The Best Hitting Teenager... Ever? - Part 1

Baseball prospecting needs a constant inflow of talent and hype to drive the machine forward.  While certain products like Heritage and Flagship are driven by existing talent, I think the real money exchanging hands is usually over things like Bowman, Draft, and Chrome.  All of these are driven almost exclusively by prospects (or prospect cards of people who have now become stars.)  You don't see a lot of thousand dollar cards coming out of flagship or Heritage, and usually when they are...  They are rookies or prospects.

We are constantly looking for the next "something."  Whether that is the next Mickey Mantle, Albert Pujols, or Mike Trout, we are always looking.  People are crunching advanced metrics and comparing stats across eras.  Less important are things like RBI's and more important are things like WAR and BABIP.  Opposite field hitting, accurate plate discipline and strike zone command, and percentage of balls with hard hits.

It's crazy the ways we can evaluate people, and how that hype machine builds mountains and monuments out of players that have never even seen a single major league pitch.  Which leads me to what makes Juan Soto truly amazing.