Hunt and Peck

Dylan Carlson, Nolan Gorman, Matthew Liberatore are Top 100 Prospects - A Hunt and Peck

Courtesy of Fangraphs

By lil_scooter93 Feb 18, 2020, 2:00pm EST

It is about the time of year when the prospect lists start churning and Cardinals minor leaguers Dylan Carlson, Nolan Gorman, and Matthew Liberatore have all found their names on many of them. Fangraphs has already published their list. Since then Frangraphs has published ZiPs Projection Prospect list. What makes this list different? The projections, of course. Per Dan Szymborski of Fangraphs:

One of the biggest differences between ZiPS and most other prospect lists is that, given the uncertainty surrounding any prospect’s future performance, ZiPS projections tend to give higher career WAR forecasts to lower-risk, lower-ceiling players in the high minors.

The more likely a player is to make the majors, the more likely it is he accumulates WAR in the majors, the higher he ranks on the list. Most other lists are highly influences by scouting reports and opinions while the ZiPS list is cold, hard data. Both are useful!

With that being said, here is how the Cardinals showed up across all major prospect lists (big hat tip to Craig Edwards of Fangraphs for his help with getting some of these rankings!):

The biggest outlier appears to be Fangraphs prospect correspondent Eric Longenhagen’s opinion on Dylan Carlson. This mostly appears to be due to whether or not Carlson can play centerfield — Longenhagen is concerned about a lack of speed.

Dylan Carlson pic.twitter.com/14kaV7GGED
— Jeff Jones (@jmjones) February 18, 2020

Nolan Gorman’s power is what propels him to his spot on these lists. Concerns he might have to move from third base and potentially high strikeout rates seem to be the most common addressed.

Matthew Liberatore was just drafted in 2018 and already shows a lot of promise. The tall lefty has an impressive pitch arsenal with a fastball that tops out at around 97 mph. There is not a lot of data on him yet, which holds him back on the list, but many are excited about this young southpaw.

ZiPS Top 100 Prospects | FanGraphs Baseball

2020 Top 100 Prospects | FanGraphs Baseball