He has two above average offspeed pitchs, a plus change up and a above average to plus improving curve ball. He’s pitched deep into games so we have a better idea that he will be able to pitch deep into games moving forward and won’t fall apart the 3rd time through the line up. Concerns with him would include a walk rate that is bordering high and as a fly ball pitcher home runs happen, which you would prefer to not come after a walk. However I think the k rate and improvement since college and the low number of collegiate miles on his arm indicate future success.

He struggled this season, for sure, but he’s a youngish college guy (turned 22 right around the midseason mark) and I’d certainly wait one more season before writing him off. The MWL can be a tough place to play for hitters.

He did do a good job of getting his K rate in line this season. Probably in that 25-35 range.

See below. I was just doing a quick scan of the position players and he wasn’t on the list.

I will say that I’m confused by arguing for Peterson based on age when there’s all of a four month age difference between the two. Sulentic has more pro experience, but he’s not more physically developed.

Frankly I’m having a devil of a time telling those two guys apart in any significant way at this point. Their hitting lines this year are virtually mirror images. Good average, too many strikeouts, not enough walks, not much power. Sulentic ran more but it’s not clear that was even a good idea (21/30 in steals).

He has good power, decent speed and is reportedly a pretty respectable shortstop. His 90th percentile outcome is something like J.J. Hardy (non-2009 version).

Looking at his stats from this season is kind of problematic because, as reported, he had a wrist injury which destroyed what was (up until then) a very strong season. Wrist injuries really fuck up players’ power (not a coincidence that he hit 8 HR in a matter of weeks and then only 1 the entire rest of the season) and it seems to have damaged whatever progress he was making toward lowering his strikeout rate too(contact hitting is unquestionably the most problematic aspect of him as a player).

At the very least, he’s no worse a prospect now than Grant Desme was one year ago.

Now, comparing him to Stassi. Stassi is reportedly a first-round talent. But the problem with that is that he’s a high school catcher. I view “first-round” high school catchers as maybe the equivalent of 3rd or 4th round college players, if that. They’re just an awful, awful bet. Stassi might have the fielding chops to play the infield, but I’m troubled in that respect by his “”http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:Keu57I-KFSAJ:mlb.mlb.com/mlb/events/draft/y2009/reports.jsp%3Fcontent%3Dstassi+max+stassi+scouting+report&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari" target="new">below-average" speed and average arm. (Although it’s not clear whether they mean average for the position or average in general— catchers typically have very strong arms.) There’s no way at this point to tell what kind of hitter he’ll be— for all we know, he’s the next Kyle Skipworth.

I think you can make a plausible case for ranking Ryan Ortiz in front of him; I don’t know if I’m willing to quite go that far, but I’m really a fan of what Ortiz did in college and in his pro sample to date. Power, reasonable whiff rate, terrific plate discipline— I’m willing to defer to Stassi’s signing bonus for now, but it’s not going to take a lot next season from Ortiz to put him higher than Stassi on my rankings.

My view is that Stassi is the last unranked position player in our system who still has the potential to be a starting position player in MLB.

Surely you can’t mean this literally. I mean, at the very least, guys like Wilfredo Solano and Robin Rosario (not to mention Dixon) are so young that there’s no way to know for sure what their ultimate potential is. The A’s certainly paid Solano like a guy who has potential to be a starting position player in MLB. (Rosario’s a bit of an odd case because I think he might actually have more ultimate potential as a pitcher than as a position player, but either way he’s clearly too inexperienced to write off.)

Why should I vote for a reliever prospect over a guy who’s upside is still "starting-quality major league catcher" or even "Kurt Suzuki-quality major league catcher" (i.e., top 10 in the game?)

I don’t think you should. Kilby and Demel are the top relief prospects, or maybe Storey, and I don’t think any of them are realistically options before #20 or so. The starters are just more useful (although I suppose you could rank Storey up on spec that the team might reconvert him into a starter if you were really feeling chippy).

and was considered one of the top 10 international players in his age class.

Should be enough to take him into the top 20 or so. He’s not as good a pure hitting prospect as Sano, but he’s almost certainly a better defender.

After two full seasons of very high babip it becomes harder to write it off as a fluke, but I can’t really justify it logically. He’s shown decent speed but not enough to think he has an Ichiro-like ability to get hits on grounders for a sustainable high babip. I guess he could just have really good hand-eye coordination which allows him to consistently square up the ball and he just lacks the power to hit HR’s, but it seems to me if he had this exceptional “line drive abilty” he wouldn’t strike out so much.

I’m still not a big fan of Sulentic as I tend to lean towards the fluke explanation but at this point I’m open to being swayed. Hopefully once we get near the twenties there will be some good arguments around Sulentic.

It seems like the A’s are just being ultra cautious with Ynoa. DLS actually had to have TJ.

without DL

His WB experience

Wait, Leon appeared in angsty, yet vapid teenage dramas with insufferably unrealistic and stilted dialogue?