Colorado Rockies prospect rankings, mid-season 2024: numbers 5 to 3

Two outfielders and an infielder start the top five

We’ve entered the top five of the mid-season 2024 Purple Row Prospects (PuRPs) list!

Previously we had PuRPs 30-26, 25-21, 20-16, 15-11, and 10-6. As a reminder, in this edition of the PuRPs poll, 35 ballots were cast, with 30 points granted for a first place vote, 29 for second, etc.

For each player on the PuRPs list, I’ll include a link to individual stats and contract status (via Baseball-Reference), PuRPs voting stats, a note on the 2024 season to date, and a scouting report from a national prospect writer where possible. For what it’s worth, I’ll also include where I put each player on my personal ballot. All ages are as of the date the article is posted.

5. Yanquiel Fernandez (907 points, 35 ballots) — Preseason Ranking: 4 — High Ballot 1 (2), Mode Ballot 5

How did he enter the organization?

2019 International Free Agent, Cuba

Why did he make the PuRPs list?

The ball just sounds different coming off Fernandez’s bat. The 21-year-old lefty outfielder (who signed for $295k in 2019 out of Cuba) is well-known for making loud contact, and did a lot of that in 2023 with High-A Spokane as one of the youngest players in the league, then a little bit more in Double-A Hartford to close the year. Fernandez is lauded for his plus power projection and good feel for hitting, though his below-average speed limits him to the corner outfield positions.

The 6’2” Fernandez was assigned to High-A Spokane in mid-April 2023 and responded well to the challenge. In 268 PA with Spokane, Fernandez hit .319/.355/.605 with 17 homers among his 34 extra-base hits (147 wRC+). That was enough for the Rockies to promote him to Double-A Hartford in late June, where Fernandez was 3.7 years younger than league average.

Fernandez homered in his first game with Hartford and he went yard in four of his first eight games. Fernandez was selected to the prestigious MLB Futures Game a couple weeks later. In the game, Fernandez hit a single and was clocked at over 103 MPH on an in-game throw to third base:

The league caught up with Fernandez after his hot Double-A start, as he hit just three long balls in the season’s last two months and struggled majorly to make contact. Still, though Fernandez’s .206/.262/.362 line (69 wRC+) in Hartford wasn’t elite, the fact that he did it as a 20-year-old in Double-A very much is. Fernandez struck out in 33% of PA in Hartford (6% walks), which is a black mark, but he continued to show almost no platoon splits with his OPS even as he faced upper-level pitching. Fernandez appeared only in right field (or as a DH), where he had four errors and 11 outfield assists in 101 games.

Fernandez finished 2023 with a month in the Puerto Rico Winter League, and though he scuffled there (hitting .225/.271/.270 in 96 PA), he got some valuable reps against much older pitching (he was 6.2 years younger than league average).

This year, Fernandez headed back to Hartford, where he was still 2.6 years younger than league average. Though Fernandez hasn’t hit for as much power as he did in 2023 (10 HR so far vs. 25 last year), he significantly cut his Double-A strikeout rate from 33% of PA to 19%. In 346 plate appearances with Hartford, Fernandez hit .283/.339/.440 with the ten long balls among his 34 extra-base-hits, which equates to a 118 wRC+ against upper minors pitching.

The Rockies promoted Fernandez to Triple-A Albuquerque earlier this month — where, true to last year’s pattern, he has struggled to acclimate to the pitching. In 73 PA so far with Albuquerque, Fernandez is scuffling to a .246/.288/.333 line, which in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League is only worth 53 wRC+. Again, the offense hasn’t been remarkable, but the fact he’s putting up that line as a 21-year-old very much is. In 94 games, all in right field, Fernandez has committed five errors with four outfield assists.

Here’s some video of Fernandez’s 2023 highlights. I’m particularly fond of the throw at the five minute mark:

What do the scouts say?

MLB.com ranks Fernandez fifth in the system and 95th in MLB as a 55 FV player, highlighted by plus power and throwing grades:

There are still plenty of reasons to be bullish about Fernandez, starting with his easily plus raw power from the left side of the plate. Even with his struggles in Double-A, the Futures Gamer hit 25 homers in 2023, and he has the ability to drive the ball to all fields with ease. The jump in his strikeout rate to nearly 33 percent with Hartford is a cause for concern, as his miss and chase rates — especially against breaking stuff — skyrocketed. He’s always going to be a very aggressive hitter, but there’s confidence the 21-year-old will make adjustments because he did just that when initially fed a steady diet of soft stuff during his full-season debut in 2022.

A below-average runner, Fernandez has a plus arm that fits the right field profile well, though he’ll be an average defender at best. His run-production potential fits that profile, too, if he can refine his approach again and make better swing decisions while recognizing spin. If all goes his way, he has the chance to be a true middle-of-the-order threat in Colorado.

Keith Law of the Athletic ranked Fernandez 82nd overall in MLB in February, 3rd in the system:

[Fernandez] makes very hard contact and projects to 30-homer power in a neutral environment, while he has the easy plus arm to handle right field, although his range will probably be 45ish in either corner. It comes down to discipline, as he chases too many pitches out of the zone, and Double-A arms were able to exploit this with breaking stuff where A-ball guys weren’t. He’s a good enough bad-ball hitter to get away with expanding the zone a little, just not to the extent that he did after his promotion. There’s too much power and strength here to ignore, and the environments he’ll face in Triple A and the majors will help him even if he never gets past 45 plate discipline, with .300+ averages and 30 homers quite possible with Coors Field as his home park.

Kiley McDaniel of ESPN.com slotted Fernandez 3rd in the system pre-season in February as a 45+ FV player (126th overall):

I’ll always be slower to get on board with Fernandez’s type of player than other evaluators. He’s a 6-foot-2 lefty hitter with huge raw power — something like 30-35 home runs annually if things click — and he belted 25 last season. What worries me is his swing rate (57%, about 10% worse than average) and chase rate (rate of swinging at pitches outside the zone: 38%, about 12% worse than average) are in the danger zone of tanking his average, on-base percentage and slugging against big league caliber pitching. On top of that, he is a below-average runner with a fringy arm and below-average defensive ability in a corner outfield spot. He does have some innate bat-to-ball ability, and he’s still young enough to get those swing and chase rates to around average, along with lifting the ball more to actualize his upside. But that’s a lot of ifs for me.

Fangraphs graded Fernandez as a 45+ FV prospect in April, third in the system with a 65 future game power grade to go along with a 70 raw power and 60 arm grade (emphasis mine):

As a prospect, Fernandez is the hot person you know it’s a bad idea to date. He has a sexy and explosive swing that produces absurd pull power for a college-aged hitter, and the broad-shouldered Fernandez might yet have more room for muscle on his frame. He is also among the more aggressive, free-swinging hitters in the minors, and his lack of plate discipline, as well as a top-of-the-zone hole in his swing, threaten to either limit (as with Marlins outfielder Jesús Sánchez) or undo (as has been the case so far with White Sox outfielder Oscar Colás) his whole profile. Fernandez’s 18.5% swinging strike rate across last season was impossibly close to his overall strikeout rate (17.9%) while he was raking at High-A Spokane, and the latter was clearly not sustainable given the former. My fear here is that Fernandez doesn’t even have to be tricked in order to be beaten — you can also beat him executing fastballs up and away from him in the zone because his swing is so geared for low-ball contact that he can’t get on top of them. This is where a gap between someone like Heston Kjerstad (who also chases a lot, but is a power threat all over the zone) and Yanquiel comes from in terms of evaluation. I think there has to be adjustment here in order for Fernandez to succeed, but he’s young enough that there feasibly could be. His best swings are, I’m not kidding, Griffey-like in their explosion and beautiful finish. The power-hitting potential here is so strong that I think Fernandez will find a way to produce like a corner platoon guy despite his flaws, and if he can improve on those as he gets deep into his 20s, he’ll have a monstrous peak. This is a pretty volatile player who the Rockies should be patient with, as he’s likely to have some pretty severe early-career struggles against big league arms.

When’s he going to get to the Rockies and how good will he be once he’s there?

A player like Fernandez with 40+ home run potential at Coors Field is clearly worth being patient with, and he’s shown the ability to adjust to pitching through the Double-A level. The next task is to do the same at Triple-A, then eventually the big leagues (likely sometime mid-season next year).

He’s clearly a bat-first prospect both plus power and decent bat-to-ball ability (with some glaring plate discipline issues). He has a cannon for an arm but he’ll need to be able to show he can stick in right field as he moves up the ladder to maintain his limited defensive utility. Fernandez’s impact offensive profile stands out even in a deeper Rockies system and is why he earned a 40-man roster spot this past off-season. I ranked him fourth on my list as a 50 FV player.

★ ★ ★

4. Zac Veen (911 points, 35 ballots) — Preseason Ranking: 3 — High Ballot 1 (1), Mode Ballot 4

How did he enter the organization?

2020 1st Round, Spruce Creek (FL) High School

Why did he make the PuRPs list?

We want to believe in Veen. A star ceiling was promised when the 22-year-old lefty-swinging, righty-throwing corner outfielder was made the ninth-overall pick in the 2020 draft and signed for a slightly above-slot value $5 million — but there are some ifs before we get there. If Veen can stay healthy, if he can manage the swing-and-miss in his profile, if he can convert more of his raw power into game power… Then Veen could be a star at the big league level. After three years and a number of injuries that slowed his ascent in Double-A, Veen is finally at the doorstep to MLB that is Triple-A Albuquerque.

In 2023, Veen was assigned to repeat at Double-A Hartford. Though he may have harbored ambitions of forcing his way onto the big-league team with a big 2023, his health (and upper-minors pitching) had other ideas. Veen had been playing through the second half of 2022 with a left wrist injury (specifically, an issue with his ECU tendon), which no doubt had a deleterious effect on his 2022 stat-line in Hartford (.496 OPS, 42 wRC+). It likely didn’t help Veen in a repeat campaign in Hartford in 2023, as he hit .209/.304/.308 with just two homers in 201 PA (71 wRC+). In late June, Veen had surgery to repair the wrist injury, which effectively ended his 2023 affiliated ball season.

In the article discussing the surgery linked above, Veen’s agent Jason Romano said the injury caused him to lose “all kind of ability to stay through the ball, because the top hand just gives out and gets weak.” The doctor who performed the surgery told Romano that Veen had “severe fraying in tendons, and there’s potential he could rupture it any day if he keeps swinging. It was bad, one of the worst she’s seen.” While that’s not great to hear, it sounds like the surgery may allow Veen to once again tap into the raw power that was a foundational piece of him as a player. I could write all about Veen’s 2023 splits and how he struggled, but frankly I think the wrist injury really colors every hitting number.

Veen did have an abbreviated but encouraging stint in the Puerto Rican Winter League this past December after his surgery and rehab, in which he went 9-for-21 with four doubles and three steals. This year, Veen was once again back in Hartford, where he is still 1.6 years younger than league average. He quickly showed that the time off had been productive, as he produced a .326/.418/.568 line in 110 April/May plate appearances with five homers and nine steals. However, back issues shelved him for a few weeks and it wasn’t until early July that Veen was back at Hartford (he had an eight game rehab stint in between).

After his return, Veen scuffled to a .143/.276/.184 July in 58 PA split between High-A Spokane and Hartford, then he went down with a thumb injury that took him out of action another month. The Rockies decided to try Veen at Triple-A Albuquerque once he convalesced this past weekend, and so far it’s gone well — in his first two games, Veen went 2-for-6 with a homer, a walk, and three strikeouts:

In total this year, Veen has been limited by injuries to just 186 plate appearances across 46 games, but the overall .280/.380/.465 line with six homers among his 15 XBH and 15 steals in 18 attempts are encouraging. After two subpar seasons at Double-A, Veen’s 132 wRC+ this year at the level is exciting, though he did strike out in over 26% of his PA, up five points from last year. Encouragingly, Veen hit line drives in Hartford this year at about double the rate he did last year (32% vs. 16%), with most of those extra line drives coming from his groundball rate.

Here are some of Veen’s 2023 highlights, and below is some video of him by Fangraphs including tape from 2022 and spring training 2023:

What do the scouts say?

Veen is ranked 91st overall by MLB.com as a 55 Future Value player, fourth in the system:

When he’s healthy, Veen has shown the ability to do a lot of things well on the baseball field. Still only 22 years old for all of the 2024 season, there is plenty of projection in the 6-foot-3 left-handed-hitting outfielder. It’s hard to know exactly what his power potential is because his attempts to play through his wrist injury changed his mechanics. The Rockies like where his swing is now, staying more on a plane; but when his top hand wrist was hurt, he couldn’t finish balls and had gotten way too steep with his swing.

While Veen has above-average pure run speed, his instincts and aggressiveness on the bases make him a plus basestealing threat. He’s improved defensively and should see time in both outfield corners, with the organization excited to see what a truly healthy Veen can do at the upper levels.

In that evaluation, Veen receives plus grades on his speed and arm with a 55 on fielding and a 50 on his hit tool.

Fangraphs ranked Veen in April as a 40+ FV player (despite a 70 run grade and 60 future grades on fielding and raw power), which is 17th in the system:

Veen rotates with rare ferocity, and his broad-shouldered, 6-foot-3 frame leaves room for immense strength as he matures, projection he began to actualize in 2022. As explosive as most of his body is, Veen’s hands are not, and he tends to be long into the hitting zone. The length of Veen’s swing makes it very difficult for him to catch up to fastballs and limits the locations in the zone where he can do damage. Pitchers work him in on the hands, then get him to swing over the top of back-foot breaking balls once Veen starts to cheat on heaters in that spot. Against the fastballs at 94 mph or above that Synergy Sports has tracked since 2022, Veen has hit .146 with a .171 SLG. Some of this is likely due to the wrist injury, but isolating his performance to 2022 still has him hitting below the Mendoza Line. Veen is habitually late on heaters and really only able to impact ones down-and-away from him when he can get his arms fully extended.

So much else of what Veen brings to the table is exciting and potentially impactful. He is going to wreak havoc on the bases. He plays with an elite motor, moves from base to base with just a few gigantic strides, and commits to the next base with abandon in borderline situations. He added meaningful muscle and strength during the 2022-23 offseason, and has made several adjustments to his swing across the last few seasons, some seemingly because he was trying to deal with injury and others to try to solve his contact and lift issues. He has the straight line speed to play center field but defenders with better feel have pushed him to a corner in the minors. He is most similar to D-backs outfielder Jake McCarthy and Braves outfielder Forrest Wall, with the skillset of a premium fifth outfielder who most often impacts the game with speed, except Veen has more raw juice and in-game power potential in the event that he makes a successful swing adjustment.

Veen was slotted seventh in the system by Keith Law of the Athletic in February:

Veen showed promise in high school as a power-hitting right fielder, but he hasn’t filled out as expected and lately he’s been trying to force power by swinging more uphill, resulting in a lot of medium- to low-quality contact. He can still steal a base — I’ve heard it described that he wants to steal all of them — even though he’s a 55 runner, and he’s an above-average defender in right. Maybe it’s just a swing thing; if he flattens out a bit, he can just put the ball in play and try to create value with a high average, and perhaps if he flattens out the swing he won’t have as much trouble connecting on breaking balls. He’s just not going to be the star most folks forecasted he’d be when he was a top-10 pick in the 2020 draft.

Kiley McDaniel of ESPN.com ranked Veen 11th in the system as a 40+ FV player in February:

Veen has been a bit of an enigma since going as the No. 9 pick in the 2020 draft. The belief at that point was that he’d add a lot of strength to his 6-foot-3 frame, move to a corner-outfield spot, or maybe even first base, and be a middle-of-the-order force. That hasn’t happened so now he’s an outfielder tweener of sorts who is still a plus runner but without much in-game power. He’s also not hitting for average. He played through a hand injury before it ended his 2023 season, so I’m ready to revise my evaluation, but I’ve seemingly been wrong about how Veen’s path would play out since he was drafted.

When’s he going to get to the Rockies and how good will he be once he’s there?

Though I’m worried that Veen has again been hindered by injuries this year, I can more clearly see a big-league regular with an intriguing collection of tools in his results in limited playing time this year. Maybe Veen won’t be able to adjust to some holes in his swing that big league pitching will exploit, but he’s shown the ability to adjust before.

Veen is an elite base-runner, a good outfielder, he has raw power to tap into, and he’s making better swing decisions. That makes him a good bet in my book and I ranked him fifth as a 50 FV player. Veen is almost certain to receive a 40-man roster spot at the end of the season (if he doesn’t get a big league cameo next month) and he’ll be another entrant into the crazy outfield playing time derby of 2025 along with fellow PuRPs Yanquiel Fernandez and Jordan Beck, not to mention the incumbents.

★ ★ ★

3. Adael Amador (929 points, 35 ballots) — Preseason Ranking: 1 — High Ballot 1 (2), Mode Ballot 3

How did he enter the organization?

2019 International Free Agent, Dominican Republic

Why did he make the PuRPs list?

After a torrid two year span that lifted the switch-hitting 21-year-old second baseman from top 10 in the system to top 30 in MLB, expectations were high for Amador entering 2024. The 6’0”, 200-pound middle infielder was the highest-rated international signing for the Rockies in 2019, representing the 15th-highest ranked player in that class by MLB Pipeline. He signed with Colorado for $1.5 million — giving him the equivalent of an early-second-round draft bonus — but only got into professional games in late June 2021 for the Arizona Complex Level team due largely to the lost 2020 season.

Amador jumped onto national top 100 lists with a strong 2022 after he dominated as a teenager in Low-A Fresno, then built on that platform in 2023. Amador was advanced to High-A Spokane to begin 2023, where he sparkled, growing his OPS each month from .753 in April to .926 in May and .982 in June. Amador’s excellent approach at the plate was evident, as he walked (31 times, 12 % of PA) more than he struck out (26, 10%), though he hit much better from the left side of the plate (.999 OPS) than the right (.693 OPS) with Spokane. Amador was hitting .302/.392/.514 with nine homers among his 26 extra-base hits and 12 steals in 259 PA (143 wRC+) before injuring his hamate bone in late July.

After surgery and a seven week absence, Amador was jumped up to Double-A Hartford, where he was 3.7 years younger than league average. Amador appeared in 10 games for Hartford and struggled, hitting just .143/.244/.229 with a homer and three steals in 41 PA (35 wRC+) — perhaps the hamate injury was still lingering. Of course, the real feat was earning a Double-A spot as a 20-year-old. Amador continued to play into the winter in the Puerto Rican Winter League, hitting a typically patient .243/.372/.300 in 86 PA. Amador played mostly at shortstop for Spokane but was almost exclusively at second base in Hartford, committing nine errors in 69 games between the two positions.

This year, Amador made his way back to Hartford among top-30 prospect status and had a rough go of it immediately. He hit for a frigid, walk heavy .560 OPS in April, then improved to a tepid .606 OPS in May. Through June 7th, Amador was hitting just .194/.337/.329 in 209 plate appearances, but he did homer six times in his last nine games. That was possibly a factor in the Rockies promoting Amador all the way to the big league club less than two months after his 21st birthday — and a Brendan Rodgers injury of course.

With the Rockies, Amador started 10 of 11 games, batting 9th in the order in all but one game and playing second base. He got a hit in his Major League debut, but ultimately he didn’t look quite ready yet with a .171/.194/.200 line in 36 PA (-5 wRC+) before going on the injured list with an oblique injury. After he recovered, he was sent back to Hartford in early July and kept up his 2023 trend of improving his OPS each month (.708 in July, .764 in August). Despite the poor start he had in Hartford this year, Amador has actually put up a .219/.339/.364 line in 381 PA with 12 homers and 31 steals in 39 attempts at the level this year.

That translates to an above average 106 wRC+ as a 21-year-old in Double-A who is walking in 14% of his PA while striking out in 20%. In fact, Amador has been younger than the pitcher he faced this year in every single plate appearance — and in his professional career, Amador has been the younger player in those matchups in over 98% of his plate appearances. He’s been a bit better hitting right-handed (.707 OPS vs. .663 OPS hitting lefty), though most of his PA (and his HR) are from the left side. Amador has moved almost entirely to second base this year, where he has committed 15 errors in 90 games.

Here are some of Amador’s 2023 highlights, and here’s some video on Amador hitting from both sides of the plate at 2021 fall instructs courtesy of Fangraphs:

What do the scouts say?

Amador has taken a tumble down (and in some cases out) of the top 100 lists he was on in the pre-season cycle.

He dropped from 17th overall in the pre-season Fangraphs top 100 as a 55 FV player, highlighted by a 70 future hit grade, down all the way to a 45 FV grade and 8th in the system. Here’s what Fangraphs had to say in April about Amador:

Amador has special hand-eye coordination and bat-to-ball skills, as well as a tremendous idea of the strike zone, and those attributes, combined with the mechanical simplicity of his swing, give him one of the better hit tool projections in the minors. Amador is one of those compact switch-hitters who is so short to the ball that he gets an extra beat to diagnose pitches before he has to commit to swinging, and he takes advantage of this. He’s walked more than he’s struck out every year of his pro career, and ran a microscopic 5% swinging strike rate in 2023. Over the past two years, Amador has thickened like a roux and become stronger, but he still doesn’t have great power. At least some of that lack of thump in 2023 was likely due to the after effects of a mid-season hamate break, but Amador is still much better at spoiling pitches than he is at actually squaring them up. He can move the barrel all over the place but his swing isn’t often well-connected in a way that allows him to punish the baseball. Now that he’s close to physically maxed out, any leap he takes in the power department will need to come from improving his feel for loft, and it’s much more likely that Amador will hit dozens of doubles at maturity than lots of homers.

While he’s on the 40-man roster, Amador is still probably a couple of years away from finding his big league footing. He lacks some field awareness (he bat-flipped a walk down six or seven runs last week against Bowie) and Double-A looks fast for him in the early going of 2024, but he only turned 21 at the very start of the season and has just one totally healthy year of reps at a full-season affiliate under his belt. The bat control savants who play second base need to hit for power to truly be a star; the Joe Panik/Adam Frazier types who Amador perhaps comps to tend to pan out like 50-grade players over a long period of time. I considered altering Amador’s grade and sliding him within the Top 100, but because of the context here (Amador’s age and relative inexperience, he’s coming off injury, it’s freezing cold in Hartford in early April), I want to let things air out and give him time to adjust to the Eastern League before doing so.

MLB.com ranks Amador 96th overall (down from 28th pre-season) as a 55 FV player (including 55 hit and fielding grades), sixth in the system:

Right from the outset, Amador has shown off an advanced approach at the plate that has belied his years. The switch-hitting infielder has walked more than he’s struck out in his career heading into the 2024 season, drawing a free pass in 14.2 percent of his plate appearances while striking out just 12.3 percent of the time. He barrels up the ball consistently from both sides, and while he’s definitely a hit-over-power type, the strength he’s added has allowed him to drive the ball for extra bases more consistently.

While he continued to play shortstop more than anywhere else in 2023 and has solid hands and footwork to go along with a decent arm, he did start to get additional reps at second base, with some thinking that might be his best spot as he continues to fill out his six-foot frame. He’ll play all of 2024 at age 21, with a chance to really show off just how much offensive ceiling he has.

Kiley McDaniel of ESPN.com ranked Amador 33rd overall as a 55 FV player in February, first in the system:

Type: Plus hitter with a great approach who can stick at shortstop, but without much over-the-fence power right now.

You might be thinking that given the above “Type” and Amador’s team that he could juice his power a few notches in reality. I don’t consider that type of thing because he’d be ranked in the same spot if he were to be traded tomorrow, but there is some raw power in Amador’s bat. He just has a lower launch angle and it’s more gap-to-gap doubles than homers. He’s also not that physically projectable and he almost posted a .400 OBP in High-A as a 20-year-old, so I wouldn’t be inclined to mess with what’s working. That said, the components appear to be here (hitting the ball hard in games, good in-zone contact rate) that there could be a swing adjustment. Amador is a solid bet to stick at shortstop long term as a solid average defender with average speed, so you’re getting a big leaguer but it’s still up for debate in the industry what kind of impact he’ll have.

Keith Law of the Athletic was an outlier, ranking Amador just outside his top 100 in February, fourth in the system:

[Amador has] real plate discipline and has walked more than he’s struck out in each of the past two years while being young for everywhere he’s played. He’s mostly played shortstop but there’s a near-unanimous consensus elsewhere that he’s going to move to second base, as his defensive metrics last year at short were below average and his body is already getting thicker to the point that shortstop looks really unlikely.

There’s a little pop in there, maybe 10-12 homers a year, and his best path to becoming a solid regular or more is to find a way to boost that to make up for a move to second base. He’s a 45 runner as well, so if second base didn’t work out he’d have to move to an outfield corner, where the bat probably won’t profile. I was surprised at how little support I got from all industry sources for him — I assumed he would be on the top-100 list going into the process, but the more I talked to scouts and execs, the clearer it became that the industry doesn’t view him as highly as I might have on my own.

When’s he going to get to the Rockies and how good will he be once he’s there?

The last bit is an interesting peek behind the curtain at Amador’s perceived value among other clubs, but he’s clearly still a player to watch. The combined package Amador presents of strong plate discipline and offensive potential shown by a switch-hitting up-the-middle defender as one of the younger players in Double-A (and with a MLB cup of coffee) is still outstanding, even if his 2024 hasn’t been exactly what Rockies fans hoped for.

Amador has already shown more power than was forecasted and he might have the chops to fill in at shortstop if the Rockies need him there. Amador’s floor is strong and his ceiling will rise as his power develops. The production, tools, and defensive utility were enough for me to rate Amador with a 50 FV grade and rank him third on my ballot, though I am more bearish now on the ultimate ceiling than I was pre-season.

★ ★ ★

Come back tomorrow to see how the top two rank!