Many Rangers fans have become acquainted with Jurickson Profar this season. He's pretty clearly one of the organization's top three prospects, along with Martin Perez and Leonys Martin, ranking as high as a top ten prospect in all of baseball at midseason according to Baseball Prospectus. He joined Perez at the futures game and homered off of a pitcher five years his senior.
Thanks to a strong second half his prolific numbers for a player at his age and level are now catching attention. Jim Callis of Baseball America answered a question about those numbers Monday in his Ask BA space.
Rangers shortstop Jurickson Profar is pushing a .300/.400/.500 triple-slash line for the year. This is impressive for any player at any level, but even more so given that he's an 18-year-old shortstop. How rare is it for a teenager to put up a line like that in full season ball?
Josh Sweeney
Norwood, Mass.
With a month to play in the minor league season, Profar is hitting .290/.397/.499 at low Class A Hickory. If he can get to .300/.400/.500, he'll become just the fifth teenager to do so in a full-season league in the last seven seasons...
All four of [the four most recent to do it - Wil Myers, Jason Heyward, Justin Upton and Billy Butler] were 19. The last 18-year-old to accomplish the feat was Cardinals catcher Daric Barton, who hit .313/.445/.511 in low Class A in 2004. So if Profar can pull this off, he'd be in very rare company indeed.
The other thing that Callis doesn't mention is that all five of those players are at the bottom of the defensive spectrum, while Profar is at the top. Heyward and Upton are right fielders, and Myers, Butler and Barton are players who have moved around the diamond just looking for a spot to feature their bats. Profar looks like a special player no matter how you measure him.