Nick Madrigal left out of Keith Law's top 100 prospect list

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There are plenty of prospect rankings in the baseball world and typically some level of consensus is formed among where prospects fall.

As far as the White Sox are concerned, Luis Robert is a top 10 prospect in baseball by just about everyone, Michael Kopech is usually in the top 20 or 30 and Andrew Vaughn and Nick Madrigal aren’t too far behind.

Keith Law of The Athletic sees it differently for one of those four. Law released his top 100 prospects on Monday and featured just three White Sox prospects.

Robert came in at No. 6, Kopech was at No. 16 and Vaughn was ranked 28th. There was no Madrigal though.

Madrigal is ranked 40 by MLB Pipeline, 48 by Baseball America, 41 by Fangraphs and even as high as 13 on Baseball Prospectus. Law is the outlier here and he got plenty of questions about it.

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The argument against Madrigal is fairly obvious. He has almost no power. The question is can he overcome that and still bring value to a team? Most scouts have said yes.

Madrigal’s notable skill is his elite contact rate. He almost never strikes out, which tends to lead to a high batting average. Madrigal is also a good defender who is noted as a smart baserunner. Throw those things together and you have a solid contributor to a big league team, but far from a star.

Offensively, Madrigal will have to consistently hit for a high average to overcome his lack of power. He has four home runs in 163 games in the minors. He won’t be an OPS hero by any stretch. That said, he hit .311 across three levels of the minors in 2019, including a .331 batting average in 29 games in Triple-A.

If Law thinks Madrigal’s contact skills are very good as opposed to elite and doesn’t believe in growth in other parts of his game, it’s reasonable to think he’s not a top 100 prospect. Still, this is the minority opinion at this point.

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