Philadelphia Phillies reportedly offering top prospect Adonis Medina for Manny Machado

The Milwaukee Brewers are still in the race to get Manny Machado, but after a Jon Morosi report late Monday night, some are afraid that the Philadelphia Phillies are taking the lead.

According to Morosi, the Phillies are now willing to trade Adonis Medina. On the surface, this looks like a potential huge get for the Orioles. Medina was a consensus top-100 prospect to start the season and is ranked #2 overall on the Phillies top 30 by MLB Pipeline. But look further into the numbers and you can see there’s something missing from those initial evaluations.

Medina is 21 at high-A, three years below the average age but a reasonable age to expect good results at that level. Since the beginning of the season, he has a 4.93 ERA and an 86.9 DRA, hardly elite numbers. Meanwhile, the young righty is still allowing more than 3 walks per nine to opposing teams.

While the term ‘top prospect’ is true, Medina also doesn’t rank very highly on many of the well-regarded rankings. He started the season at 84 on Baseball America’s top 100 and 86 on MLB Pipeline’s. He’s advanced about 10 spots over the course of the season on those lists, but that’s due to graduations from other players. Baseball Prospectus had Medina at 48 to start the year but he failed to make the site’s most recent release of its mid-season top 50 prospects (the one that ranked Keston Hiura #5 overall).

Medina does have a promising and exciting history, but there’s surely no doubt that Milwaukee can match the Phillies’ offer. Milwaukee has a group of prospects equally regarded, if not better, and closer to the majors. This particular rumor doesn’t even scare me into believing that the Crew would have to throw in Burnes to get this deal done.

Either way, all reports imply that a deal will get done later this week. The Orioles are just ensuring the shortstop plays in the All-Star Game before switching leagues.