Baseball America continued their rankings of the top 20 prospects in each league on Friday morning and left-handed pitcher Braeden Ogle of the Bristol Pirates made the Appalachian League list.
Unlike with the other leagues profiled so far, the Appalachian League has just ten teams. They also don’t get many first round picks in the league for a full season. In fact, just one first round pick is listed among the 20 prospects in the league this year. So with a limited player pool to choose from and very few of the top draft picks, it’s usually not the best list for prospects. That being said, Ogle still had an impressive season, especially from the scouting standpoint.
Ogle was looking strong in August until minor knee surgery shut him down, causing him to miss his last three starts of the season. He threw five shutout innings in each of his final two outings, and he struck out seven batters in his final start. He finished with a 3.14 ERA and a 1.30 WHIP, with 35 strikeouts in 43 innings. The ERA and WHIP are both much better than league average. Ogle turned 20 years old at the end of July, making him about a year younger than league average.
BA ranked Ogle as the 13th best prospect in the league. They mentioned that he sits low-90s and tops out around 96 MPH. It appears that is going off of last year’s scouting report, because he was throwing harder this season, topping out at 98 MPH with Bristol and he sit more in the low-to-mid 90s range. He probably wouldn’t rank any higher if they knew that information because they made no mention of the knee surgery. While it was minor and he is progressing nicely from it at Pirate City right now, it’s still considered missed time between the three starts and being unable to compete in the Fall Instructional League.
The GCL will be the next prospect list up. Yesterday, BA did two lists, but that was because the same writer covered both leagues and it made sense to have one chat for both. So I’m not sure if the GCL will be up today or on Monday. They also put out a list for the DSL.