The Nats Now Have Baseball’s 4th-Best Prospect

Baseball Prospectus put out its midseason top 50 prospects list (excluding just-drafted players and those already in the majors), and Nats minor-league CF Victor Robles is up to No. 4:

Why He’ll Succeed: Potential five-tool up-the-middle player. Robles is a sure shot centerfielder whose plus-plus speed will cause havoc on the bases and hoover up balls on the dirt. Oh yeah, he can really hit too, and some evaluators think there is average-or-better power to come. That’s a monster player.

Why He Might Fail: The offensive tools require a fair bit more projection than the defensive ones, and Robles may end up more of a Manny Margot type. Actually it feels like we wrote almost this same entry about Margot last year.

Four is a few spots up from Robles’ place on BP’s preseason top 101, but some of the kids that were ahead of him (Dansby Swanson, Andrew Benintendi) are already in the bigs.

It’s an expected progression, I suppose, considering Robles has a .302/.388/.524 slash line at high-A Potomac. Thirty-six extra-base hits in 67 games for a young 20-year-old is not bad.

Also on the list at No. 12 (up from 57) is 18-year-old Nats prospect Juan Soto, who’s been called “the Dominican Bryce Harper.” Sounds good. We may need one of those in a couple years.