How’s My Driving: 2018 Top 100 Audit

FG Rank Name Pos Org 2018 Age Career WAR WAR Rk FV Actual Grade 1 Shohei Ohtani TWP LAA 23.7 40.4 5 70 80 Ohtani is ranked 22nd among hitters and 70th among pitchers when you split up his WAR production; he’s fifth among hitters and first among pitchers when you combine what he’s done on both sides of the ball. Only Aaron Judge, Mookie Betts, Francisco Lindor, and José Ramírez have accumulated more WAR since 2017. Shohei has missed considerable time with injury. He only generated about 5 WAR in his first three seasons combined, had a goose egg season in 2020, and didn’t really get traction as a pitcher until 2022. He was tracking way, way below my projection until the back half of his evaluation window, when he became maybe the most talented player we’ve ever seen. I favored Ohtani as a pitcher when he came over, and thought that the strikeout issues he had as a hitter in Japan would keep him from actualizing all of his power. I put a 40 on his hit tool and a 70 on his raw pop (both of those are close to what has transpired), but just a 55 on his game power. He made stateside swing adjustments (which you can see here) that allowed him to better cover, and be more dangerous on, the outer third of the zone. I’ve been lucky enough to see this guy do his thing many times, often within 15 minutes of my front door. There was this outing while he was still with Hokkaido, recorded by precariously leaning my phone against the netting in Peoria. There was this god awful 2018 spring start versus Tijuana Toros, the one that tricked Jeff Passan into thinking Shohei might not be good. There was a Cactus League start in Mesa against Shintaro Fujinami, and a regular season big league game here and there. As with Tyler Glasnow on last year’s inaugural “Driving” piece, I think it’s reasonable to put our thumb on the scale a little bit here, and both prorate some of Ohtani’s production due to injury and appreciate that his talent embodies the statistical noise that an 80-grade player’s is supposed to. We’ll never see anything like this again. 2 Ronald Acuña Jr. CF ATL 20.3 28.3 23 65 70 I first saw Acuña and Juan Soto in person on the same day, during Instructional League in 2016, back when the Braves trained at Disney’s Wide World of Sports complex. The game ended prematurely due to a nasty storm that forced those of us in attendance onto semi-covered metal bleachers, which we then fled when the lightning started striking nearby. Video of Acuña from some of that day can be found here. I was immediately blown away by the speed of his hands, and the way his bat path mirrored pitch planes almost perfectly. By the time Acuña reached the Arizona Fall League the following year, he had gotten stronger and was swinging so hard that it terrified the retiree regulars of the league, who’d gasp when he’d make flush contact the way their parents did when they saw Elvis move his hips for the first time. Big league Acuña has been a bit mercurial and at times has looked a little out of shape, but his talent has made him an upper crust player anyway, netting him the NL MVP award in 2023. That season, we saw what it looks like when this guy is locked in — he hit 41 home runs and stole 73 bases, posting a 171 wRC+ and 9.1 WAR. For him to have cut his strikeout rate from the 23-29% range he had previously shown to 11 freaking percent that year is absurd. This is one of the most talented hitters and all-around players of this century, whose rashes of inconsistency may be due to the fallout from injuries, the most severe of which have been tears to both ACLs (one in 2021 and the other in 2024). 11 Willy Adames SS TBR 22.6 21.3 36 60 60 Adames might have performed above this mark had he not struggled to see the baseball at Tropicana Field (check out this Jake Mailhot piece on the subject) for most of the first four years of his big league career. He’s performed more like a 65 since he was traded to Milwaukee, as Adames got to huge power while playing plus-plus shortstop defense, and became the emotional leader of the team. Everyone was properly on this guy. 12 Gleyber Torres SS NYY 21.3 15.8 70 60 55 I was, perhaps, a shade lower on Torres than the consensus because of his relative physical maturity. He was more of a skill-oriented player than one of elite physical prowess; he had “old man game,” as a scout once put it to me, and I thought he was more of a high-floored player than a high-ceiling’d one. Because of his body type, it seemed that Torres’ physical ability might plateau sooner than a lot of his peers, and I think based on the arc of his production and the way teams approached his free agency this offseason, it’s fair to say that’s how things have panned out so far. Had I correctly pegged Torres as a second base defender rather than an average shortstop defender, maybe I would have nailed this one exactly. Instead, I over-projected him by a half grade. 13 Lewis Brinson CF MIA 23.9 -3.5 485 60 Org I thought Brinson would be a tooled up, power-hitting everyday center fielder. Instead, he was a Quad-A type. Brinson presents us with a great learning opportunity because, aside from the very start of his minor league career, he didn’t show obvious statistical signs that he’d K too much to succeed; it was something you had to identify visually. From 2015 to 2017, as he moved from High- to Triple-A and was traded from Texas to Milwaukee for Jonathan Lucroy, Brinson struck out at a totally reasonable 19-21% clip. As a big leaguer (he was traded to Miami as part of the Christian Yelich deal), he K’d 28.4% of the time and hit a career .198 before moving on to NPB, where he ran a sub-.300 OBP in 2023. Unless you saw him enough in person to be confident that Brinson basically had no chance against secondary stuff, he looked like an absolute toolshed center fielder who’d hit for plus power. Instead, Brinson hit Triple-A pitching but was overwhelmed by big league stuff. 14 Miguel Andujar 3B NYY 23.1 3.2 343 60 35+ As I mentioned above, it was around this time that Kiley and I began to incorporate league-wide TrackMan data into our analysis and evaluations, and Andujar’s monster minor league exit velos were a big part of why we were so high on him. He finished second in AL Rookie of the Year voting, and we were so proud of ourselves. The following year, Andujar tore his labrum and he was never quite the same as a hitter. It took him six more years to have a big league season in which he accumulated more than 300 plate appearances. When players chase as often as Andujar does (a 36% career rate, while the big league average is 28%) and can’t really play defense anywhere (a thing we didn’t properly consider at the time), we should beware. Learning this the hard way is why I later kept my guard up evaluating Ty France, Elehuris Montero, Juan Yepez, and many others of this ilk. 16 Alex Reyes RHP STL 23.6 1.7 DNQ 60 Injury Reyes debuted in 2016 and was just a few innings shy of graduating from rookie status that year. A marijuana suspension, a Tommy John, and a torn lat would derail his 2017-19 seasons, and then we had the pandemic year in 2020. In 2021, Reyes pitched a career-high 72 walk-prone frames out of St. Louis’ bullpen. The following campaign, he began to deal with shoulder issues that would lead to two more surgeries, which prevented him from ever pitching for the Dodgers, who signed him before the start of the 2023 season. Two offseasons ago, Reyes and the Mets agreed on a two-year minor league deal, which fell through due to what NJ.com’s Manny Gomez reported as “personal reasons.” If you caught peak Reyes on one of his best days, you’d see him sitting 97-101 with an absolute hammer breaking ball and plus-plus changeup. His changeup and slider generated plus-plus swinging strike rates (each just over 20%) in the healthy big league innings he was able to throw. So many talented pitchers fall short of our collective expectations for no other reason than injury, and Reyes is among the more prominent of the last decade or so. 25 Scott Kingery 2B PHI 23.9 0.1 451 55 35+ Kingery was a late-blooming amateur. He was essentially a walk-on at U of A and didn’t play the infield until he was an upperclassman. He showed three years of positive offensive progression with the Wildcats and seemed like a potential leadoff hitting second baseman or center fielder. The Phillies drafted him in the 2015 second round, and he hit so well at Double- and Triple-A in 2017 (.304/.359/.530, 26 HR, 29 SB) that the Phillies gave Scott Jetpax a six-year, $24 million deal in March 2018, before he had played a big league game. It was a good decision for Kingery, who then had one good big league season as a superutility type (.258/.315/.474, 19 HR in 2019) before things totally collapsed. Kingery has spent most of the last several years at Triple-A Lehigh Valley, and until 2024, he was struggling there as well. He was traded to the Angels this offseason. Like Andujar, Kingery has issues with plate discipline, and his ability to contact fastballs backed up throughout the course of his career, to the point where he has fastball chase and miss north of 30% over the last half decade. That’s bad. The chase element was always part of Kingery’s profile, but his disconnected, often awkward looking swing, which struggles to get on top of fastballs, just seemed to devolve over time. 27 Walker Buehler RHP LAD 23.7 15.0 43 55 60 I drove at irresponsible speeds to Camelback Ranch when I was tipped off that Buehler would be making his first start coming off of TJ in 2016. I barely got there in time to see him and take shaky cell phone footage of part of one inning. He had added a cutter and was throwing so much harder than he had at Vandy, but the context of the look (Buehler threw just five rehab innings in 2016, then 98 innings in 36 games in 2017, debuting that year in relief) gave us pause that this medium-framed righty could sustain an upper-90s fastball for 140 innings or more. Buehler did, and had two full seasons as a legit top-of-the-rotation guy sandwiched around the pandemic. Reduced stuff preceding and following his second TJ makes it tough to line him up properly here. If not for the pandemic, Buehler probably would have had three seasons where he performed like a 70 instead of just two. I’ve fudged his outcome here because I think it properly accounts for his talent, which can reasonably be held a cut above the other 55-grade pitchers in this review. 29 J.P. Crawford SS PHI 23.2 15.0 81 55 55 The son of a former pro defensive back in the CFL, Crawford was the third Lakewood High School (CA) draft pick by the Phillies within just a few years (Travis d’Arnaud and Shane Watson were the others). A sensational defender, Crawford carried an OBP-driven offensive profile to the upper minors, then with multiple injuries during his early time on the 40-man roster dealt and struggled to supplant Maikel Franco and Freddy Galvis. He was eventually traded to the Mariners along with Carlos Santana for Jean Segura. In Seattle, Crawford finally got regular playing time, becoming the team’s rudder and emotional leader during the post-Seager/pre-Julio window, and later signing a five-year, $51 million extension that will take him through the 2026 season. Crawford’s lack of power made him more of a second division regular until 2021 when the rest of baseball stopped hitting for ridiculous thump. Suddenly, Crawford’s offensive output was a little better than average rather than a little below. Starting in 2023, Crawford looked noticeably stronger, hit for career-best power, and started to backpedal on defense (though perhaps more due to health than size). If I were looking purely at his offensive production, Crawford would be more of a 45+ FV type of player with that one big year among a bunch of okay seasons, but his glovework at a premium position pretty comfortably pushes him to the edge of the 50/55 FV tiers. There just wasn’t quite as much power here as I projected until the very end of the eval window, but the OBP aspect of Crawford’s game held up. 32 Franklin Barreto SS OAK 22.1 -1.2 DNQ 55 Org Another hitter whose production went belly up because of his hedonistic approach, Barreto has a career 42.2% strikeout rate and 3% walk rate at the big league level. Originally a Blue Jay, he was sent to Oakland in the Josh Donaldson deal. Until he stalled out at Triple-A, Barreto was always very young for the level to which he was assigned, which helped mask that his performance was more “fine” than “bangin’,” and ultimately flimsy due to a reckless approach. This was definitely more of a blind spot for your friendly neighborhood prospect writer when I wrote up Barreto than it is now, and Franklin isn’t the last player in this retrospective to be over-projected because I was ignorant to this particular issue. 35 Corbin Burnes RHP MIL 23.4 21.5 14 55 60 Burnes spent most of his first two big league seasons as a reliever, finally moved into Milwaukee’s rotation in the middle of an utterly dominant pandemic season, and was great from that moment on. We were pretty close to nailing his overall projection, but not Burnes’ pitch grades. His cutter, as well as all of his secondary stuff, has been plus or better. When he debuted, he lacked anything with arm-side movement, and Burnes really took off when he started incorporating a sinker and a more polished changeup into his mix in 2020 and 2021. It became an utter nightmare for hitters to have to deal with a mid-90s cutter and sinker moving in different directions. Burnes has also been remarkably durable; he’s second in innings behind Zack Wheeler since 2021. 43 Jake Bauers RF TBR 22.5 -1.3 479 50 35 Originally a Padre, Bauers has been traded five times, most notably to Tampa Bay for Wil Myers and then to Cleveland as part of a multi-team swap that also included Yandy Díaz, Edwin Encarnación, and Carlos Santana. Though limited power capped Bauers’ projection, at the time I considered him a high-probability prospect because he a) looked hitterish to the eye and b) ran strikeout rates in the mid-teens until he got to Triple-A. His hit tool didn’t hold that kind of water at the big league level, where Bauers has struck out a career 29.2% clip. He’s had a decade-long pro career and 1,744 big league plate appearances, which we should all tip our caps to. But 50 FV impact? It wasn’t here. 46 Willie Calhoun DH TEX 23.4 -2.4 484 50 35+ Calhoun left Arizona after his freshman year and ended up at Yavapai College, where he hit 31 homers in a mile-high bandbox as a sophomore. Originally drafted by the Dodgers (who tried to play him at second base — remember that?!?), Calhoun was traded to Texas as part of the Yu Darvish deal. The 5-foot-8 Calhoun went from “stocky” to “thicc” very quickly, and though he was only ever really projected as a DH here at FanGraphs because that trajectory always seemed like a strong possibility based on Calhoun’s build, it did appear to sap some of Calhoun’s explosiveness in his mid-20s. I had plus hit and power grades on Calhoun, and thought he’d be an impact player even as a DH, but while the bat-to-ball skills translated, aside from one 21-homer season, the power did not. 47 Austin Meadows OF PIT 22.9 6.0 246 50 40+ Aside from his numerous soft tissue injuries, Meadows appeared to have one of the more well-rounded contact and power combinations in the minors. There were two seasons surrounding the pandemic year when it looked like everything was going to actualize. Meadows’ 2019 season — .291/.364/.558, 33 homers — was incredible, and more in line with what I hoped for the outfielder when he was ranked fifth overall in 2017. Vertigo, Achilles tendinitis, and multiple bouts with COVID marred Meadows’ time with the Tigers after Tampa Bay traded him for Isaac Paredes and a comp pick (he famously was part of the Rays’ return in the Chris Archer trade a few years earlier). He left the team in 2023 to tend to his mental health and was non-tendered that offseason. 50 Juan Soto OF WSN 19.4 36.3 10 50 70 While it took roughly one Ronald Acuña Jr. swing for my eyes to pop out of my head on that stormy day in Orlando in 2016, I initially wasn’t as impressed with Soto (there’s video of this day here) and I certainly would not have guessed that he’d soon be on an obvious Hall of Fame pace. It wasn’t until the following year, when I saw Soto with Potomac as he was rocketing toward the big leagues, that his bat speed looked closer to the positively nutty version we get to enjoy today. Multiple injuries meant Soto didn’t play very many minor league games before he debuted in Washington — he appeared in just 122. For context, Alex Rodriguez played in 114 games before he reached the Kingdome, and I’m pretty sure Soto is the fastest teenager to debut (in terms of fewest games played) since Rodriguez. His rate of promotion, in what was just my second year doing this full-time, absolutely blindsided me. I figured this would be a player who’d spend another offseason as a prospect. Instead, Soto was correctly raced from Low-A to the big leagues by mid-May, plenty early enough to graduate during this season. The inverse of over-projecting the aggro swingers, Soto’s elite plate discipline was not properly appreciated while he was a prospect, though the small sample was definitely part of that. Soto’s comfortably below-average defense is the lone reason he’s “only” a 70 here. He produced five fewer WAR than Aaron Judge did during his pre-free agency years of control. Of course, Soto’s clock started ticking while he was several years younger than Judge, and by the time Soto’s career is over, those extra couple of years will probably make a difference when considering career production. But (again), for the purposes of this exercise, I’m only interested in the years between a player’s debut and him reaching free agency. 53 Colin Moran 3B PIT 25.5 1.6 398 50 40 The 2013 draft’s sixth overall pick, Moran was a big time college performer at UNC. Originally drafted by Miami, he was traded to Houston as part of a sizable deal involving Enrique Hernández, Jarred Cosart, Jake Marisnick and Francis Martes, and then later traded to the Pirates in the Gerrit Cole deal. There was consistent doubt that Moran would be able to stay at third base, and that turned out to be a pretty big deal, as he never tapped into the power needed to profile as an ideal everyday first baseman. He produced a career 98 wRC+. 61 Tyler O’Neill OF STL 22.8 11.3 120 50 50 O’Neill is tough because his per plate appearance rate of production has been quite good, he’s just been hurt so much that it’s been hard for him to accumulate WAR on par with his talent. These issues have kept O’Neill from playing in more than 100 games in all but two of his big league seasons. He’s still produced nearly 2 WAR per campaign (which is basically my barometer for a 50) despite this, and his splits versus righties (he’s a career 104 wRC+ hitter against them) are not so bad that O’Neill needs a platoon partner. 63 Dustin Fowler CF OAK 23.3 -0.9 DNQ 50 Injury Drafted by the Yankees, Fowler collided with an electrical box while pursuing a fly ball at U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago during the first inning of his big league debut and ruptured his patellar tendon. The A’s still took him on as part of the trade return for Sonny Gray later that year, but Fowler was never quite the same. He sued the White Sox, and they settled out of court. 65 Jack Flaherty RHP STL 22.5 13.4 57 50 55 Flaherty was a quintessential high school pitching prospect, with a prototypical 6-foot-4 frame and an excellent breaking ball. He became an impact mid-rotation guy pretty quickly despite never really developing a changeup. After the pandemic season, Flaherty’s delivery looked less connected and more arm-y at times. He started having shoulder problems and rashes of wildness. The last couple of seasons, he has learned how to pitch with slightly reduced velocity and had an excellent 2024. He netted the Tigers good prospects at the 2024 trade deadline (Thayron Liranzo and Trey Sweeney), then returned to Detroit on a two-year deal this offseason. 78 Max Fried LHP ATL 24.2 19.0 20 50 60 Fried was nearly the first pick in the 2012 draft; had Carlos Correa‘s bonus ask been closer to what Byron Buxton’s was at the time, Fried could have been an Astro. Instead, Houston felt comfortable that they could take Correa and also get an over-slot player with their next pick, which turned out to be Lance McCullers Jr. Fried was drafted by the Padres and later traded to Atlanta in the Justin Upton swap during A.J. Preller’s early tenure in San Diego. Fried’s prospect pitch grades were bang on, but his overall grade was not. His changeup didn’t start developing until 2022 but has arguably been plus since then. Most young pitchers with a great curveball end up being able to add a second good breaking ball, and Fried added an average slider the season after graduating. 82 Brian Anderson 3B MIA 24.9 8.7 174 50 50 Anderson’s first couple of years with the Marlins were great, and through the pandemic season, he was not only tracking in line with this projection, but arguably above it. Then he started getting hurt. A shoulder subluxation, which required two separate IL stints and a surgery, and multiple lower back strains are his most prominent maladies. Anderson hasn’t slugged over .400 since the shortened pandemic season and began playing the outfield more often during the back half of the relevant eval window. 83 Ryan McMahon 3B COL 23.3 10.0 146 50 50 After he played a bunch of second base and some first (where I had him forecast) early during his big league career, McMahon’s hitting (.243/.324/.422 career line) improved as the Rockies deployed him more regularly at third during the back of his pre-free agency window. Overall, he has been a better defensive player than I expected, though he hasn’t quite produced as much power as I thought he would, especially for a guy who gets to play at Coors. He’s right on the 45/50 line in terms of production and has three years left on a six-year, $70 million extension. 85 Carson Kelly C STL 23.7 5.9 245 50 45 Kelly projected as a rock solid glove-first regular who’d make enough contact to be a primary catcher. He debuted in 2016 but didn’t lose rookie status until 2018 (B-Ref’s grad year for Kelly is incorrect) due to the presence of Yadier Molina. He was traded to Arizona in the Paul Goldschmidt deal and became snake bitten by injury. Foul tips seemed to find the nooks and crannies between Kelly’s gear, and he suffered several different fractures and strains, and likely played through many bumps and bruises before he was overtaken by Gabriel Moreno and DFA’d in 2023. In two of the three seasons that Kelly was actually able to catch about 100 games, he produced close to the 2 WAR line commensurate with an average primary catcher, mostly because of how often he was able to walk. He ranks 28th among catchers in WAR since 2018. 101 Brandon Woodruff RHP MIL 25.1 16.1 37 50 55 Woodruff’s changeup slowly got better throughout the middle of his pre-free agency window, and by 2021, it was generating a plus-plus swinging strike rate. It was a tertiary offering during his first few seasons but, since 2020, it has been his most-used secondary. Peak, healthy Woodruff also throws two ticks harder than he did when he first debuted as a 24-year-old in 2017. Of course, as his lost 2024 season shows most dramatically, he hasn’t always been healthy. 101 Tyler Mahle RHP CIN 23.5 10.0 90 50 50 Kiley and I were on Mahle in the 45-50 FV range in 2017 and 2018. He seemed like a very stable, strike-throwing fourth starter. Once Mahle started developing a good splitter in 2019, it looked like he might outpace our projection, but the type and quality of his secondary stuff became pretty variable for the rest of his pre-free agency window. He had a curveball/cutter season in 2019, with some years where he has been more slider-heavy and others where the slider has taken a back seat. A 2023 TJ and 2024 shoulder injury limited Mahle to 38.1 innings in his final two years of the eval window, but he’s still basically produced like a good team’s fourth starter. 101 Jesse Winker OF CIN 24.6 8.6 178 50 50 Winker is a career .262/.367/.437 hitter whose WAR total has been dragged down by his defense and time missed due to injuries, and because the pandemic coincided with Winker’s peak. He posted comfortably above-average overall batting lines during the first five years of his career. During the most recent few seasons, Winker has become a well-traveled pot-stirrer while his power output has been compromised by back and neck issues, especially during his brief tenure with Milwaukee. I’m essentially prorating Winker’s 2020 season to nudge him into the group of 50s. His xwOBA that year, and in the prior year, was in line with his actual production, and it feels like a more accurate representation of his talent than 45ing him. Go look at his career batting line again at the top of the blurb. That’s pretty good. 101 Erick Fedde RHP WSN 25.1 4.8 200 45 40 After a generic and semi-disappointing tenure with the Washington Nationals (who drafted him in the first round out of UNLV in 2014), Fedde went to Push Athletic in Scottsdale and remade his body, mechanics, and the shape of his three most-used pitches. He then had such an incredible 2023 season in Korea for the NC Dinos that he was named the KBO’s MVP and won their equivalent to the Cy Young. He signed a two-year, $15 million deal with the White Sox last offseason and had a workhorse no. 4 starter’s season with a 3.30 ERA in 31 starts; he was traded to the Cardinals at the trade deadline. Fedde highlights the importance of player dev, or org/player fit. It’s possible he could have been producing like 2023-24 sooner. 101 Joey Lucchesi LHP SDP 24.8 4.7 208 50 40 Lucchesi was the first pitcher from the 2016 draft to debut in the majors. Aside from being homer-prone as a rookie, his first two big league seasons were pretty good; he worked just shy of 300 combined innings and ran a 4.14 ERA. His pandemic season was a wash, then Lucchesi was traded to the Mets and blew out his elbow, which cost him most of 2021 and all of 2022. He hasn’t quite been the same since the surgery and signed a minor league deal with the Giants this offseason. 101 Christian Arroyo 3B TBR 22.8 0.6 DNQ 50 40 I count 17 IL stints for Arroyo since 2017, which limited both his availability and his production when healthy. He did have a couple of seasons toward the back of the timespan in question during which he played like what I’d consider a 40+ FV sort of role player, a multi-positional infielder who mashes lefties. 101 Fernando Romero RHP MIN 23.3 0.6 DNQ 50 35+ We had Romero written up as a closer, but he debuted as a starter. He didn’t really have walk issues in the minors, but he did have arm trouble and a violent-looking, reliever’s delivery. After parts of just two seasons and 70 career innings with the big league Twins, Romero had visa issues during the pandemic year and was released that December. He pitched in Japan for Yokohama in 2021 and 2022 before returning to affiliated ball in the Angels system in 2023. 101 Chance Sisco C BAL 23.1 -1.5 DNQ 50 Org Sisco didn’t start catching until his senior year of high school, and there was hope that he’d bloom late as a defender. His lack of arm strength was a barrier for this, and Sisco also struck out much more than expected, at a career 32.2% clip. He wore a big league uniform in parts of five seasons but was ultimately boxed out by Pedro Severino, Welington Castillo, and Caleb Joseph during the pre-Adley era in Baltimore.