With the minor leagues' regular seasons over, it's time to present our annual Prospect of the Year award, given to the prospect who showed the best performance in the minor leagues in 2019. This year's contest was more crowded than most, with three players vying for the top spot and a dozen or so more worthy of serious consideration for this column.
While the process of selecting the top prospects was ultimately subjective, I focused primarily on legitimate prospects who performed well relative to their age, level and experience in pro ball. In short, the younger a player was relative to the other players in his league -- especially when compared just to the players in his league with a chance to have some impact in the majors -- the more impressed I was with a strong performance.
The primary criterion here is performance as prospects while still in the minors, especially because so many top prospects ended up in the majors this summer -- performance I didn't count toward this list.
With that, here is my overall Prospect of the Year for 2019, as well as several other players who had outstanding seasons and deserved notice. I also gave a separate award to the 2019 draftee who had the best pro debut.
Prospect of the Year: Wander Franco, SS, Tampa Bay Rays
There were three strong candidates for the Prospect of the Year title this season, but Franco's year stands above the next two players' performances. Franco turned 18 on March 1, hit .318/.390/.506 in the low-A Midwest League for half the season, then hit .339/.408/.464 in the high-A Florida State League for the rest of the season. He was the youngest player at both levels and one of just two teenagers in the FSL; if he'd been a first-round pick this past June, he would have been the fourth-youngest player taken there.
Most impressive about Franco's year is that he walked more often than he struck out at both levels, finishing the year with 56 walks and just 35 strikeouts (a 7.1% strikeout rate); only one player, 22-year-old Nick Madrigal, had a lower strikeout rate among players in full-season leagues. And Franco did all of this as a shortstop.
The next two players on this list also had tremendous seasons, but taking into account Franco's across-the-board performance, his extreme youth and his position, he gets this year's nod.
Runner-up: Luis Robert, OF, Chicago White Sox
If only he'd gotten a hit in front of me, maybe he would have won the award. Robert bounced back from a 2018 season that was ruined by injuries, mostly a persistent thumb injury he suffered in spring training, to hit .328/.375/.624 across three levels, finishing by hitting 16 homers in 223 PA in Triple-A, where he got to hit the lively major league baseball for the first time. He and Houston's Kyle Tucker were the only 30 HR/30 SB players in the minors this year -- and in fact were the only 25/25 players.
Robert is a true center fielder as well, not as valuable as a shortstop but still a skill position. The biggest difference between him and Franco, aside from the age gap, is in plate discipline, as Robert doesn't walk much and struck out five times as often as he walked. He's still a very good prospect and was No. 2 on my list for this honor.
Runner-up: Gavin Lux, SS, Los Angeles Dodgers
Lux was the Dodgers' first-round pick in 2016, taken No. 20 overall out of a Wisconsin high school, and has improved each of the past two years, launching himself to a .347/.421/.607 line this year between Double-A and Triple-A. Lux had the second-highest OBP of any player who had at least 500 PA in the minors this year, fifth highest among players with at least 400 PA. This year's power surge was a surprise, and it wasn't just the Triple-A baseball, as he hit 13 homers in 64 games for Double-A Tulsa before his promotion. Even if he's just an average hitter for power going forward, as a true shortstop with a great eye and the ability to make a lot of hard contact, with speed he still hasn't translated into stolen bases, he's a likely All-Star for a long time to come.
Jarred Kelenic, OF, Seattle Mariners: Mets fans, avert your eyes ... again. The sixth overall pick in 2018, Kelenic started the year in low-A and finished it in Double-A, hitting .291/.364/.540 at age 19 (he turned 20 in mid-July), with contact rates above the league averages at both his first and, most impressively, last stops. The Mariners' top prospect continues to show he's capable of staying in center field, with a power/speed/OBP combination that could make him a superstar. Justin Dunn, also part of the trade that brought Kelenic to Seattle, finished 20th in the minors in strikeouts this year with 158 in 133.2 innings, all in Double-A at age 23.
Jeter Downs, SS/2B, Los Angeles Dodgers: There were two really bad prospect trades this winter that each sent two pretty good prospects to other clubs in exchange for veterans, only to have the veterans underperform for their new clubs while the prospects had great seasons. Downs and right-hander Josiah Gray both went from Cincinnati to the Dodgers in the trade that sent Yasiel Puig, Alex Wood and Matt Kemp's contract to the Reds; Puig was worth only half a win for the Reds and Wood has made only seven starts around multiple IL stints. Downs, however, had a huge season between high-A and Double-A at age 20. His 35 doubles tied him for 18th in all of the minors, and with 24 homers and four triples he tied for 11th in the minors in extra-base hits. He hit .277/.362/.526 on the season and mostly played shortstop, although it's probably more likely he ends up at second base.
Tarik Skubal, LHP, and Matt Manning, RHP, Detroit Tigers: Detroit's Double-A rotation in Erie had the organization's top three pitching prospects in Skubal, Manning and Casey Mize, who started very strongly but got hurt and wasn't quite the same when he came off the IL.
Skubal was the giant surprise of 2019, a ninth-round pick out of the University of Seattle who had a mediocre spring after missing nearly two years due to 2016 Tommy John; he came back in 2019 with a plus fastball, plus curveball and far better control than he'd ever shown.
Manning, the team's first-round pick in 2016, picked up where he'd left off in his own breakout season in 2018, finishing second in the Eastern League in strikeouts and posting his lowest walk rate as a pro.
Joey Cantillo, LHP, San Diego Padres: Cantillo's stuff doesn't grade out well, but the Hawai'i native has a ton of deception in his delivery, which allowed the 19-year-old to strike out 144 batters in 111.2 innings this year between low-A and high-A, mostly for Fort Wayne at the lower level. While it's not a great starter's delivery and his fastball may not play at higher levels, we won't really know if he's the exception until he gets the chance to prove it in Double-A or above.
Miguel Vargas, 3B, Los Angeles Dodgers: Vargas couldn't have been any further under the radar before 2019; the Cuban defector signed with the Dodgers for just $300,000 in the fall of 2017, two years after he came to the United States. That dollar figure doesn't get you noticed until you do something on the field, which Vargas did this year as a 19-year-old, hitting .308/.380/.440 between low-A and high-A with an extremely impressive 14.8% strikeout rate given his age and inexperience in pro ball (he had just 140 pro PA before 2019, all coming last year). He may not stay at third base, but the bat will probably play anywhere.
Others of note: Logan Gilbert, RHP, Seattle; Yordan Alvarez, OF, Houston; Mason Martin, OF, Pittsburgh; Trevor Rogers, LHP, Miami.
Best debut: C.J. Abrams, SS, San Diego Padres
It'd be tough to top what Abrams did for the complex-level Arizona Rookie League Padres, hitting .401/.442/.662 with 14 steals in just 32 games. With the two games he played in low-A before an injury ended his season, he had the best batting average, second-best slugging percentage and 13th-best on-base percentage of all 2019 draftees this summer, including college players three or four years Abrams' senior. An honorable mention goes to the player picked right before Abrams, Detroit outfield prospect Riley Greene, who hit .312/.399/.448 between the Gulf Coast and New York-Penn short-season leagues before he finished the year in low-A West Michigan.