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Evaluating The Prospects: Texas Rangers, Colorado Rockies, Arizona Diamondbacks & Minnesota Twins

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

The Diamondbacks have a solid system fronted by three right-handed starting pitchers that could all be factors in Arizona by the end of 2015.  The system has added depth with recent trades and solid drafts, but most of the top talent is in the upper levels, so Arizona will need to continue restocking the farm to have a continuous pipeline.

Here’s the primer for the series and a disclaimer about how we don’t really know anything.  See the links above for the two previous installments in this series and another series about how I evaluate, including four part on the ever-complicated hit tool, with more installments in that series coming soon.

Most of what you need to know for this list is at the above links, but I should add that the risk ratings are relative to their position, so average (3) risk for a pitcher is riskier than average risk (3) for a hitter, due injury/attrition being more common. I’d also take a 60 Future Value hitter over a 60 FV pitcher for the same reasons. Also, risk encompasses a dozen different things and I mention the important components of it for each player in the report.  The upside line for hitters is the realistic best-case scenario (in general, a notch better than the projected tools) and the Future Value encompasses this upside along with the risk rating for one overall rating number.

Below, I’ve included a quick ranking of the growth assets that Arizona has in the majors that aren’t eligible for the list and Dave Cameron shares some general thoughts on the organization. Scroll further down to see Carson Cistulli’s fringe prospect favorite and my first stab at an emoji scouting report. The next team up in the series, working from the bottom of the standings on up, is the Minnesota Twins.

Big League Growth Assets
1. A.J. Pollock, CF, Age 26
2. Chase Anderson, RHP, Age 26
3. Patrick Corbin, LHP, Age 25
4. Chris Owings, SS, Age 23
5. Didi Gregorius, SS, Age 24
6. Randall Delgado, RHP, Age 24

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The Baltimore Orioles are about to win the American League East and Buck Showalter, in all likelihood, will be named Manager of the Year. The latter is quite an accomplishment for someone who refers to himself as a slapdick with a limited shelf life.

Showalter’s track record isn’t that of a slapdick. As for the self-deprecation, the 58-year-old skipper’s way with words matches his ingenuity, which lies somewhere between fox and far-sighted facilitator. In an interview four years ago – three months before he was hired to manage the Orioles – he told me, “You always have to keep your eye on the end game.” To the surprise of most prognosticators, Showalter may be on his way to leading his team to its first World Series title in over 30 years.

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Showalter on the Orioles’ identity: “As an organization, one of the most important things you can do is know who you are, and who you’re not. When I first came here, we talked about that a lot: ‘Who are we and how are we going to do this?’ You can’t confuse your fans. We look within first and spend a lot of time – like every other club does – preffing [sic] six-year free agents. We look like we have a 75-man roster, because it’s going to come out of Norfolk, Bowie and here. When you have a game like [September 7], where 20-something guys make a contribution, there’s a great morale that comes out of that.

“We’re not paupers. Our ownership has been very supportive financially. We’ve got more than enough payroll. There are a lot of things you may not be able to do, but we can out-opportunity some teams for guys like Steve Pearce. We can give them an opportunity to be more than how the industry may perceive them.

“This thing is so fleeting, and this time of year, things snowball. They snowball good and they snowball bad. September is an eternity. When you’re trying to close out a good season, it’s tough. It tests your mettle. That’s why you challenge your players to stay together, stay together. There are so few people who live in the reality of what they do, and what the challenge is. People try to get into that, but they can’t. Until you’ve been through this and understand what the day-to-day stuff is really like… seasons are really about shortening the bad times and elongating the good times. Everybody is going to have them – as a pitcher individually, as a hitter individually, as a team. You’re going to have that, so you try to shorten the curves.”

On a life lesson and learning to adjust: “My dad, years ago… we’d get up at 5 o’clock in the morning and drive to Tuscaloosa in his school truck – he was a principal – and we’d go in the faculty section of Alabama. He’d have me watch the sidelines and coach [Bear] Bryant. I used to love how Alabama would go out in the first series against podunk – a team they were supposed to beat – and go three and out. I’d ask, ‘Dad, what’s wrong?’ He’d go, ‘Watch the sideline.’ Coach Bryant would walk over to the linemen to talk about this new defense this other team had put on the field, a 5-3 stack or something crazy. My dad would say, ‘OK, watch the next series’ and it would be like a knife going through butter. Read the rest of this entry »

Here at FanGraphs, we spend a decent amount of time talking about ways to think about valuing players and their performance. These kinds of discussions naturally lead themselves to conversations about various postseason awards, and with the rise of prominence of WAR, the role of newer metrics in determining things like the Most Valuable Player or Cy Young Award in each league. And so we end up writing a lot of words about player value in the context of trying to define awards that were created by other entities, and sometimes, arguing about the meaning of the name of the award rather than the performances of the players on the field.

So this year, we’ve decided that perhaps it is time that we just have our own award, so we can define the award in a way that makes sense to us, and to give us a chance to honor the the single player that we felt deserved to be recognized in a given year, regardless of which position he plays or which league he is in. To that end, we’ve decided to create the FanGraphs Player of the Year Award, which we will give out for the first time this season.

The criteria for the award will be rather simple: which player, through his on-the-field performance, most deserves to be recognized for his outstanding play within the given season? It is an attempt to honor outstanding performances, and to consider the relative merit of all players who contributed within that season, regardless of position or quality of his teammates.

Certainly, we recognize that we are not the first organization to create their own Player of the Year Award, as the Sporting News, Baseball America, and the MLB Player’s Association all have similar awards, and ESPN gives out an ESPY award for “Best MLB Player” every year. However, as we are a baseball-only site, and one that focuses heavily on attempting to quantify player value, we think it is likely that we may come to different conclusions than other organizations, and we would rather spend our time honoring players we think are worthy rather than trying to convince other organizations to adopt our methodology for their award. This does not mean we think our award is better or more important than other awards — including the awards voted on by members of the BBWAA, which we remain a part of and will continue to vote on when asked — but that we think there’s some value in having an award that is distinctly ours.

The FanGraphs Player of the Year Award will be voted on by members of the FanGraphs staff. This year, the 11 voting members are as follows.

Tony Blengino
Dave Cameron
Carson Cistulli
August Fagerstrom
David Laurila
Kiley McDaniel
Mike Petriello
Eno Sarris
Jeff Sullivan
Paul Swydan
Wendy Thurm

Each member will be casting a ballot with 10 names ranked in sequential order as well as a grade for that player’s season — in order to capture information about the voter’s opinion of relative performance beyond just what a simple list vote can offer — and both the ranking and the grade will be used to calculate the final order. And no, to answer the obvious question, the order and the grade will not simply be based on a player’s Wins Above Replacement. All the ballots will be made public and we will attempt to be as thorough and transparent as possible about the calculations. We will vote on the award at the conclusion of the regular season, and announce the first annual FanGraphs Player of the Year Award winner on Monday, October 20th, the day between the end of the League Championship Series and the start of the World Series.

In addition, we will run a crowdsourced ballot on the day after the regular season ends, and announce the results of the FanGraphs Readers Player of the Year selection as well.

Over the next month, our writers will be encouraged to write articles detailing the way they plan to approach their ballot, and we will attempt to make it quite clear why each voter decided on their final ballot. We also fully encourage educated lobbying, so if you would like to make a strong case for your favorite candidate, the Community Blog is a great place to make your arguments heard. If the piece is compelling, we will publish it, and we will take your points into account when deciding how to vote.

So, don’t be shy in letting us know who you think the FanGraphs Player of the Year should be. There are a number of players having excellent seasons, but only one will be honored as the most outstanding player of 2014 as evaluated by a collection of baseball nerds.

I’m going to be honest, I feel a bit dirty writing this post. We’re now on year five of Craig Kimbrel being impossibly good. For four years he’s clearly been the best reliever in baseball and, frankly, it’s one of the better stretches of relief pitching we’ve seen in recent history. Yet, this is the first post on FanGraphs this year where he is the subject, and it’s about him making a mistake. Which, really, just reinforces how good Craig Kimbrel is. He’s so good that when he makes a mistake, it becomes news. On Wednesday, Kimbrel made a new kind of mistake.
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Rusney Castillo is set to make his Major League debut in mere days after signing a record contract for a Cuban defector. Cuban players are the most interesting to project, since the public tends to have about as much information as teams do to process and make a decision on their futures. I started writing this article before Rusney Castillo signed with the Red Sox, with the goal of figuring out how his bat will play in the big leagues. Going forward I will also be contributing in a modest fashion to the robust scouting team that Kiley McDaniel has assembled, with my motivation and experience still focusing on hitters.

As such, this article is a bit of a hybrid between a concise scouting report and my usual shenanigans breaking down available videos. I promise to both you the readers and Kiley I will follow protocol more consistent with the rest of the team in the future. Check out his report on Castillo as well as Dave Cameron’s article for their more distinguished viewpoints. Kiley has a lot more contacts than I do in the scouting world, so treat this as only my take rather than a more informed opinion. Without further ado, let’s look at his tools before getting into the nitty gritty of his swing.

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I wrote something like this before, in the beginning of May of this season. During an arbitrary stretch between April 19 and May 14, Mike Trout struck out in 31% of his plate appearances, posting a .722 OPS. I identified the strikeouts as something to pay attention to, and then from May 15 through the All-Star break, Trout struck out in 20% of his plate appearances, posting a 1.111 OPS. So. Obviously, Trout adjusted to whatever needed to be adjusted to, or alternatively, the randomness swung in the other direction. For a while, it was easy to forget that Trout had ever slumped.

But now we’re back! Having learned nothing from the first go-round, I’m here to tell you to worry just a little bit about Mike Trout’s strikeouts. Since the All-Star break, Trout’s whiffed nearly 30% of the time, and he’s managed an OPS under .800. He’s still been a good player. He’s still been a terrifying player. He’s still, as of this moment, the almost certain winner of the American League’s Most Valuable Player award. But we’re obligated by social contract to write about Trout at any opportunity, and there are signs pitchers are finally trying to take advantage of his vulnerabilities. You know the ones. You’ve thought about them for hours.

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With the Marlins hanging around the periphery of the Wild Card race, there’s a strong chance that Giancarlo Stanton is going to win the NL MVP award. He’s the classic traditional candidate, leading the league in home runs and runs batted in, and the Marlins small gap from the Wild Card leaders will allow people to talk themselves into his performance having come in games that mattered. With all of the other top candidates requiring the rejection of some long held ideal, Stanton looks like a pretty easy choice for someone who likes the way that MVPs have traditionally been selected.

This may actually be bad news for the Marlins, however. An MVP trophy would be nice recognition for the franchise’s best player, but it would also increase his asking price in arbitration, and Stanton is already in a position where he has significant leverage. The Marlins have thus far eschewed trade requests for their right fielder, hopeful that they can convince him to sign a long-term deal to stay in Miami, but an MVP trophy might make a tough road even more difficult. Let’s look at the kinds of numbers Stanton may very well ask for to pass up the chance to hit free agency after the 2016 season.

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

Here’s the scouting data (not the text report) from what I wrote on the Rangers list, their top prospect, Joey Gallo.

Hit: 30/45, Game Power: 60/70, Raw Power: 80/80, Speed: 40/40, Field: 45/50, Throw: 70/70
Upside: .260/.350/.500 (30-35 HR), fringy 3B or solid RF
FV/Risk: 60, High (4 on a 1-5 scale)
Projected Path: 2014: AA, 2015: AAA/MLB, 2016: MLB

For this, we’ll focus on the hit grade and upside and risk sections. I’ve re-posted a table from the introduction to this series, showing the scale most clubs use to project the hit tool.
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So, the Brewers.

As collapses go, that looks nice and spread out. There’s a definite negative slope, but, you know, it could be steeper. You get the vibe from the graph that the Brewers’ decline has been steady and gradual. But there’s the thing about the x-axis, and about how this shows only two weeks. Lately the Brewers have shot themselves in the foot. In their haste to bandage the wound, they’ve accidentally shot themselves in the other foot. With their hands busy trying to stop the bleeding, they’ll just apply the iodine with their mouth-

Working a little to the Brewers’ benefit is that their slide has overlapped with Oakland’s slide, and Oakland has fallen from a loftier position, so the attention’s divided. But the Brewers don’t care about the attention they receive; they care about not being awful, and since this slide began they’re last in the NL in runs scored and first in the NL in runs allowed, where “first” is another word for “last”. They’ve lost 13 of 14 games, and Tuesday’s could’ve been the worst of the losses. Tied 3-3 in the bottom of the eighth, the Brewers had the bases loaded with nobody out. Eight pitches later, a scoreless frame was complete. Then in the top of the ninth, Francisco Rodriguez had two outs and two strikes on Giancarlo Stanton. Nine pitches later, a walk, a steal, and two homers had the Brewers all but defeated. You’d think that all the losses feel the same, but every loss is a snowflake.

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