When it comes to All-Star week, my favorite event isn't the headline game itself, but the Futures Game. The All-Star Game was big for me when I was a kid -- 1989, the year of Bo Jackson homering off Rick Reuschel is is burned into my head -- but in a world with interleague play, it doesn't feel like we see a lot in the All-Star Game that we don't already see on a day-to-day basis.
But the Futures Game is different. There, you get to get a sneak peek into the crystal ball and see some of baseball's upcoming stars participate in their first battles against each other. Pete Alonso was already making his name for himself in a big 2018 season in the minor leagues, but it was his massive home run in the Futures Game that summer that heralded his arrival in the public consciousness.
As someone who also makes a lot of predictions as my occupation, that just makes the game even more interesting to me. As is my wont, I ran up-to-date ZiPS projections for each player in the Futures Game to find which 10 players have the brightest future. Projection systems tend to look for different things than scouts do and are more excited than their flesh-and-blood counterparts about some players with lower ceilings but higher floors. That said, some of ZiPS' favorite players as prospects included Aaron Nola, Kyle Hendricks and Eugenio Suarez, and they've turned out more than OK.
So, enough with the preludes, let's get to the players:
Jo Adell, CF, Los Angeles Angels: While one wouldn't normally think of the toolsy types as projection-favored, Adell never really had that rough run professionally during which he struggled to hit minor league pitchers. In fact, Adell succeeded quite quickly in the minors and has accumulated a .310/.369/.550 line in two years.
Adell already has reached Double-A ball on merit and combined with his high-A experience, he's just slightly more projectable than the No. 2 hitter on this list, whose name you've probably already guessed.
ZiPS sees Adell as nearly a league-average center fielder if he were in the majors right now and sees tremendous power upside, projecting him to be a regular 30-homer club member. A lot of big sluggers appear on his comp list, names such as Carlos Gonzalez, Kevin Mitchell and Chili Davis, but now imagine if those guys could also play a solid center field!
Wander Franco, SS, Tampa Bay Rays: With the graduation of both Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Fernando Tatis Jr. to the majors, I don't think I'd be stepping out of line by saying Franco is the consensus No. 1 prospect in baseball. ZiPS only puts him second here by a slim margin due to his having less professional experience.
ZiPS translated his 2018 season as a .245/.294/.356 line with 15 extra-base hits in 61 games. Those numbers don't pop out at you until you remember that Franco was all of 17 years old and in Rookie League ball with that translation; nobody else in the Appalachian League translated into the same galaxy. ZiPS already sees Franco at his peak as a .280/.340/.480 player.
Luis Robert, RF, Chicago White Sox: He has wiped out the memories of his injury-filled 2018, quickly, hasn't he? A healthy Robert mashed his way out of the Carolina League in a month and hasn't stopped hitting at Birmingham, with an OPS of .880 as you read this. His ZiPS offensive comp list is arguably even more impressive than Franco or Adell, with names like Roberto Clemente, Cesar Cedeno, Jimmy Wynn, Matt Kemp and Adam Jones at the top. Arguably the worst result in the top 10 comps is Claudell Washington, who still managed to have a 17-year career in the majors.
Cristian Pache, CF, Atlanta Braves: My colleague Keith Law said earlier this year that Pache "might be an 80-grade defender right now." The rudimentary defensive data we have for the minors backs Keith up. ZiPS uses a system in which it rates the catch probability for every hit ball in the minors based on the Gameday coordinates that MLB publishes. While not quite as accurate as Baseball Info Solutions or Ultimate Zone Rating in the majors, it gives us information about a crucial aspect of a prospect's résumé. This system had Pache as a plus-13 run defender in CF in 2018.
This is the year his bat has caught up to that level of excellence. We're only in the first week of July and Pache already has more than half his professional home runs (11 of 20) in 2019. He's still just 20 years old yet in Double-A, and it's enough that ZiPS sees Pache as a slightly better Devon White.
Nolan Jones, 3B, Cleveland Indians: There's usually a great deal of skepticism in ZiPS for minor leaguers who get a lot of their value from plate discipline. These players tend to fall into a trap between the high minors and majors of becoming too passive, with names like Jeremy Hermida and Ben Grieve coming to mind. However, it looks like Jones will hit for a high enough average and be competent enough at third base for the plate discipline to matter and the projections look a lot like your average Dave Magadan season. That's not the flashiest name, but look up Mags' stats; he was one of the most underrated players in the majors in the late '80s and early '90s.
Gavin Lux, SS, Los Angeles Dodgers: It seems almost unfair that the fabulously rich Dodgers are also fabulously competent at finding and developing prospects. Lux's power explosion from 2018 has continued in 2019 at an even more torrid pace. Hitting 13 homers for Double-A Tulsa has already earned Lux a promotion to Triple-A Oklahoma City at age 21. Given that Triple-A leagues have adopted the flubber baseball from the majors this year and have seen their own offensive explosion, Lux may finish the season at 30 total homers in the minors. ZiPS sees players such as Alan Trammell and Eric Chavez in Lux's comps. Also, "Gavin Lux" sounds like a Bond villain, which pleases me as I'm kinda nerdy.
Brendan McKay, LHP/DH, Tampa Bay Rays: Finally, a pitcher! Projection systems tend to be grumpy about pitchers, given that the hurlers have a tendency to break in the minors. It's an additional sort of risk that isn't to the same degree in hitters, hence Baseball Prospectus once coining the acronym TINSTAAPP, meaning There Is No Such Thing as a Pitching Prospect.
McKay was expected to be polished coming into professional baseball and that's been largely true. ZiPS already thinks he's a No. 3 starter in the majors and projects him to peak at All-Star levels, around four WAR a season. The question, of course, is whether that will hold up when he has larger workloads than the relatively light burden the Rays have given him so far. You can tell the faith the Rays have in McKay, giving him a debut in the majors just two months after his high-minors debut.
ZiPS is less excited about McKay's bat. The projections don't see his bat providing much value anywhere on the field outside of as a pitcher. But he's almost Hall of Fame-quality with the bat compared to the normal pitcher, so he'll eke out additional value at times, especially in interleague games.
Taylor Trammell, LF, Cincinnati Reds: ZiPS doesn't see Trammell having the power upside as the top players on this list or the defensive chops to add a lot of value on that end, at least in center field (the translation for 2018 was minus-4 in centerfield while solidly above average in the corners). But ZiPS also sees Trammell as one of the safest bets among prospects, and while it doesn't have him developing more than 15 homer-a-year power, it also has Trammell peaking with on-base percentages in the .360 range and high batting averages.
MacKenzie Gore, LHP, San Diego Padres: It's hard to get projections excited about a low-minors pitching prospect, but ZiPS is totally into San Diego's top pitching prospect, MacKenzie Gore. The computer already thinks Gore could have an ERA right around 4.00 in the major right now, which is mighty impressive for a California League pitcher. ZiPS seems to be cranking up the wayback machine when finding comps for Gore, thinking of Gore along the lines of a young Don Gullett or Vida Blue. Steve Carlton peeks in at the back of his top 10 comparable pitchers list, but obviously think of that as a best-case scenario. Because Steve Carlton.
Isaac Paredes, INF, Detroit Tigers: I mentioned ZiPS loving Eugenio Suarez as a prospect up above, and there's a lot of that prospect DNA in Paredes. There's nothing flashy about Paredes, but he does a lot of things well: solid plate discipline, midrange power and lots of experience all over the infield. Hitting .258/.345/.385 isn't eye-popping at Double-A Erie, but he also turned 20 just before the 2019 season. ZiPS thinks he can hang anywhere in the infield and hit .260/.350/.450 in the majors at his peak, not all that different from Suarez outside of his big 2018 season. Hopefully the Tigers don't trade this one for a new Alfredo Simon.