Put it all together, and that's two of Oakland's recent July trade acquisitions in the top five of the CPL, with pitcher Casey Meisner holding an outside shot at the top 10 (he was the runner-up in the last nomination process). Those rationales don't guarantee future success, but they're important context for judging the performance of young prospects. If you average his two stints in High-A (weighted for playing time), he posted a 122 wRC+, the same mark put up by Barreto (who is a year younger but didn't face the aforementioned adversity Nottingham did). He also switched teams twice, once for a promotion and once for the trade to Oakland that means three sets of coaches, three sets of teammates, three home parks, three home cities, etc. However, it's important to consider that he put in a workload (119 games) that more than doubled his previous career-high, which is a big deal for a player who spends half the game in a crouch and a bunch of heavy protective gear. The biggest red flag in Nottingham's season was that he tailed off toward the end. Nottingham's performance was fantastic in its own right, but it looks even more promising when you consider how young he is. 140 plate appearances) - he should reach Double-A at some point this season as a 21-year-old, the age at which Olson and Renato Nunez played last season, and the age of most college juniors. Furthermore, he forced his way up to High-A ball as a 20-year-old, which made him the eighth-youngest hitter in the 10-team California League (min. He began to show his offensive potential with his breakout hitting performance last season, and he seems to have the tools to stick at catcher. No matter who won this vote, the point is that both players have exciting futures despite legitimate drawbacks, and they're each excellent prospects.įor his part, Nottingham's strengths are indeed quite appealing. high-floor," but rather different opinions built on the varying priorities of each evaluator and the case-by-case nature of each comparison. As you can see, there is no universal right answer to the debate regarding "high-ceiling vs. The first time we picked the more advanced prospect (Manaea), and the second time we preferred the bigger potential (Nottingham). This is the second photo finish we've had already in this CPL, and both times the two candidates have been difficult to compare side-by-side. The current list, including their winning margins (the amount by which they won their elections, defined as a percentage of the total vote): In the end, Nottingham won by five votes out of the 636 cast, for a winning margin of 0.8% - you could just as easily say they tied for the No. For three days, catcher Jacob Nottingham and shortstop Chad Pinder were effectively in a dead heat, with each spending an entire day in the lead and rarely a double-digit gap between them. The last vote must have been one of the closest in the history of our Community Prospect List.