One last pile-on to the busy Top 100 prospects lists in baseball today: FanGraphs finally put out their top 100 list. A lone Astro sits on it: Jordan Lyles, unsurprisingly, is that Astro. FanGraphs has him as the #64 overall prospect in baseball.
What is a bit surprising, to me anyway, is Lyles is ranked higher by Baseball America than he is by FanGraphs. You would think that the sabermetric crowd would fall a bit harder for Lyles considering his statistical dominance and his youth, and that the scouting community would say "sure, but he's a short right-hander without dominant stuff." Of course, FanGraphs doesn't necessarily use minor league stats to project major league performance, and projection factors into the lists.
It's just interesting to me how far we've come from the old-time "stats vs. scouts" arguments that a prospect of Lyles tools is now being rated higher by the scouts than he is by the sabermetricians.
↵Lyles, 20, will likely open up in the Oklahoma City RedHawks rotation, and should be first in line to get a crack at the starting rotation should injuries occur. As long as said injuries don't interfere with the Astros plans of keeping his rights an extra year through service time manipulation.
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