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

Draft Coverage: Rankings, November Update, January SoCal Notes & Ian Happ Video Profile

International Coverage: 2015 July 2 Top Prospects & Latest on Yoan Moncada

Evaluating the Prospects:
Rangers, Rockies, D’Backs, Twins, Astros
Cubs, Reds, Phillies, Rays, Mets
Padres, Marlins, Nationals, Red Sox, White Sox
Orioles, Yankees, Braves

While college baseball is slated to begin in earnest this week, the Junior College circuit already has, which means 2015 draft season has arrived. Near or at the top of everyone’s JUCO agenda is College of Southern Nevada righty, Phil Bickford. The 6’4” sophomore righty is already famous after spurning the Toronto Blue Jays’ multi-million dollar advances when he opted not to sign with the club after they made him the 10th overall pick in the 2013 draft.

Bickford attended Cal State Fullerton last year, then went to the Cape Cod League over the summer where his stock skyrocketed thanks to an uptick in stuff as Kiley McDaniel pointed out in his rankings. Bickford defected to the Junior College ranks at the College of Southern Nevada to take advantage of this ascent, as it meant he would be draft eligible in 2015. Bickford pitched at South Mountain Community College in Tempe on Saturday.

Phil Bickford, RHP, College of Southern Nevada

Delivery/Command/Feel to Pitch

Bickford’s body tapers down from his broad shoulders to his narrow but muscular lower half. His long arms always seem to be a bit bent at the elbows. He is a tightly wound, muscular kid, not the sinewy, smooth, projectable type of arm that is most associated with draft eligible high schoolers. Bickford uses his lower half fairly well during the delivery, driving hard off of the mound in a way that is more power than grace. His unwinds up through the hips and generates a good amount of torque before uncorking his pitches. The arm action is short as Bickford loads his arm with a bent elbow, similar to what you might see from quarterback, before unfurling out to about a 3/4 angle at release.

There is effort to the delivery but not so much that I would label it as violent. Despite that effort, Bickford repeated his delivery fairly well, especially early on in the outing, other than a few instances in which he varied his arm angle to alter the depth of his slider. Whether that was done consciously or not I don’t know, but it always made the pitch less effective. Bickford’s fastball command was a pleasant surprise as he worked in, out, up and down at will for the first few innings.

Stuff/Projection

The stuff was down a bit from Cape League ball which makes this a good time to remind everyone that it’s not even Valentine’s Day yet and there’s four months between now and the draft for players to grow and change. Bickford’s fastball sat 90-92 and touched 94 mph for his first few innings before throttling down to 88-90 as he finished up. The four seamers lacked movement, but the two seamers had appetizing sink and run to them. Both were vicious when Bickford was spotting them on the corners at the knees, which occurred half a dozen times or so in this outing. Projecting the fastball here is tricky, as Bickford has had some pretty vast fluctuation in velocity over the past few years.  It’s hard to know where it’ll be when the cement dries.

At 6’4”, 210, there’s some room for him to thicken up and get stronger but not so much that it’s going to make a world of difference. The best case scenario in my summation is for Bickford to shake off what could simply be early season rust, get back to being the mid-90s chucking howitzer scouts saw on the Cape and add enough strength to maintain that sort of velocity throughout a season as he matures. Of course as he does that, he’ll have to also maintain enough flexibility and athleticism, two things he already appears a tad short on. His physical development and the way his stuff is impacted by it will be an interesting thing to follow over the next few years.

Bickford’s slider flashed plus twice and sat between 78-81 mph with a good bit of horizontal movement but not much depth. It was a consistently average pitch until he began to fatigue in the fifth inning. His slider utilization was about what you’d expect from a 19 year-old (Bickford doesn’t turn 20 until July 10th) with pretty uniform location in the zone. He’ll have to learn to use it in various ways, first and foremost to run it away from righties in the dirt as he matures. He did try to throw one backdoor slider to South Mountain’s only lefty in the lineup but missed off the plate away. Bickford’s changeup was miles behind today, but it’s still early in every sense of the word.

Based on what I saw Saturday (hedging a bit based on past performance) my projected long term outcome for Bickford is that of a hard sinker, slider, cutter (purely an educated guess based on the way Bickford’s hand naturally interacts with the baseball) mid-rotation starter. He looked good enough for me to put a mid-to-late first round grade on him which, in what looks like a bit of a down draft, could slot him in the 12-15 range. If the velo ticks up as the spring chugs along then we could be having a different discussion. Beauty is very much going to be in the eye of the beholder come June.

Longenhagen’s Grades: Fastball: 55/60, Slider: 50/60, Changeup: 35/45, Command: 40/55, FV: 50 (#4 starter)

Kiley’s Grades: Fastball: 55/65, Slider: 50/60, Changeup: 40/50+, Command: 40/55, FV: 60 (#3 starter)

More notes from Saturday’s game:

CSN RHP/DH Kayden Porter sat upper 80s with the fastball and had a loopy, below average curveball. He’s just a redshirt sophomore, so there’s time for the breaking ball to tighten up. At 6’7”, 275 lbs there’s not much projecting to do on the fastball. He might be someone’s late round flier if they want to take a chance on something developing on the mound or in the batter’s box as Porter has some pop.

CSN sophomore lefty Anthony Martine touched 91 and flashed a fringe average breaking ball but, while his arm was loose, he had trouble repeating any aspect of his delivery.

OnDeckDigital is a new company run by former big league pitcher Randy Flores that films, logs and stores video on their website of multiple angles from some of the top amateur baseball games around the country. They have an exclusive contract to video the prestigious Cape Cod League and have expanded into colleges, high schools and youth events as well. Numerous MLB teams already subscribe to their service and we wanted to show FanGraphs readers what the video and information from OnDeckDigital can do.

I chose arguably the top draft-eligible hitting prospect from the Cape, OnDeckDigital made a highlight reel with their video from the Cape and Matt Rose and I give some analysis for context to what you’re seeing. All of their video is HD, available on mobile devices and is easily sharable to social media. You can learn more at OnDeckDigital.com

Ian Happ, 2B, Cincinnati (NCAA) & Harwich (Cape Cod League)
6’0/205, B/R, Draft Day Age: 20.8, Draft Ranking: 13th

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Kiley McDaniel posted his Way-Too-Early 2015 MLB draft rankings back in September and a quick update in November but it has been rather quiet on the FanGraphs MLB Draft front since then. I’m here to start changing that, as this past weekend gave me my first opportunity of the year to begin getting looks at notable draft prospects in the Southern California area.

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When I’m making the calls for the Evaluating the Prospects series, I start picking up trends across multiple lists.  Some of it is simple, expected things—trends in types of players I or the industry tend to underrate or overrate—but there can be more specific things that keep coming up.  I wrote earlier about the trend of top hitting prospects flopping the big leagues after appearing bored at Triple-A along with a general plea of ignorance in any scouting projections, but now there’s now another constant I keep hearing on almost every list.

It’s become part of common internet prospect lingo to ask/comment on whether a prospect that plays shortstop in the minors can “stick at the position.” What this means is if he can project to be average to slightly below, or in other words, good enough to send out there on an everyday basis, assuming his bat is enough in combination with his defense to be one of the top 30 shortstops in the big leagues.

This seems like a simple enough question, but there’s a persistent blind spot in the industry of underrating the defensive ability in short looks (a showcase, infield practice or just a handful of games) of shortstops with solid fundamentals, but without flashy actions.

Some of this comes from a team talking about their own prospect, trying to change the consensus that their own prospect can, in fact, stick at shortstop in the big leagues. I can say from working in three front offices that over 95% of the time, the team that has a prospect also has the #1 highest value of him out of all 30 teams. There’s a number of understandable reasons for this effect, but it only accounts for a small part of the overall trend.

I hear it often and in the all three talent markets: the draft, July 2nd and now on organizational prospect lists. The player getting underrated is a shortstop with anywhere from 45 to 55 speed on the 20-80 scale, that has fringy to average pure range for the position and the minimum amount arm strength (55) for the position. So many times, this player doesn’t seem in early looks like he could stick, but now a scout, a plurality of scouts or a whole organization later come to realize that he can.

You probably have a mental image of these two sorts of players. There’s the flashy (almost always Latin) shortstop with quick hands, plus speed and the actions that, after one ground ball, look like a big league shortstop.  This guy could be Elvis Andrus, Rey Ordonez, Andrelton Simmons or any other number of players you may be thinking of right now.  Then there’s the other guy, either with a third base looking frame and/or speed (Jhonny Peralta, Juan Uribe, Jordy Mercer) or just a guy with unspectacular tools (Jed Lowrie, the recently-traded Franklin Barreto or 2015 draft prospects Alex Bregman of LSU and Brendan Rodgers, from an Orlando-area high school).

You can see there’s a subtle amount of racial influence here in most cases, but what I’m realizing is that the answer to “is he a shortstop?” is a snap reaction that’s answering a different question. The answer is often addressing “does he look like Rey Ordonez?” rather than “can he be fringy to average defensively with enough bat to be one of the 30 starting shortstops?” question, which is the one being asked by the scouting report. It usually isn’t until the high minors or big leagues that the default answer by scouts is to the more important question.

I find myself (and other scouts echo my sentiment) that when you go to a showcase and see 40 kids you’ve never seen before run out to shortstop and each take a half dozen grounders that I write in my notes after you see some Jed Lowrie type tools “2B fit” or “3B fit” next to his name.  Then, this same player plays in games the rest of the evaluation period until signing/draft day and you start seeing instincts, positioning and the intangibles of defense and you slowly start thinking this kid might be able to stick.

This happens in various forms at every level of baseball, but there’s little accountability for when scouts or writers get it wrong, because the shortstop was called a future non-shortstop at every level until he proved it in the big leagues for multiple years. It didn’t matter if you were wrong, because everyone was wrong, because they were answering the wrong question.

The more accurate way to think about shortstop defensive evaluations is in three buckets: definite yes, maybe and definite no. Some scouts may already think of it this way, but odds are only the flashy guys go in the first bucket and some of them don’t show the consistency to deserve that standing. Plenty of second bucket guys are getting tossed in the third bucket way too quickly, before they claw their way to where they belonged in the first place.

Barreto and Rodgers (the front-runner for the #1 overall pick in June) are both interesting cases to watch going forward, but the best case study may be two current college players. There’s another 2015 draft shortstop prospect I haven’t mentioned yet — University of Florida product Richie Martin. He is the flashier type of shortstop and has plus speed: he immediately passes the eye test and every scout you talk to says he should be at least an average defensive shortstop.

When you drill down or talk to a scout who is really paying attention, you’ll hear it pointed out that Martin makes a number of mental errors and lapses in focus to where he’s clearly behind Bregman as a defender currently. Bregman is a smaller guy that is a tick slower, doesn’t have flashy actions and has been projected as a pro second baseman or catcher his whole amateur career for these reasons.

That said, Bregman makes every play and to make up for his merely okay range, he charges almost every ball hit to him and has sure hands, making nearly every play. Martin has always had a light bat and was almost benched as a sophomore, but had a breakout offensive summer on the Cape, so now he’s seen as a complete prospect that likely goes in the top 50 picks.  Some scouts are a little wary of the short track record of offensive success and the inconsistency on defense, so it’ll be interesting to track the scouting consensus and actual results for these two SEC shortstops.

While this is just one case study and it could go either way, I’ll be paying closer attention to scouts’ and other publications’ pronouncements, along with my own, about who can stick at short and who cannot.  This is also yet another reason why, for next year’s prospect rankings, I’ll be going through this year’s rankings and pointing out where I was wrong.  Here’s to hoping it won’t be longer than the actual list.

I’ve said it before but could stand to say it again: prospect rankings don’t have a long shelf life.  Usually, players ranked in the offseason don’t change much over that offseason, or at least we don’t have a chance to see any changes since they normally aren’t playing organized ball.  Every now and then a player with limited information (like a Cuban defector that signed late in the season) will go to a winter league and we’ll learn more, but most times, players look mostly the same in the fall/winter leagues, or more often a tired version of themselves.

This means that updating prospect rankings before we have a nice sample of regular season games to judge by (say, late April), seems pretty foolish.  The two mitigating factors in the case of my rankings is that I started ranking players before instructional league and the Arizona Fall League started and I also did draft rankings, which are constantly in flux.

I was on the road 17 of the last 18 days, seeing July 2nd prospects (recap here), draft prospects and minor league prospects.  I’ll take this chance to provide some updates to my draft rankings from September and below that, some players that looked to have improved at the AFL, particularly those from clubs whose prospects I’ve already ranked.

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

More Draft Coverage: November Update & January SoCal Notes

International Coverage: 2015 July 2 Top Prospects & Latest on Yoan Moncada

Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, D’Backs, Twins, Astros, Cubs, Reds, Phillies, Rays, Mets, Padres, Marlins, Nationals, Red Sox, White Sox, Orioles, Yankees, Braves & Athletics

EDIT, Sept 28: Since this article was published, Bickford chose a school (Southern Nevada JC, the same school as Bryce Harper) which I note in his blurb and one of the principles in the Aiken/Nix mess, lefty Mac Marshall, transferred to a junior college after a few weeks at LSU.

Marshall is joining high school teammate Isiah Gilliam (mentioned in the extra names below the rankings) at Florida panhandle juco powerhouse Chipola JC after both opted not to sign with the Astros and Cubs, respectively, after leaving another powerhouse program, Atlanta-area Parkview High School.  Marshall would slot 46th on this list, but I didn’t change the rankings, just put a blurb for Marshall in the spot where he would be on the list if I re-ranked it.

Some housekeeping notes to clarify and expound on the rankings:

– Brady Aiken still hasn’t signed and nothing concrete has been announced to that end, so he’s in the 2015 class until further notice. Like Aiken, Phil Bickford’s school is unknown at the moment, but both are expected to go to junior colleges out west.

– This draft class is shallow at the top. The top 3 players are a tier and then the players right behind them would usually be around 10th in most classes. There’s still plenty of time for new players to emerge or known players to get better, but at this point things are a little light.

– The Astros are once again a big story, as they have the 2nd overall pick (compensation for not signing Aiken) and as of today the 7th pick as well. That’s still fluid with picks 5-9 separated by 2 games with under 20 to go.

– One of the reasons you’ll keep hearing about the Astros and Aiken is because Aiken’s advisor, Casey Close’s Excel Sports Management, represents 7 of my top 15 prospects. (I won’t connect specific players to advisors as that only serves to help the NCAA take leverage/college eligibility from kids.) Neither side has said they won’t sign or won’t draft a player from the other side, but the tension from the Aiken/Nix saga certainly doesn’t make this an easy situation to figure.

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