Jud Fabian Thoughts/Report

Given that Indiana baseball is pretty weak this year draft wise, I've been starting my overall top prospect list a lot earlier than I normally would. This list is based off of video clips and stats, so certainly not a great list but I've done reasonably well over the past couple of years and I think I'm pretty good at synthesizing information that is relevant. Obviously team lists are far better, but it still is a good exercise in video scouting and contextualizing with (surface level) stats.

I'm going to talk more about him in the official list, but the player who has interested me most this cycle and almost feels underrated at this point is Jud Fabian, CF from Florida. As of right now, Fabian is a top 10 pick and I don't really see him getting bumped out.

This is an excerpt of my writeup on Fabian:  

"I think for model driven people Jud Fabian is going to be really difficult to value properly. From a demographic standpoint, his plusses are his age, his excellent senior year BB/K ratio, and his raw power, but it’s weighed down by a horrific junior season (from a plate discipline standpoint) that forced him back to Florida his senior year. This is a really difficult situation to model, as there are very few players like him.

Zoning out and looking at what he does well gives a pretty clear picture as to why he’s a top 10 pick. Fabian has plus power, above average speed, will be able to stick in center field (giving him a lower offensive bar, not that I think he needs it), and a plus arm. These sorts of tool freaks tend to have poor plate discipline, but that really isn’t the case here. Most of his swing issues from junior season come from a very steep bat path that is conducive to having a lot of strikeouts. If this was a pitch recognition issue, it would be far more concerning, and probably would be an early second round guy. From the video I’ve seen, it doesn’t seem to be the case. I think it’s hard to pass up an opportunity to draft someone with above average to plus tools across the board aside from the hit tool, where the main issue is a mechanical one (ie fixable) rather than a pitch recognition one (less confident this is fixable).

Now it’s a pretty big concern that the mechanics are heavily optimized for one part of the plate and not the others, since teams are more creative now with their pitches and are more than willing to exploit any weakness in the strike zone than just throwing fastballs down and away. This optimism comes from the thought that in general, teams are better at making swing adjustments than in previous years. 

One final note is that if we say that SEC competition is roughly A ball, which I think is fair, then in the context of Jud repeating A ball as a 21 year old, we would be pretty happy with his performance and discount the prior season pretty heavily, at least in my opinion."

It's very hard to make the major leagues, and you need to have outlier tools. Fabian has a couple and plays a premium position, which makes me overlook his flaws. It's not a complete package, which is risky, but the payoff could be extreme, and for teams that know how to integrate PD and scouting and can line up their PD's strengths with Fabian's weaknesses, this is a future All-Star. Looking at where he could go in the top 10, I could see the Cubs on him at 7 based on their Christian Franklin selection last year, and the Royals at 9 could be another great fit given their recent track record of player development and how well it has been the last few years.