Some prospects pop up and people get all excited (SP, SS), and some prospects pop up and people look at their watches (1B). Here’s why those people can’t tell time.
Also get to know Vinnie here and here.
- Born: October 10, 1997
- B/T: Left/Left
- 6’4″, 245-lbs
- Drafted by the Kansas City Royals in 2019 from Old Dominion University.
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:
We’ll get to the negatives later. For now, bask in the glory that is Vinnie’s 2021 combined line showing an equal number of walks and strikeouts. And note in the chart before this, he didn’t feast on High-A pitchers and then regress in Double-A — he got better in Double-A! There he walked 31 times while only striking out 26 times.
And yes, he has power in abundance. His Hard hit number is not overwhelming, but it’s still good and not far from great. So his power is real, and he’s shown it for two seasons in a row.
When you see that kind of power combined with that level of bat control, you get excited.
He maintained his numbers against RHP as he moved from High-A to Double-A, and both look great. His slightly sub-par numbers against LHP in High-A got leveled up when he moved to Double-A. I think we’d take a LHB whose worst split is a .392 OBP.
The Scouts
- Rotowire: #167 on their Top 400
- BaseballHQ: Not on their Top 100
- Fangraphs: Not on their Top 133
- Fantasy Six Pack: Not on their dynasty list
- Imaginary Brick Wall: Not on the Top 473
- Fantrax: #219 on the Top 250
- PARSlist: 74.6 on the PARS list (aka potential major league regular)
Warnings
Now for the negatives: He’s not really on the scout’s radar, though James Anderson at Rotowire is all over the guy. And the PARS list has him as one of the best-hitting prospects in the game. So what’s the problem?
He plays 1B.
That’s where, in a Hollywood movie, you’d get a record scratch.
OK, so he’s not defensively blessed, and he has no speed, but what can you do? He’s in an AL organization that has a DH slot (and probably all major league teams will have that soon). So while there might not be room for Vinnie at the moment, when a prospect hits, they make room for him somehow.
Conclusion
That’s it, that’s the long and the short of it. Do you want to invest in a great hitting left-handed batter who is age appropriate at AA and who could provide 20-30 HRs with a high OBP for leagues where that matters? Do you play in a H2H league where consistency matters, and someone who rarely strikes out gives you a boost? Meet your poster child.
Vinnie Pasquantino is a hitter. Full stop.
Let the scouts stumble over themselves to update their lists when Vinnie gets called up in 2022 or 2023. You know about him now.