It’s everyone’s favorite game — compare anonymous stat lines!
| Player A | Player B | |
| ISO | 0.095 | 0.190 |
| BB% | 10.3 | 8.6 |
| K% | 19.5 | 10.1 |
| LD% | 24 | 20 |
| BABIP | .364 | .332 |
| wOBA | .340 | .374 |
Both of these players are Cardinal prospects. Both of these players are in AA. Both of these players are outfielders.
Before I reveal the answer, and before you cheat and look it up, who is having the better year? You could make an argument for either player but player B seems to be outpacing player A by a healthy margin, imo.
Player A is Daryl Jones and Player B is Tyler Henley. We’ve got mitigating variables here that I didn’t include: DJTools is batting a knee injury, Henley is 2 years older and DJ is in his second year of AA. I still think Daryl Jones is a better prospect — age for position players is important to me — but I don’t think Henley gets nearly the amount of love his line has earned him this year.
Henley plays a solid defensive outfield. He’d be a plus defender in a corner position and would probably be able to handle centerfield as an average defender. He’s showing increased power this season, great contact rates, enough of a walk rate to wait for his pitch and nothing that’s obviously fluky about his stat line. He’s not a flashy player that’s going to get rave review from scouts and he’s not a high impact projectable bat. He’s another player in the mold of so many Luhnow draftees — jack of all trades, master of none.
Still, for someone who isn’t a “master” of any one skillset, Henley’s season has to be exciting as he continues to climb the organizational ladder. A player like this looks like he can be a solid 2 WAR player in the next 1-2 years. A better bench bat that someone like Shane Robinson and a decent option as a defender for late innings as well. While batting from the left side of the plate doesn’t help his place in the organization, Henley should be climbing rankings if he continues to hit in a season when so many other Cardinal prospects aren’t.
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I’d agree with that. It’s also worth noting that Jones has refound his swing. It wasn’t great in May or June. Scouts said it looked like he was sweeping across the plate. I saw the same thing.
In batting practice recently, DJ looked much better. Harder swing, more line drives, less grounders. Look for a better second half from him.
Matt, I hope you are right but a guy taking good swings in batting practice doesn’t show that a guy has refound his swing. I hope you are correct but he obviously didn’t refind it before the injury (OPS under .500 for the last month – my god that’s near Derba territory!!!!). I’ll wait until he actually hits in real games before I give him props on the new swing.
I still think Jones is the better prospect but if there is a promotion to AAA in the near future for an OF I hope it is Henley.
This is pretty cool. I would think that DJ’s awesome LD rate and and decent BB rate over the last 2 years in combination with his age.. you can project that he will hit for average, more power down the road and get on base at a pretty decent clip. But Henley’s definitely in need of some love.
In my OOTP season, I’ve nicknamed Henley “Bandwagon” on account of all the love he’s getting here on FR. Not saying it’s unjustified.
So now that Rasmus appears to have a hold on the majors, how many left handed outfielders will be in FR’s top prospect list next season? I can think of at least three.