Projecting the Prospects in the Giancarlo Stanton Trade

The Yankees have acquired reigning National League MVP Giancarlo Stanton from the Marlins in exchange for Starlin Castro plus prospects Jorge Guzman and Jose Devers. A possible $30 million in cash would also be included in the event Stanton chooses not to opt out of his mega-contract following the 2020 season.

Below are the KATOH projections for the prospects received by Miami. WAR figures account for each player’s first six major-league seasons. KATOH denotes the stats-only version of the projection system, while KATOH+ denotes the methodology that includes a player’s prospect rankings. In total, my KATOH system projects these prospects for a combined 5.9 WAR (5.2 by KATOH+) over their first six years in the majors.

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Jorge Guzman, RHP (Profile)
KATOH: 3.3 WAR
KATOH+: 3.2 WAR

Acquired from the Astros last winter in the Brian McCann trade, Guzman dominated the New York-Penn League in 2017. He struck out a league-leading 33% of opposing batters this past season and walked just 7%. The end result was a 2.30 ERA across 13 starts. At 21 years old, Guzman wasn’t particularly young for short-season ball — especially for an international signee — but his performance was off the charts. As a result, KATOH has him as a top-150 prospect. Guzman is obviously several levels away from the majors, but there is a lot to like.

I saw Guzman in person last summer, and it was immediately clear how he achieved those gaudy results: his stuff is nasty. He sat 96-100 mph as a starter and even ran it up to 102 a couple of times. He also missed bats with a slider that he threw as hard as 89 mph. Below is some mediocre-quality video I recorded. I tried to catch the velocity readings in the upper-left.

To put some faces to Guzman’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps. I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Guzman’s Triple-A performance and every Triple-A season since 1991. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues. 

Please note that the Mahalanobis analysis is separate from KATOH. KATOH relies on macro-level trends, rather than comps. The fates of a few statistically similar players shouldn’t be used to draw sweeping conclusions about a prospect’s future. For this reason, I recommend using a player’s KATOH forecast to assess his future potential. The comps give us some interesting names that sometimes feel spot-on, but they’re mostly just there for fun.

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Jose Devers, SS (Profile)
KATOH: 2.6 WAR
KATOH+: 2.0 WAR

Devers spent most 2017 as a 17-year-old shortstop in the Gulf Coast League. He performed reasonably well given his age and position, slashing .246/.359/.348 with 15 steals in 169 plate appearances. Devers has shown an encouraging capacity for making contact at a very young age while playing the middle infield, which gives him a reasonably high chance of reaching the major leagues. As an undersized infielder who’s extremely far away from the big leagues, though, he’s little more than a long-term lottery ticket.