Misc. Minor League Ramblings

[phins]

The pitching gets worse as you go though, as pitchers get shut down quite often before the end of the season there.

I'm not saying it holds no value- it's certainly better to do well than poorly- but it doesn't hold a lot of predictive value outside of seeing the tools up close and generally you glean a bit more from the pitchers and younger players playing "up" in the league.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

What was/is the consensus on Steve Bean? It seemed like the guy was a waste of a first round pick from the word go. Is that still the case? Is there any reason to believe he'll amount to anything?

Obviously I've never seen him play, but is he a Molina at handling a staff or throwing runners out or anything? Otherwise, it looks like he can take a walk and not much else.

[33anda3rd]

Have not seen Bean, and have not read anything about him since the draft. Hopefully he will get a good bit of playing time in the midwest league this year and I'll get to look at him a few times.

[phins]

Cards love him defensively...they're higher on him than I am. They see him as a backup C at the major league level.

The thing to remember with the draft is the place you're drafted is not always an indication of your talent, getting you to agree to a number so the team gets your bonus pool slot is an important consideration as well and you have to view the entire package together when evaluating a draft.

[pioneer98]

I will make it a point to see the baby birds when they come to town, but if people don't care I will post my observations from the Midwest League here.

I saw Kane County (Cubs) take on QC River Bandits (Astros) on opening night. Well, I stayed for about 5 innings before the temp dropped into the low 30s and I froze and left. Despite the frigid weather both teams combined for 22 hits. Yasiel Balaguert was 4 for 5 with 3 doubles for Kane County. The pitchers seemed to be bothered more by the weather than the hitters, but they just couldn't get him out. Then James Ramsay (no a different guy) for QC was 3 for 5 with a double. He is athletic and can obviously hit but wow is he bad in CF right now. Seems to lack hustle and thinks his arm is so good he can just ignore the cutoff man.

SS Chan Moon provided the best highlight I saw. The infield was drawn in and he made a great diving play and then doubled the runner off 3rd. Then he led off the bottom of the inning with a perfect bunt hit. He's probably not much of a prospect but that was good baseball.

The guy I'm really pulling for on QC is Chase McDonald. He is listed at 6'5", 265 lbs. No idea how good he will be but I am looking forward to seeing how far it will go when he gets hold of one.

I never noticed last year how out-of-place the Cubs logo looks on the front of the Cougars' jersey:

[SHOW]

[33anda3rd]

This is from Jason Parks on BP on Monday morning, and it's one of the very best and most honest paragraphs I've read from a prospect writer in a while:

Internet evaluators have a tendency to overcomplicate the scouting process, focusing too much of their attention on what players will do in the future rather than simplifying the explanations of what they actually can do in the present. We can dream on athletic bodies and cite physical projection to justify our fantasies about future accomplishment, and I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to attaching my name to body-beautiful types regardless of current skill level. But a good rule of thumb—in the particular context of evaluating position players—is that good hitters hit and bad hitters only project to hit.

We have to get past the idea of these middle-infield kids and speedy CF who show quick-twitch skills at 19, 20 and we think they're gonna be studs because, hey, they'll get the hitting thing down because they have a pretty swing against bad competition in the low minors. Too many of them do not ever get it down in the batters box at the highest level. Guys like Adams and Papi and so on, they hit in the minors and become productive MLBers. Guys like Lindor and Brandon Wood and such need to show they can hit vs. advanced pitchers before we get too carried away with their future projection.

[phins]

Why do we need to get away from projecting quick-twitch athletes and speedy CF types? What benefit do we gain from this?

[33anda3rd]

We need to rank them appropriately.

By value estimators (the versions of WAR we have) players who are all-glove, which I'll say is at least +20 in D on Fangraphs and at best +10 on offense, are not typically 4+ WAR players. Machado 6.2, Simmons 4.6, Parra 4.5, Russell Martin 4.1, Yuni Escobar 3.9, Sal Perez 3.7. Take out the catchers and you're left with three left-side players who are significantly above average in overall value in a season.

Flip it. Make it at least +20 on O and at best +10 on D. Cabrera, Chris Davis, McCutchen, Votto, Goldschmidt, Marp, Choo, Werth, Holliday, Freeman, Encarnacion, Pence, Cano, Beltre, Mauer, Byrd, Bautista, Marte, Adam Jones, were all at least 4 fWAR and most were in the 5.5 and up range.

Guys who play corner spots make up most of that 2nd list. They make up a lot more real value at the MLB level. So when we're ranking 5 shortstops at the very very top of the prospect rankings, crowding them all into the top 12 or so, we better be darn sure they're going to hit at the MLB level. And a few of them haven't shown anything at the upper minors yet, Lindor and Russell in particular. I've seen both, I like both, they're both top-50 prospects. But Lindor is not a future top-10 player in MLB if he doesn't hit, and neither is any player. Because the top-10 players in baseball hit. You can't hail a kid as a top-10 prospect if he doesn't project to be a year-in/year-out top 20 player in baseball, and Lindor is not that.

Look at Elvis. Y'all know I love Elvis. He gets on base 34% of the time but has limited power. He plays ++ D. He's GREAT on the basepaths. He's one of the best SS in baseball, hands down. And in his very best years he's a 4-win player. If you wanna put a comp on Lindor, a guy he's likely to be, it's Andrus. And that's not top-7 prospects territory. It's a real real valuable player but it's not holy cow let's all fawn over this guy turf.

The ranking of prospects still, even after the lesson of Hatteberg in Moneyball, relies on good bodies and twitchy athleticism. They don't care to rank guys like Adams and Vogelbach high because they are fatties, and they're missing the fact that only three shortstops in the last however many years have been more valuable than David Ortiz. David Ortiz is more valuable than Yuni Escobar. Always has been. Because he hits. The highest Rizzo, who mashed everything in the minors, was ranked was 47 by BA. That year, above him, Hak-Ju Lee, Anthony Gose, Gary Brown, Brett Jackson, Bubba Starling. Bunch of up-the-middle athletes who had not yet shown they could hit. They'll never, any of them, be as valuable as Rizzo. The only up-the-middle player on that prospect list in 2012 who is likely to be better than Rizzo over his career is Trout--yeah, I think Rizzo will be > Machado since Machado has trouble at the plate. Rizzo should have been ranked higher. Adams should have been ranked. Dan Vogelbach should be ranked now. I'm not saying don't rank SSs, I'm saying rank them appropriate to what their MLB value is likely to be. For a lot of these bat-first guys who can't field well it's multiple ASGs and a MVP run or two, and for a lot of these up-the-middle glove guys who have yet to show they can hit it's a couple ASGs off the bench and a career of 3.5-win peak seasons.

Of the Big Four current SS prospects only Baez has shown he can mash baseballs at the high minors, and holy crap can he mash baseballs. He's a top-5 prospect. He has best-player-on-earth potential because he can play SS and he could hit 40 bombs. The rest fall in line behind that.

[33anda3rd]

I didn't have time to think through my own prospect list for this year. The last one I did was last year, and I said then, and stand by it now:

However, I don’t consider being a defensive whiz in low-A to be a huge deal. Lots of teenagers are defensive whizzes in the low minors. Lots of strong arms and rangy quick-twitch players have that when they’re very young. I saw several low-A players in 2012 and thought “he could play defense in the majors today.” I did not, however, see anyone in low-A last year who could handle MLB pitching as a hitter. Simply put, it’s tougher to become a great hitter than it is to become a great fielder. You could substitute Albert Almora, Jackie Bradley or Aaron Hicks for the best defensive CF in baseball, Peter Bourjos of the Angels, and not lose much, if anything. But none of those three is nearly ready to hit at the MLB level. Beyond that, the bat will determine how long a lot of those defense-first players stick in the majors. Slick-fielding up-the-middle players tend to have Young Player Skills, and when Young Player Skills slow down or stop, the player loses utility. That slick-fielding SS whose bat does not develop will have a shorter career than the unathletic corner OF, 3B or 1B who can hit–those skills last longer. The hit tool needs time to develop, and when someone has it naturally, and has it at a high level, that’s far more special than a rangy teenage shortstop or a CF prodigy who can run down a lot of fly balls.

To audit that list now, 13 months later, I'm pretty happy with it. From a STL perspective, I was higher on Wacha than any of the national guys, and I was, of course, higher on Adams than anyone but Adams's own personal un-grabbed mother. I'm happy with my categorization of the SSs. I had Profar as Tier 1, Baez/Bogaerts/Lindor as Tier 3 (if I could change it now I'd move Lindor down, none of these guys had done anything above the low minors yet), and Correa/Russell in Tier 4. I don't think anybody had Baez > Correa last year. I believe in the bat as the carrying tool, and had Baez higher, and that's a feather in my cap I guess. I had six SSs in my top-21 (they're not ranked, but tiered, and those tiers keep them all in the top 21), and that's something I'd do a little different--I was too low on Wacha, Archie, Puig, Syndergaard--but I think I got the order of them right, and I think, again, that's because I tended to sort them by bat. If I were to keep sorting SS prospects by bat, I think I'd be more right than wrong when the rank of them is comped to the rank of their MLB careers when they're finished. Guys like Ozzie and Vizquel and Simmons are great when they're putting up 5-7 win seasons on glove alone, but they're still not as valuable as Jeter or Tulo or A-Rod over their careers or their peaks.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

I'm 100% on board with making sure that offensive value gets properly weighted(I'm keeping a list of anyone who puts Lindor in front of Baez in prospect rankings), but I think part of it too is what you're trying to measure. The Elvis/Yuni profile, if they end up not being quite the offensive player as those guys, they can still be of some value(see Escobar, Alcides). If Adams or Vogelbach don't show and keep their bats to a very high standard all the way through, what are they? Daryl Ward? Randall Simon? There's a continuum of outcomes, and the guys with Young Player skills are more bunched in the middle, which does have its value. Make no mistake though, I like that paragraph of Parks about future abilities. Too often people point to acceptable performance relative to age/level to go along with Young Player's skills as reason for optimism, when many times the reason they even have that acceptable performance is due to an approach that also limits future projection.