for Patience/Plate Approach, K% for pitchers' strikeouts), in others, less so (for hitters, Athleticism begins with evidence from triples, doubles, SB, and SB%, plus speed times where available; for pitchers' Stuff rating, velocity when I can get it, otherwise it's derivative of K, HR, and XBH percentages and Batting Average Allowed).

These basic ratings then have to be modified to account for factors like experience (e.g., we would expect a Junior to hit better than a Sophomore, so Jr numbers need to be adjusted downward somewhat, especially their Patience rating) and environment (6% HR in the AEC is different from 6% HR in the ACC; hitting .350 in the OVC is not as interesting at hitting .350 in the Big West).

I further modify the resulting ratings to reflect any other information I can get my hands on: summer league performance, scouting evaluations and opinions, high school performances, whatever is publicly available. Information that doesn't fit easily anywhere else (for example, that the player is an academic All-American) impacts the Subjective rating. Thus, I might end up assigning a 6 for Athleticism to a player who didn't hit a lot of triples or steal a lot of bases because scouting opinion seems to be that he's a strong athlete and he ran track in high school; the final rating becomes a compromise between the performance data and soft information. A player's Power rating, on the other hand, will tend to stay closer to what the numbers indicate, because the numbers reflect power more clearly than they do athleticism.

For each position the different categories have a slightly different weight, depending on how important that quality is at each position (for first basemen, for example, Power makes up 40% of the final number, Power, Patience, and Average collectively make up 75%; for shortstops, Defense and Athleticism account for about a third of the total). The final number will be between 0 and 100, and more or less answers the question, "how close to a perfect prospect is this player?" While any percentage is theoretically possible, in practice I've never had a player top 80, only 2-4 per year over 70. On the other end of the spectrum, below about 40 the number of players gets out of hand quickly, so I only track those who get above that number, or who are very close and unusually interesting for some reason. Happily, this final range of numbers corresponds well to the traditional scouting scale. As the precision suggested by my final numbers is of course not real ("You're a 46.75, you need to stand behind that guy, he's a 47.25!"), I round the final number to the nearest 5, so I have 40 players (occasionally 40+ or 40- if I think it's warranted), 45 players, 50 players, and so on.

I believe my approach has four strengths. It's simple. It's flexible, easily adjusted to adapt to new ideas and information (in fact I tweak it annually). It allows for apples-to-apples comparisons among different groups of players, in particular hitters and pitchers (the two populations, with only small adjustments to a couple of positions, have roughly the same mean and range over a multi-year sample, so a 55 hitter and a 55 pitcher really do have similar value within the system). And by far most important, this method allows for the use of many different kinds of information. Stats are great, but scouts have meaningful insights too; the best answers come from approaches that take advantage of both sources. My method starts with numbers but can incorporate soft data and still produce a meaningful, non-arbitrary numeric rating.

So that, for what it's worth, is the approach that picks out the particular players I've chosen to profile. I hope parts of it will prove useful to you. Thank you for reading, and I look forward to your comments.