| 5:36 |
: Hi everybody! Jeff and I will be here at 9 pm ET. Before you ask about us Kiley’s prospect list, let me remind you that he did a chat this afternoon:
See you soon! |
| 9:02 |
It’s 9:01! You’re late |
| 9:02 |
It’s 9:02!! YOURE LATE!! *LOUD NOISES* |
| 9:02 |
BASEBALL IS BACK TOMORROW!! |
| 9:02 |
: MY COMPUTER SAYS 9:01. And no, baseball is most definitely NOT back tomorrow.
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| 9:03 |
: Yep
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There in the Giants clubhouse, behind the stars you’ve heard everything about, are two rare players. They’ve made a circuit that very few players have made before. After surviving the gauntlet, they took some time to pass on what they learned with their travels East.
New Giants’ third baseman Casey McGehee was pretty sure his Major League Baseball career was over when he packed his bags for Sendai in Japan. “Going over there, that was one of the toughest parts, I knew the chances of coming back weren’t great,” the player said before FanFest last week.
But both McGehee and Ryan Vogelsong made it back, and to the same team no less. Of the 167 foreigners that have played in Nippon Professional Baseball since 1998, Brian Cartwright found that only 11 position players have managed more than 100 plate appearances back in America, and only Julio Franco and McGehee managed as much as 300 in one season. Only nine pitchers pitched for more than one season after returning from Japan.
Or: nobody has come back from Japan since 1998 and become a full-time starter like McGehee, and only Eric Stults, Colby Lewis, and Ryan Vogelsong have returned and managed more than 100 innings twice in the big leagues.
Though the game itself isn’t very different there — they bunt a little more, swing a little more, and play for one run more often — it could be that the trip over has that sense of finality to it that you hear from McGehee. You don’t usually come back and become an important part of a good team.
This morning, Kiley McDaniel released the FanGraphs Top 200 Prospects list, providing a remarkable source of information. We’re obviously biased, but Kiley’s doing great work with the prospect information provided here on the site. One of my favorite things he’s doing is working to break down the barriers of the ordinal ranked list, providing Future Value grades that allow for more reasonable tiers of prospects, so that less time is spent arguing over whether a particular player should be #23 or #28 on a particular list.
So, I wanted to see if I could come up with a piece that would complement the information he’s presenting, using the value of having additional information beyond just ordinal ranking. To that end, I took latest prospect valuation estimates from Kevin Creagh and Steve DiMiceli, and attempted to convert their tiered valuation estimations into numbers based on the Future Value calculations Kiley attached to each prospect on his list.
As I noted when we discussed the prospect valuation work a few months ago, the data is fascinating, but also slightly problematic for this purpose. For instance, here’s the table of values for prospect tiers according to Creagh and DiMiceli.
The FIP statistic was created because of the inherent shortcomings of ERA; so much that was reflected in the traditional pitchers’ statistic was totally out of their control, and the new metric credited and debited hurlers for that which they did. As it turns out, FIP isn’t perfect either, as not all types of batted-ball contract are created equal. Still, FIP is preferable to ERA in just about every way imaginable, and is a much better anchor upon which to base pitcher evaluations. In any given year, however, there are pitchers who are much better (or worse) than both their ERA and FIP, once you adjust for quality of batted ball contact allowed. Today, let’s look at the two ERA title-qualifying AL starters who were most significantly better than both their ERA and FIP in 2014; Drew Hutchison and Jake Odorizzi. Read the rest of this entry »
| 12:05 |
: I can’t start using catch phrases in the intro now, all these casual readers checking in for the first time will start expecting it. Gotta leave them wanting more.
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| 12:05 |
I’m really mad about _______ being so low/not included on the list! Why do you hate my team?! LOUD NOISES!!!!!! |
| 12:05 |
: You were great in Wedding Crashers, don’t listen to what people say about your nose
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| 12:05 |
Addison Russell was a 60FV on the Cubs list, now a 65 and #3 overall. As I cubs fan I love this, I get you broadened who you were getting information on for the top 200, etc. Any specific new information that raised your opinion/ranking on Russell? Or just general awesomeness? |
| 12:06 |
: No real new information. The Cubs list was early in the run and I knew Russell was behind Bryant, but didn’t have a great feel for how far or how the grades would dictate that. Turns out there weren’t many players between them.
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| 12:07 |
: That’s also the process that led to Ian Clarkin and Michael Taylor sneaking on the end of the list. Felt like just short of 50 FV, then I stacked up every player and they were both better than a handful of guys on the list…so they went on the list.
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I can pinpoint the exact moment when I started to understand and appreciate the potential impact of pitching coaches. I mean, I always had some suspicions, and I was one of those people really interested in Rick Peterson back in the day, but, in March of 2006, the Mariners traded Matt Thornton to the White Sox for Joe Borchard. You have to understand what Matt Thornton was at the time — though he had a big arm, he’d been infuriating with Seattle, incapable of throwing consecutive strikes. I remember being overjoyed about his departure; he’d walked one of every six batters, proving himself completely and utterly unreliable. A big arm without any control? There are a million of those. They just about never figure it out.
Instantly, Thornton figured it out. Because Don Cooper figured it out. Cooper had figured it out a couple years earlier.
The left-hander always possessed a gifted arm, with a fastball in the mid 90s, but also has battled control issues. Thornton mentioned that Cooper noticed the flaw two years ago, while watching game film on him, at a time when the White Sox were interested in acquiring the one-time first-round draft pick from Seattle.
“I kidded him by saying, ‘You could have sent me a little note or something,'” said Thornton with a laugh. “It may have been a little different for me.”
Thornton, as a Mariner, threw 59% strikes. His first year with the White Sox, he threw 67% strikes. He’s maintained the same rate ever since, and though Thornton’s career is just about up, he’s 38 years old, and for a time he was a premier lefty reliever. He’s totaled more than $20 million in career salary. If it weren’t for Don Cooper, who knows what would’ve happened with Thornton’s professional path? Would he still be set for life? Would he be a realtor?
This morning, Kiley McDaniel rolled out his much-anticipated FanGraphs Top 200 prospect List. If you haven’t had a chance to look through it yet, I strongly recommend that you do so. As a complement to Kiley’s rankings, I’ll be taking a quick look at how the players he ranked grade out according to KATOH — my methodology for projecting prospects’ career trajectories using solely minor league statistics.
I’ll start with a bit of a primer on the system. In sum, KATOH uses a series of statistical regressions that look at a prospect’s age and league-adjusted minor league stats. After taking all of this data into account, it spits out probabilities that a prospect will reach certain WAR thresholds through age 28. If you’re interested in a more nitty-gritty, technical explanation of how KATOH works, feel free to check out my pieces on KATOH for hitters and pitchers over at The Hardball Times. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, we gave you a little bit of a tease, giving you a glimpse into the making of FanGraphs Top 200 Prospect List. This morning, however, we present the list in its entirety, including scouting grades and reports for every prospect rated as a 50 Future Value player currently in the minor leagues. As discussed in the linked introduction, some notable international players were not included on the list, but their respective statuses were discussed in yesterday’s post. If you haven’t read any of the prior prospect pieces here on the site, I’d highly encourage you to read the introduction, which explains all of the terms and grades used below.
Additionally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you towards our YouTube channel, which currently holds over 600 prospect videos, including all of the names near the top of this list. Players’ individual videos are linked in the profiles below as well.
And lastly, before we get to the list, one final reminder that a player’s placement in a specific order is less important than his placement within a Future Value tier. Numerical rankings can give a false impression of separation between players who are actually quite similar, and you shouldn’t get too worked up over the precise placement of players within each tier. The ranking provides some additional information, but players in each grouping should be seen as more or less equivalent prospects.
If you have any questions about the list, I’ll be chatting today at noon here on the site (EDIT: here’s the chat transcript), and you can find me on Twitter at @kileymcd.
Alright, that’s enough stalling. Let’s get to this.
Ben and Sam preview the Diamondbacks’ season with David Raposa, and Sahadev talks to AZCentral Sports Diamondbacks beat writer Nick Piecoro (at 23:26).
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Episode 532
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 the precarious balance for an organization between playing for the present and building for the future.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 35 min play time.)
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