A little more than a week ago, Riley Cooper had plans to travel to Arlington, Texas to pick up a $125,000 check. It was half of the signing bonus that Cooper had agreed to with the Texas Rangers, a significantly over-slot signing for the 754th overall selection. Cooper, who only started 41 games for the Florida Gators baseball team in three seasons, was deemed a coup for the Rangers scouting department, as no other organization thought it possible he would give up football for baseball. Ultimately, the other 29 were correct, as it was revealed Tuesday that Cooper canceled his physical (and check signing) with the Rangers to pursue a career in the National Football League.

Cooper has not been the only established college player to make this decision recently, as he is joined by all-SEC safety Chad Jones (LSU) and Heisman Trophy finalist Toby Gerhart (Stanford), both of whom some expected to re-join their college teams this spring.

The best prospect in both sports, by a country mile, is Jones. In fact, Jones is the most polished two-way player we have seen since Jeff Samardzija. Where he lacks Samardzija’s proven baseball record, Jones matched the former Golden Domer in arm strength. Paul Mainieri’s crew began to give him time out of the LSU bullpen late last season, and he emerged as an important member of their pitching staff in Omaha. While he would have had to show polish with his secondary stuff this spring, his potential as a mid-90s lefty, with good spin on his curveball, was getting first-round grades from some scouts. But those scouts also knew he loved football.

“I really thought we’d lose him,” said Louisiana State coach Paul Mainieri, who also coached Samardzija at Notre Dame. “I thought he wanted to go into pro football. Mentally, I was already preparing that he would go unless word came back that he wouldn’t get drafted high.”

Jones could not have had the leverage that Samardzija did, and would not have sniffed the $10 million that he received from the Cubs. Still, the nature of the provisions that two-sport athletes receive in the MLB Draft, which allows MLB teams to spread the bonus over five years, would have led to an above-slot contract. I believe something in the neighborhood of what Shelby Miller received from the Cards last year — qualifying for two-sport status as an all-state prep punter — as a first round pick, $2.875 million, would have been available to Jones. On the contrary, in the NFL Drat last year, the two defensive backs drafted closest to 44th overall (where Scouts Inc. ranks Jones) received $2.15 and $2 million guaranteed, with four-year contracts in the $4-5 million range. Jones, as you can see, is giving up guaranteed money in the short-term to follow his NFL passion.

When Gerhart went undrafted last June, it became clear that he had voiced to scouts his intentions to pursue a football career. When he emerged as the nation’s most productive runner this season, this was etched in stone, as Gerhart is now a higher ranked football player (85th overall by Scouts Inc.) than he would have been as a baseball player. I saw Gerhart at the 2008 College World Series, and he was very impressive — but more so physically and in batting practice than in game play. While he went 12-for-12 stealing bases in college, he didn’t show the home-to-first speed you’d like in a college running back, and all his power would have been projected down the road.

Finally, we have Cooper, and we don’t have to guess what he’s passing on: the agreed-upon $250,000 contract he signed last year. The contract was contingent upon Cooper giving up football after one more autumn with Mr. Tebow, but the Gators’ success was enough for him to stay with the pigskin. He’s much more polished there, and though he ranks only as the No. 17 wideout through Scouts Inc., just the presence on a 53-man roster will give him more money than the Rangers promised. While Cooper was a star defensive outfielder with great speed, he was raw, showing scouts only 147 at-bats in two seasons. Financially, it’s clear: if he makes a roster in football, he made the right choice (financially). If he doesn’t, then we’ll have to wonder what if.

Failure in football could see all these players retreat to baseball, but the bonuses will be long gone. Hopefully they never reach the point of wondering what if, and each succeeds in their chosen sport.

Five years from now, there will be dozens of new Major League pitchers succeeding in the Major Leagues with the same profile. Each will seem a surprise in his own right, discounted at some level in the Minor Leagues due to the perception of bad performance. They will be succeeding because their batting average on balls in play is lower than it has been in their professional career, and because they don’t walk many batters. They will not have been top 10 prospects, but they will be a steady presence on every Major League roster, a set-up man, a middle reliever, a fourth starter.

They will each throw a sinker. This week, I have used a sample of sinker pitchers to show that this subset of pitcher is underrated by current prospect evaluation techniques. This is because too rarely we realize, while scouts agree the player has very limited further upside, improved defenses at higher levels should yield better results. Today, with the lessons learned this week, I want to turn the attention to the future. I have culled the minor leagues and found 10 players, who I present alphabetically, that I think could be the next generation of Major League sinkerballers.

In the interest of saving space, I’m going to tell you about almost all of them in a paragraph, because this type of pitcher has very specific similarities. These guys, of course, all have very good sinkers around 90 mph, and have been carefully selected due to consistent high groundball rates. Their breaking ball is solid, but it could certainly be more consistent. They struggle against left-handed batters, and as a result, future success – especially in a rotation – is contingent on an improved change-up. And all of them have given me reason to believe that their BABIP will come down at some point and, with it, their H/9 and ERA.

Please note that groundball percentages and BABIP numbers come from Jeff Sackmann’s incomparable Minor League Splits site. Also, some of these players now have their college splits available, if you click on the red number on their Career Stats page. A great tool keeps getting better.

Kyle Allen, 20, New York Mets

Level   BB/9   K/9   HR/9   GB%    BABIP
Low-A   3.7    8.0   0.6    55.0   .289

The youngest of the ten, Allen also has one of the best change-ups, which led to a .508 OPS against left-handed batters. His defense was pretty good for him this year, so if he can cut down on the walks and tighten the slider, watch out.

Randy Boone, 25, Toronto Blue Jays

Level    BB/9   K/9   HR/9   GB%    BABIP
AA/AAA   3.0    6.4   0.5    53.6   .320

I do hope the Blue Jays give Boone a chance, as he’s really located well down in the zone since leaving University of Texas. He does have a nice breaking ball, and doesn’t figure to get more polished. Should be the first starter called up this season, if you ask me.

Shane Dyer, 22, Tampa Bay Rays

Level   BB/9   K/9   HR/9   GB%    BABIP
Low-A   2.8    6.8   0.3    58.1   .360

Really a good representation of players on this list. He didn’t allow any home runs, but Tim Beckham’s Bowling Green defense let down that entire pitching staff. If things get any better on that front this year, Dyer is going to surely cut down that 10.7 H/9.

Stephen Fife, 23, Boston Red Sox

Level   BB/9   K/9   HR/9   GB%    BABIP
A-/A+   1.4    8.9   0.8    55.5   .317

Assuming his days of a sore shoulder are behind him, my favorite player on this list. Still has sink on his fastball up to 93 mph. Fife was a late bloomer at University of Utah, but has shown all three pitches to be plus at times. His defense in High-A wasn’t very good, and I expect him to fly up the Boston prospect rankings this season.

Jason Godin, 25, Kansas City Royals

Level       BB/9   K/9   HR/9   GB%    BABIP
A-/AA/AAA   4.2    7.4   0.3    60.0   .356

Godin came back slow after a facial fracture ended his season short in 2008, but he’s shown signs of really making good on that fifth round choice in 2006. I truly believe the Royals should be aggressive with Godin, who has a career 58.9 groundball percentage. The tools to be a viable Major League reliever all seem there to me.

Liam Hendriks, 21, Minnesota Twins

Level   BB/9   K/9   HR/9   GB%    BABIP
Low-A   2.0    8.4   0.4    57.5   .354

Hendriks missed 2008 with a broken back, but didn’t show any signs of injury in his 14 starts last season. Instead, all he showed was some bad luck. Hendriks was a choice of Australia’s last World Baseball Classic team, and is more advanced than the Twins handling has shown. An assignment to Fort Myers, with a quick trigger to Double-A, should be in the cards. Note: fellow Australian and Cubs prospect Ryan Searle was a finalist for this article.

Luke Putkonen, 24, Detroit Tigers

Level   BB/9   K/9   HR/9   GB%    BABIP
Low-A   2.8    6.9   0.2    56.9   .318

Putkonen was not known for his fastball movement at the University of North Carolina, and had a 1.52 GO/AO in his final year there. But he has reinvented himself as a sinker pitcher, and had a fantastic year in the Midwest League. There’s no semblance of a third pitch, so I think he’s a reliever in the end, but he could be a good one.

Stephen Sauer, 23, Chicago White Sox

Level   BB.9   K/9   HR/9   GB%    BABIP
Low-A   1.2    7.8   0.3    56.3   .363

This guy managed a 3.36 ERA in Kannapolis because he was so good at limiting home runs and walks, but look at his BABIP! His hit rate seems to have scared off prospect evaluators, as he’s not listed as one of Baseball America’s top 30 White Sox prospects. But his sinker has always been good (2.64 GO/AO at ASU) and his slider is average enough. With a good change-up, Sauer can be just as good as Jon Garland ever was.

Kyle Waldrop, 24, Minnesota Twins

Level   BB/9   K/9   HR/9   GB%    BABIP
A+/AA   2.5    5.0   0.2    60.1   .322

I’m not sure about this one, but Waldrop’s groundball numbers were just so good. They were good before he had Tommy John surgery that cost him the 2008 season, but they were never above 60%. This is a guy that has had to reinvent himself since he was a first-round pick, and with that pedigree, should be given a chance to succeed with the organization. He seems to have the savvy to be able to do just that.

Trey Watten, 23, Milwaukee Brewers

Level   BB/9   K/9   HR/9   GB%    BABIP
Low-A   3.9    6.5   0.6    56.7   .329

Watten is still pretty new to pitching, but his arm strength landed him a spot in the seventh round of the 2008 Draft. His debut season went well, but his defense just didn’t do good enough work. He’s the rawest player on the list, but if the command and change-up come along, his athleticism could make him the best.

I want to be clear about my intentions in this series. Simply put, I believe that prospect evaluation has improved by a radical margin during the information era, and we’re doing it better than we ever have. But I believe that the type of analysis being done does inherently underrate players, and that we can always be better. The writers can be better, the farm directors can be better, the General Managers can be better. One of those steps, in my estimation, is giving sinkerball pitchers a different route of analysis. These are not players that follow a typical path of progression and improvement.

In this belief, on Tuesday I laid out my method for creating a sample of 22 sinkerballers that have made it to the Major Leagues, and succeeded enough to be causing 50% of their batters faced to hit the ball in the ground. I crunched the numbers on these players, and below, I believe their Minor League performance speaks for itself. If defense is beginning to matter more and more, than the way we understand pitchers that rely on defense needs to change. Here is my sample’s aggregate Minor League statistics (note: “Yrs” is the player seasons in the study, and “2009” was their aggregate 2009 Major League performance):

Level   Yrs   Age    ERA    H/9    K/9    BB/9   HR/9
Low-A   20    21.2   3.91   9.16   6.46   2.41   0.58
HighA   23    22.0   3.68   9.43   6.55   2.70   0.47
DoubA   35    23.5   3.76   8.97   6.73   2.96   0.59
TripA   44    25.8   4.01   9.26   6.27   2.97   0.82
2009    22    28.4   4.33   9.65   5.64   3.40   0.85

If nothing else, I am immediately struck by the uniformity of the numbers. Obviously, Major League hitters are responsible for the decline in strikeouts (which, unsurprisingly, leads to the small jump in H/9) and the increase of walks. The power that Minor League hitters are developing seems to come to fruition in Triple-A, and certainly sustains itself in the Major Leagues. Of course, we could micro-analyze the changes in peripherals all over the place. But at the end of the day, the difference in ERA between this group of sinkerballer pitchers in Low-A, and in their average age-28 season in the Major Leagues is 42 ERA points (and it’s even closer if you discount two players that were WAY too old for the Midwest League). I doubt there’s another subset of players that shows such consistency from the lowest rung of the minors to the bigs.

Best Undervalued Low-A Pitcher: Jamey Wright, Asheville. A first round pick in 1993, Wright made his debut the next season, and was one of the worst starting pitchers in the league. His 11.8 H/9 led to a 5.97 ERA, and would have been worse had he not allowed just six home runs in 143 innings. The next year, Wright was promoted, and though his strikeout and walk rates worsened, his H/9 dropped to 8.4, his ERA to 2.47, and he was all over the prospect map again.

Best Undervalued High-A Pitcher: Chris Sampson, Salem. A former shortstop, Sampson didn’t make his conversion to pitching until age 25, when he dominated Low-A hitters in Lexington (1.39 ERA in 84 IP). The next season, some began to question Sampson as his hit rate ballooned to 10.1. However, his walk rate had dropped, and the difference in strikeout and home run rates were insignificant. It was merely the Salem defense, as Sampson proved by dominating the Minor Leagues for the next two seasons. If history repeats itself, Sampson should have a better 2010 after a strange .342 BABIP last year.

Best Undervalued Double-A Pitcher: Chad Qualls, Round Rock. Baseball America did have Qualls as a top ten prospect following his 2002 first run at Double-A. But ninth just wasn’t high enough, as this was a guy that had a 0.5 HR/9, 7.8 K/9, and plenty of groundball outs. His 9.6 H/9 was the hold-up, and when it regulated itself the next season, BA moved him up in the Astros rankings. (Also note: They left him off the 2005 top ten list when his H/9 ballooned in Triple-A. The next year, he had a 3.28 ERA in the Astros bullpen.)

Best Undervalued Triple-A Pitcher: Clay Condrey, Everywhere. This guy pitched from 2002-2007 in the Triple-A, never sniffing more than 30 innings in a big league bullpen. But in 2003, when Condrey improved everything but his hit rate in his second go-around, the Padres should have known what they had. Instead, they sold him to the Phillies, who certainly got more than they paid for in 2008-2009.

So I want to repeat what I have been saying throughout this series: the wonderful thing about sinkerballer pitchers is that they just don’t change very much. Yes, they have to work on their out pitch to left-handed batters. And everything needs to be harnessed and tweaked. But what you see is what you get, and with every promotion, they simply strike a balance between the difficulty of facing harder hitters with the ease of better fielders. No one better personifies this notion than Doug Mathis:

Year   Level   H/9    ERA    K/9   BB/9   HR/9
2006   HighA   9.6    4.18   6.5   2.8    0.8
2007   DoubA   9.6    3.76   6.3   2.7    0.5
2008   TripA   8.6    3.35   6.0   2.3    1.2
2009     MLB   8.2    3.16   5.3   2.1    0.8

See what a good defense does? Imagine how much worse the Brandon McCarthy trade would have been for Texas if the White Sox insisted on Mathis instead of Jake Rasner. Note: Tomorrow’s article will be looking into the minors for the next crop of sinkerballers. After the jump, a little clarification on what I’m looking for from that group.

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“There is little if any difference among major-league pitchers in their ability to prevent hits on balls hit in the field of play.” If you’re reading this site, I imagine these are not foreign words to you, as I’m quoting from Voros McCracken’s first article outlining his famous DIPS theory. With that sentence, pitching evaluation was changed forever. But, I do find it interesting that McCracken limited himself to “major-league pitchers,” as his findings surely represent a universal truth in baseball.

Yesterday, I began my writing at FanGraphs with the assertion that right-handed sinker-throwing prospects are a breed inherently undervalued by the conventions of Minor League prospect coverage. They do not throw hard, they do not strike people out, and they do not possess a ceiling. These are not power pitchers that need to be coddled and have their command harnessed, because for a right-handed worm-burner to be drafted, some semblance of secondary skills must be present. This is merely a group of prospects that relies on their fielders’ ability “to prevent hits on balls hit in the field of play” more than any other type of prospect. Simply: they are underrated because they are most dependent on inexperienced fielders.

In the Major Leagues, fielders seem to routinely turn about 69% of balls in play into outs. Last year, I wrote an article that found the 2008 NCAA Division I average defensive efficiency to be 61.7%. This difference, I don’t have to tell you, is astronomical, and varies even further on a team-to-team basis. My article focused some on the notion that the “what have you done for me lately” aspect of scouting is susceptible to underrating a pitcher because his defense doesn’t get to balls and runs cross the plate. The response I heard from Major League executives seemed to validate this theory.

If scouts are making this mistake at the college level, then I have no qualms accusing prospect evaluators (big note here: myself included!) of doing the same with Minor League pitchers. To reinforce the notion that a hit in Peoria isn’t the same as a hit in Chicago, I calculated the Defensive Efficiency of each full season league for the past five years. I should note these figures will be slightly inflated, as it just seems impossible to weed out batted ball errors from the total figure. Still, that would only have an incremental effect on these numbers, which show that fielding gets better as you move up the ladder and get more experienced defenders behind you.

League               DER
Midwest              .6495
South Atlantic       .6461
California           .6348
Carolina             .6589
Florida State        .6566
Eastern              .6642
Southern             .6614
Texas                .6595
International        .6660
Pacific Coast        .6571

Obviously, the altitude and park effects present in the California and Pacific Coast Leagues skew their data a bit, but it’s clear that a pitcher should expect a better defense with each promotion in the Minor Leagues. And as such, the baseline H/9 that we judge pitch-to-contact pitchers by should be higher in the lower levels. If a sinkerball pitcher is getting his ground balls, regardless of the outcome, he is doing his job. A player with an identical percentage of ground balls in play at each level is simply going to have more success to the most advanced level he is assigned.

I’ll close out with an example. Rick Porcello is, without question, one of the most talented players I chose for my sinkerballers sampler. He’s a guy that no one really underrated, but he’s a prime example of the defensive difference between High-A and Major League Baseball, given that he made the jump in just one year. In 2008, Porcello posted a 3.83 FIP with the Lakeland Tigers. He had a ridiculous 64.1 groundball percentage, a 25.2 flyball percentage, and a 8.3 line drive percentage. Using David Appelman’s expected BABIP formula for pitchers, Porcello should have had a .252 BABIP. It was .280. In the Majors, he essentially gave up 10% of his groundballs and turned them into line drives, as he faced a hugely more talented group of hitters. His expected BABIP at the Major League level was a still respectable .298. But the Detroit Tigers defense gave him a .281 BABIP.

There were no significant differences in Porcello’s stuff between 2008 and 2009. But the reason he was able to make such a fascinating transition so seamlessly was because his pitching style is just as suited for the benefits of a Major League defense (as compared to a High-A one) as it is for the trade-off of facing an average High-A hitter compared to a Major League one. With the emergence of batted ball data in the Minor Leagues, the influx of support in DIPS theory and the importance of defense, using hit rates to evaluate sinkerballers should soon become a thing of the past. We’ll see where Major League Baseball teams have made this mistake when I analyze the Minor League commonalities of my sinkerballer sample group tomorrow.

We’re really excited to introduce you to the newest writer to join the FanGraphs team – Bryan Smith. He’s covered minor league and college baseball for nearly every site on the planet, and we’re thrilled that this will be his new home. Please welcome him to the site.

Brad Bergesen was not the most exciting player that had his Major League debut with the Baltimore Orioles last season. Not even close. When Bergesen was called up in late April, the fan base was too busy anticipating Matt Wieters arrival to notice. His season-ending injury was suffered in late July, one day after Chris Tillman made his debut, and six days before Brian Matusz would follow suit. The minor league strikeout numbers of David Hernandez and Jason Berken surely held more promise for Orioles fans.

A lot of blue-chip players debuted for the Orioles last season, ushering in a new era of trust in the farm system. Of all those players, Brad Bergesen was the most valuable. The 2.3 WAR he accumulated in 19 starts was more than those other pitchers combined, and still managed to top Wieters and Nolan Reimold. Bergesen, amazingly, was the Orioles’ Rookie of the Year.

Now, I don’t believe that when it’s all said and done, Bergesen will end up as the career WAR leader of this esteemed group. But even within his small sample size of success, I think there is a lesson to be learned for those of us that follow (and report on) Minor League Baseball. I use Bergesen as a very particular example as I begin my first project here at FanGraphs. I posit that no type of minor leaguer is typically as undervalued as the right-handed sinker-slider brigade, for a couple reasons: 1) the sheer number of them gives the notion they are fungible, 2) they don’t light up radar guns or strikeout columns and, most importantly, 3) their success depends upon the inexperienced eight players in the field.

More than three years ago, I wrote an article for The Hardball Times predicting eight breakout prospects for the 2007 season. (I ask you to ignore the article so as not to become blinded by my Eric Campbell infatuation). One of the diamonds in the rough in the piece was Vince Mazzaro, coming off his debut season in the minor leagues: 5.05 ERA, 11.0 H/9, 6.1 K/9. But armed with the knowledge that he had a solid sinker, and quoting his .320 BABIP and 62.4 LOB%, I saw someone that would improve as his defenses did.

After his first 17 Major League starts yielded replacement level results, Mazzaro probably shouldn’t serve as my credibility-defining example. But his progression up the minor league ladder, from “bust” to 2008 Texas League Pitcher of the Year, serves as an interesting narrative to begin this series. I plan to isolate a sample of Major League sinkerballers, define their minor league commonalities, and use this information to help us recognize a different breed of prospects. The criteria I used to isolate the sinker guys was as follows:

— At least 40 IP in 2009.
— At least a 50% groundball percentage in 2009.
— Neither left-handed, nor right-handed with an average fastball above 93.0.
— And then I used my eyes to do things like eliminate the side-armed Cla Meredith’s of the world.

I want to clarify my third criteria. When a scout sees a player, there’s no question a few traits will inspire a little bias off the bat. You’ll find that all scouts love lefties that can touch even 90 mph, especially lefties with the kind of control that sinker/slider guys possess. Paul Maholm and Marc Rzepczynski don’t have better stuff than the guys in my sample, but because they were left-handed, they were a lot more noticed at the college level. The velocity requirement is similar: Fausto Carmona could get by in the minor leagues at times solely based on his velocity — and scouts held him up as a prospect as a result of velocity + movement.

So, with all that out of the way, I whittled down a nice sample of sinkerballers. We have 24 in all, complete with guys you would expect, like Derek Lowe, or Aaron Cook, or Chien-Ming Wang. And also a whole lot of guys who are, yes, fungible (I’ll leave the whole list in the comments). Still, the job of a prospect reporter is to identify as many up-and-coming Major Leaguers as possible — even the guys capable of just 40 decent innings. Prospect coverage can get better, and I see sinkerballers as a fine place to start.

Final Note: I’m thrilled to say that I’m joining David Appelman’s fantastic outfit here at FanGraphs for the indefinite future. I’m very pleased to be joining friends of mine, like, Dave Cameron and Erik Manning, and just as pleased to be joining the company of guys I admire, like, well the rest of this staff. If you’d like to get a hold of me, please try bsmithwtny AT gmail, or I’m going to try this Twitter thing again with the @bsmithwtny handle. Thanks!