Alexfri Planez, OF, CLE

Posted byNick RichardsPosted inAL, AL Central, Batter, CLE, MLB

He’s only played at the Rookie league level as a 17-year-old, yet Alexfri Planez is already showing up in Top 200 lists of prospects. What gives?

[This is the third of an occasional series of players I will analyze in the offseason simply because they are being ranked highly by Top Lists in the industry, yet they have little track record. ‘What are the rankers seeing?’ is the question I will try to answer.]

Video courtesy of Prospects Live
  • Born: August 17, 2001
  • B/T: Right/Right
  • 6’2″, 180-lbs
  • Signed by the Cleveland Indians in 2017 out of Venezuela

The Numbers

His raw numbers are listed above courtesy of baseball-reference.com. Let’s aggregate by year then focus on the important numbers for minor leaguers:

Obviously we have little data to go on, and that data was from a 17-year-old. That said, hey, that power is there, and his strikeouts weren’t too high, and his on-base ability was there already. He didn’t steal any bases in his six games at the rookie level (yes, we have only 25 PAs to analyze here), but in the DOSL he stole five (while getting caught seven times).

He’s raw, he has ability, he’s learning.

Uh, small sample size warning, but he his lefties in his three plate appearances against him. Oh, never mind, it’s ridiculous to draw any conclusions here.

He’s got that pull power all right. Might as well put this in the dictionary under “pull power.”

That’s nice to see. His OPs reached .800 and then kept climbing and climbing and climbing. Yes, most of that was the DOSL, but we take what we can get.

The Scouts

Warnings

He’s young, and he’s raw, and we simply don’t have the data yet.

Conclusion

So what do the scouts see? Let them answer for themselves:

Planez has big time pull-side lift in his swing, already has average raw power at age 18, and has a fairly projectable 6-foot-2 frame that portends more. He’ll reach down and barrel balls near his shoe tops and also crush center-cut mistakes. He’s too aggressive right now, his swing is somewhat grooved, and he probably has to move to a corner eventually, so my early assessment of the profile is that it’s very risky, enough that I think Planez needs to be a clear tier behind the Sanquintin/Rodriguez/Martinez group. But as far as teenage power projection bats go, this is a pretty good one.

FanGraphs, Eric Longenhagen, May 18, 2020

This is a 70-raw, 55-run teenager who’s largely flying under the radar in a lot of dynasty leagues and prospect circles. I was vaguely aware of the 18-year-old heading into the 2019 season, but Jason Pennini moved Planez to the forefront when he ranked the the 18-year-old 8th on his Arizona League top-100. That’s above prospects like Gabriel Rodriguez, Daniel Espino and many others on this list. And based on the raw tools, the outfielder should probably be higher on this list. However, a contact told me this offseason Planez is very, very raw in the pitch recognition department. Like, on the 20-80 scale, it may currently sit on the ground floor. Recognizing the 18-year-old is likely bound for the New York Penn League in 2020, I simply want to see what the strikeout rate looks like in a non-Rookie Ball league before pushing all my chips to the center of the table. But make no mistake about it, now is the time to gobble-up shares of Planez in dynasty leagues. A hamate fracture limited him to six AZL games last summer (complex evaluators saw what they needed to in XST), and there’s a good chance he’d be much more known (and the stats would be much more eye-opening) had he remained healthy. If Planez only strikes out in a fourth of his plate appearances (25.0 K%) in 2020, he’s a top-100 prospect this time next season. 

Prospects365, Ray Butler, March 9 2020

Get the idea? He’s projectable, he has great potential, but he’s too raw to rank in the Top 100 yet, but in dynasty leagues now is the time to invest.