F-Mart/Ruffin too high, Peguero too. But I like dropping Pimentel down a bit, and I also like the ranking of Erasmo Ramirez. I understand why Liddi isn’t even ranked, but I don’t agree with it.
When I was thinking about prospect lists the other day, I just couldn't help but think I wouldn't rank anyone below a certain level or age.
If a guy is 3-4+ years away, I don’t see the benefit of doing it. You can only go off of so much until they play against real competition. Even if you start at low-A. Rank the guys that mean something in the next 2-3 years and that you have a better idea of, even if you think you’ve got the next Miguel Cabrera… keep Peguero and Castillo in a sidenote.
I think if you've got someone with the tools to be a dominating player
they’ve got to be on the list, though you have to account for the higher risk. A lot of lists that go for upside seem to forget that, but then the alternative would be a safer list that didn’t actually reflect the talent of the system.
Obviously, everyone balances these factors in their own way, which leads to things like Ruffin coming in right between Phillips Castillo and Martin Peguero.
Seriously though, you’re right. It’s not about what level they’re at. If someone has amazing tools across the board, they won’t take 4 years to make it. You’ll see someone ranked because they have a few amazing tools and a few glaring weaknesses (the Guillermo Pimentel/Greg Halman types), but that’s a separate issue.
I think that unless a prospect hasn’t played an inning at AA any writeup just reads as “hes a really fast toddler who wont stick at short/cant take a walk/any number of huge weaknesses” in my eyes. You end up getting the Triunfel/Michael Inoa syndrome when you list those players and it makes a fan-base impatient with players who sometimes will take longer to develop. These guys seem like world beaters, then the world beats them once, and their stock plummets it seems.
but then what do you do with Bryce Harper last year, or Manny Machado, Taijuan Walker, Jurickson Profar now?
You’ll certainly see a lot fewer out-and-out busts if you restrict the lists to the high minors, but then you’d get an M’s list that ranks, say, Carlos Triunfel ahead of Taijuan Walker. Does that help anyone understand the talent in the system?
If I came out with a 2012 list this year, I wouldn’t put any 2011 draftees on it. I also wouldn’t put any IFA’s under 20 on it unless they had shot up the system and already had significant time in A-ball.
That still allows me to have Harper, Trout, Machado, Walker, Profar, but I don’t have to rank a guy like Danny Hultzen or Gerrit Cole before they’ve ever pitched in the minors.
But I think we know enough about college baseball to say that Gerrit Cole is one of the best prospects in the Pirates system. I understand he hasn’t been through the meat grinder of the Northwest League, and hasn’t annihilated 20 year old prospects in the Midwest League, and maybe you’d downgrade him for that, but the Pirates have a huge RHP who can throw in the mid-upper 90s and who has a decent breaking ball or two. Should we ignore that?
No, not ignore because obviously some of the 2011 draftees are really good prospects that will turn into really good baseball players.
At the same time, I can look at Shelby Miller and say “He dominated minor league hitters at this level and this level” blah blah blah. But with Cole, I have only college information to go off of and scouting reports. What do they say about comparing college baseball to a minor league system? Is it comparable to low-a? (I really don’t know) But I do know that he faces hitters many hitters that won’t be good enough to play in the minor leagues.
So you go back to 2007 for example and see David Price at #1. Just a dominating lefty prospect. His first year, BA ranked him 10th. A lofty ranking. He was so good that year that they bumped him to 2nd. But what if I just didn’t rank him in 2008? I could still rank him 2nd in 2009 and now I know he was actually underrated (very slightly) in 2008 anyway.
Then you’ve got Josh Vitters, ranked 43rd in 2008. Then 51st. Then 70th. Then off. I could have avoided most of that slide if I just never ranked him based on his lofty prospect status before he had much time in the minors (51 at bats in 2007 at age 17)
That year they also ranked Ross Detwiler (6th overall) 51st. I would have never had to rank him based on his scouting report. He would have never made a top 100, s he shouldn’t have.
Meanwhile, Madison Bumgarner was NOT ranked out of that draft in 2008, but then shot up to 9th after they saw him pitch. I could have just waited a year and ranked him 9th and forget the whole part where I left him off of my top 100 based on scouting reports.
Of course, prospect evaluation is an inexact science. You are always going to have errors. I just think you have less errors this way. BA always has a top 100 with too many draftees from the prior year on it (in my opinion) and then you leave off other guys that might deserve some recognition. Either way, at least I would feel confident that my ranking of players after a year in the minors will always be more accurate than ranking them before they play.
In the end, you could have a top 100, and then a list that ranks the top 30 draftees and IFAs (or something) and that way you’d also have a way to talk about more draftees that you are interested in.
Who cares if a guy is left off one year or subsequently falls?
Just look at who is doing the rankings and what their proclivities are. Anyone ranking Martin Peguero as highly as Hulet does either has great scouting info for him that he believes in or is wishcasting or whatever. If respectable scouts loved what they saw in Vitters it would be stupid to not rank him. At that time, he had a high ceiling. Ok so fine. Now we have more data and he isn’t ranked anymore.That doesn’t mean it wasn’t reasonable at the time. Was it reasonable to have Jeff Clement and Michael Saunders rated highly? Yup. Now? Nope. Things change. It’s stupid to penalize people for that happening unless they are making fundamental mistakes in their evaluation.
I don’t mean for it to come off that way. Everyone has a right to do it the way that they want to do it.
My only point was that I felt it would be more accurately predictive if we used that extra year of data before ranking a player. Of course, it’s never going to be super accurate, but I just feel that it would be more accurate and that it’s very rare for an 18 or 19 year old to make the majors anyway, so you’re still going to have a chance to rank them at some point and say, “This guy has proven his lofty draft status, and now I make him 15th” or whatever.
I agree w/abender's comment above, and it seems like the disagreement
centers on what these lists are for. You focus on their predictive power, and the best way to cut error is to eliminate the high-risk guys so you wouldn’t have spectacular misses.
But I take the rankings/lists as a snapshot of a team’s minor-league talent. You’re absolutely right that you’d get a better sense of draft picks after they plan in the minors, but I don’t want to ignore the #3 pick in the amateur draft when discussing the M’s talent next year. I think it’d be crazy if we all pretended we had absolutely no clue if Danny Hultzen was any good. You’d avoid making a huge mistake, like assuming Matt Bush WAS good, but I don’t care as much about that.
In the case of the Mariners or Pirates or really anyone that picked a high-upside player or two that immediately becomes the top prospect in the system in many cases, I would be ignoring someone very important.
I can’t really get around that part of it, yet. It’s a glaring flaw in my system.
I do think 2011 draftees make sense to add, since many of them are 1/2 years away and thus close to making an impact. Maybe be more conservative on them, but hell – some may have even played a bit in 2011, and discounting that seems silly.
On the flipside, though, toolsy players that are simply not good yet and are years away shouldn’t be on these lists, because their likelihood of making an impact is almost nothing and there are far more of them. Similarly relievers should almost never make a top 10, IFAs probably shouldn’t unless they’ve somehow put something together that makes it appear they’ll be up in 2 years…
They really just need to be calculated by percentages. A player that has the tools to be a 6 win player but only a 10% likelihood of making it should be given .6. A player that looks to be a potential 4 win player with a 20% chance of making it should be given .8, and so on.
Yeah, I go a little more extreme than that. I wholeheartedly agree that Castillo and Peguero are way too far off to rank.
I just perhaps would take it a step further. For instance, when you draft a HS player in the top 5, he might be an exceptional player like Bubba Starling but he’s still 4 years away. So you do or don’t rank him while you do rank Anthony Rendon? If I just have a simple cutoff, it makes it simple. But I am going to another extreme.
I would assume that if someone were to develop a risk/reward calculation for these rankings
It would account for this naturally. True unbelievable talents like Bryce Harper would still make the lists, but toolsy Dominicans probably wouldn’t, because the risk (depending on the player) would presumably be higher. But who knows.
Regardless of how they’re ranked, they shouldn’t be ranked using other people’s lists as a reference, nor should they use blog posts based on the rankings of others. Raw scouting reports, numbers, and personal opinion based on personal scouting should really be all that’s involved, and without that it doesn’t really make sense to provide one of these rankings. May as well cut and paste someone else’s ranking and then give your opinion of it each time like we do here.
Yeah, head over to MinorLeagueBall and try to have a discussion and argue against the norm on a player, like what I had to do when talking about Dustin Ackley's defense.
The truth of the matter is that all I had to go on in regards to Ackley’s 2B defense before he hit Seattle, was reports. And so when I went over there and said, “I don’t see any reason why he can’t play 2B in the majors at this point,” it turned into a pretty ugly argument. But overall, EVERYBODY WITH AN OPINION WAS GOING OFF OF SHIT THAT THEY READ, MOSTLY THE SAME SHIT THAT I READ. And then how did 99% of all the Ackley defense reports read: BAD DEFENSE? Because 90% of it was “Well, I read it here and wrote it” and “Well, I read it from THAT guy and wrote it.” and nobody can trace it back to the source. For all we know, the Architect from The Matrix started the rumor and it just spreads like wild fire.
That’s not to say that Ackley was playing great defense. That’s not to say he was playing Good, Bad, Mediocre, Average, or Terrible 2nd base defense. The problem to me is that everyone is copycatting everybody else and 99% of them had never seen him play. And this applies to almost everything you hear about prospects in regards to defense, it seems like, and that’s also where I have issue with guys like Peguero or Castillo. Holy shit, like how many people talking about these guys have even ever seen a picture of one of them?
So when I argued about Ackley defense I said, “Look, I don’t know if he plays good or bad defense. All I know is that he’s been playing 2nd base for x amount of months. I never expected him to learn it over night. With his transition around the diamond in college based on injuries, I just have high hopes that he’ll be able to learn another new position. But the truth is, you’re just repeating what you heard from somebody else.” And when it comes to defense, even if you did see Ackley play in person, what is one game really going to tell you? What if you went to one Adrian Beltre game and he happened to have two errors or make two mistakes of any kind?
In conclusion, yeah, lots of copy-pasting is all I really meant to say. Sorry for so long again. I miss baseball?
Yeah, agreed. Most people read lists of most people that read articles based on lists from most people that read one scouting report maybe from someone that may or may not have any expertise.
I suppose that people have issues with players transitioning to a position later because it’s just not common, but it strikes me that prospect evaluators are more awful at putting things in context than it seems like they ought to be.
I know this would be defeating the purpose of 1 list
And also I would be using a marker that does not represent a uniform marker amongst everyone, but wouldn’t it be better if there was a U21 (under 21) and O21 (over 21) list ? That would show the depth organizations have in both the high and low minors in my opinion.
I like Hulet's work a lot so I don't consider this a slight on him when I say this
But this list screams of “I just read other lists and created my own.” I’ve seen him do pretty good analysis before and provide his opinions, but most of his thoughts here don’t read very strong.
Yeah, I don't read the lists often but I do read the individual player information.
I’m starting to get pretty down on these lists because it’s clearer and clearer that most people that write them are basing them on nothing but what other people have written about them, usually in blurb form rather than even reading an entire scouting report.
The more lists come out though, the harder it seems for anyone to go out on a limb. I think I did an okay job with my rankings in Grand Salami last year, but I also feel like the way last season turned out I have all the more reason to use my own instincts on the matter (I had Chavez as our 6th best hitting prospect, BA and Fangraphs both had him at our 7th best OVERALL prospect and BP held off and put him at #10). Granted, last year we really did not have a lot of good hitting prospects to work with.
It’s seeing other writers say that he has lots of tools and then having them place him high on the list. Otherwise he’d be right with Triunfel if these lists were at all objective.
And for writers that don’t follow the Mariners farm system with any regularity, the fact that Triunfel has been disappointing so far shouldn’t be an issue, and these random bloggers and national writers should be objective if they looked at scouting or watched players themselves, since they haven’t been following the M’s farm system with the bias eye that Mariner fans do. But The Triuff (as his teammates call him) isn’t on these lists, while Martinez is.
In your case, you primarily followed one system, you did more than read other people’s lists, you saw some things yourself, you followed various stats, and I’m assuming on occasion you either read complete scouting reports or watched a video or saw him play or something that would help you develop an opinion of your own. Most list builders don’t do that stuff for players they’re ranking.
I really don't see how Ruffin always gets ranked so highly.
He projects to have, what, 2-3 wins of surplus value over the course of his team control years?
For example, even if Catricala has a 70% chance of busting out, isn’t a 20% chance that he becomes a regular and a 10% chance that he becomes above-average worth more?
seriously? Great contact rates, good discipline, shows plus power, made the leap to AA with flying colors. And he’s 10th?
I could understand questioning his tools (which he kind of disproved in AA but anyway) but it’s always about his defense. It’s not like F-Mart’s defense is good either. Ugh, whatever. I don’t think a 3B to LF switch deserves basically a 100 spot drop but it’s not my list.
This is probably a weak argument, but I'm going to start a dialogue on it anyway.
How can we argue that Edgar should be in the Hall of Fame but put a major ding on any player that can’t play defense? Now of course, maybe Marc Hulet doesn’t think Edgar SHOULD be in the Hall, but I wonder if there are people out there that say “Edgar should be in the Hall AND Catricala should be 10th in the system or Jesus Montero shouldn’t be above Hultzen and Walker and maybe Paxton and Franklin too.” or whatever.
Of course, Edgar was one of the best hitters of his era, but I just wonder about any possible correlation (or non-correlation?) between dinging a player for playing shitty defense and then defending Edgar to the death. Of course, if you have two hitters of equal talent and one is a DH and one is a SS, you take the SS (or any position) but to what end? How much do you ding a player like Cat?
If his bat is as good this year as it was last year, then I think he’s a lock for #6 in the system, and that’s only because the top 5 is so good. (Not counting any graduations of course)
And Marc didn't really go into detail about how well Catricala hit.
I’m reminding myself right now on BR.
It was only 62 games in AA, but Catricala was the best hitter in the league at age 22. The 2nd best hitter was probably Paul Goldschmidt, who is a year older than Catricala and everyone was starting to fall in love with Goldschmidt.
PG hit .306/.435/.626 in 457 PAs
VC hit .347/.420/.632 in 276 PAs.
Can probably could stand to walk more based on that, but when you’re hitting .347, it’s hard not to swing I imagine. More well-rounded numbers: .403 BABIP, .285 ISO, 8.7 BB%, 17 K%, 25% LD, 183 wOBA+. He hit 6 HR in his last 9 games and started to draw more walks. I imagine that had something to do with his ridiculously hot bat.
On the road he had a more reasonable .358 BABIP, but still hit .322/.386/.504.
Yasmani Grandal at the same age hit .301/.360/.474 in 172 PAs.
There aren’t a lot of great prospects in the league (way better numbers than Tyler Pastornicky, Tim Beckham, Josh Vitters, Carlos Triunfel) but he was the best hitter in terms of production at least and putting up numbers you’d expect from someone 2-3 years older.
And he got better not worse when he left high desert.
I think people miss the boat on Catricala when they start to look over the M’s system, because he wasn’t highly rated in the draft, but we’ll see what he does in Tacoma this year. He’ll be one of the top guys to watch.
(I know you know these things JY, but just scratching out my findings for everyone to see.)
I think they said that he was a pretty good defensive third baseman. But everything was so much different back then in terms of scouting, rankings, etc.
The M’s shouldn’t have left him in Calgary in 1988, but at 22 in the Southern League he had a great eye and that was about it. He repeated the level the next year and was essentially the same player.
Edgar is unique, and his career arc is fascinating.
Positional adjustments are how much you ding a player
For example as Matthew noted earlier, the difference between a DH and a Catcher just from positional adjustment is 30 runs. The same hitter as a catcher is worth a full 3 wins more than the same hitter as a DH. Put another way that means the average DH needs to provide 30 more runs with his bat than the average catcher does to provide average value. This is an enormous difference. If you can’t play a position, you reeeeeeally have to have an amazing bat to make up for it, you can’t just be an alright hitter, you have to be a really good hitter.
The reason we talk about Edgar in the hall of fame is that he was such an amazing hitter that he was able to provide excellent value even when playing DH. Being restricted to DH is a major knock against a player no doubt, but it’s possible to be good enough at it to be a hall of famer, just quite a lot harder than if you can play a position.
Sure, if he was a great defensive third baseman, then it would be a big run adjustment. But how many of those are there? Ryan Zimmerman? Ryan Braun was a terrible third baseman, but would anyone go back and change his prospect status based on the fact that they knew he was going to cost you x amount of runs in the field?
If people just flat out said “Catricala is a bad third baseman, a not-very-good-outfielder, or a not-very-good-first basemen but he doesn’t have to DH” then would we rank him higher? Do we rank him lower just because everyone implies that he can’t play any defensive position at all? If he played shitty first base and wasn’t blocked, would we just go “Who cares if it’s shitty, its first base”? It’s only because we know that he won’t play 1st unless something happens to Smoak.
If Vincent Catricala was drafted in the first round instead of the tenth (and I think in a re-draft he would definitely be a first round pick) would he get more respect?
I just realized that in that first paragraph I didn't mention Adrian Beltre as a great defensive third baseman that can hit. Still, there aren't many of them.
The positional difference between DH and 3B is still 20 runs
That’s the average 3B and the average DH, it’s not really taking defensive ability into account yet. 20 runs difference just from the position difference itself. Two full wins. If he’s a bad defensive 3B it eats into the positional difference to play him there instead of at DH or somewhere else. If he’s so bad he can’t play 3B and has to play DH, he loses 20 runs of value.
If he’s a LF, the positional difference between LF and DH is 10 runs. Again this isn’t factoring in his actual proficiency at the position yet, just positional adjustments based on the value of the position assuming defensive ability is held static.
From this you should get a sense that the hierarchy of positions makes a big difference in projecting value of a player
Players who are up in the air as far as a place to play carry a higher risk of winding up at DH (or a lesser valued position) and having their utility for a baseball team severely restricted to just their bat or a position that doesn’t matter as much for preventing runs. If this happens, they need to be much better hitters to still be useful because there are a lot more people who can hit but not play a position than who can hit and also play a position. Which is also why there are very few people who can play one of the premium positions like Catcher or Shortstop and also hit well.
Considering how many DH's are underwhelming, what's the run differential between the potential ceiling of Catricala and the average DH?
I mean (and I know that perhaps I’m reaching, and I admit that) lets say that you lose 20 runs of value because a hitter is a DH. But you gain 10-20 runs over value from going to a mediocre DH to a great one. Then what? How do we “rank” that value?
Do you mean, the M’s should account for the fact that they’ve been running out shitty DHs for years when they look at Catricala?
Or do you mean, the position adjustment was created when DHs could actually hit, but the current crop are terrible, and thus he should get some extra weight to account for the scarcity of quality bats?
Fundamentally, all of this comes out when you calculate his WAR. He loses 20 runs for being a DH, but he’s 20 runs better with the bat, well, he’s a league average player again. Nifty! If you think the current WAR components (as used at Fangraphs, B-Ref, B-Pro, whatever) aren’t right, you can always make up your own.
What do you think Catricala would put up in a full season in 2012? How about 2015?
I can't tell if you're being snarky? But I think maybe you are.
I was asking a serious question. Because I didn’t know the answer to how different his value would be if he turned out to be a great hitter and at what point would being a great DH make him a great prospect.
I mean, if a guy is worth 100 runs with the bat, then he’s awesome no matter what position he plays. I really can’t say what would make someone a “great prospect” for you, esp. since I don’t really know how to elucidate a clear guideline for myself. But I honestly, non-snarkily, don’t know what you mean when you say, “But you gain 10-20 runs over value from going to a mediocre DH to a great one. Then what?”
I mean… I’m still trying to wrap my head around how we are supposed to view bat-only players. Better or worse than “defense only” players? Or the only thing that matters is how the runs balance out.
I guess what I was trying to get at, and knowing that it’s an incomplete and probably inaccurate argument, is that if any team needs a bat only player, it’s the Mariners. Maybe not in terms of +/- runs, but in terms of “God this team is hard to watch sometimes.”
That has nothing to do with Cat’s prospect status, obviously, but I do feel that even if he’s a bat-only player, he doesn’t get enough respect because he wasn’t viewed as a great prospect coming in, or because he won’t play 1B in the majors… maybe he’s being undervalued.
As a fan who is still learning about all this fancy 20th century statometric analysis
I appreciate your public struggles and commitment to work through and try to figure it out. I learn from your questions, the questions that I’m too fearful and socially retarded to ask on my own. So thanks for looking like the guy you were 3 years ago.
Positional adjustments are how much you ding a player
For example as Matthew noted earlier, the difference between a DH and a Catcher just from positional adjustment is 30 runs. The same hitter as a catcher is worth a full 3 wins more than the same hitter as a DH. Put another way that means the average DH needs to provide 30 more runs with his bat than the average catcher does to provide average value. This is an enormous difference. If you can’t play a position, you reeeeeeally have to have an amazing bat to make up for it, you can’t just be an alright hitter, you have to be a really good hitter.
The reason we talk about Edgar in the hall of fame is that he was such an amazing hitter that he was able to provide excellent value even when playing DH. Being restricted to DH is a major knock against a player no doubt, but it’s possible to be good enough at it to be a hall of famer, just quite a lot harder than if you can play a position.
Jay or Marc, is Catricala a bad defensive player, or a truly atrocious one?
I mean if we get a good bat in the lineup in exchange for having, say, Jose Lopez at third base, that’s fine. It’s a big difference if we have to get Raul Ibanez in left to get that bat out there.
Sounds like he’s not going to get a lot of time at 3B. I may have a jaundiced eye after watching the likes of Brad Nelson, Bryan LaHair and (early) Mike Carp patrol LF.
I just remember hearing that Alex Liddi was worse than a folding chair at 3B, and for a while, he actually looked atrocious. But by the midpoint of the year, I thought he was fine. Not good, but not bad either. I’m hoping that Catricala’s the same way.
The reports on him were on both extreme. The managers said he was the best defensive 3B in the Cal League. The Southern League report on him was that he was so stiff he had to move to first. When you get reports on both extremes, that’s problematic.
There are guys that don’t try, and have good tools. There are guys that try but are erratic and have good tools (Tenbrink is a good example here). There are guys that don’t try and have bad tools. There are guys that try and have bad tools.
I think that Catricala is closest to the last one. His arm strength, range, et al, are passable, and he would aspire to be averagem but it’s not because he’s phoning it in out there.
Not totally on topic, but not totally off topic either
KLaw put his list out today, Ms have five players on it in order – Montero, Walker, Hultzen, Paxton, and Franklin at 57. So, 5 of the top 60. Pretty good!
Also, there’s this, from Yankee focused Captain’s Blog:
Appears as though the Ms have the highest ‘prospect score’ which is surely worth some kind of prize.
Just how bad would his defense at 3B or LF have to be to justify not having his bat in the line up, and is there a real possibility of that happening? I mean he couldn’t possibly end up being worse at 3B than, say, Miguel Cabrera, right?
Oh boy!
I don’t know about ranking Martin Peguero that high. Also Chiang might be too high.
JY - February 8, 2012
Yeah, it's a weird mix.
F-Mart/Ruffin too high, Peguero too. But I like dropping Pimentel down a bit, and I also like the ranking of Erasmo Ramirez. I understand why Liddi isn’t even ranked, but I don’t agree with it.
marc w - February 8, 2012
When I was thinking about prospect lists the other day, I just couldn't help but think I wouldn't rank anyone below a certain level or age.
If a guy is 3-4+ years away, I don’t see the benefit of doing it. You can only go off of so much until they play against real competition. Even if you start at low-A. Rank the guys that mean something in the next 2-3 years and that you have a better idea of, even if you think you’ve got the next Miguel Cabrera… keep Peguero and Castillo in a sidenote.
Kenneth Arthur - February 8, 2012
I think if you've got someone with the tools to be a dominating player
they’ve got to be on the list, though you have to account for the higher risk. A lot of lists that go for upside seem to forget that, but then the alternative would be a safer list that didn’t actually reflect the talent of the system.
Obviously, everyone balances these factors in their own way, which leads to things like Ruffin coming in right between Phillips Castillo and Martin Peguero.
marc w - February 8, 2012
Someone with the tools to be a dominating player and a risk that justifies putting them on the list would probably not be 4 years out.
Maybe I’m wrong but I can’t remember the last time someone was number 1-4 on a list because of their amazing toolset for 4 straight years.
CapSea - February 8, 2012
Triunfel was #4, #4, #5 2008-2010.
So close.
JY - February 8, 2012
He'll pan out though so it's cool.
CapSea - February 8, 2012
Ryan Anderson!
Seriously though, you’re right. It’s not about what level they’re at. If someone has amazing tools across the board, they won’t take 4 years to make it. You’ll see someone ranked because they have a few amazing tools and a few glaring weaknesses (the Guillermo Pimentel/Greg Halman types), but that’s a separate issue.
marc w - February 9, 2012
I agree wholeheartedly
I think that unless a prospect hasn’t played an inning at AA any writeup just reads as “hes a really fast toddler who wont stick at short/cant take a walk/any number of huge weaknesses” in my eyes. You end up getting the Triunfel/Michael Inoa syndrome when you list those players and it makes a fan-base impatient with players who sometimes will take longer to develop. These guys seem like world beaters, then the world beats them once, and their stock plummets it seems.
dougstrangerthanfiction - February 8, 2012
I understand it's risky
but then what do you do with Bryce Harper last year, or Manny Machado, Taijuan Walker, Jurickson Profar now?
You’ll certainly see a lot fewer out-and-out busts if you restrict the lists to the high minors, but then you’d get an M’s list that ranks, say, Carlos Triunfel ahead of Taijuan Walker. Does that help anyone understand the talent in the system?
marc w - February 9, 2012
My thoughts on ranking were more like this:
If I came out with a 2012 list this year, I wouldn’t put any 2011 draftees on it. I also wouldn’t put any IFA’s under 20 on it unless they had shot up the system and already had significant time in A-ball.
That still allows me to have Harper, Trout, Machado, Walker, Profar, but I don’t have to rank a guy like Danny Hultzen or Gerrit Cole before they’ve ever pitched in the minors.
Kenneth Arthur - February 9, 2012
Understandable
But I think we know enough about college baseball to say that Gerrit Cole is one of the best prospects in the Pirates system. I understand he hasn’t been through the meat grinder of the Northwest League, and hasn’t annihilated 20 year old prospects in the Midwest League, and maybe you’d downgrade him for that, but the Pirates have a huge RHP who can throw in the mid-upper 90s and who has a decent breaking ball or two. Should we ignore that?
marc w - February 9, 2012
No, not ignore because obviously some of the 2011 draftees are really good prospects that will turn into really good baseball players.
At the same time, I can look at Shelby Miller and say “He dominated minor league hitters at this level and this level” blah blah blah. But with Cole, I have only college information to go off of and scouting reports. What do they say about comparing college baseball to a minor league system? Is it comparable to low-a? (I really don’t know) But I do know that he faces hitters many hitters that won’t be good enough to play in the minor leagues.
So you go back to 2007 for example and see David Price at #1. Just a dominating lefty prospect. His first year, BA ranked him 10th. A lofty ranking. He was so good that year that they bumped him to 2nd. But what if I just didn’t rank him in 2008? I could still rank him 2nd in 2009 and now I know he was actually underrated (very slightly) in 2008 anyway.
Then you’ve got Josh Vitters, ranked 43rd in 2008. Then 51st. Then 70th. Then off. I could have avoided most of that slide if I just never ranked him based on his lofty prospect status before he had much time in the minors (51 at bats in 2007 at age 17)
That year they also ranked Ross Detwiler (6th overall) 51st. I would have never had to rank him based on his scouting report. He would have never made a top 100, s he shouldn’t have.
Meanwhile, Madison Bumgarner was NOT ranked out of that draft in 2008, but then shot up to 9th after they saw him pitch. I could have just waited a year and ranked him 9th and forget the whole part where I left him off of my top 100 based on scouting reports.
Of course, prospect evaluation is an inexact science. You are always going to have errors. I just think you have less errors this way. BA always has a top 100 with too many draftees from the prior year on it (in my opinion) and then you leave off other guys that might deserve some recognition. Either way, at least I would feel confident that my ranking of players after a year in the minors will always be more accurate than ranking them before they play.
In the end, you could have a top 100, and then a list that ranks the top 30 draftees and IFAs (or something) and that way you’d also have a way to talk about more draftees that you are interested in.
Kenneth Arthur - February 9, 2012
Who cares if a guy is left off one year or subsequently falls?
Just look at who is doing the rankings and what their proclivities are. Anyone ranking Martin Peguero as highly as Hulet does either has great scouting info for him that he believes in or is wishcasting or whatever. If respectable scouts loved what they saw in Vitters it would be stupid to not rank him. At that time, he had a high ceiling. Ok so fine. Now we have more data and he isn’t ranked anymore.That doesn’t mean it wasn’t reasonable at the time. Was it reasonable to have Jeff Clement and Michael Saunders rated highly? Yup. Now? Nope. Things change. It’s stupid to penalize people for that happening unless they are making fundamental mistakes in their evaluation.
abender20 - February 9, 2012
Well, I'm not trying to "penalize" anyone.
I don’t mean for it to come off that way. Everyone has a right to do it the way that they want to do it.
My only point was that I felt it would be more accurately predictive if we used that extra year of data before ranking a player. Of course, it’s never going to be super accurate, but I just feel that it would be more accurate and that it’s very rare for an 18 or 19 year old to make the majors anyway, so you’re still going to have a chance to rank them at some point and say, “This guy has proven his lofty draft status, and now I make him 15th” or whatever.
Kenneth Arthur - February 9, 2012
I agree w/abender's comment above, and it seems like the disagreement
centers on what these lists are for. You focus on their predictive power, and the best way to cut error is to eliminate the high-risk guys so you wouldn’t have spectacular misses.
But I take the rankings/lists as a snapshot of a team’s minor-league talent. You’re absolutely right that you’d get a better sense of draft picks after they plan in the minors, but I don’t want to ignore the #3 pick in the amateur draft when discussing the M’s talent next year. I think it’d be crazy if we all pretended we had absolutely no clue if Danny Hultzen was any good. You’d avoid making a huge mistake, like assuming Matt Bush WAS good, but I don’t care as much about that.
marc w - February 9, 2012
I see what you're saying.
In the case of the Mariners or Pirates or really anyone that picked a high-upside player or two that immediately becomes the top prospect in the system in many cases, I would be ignoring someone very important.
I can’t really get around that part of it, yet. It’s a glaring flaw in my system.
Kenneth Arthur - February 9, 2012
Interesting/timely piece
by Dave Cameron on this issue today at fangraphs.
marc w - February 9, 2012
No, I disagree with this.
I do think 2011 draftees make sense to add, since many of them are 1/2 years away and thus close to making an impact. Maybe be more conservative on them, but hell – some may have even played a bit in 2011, and discounting that seems silly.
On the flipside, though, toolsy players that are simply not good yet and are years away shouldn’t be on these lists, because their likelihood of making an impact is almost nothing and there are far more of them. Similarly relievers should almost never make a top 10, IFAs probably shouldn’t unless they’ve somehow put something together that makes it appear they’ll be up in 2 years…
They really just need to be calculated by percentages. A player that has the tools to be a 6 win player but only a 10% likelihood of making it should be given .6. A player that looks to be a potential 4 win player with a 20% chance of making it should be given .8, and so on.
CapSea - February 9, 2012
Yeah, I go a little more extreme than that. I wholeheartedly agree that Castillo and Peguero are way too far off to rank.
I just perhaps would take it a step further. For instance, when you draft a HS player in the top 5, he might be an exceptional player like Bubba Starling but he’s still 4 years away. So you do or don’t rank him while you do rank Anthony Rendon? If I just have a simple cutoff, it makes it simple. But I am going to another extreme.
Kenneth Arthur - February 9, 2012
I would assume that if someone were to develop a risk/reward calculation for these rankings
It would account for this naturally. True unbelievable talents like Bryce Harper would still make the lists, but toolsy Dominicans probably wouldn’t, because the risk (depending on the player) would presumably be higher. But who knows.
Regardless of how they’re ranked, they shouldn’t be ranked using other people’s lists as a reference, nor should they use blog posts based on the rankings of others. Raw scouting reports, numbers, and personal opinion based on personal scouting should really be all that’s involved, and without that it doesn’t really make sense to provide one of these rankings. May as well cut and paste someone else’s ranking and then give your opinion of it each time like we do here.
CapSea - February 9, 2012
Yeah, head over to MinorLeagueBall and try to have a discussion and argue against the norm on a player, like what I had to do when talking about Dustin Ackley's defense.
The truth of the matter is that all I had to go on in regards to Ackley’s 2B defense before he hit Seattle, was reports. And so when I went over there and said, “I don’t see any reason why he can’t play 2B in the majors at this point,” it turned into a pretty ugly argument. But overall, EVERYBODY WITH AN OPINION WAS GOING OFF OF SHIT THAT THEY READ, MOSTLY THE SAME SHIT THAT I READ. And then how did 99% of all the Ackley defense reports read: BAD DEFENSE? Because 90% of it was “Well, I read it here and wrote it” and “Well, I read it from THAT guy and wrote it.” and nobody can trace it back to the source. For all we know, the Architect from The Matrix started the rumor and it just spreads like wild fire.
That’s not to say that Ackley was playing great defense. That’s not to say he was playing Good, Bad, Mediocre, Average, or Terrible 2nd base defense. The problem to me is that everyone is copycatting everybody else and 99% of them had never seen him play. And this applies to almost everything you hear about prospects in regards to defense, it seems like, and that’s also where I have issue with guys like Peguero or Castillo. Holy shit, like how many people talking about these guys have even ever seen a picture of one of them?
So when I argued about Ackley defense I said, “Look, I don’t know if he plays good or bad defense. All I know is that he’s been playing 2nd base for x amount of months. I never expected him to learn it over night. With his transition around the diamond in college based on injuries, I just have high hopes that he’ll be able to learn another new position. But the truth is, you’re just repeating what you heard from somebody else.” And when it comes to defense, even if you did see Ackley play in person, what is one game really going to tell you? What if you went to one Adrian Beltre game and he happened to have two errors or make two mistakes of any kind?
In conclusion, yeah, lots of copy-pasting is all I really meant to say. Sorry for so long again. I miss baseball?
Kenneth Arthur - February 9, 2012
Yeah, agreed. Most people read lists of most people that read articles based on lists from most people that read one scouting report maybe from someone that may or may not have any expertise.
I miss Mike Wilson already.
CapSea - February 9, 2012
The Ackley defense discussions drove me batty.
I suppose that people have issues with players transitioning to a position later because it’s just not common, but it strikes me that prospect evaluators are more awful at putting things in context than it seems like they ought to be.
JY - February 9, 2012
I know this would be defeating the purpose of 1 list
And also I would be using a marker that does not represent a uniform marker amongst everyone, but wouldn’t it be better if there was a U21 (under 21) and O21 (over 21) list ? That would show the depth organizations have in both the high and low minors in my opinion.
dougstrangerthanfiction - February 9, 2012
F-Mart and Ruffin being too high has been a recurring thing though.
JY - February 8, 2012
Yes, definitely.
marc w - February 8, 2012
Yeah, amongst people who don't look at performance.
abender20 - February 8, 2012
I like Hulet's work a lot so I don't consider this a slight on him when I say this
But this list screams of “I just read other lists and created my own.” I’ve seen him do pretty good analysis before and provide his opinions, but most of his thoughts here don’t read very strong.
CapSea - February 8, 2012
Most of his prospect lists to date have read similarly, in my opinion.
There’s his thing for Johermyn Chavez, but every list writer has some guy that they think is very much underrated.
JY - February 8, 2012
Yeah, I don't read the lists often but I do read the individual player information.
I’m starting to get pretty down on these lists because it’s clearer and clearer that most people that write them are basing them on nothing but what other people have written about them, usually in blurb form rather than even reading an entire scouting report.
CapSea - February 8, 2012
And I think that the reason Martinez has been high on each one is because everyone's reading other lists that have him high up.
Not because anyone’s actually reading anything of value about him as a player
CapSea - February 8, 2012
Toolsy.
The more lists come out though, the harder it seems for anyone to go out on a limb. I think I did an okay job with my rankings in Grand Salami last year, but I also feel like the way last season turned out I have all the more reason to use my own instincts on the matter (I had Chavez as our 6th best hitting prospect, BA and Fangraphs both had him at our 7th best OVERALL prospect and BP held off and put him at #10). Granted, last year we really did not have a lot of good hitting prospects to work with.
JY - February 8, 2012
I don't think it's just the tools though.
It’s seeing other writers say that he has lots of tools and then having them place him high on the list. Otherwise he’d be right with Triunfel if these lists were at all objective.
And for writers that don’t follow the Mariners farm system with any regularity, the fact that Triunfel has been disappointing so far shouldn’t be an issue, and these random bloggers and national writers should be objective if they looked at scouting or watched players themselves, since they haven’t been following the M’s farm system with the bias eye that Mariner fans do. But The Triuff (as his teammates call him) isn’t on these lists, while Martinez is.
In your case, you primarily followed one system, you did more than read other people’s lists, you saw some things yourself, you followed various stats, and I’m assuming on occasion you either read complete scouting reports or watched a video or saw him play or something that would help you develop an opinion of your own. Most list builders don’t do that stuff for players they’re ranking.
CapSea - February 8, 2012
Marc Hulet sure likes ellipses...
Mariner John - February 8, 2012
That's better than liking Johermyn Chavez.
JY - February 8, 2012
I really don't see how Ruffin always gets ranked so highly.
He projects to have, what, 2-3 wins of surplus value over the course of his team control years?
For example, even if Catricala has a 70% chance of busting out, isn’t a 20% chance that he becomes a regular and a 10% chance that he becomes above-average worth more?
lailaihei - February 8, 2012
Hulet is a weird fit on Fangraphs, seeing as how he is almsot entirely old school scout based and ignores the numbers.
abender20 - February 8, 2012
So he's an improvement
Poochie - February 8, 2012
Catricala
seriously? Great contact rates, good discipline, shows plus power, made the leap to AA with flying colors. And he’s 10th?
I could understand questioning his tools (which he kind of disproved in AA but anyway) but it’s always about his defense. It’s not like F-Mart’s defense is good either. Ugh, whatever. I don’t think a 3B to LF switch deserves basically a 100 spot drop but it’s not my list.
valencia - February 8, 2012
This is probably a weak argument, but I'm going to start a dialogue on it anyway.
How can we argue that Edgar should be in the Hall of Fame but put a major ding on any player that can’t play defense? Now of course, maybe Marc Hulet doesn’t think Edgar SHOULD be in the Hall, but I wonder if there are people out there that say “Edgar should be in the Hall AND Catricala should be 10th in the system or Jesus Montero shouldn’t be above Hultzen and Walker and maybe Paxton and Franklin too.” or whatever.
Of course, Edgar was one of the best hitters of his era, but I just wonder about any possible correlation (or non-correlation?) between dinging a player for playing shitty defense and then defending Edgar to the death. Of course, if you have two hitters of equal talent and one is a DH and one is a SS, you take the SS (or any position) but to what end? How much do you ding a player like Cat?
If his bat is as good this year as it was last year, then I think he’s a lock for #6 in the system, and that’s only because the top 5 is so good. (Not counting any graduations of course)
Kenneth Arthur - February 9, 2012
Catricala has at least done one of the things already that everyone seems to be hoping Martinez might do, i.e., hit.
JY - February 9, 2012
And Marc didn't really go into detail about how well Catricala hit.
I’m reminding myself right now on BR.
It was only 62 games in AA, but Catricala was the best hitter in the league at age 22. The 2nd best hitter was probably Paul Goldschmidt, who is a year older than Catricala and everyone was starting to fall in love with Goldschmidt.
PG hit .306/.435/.626 in 457 PAs
VC hit .347/.420/.632 in 276 PAs.
Can probably could stand to walk more based on that, but when you’re hitting .347, it’s hard not to swing I imagine. More well-rounded numbers: .403 BABIP, .285 ISO, 8.7 BB%, 17 K%, 25% LD, 183 wOBA+. He hit 6 HR in his last 9 games and started to draw more walks. I imagine that had something to do with his ridiculously hot bat.
On the road he had a more reasonable .358 BABIP, but still hit .322/.386/.504.
Yasmani Grandal at the same age hit .301/.360/.474 in 172 PAs.
There aren’t a lot of great prospects in the league (way better numbers than Tyler Pastornicky, Tim Beckham, Josh Vitters, Carlos Triunfel) but he was the best hitter in terms of production at least and putting up numbers you’d expect from someone 2-3 years older.
And he got better not worse when he left high desert.
I think people miss the boat on Catricala when they start to look over the M’s system, because he wasn’t highly rated in the draft, but we’ll see what he does in Tacoma this year. He’ll be one of the top guys to watch.
(I know you know these things JY, but just scratching out my findings for everyone to see.)
Kenneth Arthur - February 9, 2012
I get what you're aiming at by saying this.
More information is better in my opinion.
JY - February 9, 2012
What were prospect scouts saying about Edgar when he was coming up?
stredarts - February 9, 2012
I think they said that he was a pretty good defensive third baseman. But everything was so much different back then in terms of scouting, rankings, etc.
Kenneth Arthur - February 9, 2012
Probably something like "too passive," "no power"
The M’s shouldn’t have left him in Calgary in 1988, but at 22 in the Southern League he had a great eye and that was about it. He repeated the level the next year and was essentially the same player.
Edgar is unique, and his career arc is fascinating.
marc w - February 9, 2012
Positional adjustments are how much you ding a player
For example as Matthew noted earlier, the difference between a DH and a Catcher just from positional adjustment is 30 runs. The same hitter as a catcher is worth a full 3 wins more than the same hitter as a DH. Put another way that means the average DH needs to provide 30 more runs with his bat than the average catcher does to provide average value. This is an enormous difference. If you can’t play a position, you reeeeeeally have to have an amazing bat to make up for it, you can’t just be an alright hitter, you have to be a really good hitter.
The reason we talk about Edgar in the hall of fame is that he was such an amazing hitter that he was able to provide excellent value even when playing DH. Being restricted to DH is a major knock against a player no doubt, but it’s possible to be good enough at it to be a hall of famer, just quite a lot harder than if you can play a position.
OlSalty - February 9, 2012
But Vincent Catricala is not a catcher.
Sure, if he was a great defensive third baseman, then it would be a big run adjustment. But how many of those are there? Ryan Zimmerman? Ryan Braun was a terrible third baseman, but would anyone go back and change his prospect status based on the fact that they knew he was going to cost you x amount of runs in the field?
If people just flat out said “Catricala is a bad third baseman, a not-very-good-outfielder, or a not-very-good-first basemen but he doesn’t have to DH” then would we rank him higher? Do we rank him lower just because everyone implies that he can’t play any defensive position at all? If he played shitty first base and wasn’t blocked, would we just go “Who cares if it’s shitty, its first base”? It’s only because we know that he won’t play 1st unless something happens to Smoak.
If Vincent Catricala was drafted in the first round instead of the tenth (and I think in a re-draft he would definitely be a first round pick) would he get more respect?
Kenneth Arthur - February 9, 2012
I just realized that in that first paragraph I didn't mention Adrian Beltre as a great defensive third baseman that can hit. Still, there aren't many of them.
Kenneth Arthur - February 9, 2012
The positional difference between DH and 3B is still 20 runs
That’s the average 3B and the average DH, it’s not really taking defensive ability into account yet. 20 runs difference just from the position difference itself. Two full wins. If he’s a bad defensive 3B it eats into the positional difference to play him there instead of at DH or somewhere else. If he’s so bad he can’t play 3B and has to play DH, he loses 20 runs of value.
If he’s a LF, the positional difference between LF and DH is 10 runs. Again this isn’t factoring in his actual proficiency at the position yet, just positional adjustments based on the value of the position assuming defensive ability is held static.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/position-adjustments/
OlSalty - February 9, 2012
From this you should get a sense that the hierarchy of positions makes a big difference in projecting value of a player
Players who are up in the air as far as a place to play carry a higher risk of winding up at DH (or a lesser valued position) and having their utility for a baseball team severely restricted to just their bat or a position that doesn’t matter as much for preventing runs. If this happens, they need to be much better hitters to still be useful because there are a lot more people who can hit but not play a position than who can hit and also play a position. Which is also why there are very few people who can play one of the premium positions like Catcher or Shortstop and also hit well.
OlSalty - February 9, 2012
Considering how many DH's are underwhelming, what's the run differential between the potential ceiling of Catricala and the average DH?
I mean (and I know that perhaps I’m reaching, and I admit that) lets say that you lose 20 runs of value because a hitter is a DH. But you gain 10-20 runs over value from going to a mediocre DH to a great one. Then what? How do we “rank” that value?
Kenneth Arthur - February 9, 2012
What do you mean?
Do you mean, the M’s should account for the fact that they’ve been running out shitty DHs for years when they look at Catricala?
Or do you mean, the position adjustment was created when DHs could actually hit, but the current crop are terrible, and thus he should get some extra weight to account for the scarcity of quality bats?
Fundamentally, all of this comes out when you calculate his WAR. He loses 20 runs for being a DH, but he’s 20 runs better with the bat, well, he’s a league average player again. Nifty! If you think the current WAR components (as used at Fangraphs, B-Ref, B-Pro, whatever) aren’t right, you can always make up your own.
What do you think Catricala would put up in a full season in 2012? How about 2015?
marc w - February 9, 2012
I can't tell if you're being snarky? But I think maybe you are.
I was asking a serious question. Because I didn’t know the answer to how different his value would be if he turned out to be a great hitter and at what point would being a great DH make him a great prospect.
Kenneth Arthur - February 9, 2012
Sorry, not being snarky at all.
I just don’t really understand your question.
I mean, if a guy is worth 100 runs with the bat, then he’s awesome no matter what position he plays. I really can’t say what would make someone a “great prospect” for you, esp. since I don’t really know how to elucidate a clear guideline for myself. But I honestly, non-snarkily, don’t know what you mean when you say, “But you gain 10-20 runs over value from going to a mediocre DH to a great one. Then what?”
marc w - February 9, 2012
Okay, yeah, absolutely.
I mean… I’m still trying to wrap my head around how we are supposed to view bat-only players. Better or worse than “defense only” players? Or the only thing that matters is how the runs balance out.
I guess what I was trying to get at, and knowing that it’s an incomplete and probably inaccurate argument, is that if any team needs a bat only player, it’s the Mariners. Maybe not in terms of +/- runs, but in terms of “God this team is hard to watch sometimes.”
That has nothing to do with Cat’s prospect status, obviously, but I do feel that even if he’s a bat-only player, he doesn’t get enough respect because he wasn’t viewed as a great prospect coming in, or because he won’t play 1B in the majors… maybe he’s being undervalued.
Kenneth Arthur - February 9, 2012
Every re-read your own posts and feel like you're posting something you would have said 3 years ago?
Kenneth Arthur - February 9, 2012
As a fan who is still learning about all this fancy 20th century statometric analysis
I appreciate your public struggles and commitment to work through and try to figure it out. I learn from your questions, the questions that I’m too fearful and socially retarded to ask on my own. So thanks for looking like the guy you were 3 years ago.
Craptastic-J - February 9, 2012
Ever re-read your own posts and feel like you didn't express what you wanted to say in a non-weird way?
Craptastic-J - February 9, 2012
Hey, I do what I can to help!
Kenneth Arthur - February 9, 2012
You're an entire century behind!
Matthew - February 9, 2012
You DON'T want to know who led the AL in game-winning RBI's last year?
marc w - February 9, 2012
At least 3 years behind, or however many years it takes to get back to the 1900s
I went all figgins after turning 25 and stopped trying to keep track of years
Craptastic-J - February 10, 2012
Positional adjustments are how much you ding a player
For example as Matthew noted earlier, the difference between a DH and a Catcher just from positional adjustment is 30 runs. The same hitter as a catcher is worth a full 3 wins more than the same hitter as a DH. Put another way that means the average DH needs to provide 30 more runs with his bat than the average catcher does to provide average value. This is an enormous difference. If you can’t play a position, you reeeeeeally have to have an amazing bat to make up for it, you can’t just be an alright hitter, you have to be a really good hitter.
The reason we talk about Edgar in the hall of fame is that he was such an amazing hitter that he was able to provide excellent value even when playing DH. Being restricted to DH is a major knock against a player no doubt, but it’s possible to be good enough at it to be a hall of famer, just quite a lot harder than if you can play a position.
OlSalty - February 9, 2012
Sorry for the double post, SBN is acting weird
OlSalty - February 9, 2012
On Catricala -
Jay or Marc, is Catricala a bad defensive player, or a truly atrocious one?
I mean if we get a good bat in the lineup in exchange for having, say, Jose Lopez at third base, that’s fine. It’s a big difference if we have to get Raul Ibanez in left to get that bat out there.
seattlebruin - February 9, 2012
I'm really excited to find out this year.
Sounds like he’s not going to get a lot of time at 3B. I may have a jaundiced eye after watching the likes of Brad Nelson, Bryan LaHair and (early) Mike Carp patrol LF.
I just remember hearing that Alex Liddi was worse than a folding chair at 3B, and for a while, he actually looked atrocious. But by the midpoint of the year, I thought he was fine. Not good, but not bad either. I’m hoping that Catricala’s the same way.
marc w - February 9, 2012
But that was an issue with Liddi.
The reports on him were on both extreme. The managers said he was the best defensive 3B in the Cal League. The Southern League report on him was that he was so stiff he had to move to first. When you get reports on both extremes, that’s problematic.
JY - February 9, 2012
There are degrees here just as everything else.
There are guys that don’t try, and have good tools. There are guys that try but are erratic and have good tools (Tenbrink is a good example here). There are guys that don’t try and have bad tools. There are guys that try and have bad tools.
I think that Catricala is closest to the last one. His arm strength, range, et al, are passable, and he would aspire to be averagem but it’s not because he’s phoning it in out there.
JY - February 9, 2012
I'll take (below) average defense at 3B or LF if it means having his bat in the line up.
As long as he isn’t Raul levels of bad.
Cascadian Man - February 10, 2012
Not totally on topic, but not totally off topic either
KLaw put his list out today, Ms have five players on it in order – Montero, Walker, Hultzen, Paxton, and Franklin at 57. So, 5 of the top 60. Pretty good!
Also, there’s this, from Yankee focused Captain’s Blog:
Appears as though the Ms have the highest ‘prospect score’ which is surely worth some kind of prize.
Bearskin Rugburn - February 9, 2012
Sorry, should have included link to their whole post
here.
Bearskin Rugburn - February 9, 2012
Not sure if anyone read the comments on the article or noticed that Hultzen and Montero share the same birthday.
I found that interesting
luciuswolfey_96 - February 9, 2012
Twinsies!
abender20 - February 9, 2012
In other news,
big sexy pic of Dustin Ackley on the SI homepage right now.
Slow Country - February 9, 2012
Regarding Catricala:
Just how bad would his defense at 3B or LF have to be to justify not having his bat in the line up, and is there a real possibility of that happening? I mean he couldn’t possibly end up being worse at 3B than, say, Miguel Cabrera, right?
Cascadian Man - February 10, 2012
He's not going to hit as well as Miguel Cabrera either.
CapSea - February 10, 2012
Not unless something crazy happens!
the tourist - February 10, 2012
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