Previous installments of the top 50:
#20.) Euribiel Angeles, INF
Angeles was acquired from San Diego in the Sean Manaea trade, and though he hasn’t been hitting for average this year in Lansing as he did in Low-A in 2021, he still is a plus-hit guy who can play a solid shortstop. He’s remarkably sure-handed and consistent defensively for a guy who just turned 20, and he has absurd hand-eye coordination that allows him to barrel pitches in all sorts of seemingly unhittable locations. But like Jordan Diaz five spots below him, Angeles’ gift for getting the bat to the ball has given him very haphazard pitch selection; he’s walked under 4% of the time this year. He ranks above Diaz because he brings way more defensive value and is nearly two years younger, but unlike Diaz, Angeles doesn’t have the strength to regularly turn weaker contact into base hits. There’s some sneaky power in there, but since he’s so often making contact with chase pitches, he hasn’t gotten to it much at all this season. The A’s have adjusted his stance several times throughout the season to try to give him a stronger hitting base and take some of the lunginess out of his swing, and he’s heated up some over the last week-plus, but until he shows some measure of secondary skills, it’s going to be hard to fully buy in on Angeles as a future regular. But there’s a lot to like here: Angeles only just turned 20, and he’s got a very strong chance to be a solid defensive shortstop who strikes out less than 20% of the time. That alone might be enough to give him a career as a utility player, and there’s lots of time for him to get more selective at the plate and add to the skillset.
#19.) Adrian Martinez, RHSP
Yeah, the two players the A’s got for Manaea show up back-to-back on the list, which I didn’t even realize until I sat down to write this section. Martinez is the A’s #5 starter right now and has made two starts: one good and one not so good. But he’s ready for the job full time after making 22 solid starts in Triple-A over the past two seasons. He’s got a fastball-change-slider repertoire that notably tunnels very well, with the plus high-spin changeup being the clear headline offering, an out pitch to batters of either handedness. The two-seam fastball doesn’t miss a ton of bats, but Martinez locates it well and it comes in suitably hard, at 93-95 mph. The slider is his third pitch and is below-average in a vacuum and really only usable to righties, but it tunnels very effectively and Martinez has a good understanding of when and where to use it. Since the changeup is his only plus tool, Martinez doesn’t have a huge ceiling, but he throws quality strikes and his arsenal works well together. He’s got a very strong chance to pitch toward the back of A’s rotations for the next several seasons.
#18.) Max Schuemann, OF/INF
Schuemann has had a banner calendar year in Midland, hitting .327/.430/.464 in 117 games while stealing 35 bases and playing every position except catcher and first base. As those numbers indicate, he has a particularly wide skill base that has a lot of likelihood to translate into some big league value. He runs very well–not quite an 80 grade, but an easy plus one–and provides defensive value probably everywhere but shortstop, where he’s a bit stretched but can fill in adequately. His best position is probably center field, where he started playing regularly late in 2021. Schuemann’s speed comes in handy in beating out infield hits and taking extra bases on his frequent gap liners, and though he chokes up and has a short, simple swing, he takes big, high-effort cuts with a strong base and has come into double-digit homer power. He is already 25 and doesn’t have the barrel accuracy you’d expect from someone with this high of a batting average, so he’s going to have to be careful to balance swinging for power with maintaining reasonable contact rates. But Schuemann might be ready for the big leagues already, and he’s a high-makeup grinder who has improved tremendously since his feeble pro debut in 2018. He’s most likely a super-utility player who can get 350 plate appearances per season, but if he can keep his strikeout rate under 25%, he might be an everyday player, whether at one position or several.
#17.) Garrett Acton, RHRP
Acton is easily the best pure reliever in the system, working with a bigtime three-pitch mix and a very deceptive short-arm delivery. Like Martinez, he’s basically ready: he’s been dominant in his first few Triple-A outings over the last couple of weeks. And like Schuemann, Acton has a reputation as a tremendous worker and excellent at implementing adjustments, as he’s picked up about 5 mph and now sits 96-98 (some 99s were mixed in yesterday for the first time), raised his arm slot, added more deception, and picked up an unusually-gripped above-average changeup all in the past year, catapulting from Low-A to the brink of the big leagues along the way. Relievers are volatile, but if everything holds, Acton will be in the A’s late-game bullpen mix for the next several seasons, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see him emerge as the team’s closer at any point.
#16.) Lawrence Butler, OF/1B
Butler is another player who has come a long way in the post-2020 era, as he erupted for a huge 2021 season, mostly in Stockton, after two years of struggles in the low minors. Still, he had long struggled with strikeouts, even including that season, and the swing-and-miss issues were again a problem as he got off to a slow start in 2022, to the point where I would’ve had him much lower on this list–ten spots or so–a month ago. But Butler made a series of changes to his swing since then that have dramatically improved his timing and barrel accuracy, bringing his easy-plus raw power into games more consistently. He’s not as fast as his 29-for-34 mark in stolen bases last year would indicate, and he’s still somewhat raw as a route-runner in the outfield, though he’s improved enough to start to lessen the likelihood that he’ll be a 1B-only guy on defense, especially since he’s shown a strong outfield arm. Even with the swing changes, the long-levered Butler retains some hit tool risk and hasn’t solved his fellow lefties yet, but a destiny as at least a good platoon right fielder is starting to come into focus here.
#15.) Jonah Bride, INF/C
Bride’s another guy who’s made it up to Oakland already, striking out just three times in his first 44 big league plate appearances. That says something pretty positive about his hit tool that outstrips his unimpressive major-league triple-slash, as he has a .328 xwOBA. Bride had crushed upper-minors pitching over the past two years, and there’s little doubt that the 26-year-old is ready for at least a part-time role. He’s got a great sense of the strike zone and terrific plate coverage, and he’s gradually come into more over-the-fence power as his minor league career has progressed, though that part hasn’t translated to the big leagues yet. The bigger question is where Bride is going to play. He converted to catcher in the offseason but has only caught one game in the last month or so since his promotion to Triple-A, and none in the big leagues yet; he’s also seen his first significant exposure at second base and hasn’t looked great there. He’s sure-handed but otherwise fringe-average at third, though he’s solid-average at first base, the one position where his bat pretty clearly isn’t going to be enough. This is the flipside of Schuemann’s profile: it’s Bride’s offense that ensures he’ll be a big leaguer in at least a part-time role, but the defensive profile–similar to Max Muncy (the big leaguer, not the A’s prospect) plus the catching wrinkle–holds him back from being an obvious fit in an everyday role. At the very least, though, he’ll make for a good bench bat, and he’s got a sneaky chance to have a Muncy-esque offensive run (with more contact and less power) in his late twenties.
#14.) Chen Zhong-Ao Zhuang, RHSP
Zhuang hasn’t gotten a lot of press yet, partially because of his unusual origin: he signed out of Taiwan at age 20 this past November after impressing the A’s in a tryout. The organization thought he might be too raw to get a full-season assignment, but he impressed in camp and has been one of Stockton’s best starters in his first pro season, with a sparkling 43/9 K/BB in 42 innings. Zhuang pitches off a carrying four-seamer in the 92-96 range and a plus changeup that’s already one of the best in the organization. His slow, looping curve was originally his third pitch, but he’s added a short, cutting slider that has more promise, and he also throws some two-seamers. He’s allowed a lot of home runs in the Cal League hitting haven with his high-fastball approach, but he’s got solid command and shows advanced feel for sequencing given his lack of pro experience. I’m ranking him aggressively here, but his profile is similar to Martinez’s except Zhuang’s fastball can miss bats. He’s still pretty far from Oakland, but Zhuang has mid-rotation upside if things work out.
#13.) Brett Harris, INF
Harris has some similarities to Bride, in that he was an underpowered corner infielder in college who has turned into a bit more of an offensive force than expected in the minors; he’s held his own with the bat in Double-A less than a year after being drafted. Unlike Bride, he’s a terrific defender at third base who can even play an average second despite his lanky 6’4” frame and below-average speed. He is already 24 and hasn’t yet figured out how to translate the excellent plate discipline he showed early in the year in Lansing to the upper minors, but the defense is good enough to give Harris a career even if the bat tops out in the Ke’Bryan Hayes range. It’s not yet clear exactly what Harris’ offensive profile is going to look like–there’s leverage-based power, but he keeps the swing short and contact-focused and has the walk-heavy history, but none of these three strengths are so strong as to be guaranteed carrying offensive skills–but there’s a real chance he gets to the 100 wRC+ level or better, which would make him an extremely valuable player.
#12.) Joey Estes, RHSP
Estes is the youngest pitcher to spend significant time at an A’s full-season affiliate this season, and he’s held his own at High-A Lansing after being a big part of the Matt Olson trade. His numbers there haven’t matched the dominance he had at the Braves’ Low-A affiliate, and his season was interrupted by a knee injury suffered while diving in the field that he’s since returned from, but Estes has shown some of the best velocity in the system, sitting 95-97 at times. His fastball also has huge running action but retains some carry and plays up in the zone. There’s still a gap between the pitcher Estes is and the one he’ll become. Like a lot of high school draftees, he was primarily a fastball-slider guy when he was selected in 2019, but it’s the changeup that has significantly more upside than the breaking ball and could get to plus in time. Since he’s still somewhat new to featuring the pitch, Estes’ feel for the change, and its resultant consistency, isn’t consistently there yet, but when it is, he dominates. The slider isn’t consistent yet either and really backs up on Estes at times, but it flashes up to about average when he finishes the pitch. He might be a candidate to add a pitch–curve or cutter–at some point to take the pressure off the slider and tunnel better with the fastball/change combination. Estes has a notably aggressive demeanor on the mound and comes right at hitters with fastballs at the letters, and he’d have Acton-esque upside in relief, but the promise of the changeup and Estes’ decent command give him a shot to start. He’s an extreme flyball pitcher in the Tyler Mahle mold, and Mahle’s production isn’t a bad comp for how Estes might fare if he develops reasonably well.
#11.) J.T. Ginn, RHSP
We switch to the other side of the batted-ball spectrum for Ginn, an extreme groundball guy who pitches off a heavy, heavy sinker that can touch the mid 90s. He was off to an unusually promising start in the bat-missing department with Midland to start the season before getting shut down in May with forearm tightness. His offspeeds–a fairly long slider in the 82-85 range and a changeup that looks almost exactly like the sinker, just seven mph slower–looked solid but unexceptional in his brief time on the mound this year, but the slider has earned stronger reviews in the past, and it may be that it was affected by the injuries earlier this season, so I’m retaining some optimism that my takeaway on it was more of a blip. Ginn’s command and ability to keep the ball on the ground give him an extremely high floor other than his fairly extensive injury history, which includes a Tommy John surgery, The success in garnering strikeouts early in the season points toward perhaps a significant ceiling, but I’m mostly inclined to treat him as more of a righthanded Brett Anderson than a righthanded Framber Valdez for now. Still, if he stays reasonably healthy, Ginn is the pitcher in this system who is most likely to crack 100 big league starts, and that’s meaningful.
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