In the 2007 draft, Matt Harvey, Kyle Blair and Brandon Workman were considered among the best right-handed prep pitchers available in the draft. And all three, either by intention or by confusion, made a subset of scouts believe that they could be bought away from their college scholarships by large bonuses. Harvey could have been, I think, but Scott Boras played his cards wrong with rumors of multi-million dollar bonus demands. He dropped to the third round, where the Angels hoped they could get him on the cheap. But Blair and Workman were considered signable enough to be drafted in the fifth and third rounds, respectively, and offered large six-figure bonuses to bypass college and enter professional baseball. Ultimately, all three hard-throwing righties decided they would make more money dominating college baseball for a couple years and re-entering the 2010 draft than signing these above-slot offers.

Fast forward three years, and they will make for some very interesting arguments in draft war rooms in June. All three entered the spring still highly thought of — but in six college seasons, only Matt Harvey’s freshman season (2.85 ERA, 10.99 K/9) could be considered dominant, and he still walked 6.5 batters per nine that year. Last weekend, in their first start of opening weekend, they combined for a composite line of 18 hits, 8 walks, 7 earned runs in 15.2 innings. Again, the 18 strikeouts show their promise, but that is just not getting it done. There will be teams that want to understand why these players have been scuffed around so often in college before ascertaining the idea of spending a million bucks on their live arms.

Thankfully, this week I was given some of the same data that these teams might be looking out in June, as the boys at CollegeSplits.com shared their statistics on the three players with me (as they’ve been releasing some data on top prospects at their flagship). I’m going to deal with all three prospects separately, using this great resource to shed some light where possible.

Kyle Blair, rhp, San Diego

Like Harvey, Blair was certainly dominating at times as a freshman, beating the UNC ace with a 12.04 K/9. But as the .219/.332/.286 line that batters posted against Blair suggests, he walked and hit a lot of batters. Last year, Blair missed much of the season with injury, but his 3.15 ERA and 62/18 strikeout-to-walk ratio suggested a lot of improvement. Blair probably has the weakest stuff of this esteemed group, but he appeared on the rise. Still, teams are going to have to wonder if Blair is ultimately a relief pitcher. The reason that I say this is because he has had significant problems against left-handed hitters. As a freshman, left-handers hit .330/.457/.468 in 94 at-bats, and followed that up with a .273/.351/.343 line as a sophomore. Obviously this is improvement, but it’s a far cry from the .469 OPS that right-handers posted. The encouraging sign is that Blair posted a 1.37 GO/AO vs. left-handers as a soph, versus a career average of 0.92. Certainly, when teams send scouts to see Blair this year, they need to see if he has made legitimate improvements against left-handers, or if his problems with just having faith in his fastball and slider give him a reliever grade.

Matt Harvey, rhp, UNC

If there’s someone that generates legitimate concern from people, it’s Harvey. This is a guy I saw strike out six consecutive batters at one of the 2006 summer’s biggest high school showcases, and since, has pitched a little worse each season. This snowballed last season, when a 5.32 BB/9 and 1.01 HR/9 led to a 5.83 ERA. The difference between one home run allowed (freshman season) and 8 (soph) is pretty much the difference between his two seasons. There wasn’t a change in his groundball rate, but I think we can certainly guess that batters were hitting the ball harder. What I can’t explain is Harvey’s reverse platoon split, as right-handers hit him .059 OPS points better as a freshman (insignificant) but then .204 better as a sophomore. Having seen Harvey pitch, my guess is that his change-up has become a weapon under the great North Carolina staff, but that he still hangs too many curveballs to right-handed sluggers. But his 8.24 BB/9 against right-handers last year I can’t explain.

Brandon Workman, rhp, Texas

When it’s all said and done, if I had to bet on one guy being a starter in the Major Leagues, it would be Workman. The guy has been upstaged in each season in Austin, by Chance Ruffin as a freshman, by Taylor Jungmann last season. He’s a lot easier to figure out, because his platoon splits have been insignificant — he bounced back after a freshman season that left-handers hit .294/.410/.485 against him to hold them to .178/.274/.314 as a sophomore. He’s just a simple power pitcher, and you’re going to get what comes with that: strikeouts, walks, flyballs. Last year, a better Texas defense made Workman look better, and he’ll need that: guys seem to hit balls hard off him. But if he can keep those bad line drives to when no one is on base, the positives will outweigh the negatives with Workman.

Matt Harvey is expected to pitch tonight against Maine. Kyle Blair and Brandon Workman will pitch on Saturday, against San Diego State and Stanford, respectively. I’ll be tracking their progress all spring, on Twitter if not in this space.

Let me start theoretical. I wonder why prospect lists run in order of career potential. In my view, prospects are valuable because they provide Major League Baseball’s best bargain. Find a player ready to contribute from Year One to Year Seven, and the return on investment is ridiculous. In three seasons, Tim Lincecum has been worth roughly $84 million to the Giants. If you didn’t know, he has not been paid that much. However, in a few short years, Lincecum will enter free agency, and he will no longer be a bargain. Teams will bid for his services, and he will be paid appropriately by what the market determines.

In my eyes, prospect lists should attempt to determine a ranking based on what value players will provide when they are under organizational control (first six to seven years). If we follow prospects because they are a bargain, we should only care about their performance when they represent a bargain. Right? Consider yesterday’s posterboy, Garry Templeton, who in a retro prospect list, probably wouldn’t rank very highly. But why not? Templeton was well above the average shortstop with the Cardinals, and was the centerpiece of a trade that netted the Cardinals Ozzie Smith. Templeton provided insane value to the Cardinals.

In fact, in their first seven seasons, Garry Templeton produced 20.5 WAR. Ozzie Smith, who peaked in Years 7-12 of his career, produced just 17.7 WAR in his first seven years. Now, readers, I ask you: why would Smith be considered the better prospect in hindsight? Particularly in today’s environment, when loyalty doesn’t exist with free agents.

************

As I’ve transitioned back into covering minor league baseball, I have begun to see the direction I want my analysis to take — it’s both outlined above, and it exists in the FanGraphs defining stat: WAR. I want to attempt to see prospects in the light that the organizations might: who is overvalued relative to the likely contributions they’ll provide and thus make a nice trade chip, and who should teams be making way for? What value might a prospect provide our team? Eric Hosmer and Pedro Alvarez are right next to each other in Keith Law’s rankings; if each is the player scouts think they could become, what does that look like in terms of WAR (an article for another day?)

This is long-winded, as I so often am, but I’m trying to create a dialogue about what a sabermetric approach to covering prospects can be. And I want your help! It’s no longer about ignoring scouting reports and restricting yourself to MLEs (was it ever?), but about finding the proper routes to evaluating players more accurately — based on development (like yesterday), based on nuance (the sinker series), and based on modern statistical analysis.

Today, I’m going to take a stab at the latter. After the jump, we’ll walk through creating a set of expectations on what the Cubs should anticipate from Starlin Castro (sorry, he’s on the brain).

Read the rest of this entry »

Since a fantastic autumn in the Arizona Fall League, I would argue no prospect has been lauded more this winter than Cubs SS Starlin Castro. The hype machine is in full force in Mesa, as just this week we’ve seen Carrie Muskat of MLB.com profile his Spring Training debut, and Paul Sullivan of the Chicago Tribune interview Ryan Theriot on potentially moving to second base. Thankfully, the notions of Castro beginning the season in the Majors have passed, but living a mile south of Wrigley Field, I can report Cubs fans will be clamoring for the call-up everyday the soon-to-be 20 year old gets two hits in Des Moines while Mike Fontenot gets none in Chicago.

Just between Muskat and Sullivan’s articles, we have been thrown comparisons to Edgar Renteria, Hanley Ramirez and Miguel Tejada. That’s 13 All-Star games between the three of them, for a man that has just one year of full-season baseball under his belt. Castro hit .299/.342/.392 between the Florida State and Southern Leagues last season (a brief aside to link to Justin Inaz’ great article at the Hardball Times yesterday concerning Minor League run environments. There, you’ll see Castro was narrowly above-average in both leagues.) But I think we can do better than lazy comparisons to three Latin shortstops, none of whom mirror Castro’s developmental path.

I set out to find some proper comparison points to Castro, given the assumption that the hype machine propels him to the Majors this season. Using my newly renewed subscription at Baseball-Reference’s Play Index, I queried for players that made their Major League debuts and crossed the rookie threshold at the age of 20. This yielded a total of 52 players. If I limit this to middle infielders, the list goes down to 12. One step further still, seven of them have some Minor League data available through Baseball-Reference. What would we do without Sean Forman?

Dalton Jones, Garry Templeton, Danny Ainge, Roberto Alomar, Jose Reyes, Jose Lopez and Elvis Andrus. Collectively, this is a group that hit .261/.301/.364 as 20-year-old, Major League rookie middle infielders. The previous season, at 19 in the Minor Leagues, our comparison group hit .281 and slugged .397. The majority (Alomar, Andrus, Lopez and half-seasons of Reyes and Templeton) played in Double-A, and hit .300 and slugged .429. Castro’s batting average is right in line, given his superior ability to make contact with the baseball. But his isolated power, just .108 in Double-A and .093 overall, are below the level of the players I’ve compared him to.

Looking further, I want to note that Jose Reyes and Garry Templeton had very similar development paths as Castro, splitting time between the Florida State League and Double-A in their age 19 season. Let’s look at how they did:

FSL H-A      AVG/OBP/SLG   BB   SO   XBH   PA
Reyes        288/353/462   30   35    27   327
Castro       302/340/391   19   41    23   387
Templeton    264/288/338   12   42    16   361

And in Double-A:

Double-A   League   AVG/OBP/SG   BB   SO   XBH   PA
Templeton   Texas   401/424/531   6    2    15   184
Reyes        East   287/331/425  16   42    26   295
Castro      South   288/347/396  10   12     9   122

It’s clear that the Cubs prospect is Reyes’ inferior; Baseball America would rank Reyes its third overall prospect after the 2002 season, while Castro came in at 16 when the magazine released their list yesterday. Reyes displayed more patience and more power, Castro a better knack for contact. What interests me is the comparison between Templeton and Castro – both were impatient contact hitters with questionable power profiles.

In 1976, the St. Louis Cardinals returned Templeton to their Double-A affiliate, and he hit .321/.351/.483 in 106 games. On August 9, with the Major League squad 25 games behind in the standings, they called up Templeton and inserted him at shortstop, asking veteran Don Kessinger to move to second base. Templeton hit .291/.314/.362 down the stretch, and would play the next five years holding down the position, posting a 104 OPS+ with two All-Star appearances in that time. Templeton never developed home run power, he never developed patience, and when his speed started to go (and the BABIP with it), Templeton was no longer a useful player. Using the WAR historical database, we see that Templeton was 25.2 wins above replacement player in his 16-year career. I think Castro can be better than this (he’s already a little more patient than Templeton, and walks are preached more than ever nowadays), though his four-year peak of 14 WAR seems appropriate.

The Cubs should follow the Templeton model out of Spring Training, and re-assign Castro to the Southern League. It’s simply not fair to assign him to face older pitchers after 122 decent plate appearances and a great BABIP-driven Arizona Fall League sample. But for a team that doesn’t figure to be 25 games back on August 9, calling up Castro for more than a September cup of coffee doesn’t seem prudent. Let’s keep the talk of Castro, the Major Leaguer, to a minimum, and see if the Templeton comparison still holds water a year from now.

The format for my weekend rundown is going to change in the future — though even I still can’t profess to know where it’s headed. As always, the more people let me know what you’re interested in, the more this column promises to change in your favor.

In their last five drafts, the Los Angeles Angels have failed to sign six different players they drafted in the first five rounds. For a scouting department that has admirably built up an organization with years of success, this is a damning statistic that suggests a failure in the team’s ability to judge the signability of their draftees. The sting of this is going to be felt everytime Brian Matusz takes the mound for the Orioles. (Matusz was an unsigned fourth-rounder out of high school before starring for three years at the University of San Diego.) The list includes both players that have failed to improve their profile in college (Russ Moldenhauer) to players that have sustained their status (Matt Harvey), but either way, there is no question this is a trend the Angels need to stop. By comparison, in the same five years, the rest of the AL West has failed to sign just three top-five round picks combined.

I bring this up because it was a little surprising to me that the star of college baseball’s first weekend was an unsigned third-round draft pick by the Angels in 2008. Zach Cone was drafted by the Halos out of Parkview High School in Lilburn, Georgia, where he starred both in the outfield and on the mound. He was ranked as the 80th overall talent in the draft by Baseball America, but saw fit to turn down a high six-figures bonus offer to head to the University of Georgia program that Gordon Beckham had just led to the College World Series. Cone’s decision has never looked so good as it does on this Monday morning, following the most dominating weekend of any college player in the nation. In four games against two top-70 programs in Baylor and Duke, the sophomore Bulldog outfielder went 11-for-16, including hitting for the cycle in a loss on Saturday.

There were signs of this ability in the summer — Cone played for Cotuit in the Cape Cod League — but a .243/.268/.331 batting line isn’t going to inspire, even if its only a tick below league average. Cone showed his five tools there, stealing 10 bases, placing second on his team in home runs, playing a damn good outfield. But like so many five-toolers before him, Cone showed he was still raw in the BB/K column, ending up at 5/42 in 136 AB. He didn’t register a mark in either column over the weekend, but there is nothing wrong with making hard contact in nearly 20 straight at-bats.

The 2011 draft has already been framed as a battle of Rice 3B Anthony Rendon (on base in 9 of 14 PAs in his first weekend) vs. UCLA RHP Gerrit Cole (1 H, 2 ER, 9 K in 6 IP) for the top spot, with Texas RHP Taylor Jungmann in the discussion or right behind it. Cone won’t have to show all his ability to land a first-round grade from scouts — surely some have already slapped that tag on him — but he’s a dominant sophomore removed from top-10 discussion. The Bulldogs did themselves no favors in scheduling a tough non-conference schedule leading into the rigors of the toughest conference season in college baseball, so if Cone can dominate this competition, he’ll fly up those 2011 draft boards in a hurry.

And hopefully in doing so remind the Angels that they can’t afford to not sign top draft picks.

Best 3 Team Impressions From the Weekend:
1. Stanford: Swept Rice at home, showing a much greater ability to score runs than people gave them credit for.
2. Oregon: It hasn’t taken long for George Horton to make the Ducks a solid team, with wins over Cal State Fullerton and Long Beach State highlighting a promising opening weekend.
3. Florida Gulf Coast: It was only Temple, but a 39-7 run differential in a sweep is a sign of things to come for a program entering its first season of the ability to contend in postseason baseball. And trust me, they will.

Baseball came back to us this week, but it opened in its usual, drab format: with hyperbolic reports on players’ weights, promising a month of statistics that don’t matter. It seems to me this desperation we have for real baseball would be best served with a different focus, if only for the next six weeks: college baseball. I have tried for years to convert casual MLB fans into college baseball observers, with mixed success, but I’m going to keep trying. I know the aluminum bat might be too much for you, and the sloppy play is a put-off, but it’s real, meaningful baseball. Area scouts have been dispatched for college baseball’s first pitch today, and the 2010 draft landscape will appear clearer each week until June. If you’re interested in the draft, and think you can give college baseball a chance, keep an eye on these three match-ups this weekend. You can bet big league scouts are doing the same.

Top Match-Up: Missouri State LHP Aaron Meade vs. Georgia Tech RHP Deck McGuire.

The Missouri State schedule isn’t such that Meade will be overshadowed often this spring, but he certainly will be in his season debut Friday. McGuire looks to be a sure-fire first rounder, and further development of his secondary stuff will put him in the top ten. The rare Georgia Tech pitching star uses his big 6-6 pitcher’s frame to get nice movement on a low-90s fastball, and has three secondary pitches for teams to play with at the next level. He’ll overpower a punchless Bears team whose best hope is for Meade to match McGuire zero-for-zero. The southpaw could be the first player drafted from the Missouri Valley Conference in June, coming into the season with helium following a strong performance in the 2009 Cape Cod League (1.91 ERA, 47 K in 42.1 IP). Meade reminds me a bit of Wade Miley from a couple seasons ago — small-school lefty with low-90s velocity, just average command, but enough strikeouts to really impress scouts. It’s no easy thing to debut with your toughest test, but Meade can do a lot for his draft stock with a big outing against these vaunted Yellow Jackets.

First Honorable Mention: Pepperdine RHP Cole Cook vs. Long Beach State RHP Jake Thompson.

Now this is confusing. Cook, a sophomore, is actually a full year older than Thompson, a junior, and both will be eligible for the draft this June. Thompson, like Robert Stock a year ago, skipped his final year of high school to enroll early in college, so he offers teams three years of college experience at a younger age than any of his peers. He will need to translate his big pitcher’s body and 92-94 mph velocity into strikeouts this season, but the return of LBSU pitching coach Troy Buckley should help in that regard. On the opposite side is Cook, a draft-eligible sophomore because he was redshirted as a freshman in Malibu. He was great as a freshman last year, and at 6-6 with a nasty hook, Cook will have some leverage for good money in the early rounds.

Best Hitter-versus-Pitcher Match-up: Saturday sophomores — Rice 3B Anthony Rendon vs. Stanford LHP Brett Mooneyham.

It’s never too early to start thinking about the 2011 draft, and on Saturday, scouts will see an epic match-up of two projected 2011 first rounders. Rendon is, alongside UCLA ace Gerrit Cole, the favorite to be drafted first, a third baseman that has every tool in the book. The Cardinal pitchers will by and large pitch around the sophomore, but I expect Mooneyham to go right after him in what should be a breakout season for the blue-chip southpaw. Mooneyham throws in the low 90s from a 6-foot-5 left-handed arm slot, and can offer Rendon as many as four different pitches. These are the kind of battles that non-conference college baseball offers, and I guarantee scouts will be recalling this duo’s battles 15 months from now.

Finally, indulge a few college baseball predictions:

Championship: UC Irvine over Texas.
Golden Spikes Award: Danny Hultzen, Virginia.
Other CWS Teams: South Carolina, Virginia, LSU, Rice, Miami, Fullerton.

Four days into the splits debut at FanGraphs, I think we understand the need to exercise caution with using these small sample numbers. The left/right splits, for instance, need to be regressed to the league averages until a high number of data has been collected. However, if we trust Minor League numbers enough to help us project players at the Major League level, I believe we can use splits at the Minor League level to help in our understanding of a player. Obviously, studies need to be done to find the correlation of splits at the Minor League and Major League level before I can say this with any certainty. Luckily, we now have the data to do so, thanks to the splits here at FanGraphs, and the wealth of information at Jeff Sackmann’s MinorLeagueSplits.com. I’m not here to do that kind of heavy lifting today, but to show the direction of analysis I believe we can achieve with the numbers currently available.

We are taught to essentially ignore the splits posted by rookies, because we would need to regress those numbers so much to have any certainty in them. But if a player had 1,200 more plate appearances in the Minor Leagues, shouldn’t we trust those splits more than a broader league average? Today, I took the seven rookies that had at least 300 PAs in 2009 and 700 more in the Minor Leagues, and I want to compare the splits congruent between this site and Minor League Splits: batted ball info by handedness. I believe this will inform our comprehension of each player’s Major League splits, and our projection of their performance going forward. (LD-L is a player’s line drive percentage versus left-handed pitchers. You can figure out the rest.)

Chris Coghlan, 2B, Florida Marlins

Level   AB    LD-L%   GB-L%   FB-L%   LD-R%   GB-R%   FB-R%
MLB     504   18.9    47.2    34.0    23.7    47.8    28.5
MiLB    1117  17.4    45.5    36.7    18.2    43.9    37.7

What Changed: Many fewer fly balls vs. RHPs.

Going Forward: Coghlan’s batted ball profile against LHPs barely changed from the Minor Leagues to the Majors, and I see little reason he can’t continue to be successful against southpaws. Against right-handers, I don’t believe he’s a hitter that will routinely post a 20% line drive rate, so I think you’ll see some regression in BABIP this season, and I’ll think we’ll have that to point to.

Elvis Andrus, SS, Texas Rangers

Level   AB    LD-L%   GB-L%   FB-L%   LD-R%   GB-R%   FB-R%
MLB     480   27.2    48.5    24.3    20.1    57.4    22.5
MiLB    1600  17.2    58.8    23.7    14.4    58.3    27.0

What Changed: Traded 10% of groundballs for line drives vs. LHPs.

Going Forward: I would like to believe Andrus’ aging and development led to the change, but he’s just not a guy that can sustain a 27% line drive rate against any kind of pitcher. He should maintain his performance against right-handed pitching, if not improve, to compensate a regression vs. LHPs

Colby Rasmus, CF, St. Louis Cardinals

Level   AB    LD-L%   GB-L%   FB-L%   LD-R%   GB-R%   FB-R%
MLB     474   14.1    41.0    44.9    21.1    33.0    45.9
MiLB    1569  15.1    34.8    49.8    18.0    33.8    47.7

What Changed: More groundballs, less elevation vs. LHPs.

Going Forward: Scouts have criticized Rasmus’ approach against southpaws for years, and a change in process didn’t do much to his results in 2009. The Cardinals should see if Rasmus can start making harder contact against lefties early in the season, but if contention stands in the way of Rasmus’ development, he should be platooned quickly.

Andrew McCutchen, CF, Pittsburgh Pirates

Level   AB    LD-L%   GB-L%   FB-L%   LD-R%   GB-R%   FB-R%
MLB     433   20.5    37.5    42.0    17.9    43.9    38.2
MiLB    1964  15.8    40.8    43.4    15.5    49.1    34.9 

What Changed: More line drives.

Going Forward: This is the most difficult case, because I don’t see a real reason for regression. McCutchen has been a scouts favorite for a long time, dating back to some of his struggles in the lower levels. Nothing about this batted ball profile is out of line — he’ll be a great case for personal development vs. regression to Minor League standard.

Gerardo Parra, RF, Arizona Diamondbacks

Level   AB    LD-L%   GB-L%   FB-L%   LD-R%   GB-R%   FB-R%
MLB     455   11.7    64.9    23.4    20.1    49.7    30.3
MiLB    1402   8.7    61.4    29.9    12.7    54.3    32.9

What Changed: More Power vs. RHP, not enough vs. LHP.

Going Forward: Parra should be platooned from Day One of Spring Training, no regression to the league, or further chances at development needed. The stigma against platoon players is such that people will think I “hate” Parra, but it’s not true — he’s becoming a legitimate threat against right-handed pitching. You could do worse than a Jacque Jones or Michael Tucker career.

Everth Cabrera, SS, San Diego Padres

Level   AB    LD-L%   GB-L%   FB-L%   LD-R%   GB-R%   FB-R%
MLB     377   10.1    72.2    17.7    16.7    58.9    24.5
MiLB    877   13.6    67.1    18.8    12.1    59.8    27.6

What Changed: Even more groundballs vs. LHP.

Going Forward: Cabrera will be this type of player forever — bashing the ball into the ground — more when batting left-handed than the opposite. With game-changing speed, Cabrera just needs to right his defensive woes to become a very manageable shortstop. And he’ll need it, because you’re not going to win long-term with this offensive strategy.

Nolan Reimold, OF, Baltimore Orioles

Level   AB    LD-L%   GB-L%   FB-L%   LD-R%   GB-R%   FB-R%
MLB     358   16.3    51.0    32.7    13.3    46.7    40.0
MiLB    1512  14.6    34.8    50.6    11.1    40.4    48.4

What Changed: Drastic fluctuations in flyball-to-groundball ratios against both pitchers.

Going Forward: Essentially, it looks like Reimold translates a whole lot of infield flies (career 18.0% in the minors) into groundballs against left-handed pitchers. This actually is a step forward, and as a result, his numbers on fly balls (.453 wOBA) were very good now that he wasn’t mixing in an infield flies a fifth of the time. Still, a high IFFB% against right-handed pitchers, so that split bears watching in 2010.

Note: I generally ignored the percents difference between fly balls and line drives between the Minor League and Major League level. It seems that so-called “fliners” are classified different, and I believe are marked as line drives less in the Minor Leagues. Something else to study, I suppose.

Tomorrow: Pitchers!

Exceptions to the rule noted, when we look at the collegiate players drafted in the first round each June, most have one similarity: they either spent the previous summer playing in the Cape Cod League, or with the USA Baseball Collegiate National team. While players have turned down the national team for the competitiveness and exposure of the Cape, there is still no greater honor in college baseball than being selected to represent the country in competitions like the World Baseball Challenge. The alumni speak to the selectivity of the fraternity: Mark Teixeira, Ryan Zimmerman, Geoff Jenkins, Robin Ventura, Matt Wieters, Stephen Strasburg, and many, many more.

In 2008, the team flexed their dominance with a perfect 24-0 record on the heels of a 0.88 team ERA. So, if you don’t believe the 2010 draft is going to be shallower than last year’s, look no further than the 2009 team ERA: 2.16. Furthermore, the team’s two best pitchers, Vanderbilt’s Sonny Gray and UCLA’s Gerrit Cole, will not be eligible for the draft until 2011. The team still managed a 19-5 record, however, thanks to an offense that scored 57 more runs than their predecessors. Considering the glut of quality draft-eligible position players, there is no question we will see the stars of the USA Baseball offense drafted early and often in June. And there was no bigger star on this team than Cal State Fullerton junior shortstop Christian Colon.

In reviewing the history of this team, there is a case that no player has had as complete a summer with this squad than Colon did in 2009. In 94 at-bats, the six-foot shortstop struck out just six times, versus 11 walks, 34 hits, 11 extra-base hits, and 31 runs — good for a .362/.459/.617 batting line. While the shortstop did commit seven errors in 23 games at shortstop, scouts still gave positive reports to his range and hands up the middle. Colon is now looking as a possible top twenty pick in the draft, and will compete with USA teammate Rick Hague (Rice) for the honor of first drafted shortstop.

In 125 starts over two years at Cal State Fullerton, Colon stole 28 bases in 39 attempts. In 23 games with the USA Baseball team, he went 24-for-26 on the basepaths. This speaks to two things: first, there is untapped potential left with Colon, and two, the Japan, Canada and Guatemala Collegiate teams’ catchers must have not been great shakes. Still, Colon has above-average speed, and is harnessing his ability to translate it to stolen base success.

Major League Scouting Directors love drafting hitters with potential to lead off one day — I once even did a series on this — and Colon certainly could be at the next level. If we include his USA Baseball stats and his two years at CSF, Colon has just 55 strikeouts (versus 54 walks) in 592 at-bats. He also gets on base at a higher clip because his stance is prone to hit by pitches, now with 37 plunks over two-plus seasons. If the whole package doesn’t read a touch like Craig Biggio to you, I’d be surprised.

Other notes on Team USA”s finest:

— Scouts love summer baseball because it puts players on an even plane, not to mention using a wooden bat. So it is no exaggeration to say that for outfielder Bryce Brentz and right-hander Asher Wojciechowski, hailing from Middle Tennessee State and The Citadel respectively, those baseball games in red, white and blue were the most important of their life. Both thorougly impressed scouts, with Brentz hitting .366/.416/.563 and Wojciechowski sporting a 29/4 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 21 innings. Brentz is a lock for the first round, while Wojciechowski will have to prove the command problems that have plagued him in the past are behind him.

— Every summer, the team manager and assistant coaches are allowed to bring 1-2 of their own players. When Tim Corbin brought Pedro Alvarez and David Price no one blinked an eye, but oftentimes, the players are overmatched and their inclusion smells of nepotism. This summer was interesting, because when Tulane coach Rick Jones brought right-hander Nick Pepitone, it didn’t seem like he belonged. But Pepitone raised his profile considerably by dominating in international play. Pepitone allowed just two hits in 14.2 innings as the team’s set-up man, and should function as Tulane’s closer this spring. Pepitone brings good tilt to a hard sinker and slider combination, and could be one of the first relievers off the board.

— File this away, but we already have a wonderful argument developing for the top of the 2011 draft board between Rice third baseman Anthony Rendon and UCLA ace Gerrit Cole. The latter dominated on the national team, allowing just 11 hits in 34 innings. Cole, like Stephen Strasburg before him, can pitch into the high 90s until the late innings, and has a nasty wipe-out breaking pitch. Cole’s decision to not sign with the Yankees as a first rounder out of high school is looking better by the day, as he is in for a huge payday in 16 months.

(I am severely late to the party, but I’m here to talk about a movie that made its debut on the festival circuit in 2008, and was released sometime last May in the United States. But on the heels of yesterday’s Oscar nominations, I’m hoping you can see some tangential timeliness, if only to point to its glaring omission from the Best Original Screenplay category. I also think SUGAR can provide real lessons that can help us in our goal from Friday: finding ways to improve the existing Minor League development process.)

“It’s the same game we played back home.” It is this question — not the assurance, as it’s spoken in the film — that concerns the baseball element in “Sugar”, a story about assimilation into the United States told by fimmakers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (“Half Nelson”). The title character is Miguel “Sugar” Santos (newcomer Algenis Perez Soto), a right-handed pitcher from San Pedro, Dominican Republic, signed for $15,000 to the Kansas City Knights. Santos takes quite a journey in the film, traveling from his home country to Phoenix for Spring Training, then to Bridgetown, Iowa for his first minor league assignment, and to New York for a taste of the America he has dreamt about.

This is the baseball journey that we know about told through a lens we have only imagined. Boden and Fleck are unwavering in their pursuit to tell the Dominican story of playing baseball in America, from the playgrounds in the Bronx to the organizational facilities in the Caribbean. Sugar is good; at 19, the film opens as he begins to harness the ability that led to his signing. But the Knights realize what a bargain he is when Sugar quickly picks up a knuckle-curve that a visiting scout teaches him. From there, it’s onto Phoenix, as Sugar and his curveball are invited to the Knights’ Spring Training camp.

From here, the film begins a series of narratives that deal with the difficulty of the language barrier. Sugar arrives in America with enough English to play baseball with: his English classes in the Dominican consisted of “flyball,” “home run,” and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Anything outside of this, like ordering food at a restaurant or understanding his coaches and teammates, is out of his league. “Donde está I-A?” he asks his friends before a plane ride sends him to his professional debut in the Midwest League. Middle America is not the stuff of Dominican dreams.

There are three principal relationships that a Minor League player has, and Boden and Fleck have done their due diligence to pursue each struggle in communication: the host family, the coaching staff and teammates. We can tell that Sugar, like so many Latin minor leaguers, is very smart, because he picks up the language very well. But a perfect storm of events strike midseason, as they so often do, and it drastically changes Sugar’s worldview in Bridgetown. He injures his ankle tripping over the first base bag, just when his lone Dominican teammate is released as the result of bad performance. His other friend on the team, a second baseman from Stanford, is promoted, and suddenly Sugar feels alone. When he returns and the inevitable slump hits, Sugar’s frustrations are read as make-up problems by his equally frustrated coaches.

This, I think, is the first lesson that we can take from the movie. I’m reminded of Hanley Ramirez, who had numerous suspensions in the Boston Red Sox organization for mis-conduct. Ramirez would often get in arguments with coaches and trainers, and was even demoted from High-A to Rookie League as punishment. I should preface this example by saying that Hanley’s own lack of maturity and ego were the central role in these problems. But I also can see that at no level in the Boston organization did he have a Latin coach, and thus, I find his immediate success in Latin-friendly Miami as something less than coincidence. I can’t help wonder if part of his anger outbreaks coincided with language barrier frustrations.

The film further reveals itself when Sugar travels to New York to visit the departed Dominican third baseman. There, he sees the Yankee Stadium he dreamed about as a boy in San Pedro, and finds a Latin community in the Bronx. It presents, to me at least, an interesting dichotomy: the biggest cities in America are home to our largest fanbases, but also are in the most Latin-friendly towns in America. Many of the minor league cities that players are assigned to, with the intention of developing them into Major Leaguers, are in towns with nothing to offer Spanish speakers.

Critics have credited Boden and Fleck for a niche look at the American dream, but they have also accomplished something that revered sports movies like “The Blind Side” and “Invictus” (both Oscar-nominated films) failed at: they delivered a universal message without dumbing down the sport serving as metaphor. In fact, I think “Sugar” raises issues that we need to pursue that could shine light on the ideal development process of a Latin player. What teams are best at developing these players? What do they do differently? Do players succeed in towns more accessible to Spanish speakers?

Is it really the same game they play back home?

(A note: This week begins what I hope to become a weekly feature: college baseball on Mondays. During the season, we’ll recap how the top draft prospects fared during the weekend. But with Opening Day still three weeks away, we begin today with the top prospect in Division I.)

“He’s not just tall and has a good arm, you know,” Louisiana State head coach Paul Mainieri told me on the phone last week. Sometimes, the rest of what makes up 21-year-old Anthony Ranaudo tends to get lost in the fray. His success, as a pitcher-not-thrower, pitching on Friday nights for a national champion, can somehow be overshadowed by his “good arm.” A beast at 6-foot-7, 230 pounds, with a fastball that has touched 97 mph in the past, Ranaudo is what scouts dream of when they imagine a right-handed pitcher.

He will be drafted in the top five this June, Boras’ demands permitting, as a result of that frame, that arm, and yes, some of those pitching skills harnessed in Baton Rouge. His decision to attend college, one he made before the 2007 draft, was a calculated risk when it appeared he would not be drafted in the first round out of a New Jersey high school. Blame Rick Porcello’s sizable shadow, or blame a senior season that just couldn’t match the dominance of the previous year. But the calculated risk looked to be an epic mistake in 2008, when Ranaudo lost most of his season to elbow tendinitis. Fast forward 12 months, and his prospect status is higher than ever.

And while it’s hard to poke holes in a 12-3, 3.04 ERA season (not to mention the 6.73 H/9 or 11.51 K/9), it does seem as things could get better for Ranaudo this year. Another year removed from his elbow problems, we should see more consistency in velocity this season, as last year his fastball would dip into the 89-91 range at times. In the fall and early spring workouts, the healthy right-hander is back to his old mid-90s self. And to face left-handed hitters, who had some success against him last year, Ranaudo will be implementing his third pitch.

“We’re going to use the change-up a little more this year,” Mainieri said. “It was pretty good last year, we just didn’t throw it much. This fall it looked real good.”

Scouts are anxious to see it, as they didn’t get to see him last summer. Mainieri ruled that after never pitching more than 60 innings in a season before, the 124.1 innings logged during the Tigers’ championship run was enough for 2009. They shut him down for the summer, and limited his fall ball workout to five outings with a maximum of three innings. Before the season, they plan on three more intrasquad starts. And on February 19, against Centenary, Ranaudo will begin his final season in purple and gold. It will mark the first time he’s thrown to a non-teammate since winning the national championship on June 24.

The 2010 draft looks thinner on the college side than it has in a few years, but it’s not without a horse. More on Ranaudo every Monday in this space.

In my talk with Mainieri, three other players came up worth noting, all of whom I’ll run through quickly:

— While Bryce Harper (who made his junior college debut over the weekend) is the draft’s top catcher, Micah Gibbs is the most polished. The junior has shown a bit of every skill at LSU, including gap power (32 doubles in 412 at-bats), patience (69 walks) and plus defense. Mainieri quoted Gibbs’ ability to put all of them together, day in and day out, as his final hurdle before June.

— In terms of SportsCenter appearances, no player in college baseball has been as visible in two seasons as Leon Landry. In both 2008 and 2009, Landry made a Top Ten Play, showcasing his “70” defensive range. He also came out of the gate last season as the nation’s hottest hitter, but went cold at the onset of conference season and was benched by the postseason. “He just got a little homer happy and was pulling off the ball,” Mainieri said. The coach also pointed out that LSU faced “an inordinate amount of left-handers,” who Landry is still struggling against. Still, with an insane power-speed toolset, Landry won’t slip past the third round.

— I first became aware of Blake Dean in August, 2007, when I ranked him as a top freshman prospect in the Cape Cod League, “A nice left-handed swing with good bat control, and a good outfielder,” I wrote. Well, I was wrong with the latter point, as Dean quickly became the Tigers’ Designated Hitter. But he did slug, and has been one of the nation’s top hitters for two seasons, hitting .340/.432/.628 in his sophomore and junior seasons. The coaches finally have a position for Dean, for his final season in Baton Rouge: first base. “This was always his natural position, he just never knew it,” Mainieri said. Expect him to go higher than the 10th round (where he was drafted last June) this time around.

Like so many elements of today’s national pastime, the structure of minor league baseball has a direct lineage to Branch Rickey. The first sabermetrician, as it were, created the modern farm system around the time of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Almost nothing about baseball back then is the same today, and yet, the minor league ladder is never questioned. Each Major League team has six affiliates, to which they assign a contrived order of importance: Rookie League, A-ball, Triple-A, you know the drill. Players are given promotions when they’ve shown a “mastery” of a level, which is almost always either on the back of a hot streak, or because there’s someone below that is ready to take their spot. And for going on 80 years, we’ve simply assumed this is the way it should be.

With the goal that player development should be about building confidence and refining skills, I today offer an idea for change. My series on sinkers last week found how often good pitchers are let down by bad defenses at the lower levels of the minor leagues. With this suggested change, an onus would be put on young position players to value defense more, which can’t be a bad thing. Here’s my (fun?) six-step program to creating an entirely different Minor League structure:

1) Determine the best position for each regular season, full-time player.

2) During Spring Training, rank the players at each position defensively, in four quadrants: great, good, bad, terrible.

3) Do an extensive evaluation of the proportions and park effects at each affiliated minor league stadium.

4) Determine the groundball aptitude of all minor league pitchers, and like you did, separate the players in four quadrants: the most to least worm-burning pitchers.

5) Use this to build your minor league teams:
– Team 1: Groundballiest pitchers with great infielders, terrible outfielders, smallest stadium.
– Team 2: Second groundballiest pitchers with good infielders, bad outfielders, second smallest stadium.
– Team 3: Second flyballiest pitchers with bad infielders, good outfielders, second largest stadium.
– Team 4: Flyballiest pitchers with terrible infielders, great outfielders, most cavernous stadium.

6) Develop a series of challenges for each player that involves assignments to different teams to challenge their learned skills.

Yes, I think this is unrealistic, and no, I don’t think it is necessarily better than the current system. It’s Friday, though, and there’s no harm in having some fun. It also accomplishes some neat things:

1) It creates the best environment for pitchers to succeed. You’re playing to the pitchers’ strengths, and as a result, giving your best fielders the most chances to continue to improve their skills.

2) It creates a clear path for coaching assignments. For example, team 4 is most likely to be filled with power pitchers, who typically struggle with change-ups. The organization’s pitching coach that best teaches the change-up is thus assigned to this team. And so on.

3) The biggest weakness, without question, is that it would have disproportionate effects on offensive performance. Since it’s unlikely any other team would do this — the rest sticking to the traditional structure — you’re risking putting a “Triple-A” caliber hitter into a “Low-A” league/environment. And vice versa.

4) This all makes the farm director more important than ever before. With an understanding of his farm system, the director would be responsible for moving players around when they aren’t being challenged, and finding the best (and most ready) players to be called up to the Major Leagues. This shouldn’t be a difficult task, but it’s certainly asking more from the position.

At the end of the day, the minor league ladder still exists for the same reasons that closers, five-man rotations and sacrifice bunts do: because no one is willing to overtly challenge convention. Any editorial to do so is, admittedly, hot air, but this is still one structure that seems to skate by without questioning. I hope to hear about your opinions about the current structure, my suggested one, or any other ideas you guys have for change in the comments.