The results are in and this year’s Prospect Watch player will be shortstop Gleyber Torres. I apologize in advance to all of you who believe in the Prospect Watch Curse. This was a two-horse race and Torres edged out outfielder Blake Rutherford by a relatively small margin. In fact, when I checked the poll results yesterday morning, Rutherford was in the lead.
Here are the final vote totals for the eight Prospect Watch candidates:
- SS Gleyber Torres — 2,048
- OF Blake Rutherford — 1,642
- OF Clint Frazier — 709
- SS Jorge Mateo — 353
- RHP James Kaprielian — 273
- 3B Miguel Andujar — 233
- LHP Justus Sheffield — 91
- RHP Chance Adams — 84
The 5,433 total votes is a new Prospect Watch record. Last year we had 5,158 votes and the year before it was 3,020. Pretty cool. Thank you to everyone for voting and reading and sticking around.
Torres, 20, came over in the Aroldis Chapman trade last year and he is currently on the very short list of the best prospects in baseball. He hit .448/.469/.931 with six doubles and two homers in 32 plate appearances this spring, and he’ll start the season with Double-A Trenton. The plan is two three games at short, two games at third, and one game at second per week. Sounds good to me.
Despite his age, I don’t think it’s out of the question Torres reaches the big leagues later this year. Several things need to happen, but it is doable. Other high-end shortstop prospects like Xander Bogaerts and Carlos Correa climbed from Double-A to MLB in their age 20 season in recent years. It would be pretty darn cool if Torres did the same.
So what does winning the Prospect Watch mean? It means we’ll keep track of Gleyber’s progress day by day in our sidebar, right where the Opening Day countdown is now. Because he’s a position player, the Prospect Watch will be updated daily. That’s more fun that waiting five days with a starting pitcher, ain’t it?
The minor league regular season begins next Thursday, April 6th. I’ll get the Prospect Watch up in the sidebar that day.
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