Archive for Featured

I’m going to be up front with you: that headline is seriously misleading. Based on what we can tell, Miguel Sano is probably not a good defensive player. Last year, though, to try and get the club’s offense going, the Twins decided to try Miguel Sano in right field. Regret kicked in pretty quickly.

He played right field most days for the first couple of months of the season, until a strained hamstring put him on the disabled list for the entire month of June. During the month that the team didn’t have to watch Sano chase balls around the outfield, they decided that they didn’t really want to see that ever again. When he returned to the team at the beginning of July, he was promptly moved back to third base. He split his time between there and DH over the rest of the year.

As a pretty large human being, Sano certainly doesn’t look like an outfielder, and while we only saw him out there for a little over 300 innings, the early returns weren’t particularly positive.

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Earlier this morning, Eric Longenhagen rolled out his list of the top-100 prospects in baseball, with Red Sox-turned-White Sox prospect Yoan Moncada at the top of his rankings. Helpfully, Eric’s rankings include the FV grade for each player, so that we can see that he really does see a difference between Moncada and the rest of the pack, as Moncada was the only prospect in the sport to garner a 70 grade.

As Eric notes in his piece, the grade is really the more important number here, as the ordinal ranking can create some false sense of separation, where players might be 20 or 30 spots apart on the list but offer fairly similar expected future value. The FV tiers do a good job of conveying where the real differences lay, highlighting those instances when Eric actually does see a significant difference between players, versus simply having to put a similar group of prospects in some order regardless of the strength of his feelings about those rankings.

But while the FV scale is helpful in binning players, it doesn’t do much to convey the differences between the tiers themselves. How much more valuable is a 60 than a 55? Or is a team better off with one elite 65 or 70 FV prospect or a multitude of 50-55 types? These are interesting questions, and ones that teams themselves have to answer on a regular basis.

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Below is my list of the top-100 prospects in baseball. Each prospect has a brief scouting summary here with links to the full team reports embedded in their names where applicable. Those without links will have them added as I cover the remaining farm systems. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources, as well as from my own observations. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed, you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

Note that prospects below are ranked overall and that they also lie within tiers demarcated by their FV grades. I think there’s plenty of room for argument within the tiers, and part of the reason I like FV is because it can illustrate how an on-paper gap that seems large may not actually be. The gap between prospect No. 3 on this list, Amed Rosario, and prospect No. 33, Delvin Perez, is 30 spots but the difference between their talent/risk/proximity profiles is quite large. The gap between Perez and prospect No. 63, Kyle Tucker, is also 30 numerical places but the gap in talent is relatively small. Below the list is a brief rundown of names of 50 FV prospects who didn’t make the 100. This same comparative principle applies to them.   -Eric Longenhagen

70 FV Prospects

Scouting Summary
The tools are deafening. Moncada is a plus-plus runner with plus-plus arm strength, plus raw power and an advanced idea of the strike zone. He’s going to strike out, and there are some within the industry concerned about how much. That said, I think it’s important to consider that while Moncada was K-ing a lot late last year he was also a 21-year old who had played for just a month and a half above A-ball and, during a large chunk of that time, was learning a new position. The stat-based projection systems, KATOH and otherwise, seem comfortable with it, and so am I. I think he’ll provide rare power and patience while playing a premium position — he’s looked fine at second base in my looks this spring — and, while it might take adjustment at the big-league level, I think he’ll eventually be the best of this crop of minor leaguers.

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The first words out of Casey Kelly’s mouth surprised me. When I asked the former top prospect how he’d describe his career, I expected something along the lines of, “It’s been frustrating.”

He said “It’s been fun.”

That’s a glass-is-half-full attitude if there ever was one. Since being taken in the first round of the 2008 draft by the Red Sox, the 27-year-old right-hander has thrown just 640 professional innings, 62 of which have come at the highest level. They haven’t been pretty innings. Kelly’s big-league ERA is an unattractive 6.39.

His future look especially bright after he was acquired by San Diego in the Anthony Rizzo–Adrian Gonzalez trade. Heading into the 2011 season, Kelly was ranked by Baseball America as the Padres top prospect (Rizzo was right behind him). Displaying a power arsenal, he went on to hurl 142 quality frames as a 21-year-old in Double-A.

Clouds were looming on the horizon. Read the rest of this entry »

When a team invests money in a player, the general idea is that the player in question will generate value by actually playing for the team by whom he’s been signed or acquired. Of course, that’s not always the case. There are multiple reasons why a team might end up cutting ties with a player but agree to continue paying part or all of his salary: to complete a trade that enables that club to get better prospects in return, to open a 40-man spot for a player of greater value, or to offset the salary of an overpaid player to make him more enticing in a trade.

For a club to spend money on players absent from their roster isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Last season, for example, the Cubs, Dodgers, and Indians all had more than $10 million in dead money. They clearly had no problems competing.

As for why a team would want a player so easily discarded by his original team, our old friend Moneyball covered that pretty well when it came to the A’s acquisition of David Justice:

In his prime, Justice had been the sort of sensational hitter the Oakland A’s could never have afforded to buy on the open market. They could afford him now only because no one else wanted him: the rest of baseball looked at Justice and saw a has-been. Billy Beane had cut a deal with the Yankees thtat left the A’s with Justice for one year at a salary of $3.5 million, half what they Yankees had paid him the year before. The Yankees picked up the other half. The Yankees were, in effect, paying David Justice to play against them.

It was a little more dramatic in the movie (and as Ken Davidoff mentioned to me, it was the Mets, not the Yankees), but in any event, the opportunity to potentially buy low on a player is enticing. Nor is the strategy limited merely to low budget teams taking on players from high-budget ones. All teams — or, at least, almost all teams — have a pretty good amount of money, so almost every team can afford to give up or take on a player depending on their needs. Last season, there was around $136 million in dead money on payroll. This season, that amount has doubled. In terms of teams paying the most, the Dodgers have a healthy lead, with the Padres and Yankees also devoting some payroll to players not contributing to the current club.

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One of the main complaints about the World Baseball Classic is that it’s played in March. That creates at least two hurdles for the event in terms of mass appeal. One, fans aren’t conditioned to watch competitive baseball in March. Second, a lot of the players back out due to the upcoming grind of their regular seasons. While it’s possible that younger generations could eventually learn to expect competitive March baseball and that future players might regard the tournament with more gravity, neither outcome is certain.

The alternative that is often discussed is holding the tournament in July. Dave has written about this twice, both in 2009 and in 2013. His “March Madness” style idea is very appealing, because it wouldn’t be necessary to alter the schedule other than to cancel the All-Star Game. It also creates less of a time commitment and ratchets up the excitement. It’s a great solution in my opinion, and I heartily endorse it. But what if we wanted to play the entire tournament in July, with more or less its current structure? Impossible, you say? I don’t think so.

Let’s start with this year’s schedule.

• First Round/Pool A: March 6-9
• First Round/Pool B: March 7-11
• First Round/Pool C: March 9-13
• First Round/Pool D: March 9-13
• Second Round/Pool E: March 11-16
• Second Round/Pool F: March 14-19
• Semi-Finals/Finals: March 20-22

As you can see if you count it out, this makes for a 17-day tournament. The start times for Pools A, B and E are staggered to start earlier, primarily to give the Pool E winner time to fly from Tokyo to Los Angeles for the finals. Keep that in your back pocket for a minute.

What we need to do now is figure out how to squeeze 17 days of non-MLB games into July. Let’s walk through it, shall we?

Co-Opt the All-Star Break

The All-Star break is four days long. You would still have to cancel the All-Star Game in order to play the WBC in the middle of the season, so right there, we’re down to 13 days. I should note, however, that I’m advocating only for the cancellation of the All-Star Game itself. The league could still hold the vote, and still have the same process of naming starters and reserves. Why? Because there’s still money to be made here.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the New York Yankees farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on thes 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this. -Eric Longenhagen

The KATOH projection system uses minor-league data and Baseball America prospect rankings to forecast future performance in the major leagues. For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, so take these projections with a grain of salt. Due to their purely objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated. Due to sample-size concerns, only players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced last season have received projections. -Chris Mitchell

Other Lists
NL West (ARI, COL, LAD, SD, SF)
AL Central (CHW, CLE, DET, KC, MIN)
NL Central (CHC, CIN, PIT, MIL, StL)
NL East (ATL, MIA, NYM, PHI, WAS)
AL East (BAL, BOS, NYY, TB, TOR)

60 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Slashed .270/.354/.421 in 2016.

Scouting Report
When I first saw Gleyber Torres shortly after I moved to Arizona during the summer of 2014, I thought he was a nice little middle-infield prospect with a good feel to hit and a chance to stay at short. I also thought the offense might not profile to another position. Two years later, Torres has already grown into more raw power than I initially projected (by a full grade) while also remaining potentially viable at short. He has become one of baseball’s best prospects.

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Editor’s Note: the following post contains spicy language.

J.D. Martinez had just concluded a chat with a Tigers beat reporter when I approached him Monday afternoon. I sensed him preparing to escape my forthcoming interview request in the Joker Marchant Stadium clubhouse as I walked in his direction. He’d just risen from the cushioned chair in front of his locker and picked up a cardboard box of personal effects as I introduced myself. His body language wasn’t suggestive of much interest in engaging in conversation with me and, to be fair, I was a stranger. We had never spoken. He had just finished playing six innings of an exhibition game and was presumably was looking forward to the rest of the day.

But then I explained why I was interested in speaking with him. He rested the box on a laundry cart, freed his hands, seemed to warm to the idea (or possibly not), and opened up.

I wanted to ask Martinez whether baseball is on the cusp of a fly-ball revolution, whether we’re about to see the sort of approach already adopted by Martinez, Josh Donaldson and Justin Turner — all of whom have experienced great personal success — become more widely adopted and accepted in the majors. Jeff Sullivan and I have written quite a bit about the potential fly-ball revolution in recent weeks as you can read here, here, here and here. But Monday offered a chance to get a key perspective from an early adopter and perhaps a significant influencer.

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It might be surprising, but there’s one thing Joey Votto isn’t good at. Well, to be more precise, there’s one thing that Joey Votto doesn’t think he’s good at. He’s done a lot of work, and it looks like he’s good at it. When it comes to defense, though, he credits the work and not any natural ability. And then last year happened, so maybe he’s not so good at it, after all.

That’s Votto’s rolling UZR per 150 games since 2008. UZR requires a large sample to become reliable, so any single year of data needs to be regressed heavily. But there appears to be a trend here. In any case, I’m apparently not the first to notice a downturn in Votto’s defensive ability last year, nor to mention it to him. “It’s hard to ignore when people ask you on a consistent basis about it,” he grimaced when I asked.

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Two years ago, Max Scherzer and Jon Lester signed deals worth a total of $365 million between them, agreements which would keep both players employed into their age-36 seasons. The accepted wisdom, dating back at least as far as Mike Hampton and Barry Zito, is that signing free-agent starting pitchers to massive contracts into their 30s is a poor idea. If early returns are any indication, last season’s deal for Zack Greinke is unlikely to serve as evidence to the contrary. David Price’s injury scare, meanwhile, provides another reminder of the risks inherent to long-term agreements with pitchers.

Not all such commitments are doomed, however. We’re just entering the third year of the contracts signed by Scherzer and Lester, for example, and so far those deals look quite good.

Two offseasons ago, Lester and Scherzer represented the only two players to receive a contract of $100 million or more. Eight other players signed for at least $50 million, though. All 10 such contracts are listed below. For each player, I’ve also provided an estimate of the value he would have been expected to provide starting with the time he signed. To calculate this estimated value, I began with each player’s WAR forecast from the 2015 FanGraphs Depth chart projections, started with $7.5 million per win, added 5% inflation per year, and applied a standard aging curve. The rightmost column indicates whether the player in question was expected to outperform or underperform the cost of his contract.

The surplus and deficit figures for individual players vary by quite a bit. Overall, however, the actual contract and value numbers are within 1% of each other.

It might be hard to believe that, at the time, projection systems were calling for Chase Headley to record $100 million in value. Remember, though, that he had averaged more than five wins over the three previous seasons and had just completed a four-WAR year. From this point, it looked like Scherzer, Lester, and Hanley Ramirez signed contracts pretty close to their expected value. The number for Scherzer is probably even closer than what we see above after accounting for his deferrals, as he makes just $15 million per season over the playing life of the contract.

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