Jesús, Etc. | Baseball Prospectus

Last week the Mets traded David Peterson to the Cubs for Cole Mathis. I would call this deal “marginally more interesting” than your median backend starter rental, as the Mets likely leveraged the Cubs’ lack of warm bodies to put on a mound into a better return than you’d expect for 15-ish starts of David Peterson. Mathis is not without his flaws: He can’t stay healthy, plus he’s a right-handed-hitting likely first baseman. But he’s a pretty good prospect, a recent second-round pick with some real pop and solid swing decisions.

More importantly, this trade—along with the calendar turning over to July—kicked off deadline season. Over the next four weeks, a lot of players will get dealt, and I’ll write a lot of transaction analyses. But barring a real blockbuster or a real bidding war for Tarik Skubal, it’s entirely possible that not a single prospect off our upcoming Midseason 50 list will get traded. And there may not be a Leo de Vries-for-Mason Miller out there.

I was discussing Luke Weaver’s trade value with Jarrett Seidler on a recent episode of For All You Kids Out There. I expect the reliever market will be about as robust as last year—Miller aside—given how many teams will be at least soft buyers and how few true sellers. Weaver is an ideal pick-up, given his track record and extra year of control. He can close, but doesn’t need to. From the Mets side of things, you’d be selling slightly high if he can keep that ERA right around 2.00 for the balance of the month, and you don’t really have another piece that will bring back more, given Freddy Peralta’s struggles. Jarrett suggested the Mets might be able to get back the 73rd-best prospect in baseball (not literally, but you get the idea). That roughly squares with my thoughts, and that feels like a very nice return for any non-closer with an additional year on his contract. That’s also more in the range of the quality of prospect teams are willing to deal at the deadline without having their ops department break out into a cold sweat.

It also means you get (roughly) Jesús Sánchez. Sánchez never ranked exactly 73rd for us, bouncing between 31st and 80th during his three years on the Top 101. And while he was dealt at the deadline, it was one of those Rays/Marlins trades that don’t neatly fit in a buy or sell bucket. Sánchez is on his seventh season in the majors now, peaking at between 1.5-2 WAR no matter your preferred value metric. You would have hoped he would have made a little more contact or hit for a little more power. You definitely would have hoped he could at least hold his own against lefties. He’s a useful long-side of a platoon as a DH or corner outfielder. That’s not nothing, and the dirty little secret is, it’s not that bad an outcome for the 73rd best prospect in baseball.

You might feel disappointed, though, if your team made a significant sell trade at the deadline and ended up with Jesús Sánchez. Now, you are going to actually end up with someone who has more upside than major-leaguer Jesús Sánchez, but that also describes prospect Jesús Sánchez. From the 2020 Annual (the year he ranked 80th): “The raw power is plus-plus, but he has yet to top 15 home runs in a season. His free-swinging ways haven’t been tamed either, and the hit tool looks more average despite excellent hand-eye and bat control.” Sánchez has turned into more like a 40 hit/55 power bat with platoon issues, than the 50/70 one we projected six years ago.

I don’t think that’s a particularly bad blurb, though. Sánchez does still display plus-plus raw power, he’s generally run well above-average and 90th-percentile exit velocities in the majors. He does chase a little too much, although not to a disastrous level. If I were to nitpick, it’s the barrel control that’s let him down, as he’s never really hit the ball in the air enough given how often he strikes out and infrequently he walks. If you were wondering (and I was), the 73rd-best prospect that year was Vidal Brujan, who has been distinctly worse as a major leaguer.

This is not to say that the Mets shouldn’t trade Luke Weaver for the 73rd-best prospect in baseball, whoever that may be. They may work out better than Jesús Sánchez. If you go back one year, you’ll find Sandy Alcantara at that spot. But it’s very unlikely you will hit the prospect outcome jackpot there. One of the hardest things to explain, to someone that doesn’t do this year round, is that while we rank 101 prospects, we don’t actually think most of them will be good major leaguers.  Sánchez was the 54th best position-player prospect on that list. You wouldn’t expect him to be the 54th best hitter in baseball, and even if he was that player in 2015 was good for 2.9 WARP and a 117 DRC+. It’s 3.2 WAR if you go to FanGraphs. There just aren’t that many plus regulars to go around. Major League Baseball is very hard.

I’m sure this is part of the reason that FanGraphs has (very) recently updated their prospect valuations. I prefer to be a bit more qualitative in my approach, but we are broadly talking about the same idea. There is exponential value in the elite prospect talent. If you look at the 2026 season, among the top 10 hitters in WARP you have a former number one prospect, three former number twos, and no one outside the top 50. You also have Shohei Ohtani, who we didn’t rank, but would have been at worst second himself.

We are of course one list from one website. It’s very possible, even likely, that the Rays were lower on Jesús Sánchez than we were when they shipped him down I-75 along with Ryne Stanek for Nick Anderson (I told you it was one of those Rays trades), And I’m not suggesting you should stop reading out national list once you hit number 50; merely that along with the proliferation of prospect information has come perhaps a bit overexcitement for the 73rd-best prospect in baseball.