Jacob Wilson is proving the Athletics right

Top A’s prospect Jacob Wilson was recently promote to Triple-A, and his performance at Midland has made a mark

The Oakland Athletics took Jacob Wilson with the sixth overall pick in the 2023 MLB draft, then handed him $5.5 million to sign with them, immediately making him one of the most important people in an organization looking to build back respectability. Wilson was a standout at Grand Canyon University, striking out only five times as a senior and posting an OPS north of 1.000 in his sophomore and junior seasons. He was widely considered a top 10 lock for the draft, and Oakland made him the first selected outside of a frontrunning top five group of prospects. Wilson had a solid professional debut with a 135 wRC+ at High-A Lansing, displaying his unique contact trait to hit .318 with a strikeout rate just over 10%.

I will admit to a lot of skepticism regarding Wilson’s profile. Some of that may be personal bias — I’ve seen far too many contact-first prospects get to Double-A and Triple-A and despite making all the contact in the world they can’t hit the ball hard enough to make themselves stick. I watched Wilson over the winter and came away largely unchanged in my opinion, seeing a player who I felt was going to be a solid regular but not really have a high enough ceiling to be worth a sixth overall pick or a top spot in a farm system. It really didn’t take long of watching him on a daily basis to flip that opinion. Every single time Wilson has stepped onto the field in 2024 he has been the best player on that field. Before I get to the details of how I see his profile, I think the dude is just a damn good ballplayer. There’s a thing that most eventually great players do in the minor leagues and I see it with Wilson. Every single game you watch he is going to do something that catches your eye. Sometimes it’s a home run or a flashy defensive play, and sometimes it’s just a well hit ball, a great decision on the bases, or just the way he makes in-game adjustments. Even at his worst he will find some way to impact the game. Great players have bad days, but when you see their name in the lineup you know they’re not going to give you a day off. You can’t ever take Jacob Wilson out of a game — he’s always going to be a tough out, always going to make a defensive play that most wouldn’t, and always going to take extra bases where he can get them. These little details can be hard to pick up in small viewings, they’re why it’s important to talk to the smart people inside of organizations to get a feel of players, and Wilson takes care of all these details on a daily basis.

My opinion on Wilson’s core attributes are largely unchanged and don’t differ from national publications all that much. Wilson can flat-out hit, and you’re just not going to get him to whiff inside the zone. Fastball, curveball, slider, changeup, up, down, in, out, it really doesn’t matter. He has quick hands, a feel for contact, and can recognize and adjust to pitches to make contact in any quadrant. His ability to adjust his bat path to cover the zone and utilize his bat speed even when he does make mistakes is impressive. There are very few hitters in baseball that can make contact at the rate he does, and having a standout trait that is the most important trait to a position player is immediately intriguing.

Now for Wilson you can add in the defensive aspect of the game, where he is could step into the shortstop role at the major league level right now and be a plus defender. His speed isn’t fantastic, but it’s enough, and he has remarkably smooth actions up the middle. He makes every play you ask a shortstop to make, with the instincts and decision making to always be in the right position to make the play. When he does get to the ball he makes throws well, with the footwork to get into good throwing positions and fire the ball accurately to first moving in any direction and after receiving the ball at a multitude of angles. He’s a lockdown defender that is going to make an immediate difference at the position, and this combination of traits alone makes him a major league starter.

Those are the core attributes, and it’s what every evaluator raves about with Wilson, but it’s all things I knew coming in and observed when digging in on him. However I think it’s my view of his shortcomings that have largely shifted, as I think he’s going to be able to move forward and at a minimum mitigate, if not overcome the flaws in his profile. All I saw and heard was the Wilson largely didn’t make loud contact, settling for bloop singles and gapped doubles in the majority of cases. Wilson has really turned in a fantastic season with Midland, however, and while he still lacks the top end exit velocities to project average power I think the pull side power is enough to play at the major league level and not be exploited such as with similar-ish players like Nicky Lopez or Santiago Espinal. Wilson rakes any fastball you leave on the inner half, and if you make any mistake in any part of the zone he is able to recognize it and get the barrel to the ball. Even in an offseason he seems to have added enough strength to bump up his power profile at least half a grade, and I see him being able to get to the 10-12 home run range.

Moreover it’s not just the volume of extra base hits for Wilson, but the quality of the contact that he is making on his batted balls. It’s a steady stream of line drives to all fields, and with that I see him as a player who can run a higher BABIP than league average. Pair that with a his high contact rates and it’s easy to project him to that .350+ on base percentage range where a player is all but guaranteed to be an above average hitter. Above average hitter with plus shortstop defense doesn’t sound exciting, but it’s a valuation that’s a consistent 3.5-4.5 WAR player to add to your franchise with a relatively low performance floor.

My main concerns with Wilson were and are his approach and swing, but I think it’s overall a bit of an overstated concern. Wilson swings far too often, and it’s actually gotten a bit worse early in this season, but it’s important to remember that a 22 year old at Double-A (now Triple-A) is still a relatively young player. Especially coming from a small college, this is by far the highest level of pitching he has faced and he has to learn what he can and can’t hit with authority. Wilson is mostly overly aggressive on pitches away from him, and now that he has been pushed up to Triple-A pitchers are going to be able to take advantage of that. They’re going to dot those changeups and sliders down and away, forcing Wilson to chase into zones that he doesn’t make the same quality of contact as he does on the inner half.

Where I don’t find myself concerned with Wilson is where you often see concern come in young players who struggle to make the transition to the major leagues. Wilson identifies spin at a high level, he knows the zone at least as well as the average hitter, and because of this he chases less than you might expect for a guy running a (as of typing this) 3.1% walk rate. Wilson has to draw walks more often than that, there’s no debating that point, but the skills are in place for Wilson to make those strides. As he adjusts to higher level pitching he will need to learn what pitches and what locations he should be targeting based on situations. If he takes an 0-2 swing and tries to poke an outside changeup over the second baseman’s head that’s not as big of a concern. He’s in a bad spot and utilizing his contact ability to make the best of that situation has value. Where he gets himself in trouble is the first pitch swings on junk or reaching towards the outer half when he has counts in his favor. Once he finds the maturity to recognize that a pitch may be a strike, and it may be something that he can make contact with, but that he can still wait back for a better offering and trust that regardless of the count he is good enough to make contact. Wilson is never going to strike out much because he’s too good at making contact, so when he takes that approach of hunting early fastballs middle in, jumping on hanging sliders when they’re there, and utilizing his bat speed and wrist strength to his advantage his offensive game goes to another level. I’ve seen plenty of occasions this season where he does just that, and I’ve seen others where Wilson just pokes at a ball early in the count and accepts the result. The progress has been there, and as long as he continues working in the right direction the markers are the for him to be a successful major league hitter.

Jacob Wilson makes things simple from a projections standpoint because it’s very easy to input the components and see it turning into a big league player. Playing plus shortstop defense is an immediate major league role, and combining his contact ability with his defense is a near surefire starter at least as much as you can guarantee a minor leaguer. His ultimate ceiling is going to be power and approach dependent, and while I think his swing and body will limit the former, the latter is something that he should end up working through. Wilson has never faced pitching good enough to need to do anything except swing away, and now that he is seeing that there will be another step in his evolution that should see his walk rates float back towards league averages. I don’t see a 10+ percent walk rate in his future, but I don’t see him as a player like Andrelton Simmons whose pitch selection and lack of in-zone quality contact ultimately limited his offensive ceiling (though Simmons was clearly a better defender than Wilson will be). Wilson very well might be Oakland’s best shortstop right now (I recognize that’s not hard to do), and the calls for him will likely grow as the season wears on. Given Oakland’s propensity for aggression I think he will get the call to the big leagues this season, and I’m confident he will ultimately be a consistent contributor to the organization for the coming half-decade or so. He’s not going to chase MVP awards by any means, but as the cornerstone of your defense and a player to plug in every day he’s going to a valuable shortstop that helps the team win games.