The polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet — with assistance from celebrity guest Jason Churchill — has published today his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Seattle Mariners.

It goes without saying that, in composing such a list, Hulet has considered the overall future value those prospects might be expected to provide either to the Mariners or whatever other organizations to which they might someday belong.

What this brief post concerns isn’t overall future value, at all, but rather such value as the prospects from Hulet’s list might provide were they to play, more or less, a full major-league season in 2014.

Other Prospect Projections: Chicago AL / Miami.

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In June the Seattle Mariners took the University of New Mexico’s D.J. Peterson with the twelth overall pick in the Rule 4 Amateur Draft. Peterson represented one of the safest, most easily projectable bats in the draft class. He had mashed the ball all Spring for the Lobos and led the team to a Super Regional berth. His 18 home runs were good for third most in Division 1 – although he did play his home games in a very homer-friendly park. His short, explosive swing and quick hands excited scouts and appealed to scouting directors looking for a bat that could help relatively quickly. With a strong pro debut Peterson finished 2013 looking like a player every team would be glad to have in their farm system. There remains some questions as to whether Peterson can stay at third base in the long term though, and where he plays could swing his value pretty drastically.

As someone who covers amateurs and the draft fairly extensively I often see fans that prefer their team avoid a player like Peterson if there is some question of him moving to first base. After all, the defensive spectrum and conventional baseball wisdom tells us that good teams are built up the middle, with players on the right side of the defensive spectrum. Talking to amateur scouts I encounter a different attitude. They find it more than difficult enough to “hit” on a player and are quite often happy to find a safer choice like Peterson than they can project as a major league bat. After all, the general success rate of any first rounder making the majors isn’t great, so for many it’s very enticing to find a player you’re reasonably confident will hit in the big leagues. Both viewpoints have merit, of course. Personally, I have to be really convinced a player has a special bat for me to endorse him as a top of the first round pick. The offensive threshold expected at first base is just so lofty that it troubles me some to spend early picks on players with uncertain profiles. A prospect can develop into an above average major league hitter and still be only the 16th best first baseman in the majors (as in the case of  Nick Swisher this season with a .336 wOBA). When calculating WAR the positional adjustment for third base is +2.5, which is the same as that for second base and center field. The adjustment for first base is -12.5. Given the broad range of available quality hitters in free agency at first base and the extreme developmental demands on a first base prospect’s bat the question that then comes to mind is whether it makes sense for teams to draft a first baseman in the 1st round.

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The Seattle Mariners may have gotten the steal of the 2013 draft when they selected Austin Wilson in the second round. The 21-year-old outfielder is a five-tool player with a world of potential. And he has a Stanford pedigree.

He is also a bit of an enigma. Wilson has never quite lived up his billing: Expectations have been sky high since he was dubbed a potential first-round pick coming out of high school. He hit .295 in three collegiate seasons, but the 6-foot-5, 245-pound right-handed hitter remains more of a work-in-progress than a burgeoning superstar.

Wilson needs to rebound from an up-and-down campaign that has some doubting his future. He missed more than a month of his junior year due to an elbow injury; and in 56 games with Seattle’s short-season affiliate, the Everett AquaSox, he hit a lackluster .242/.319/.414.

Wilson talked about his hitting approach — and his introduction to pro ball — late in the minor league season. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mariners organization features some exciting young arms with seven of the Top 10 players applying their trade on the mound. The front office has done an exceptional job of acquiring talent both through the annual amateur draft and the international free agent market. Every player in the Top 15 was originally signed by the club. Seattle will enter 2014 with one of the best systems in baseball.

To make the Mariners list even more enjoyable this year, I enlisted the aid of a writer who probably knows the the system better than anyone outside of the organization. Jason Churchill of Prospect Insider — who you might also know from ESPN — graciously agreed to provide his thoughts and opinions on each player in the Top 10. We both wrote our comments separately with no input from each other so you may find some contradictions but, for the most part, our reports share a lot of similarities. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam discuss Jay Z’s potential to be a new kind of agent, and whether they’d want to be one of his clients.

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Episode 401
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he analyzes age curves, particularly as they relate to speed-oriented players such as free agent Jacoby Ellsbury.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 40 min play time.)

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As first reported by the Bay Area Sports Guy, the Giants are going to sign former Braves hurler Tim Hudson to a two year, $23 million contract. This is slightly higher than the FanGraphs Crowd’s expected price of $17 million over two years, but still in the same ballpark, essentially. And there are plenty of reasons to like this deal for the Giants.

Yes, Tim Hudson is heading into his age-38 season, and missed almost the entire second half of the season due to a broken ankle. And yes, the 108 ERA- he posted last year was the highest of his career. There are going to be assumptions that these factors suggest that Hudson is headed for serious decline. Don’t believe it.

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The Phillies just gave Carlos Ruiz a guaranteed three year contract that covers his age-35 to age-37 seasons. In both my defense of the deal here and on Twitter, I have invoked Russell Martin’s name as a comparison, but noting that Martin was a huge bargain last winter has met with some resistance because Martin is significantly younger than Ruiz. His two year deal with the Pirates covered his age-30/31 seasons, so Pittsburgh wasn’t committing guaranteed money deep into his mid-30s, as the Phillies are doing with Ruiz.

There simply aren’t that many examples of highly productive 35 year old catchers, as most catchers are on their last legs at this point in their career, and that has helped fuel the belief that catchers age very poorly. The belief that catchers age in dog years is a prevalent one, and is one of the main reasons that the Ruiz deal has been poorly received. However, I think the evidence mostly points to this idea being incorrect.

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If you are familiar with my previous studies on the battery, I have often struggled with preconceived notions regarding the relationship between the pitcher, the catcher and the running game. I have previously concluded that it is the pitcher who has more influence on the caught stealing percentage of the battery than the catcher. In addition, I’ve concluded that it is the pitcher who has more of an impact on the passed ball. Meanwhile, in box scores and in broadcast booths all around the country we continue to reward caught stealing and responsibility for the passed ball to the catcher. Fact is, there are many variables at play and as a result, there is a battery effect that must be considered.

In my continuing study on the relationship between the pitcher and the catcher, this article addresses one specific area of the battery effect and will question the conventional wisdom that the catcher’s arm is the determining factor in the outcome of a would be base stealer.

While there are many variables in play, for today we will solely look at timing of the battery and the past success of the battery, the pitcher, and the catcher in controlling the running game.
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When Increase Mather declared from under his pilgrim hat that “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” what he almost certainly had in mind is the sort of posts an internet baseball writer might produce in the lean months immediately following the conclusion of the season.

Indeed, Mather’s concerns have been realized today, for what follows is little more than a pair of leaderboards which attempt to answer (very roughly) the question, “Who was the best minor-league basestealer of 2013?”

For the purposes of this post, the “best” basestealer of 2013 is not merely the one who recorded the highest stolen-base total. Instead, what the author has done is to apply the linear-weight run values of a stolen base and caught stealing to the relevant totals of every minor-league player.

Such a methodology is not without its flaws, of course. For one thing, because the run environments of each minor league are likely to differ from the present major-league one, the precise value of a caught stealing is likely to differ, as well. Furthermore, one oughtn’t ignore the fact that the minor leagues exist predominantly for the development of future major-leaguers. It’s quite possible, therefore, that minor-league players might attempt stolen bases — for developmental purposes — in situations that wouldn’t otherwise call for such a risk.

For these reasons — and for others which the author is too simple to recognize — what follows represents, as mentioned, merely a rough attempt at identifying the best minor-league basestealer of 2013.

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