Evaluating The Prospects: Texas Rangers, Colorado Rockies, Arizona Diamondbacks & Minnesota Twins

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

The Diamondbacks have a solid system fronted by three right-handed starting pitchers that could all be factors in Arizona by the end of 2015.  The system has added depth with recent trades and solid drafts, but most of the top talent is in the upper levels, so Arizona will need to continue restocking the farm to have a continuous pipeline.

Here’s the primer for the series and a disclaimer about how we don’t really know anything.  See the links above for the two previous installments in this series and another series about how I evaluate, including four part on the ever-complicated hit tool, with more installments in that series coming soon.

Most of what you need to know for this list is at the above links, but I should add that the risk ratings are relative to their position, so average (3) risk for a pitcher is riskier than average risk (3) for a hitter, due injury/attrition being more common. I’d also take a 60 Future Value hitter over a 60 FV pitcher for the same reasons. Also, risk encompasses a dozen different things and I mention the important components of it for each player in the report.  The upside line for hitters is the realistic best-case scenario (in general, a notch better than the projected tools) and the Future Value encompasses this upside along with the risk rating for one overall rating number.

Below, I’ve included a quick ranking of the growth assets that Arizona has in the majors that aren’t eligible for the list and Dave Cameron shares some general thoughts on the organization. Scroll further down to see Carson Cistulli’s fringe prospect favorite and my first stab at an emoji scouting report. The next team up in the series, working from the bottom of the standings on up, is the Minnesota Twins.

Big League Growth Assets
1. A.J. Pollock, CF, Age 26
2. Chase Anderson, RHP, Age 26
3. Patrick Corbin, LHP, Age 25
4. Chris Owings, SS, Age 23
5. Didi Gregorius, SS, Age 24
6. Randall Delgado, RHP, Age 24

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Unless the Baltimore Orioles advance to the World Series, the 2014 book is closed on their slugging first baseman, Chris Davis. After breaking out in a big way with a 53-home-run tour de force in 2013, Davis crashed to earth this season, hitting half as many homers while losing 90 points off of his batting average before a 25-game suspension for Adderall usage brought his campaign to a premature halt. Just by watching him for even a couple of days, it’s easy to see that Davis is a high variance, all-or-nothing hitter, but even then such a sudden decline at age 28 is beyond the pale. Which Davis — the 2013 MVP candidate or the 2014 Mendoza Line flirter — is closer to the real thing? Read the rest of this entry »

Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
San Francisco at Arizona | 21:40 ET
Jake Peavy (183.0 IP, 102 xFIP-, 1.9 WAR) faces Josh Collmenter (157.0 IP, 96 xFIP-, 1.6 WAR). This game serves as a reasonable pretense upon which to note that, despite having produced relatively average numbers over the course of the whole season, Giants right-hander Jake Peavy has actually recorded the 14th-best park-adjusted xFIP among qualified pitchers over the last month and also the 11th-best WAR among all pitchers over that same interval. It also serves as a pretense upon which to note that Ender Inciarte — of whom the author can only claim a passing knowledge — has batted leadoff in 42 consecutive games for Arizona, producing actually an above-average batting line and 10-for-11 stolen-base record over that same stretch.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

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You ever notice how “improved” doesn’t have a good selection of antonyms? That’s what I’m going for. “The pitch-framer who’s gotten a heck of a lot worse somehow” gets the idea across, but it makes for a pretty lousy headline. Anyway, now you know the question being answered.

Dave has noted a few times in the past that at this point, the market doesn’t seem to pay very much for quality pitch-framing. There could be any number of reasons for this, but one could be that teams simply think they can teach their catchers to receive the ball better. Why pay for what you can instruct? Jason Castro would be an example of a guy who’s gotten way better at receiving with proper, targeted instruction. I think it makes sense to us how a guy could learn to receive pitches better. It makes less sense how a guy could just flat-out do worse. It seems like a fundamental skill once it’s learned, but every stat has its players who get better and its players who get worse, and the catcher who’s had the biggest performance decline between 2013 and 2014 is a catcher who last winter inked a three-year contract after winning a World Series.

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The Baltimore Orioles are about to win the American League East and Buck Showalter, in all likelihood, will be named Manager of the Year. The latter is quite an accomplishment for someone who refers to himself as a slapdick with a limited shelf life.

Showalter’s track record isn’t that of a slapdick. As for the self-deprecation, the 58-year-old skipper’s way with words matches his ingenuity, which lies somewhere between fox and far-sighted facilitator. In an interview four years ago – three months before he was hired to manage the Orioles – he told me, “You always have to keep your eye on the end game.” To the surprise of most prognosticators, Showalter may be on his way to leading his team to its first World Series title in over 30 years.

——

Showalter on the Orioles’ identity: “As an organization, one of the most important things you can do is know who you are, and who you’re not. When I first came here, we talked about that a lot: ‘Who are we and how are we going to do this?’ You can’t confuse your fans. We look within first and spend a lot of time – like every other club does – preffing [sic] six-year free agents. We look like we have a 75-man roster, because it’s going to come out of Norfolk, Bowie and here. When you have a game like [September 7], where 20-something guys make a contribution, there’s a great morale that comes out of that.

“We’re not paupers. Our ownership has been very supportive financially. We’ve got more than enough payroll. There are a lot of things you may not be able to do, but we can out-opportunity some teams for guys like Steve Pearce. We can give them an opportunity to be more than how the industry may perceive them.

“This thing is so fleeting, and this time of year, things snowball. They snowball good and they snowball bad. September is an eternity. When you’re trying to close out a good season, it’s tough. It tests your mettle. That’s why you challenge your players to stay together, stay together. There are so few people who live in the reality of what they do, and what the challenge is. People try to get into that, but they can’t. Until you’ve been through this and understand what the day-to-day stuff is really like… seasons are really about shortening the bad times and elongating the good times. Everybody is going to have them – as a pitcher individually, as a hitter individually, as a team. You’re going to have that, so you try to shorten the curves.”

On a life lesson and learning to adjust: “My dad, years ago… we’d get up at 5 o’clock in the morning and drive to Tuscaloosa in his school truck – he was a principal – and we’d go in the faculty section of Alabama. He’d have me watch the sidelines and coach [Bear] Bryant. I used to love how Alabama would go out in the first series against podunk – a team they were supposed to beat – and go three and out. I’d ask, ‘Dad, what’s wrong?’ He’d go, ‘Watch the sideline.’ Coach Bryant would walk over to the linemen to talk about this new defense this other team had put on the field, a 5-3 stack or something crazy. My dad would say, ‘OK, watch the next series’ and it would be like a knife going through butter. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam evaluate the Derek Jeter retirement tour as it begins to come to a close.

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Episode 484
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 discusses what is the FanGraphs’ Player of the Year Award, among other things.

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 38 min play time.)

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Clayton Kershaw’s good! Here’s something I bet you didn’t know about him. In the first half of this season, he struck out more than a third of all the hitters he faced. In the second half, his strikeout rate is actually down 17%. Now, that’s percent, not percentage points, but it means one of six strikeout victims hasn’t been a strikeout victim. That seems like the kind of thing that should raise eyebrows. But you haven’t noticed because in the first half Kershaw allowed 19 runs, and in the second half he’s allowed 19 runs. One is less inclined to notice when great players are slightly differently great.

Also, his second-half strikeout rate is still extraordinary. Also, he’s still not really walking anybody, even though just yesterday he did put Yusmeiro Petit on base. The regular numbers love second-half Kershaw, but if you dig just a little bit deeper, you can gain a better understanding of how Kershaw has remained so dominant despite giving away a handful of whiffs.

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There are a few things that most people reading this know about 3-0 counts, or at least there some things we think we know about what happens when the count runs 3-0. We know the strike zone gets very big and we know batters take the vast, vast majority of the time. We also know only the best hitters get the green light in this count.

While bat still stay largely on shoulders with the count 3-0, more and more hitters do offer at these pitches – the 3-0 swing rate increased every year since 2009. If you’re going to get a good pitch to hit, why not swing? Since only the best hitters get to unload, the ones understood to be the best judges of the strike zone, the chances of a positive outcome increases. As a rough measure, consider the drop off in slugging from 3-0 to 3-1 is slight compared to the drop from 3-1 to a full count.

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