2024 MLB Draft

I have been in fantasy leagues in one form or another since 1977. I've been looking for better reporting on prospects for almost as long. A leaguemate of mine found and subcribed to Baseball America back shorlty after it was founded as "All-America Baseball News" in 1981. We all started subcribing to it, and over the years, we've looked for and found many sources besides The Sporting News, and the annual spring training baseball fantasy magazines that used to be a big deal when they came out in February or March, which also had prospect lists. I've subscribed to Baseball Prospectus on line, Baseball HQ, bought several one-time books that claimed to have better method of evaluating prospects. Out of all of these, I find that Longerhagen and whoever's working with him at any given time at Fangraphs (and it has changed multiple times in his tenure there) to be the best of them. Not by a ton, but by enough of a margin that he's the first source I go to when I'm trying to find information about a prospect.

I've found 5-10 very good prospects reading his work that other prospect touts on other sites either didn't find, found too late, or underplayed too much. The most recent one was Jackson Merrill, who I drafted before last season, when I had finished 4th in my 13-team league and had the 10th pick of the first round. I had a list of 5 guys that I liked a lot, based primarily on his reports. Merrill was the last of the 5. There Eury Perez, Druw Jones, Termarr Johnson, Masyn Winn and Merrill. The other four were picked in the top 9, so I took Merrill at #10. Now, Merrill was top #25 everywhere, but Longerhagen had him at #10, describing him as a Michael Brantley who could play everyday shortstop. On Longerhagen's list, he was 8th among NL prospects (my league is NL-only) and among undrafted prospects, he was ranked the 3rd highest, behind only Eury Perez and Druw Jones who were picked #1 and #4 in the round. Prospects further down the list were taken ahead of Merrill, primarily because they were perceived as being closer to the majors.

I found Ronald Acuna, Jr and drafted him in the All-Star Meeting A-ball and lower draft (One round in which teams can draft any player who wasn't just drafted in that season's Rule 4 Draft and who hadn't yet reached AA or AAA) because of his writeups mid-season. Most of the league teams had no idea who Acuna was. My pick came near the end of the round, and I had to drop a prospect from my 4-player farm system and pay an additional fee to draft him, but I did it with enthusiasm because of the Longerhagen writeups. I drafted Michael Buscn in the 2nd round in 2022 of the main April draft because Longerhagen wrote that his bat would play in the majors and that a team would find a spot for him, despite his difficulty finding a defensive spot for him, as other prospect sources noted, moving him well down their lists. There have been others.

Longerhagen isn't always right. He recommended highly Zac Veen, then had to come off him when he had difficulty in AA last year, describing in detail the flaw in his swing. Now in his 2nd year in AA, Veen is doing well, but Longerhagen still doesn't have him in his top 100 because of problems  that haven't been solved. He had Veen at #15 in his Rockies' top 47 prospects that he put out in mid-April, and still has him there in the current Rockies list. Based on that downgraded scouting report, I refused to include Merrill in a dump trade along with 3 expiring contracts at the dealine year where the primary pickup was Jackson Chourio; I included Veen instead. Now I have both Jacksons playing for my team.

As I say, he isn't vastly superior, and he's made some mis-calls, but I find him to be better than Baseball America, Prospectus, Pipeline or HQ by enough of a margin that he's my first check on any prospect I haven't heard of before.