Other than Triple A, which has another few days to go, the minor league season for 2022 is now in the books, so it’s time for my annual Prospect of the Year award, given to the player who had the best performance in the minor leagues in 2022.
While the process of selecting the top prospects was ultimately subjective, I focused primarily on legitimate prospects who performed well relative to their age, level and experience in pro ball. In short, the younger a player was relative to the other players in his league — especially when compared just to the players in his league with a chance to have some impact in the majors — the more impressed I was with a strong performance. What a player did in the majors, if he was called up, was irrelevant for this list’s purposes.
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Because I focus on age, many of the older players who had huge years in Low and High A, like Vaun Brown (24 years old) and Niko Kavadas (23), aren’t on here. Their performances were good enough to earn them new consideration as prospects, but they need to perform when they’re facing competition their age or older to prove this newfound production is sustainable.
So, given those criteria, here is my overall Prospect of the Year for 2022, as well as several other players who had outstanding seasons and deserved notice.
Prospect of the Year: Logan O’Hoppe, C, Los Angeles Angels
The 22-year-old O’Hoppe got off to a strong start this year in the Phillies’ system, where the 23rd-round pick from 2018 hit .275/.392/.496 with Double-A Reading. It’s a great hitters’ park, so you could have been a little skeptical – and perhaps the Phillies were, as they traded him at the deadline to the Angels for outfielder Brandon Marsh. O’Hoppe went to the Angels’ Double-A affiliate, Rocket City, and took off like … never mind, he just hit .306/.473/.674 with 11 homers in 29 games after the trade. He finished 16th among full-season players this year (minimum 400 minor-league plate appearances) in strikeout to walk ratio, with 74 strikeouts and 68 unintentional walks on the season. He’s an offensive catcher with strong OBP skills and power, but good enough to stick behind the plate, and now he’s the Angels’ top prospect.
Logan O’Hoppe is getting activated for tomorrow, per Phil Nevin.
Magneuris Sierra was DFA’d.
— Sam Blum (@SamBlum3) September 28, 2022
Runners-up
Gunnar Henderson, 3B, Baltimore Orioles
Henderson started the year in Double A, in hitter-friendly Bowie, hitting .312/.452/.573 as a 21-year-old, which is excellent even with the boost from the home park. The Orioles bumped him up to Triple A after 47 games, and he hit .288/.390/.504 at the higher level, more than enough to get him a call to the majors, where he’s continued to get on base and show plus power. He’s also a superb defensive third baseman and should be able to stay at shortstop over the long term, although the Orioles probably have two better defensive shortstops coming up behind him in Joey Ortiz and, eventually, Jackson Holliday.
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Corbin Carroll, OF, Arizona Diamondbacks
Carroll was Arizona’s first-round pick in 2019, but missed almost all of last year after blowing out his shoulder on a home run swing in the first week of the minor-league season. He came into this year with 49 games of pro experience, but the 21-year-old hit a combined .307/.425/.610 for Double-A Amarillo and Triple-A Reno, with 24 homers, 31 steals in 36 attempts and eight triples, along with strong centerfield defense. Those two home parks are very hitter-friendly – the ball flies out in Amarillo when the wind blows, and Reno is 4,500 feet above sea level, playing in the Pacific Coast League West, which is full of hitters’ parks (Albuquerque, Salt Lake, Las Vegas, El Paso). Carroll’s a future superstar, and my No. 1 overall prospect in my last update, but this honor is more about performance than long-term potential, and Carroll’s performance doesn’t quite measure up to O’Hoppe’s or Henderson’s when you consider the environment.
Endy Rodriguez, C, Pittsburgh Pirates
Rodriguez was the Pirates’ seventh-best prospect coming into this season, a sort of afterthought in the three-team deal that sent Joe Musgrove to the Padres and Joey Lucchesi to the Mets. Rodriguez was the Mets’ payment for Lucchesi, who threw 38 replacement-level innings for New York last year before undergoing Tommy John surgery. The 22-year-old started the year in High-A Greensboro, hit .302/.392/.544 there, moved up to Double-A Altoona, hit .356/.442/.678 in a month there, and then finished his year with five games in Triple-A where he went eight for 18 with two doubles and a triple. He’s an agile, athletic catcher who projects to stay back there, giving the Pirates a very good problem with Henry Davis, the first pick in the 2021 draft, also spending part of the year in Double A. Pittsburgh could choose to give Rodriguez the first shot, since Davis missed a huge part of 2022 with a recurring wrist injury. Davis might have more upside but Rodriguez had the best year of any prospect in that system.
Brett Baty, 3B, New York Mets
Baty hit a combined .315/.410/.533 this year between Double A and Triple A, earning a call-up to the big leagues that was cut short by injury after just 11 games. The knock on Baty at the plate was always that his size and hard contact weren’t turning into over-the-fence power, but this year he hit a career-best 19 homers in 95 minor league games, plus two more in the big leagues, and looks like he’ll be a 25-30 homer guy as soon as he gets regular playing time.
BRETT BATY CRUSHES A HOMER IN HIS FIRST MLB AT-BAT!! pic.twitter.com/iqB8JqBx6h
— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) August 17, 2022
Andrew Painter, RHP, Philadelphia Phillies
The minor league pitcher of the year for 2022 is Andrew Painter. The Phillies’ first-round pick last year was just behind Kyle Harrison (see below) in overall strikeout rate at 38.7 percent across Low A, High A and Double A, all at age 19 — and he did so while staying healthy all year. The Phils did have him skip a start in June, building him back up gradually after that, which may have been part of his success through the end of the season. He also walked just 25 men in 103.2 innings, and allowed just 67 hits and only five homers, all while spending the majority of the year in leagues where he was one of the youngest pitchers – or the youngest, as he was in the Eastern League. Only Miami’s Eury Pérez was younger among pitchers with at least 20 innings in Double A, and Painter is just five days older.
Kyle Harrison, LHP, San Francisco Giants
Harrison finished second in the minors in strikeouts this year behind Arizona right-hander Brandon Pfaadt, who threw 54 more innings and struck out 32 more batters. But Harrison’s rate was the best in minor league baseball, as he struck out just under 40 percent of batters he faced. He still walks a few too many guys, but when you miss this many bats as a 20-year-old who’s young for Double A, you’re doing something right.
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Gavin Stone, RHP, Los Angeles Dodgers
Stone was the Dodgers’ fifth-round pick in the truncated 2020 draft, an afterthought and a money-saver … except it turns out he’s good, really good, in fact. Stone started the year in High A and finished in Triple A, throwing 121.2 innings with 168 strikeouts (a 33.8 percent rate) and 44 walks, along with a 1.48 ERA on the season. He even outperformed right-hander Bobby Miller, the Dodgers’ first-round pick from that same draft and the higher-ranked of the two prospects due to Miller’s bigger upside.
I used to name one player from that year’s draft class who had the best pro debut, but that meant a lot more when the draft was in June and some draft picks could get 200 plate appearances before the minor-league season ended. Instead, Cam Collier, whom I ranked as the second-best prospect in the draft class, played all of nine games after signing. While he hit .370/.514/.630 for the AZL Reds, I’d like to at least consider sample size in this. Zach Neto had the best pro debut of anyone who actually played more than a week or two, hitting .299/.377/.476 even though the Angels sent him straight to High A and then promoted him to Double A. I’d give him the edge over the Dodgers’ first pick, catcher Dalton Rushing, who had better stats (.424/.539/.778) but did it in Low A in a better hitters’ park.
I should also mention that Jackson Holliday, the No. 1 pick, hit .409/.576/.591 in nine games in the Gulf Coast League, so the Orioles bumped him up to Low-A Delmarva, where he hit a respectable .238/.439/.333 as an 18-year-old who was just a few months out of high school. Other 2022 draftees who had great pro debuts this summer, even in limited time: Gavin Cross, OF, Kansas City (first round); Jud Fabian, OF, Baltimore (second round); Spencer Jones, OF, NY Yankees (first round); Cole Young, SS, Seattle (first round).
(Photo of O’Hoppe: Jill Weisleder / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
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