Could Alex Verdugo Put An End To The 2nd Round Woes?

Andrew Fielding-USA TODAY Sports

A depressing list: Alex Verdugo, Tom Windle, Paco Rodriguez, Alex Santana, Ralston Cash, Blake Smith, Garrett Gould, Josh Lindblom, Michael T Watt, Ivan De Jesus, Josh Wall, Blake Johnson, Charles Tiffany, Zachary Hammes, Jonathan Broxton, Brian Pilkington, Joel Hanrahan.

All of these names have something in common, they’re the 17 Dodger 2nd round draftees this century, 3 are major leaguers, 13 of them are terrible, one is a middling back end/reliever type prospect ≥and one is a prospect just starting the low minors.

“Hit and miss” defined Logan White’s tenure as the Dodger director of scouting. You have the great (Clayton Kershaw, Matt Kemp, Chad Billingsley, James Loney), you have the terrible (Ethan Martin, Garrett Gould, Bryan Morris, Chris Withrow, Aaron Miller, Chris Reed [to an extent]), there has been no middle ground. And the 2nd round captures that perfectly, 3 relievers found in the 16 picks in White’s tenure qualifies as a huge failure, and due to his departure this past Winter, the 2nd round certainly appears to be a barren one filled with lots potential and “what ifs”.

Buuuuuuut… there might be something more to that “depressing list” and that’s found at the name at the top. Including Alex Verdugo in that slew of names was probably unfair because he’s been in the organization for just over 7 months, and completed his first taste of pro ball last season. Verdugo was drafted as a toolsy OF, but was actually highly thought of as a projectable mid rotation type pitcher. Had he gone to the Dodgers as a pitcher, he would have been a typical Logan White draftee, projectable athletic pitcher able to pitch and hit (Aaron Miller, James Loney anyone?) But he didn’t, he went to the Dodgers as an OF, and proceeded to RAKE in his first taste of pro ball.

A batting line of .347/.423/.518 with a 14-20 K/BB ratio in 196 PA’s is always going to turn heads as a guy who was mostly thought of as a pitcher coming out of high school. I remember at the time he was drafted there were concerns about his maturity/makeup and maybe that was why he didn’t go so high in the draft. However he was definitely thought of as a first round talent, which comes with the risks a high school draftee has. He also got a brief taste of Ogden, and did very well in his 20 PA’s there, compiling a .850 OPS. These are pretty small sample sizes, especially for someone who has a ton left to learn in the minor leagues, but the start is promising.

In fact, Chris Mitchell of the hardball times made up this projection system called KATOH. Using this system, minor league players could be given a chance to earn a certain amount of WAR over their career. The end result was a percentage scale of how much WAR a player could earn and what chance does he have of hitting it? The scale went: MLB%, > 4 WAR, >8 WAR, > 12 WAR, > 16 WAR.

Obviously, this with a big grain of salt, Mike Moustakas was a projection darling as a prospect in the PCL –Verdugo is in Ogden-, heck Mitchell openly states:

"Unsurprisingly, KATOH isn’t great at predicting the successes of these low minors players."

And Ogden rookie ball is basically the lowest level you can go while still looking at legitimate prospects. Plus, Verdugo’s stats might be overinflated because nobody really knows how to attack him, or it might be sample size noise, or he hasn’t had pitchers adjust to him, any one of those are plausible reasons (yes, he could just be really freaking good).

Well first off the results say that, Joc Pederson is pegged as a 79% favorite to earn more than 8 career WAR, and a 65% chance at earning more than 16 career WAR, and Verdugo is pegged as an 82% chance to make the majors, and a 55% chance at earning more than 4 career WAR. This might seem insignificant for Verdugo, but for a player straight out of high school, to be ahead of Marcus Semien and Dilson Herrera in this system seems promising. Projection systems overrate prospects all the time, so while this is a cool development, i’ll defer to the scouts in most of these cases, and Kiley McDaniel over at fangraphs (who is well versed in Verdugo’s prospect star) really likes him. Here’s an excerpt from a chat he held in November:

"Kiley McDaniel: “I like his bat too but Joc is the perfect outcome (so far at least) for these types of prospects. Both are solid average to above average across the board lefty bats, so there’s some similarities but Verdugo has a long way to go”"

Which is promising, comparing Joc and Verdugo might be unfair to Verdugo, after all there are hundreds of Verdugo types that fail to become even Pederson (Jeremy Rathjen is holding on line 1), but McDaniel really liked the value the Dodgers got at 62 on Verdugo, here he is talking about the KATOH projections, with fringe prospect lover Carson Cistulli.

"He was preferred by a left handed pitcher by many scouts… I preferred him as a hitter… rated him 46th as a hitter pre-draft… As a hitter i thought he was a first round pick out of the summer going into the Springaverage to slightly above power but he’s got a big plus arm, an above average runner you can start him in CF but probably moves to RF and gives above average defense with that armand he’s a really really good hitter, above average… bat speed above average above avg bat control good sense of the zone, enough power to punish mistakes, checks all the boxes."

Kiley compared him to Andre Ethier/Rick Ankiel on the spot, so take that for what it’s worth, but an Ethier type career would be the perfect type scenario for a prospect like him. Verdugo ranked 9th [above Scott Schebler] in baseball prospectus’ top 10 list. He’s also expected to rank in the top 10 of Baseball America’s prospect list that comes out tomorrow, the Dodgers fangraphs top 10 that comes out next month, minor league ball’s top 10 that comes out (likely in March), and Dustin Nosler’s top 10 (he’s going great work profiling the top 100 right now). So keep an eye out for this Verdugo guy, I mean yeah Jacob Scavuzzo was a hot name this time last year, so these types of guys seemingly rise and fall, in and out of prospect relevancy, but one guy in the 2nd round has to hit, and Verdugo already is a guy with the potential to make that happen.