ESPN's Keith Law talks prospects, Jose Bautista, and small asses

Keith Law is as thorough as possible when evaluating baseball prospects - but even he has limits.

"I have had one guy say (about a prospect), 'Well, he's got a little ass so he's not going to carry a lot of weight,'" Law said during a recent conference call. "I don't go quite to that extent."

Law has heard it all when it comes to the game's best and brightest prospects. The ESPN senior baseball writer recently released his annual list of the top 100 prospects, with the No. 1 spot going to Boston Red Sox outfielder Andrew Benintendi. Atlanta Braves shortstop Dansby Swanson and New York Mets shortstop Amed Rosario round out the top three.

The list is universally respected within the industry. Team-specific Twitter accounts waste little time sharing results with their fan bases, while beat reporters give their thoughts immediately after it's released. The list is, quite simply, an opus - nay, the opus - for prospect aficionados, and it's a hell of a thing to put together.

Law hits the phones the week before Christmas, gathering as much information as he can on every prospect worthy of consideration. He begins writing as soon as the majority of calls are done; from there, Law pounds out tens of thousands of words over the next few weeks - and if that wasn't daunting enough, this year's process featured an unexpected snag.

"Of course my daughter got sick (Sunday night), at 10 o'clock, she throws up," Law said. "I'm like, 'Really? You picked the perfect time to get sick.' Right in the middle of the top-100 package. It's just ideal."

Challenges aplenty

A barfing child is far from the only snag Law encounters when putting together the list. For starters, he has no way of seeing every prospect he writes about - forcing him to rely on the kindness of others.

"You certainly have to lean heavily on video, on friends who have seen these players, on the international guys," he explained. "Once a player has signed somewhere, I call international scouts I know from other teams and say, all right, you're not getting the player, so what did you really think. I'll ask specific questions: 'Do you like the swing, do you like the delivery, what does he got?'

"If I've seen the video, that helps, because then I can guide the questions more towards what I have seen. But I go through my list, too, and say, 'Who do I need to see this year?' - especially in spring training. It's great sort of one-stop shopping. Somebody who is ranked high, or I think is a potential to be ranked high next year, I've got to fill those in."

Then there's the matter of predicting the futures of players who, in many cases, aren't old enough to watch R-rated movies.

"We're trying to make subjective judgments and turn them into, in theory, objective projections of how a body is going to fill out; what a player will look like when he is 22, 23," Law said. "To go see 15- or even 14-year-olds and guess what you think that player is going to look like when he might reach the big leagues at 22, you have to accept so much failure as part of that."

Bautista's big change

Law also said players occasionally get significantly better with no warning.

"Jose Bautista is a good example of a guy who overhauled his swing and went from an extra guy to an All-Star," Law said. "Ben Zobrist is another one. That guy couldn't hit, period. Overhauled his swing and not only does he hit, he starts hitting for enough power to be a six-win player.

"I might say, 'Hey, this guy could be better if he makes X, Y, Z changes.' But you just can't project like that, because you could essentially wish on any player you want, and that's a level of speculation that makes me deeply uncomfortable. If I were working for a team, I would never recommend to a GM, 'Hey, let's go play full freight on this guy' on the hope that he fixes (his) delivery or changes his swing mechanism."

So, what tool does Law ultimately favor above all?

"We're looking for athleticism," he said. "I'm always a huge fan of (betting) on the kid who is athletic. If you've got two guys who are sort of similar, maybe one is a little bit ahead of the other presently, but the lesser guy is much more athletic, that's the guy I'll bet on."