Other Installments in the 2024 Midseason Top 50:
10.) Chen Zhong-Ao Zhuang, RHSP
How Acquired: International amateur free agent (2021, Taiwan)
Current Team: Lansing
2022 Midseason Rank: 14
2023 Midseason Rank: 33
Zhuang is starting to get a bit of buzz this year, but as I’ve written and this ranking reinforces, I think he’s probably the most underrated prospect in the system (One could argue some of the unknown Rookie-level guys get that honor, but that’s semantics). He’s dominated when healthy, and fundamentally I start at the same place here as I did with Jack Perkins at 11: I’ve got a ton of confidence in Zhuang’s two primary offerings. In this case, that’s his carrying mid-90s fastball and his changeup/splitter/both/whatever you want to make of his offspeeds, which have been untouchable in A-ball and which he commands very well. He does a nice job balancing an aggressive approach–coming right at hitters with the heat–with all sorts of cunning, changing speeds and shapes on pitches in ways that can really hold up several times through the order.
Zhuang is only a few months shy of turning 24 and still in A-ball–due to injury layoff, certainly not performance–so he still has a lot to prove, even if I think he’ll prove it quickly. First and foremost, he’s got to prove he can stay healthy. Beyond that, there’s still the matter of his breaking stuff–particularly the harder breaking ball that keeps morphing between slider and cutter, and his extreme flyball tendency. But as I noted in the longform analysis, Zhuang’s two best pitches + command are tough for anyone in the system to equal. He looks the part of a solid midrotation starter and should be able to move up the remaining levels quickly if health allows.
9.) Denzel Clarke, OF
How Acquired: Drafted (Round 4, 2021)
Current Team: Midland
2022 Midseason Rank: 10
2023 Midseason Rank: 3
Clarke has finally started to get going in June, getting over the Mendoza Line and hitting for power again, which hopefully stops his slow slide down the top ten over the season’s first couple of months. I’ve always figured Clarke will get things going again: he had a 130 wRC+ in Midland last year, shoulder surgery impacted his offseason and meant that he had a lot of rust to shake off, and there was some bad luck in his statline relative to his underlying metrics. But he’s now 24 and time is beginning to tick here, as Clarke has struggled to get his timing down on a consistent basis, particularly with the way his hands load. Just the past two days, he’s looked to get his hands in position earlier, and that’s produced back-to-back three-hit games, and he’s overall looked to be slowly rounding into form as the season has progressed. It’s very possible that at season’s end, the first two months are an easily-explained blip in a career that just continues ascending, as it had through the end of 2023.
It could do that because Clarke remains an incredible athlete, capable of showing massive range in center, a plus if inconsistent arm, the ability to get from base to base in an impossibly low number of strides, and huge strength that produces lasers and rainbows to all fields. There is little question that he will be a star if he can hit .240, particularly because Clarke’s batting eye is good and he has a feel for how to work counts.
Clarke’s ability to hit .240, or even .200, is really contingent on mechanics. He’s got a lot to coordinate in the box and often doesn’t look nearly as athletic there as he does in every other aspect of the game. There’s the matter of the awkward load, where his wrists turn without a ton of control to get things going, but there’s also the question of Clarke shifting his weight on time, as he’s tended to set up quite wide–in an effort to simplify the weight transfer–and get out on his front foot too early against offspeed stuff and also loops under high heat. Overall, that means he's been too beatable in the strike zone and is going to have to find more consistency to move forward.
Some might think that Clarke’s struggles should be enough to cause one to really lose faith and drop him toward lottery ticket status, though, and I don’t agree. He’s still done a ton of things well in 2024, he hit very well just a year ago, the shoulder issues are an obvious explanation for his struggles, and big, long-limbed guys often develop late. Clarke certainly gives it all in his development, as he’s been through a whole succession of setups this year in an effort to get going, a continuation of a longstanding tendency to tweak things (not always a good thing, but reflective of the player’s desire to improve, at least). We are beginning to enter the timeframe in which further struggles definitely make the career paths of either Michael Taylor more likely and the George Springer path less so, but that doesn’t mean the high-upside possibilities are anywhere near off the table here.
8.) Joey Estes, RHSP
How Acquired: Trade (from Atlanta with Shea Langeliers, Ryan Cusick, and Cristian Pache for Matt Olson, 2022)
Current Team: Oakland
2022 Midseason Rank: 12
2023 Midseason Rank: 15
Estes presumably will graduate from eligibility for this list next week. He has a 3.54 xERA and 3.87 FIP in the majors right now, and he’s only 22 years old. He’s been a durable rotation presence up the A’s chain since he entered the organization, coming right at batters with his run/carry fastball–sitting 92-95 and touching 96 at his best, 90-94 at his worst–and showing enough command and sequencing savvy to continually adapt to new levels with some finesse.
You’d like to think that a talented, competitive 22-year-old who’s doing well in the big leagues has a big upside, and that’s really where the questions are here. Eric Longenhagen’s A’s list called Estes “a low-ceiling fifth starter,” which doesn’t quite feel fair but also comes from an understandable place. He’s long been searching for consistency with his offspeed pitches and has played with their shapes, going to more of a slider/sweeper duo after experimenting with a cutter (a pitch I’ve long thought could unlock a ton for him, tunneling off the fastball) last year. His changeup, a pitch that’s long flashed above-average potential but has rarely had consistency, is growing some but isn’t a big bat-misser at this stage either.
Estes is young, but if I’m going to continually note that other pitchers in the A’s system are mid-twenties breakout candidates because they’ve missed a lot of time due to injury, 2020, etc., it also has to be acknowledged that Estes has gotten a ton of experience for his age and has yet to unlock a real difference-making pitch. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t improved–the changeup has come along, the breaking stuff has more depth than his old slider, and he’s developed much more feel for pitching–but those adjustments have raised his floor more than his ceiling, if that makes sense.
But I still come down on the more optimistic side here, because we’re now at the point where Estes has continued to steadily improve to the point where he already is a fifth starter, and thus any further improvement would make him better than that. Since he’s improved a fair bit over the past year, the notion that he’s completely done developing–at his young age–isn’t one I find especially likely. I don’t think it’s all that likely he suddenly finds a 70-grade offering and dominates, and his extreme flyball tendency–sub-20% GB% in Oakland!–definitely is going to present one statistical issue, but as extreme flyball comps go, I think he’ll end up somewhere in the middle between Aaron Civale and Joe Ryan.
7.) Colby Thomas, OF
How Acquired: Drafted (Round 3, 2022)
Current Team: Midland
2022 Midseason Rank: N/A
2023 Midseason Rank: 18
Thomas has some of the most electric bat speed in the system, and he’s got tremendous plate coverage and ability to pound fastballs and breaking pitches alike. He’s also a quality athlete who plays good corner outfield defense with an above-average arm, and he’s constantly looking to take extra bases with aggressive baserunning (occasionally to his detriment, as he almost certainly leads the A’s system in being thrown out at second trying for hustle doubles in the past two years). The ball jumps off his bat for electric ropes and homers, and he’s excelled in Double-A in just his second pro season.
Still, pushing Thomas this far up the list does give me some qualms, mostly because his plate approach has tended to veer out toward Jeff Francoeur territory this year, north of 40% chase. Now, Thomas, unlike Daniel Susac, is also hyper-aggressive within the zone and is an excellent first-pitch ambush hitter, but he also often swings at first-pitch breaking balls that finish a foot off the plate. He’s always been aggressive up there but has really taken it to an extreme in what I’ve watched in 2024, and that’s going to catch up with him at some point if he doesn’t adjust. His Z-Con/O-Con split on breaking pitches, for instance, is outrageously large–he hits around 90% of them in the zone and under 30% on chases. Chasing that frequently with that little contact (he does make much more contact on out-of-zone fastballs, although interestingly less in-zone than breakers, a trend that has persisted for two years now) is not going to be a productive approach against pitchers with a good scouting report and the ability to sequence.
The good news is that Thomas often needs to just see one in-zone pitch to get a positive result of an at-bat, and his approach has always seemed more borne of an aggressive mentality than something more damning like a spin recognition issue (if it were the latter, it would be hard explain the Z-Con on breakers). At times last year, Thomas dialed down the chasing a bit, so there’s no obvious reason a more selectively aggressive version of him can’t manifest down the line. If it can, he can be a starting big league corner outfielder.
6.) Steven Echavarria, RHSP
How Acquired: Drafted (Round 3, 2023)
Current Team: Stockton
2022 Midseason Rank: N/A
2023 Midseason Rank: N/A
Has Echavarria been up and down in his pro debut this year? Absolutely. But remember that we’re evaluating him on the scale of an 18-year-old in full-season baseball, and nobody his age has pitched for any significant length of time in full-season ball in the A’s system since Ronald Herrera in 2014. The fact that he’s gotten the Stockton assignment at all is an accomplishment, and though he sports a high ERA, it’s not as though Echavarria hasn’t had strong moments or completely lost his feel for pitching.
As we’ve ascended toward the top of the list pitching-wise, I keep referencing what I have confidence in–like Perkins’ fastball and breaker or Zhuang’s fastball/changeup/command. To me, there’s a big difference between attributes that I’ve consistently had confidence in like those and ones I’ve had intermittent confidence in. Where I am with Echavarria is that though he’s obviously got a lot of development left, I’m already impressed with all of his pitches, and he’s (likely–you never know what paths players’ development will take) got to struggle for a while longer–years–before we start to get to the point where that confidence wanes to a large degree.
It’s not even so much the pitches themselves as the attributes behind them. Echavarria has a fast arm and touches 96 with life, so that’s plenty good for an 18-year-old. He can really spin a breaking ball–he throws two different sliders right now (after a lot of curves in high school) and it’ll be years before we know what his breaking shape(s) will be in the bigs, but it’s clear that whatever they are, they’ll have tightness. He didn’t use his changeup a lot in high school but already throws a pretty good one and shows feel for it.
So why has he struggled? Well, Stockton’s a tough place to pitch and their defense has struggled, so that takes a bite out of the bad performance already, but it’d be unfair to assign all the blame to contextual factors. But all I’ve really seen as negative here is that Echavarria isn’t there yet on his overall feel for pitching: he’s had issues with overthrowing and getting too effortful in his motion, is still figuring out sequencing, and just doesn’t have the consistency of his on-mound approach down yet. But that totally makes sense–he had legendary high school numbers and is adapting on the fly to a very different level of competition. It’s not like he’s a bad athlete or has a broken delivery–more than anything, he needs reps and a bit of added muscle, and those should both come in time. Echavarria’s stuff is excellent for his age, he has some physical projection remaining, and there’s no obvious reason why he won’t settle into pro ball effectively with experience. We’re still a fair distance off from a particularly clear read on his big league future, but there are plenty of mid-rotation possibilities.
5.) Luis Morales, RHSP
How Acquired: International amateur free agent (2022, Cuba)
Current Team: Lansing
2022 Midseason Rank: N/A
2023 Midseason Rank: 12
Morales is pretty much universally considered the best pitching prospect in the system, and I’m not going to be a contrarian on this one. He’s a premium athlete who gets down the mound very effectively and unleashes easy 96-98 mph heat that he holds for several innings, his hybrid downer breaking ball arrives with big snap and depth, and his changeup is a solid if somewhat unexceptional third pitch that he’s very willing to incorporate. It’s rare to find a 21-year-old pitcher with no significant questions about any part of toolset, but that’s Morales.
The questions that do exist here entirely have to do with his ability to put those talents together. Morales’ arm action remains on the long side, and though he’s a terrific athlete with great balance over the rubber, he’s not completely out of the woods when it comes to corralling that arm action enough to obviously obtain average-or-better command. He’s also had notable trouble slowing the game down, using a grip-and-rip style of pitching with very repetitive patterning and a tendency to make mental mistakes–he leads the system in balks (all of which are not coming set before delivering) and tends to oscillate between pitching out of the stretch and the windup when the bases are empty, with little obvious impetus.
I’ll make allowances for stuff like that for now, though, because Morales is like a first-round pick in the sense that he’s had nothing but success in his professional life–what with getting the highest-ever signing bonus for an international pitcher in the current IFA landscape and immediately moving across four levels in three months last year–and those players tend to need longer to make their initial pro adjustments than others. Morales has been relatively successful in Lansing this season and has all sorts of time to clean up the rough edges in his game.
Ultimately, there are ingredients here for Morales to be a premium starting pitcher and a long developmental runway for him to continue actualizing them. I’m keeping him below the top quartet of position players because there’s more inherent risk with pitchers and Morales is probably further from the majors than everyone ahead of him. He’s got so much upside, though, that further progress from here will vault him into consideration for the A’s top prospect.
4.) Henry Bolte, OF
How Acquired: Drafted (Round 2, 2022)
Current Team: Lansing
2022 Midseason Rank: N/A
2023 Midseason Rank: 8
Bolte has been a dominant hitter in the Midwest League, and he’s only 20 and it feels like he’s just starting to scratch the surface of his potential. He’s a dynamic athlete who is a terror flying down the first base line with his hustling approach, he can cover a lot of ground in center field, and his wrists tornado to the baseball and make it jump off his bat, producing easy power without Bolte having to sell out for it. He covers the strike zone well and has an extremely discerning approach beyond his years, walking a ton and setting himself up to swipe a ton of bags.
Bolte still has a lot to clean up in his game to continue to excel at higher levels, but the thing that’s always been striking–even as his strikeouts have been consistently high–is how little of his issues seem unfixable. He does get top-hand-heavy in his swing and rolls a lot of balls over to third base, though his ability to beat out infield hits makes that significantly less problematic than a high groundball rate has been for, say, Jordan Díaz. He’s also got some work to do in cleaning up his unusually short throwing stroke in the outfield, but there’s solid arm strength in there.
The strikeout issues don’t seem to result from any significant mechanical issue, zone he can’t cover, or pitch he can’t track, but more the mental side of the game, where Bolte is so cerebral that he second-guesses himself as the pitch is coming in and can hesitate to explode through the ball, leaving him late on high fastballs and sometimes out in front of breakers away from him. As such, he’s relatively easy to put away when he’s behind in the count if the pitcher can find the strike zone. To me, though, Bolte just needs time to widen his mental database of pro stuff and patterning, and he’s tended to progress rapidly as he’s caught up to the speed of the game. There’s obviously still hit-tool risk here, but Bolte has All-Star upside and obvious paths to reach it.
3.) Darell Hernaiz, INF
How Acquired: Trade (from Baltimore for Kyle Virbitsky and Cole Irvin, 2022)
Current Team: Oakland (60-day IL)
2022 Midseason Rank: N/A
2023 Midseason Rank: 6
As it is with Estes, I think there’s a tendency for evaluators to treat Hernaiz as an is-what-he-is guy in a way that’s premature. But okay, let’s start with what he’s accomplished at age 22. Not only has Hernaiz hit well at every level of the minor leagues, but he managed a .298 xwOBA in his time in Oakland, struck out and walked at reasonable rates, crested the 88 mph threshold for average exit velo, and cut his chase rate from its high upper-minors levels to a very reasonable 23%. None of those metrics are elite, but they all paint the picture of a player who’s hanging in in basically every respect, and he’s got all sorts of time to go from just hanging in to really imposing his will on the big leagues.
That doesn’t mean he’s a perfect player, of course–there’s still work for Hernaiz to do defensively, he needs to lift the ball more, use the pull side better, and maintain that disciplined approach for more than just a month’s worth of games. But from my perspective, we’re looking at mostly finishing-school kinds of adjustments here, because it’s not like Hernaiz is some sort of maxed-out performance guy. He’s an explosive swinger with plus bat speed and strong wrists who can really drive the ball when he gets a hold of one, and his athleticism and arm strength are often evident in the field. I’ve said that if it all comes together for Hernaiz, he could be Marcus Semien. That’s not the most likely outcome by any means, but even if only some pieces of the puzzle come together, he’s got a lot of productive possible profiles. He has little left to prove in the minors once he’s healthy–and he’s already actively rehabbing–and I won’t be surprised if he’s established himself as a capable everyday guy within his next 100 pro games.
2.) Max Muncy, INF
How Acquired: Drafted (Round 1, 2021)
Current Team: Las Vegas (7-day IL)
2022 Midseason Rank: 5
2023 Midseason Rank: 7
If Muncy had gone to college, this would be his draft year. Instead, he’s proven his merit at shortstop while hitting his way up to Vegas, showing excellent pop for a middle infielder and keeping his strikeout rate reasonable after his alarming swing-and-miss issues early in the 2023 season.
Something everyone’s said about Muncy since he came into the system is what a hard worker he is, and that’s a notion that his minor league performance arc has really reflected. He’s faced questions about basically every aspect of his skillset along his minor league journey–rarely all of them at once, but at any given time, there’s been some aspect that’s a target for skepticism–and yet he’s managed to tie all of his skills into a relatively balanced package at age 21 despite a bunch of developmental hiccups, mostly his Lansing tenure in 2022 and especially early 2023.
Muncy is a capable shortstop–mostly on first step and instincts rather than gigantic long speed–with a plus arm that should make him a good fit for third base, which will be his likely destination if he’s going to share a clubhouse with the player in front of him on this list. His swing can really backspin and loft the ball to all fields, and Muncy still has room to add muscle and become a more consistent power threat as he ages.
It is the power that seems to be the biggest question about Muncy right now in prospect circles, which is an interesting development, considering that his power was the first thing to really show up in pro ball (in Stockton in early 2022). There’s no question there’s juice in his bat, but what’s happened with Muncy is that he’s still figuring out how to calibrate the effort in his swing. His massive strikeout trouble in Lansing in early 2023 came because he started taking Herculean cuts at anything and everything, coming out of his mechanics and pulling his head off line. His results returned immediately upon him dialing things down, but he’s been more of a gap hitter since that adjustment. I think Muncy’s work ethic and strength are ultimately going to allow him to find that power gear again without sacrificing all that much in the way of contact. Though the exact version of his skillset we’ll end up seeing–contact or power? short or third?–isn’t all that clear, I think Jhonny Peralta isn’t a bad comp for a reasonably likely version of the player Muncy will become. He’s got a long developmental runway to figure out the final few steps to that destination.
1.) Jacob Wilson, INF
How Acquired: Drafted (Round 1, 2023)
Current Team: Las Vegas (7-day IL)
2022 Midseason Rank: N/A
2023 Midseason Rank: N/A
There’s still a ton left to learn about Wilson since his pro career has been so short, but two things are clear: he’s going to put the bat on the ball and he’s going to play superior defense at shortstop. Lauded for his hand-eye coordination when he was drafted, Wilson has certainly delivered on that promise and hit for an absurd .389 batting average in 54 career games, propelling him to Triple-A already. He’s also a human highlight reel on defense with exceptional body control and great instincts: it’s rare to see a player of Wilson’s age who combines his flair for web gems with the mental and physical discipline to make few errors. Though I share a lot of the questions that the prospect analysis community has about Wilson’s bat, I have the glove evaluated more positively than the fairly generic “he’s a solid shortstop” takes that seem to be the norm, and that helps insulate Wilson’s floor: even if his offensive game remains fairly one-dimensional, he’ll have a fair bit of big-league value in the Jose Iglesias mold.
The good news about the questions–which have to do with the consistency of Wilson’s hard contact and his tendency to expand the zone–is that they are questions, not flaws, per se. Wilson is just 54 games into his pro career, and it’s hard to knock a guy for his chase rate when he’s hit .389, and harder still to knock him for his power output when he’s slugged .569. Even if the underlying metrics reveal some holes, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” can reasonably apply at this stage of a player’s career. Certainly, the fear that he was just a pure singles hitter hasn’t materialized, though Wilson is still quite physically slight and it’s hard to know what to make of his odd flares and choppers to right field that end up with him standing on second base. But he’s shown the ability to drive the ball to an extent and has reportedly bulked up 10 pounds since signing, with plenty more room to fill out his frame without losing athleticism.
Ultimately, the big unknown with Wilson is how he’ll adjust when he needs to. Right now, he probably would be just a singles hitter at the big league level and do a Nick Allen sort of thing (more hits, fewer walks than Allen), but putting a ton of emphasis on that fact again makes the mistake of treating a young player as a more static entity just because he’s close to the big leagues. Wilson probably has more room to improve than Cole Conn does, to pick another 2023 draftee example, and nobody thinks Conn is done developing (rightfully!). I’ve talked a lot toward the top of the list about the slower adjustment process for high picks like him, and he hasn’t come close to needing to adjust anything yet. As such, the evaluation of Wilson still has some volatility in it, perhaps more than one would like for a system’s top prospect, but he’s also been incredible overall in his pro career thus far, has a very high floor, and has plenty of time to prove that either he’s a unique, Ichiro-esque bat control outlier or that he can sting the ball with more consistency than detractors expect.