Rays top prospect Wander Franco is a freak of nature!

If you’re reading this, you’ve heard of Wander Franco.

You know he’s a top prospect (maybe THE top prospect). You know he’s gifted with a exceptional tools and talent.

What you may not know is just how rare his combination of youth, contact ability, and power is among minor leaguers. Outlier may not be a strong enough descriptor; the guy’s a unicorn.

Let’s start with just how young he is. Since 2003 (the earliest year for which Fangraphs has minor-league data), there have been about 75 players who have accumulated at least 150 PAs in full-season A ball and at least 400 PAs stateside as a professional through their age-18 season.

Franco is among them. He has 212 PAs in A ball this year and 485 career PAs as a professional, with about half of those coming for Princeton in the Appalachian League last year. His in-season age for the purpose of record keeping doesn’t tell the whole tale, though.

Because the age cutoff is in July, a player born in July of Year 1 can be counted the same age as a player born in June of Year 2, even though the player born in July is nearly a year older.

Instead let’s look at how many months old each of these players was on April 1 of their A-ball season.

(Editor’s Note: There are some lengthy tables in this article that are of this length to provide context. If you are on mobile, apologies and keep scrolling for the analysis!)

By this more accurate accounting of age, Wander Franco is the 13th youngest player (our little Wander, only 217 months old) in the last 16 years to have made at least 150 PAs in A ball and 400 PAs total as a pro before turning 19. He was just 18 years and one month old when the minor-league season began.

Distinguishing between months like this may sound trivial, but it’s not. We know teams factor these considerations into draft models and use them to make decisions. Wander’s success as a very young 18 year old makes his performance all the more impressive and bodes even better for his big-league future than if he were approaching his 19th birthday.

Okay, so we know he’s extremely young for a guy in A ball. That alone is fairly impressive, but what makes Wander so remarkable is his success on the field at such a tender age. In particular, his ability to make contact is nearly unparalleled since 2003.

Through 212 PAs in A ball, he has a 4.2% swinging strike rate (SwStr%). In the 485 PAs of his entire stateside pro career, he has a 5.3% swinging strike rate.

For the uninitiated, swinging strike rate is simply the number of times a player swings and misses divided by the number of pitches he sees. So for every 20 pitches thrown to him, Franco has swung and missed about one time, on average. That’s a fantastic rate.

There are only eight qualified big-league hitters with swinging strike rates under 5% this year. Three of them are Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, and Michael Brantley.

Here are the top 30 swinging strike rates for all the minor leaguers in my data set.

Whether you’re looking at swinging strike rate in A ball or swinging strike rate as a pro, Wander is leading the pack, and it’s not even close.

Clearly Franco doesn’t have any competition from these 18 year olds when it comes to swinging strike rate, so let’s expand the selection of players to those who were 20 years or younger when they collected the requisite A ball and professional PAs. Many of these players were two full years older than Wander at the same levels.

Here’s the top 30.

Again, it’s Wander at the top of the list.

You may notice a player on this list is Vidal Brujan, another Rays prospect lauded for his bat-to-ball skills. He was two years older than Wander when he took on A ball, and his swinging strike rate was about 50% greater than Franco’s. Brujan has great hand-eye coordination, but Wander’s is almost unreal.

According to Baseball America’s hot sheet published July 3, Franco hadn’t swung and missed at a pitch in the past seven games, dating back to the third inning of the Hot Rods’ game on May 26th.

But wait, there’s more!

Adam Sanford

Not only is Wander incredibly young for A ball and incredibly unlikely to swing and miss, but he also hits for power.

Players who hit for power typically have to give up some contact ability in order to do it. If you swing harder, you hit the ball harder, but you also tend to swing and miss more often. Looking at his power, along with his youth and contact ability, demonstrates just how singular a player Franco is.

This plot shows the career isolated power (ISO) and swinging strike rate for all the 18 year olds in my sample. Younger 18-year old’s are light red. Older 18 year old’s are dark red. You can click on the full screen tab at the bottom right for a less scrunched view of the chart.

Eight of the 75 players in the sample have hit for as much or more power than Wander (.200 ISO or better) over 400 or more professional PAs. Other than Wander’s 4.2% whiff rate, the lowest swinging strike rate among that group is 13.2% (that player is Fernando Tatis, Jr.).

None of 75 players have a swinging strike rate even close to Wander’s, but among those with a swinging strike rate under 10%, the highest ISO is .164 (that player is Vlad Guerrero, Jr.).

You probably don’t need a bunch of tables and charts to know that Franco is good. That much is apparent when you watch him play or glance at his traditional stats.

Still, a deeper dive into the numbers shows that Franco is nearly peerless statistically among precocious minor-leaguers during the past 16 years. He is freakishly talented.

*Data used was current through June 4th.