Tomorrow we will release the Data Driven Top 1000 Prospects List to the public exclusively on our Patreon. For the first time we will be including a version for pitchers this year. The Data Driven Top 1000 puts a prospect's skills on a 20-80 scale, and uses a weighted average of their skills to grade them as an overall prospect on the 20-80 scale. For hitters, the formula includes age, level, position, in-zone contact rate, chase rate, zone swing rate, 90th percentile EV, wOBA, and xwOBA. This is meant to be a supplementary tool when scouting to highlight undervalued players, not a scouting substitute.
When we release our Data Driven Top 1000 tomorrow, you’ll be surprised to find that there is a four-way tie at the top of the position players list. There are three players with east coast teams tied for the top spot at a 71.4 Overall. The fourth name there is more surprising, and he’s actually the #1 ranked prospect on the list when you round to the nearest hundredth instead of tenth. Meet Jackson Merrill, the top prospect in all of baseball.
Meteoric Rise
Jackson Merrill was a popup prospect in the 2021 draft who didn’t really get any attention as a potential first round pick until a little over a week before the draft. It came to a head when he hit a homer out of Camden Yards during a showcase game. That showed scouts he had a lot more power than he was previously anticipated. The hit tool was always supposed to be the carrying above-average skill, but he was thought of as a 3rd round type of player with below-average power until that moment. But one swing of the bat for Jackson Merrill might have earned him a million dollars and got the Padres to pull the trigger and select the future star with their first selection at #27 overall.
For a brief moment, it looked like the naysayers were right. Jackson Merrill wasn’t going to hit for any power. He had zero home runs in his 31-game pro debut at the Arizona Complex League. This wasn’t some fluke of happenstance, he had just a 26.7% Hard-Hit Rate, and actually outperformed his expected stats. Not only was Merrill not hitting for power, but his contact rates were only average. He did not look at all like the future star some thought he might be after that showcase game.
Things were different from the get-go in 2022. Merrill came to camp looking stronger and made some small tweaks to his swing to more effectively generate power with his backside, and to keep his strength when being pitched away. He started with a slightly more narrow flat-footed stance and seemed to have better balance in his swing as a result. His hips firing earlier as he collapsed the knee to force rotation caused him to stop letting his angular velocity control his bat path and improved the contact rates. Jackson Merrill was a new man and it showed in his .339/.395/.511 triple slash this season.
The Ability to Make Contact
Jackson Merrill had just a 79.8% in-zone contact rate in his pro debut, but you wouldn’t know that if you only looked at him now. This year Jackson Merrill made contact 90.4% of the time on pitches in the strike zone, and 84.9% overall. Both of those figures are the second best out of any player drafted in 2021 (Min 250 PA) behind only Caleb Durbin of the Braves. Both the contact rate and in-zone contact rate are in the 97th percentile of all players in the majors or minors. He has gone from average contact rates a year ago to some of the best contact skills in the sport.
Merrill isn’t just hitting one type of pitch either. He is hitting all of them. Merrill makes contact 90% of the time against fastball in the zone which is obviously exceptional. He shows almost no variance against top-end velocity as he still has an 89.2% in-zone contact rate against fastballs at the MLB average velocity or higher. He also has no trouble with flat fastballs as he makes contact 85.7% of the time in the zone when the VAA is flatter than -4.5° (92nd percentile). Similarly, he crushes steep VAA fastballs at an even higher level. He hits fastballs with plus horizontal movement and he hits them inside or out. There is no place where he won’t at least make contact with the fastball.
You could make a convincing argument that Jackson Merril is worse against fastballs than breaking balls. Against breakers, Merrill makes more contact in the zone with a 91.8% in-zone contact rate. He also has a higher wOBAcon. The plate discipline is slightly worse, but he is still crushing the pitch. He also has no trouble making contact with offspeed pitches as he runs a 93.5% in-zone contact rate against the softer stuff. Merrill just hits and that is all there is to it.
Jackson Merrill also makes good swing decisions which aren’t always common in players with the contact skills to hit tough pitches. Merrill chases just 22% of the time with a league-average in-zone swing rate. He is particularly exceptional at making the right decisions against the flat VAA heater. He swings 90.3% of the time at in-zone flat fastballs, and chases just 15.9% of the time. He struggles most in terms of swing decisions with the changeup which he chases 34.2% of the time, which is far from a crippling flaw.
Burgeoning Raw Power
As impressive as the contact gains were this year, the power ones might have been even more so. Jackson Merrill saw his hard-hit rate shoot up to 41.9% this year. That is in the 85th percentile of all players. Similarly, his 90th percentile EV shot up from 100.4 MPH all the way to 103.7. The former number was equal to Isiah Kiner-Falefa. This year? He was equal to Nolan Arenado.
His Max EV jumped all the way to 110.4 MPH which ranks in the 67th percentile of major leaguers. His power plays to all fields too. His Hard-Hit rate is still 30.8% going the other way and his average EV is actually 0.3 MPH higher to the opposite field instead of his pullside. He hits the ball at almost exactly even rates to all fields as well. He also his best wOBAcons when hitting the ball the other way with a .539 wOBAcon to the oppposite field. Amongst all players with 50+ BBE to the opposite field this year, Merrill ranks in the 97th percentile in wOBAcon to the opposite field. He isn’t forced to pull the ball to get to his power in games, and that only makes Merrill more dangerous.
This blend of contact and power skills do not come around often. There were only three players in all the majors and minors to have both a better in-zone contact rate, and a better 90th EV than Jackson Merrill. One of them is Vinnie Pasquantino. The other two are top ten players in the sport in José Ramírez, and Mookie Betts. This is a cherry-picked stat, obviously, with Ty France, Alex Verdugo, and Yandy Díaz all just barely missing the cutoff but the point remains. Any player who hits the ball hard this hard, and hits it this often will find a way to be a productive major leaguer.
A Fatal Flaw
There is just one thing stopping Jackson Merrill from being considered one of the best prospects in baseball. It happens to be a very major thing. 59.1% of Jackson Merrill’s batted balls this year were hit on the ground. That is the 13th highest rate of any player with at least 250 plate appearances in the majors or minors. Given that groundballs can’t be hit over the fence, it should go without saying that is a major reason why Merrill only hit six home runs in 55 games this year.
However, we’ve seen players succeed in the power department with very high groundball rates before- especially in the minors. Brett Baty still cranked home runs in Double-A last year. Christian Yelich won an MVP with astronomical groundball rates. So why do the groundballs stop Merill from hitting bombs?
Jackson Merrill’s ability to hit the ball hard is directly tied to his tendency to put the ball on the ground. On groundballs, Jackson Merrill has a 40.9% hard-hit rate. That is in the 95th percentile of all players. On flyballs, it is just a 38.5% hard-hit rate. That might sound like hardly any difference, but that 38.5% hard-hit rate is in just the 57th percentile of hard-hit rate on flyballs. Is the hard-hit distribution a fluke or is it an inherent skill issue?
Unfortunately, I think it is probably the latter. Jackson Merrill’s bat path is unconventional. His foot comes down and his hips immediately fire while the torso remains in place. When his left knee completes its rotation his elbow is down and his hands are in place but he keeps the bat from entering the zone. It’s only as the hips fully open up that he flicks his wrist and lets all the power be channeled into that one move as the bat finally enters the strike zone.
This is Merrill’s Max EV swing
Side view of the same mechanic
Merrill, as a result of how little time his bat spends over the plate and how he simply uncurls in one movement, has an attack angle that is pretty close to 0°. It's really hard to hit the ball in the air with such a flat attack angle. It is also very hard to hit a ball hard with so little ramp up unless you are consistently on plane with a pitch.
Impactful Contact against Breakers
We questioned why so much of Jackson Merrill’s hard contact comes on the ground, but the better question is why so much of it comes on the fastball. Merrill has a 55.7% Hard-Hit rate against fastball. Against breaking balls it is just 28.6%. Despite that, Merrill has a wOBAcon .520 against breaking balls compared to just .456 against fastballs. How is that possible?
It all boils right back down to the mechanics of Merrill’s swing. Jackson has a very flat attack angle but an inclined VBA. The attack angle leads to Merrill having an easier time hitting the ball hard when it is flat, and a harder time hitting it hard when it’s steep because this is how Merril generates his EVs- by staying on plane with the pitch for as long as possible. The problem is he also has a harder time hitting the ball at impactful angles when it is flat because of his steeper VBA.
The flatter the pitch the longer it stays on plane with the flat attack angle swing. The problem is that when Merrill is perfectly squared up and on plane with the pitch longer, the outcome is practically guaranteed. If he is under it, it’s a lazy flyout or popup. If he is over it, it’s a groundball, and if he is on plane it is a line drive or high launch angle groundball (Hence the .385 wOBAcon on FF groundballs).
Steeper pitches behave differently. The ball leaves the bat earlier because he is only on plane for a brief moment. This is why he hits the ball with a lot less power on breaking balls. The steep angle of the pitch means he’s only connecting briefly, and he doesn’t have the immediate bat speed to do damage like that unless his contact is out way in front of the plate. It is not at all a coincidence that Jackson Merrill has exactly zero hard-hit balls to the opposite field on breakers.
On the other hand, his steep VBA means he’s hitting steep pitches at more optimal angles which is why his BABIP is .095 higher on breaking balls than fastballs because he makes contact and then immediately the bat is no longer on plane and the pitch flies in the opposite direction from that which it approached. This means there are very few extreme launch angle batted balls, and he has a sweet-spot rate near 40% which is why the BABIP is so high (Also it’s easier to backspin breakers which helps a lot).
Jackson Merrill has fantastic raw power, but his swing doesn’t allow it to play games. Without major mechanical or approach changes, it is difficult to see that changing. I would advise against mechanical changes too as I don’t think it’s worth hurting his elite bat to ball skills to get more homeruns out of Jackson Merrill.
Merrill doesn’t need homeruns to be a productive major leaguer right now, or even a great one. He’s going to never strike out and run very high BABIPs. It’s not a stretch to call him a 70 hitter right now. He should still have 50 power, even if not homerun power with his swing. The consistent hard-contact and ability to find holes will see him hit plenty of balls in the gap.
Is Jackson Merrill The Best?
It’s not hard to understand why the computer thinks Jackson Merrill is the best prospect in baseball. The algorithm values the ability to make contact and hit the ball hard more than anything else, and Merrill excels at those two things. He grades out as at least average and usually better in every other thing it looks at as well. His tools are absolutely elite and that makes him one of the best prospects in the game.
However, the computer lacks nuance or understanding of the final details, and that leads to its rankings being flawed. Jackson Merrill has all the tools to succeed but his quite possibly unsurmountable tendency to put the ball in the ground sinks his chances at stardom. He is easily a top 50 in the sport as a shortstop with an elite hit tool and usable power, but he is not the best prospect in baseball. At least, not yet.