Today I wanted to take a look at one of the Reds top outfield prospects. Jesse Winker had a strong season for the Dayton Dragons as he posted a .281/.379/.463 line with 63 walks and 75 strikeouts in 486 plate appearances. He was recently named as the 9th best prospect in the Midwest League by Baseball America as well. I wanted to look at things both statistically and scouting wise.
Scouting
Jesse Winker is going to be confined to left field defensively, where he is likely to be an average fielder at the position. Like most left fielders though, he will need to provide most of his value at the plate. Fortunately for Winker he projects to be a very good hitter.
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Winker has an above-average hit tool as well as above-average power potential. His hit tool plays well as he can use the entire field and he can hit for power from foul line to foul line. The bat should play and it should play quite well.
Defensively, as noted above he is likely limited to left field. Some scouts think his arm is fringy, but I think it is just fine, especially for left field. Speed wise, he will likely lose a step moving forward but with left field it won’t be an issue.
Mechanical Changes
During the season Winker didn’t make many changes to his mechanics. Going back and looking at video throughout the season, there were only two changes that I noticed and they were rather minimal. The first thing was that he stood further back in the batters box as the season progressed than at the beginning of the season. At the end of the year his back foot was on the chalk, where at the beginning of the season he was about a half of a foot to a foot forward. The other difference, and it was also very minimal, is that his feet were spread out a bit more as the season progressed. The difference wasn’t much, but it was noticeable. Aside from those two things, there was nothing that stood out.
Statistical Breakdown
One of the more impressive things with Winker is his usage of the entire field. The spray charts for the first half and the second half (I am breaking it down based on splitting his ball in play data in half rather than the arbitrary midseason point) were essentially the same, so his approach/results didn’t seem to change.
Where there was an interesting difference was in how much power he hit for and where he hit for it to. In the first half of the season Winker hit for bit power to the pull side and to center, but was just average to the opposite field. In the second half though he showed just average power to the pull side and center but hit for big power to the opposite field. Being able to show big power output to both corners, even if it was only half of a season of each, is impressive to see from a teenager.
Overall
While the debut of Phillip Ervin was very impressive, on the basis of only things done in the batters box I would rank Jesse Winker as the top bat in the entire Cincinnati Reds system. With the combination of plate discipline, hitting ability, ability to use the entire field, power and confidence Winker looks like a difference maker at the plate who could move quickly if the Reds want to push him.
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Video