Philadelphia Phillies: Enyel De Los Santos, SP
The Phillies are the one team in the National League East in a much different situation rookie-wise. After having several young prospects make their debuts in recent seasons, such as Hoskins, Kingery, Crawford, Alfaro, Williams, Quinn, Pivetta, Dominguez (and it goes on), they don’t seem to have many prospects that are expected to get a full season’s worth of playing time. Enter De Los Santos, the right-handed pitching prospect the Phillies traded Freddy Galvis for last winter. He isn’t going to make anybody’s top 100 prospects list, but he has already made his MLB debut and will likely slide into the Phillies rotation if they have injury problems.
EDLS has made major improvements to his game stuff-wise in the past couple minor league seasons, and that paired with not-terrible-command and noticeable durability has helped him to 150 AA innings with a 3.78 ERA and then 126.2 AAA innings with a 2.63 ERA in the past 2 seasons. His mid-90s fastball paired with a plus changeup has helped him miss bats, and there has been at least some translation into the highest level, as he produced a 4.31 xFIP with an about average 45.4% of pitches in the strike zone and an average 10.5% of his strikes being whiffed at. It’s not elite, but for his age, it’s promising.
There is a reason De Los Santos isn’t considered a top prospect, however. In his 19 MLB innings, mostly coming in relief, he still had a high 4.74 ERA. De Los Santos doesn’t have many plus pitches, including only an average breaking pitch in his repertoire. The lack of extension he gets on his pitches also tends to concern some scouts. There’s still a lot of reliever risk with De Los Santos, even though he has stayed durable and has made it through the minor leagues. Unless he can fix the issue of going multiple times through the order effectively, it’s not clear he will do well in the starting rotation this upcoming season.
Washington Nationals: Victor Robles, CF
Sadly for the Nationals, it looks like the great era of the Bryce Harper-led Nationals is coming to a close. On the bright side, they are replacing him with rookie-of-the-year runner-up Juan Soto, and now 2019 rookie-of-the-year favorite Victor Robles, so maybe they aren’t missing much in terms of young phenoms in the outfield. As it currently stands, the prospect MLBPipeline.com ranked 4th in all of baseball is slated to start in Center Field for Washington on Opening Day. It’s seemed like a while since his debut in 2017, but the 22-year-old still has a lot in front of him.
Robles’ athleticism is most interesting in his prospect profile. Even while ignoring his smooth yet powerful swing, his defense and speed on the basepaths is enough to make him a great prospect. At the dish, Robles impresses too. Despite not having consistent playing time, in his 93 MLB plate appearances, Robles has a .843 OPS, a K% under 20%, and an ISO over .225.
That may be unrealistic to expect in the upcoming season as he takes on a bigger workload, but Steamer still projects his wRC+ to be 102, which makes him a very good player when paired with a Byron Buxton-like skillset in the field. Overall, Robles is one of the most exciting prospects in the game and may be on the MLB roster on Opening Day. If you are watching any rookies closely, he is #1 in the National League as a whole.
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