In recent days, a handful of blogs and X accounts have attempted this prompt: look back five years at organizational top prospect lists from 2019 and perform a kind of “Where Are They Now?” analysis. It’s a bit of memory lane, and a bit of what might have been with — ideally — a handful of success stories sprinkled throughout.
Every Brewers 2019 top 30 prospect and where they are now
1. Keston Hiura
Currently playing for the Tigers AAA pic.twitter.com/fEMIOVceo9
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The Red Sox have undergone such transformation that the exercise works at the four-year mark. It’s not the usual milestone, but four years ago was the start of the Chaim Bloom era, when the team’s system was filled mostly with inherited prospects. And it turns out, we’re already pretty close to a final analysis of that group.
On Feb. 26, 2020 — just two weeks after the Mookie Betts trade — Keith Law released his annual Top 20 Red Sox Prospects list. It included 18 names acquired under the previous president of baseball operations, Dave Dombrowski, and two acquired by Bloom. Four years later, we can pretty easily lump them into four distinct groups, plus a fifth group that is surprisingly relevant and necessary.
Current Red Sox: Triston Casas (ranked No. 2), Jarren Duran (5), Bobby Dalbec (7), Tanner Houck (10), Connor Wong (19), Brayan Bello (20)
Injured depth: Bryan Mata (9), Chris Murphy (12)
Red Sox minor leaguers: Noah Song (3), Matthew Lugo (11), A.J. Politi (15), Ryan Zeferjahn (16), Nick Decker (17), Chih-Jung Liu (18)
Released/waived/traded/etc.: Jeter Downs (1), Jay Groome (4), Thaddeus Ward (6), Gilberto Jimenez (8), C.J. Chatham (13), Cam Cannon (14)
Notably unranked: Kutter Crawford, Ceddanne Rafaela, Brandon Walter, Wikelman Gonzalez, Aldo Ramirez, Ryan Fernandez
This was seen as one of the worst farm systems in baseball. Law ranked the Red Sox sixth-worst in the game, and that sentiment was fairly universal. Among the biggest concerns were a lack of pitching (Bello and Crawford had yet to fully emerge; Houck still faced massive questions about his ability to start in the big leagues) and the lack of upper-level talent (which more or less proved a legitimate concern). The group’s No. 1 prospect, Downs, proved an overwhelming bust, Jimenez also fell well short of expectations, and Song’s unusual path through a military commitment has played out as a near worst-case scenario on the baseball side (delayed arrival followed by injury).
GO DEEPER
Noah Song, back with the Red Sox, aiming for an upper-level assignment
But ultimately, that 2020 farm system has generated four lineup regulars (Casas, Duran, Wong, Rafaela) and three-fifths of the current Red Sox rotation (Bello, Houck, Crawford). It’s also provided some depth (Dalbec, Murphy, Walter), one key trade piece (Ramirez for Kyle Schwarber in 2021), and four players who other teams felt were worth at least a look in the Rule 5 draft (Song, Politi, Ward, Fernandez).
Some of that success is surely a feather in the cap of the Red Sox player development program which, even before Craig Breslow was hired as the new chief baseball officer, worked to improve its pitching program. Those efforts have generated some positive results at the big-league level. Also, some of that higher-risk, lower-level talent from 2020 has progressed nicely (Casas has more or less met lefty expectations, while Rafaela and Wong have exceeded them). Our latest Red Sox top 20 includes no holdovers from the 2020 list (Mata was No. 20 until the team traded for David Sandlin), though it does include three players who had started pro ball in 2020 but went unranked at the time (Rafaela, Walter, Gonzalez). The opportunity to draft higher in recent years has brought in a lot of high-upside talent, and the system now has four of Law’s top 60 prospects — an improvement from zero in 2020.
So, four years later, where are the top 20 Red Sox prospects of 2020?…
This article was originally published by a theathletic.com . Read the Original article here. .