Before the season started, we published the TCB Top 30 prospects and took some flak for how aggressive we were with our ranking of A.J. Reed. Many of our readers didn't have a problem with it. Of the national top prospect lists, the highest Reed was listed at was number ten by Fangraphs. Baseball Prospectus and Baseball America had him at 21. With us having him at six, we stood out like a sore thumb.
However, Reed dominated the Cal League. And then, dominated the Texas League.
But, the Texas League is not our focus.
Reed has already been announced as the MVP of the Cal League so I can't really say he's not the team MVP.
He posted a 1.088 OPS for the JetHawks. It's pretty ridiculous. The next best OPS on the team was .967 and that was from Brett Phillips. For the league, the next highest among qualified hitters (2.7 PA/league game) was another JetHawk, Chase McDonald with a .950 OPS. He lead the team in rate stats of average, OBP, and SLG.
He only ranked lower in the counting stats because he played just 82 games before being promoted to Corpus.
An argument could be made for McDonald, J.D. Davis, or James Ramsay since they all played over 100 games. But, McDonald out slugged Davis by quite a bit that the 12 point edge Davis has in OBP is negligible. Ramsay's 127 games and significant playing time in centerfield is quite a huge difference but his OPS was over .200 points lower.
For the big stat geeky types. His wRC+ was 190 and his wOBA was .464. Remember that wRC+ is adjusted to the league which goes to show just how good he was relative to his peers. He was almost twice as productive as the league average hitter (100 wRC+).