It is always fun to look at top tools because they are often the most exciting and awe inspiring part of a game. Sometimes we lose perspective as to what top major league tools look like in comparison to minor leaguers. The call on best tools in the minor leagues are often close so I have included honorable mentions.
Hitters
Speed:
Minor League: Quinn (80) – Much has been written on Quinn’s speed which is a legitimate 80 grade tool. Honorable Mentions: Tocci, Gillies, Hudson
Major League: Revere (70) – A couple of years ago this might have been Jimmy Rollins, but Revere has near elite speed that he uses well in both the field and on the base paths.
Arm:
Minor League: Joseph (60) – Joseph has a plus to plus plus arm behind the plate that allows him to control the run game. In addition to throwing hard Joseph has a quick release and great accuracy. Honorable Mention: Gillies, James, Franco
Major League: Brown (70) – Brown has a cannon from the outfield and his accuracy has gotten much better making it a real weapon. Others in consideration were Rollins and Galvis from shortstop.
Hit:
Minor League: Asche (60) – Asche has a quick line drive swing that spray line drives from gap to gap. Asche may not have a lot of power but he can certainly make good contact. Honorable Mention: Franco, Quinn, Pullin
Major League: Revere (60) – When Revere makes contact he puts the ball in play. There is very little power in his swing and often more soft liners but he can make good contact consistently against all pitchers. Close calls included Chase Utley, Michael Young, and Carlos Ruiz.
Power:
Minor League: Cozens (70) – Cozens is a massive human being who can hit baseballs very far. This is a bit of a projection call as he has not faced good competition but the raw power is legitimate. Honorable Mentions: Darin Ruf, Larry Greene, Joseph, Franco
Major League: Howard (70) – Howard’s power has slipped over the years but there are very few players in baseball who can hit homeruns as far as he can.
Defense:
Minor Leagues: Tocci (60) – At 17 Tocci is an advanced defender in CF where he glides in the outfield with his 70 speed. He is only going to improve and could be an elite defender in the outfield. Honorable Mentions: Hudson, James, Valle
Major Leagues: Galvis (70) – Galvis is a near elite defender at short, and is elite at second and third when asked to play there.
Pitching:
Fastball:
Minor League: Giles (70) – Giles can routinely run his fastball up to 100 and is starting to command it in the zone as well. Honorable Mentions: Martin, Vargas, Aumont
Major League: Papelbon (60) – There are a lot more good fastballs in the minor leagues but Papelbon has a mid-90s fastball with good movement that he has used very effectively.
Curveball:
Minor Leagues: Biddle (60) – Biddle’s curveball has become a legitimate put away pitch that has allowed him to excel even with diminished fastball velocity. Honorable Mentions: Martin, Watson
Major League: Lee (70) – Lee’s curveball is probably comparable to Halladay’s but Lee’s ability to command it right now gives him the edge.
Slider:
Minor League: Morgan (60) – Morgan has a plus slider that has been a big part of his breakout in 2012. Honorable Mentions: Giles, De Fratus
Major League: Bastardo (60) – The Phillies on the major league level don’t have a ton of sliders, Adams was in heavy consideration here.
Changeup:
Minor League: Pettibone (60) – Pettibone has a plus changeup but it has not been a real weapon due to the lack of a second plus pitch in Pettibone’s arsenal. Honorable Mentions: Morgan, Biddle
Major League: Hamels (80) – Hamels’ changeup has been his calling card and might be the best in the majors. The changeup should allow Hamels to be successful well into his decline years.
Control:
Minor League: Morgan (60) – Morgan just edges Pettibone for me but it is very close. Morgan has shown the ability to throw all of his pitches in the zone for strikes. Honorable Mention: Pettibone, Cloyd, De Fratus
Major League: Lee (80) – Lee has the best control of any pitcher in the majors as he can consistently throw good strikes.
As always feel free to disagree with my assessments, this is mostly a fun exercise anyway.
Phuture Phillies 
Surprised you didn’t mention Rosin in any section for control, fastball, or slider. He has always had great command and a way above avg FB. His slider has really improved since college and is one of the reasons he has so many Ks. I know he is new to us but he will open a lot of eyes this year.
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If I was grading him out it is 50 control, 60 fastball, 50 slider and optimistic on all of those. Not saying that is bad but kind of ordinary when we are talking top tools in an organization. I want to see where he goes and in what roles before seeing how his year will go (personally I find him comparable to Garner in many ways except that he missed bats in relief)
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You are way under-clubbing him in my opinion but we’ll see.
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Pretty surprised Colvin isn’t an honorable mention on fastball. Also, for Giles, I haven’t seen him throw a slider much, but he throws a weird slurvy forkball pitch quite often.
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I never heard Giles had a plus slider either. Last year Mickey Morandini said he had an ‘unhitable’ Forkball.
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Colvin’s fastball at its peak is up there, but is not consistent enough to warrant consideration. The Phillies have gotten rid of the forkball for Giles and what you are seeing is the slider which made even more consistent during the instructs and I am hearing plus or at least plus potential.
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If consistency is part of the criteria, I’m not sure Giles or Aumont could be ranked that high either. I’ve seen Giles pitch several times and all his outings look like Ricky Vaughn in Major League. His forkball actually has better command than his fastball in the outings I’ve seen.
And I’m very surprised to see Pullin get honorable mention for hit tool – he looks very average to me to put him in the top 4 in the system in this category.
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Nice write-up. I think Galvis’ defense is elite – at least 75. Concur on Cozens’ power. Nobody at the minor league complex hits the ball as far as he does. He positively launches the ball. At the big league level I think we need to give Brown honorable mention for power – he is hitting the living daylight a oh of the ball.
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How about Hewitt: arm and power. It’s about the only reason he is still around. Also, Astudillo (wherever he is) has a great contact tool. Add outfield to Galvis’ set. He showed good instinct on his jump on the fly that Inciarte missed and his strike to the plate from right field.
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Sorry for the bad typing. You know what I meant.
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Howard might still have 80 power, lets call it 75 if we reserve 80 for Stanton. He can take it out to the opposite field with the flick of his wrists. Making contact is another story, but his power is still ridiculous.
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I did not do 5 grades (Howard and Galvis might have been 75s) so no argument there.
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60 hit for Revere seems awfully generous for a guy who hit 267 two years ago and 294 last season. That looks more like a fringe-average to average hit tool to me. Give me Utley, still.
(Since this comment section will probably turn into a variety of nitpicks like mine, thanks for this writeup. It’s an interesting topic, and an eminently debatable one.)
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Revere was a career .326 hitter in the minors and if you look at his career numbers he makes contact on a huge amount of pitches he swings at
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I tend to think of the Hit tool as a combo of the mechanics of the swing and the ability to consistently barrel up the ball. I have not seen him much, but I’m guessing that Revere’s BA is less reflective of his Hit tool than the average player due to his reliance on his speed to get on base. For me Utley has (had) one of the best Hit tools in the game when healthy. I would also put Ruiz as an above average Hit.
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I haven’t thought about who has the best control in the majors, and probably don’t watch ALers enough to say, but I was shocked reading Lee has the best control of anyone. His K/BB ratio or BB/9 is always ridiculous, so it makes sense, but still I never thought of him that way.
Franco may not have won a category, but its cool he’s in every honorable mention. Hes a real nice prospect and I’m excited to see what he can do at higher levels.
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Lee walked 18 batters the entire 2010 season, and 6 of them came in 3 games right near the end of the year. There’s no number on his control grade above but I’ve got to think that if anybody has an 80, it’s him.
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Franco has 4 of 5 tools from above average to well above, for sure. His wheels are really slow to get in gear however. But then again, last years Triple Crown guy has the same type motor.
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Interesting that 3 of the 4 minor leaguers listed for best defense tool are CFs and the 4th is Valle. Tocci could well develop into a good offensive player, but the other two CFs look like they can’t hit. Valle is really good at blocking balls in the dirt and agile behind the plate. I guess arm is separate from D. Unfortunately Valle is very pedestrian in controlling the running game.
I’m also not sure Revere should be tops in hit tool. I don’t think simply touching the ball with the bat qualifies as a good hit tool. You have to be able to hit it well enough that there is a good probability of a base hit. Considering the advantages that his speed gives him and his unimpressive major league batting averages, I’d say his hit tool is average. To drag out his minor league batting averages to justify his hit tool as a major leaguer seems stretched. I’d put Ruiz and likely Utley above him, I think Ruiz has clearly the best hit tool on Phillies. Hit tool is batting average and Ruiz is a head above everyone else on the team.
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I think if we were to place that much important on power when grading the hit tool, then we wouldn’t need a separate tool for power. He’s proven to be really good at making contact when he swings and putting the ball in play, but his power tool is just about nonexistent.
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Thanks for a very interesting article. Can’t wait to see if Tocci develops as a hitter.
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The Cliff Lee score and comment is interesting, I can’t disagree with it, but I will say Cliff’s one flaw is he gets wild in the strike zone sometimes. Where some guys have trouble locating pitches and walk people, he sometimes gets into trouble locating and misses up and over the plate and gives up lots of solo homers. Having said that, his control is amazing so can’t disagree with the score really.
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Ben Revere is one of the fastest players in baseball. He is at least a 70 runner.
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could very well be an 80
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I used to hate Wheels, but the one thing you start to notice is that his observations tend to be dead on (other than love for players like Ekstein). Yesterday he commented that every time Revere has tried to steal this spring there’s been a play on him- no real ‘had it by a mile’ swipes. That’s not an 80 runner. From what I’ve seen he’s basically Victorino speed- which is pretty good, but that’s probably more like a 65.
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Because its always a close play on his attempted steals, that doesn’t mean he is less than 80 speed. It may mean that he relies too much on speed, and doesn’t know how to get a good jump. I have no idea what his speed grade should be, but the ability to steal bases, isn’t the measure.
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He got a terrible jump off first trying to steal yesterday but everyone seemed to get a bad jump off first so maybe the ground was too soft. He’s got serious speed to burn. I look forward to a few triples off his bat rolling into the right field corner this year. However, I believe Quinn is faster.
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The catcher made a pretty good throw to get him too; the ball almost hit Revere in the head. Without a near perfect throw he probably does steal that base rather easily. And as Murray said, he didn’t get a good jump off of first.
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Kyrell Hudson is also by far the best defender in our system.
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I think he breaks out this year.
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I dont know about that, but hes a freak of nature in center field. Not sure the bat will ever play.
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Defense…no luvv for Rupp?
Joe Jordan think he is near the best in the Phils minor org behind the plate.
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Ahhhh tooollllllllzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ….
I’m going Utley for best hit tool, the last few games have really given me some hope that he can be healthy enough to be 90% of what he was, the question is… will it last. That said, when evaluating a players tools, we aren’t really looking at health. We’re only looking at skill, and Utley assuming health, he still grades out at 70.
Howard to me on the power side is a bit of an unknown as well. Clearly he was an 80, the question is now, he is still? So tough to reverse grade these once great (or maybe still great) players.
It’s like when evaluating Doc, he could rebound in the next month and finish the year in the top 10 in cy-young voting and it wouldn’t “shock” me, but it’s not seeming too likely at this point.
It probably would have been easier to evaluate the current team when at their peak instead of this year with health and age being such a significant factor. (then again, judging this team 2 years ago would have been much much easier then at present).
Your minor league tool grades are awesome, thanks for doing this. One thing I will say, it seems people on this site really get a hard-on for speed and defense. I’d easily trade both for hitting and power. Take quinn, 80 speed, potentially 70 defense (center) and 60 at short. Now… imagine a short stop who profiled 80 hit, 60 power? And that’s a potential super star (or 80 hit, 70 power in CF).
Wish we had one of those type of prospects to get excited about. 😦 Oh right… we traded him (singleton/travis D)
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It isn’t all about the insane tools (your two player examples are Tulo and Trout btw). If you were grading Singleton right now it is 60 hit and 60 power (there is 70 in there somewhere) and D’Arnaud is 50 hit, 60 power, 60 arm, 50-60 glove, plus and average tools are really good when you have a bunch of them (which is why we should all love Franco). I disagree on defense being something not to love, an elite SS or CF can be an extremely valuable player without ever hitting. The one to worry about is power without the hit (this is something I fall into a lot), big batting practice power means nothing if you can make contact.
To be fair on the major league hit tool grade I sat there for 30 minutes fighting it out between Revere, Utley, and Ruiz. Would grade them all the same (Utley has slipped, especially against LHP, it used to be a 70) went with Revere on the tie breaker.
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Nice article. I do think minor league tools are generally overrated but what else is there to go on.
The one tool that seems to be the most difficult to get an 80 and therefore is the most sought after (at least for me it is) is the Hit tool.
Other than maybe Pujols what major leaguer has an 80 hit tool and what would a minor leaguer need to do to get graded at 80?
Huge power and speed guys are fairly common. For pitchers, basically the best few in any couple year stretch are generally given an 80. (Madson’s change up should be an 80 also.)
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In general you will never see an 80 on a hit tool, control, or breaking pitch on a minor leaguer. The closest would be Trout last year and Taveres this year, but that is something where you have to see what it looks like against the best pitching. With pitching the feel and command of secondary pitches is refined on the major league level.
Pujols used to have an 80 hit tool, currently I would say 80s on the hit tools for Trout, Cabrera, and possibly Posey.
I would give Madson’s changeup a 70.
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Profar profiles as a 80 hit tool. doesn’t he?
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No, Profar is like 70 hit, 50 power (though there is a chance at 60 as he only just turned 20), 60-70 arm, 60-70 defense, and 50 speed. At shortstop that is really good.
On previous list I forgot Joe Mauer who has 80 hit. In general 80 tools are rare and hit tools especially are. You will see more 80 speed and fastball guys because the curve hasn’t shifted as players have but true 80s are rare on other tools. The most 80 tools on any player I have seen personally was Ichiro in his prime with 80 hit, 80 speed, 80 arm, 70 defense.
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Just a few of my uneducated questions on the tools list presented:
I’d think James would be a 70 arm in minors. I did not think Gillies arm was on the same level but if so he should be a top notch defender in CF.I do not think Galvis has a 70 arm from SS (at least not as good as Rollins).
Think hit tool for Franco and Quinn is a bit early to project but Quinn appears excellent from last season learning to switch hit and playing advance competition in the Spring. I’d actually put Ruf pretty high up (on the minors side) since he is pretty much a .300 hitter at every level. Utley also for me in majors.
I’d put Hudson and James at 70 for CF. Galvis at 3B, does anyone know yet? 2B he was elite.
For sheer velocity/movement would Giles be an 80? Other than Chapman & Verlander are there other 80’s? Aumont might be choice at 70 due to the movement of a 95mph FB/Sinker. Rosenberg is 95+ but straight as can be.
I know nothing if Giles slider but if it is 60 then Phillies are going to be very happy with him. DeFratus has a very good one though.
I wonder where Rodriguez would be for curveball and Bonilla for changeup?
Not much for me to asked about for the rest of the pitcher rankings.
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I’d say Ruf had the best hit tool in the minors and give Hernadez, Gillies, and Ashe the honorable mentions, in that order. In the majors I like Revere’s chances of leading the Phillies in Batting average and wouldn’t be surprised to see him with a batting average above 310 the whole season. The other categories I agree pretty much with Matt, with minor changes, like putting Ruf first in minor league power.
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There is IMO a lot of confusion in this thread about the use of the term “hit tool.” I’m not the person to entirely clear it up, but let me at least sketch out where I think the confusion is coming from. Really I think we need a professional scout to clear this up fully.
Hit tool, as I have seen it used, has two legitimate components – contact ability, and the ability to make “good” contact (which seems to me MAINLY line drive ability, though I’m willing to be corrected on this). Some people seem to add a third, not so legitimately: power, which of course is a separate evaluation category. The question I suppose is how you weigh the different components of “hit tool.” (IMO, it would make sense to evaluate the two aspects of hit tool separately). (Of course, one could simply say that hit tool is “the ability to hit for average,” but that begs the question – there really IS no such thing as an “ability” to hit for average. Players who hit for good average do so through a combination of four “abilities” – making contact, making GOOD contact, being fast (infield hits) and hitting home runs. The latter two are evaluated separately, of course.)
Anyway, most of the disagreement in this thread about who has the best hit tool is a disagreement about whether hit tool is more about contact ability or making good contact. Revere has very good contact ability. The kind of contact he generates is ground ball contact. For a speedy guy like him, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But it also isn’t necessarily what people mean by “good” contact.
Asche, OTOH, is not a great contact hitter (not bad but not great), but he has a swing that generates “good” contact – a lot of line drives.
Who has the better hit tool? It’s really a matter of definition.
A guy like Ruf, OTOH, despite his virtues as a hitter, does NOT have an exceptionally good hit tool by any definition. His contact abilities are average (though above average for a power hitter). The type of contact he generates is fly ball contact. Obviously his contact is “good” in the sense that he generates a lot of power, but power is (and should be) evaluated separately. Yes, he has put up some pretty good batting averages in the minors, but that aspect of his game is not likely to translate to the majors.
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This may have little to do with anything, but kudos LarryM for proper use of “begs the question”.
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And for something a little more relevant,
Taken from Baseball Examiner :
“Which of the five tools is considered most important?
Well, it may depend on the primary position of a player. But for the most part,the first thing about a position player we discuss is his ability or inability to hit the ball. Scouts judge a player’s swing looking for details including, but not limited to, bat speed, a level swing, full arm extension and follow-through.
The swing will often show its holes by the mechanics of the player’s body. A scout looks for what the feet are doing, what the hips are doing, what the shoulders are doing and several other biomechanical factors. A player with a “good bat” will make consistently good contact with the ball and the ball should bounce off the bat with some authority when struck.
Isn’t power part of hitting? Why is it considered a different tool?
Power is part of hitting, but it’s a different aspect of it. Hitting as a tool judges a player’s ability to put the ball sharply in play. Power as a tool is the ability to hit the ball high and far. Consider power a supplemental tool to hitting. Without a good hitting approach, power will be much more difficult to realize. A good hitter who lacks power will find it reasonably easier to later add power than will a player with good power-potential lacking a “good bat” develop into a well-rounded hitter. I know that was a complicated statement, so after you spend a moment to further examine it more closely, consider the following simplified version: power will feed off the hitting, not vice versa.
A good hitter will, with experience, eventually show some power by adding a loft to his swing and making other subtle adjustments. That is partly why power is typically the last of the five tools to develop. Power is also late to develop because, though young players may already have a good swing, bodies aren’t fully matured until the early-to-mid 20s. A player at age 18, 19 or 20 is not nearly as strong and filled-out as he will be by age 24, 25 and on. And scouts are asked to predict how strong a boy is expected to be when he becomes a man. Not easy!”
http://www.baseballexaminer.com/FAQs/scouting_faq.htm
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Most players could make “contact” most of the time. However a player’s goal when at the plate isn’t to make contact; it’s to make good contact. Nobody swings with the intention of getting jammed or rolling it over to the second baseman (certain circumstances notwithstanding).
The sole reason Ben Revere may benefit from being less determined to make good contact is to take advantage of his speed, a la Brett Butler, Juan Pierre, all the other lefty hitting speedsters who are halfway out of the box when the bat hits the ball. That to me conflates the hit tool with the speed tool.
This has nothing to do with power, mind you. Placido Polanco, in his prime, had a great hit tool.
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Bob Brookover@brookob1h
The Phillies’ latest LF experiment is Sebastian Valle. He played there in a minor-league game Wednesday
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