The final survey of the White Sox farm system usually has to wait for FanGraphs, but Eric Longenhagen makes it worth the wait by ranking his top 38 White Sox prospects.
The list for 2020 came out Wednesday, and Longenhagen's looks at the system's youngest prospects in Arizona are worth the price of a site membership that isn't necessary, just appreciated. But while the write-ups of Jose Rodriguez (No. 18) and Bryan Ramos (No. 26) are the descriptions I value most from his list, the placement and paragraphs regarding Yermín Mercedes jump off the page.
Despite his advanced age (27) and remedial defensive abilities (he's categorized as a DH), Mercedes ranked eighth on Longenhagen's list, with a future value of 40+. The ranking is in large part a reflection of the White Sox farm system's top-heavy nature, but Longenhagen also has as much enthusiasm for Mercedes as Mercedes has for baseball.
I believe Mercedes will one day be a Chicago sports cult hero. He’s highly entertaining and talented enough to play a relevant big league role despite being a total defensive misfit. Stout and beefy, Mercedes is built such that he looks ripped and fat at the same time. He has a needlessly noisy, punk rock swing (until he has two strikes, which I’ll get to) with a big leg kick and all kinds of pre-swing bat waggling, but it always pauses with Mercedes balanced, his hands in good position, ready to unload on the baseball, which he often does. Mercedes ditches the leg kick with two strikes, but he’s so strong that he puts balls in play — hard — without it. [...]
He just cannot catch. While he presents strikes to umpires well on occasion, he’ll also just totally whiffs sometimes and is constantly running to the backstop. Craig Littleman, a former coworker of mine who played for White Sands with Mercedes in 2014, told me even that team was trying to hide him on defense. He also said Mercedes was by far the team’s smartest, most talented hitter. I’m not anticipating Mercedes will be able to catch every day once automated strike zones come about, but I do think it gives him a better chance to do so once in a while and that he’ll hit enough as a DH/1B to play a part-time role anyway. Plus, he has real value as a trade chip if the universal DH is ever instituted. He’s a good, relevant hitting prospect despite his age.
The decision to leave Mercedes out of the September call-up cycle only to add him to the 40-man in November -- in favor of Welington Castillo, whom they dealt to Texas to avoid paying his buyout -- was confusing at the time. An exciting spring made it even more confusing, and now the pandemic delay adds a layer of misfortune.
The hope is that Mercedes can pick up where he left off, if and when the MLB season can resume operations in 2020. If the league proceeds with expanded rosters for a shortened season or supertournament, it sounds like the perfect venue in which to raise some hell.
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With the FanGraphs list in the books, we can finalize the big board and see how all the top prospect lists all chart different courses after the first six spots.
| SM | BA | MLB | Law | BPro | FG | FS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Robert | Robert | Robert | Robert | Robert | Robert | Robert |
| Kopech | Vaughn | Vaughn | Kopech | Madrigal | Kopech | Kopech |
| Vaughn | Kopech | Kopech | Vaughn | Kopech | Vaughn | Vaughn |
| Madrigal | Madrigal | Madrigal | Stiever | Vaughn | Madrigal | Madrigal |
| Stiever | Thompson | Stiever | Madrigal | Stiever | Dunning | Dunning |
| Dunning | Stiever | Dunning | Dunning | Dunning | Stiever | Stiever |
| Bush | Dalquist | Thompson | Adolfo | Basabe | Collins | Collins |
| Thompson | Dunning | Adolfo | Basabe | Collins | Mercedes | Thompson |
| Dalquist | Rutherford | Basabe | Dalquist | Sheets | Heuer | Dalquist |
| Vera | Gonzalez | Collins | Thompson | Sosa | Adolfo | Adolfo |
Baseball America's list is the only one that doesn't place Luis Robert, Andrew Vaughn, Michael Kopech, Nick Madrigal, Dane Dunning and Jonathan Stiever in the top six. Last year's notable high school picks -- second-rounder Matthew Thompson and third-rounder Andrew Dalquist -- both crash the party before Dunning arrives.
Thompson and Dalquist get you to eight spots on a consensus top 10, after which Zack Collins and Micker Adolfo able to capture of a plurality of support for the final two spots.
The rest of the pool swings between respected prospects bound to hover just off any top 10 list (Gavin Sheets, Luis Gonzalez) and high-variance reaches. There's Longenhagen placing Mercedes eighth and Codi Heuer ninth; the former didn't make BA's cut, and Heuer wasn't on MLB.com's list. Luis Basabe earned a couple of top-10 nods here, but ended up 22nd on the FanGraphs list.
Setting aside my tongue-in-cheek selection of a "future Cuban" who turned out to be Norge Carlos Vera within days, I might've taken the prize with Bryce Bush. I ranked him seventh according to my system of "How much would I care if [prospect name] was traded?" due to the brief stretch between position changes and injuries where he was Kannapolis' best hitter at age 19.
Here's where he ranked:
I'm out on a limb to an amusing degree for the second straight year, and among all the reasons I'll miss following the farm system this season, I'd really like to know how much hope I should actually invest.
