A’s not rankled by minorleague ratings
MESA, Ariz. — You won’t find much outside love for the current state of the A’s farm system.
Oakland’s majorleague roster is stocked with players it drafted or developed. But its minorleague crop is deemed thin by those who make such evaluations public. Baseball America had Oakland at 29th out of 30 teams in its 2021 organizational talent rankings. MLB Pipeline did not include a single A’s minorleaguer in its recent list of the top 100 pros
pects in baseball.
Some recent top prospects ( Jesús Luzardo, Sean Murphy) arrived fulltime in Oakland in 2020; others (Tyler Soderstrom, Logan Davidson) have more distant majorleague futures. Injuries have dimmed A.J. Puk’s luminous reviews. Other names have not elicited similar hype. A’s director of player development Ed Sprague doesn’t dwell on that.
“I understand it. I get it,” Sprague said of rankings. “We’re in a period where we’ve kind of graduated a lot of these guys to upper levels and they’ve gotten a little bit of time and are ready to break through. We’ve picked a little bit later in the draft the last
couple of years, part of winning 97 games. We’ve made some trades to enhance our bigleague club because we are in kind of a winning window right now.
“So I don’t get caught too much in that at all. … We’re going to take the players we have and we feel like we have good players and talented players that have a chance to make it to the big leagues and impact our majorleague club. That’s what we’re going to focus on.”
Sprague cited shortstop and catcher as positions of strength. At neither spot does an impact appear imminent on the majorleague level. Shortstops Nick
Allen and Davidson have yet to play above Class A and Robert Puason, the 18yearold Dominican prospect, hasn’t played a game in affiliated ball. Soderstrom is 19, less than a year removed from high school; fellow catchers Kyle McCann and Drew Millas were drafted in 2019.
Several pitching prospects are forecast to provide the A’s with rotation depth this season, with Daulton Jefferies, James Kaprielian, Grant Holmes and Parker Dunshee among that group. Sprague said the A’s are “probably a little light on midrange starting pitchers.” He added there are “live arms” further down the line such as righthanders Colin Peluse, a 2019 draft pick, and Jeff Criswell, a 2020 secondrounder.
“If you look at the size and the velocity of some of these guys, I think that’s an increase in the past from when I got here five years ago,” Sprague said. “We’ve got bigger guys that are throwing harder. So we need to develop them and get them in the strike zone and get them out and producing some numbers.”
This spring has offered some encouraging signs. Soderstrom, the 26th overall pick in the 2020 draft, is 4for7 in Cactus League games. The Turlock High alum is playing in majorleague spring games before he debuts in the minors. Sprague said Soderstrom’s exit velocities and strikezone awareness have impressed him and pointed out he isn’t getting hits on firstpitch fastballs, which can be an effective spring strategy.
Davidson, the 2019 firstround pick, is 4for9 with two extrabase hits and looks like he added muscle in the offseason, manager Bob Melvin said. Soderstrom and Davidson were at both the alternate site and instructional league last year, mitigating the absence of minorleague games because of the coronavirus pandemic. Other minorleaguers didn’t have that structure in 2020, and a question was what effect that will have on development. For younger players in bigleague camp this spring, Melvin said, that is unclear.
“That’s something we were trying to keep an eye on, whether it was potentially injuryrelated or in fact it’s a rest and now you can be a fullgo this year,” Melvin said. “Some of our minicampers, some of the guys that didn’t pitch (in 2020), maybe there are some command issues early. We’ve seen some walks and maybe some ugly innings that might have something to do with not competing. … But I’m not sure yet. I think it’s still kind of wait and see.”
Sprague said it will be “very interesting” to gauge prospects who report for the delayed minorleague camp next month. The A’s first minorleague pitchers and catchers workout is set for April 6. About 120 prospects, many of whom played their most recent professional game in 2019, are expected in camp. That afforded Sprague a sly nod when asked about rankings of system depth.
“I guess they’re much better evaluators than I am,” Sprague joked. “I haven’t seen these guys in over a year.”