Role 80 (5+WAR) – Risk – Moderate
1) Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (1B) Toronto Blue Jays – Heap of effusive praise commence. Eighty grades should not be thrown around lightly. I am not even sure that there should be an 80 given to a prospect every season. Only .3% or 3/1000 data points in a normal distribution fall beyond three standards deviations of the mean. An 80 on the scouting scale describes a position player who is a franchise cornerstone or potential hall of famer. This is perhaps a blasphemous expectation, but that is what I think Vlad will be. Please understand how absurd it is to give him moderate risk to reach this projection. Vlad was the best player in the fall league at age 19 and frankly looked uninterested at times. I don’t think we were watching vintage Guerrero. His bat speed and bat control were surpassed only by his advanced feel for the zone. While I view him as a 1B long-term, but that does not dampen my enthusiasm for him at all.