Baseball America posted their list of the top 20 prospects in the Dominican Summer League on Thursday morning. Third baseman Alexander Mojica made their top 20, while outfielder Sergio Campana got a mention as a player to watch.
Mojica ranked fifth in the league by BA after a strong rookie season in the league as one of the youngest DSL players. He turned 17 years old on August 2nd, while the age cutoff for the league was players born before September 1, 2002. He hit .351/.468/.580 in 55 games, leading the league in OPS. He showed excellent patience, power and a strong arm at third base. He also runs well for his size. Mojica has a thick lower half and conditioning has been a bit of an issue. He’s listed at 6’1″, 195, but that weight has to be on the light side because he’s clearly heavier.
In our top ten prospects list for the DSL Pirates, we rated Mojica as the third best player between the two Pirates affiliates in the league. Sergio Campana ranked second, while Juan Jerez is the top prospect. I had a lot of help from two people who saw the players often and they agreed that Jerez was the best of the group, despite better numbers from Mojica.
I should point out that the DSL Pirates2 (Mojica’s team) dominated their division, but it needs to be noted that they were in the worst division in the league. In the DSL, they only play teams in their own division. Out of 45 teams in the league, their five division rivals ranked 30th, 33rd, 42nd, 43rd, 44th in ERA and 26th, 34th, 40th, 43rd, 44th in WHIP. Basically, everyone on the DSL Pirates2 was facing one of the worst pitching staffs in the league every game during the season.
The DSL Pirates1 faced arguably the best pitching staff in the league (Rangers1) ten times, and another top ten staff (Rays2) ten times. Three other the other teams in their division were ranked in the 20-25 area, while two were near the bottom. So the Pirates1 were facing better pitching staffs than anything that the Pirates2 saw in 52 of their 72 games.
The point of that is to show how it’s not reliable to compare stats even up between the players from two different clubs, just because they were in the same league. That’s besides the fact that tools are more important than results at this level.
Another way to look at is that the reports BA got makes them believe that Mojica is a top five prospect in the league, then it’s great to see reports from people who saw the players (and really liked Mojica) rank two Pirates players ahead of him. In fact, one of them had Mojica ranked fourth, behind infielder Deivis Nadal as well.
