Two weeks ago, Sunday Notes led with David Cone following in Mark Gubicza’s footsteps. Just as his fellow pitcher-turned-broadcaster had done, Cone tackled a challenging career quiz, augmenting his answers — some of them correct, others amiss — with entertaining anecdotes about batters he faced along the way. Today we’ll hear from another 1980s-1990s hurler who is now a broadcast analyst: Jeff Montgomery, who played with Gubicza in Kansas City, is the Royals’ franchise leader in both appearances (686) and saves 304).

I began by asking the 64-year-old Wellston, Ohio native which batter he faced the most times.

“I’m going to say either Chili Davis or Kirby Puckett,” guessed Montgomery, naming a pair of players who narrowly missed being the correct answer. Upon being informed that it was neither of the two, the erstwhile closer pondered for several seconds, only to throw up his hands. “You got me,” he admitted. “Who was it?”

I told Montgomery that it was Paul Molitor, whom he faced 30 times, allowing just seven hits, all of them singles.

“Oh, Molly. There you go,” responded Montgomery, “Molly was the type of hitter who was never going to be easy. He had the ability to really wait on pitches. He was basically bat-to-ball, and his bat-to-ball skills were incredible. There were honestly times when I thought the pitch was in the catcher’s mitt, and the next thing I knew I was watching our right fielder chasing the ball down the line. Molly’s bat was that fast.

“I think I did pretty well against him,“ Montgomery added. “But I do remember one game in the Metrodome. We were in extra innings, it was a bases-loaded situation, and I had him 0-2. I’d thrown Molly a couple of sliders away, and decided to come in with a fastball. He leaned into it for a walk-off hit-by-pitch.” Read the rest of this entry »

The most consequential transaction (if you can call it that) in baseball this week was the resignation of Tony Clark as the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. Clark, who had been the head of the union since 2013, stepped down after an internal investigation revealed that he’d had an “inappropriate relationship” with his sister-in-law, who had been hired to work for the union in 2023. The MLBPA elevated deputy executive director and lead negotiator Bruce Meyer into the top spot on an interim basis. The timing of the move is far from ideal, coming less than 10 months before the current collective bargaining agreement expires at 11:59 p.m. ET on December 1, at which point the owners are expected to promptly lock out the players for the second time this decade. Still, as Michael Baumann wrote on Tuesday, it’s an even worse time for the union to have leadership that its membership doesn’t trust. Beyond the “inappropriate relationship,” Clark is one of the subjects of a broader ongoing federal probe into both the MLBPA and the NFLPA over financial dealings related to the group licensing firm OneTeam Partners, and was the subject of a November 2024 whistleblower complaint alleging him of misusing union resources, self-dealing, and abuse of power. His departure allows the players to better coalesce around their shared priorities.

In lighter news, 12 teams played their first spring training games on Friday, providing us with a perfect opportunity to watch some of the players we covered during Prospect Week. If you tuned in to the Mariners-Padres game, for example, you would’ve seen four of our Top 100 Prospects — including shortstop Colt Emerson (no. 11), center fielder Jonny Farmelo (no. 51), right fielder Lazaro Montes (no. 66), and second baseman Michael Arroyo (no. 78) — in action, all playing for Seattle. The 21-year-old Arroyo (a 50-FV prospect) smoked a two-run homer to right center field on an 0-2 changeup that caught way too much of the plate. He doubled his next time up and finished the day 2-for-2. There are 16 games slated for this afternoon.

We have more labor talk to come in this mailbag, but that’s the last we’ll say about the start of spring training games. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions about quantifying the pitcher-catcher relationship, the looming lockout, how teams perform after significant roster turnover, and more. Before we do, though, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m of the opinion that you usually don’t learn much from watching spring training. It’s glorified practice, with inconsistent quality of competition even before you consider the fact that some guys are going all-out while others are working on a specific issue rather than trying to win the game. This is especially true for position players who came into camp with at least an inside track on a starting job. It’s why I pay more attention to college baseball during February and March. Hell, the new season of Love Is Blind is out and I need to catch up so I can see if there are any ex-college ballplayers in the cast.

One exception to the rule that you don’t learn much from spring training: Justin Crawford. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, we are proud to announce a new site feature: The FanGraphs Lab. The Lab is a collaboration between the editorial team and the engineering team here at the site, a joint effort to create more ways to sort through and visualize the huge crush of data that pervades baseball these days.

The FanGraphs Lab is a space for experimental data visualization and exploration tools that we believe might one day have a permanent place on the site. The key word there is experimental: One of the reasons we’re so excited about the Lab is that it’s never been easier to go from an idea for a new tool or visual to a functioning version of it. It’s not quite “if you can dream it, you can do it,” but it’s closer than you might think, which means that there’s a lot of room for innovation. The Lab will have a permanent home at www.fangraphs.com/lab. It will also be accessible from the main page of the site on the right navigation bar:

This project grew out of a discussion between the two of us. Actually, “discussion” might be the wrong way to put it: Ben just kept sending Sean links to new apps he had built in rickety programming languages, fun graphing tools without any immediate use case. Instead of politely telling Ben to shove off, Sean came up with a process for turning those concepts into functioning FanGraphs tools. First, with development assistance from Claude Code, Ben rebuilt his initial ideas in the FanGraphs code base. Next, Sean integrated these new pages into the site’s data and infrastructure. From there, we bounced ideas off of each other and iterated until we were happy with the output. After taking a few months to jump-start the process, the first prototypes are coming off the assembly line now. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is our list of the top 100 prospects in baseball. The scouting summaries were compiled with information provided by available data and our own observations. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

All of the prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here.

And now, a few important things to keep in mind as you’re perusing the Top 100. You’ll note that prospects are ranked by number, but also lie within tiers demarcated by their Future Value grades. The FV grade is more important than the ordinal ranking. For example, the gap between Nolan McLean (no. 3) and Sal Stewart (no. 34) is about 30 spots, and there’s a substantial difference in talent between them. The gap between Stewart and Luis De León (no. 64), meanwhile, is also 30 numerical places, but the difference in talent is relatively small. You may have also noticed that there are more than 100 prospects in the table below, and more than 100 scouting summaries. That’s because we have also included the 50-FV prospects whose ordinal rankings fall outside the top 100, an acknowledgement both that the choice to rank exactly 100 prospects (as opposed to 110 or 210 or some other number entirely) is an arbitrary one, and that there isn’t a ton of daylight between the prospects who appear in that part of the list. Read the rest of this entry »

Cole Mathis is a small-town kid from the South hoping to make it big on Chicago’s North Side. His upside is evident — Mathis possesses projectable tools, including plus raw power — but there are question marks, as well. Drafted 54th overall in 2024 by the Cubs out of the College of Charleston, the 22-year-old corner infielder will enter the 2026 campaign with a smattering of experience above the amateur level. He had Tommy John surgery following his junior season, then was limited to just 194 plate appearances last year (128 with Low-A Myrtle Beach and 66 in the Arizona Fall League) due to a right elbow sprain. The degree to which he’ll have success against professional pitchers as he climbs the minor-league ladder is uncertain.

His future position is also in question. While he was drafted as a third baseman, Mathis was primarily a first baseman in college… when he wasn’t pitching. Prior to going under the knife, Mathis was a two-way player who showed plenty of promise on the mound thanks to a fastball that reached the mid-90s. Over 100 collegiate frames, he fashioned a 3.60 ERA with 90 strikeouts and just 30 walks.

When I caught up to him in the AFL, I asked Mathis if he still thinks about standing atop a clump of dirt sixty feet, six inches away from home plate. I also wanted to hear his thoughts on a what-if:

Had his elbow been healthy, might he have been drafted and developed as a pitcher?

“I mean, yeah, for sure,” Mathis responded to the first question. “It’s something I could fall back on, but hopefully I won’t have to resort to pitching again. At the time of the draft, my hitting skills were farther above where my pitching was, and the Cubs and I saw eye to eye with that, so it’s what we wanted to do moving forward.

“I don’t know,” he said to the second. “I mean, I got to pitch two strong years in college (he was solely a position player in his final collegiate season due to the damaged UCL) and don’t really know what would have happened that junior year. But yeah, I think we made the right decision.”

How well he develops as a hitter — particularly if he ends up at first base rather than at the hot corner — will help determine if it was the right choice. Moreover, his ability to elevate will go a long way toward his reaching, or failing to reach, his ceiling. Mathis understands that.

“We’ve definitely been working on getting the ball in the air a little more,” he told me. “A little bit of it is bat path, but the majority of it is pitch selection, getting pitches that I can drive. I have a flatter swing, so while I’ve had some success on balls down in the zone, pitches up in the zone play more to my swing.”

Mathis went on to say that while he used to have “kind of the same swing, no matter the pitcher,” he has come to realize that adjustability is a necessity against higher-quality hurlers. There is a mental component to it as well as a mechanical.

“I’ve kind of had to change my approach,” said Mathis. “Not so much change my swing, but rather change the thought process behind it. You can’t just have the same approach and swing over and over again. Pitchers watch film as much as we do, so they’re out there playing their pitches off our swings.”

Where he grew up plays into how he approaches the game of baseball itself.

“I come from a small town — it’s called called Cataula — and our county only has one high school [Harris County High School in Hamilton, GA],” Mathis explained. “I don’t know the total population of my hometown, but everybody knows everybody. Knowing that I have a whole town of support behind me, a whole county of support, means a lot. When I go out there, I’m not just playing for me, but for also for them. I’m representing my town.”

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RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS

Jason Giambi went 23 for 37 against Darren Oliver.

Al Oliver went 11 for 19 against Vern Ruhle.

Bob Oliver went 11 for 21 against Diego Segui.

Joe Oliver went 8 for 15 against Rheal Cormier.

Ollie Brown went 15 for 30 against Jerry Reuss.

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Jackson Baumeister had a lot of promise when he was drafted 63rd overall by the Baltimore Orioles out of Florida State University in 2023. What he didn’t have was an understanding of pitching analytics. I learned as much when I talked to the 22-year-old right-hander during the Arizona Fall League season, where he was making up for innings lost due to a shoulder ailment.

“In high school, even in college, I had no idea what pitch metrics were,” admitted Baumeister, whom the Tampa Bay Rays acquired from their A.L. East rivals in July 2024 as part of the Zach Eflin deal. “We were a little behind the curve in college when it came to TrackMan, Rapsodo, and stuff like that. I was completely raw coming into pro ball. When I got drafted, it was basically, ‘Hey, I don’t know any of the words or numbers you’re saying to me.’ I basically had to do this whole little master class of pitch metrics.”

Baumeister’s lessons began in Baltimore’s introductory draft meetings, and from there he continued to pick up knowledge, including in bullpen sessions where he would learn about the readings he saw on the iPad. Before long, he “understood what those numbers meant, and what the Orioles were telling me about things like what the sweet spot was for all of my pitches.”

When he signed, Baumeister’s bread and butter pitches were his fastball and curveball, the latter of which has been supplanted by a slider as his primary secondary offering. And while his mid-90s heater remains his best pitch, the way he utilizes it is far different.

“In college, my coaches preached throwing the low-and-away fastball,” explained the erstwhile FSU hurler. “For a guy like me who rides the ball pretty well and gets a lot of induced vertical break, that wasn’t ideal. Getting into pro ball, it became ‘Throw your fastball at the top of the zone.’ I also have a pretty low release, so by locating the ball at the top of the zone, I get a lot of swing-and-misses.

“My release height is lower than six feet,” continued Baumeister. “I get down into the 5-5, 5-6 range, and then I’m around 17 or 18 [inches] of vertical break on average with my fastball. Velo-wise, I think I averaged 95 [mph] this past year, but I can reach back to 97-98 on a good day. It’s my best pitch, no doubt.”

Backing off on his curveball usage and throwing more sliders was a Rays directive. His current organization also altered the shape of his slider. Whereas he used to throw a sweepier version, he now throws more of a gyro. Along with the four-seamer, gyro, and lesser-used curveball, the righty also has a changeup in his arsenal. That has also undergone a tweak. Last season he began working on a kick-change to replace what had been a more traditional two-seam circle.

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A quiz:

Ichiro Suzuki has the most singles since the turn of the century (2000), while Albert Pujols is tops in both doubles and home runs. Which player has the most triples? (A hint: he had 517 stolen bases and 145 home runs.)

The answer can be found below.

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NEWS NOTES

The upcoming SABR Analytics Conversation, which will take place in Phoenix from February 27-March 1, will include a seven-person Arizona Diamondbacks front office panel. More information can be found here.

SABR’s John McMurray recently conducted an oral history interview with Greg Maddux. The transcript and video recording can be found here.

Roy Face, a right-hander who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1953-1968, and then briefly for the Detroit Tigers and Montreal Expos, died earlier this week at age 97. A standout on Pittsburgh’s 1960 World Series championship club, Face is the franchise’s all-time leader in pitching appearances (802), relief wins (94), and saves (188). As mentioned here in Sunday Notes two weeks ago, his 18 relief wins in 1959 are an MLB record.

Gary Blaylock, who pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals and New Yankees in 1959, died earlier this month at age 94. The Clarkton, Missouri native appeared in 41 games and went 4-6 with a 4.80 ERA. He was the pitching coach for the Kansas City Royals when they captured the World Series in 1985.

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The answer to the quiz is José Reyes, with 131 triples. If you guessed Carl Crawford, he had 123 triples, as well as 480 stolen bases and 136 home runs.

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Mike Daly was featured here at FanGraphs on Wednesday, the subject at hand being the current state of San Diego’s prospect pipeline. Left on the cutting-room floor from my conversation with the club’s assistant director of player development was what he learned from his year as a minor-league manager. Daly was at the helm of the High-A Fort Wayne TinCaps in 2024.

“I learned a lot,” said Daly, whose résumé also includes extensive scouting experience. “First and foremost, it gives you a greater appreciation, and empathy, for what players and the staff go through from spring training all the way to the end. And the season is long. You understand that from a front office perspective, but until you’ve lived it, you don’t truly understand it.”

Daly went on to mention the speed of the game, and how managers frequently need to make decisions on short notice. Experiencing that firsthand reinforced the importance of pre-game planning and talking through various scenarios prior to the team’s taking the field. He also received a reminder that patience is a virtue when it comes to development.

“In the past, I was sometimes guilty of coming into an affiliate for a week and maybe trying to expedite, or push, some action with the staff regarding certain development of players,” Daly admitted. “What you learn from being in that dugout for a full season is that the process of development really does take time. It certainly made me better in terms of asking questions.”

Writing the reports that are sent to the front office after a game is a markedly different experience from being on the receiving end.

“Yes,” acknowledged Daly. “When you’re writing that manager report, especially after a tough loss… let’s just say it’s a lot different sitting in the dugout than it is sitting behind the plate [as a scout] or in the office. Until you walk in those shoes… again, you understand, but you don’t truly understand. I’m very thankful to have had an opportunity to do it.”

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A random obscure former player snapshot:

Ice Box Chamberlain had a fascinating career. Born in Warsaw, New York in 1867, the right-hander went on to pitch for six major league teams across the 1886-1896 seasons, registering a record of 157-120. His best year was 1889, when he went 32-15 while throwing 421-and-two-thirds innings for the American Association’s St. Louis Browns.

Chamberlain — his given name was Elton —had some especially notable games. Twice he pitched both right- and left-handed in the same contest, making him, along with Larry Corcoran and Tony Mullane, one of three pre-1900 hurlers to toe the rubber in ambidextrous fashion. On May 30, 1894, Chamberlain not only went the distance for the Cincinnati Reds in a 20-11 loss to the Boston Beaneaters, he was taken deep four times by Bobby Lowe. In doing so, Lowe became the first player in big-league history to hit four home runs in the same game.

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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE

MassLive’s Christopher Smith wrote about Kyle Boddy and how the Boston Red Sox have been implementing Driveline philosophies.

CBS Sports’s Dayn Perry weighed in on Chaim Bloom’s rebuild in St. Louis, and where the Cardinals go from here.

Cy Young was born in a town of roughly 400 people in Ohio’s Tuscarawas County, and his 35-acre boyhood farm is now up for sale. Joey Morona has the story at Cleveland.com.

What would MLB look like with a salary cap? Evan Drellich delved into that question at The Athletic.

The Athletic’s Katie Woo wrote about how “The Harvard of umpire schools” is closing as changing times favor tech over tradition.

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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS

Ollie Bejma played for the St. Louis Browns from 1934-1936, and for the Chicago White Sox in 1939, logging 202 hits and a .245 batting average. Humble as those numbers are, they didn’t dissuade legendary cartoonist (and big-time baseball fan) Charles Schultz from featuring him in a February 21, 1974 Peanuts comic strip. Asked who played shortstop for the pennant-winning St. Paul Saints in 1938, Woodstock replied to Snoopy that it was Ollie Bejma.

Blaine Durbin played in 32 games and logged 14 hits in 51 at-bats while suiting up for three teams across the 1907-1909 seasons. His first two seasons were spent with the Chicago Cubs, who won the World Series in each of those years. The last of Durbin’s seasons was split between the Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates, the latter of which won the World Series.

J.D. Martinez had 6,865 PAs, 1,741 hits, and 3,172 total bases.
Nick Castellanos has 6,950 PAs, 1,742 hits, and 2,977 total bases.

Mike Piazza had 7,745 PAs, a .308 BA, and 779 extra base hits.
Magglio Ordonez had 7,745 PAs, a .309 BA, and 741 extra base hits.

The St. Louis Cardinals signed Leon Durham as a free agent on today’s date in 1989. The erstwhile Chicago Cubs slugger — he had 135 home runs and a 125 wRC+ for the Northsiders from 1981-1987 — proceeded to record just one hit in 18 at-bats with the Cardinals. Suspended for failing a drug test, Durham never again played in the majors.

The New York Yankees signed Jeff Reardon as a free agent on today’s date in 1994. The righty reliever, who recorded 367 saves while playing for seven teams across 16 seasons, went on to appear in 11 games for the Yankees, earning a win and two saves in what proved to be his final hurrah. Reardon is the only pitcher in MLB history to allow exactly 1,000 hits in his career.

Players born on today’s date include Larry Yount, who appeared in one MLB game… yet never actually appeared in an MLB game. A right-hander, the older brother of Hall of Famer Robin Yount took the mound for the Houston Astros on September 15, 1971, but was injured while warming up and never delivered a pitch to a batter. Because he had been announced, Yount’s name is in the record books with one official appearance.

Also born on today’s date was Carlton Molesworth, a left-hander who logged a 14.63 ERA while appearing in four games for the Washington Senators in 1895. A teenager when he took the mound in the majors, Molesworth subsequently played 17 seasons in the minors as an outfielder, suiting up for teams including the Binghamton Bingos, Schenectady Electricians, and Shamokin Coal Heavers.

Slicker Parks had a humble MLB career. Appearing in 10 games for the Detroit Tigers in 1921, the right-hander from Dallas Township, Michigan went 3-2 with a 5.68 ERA over 25-and-a-third frames. He fared far better down on the farm. In 1926, Parks went 19-14 with the International League’s Jersey City Skeeters.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone, and welcome to the first mailbag of spring training. It’s fitting that this annual day of love coincides with the return of baseball, because all of us are madly in love with this sport. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be spending part of your Saturday reading a Members-only mailbag on a website dedicated exclusively to covering our game. Really, baseball is the game of love. Our fandom begins as passionate affair, and then like any lasting relationship, it requires daily commitment, growing stronger over time. It rewards patience, hard work, and finding joy in both the mundane and the extraordinary. It isn’t always easy, but it’s always worth it. How can you not be romantic about baseball?

Speaking of love, nobody I know loves college baseball like Michael Baumann. With Friday marking the start of the college season, he previewed the action to come in two pieces. First, he ran through the seven college teams you need to know in 2026, and then went deep on what he dubbed, “The Ridiculous Firewagon Offenses of College Baseball.” The opening of spring camps also means it’s Prospect Week here at FanGraphs. If you missed any of our coverage, you can find Eric Longenhagen’s audit of our 2019 Top 100 list, David Laurila’s interviews with Cardinals assistant GM Rob Cerfolio and Padres assistant director of player development Mike Daly about their respective farm systems, Brendan Gawlowski’s reflections on what he learned from his worst scouting report during his time as a Pirates pro scout, and Eric’s updated 2026 draft rankings. Early next week, we’ll have our Top 100 Prospects list, as well as those from both ZiPS and OOPSY, along with fantasy rankings and plenty of other prospect coverage. So be sure to come back to the site to check it all out.

That’s the last you’ll read about love and Prospect Week in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions about the cost of 1.0 WAR, the legality of a dog playing first base, the number of balls players hit in their careers, and whether a full team of free agents could beat the Rockies. Before we do, though, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Today is the first day of the 2026 college baseball season, and to celebrate, I’m cutting the ribbon on our 2026 draft rankings and scouting reports. They’re now live on The Board, so head over there for all of these players’ tool grades and blurbs. In this piece, I’ll touch on several individual players who I think are among this year’s best and most interesting prospects for readers to watch and monitor over the next five months as we approach July’s draft in Philadelphia (I can’t wait). I’ll also discuss the class as a whole from a talent standpoint, as well as which teams are in position to have a huge draft.

First, some quick housekeeping on the rankings. I’ve got 51 players on The Board right now. I’ve hard-ranked the players with a 40+ FV and above, while the 40-FV players are clustered by demographic below them. Draft-eligible sophomores are denoted with an asterisks. At this stage in the draft process, players are more in neighborhoods or clusters. It’s too early to have many dozens of players ordinally ranked in a way that won’t change drastically between now and draft day, especially once we get beyond the players who fit within the first two rounds. More players will be added to The Board as the spring progresses.

This is also your reminder that we now have college leaderboards on the site, as well as college player pages, all of which I will be wearing out this spring as the class produces another season of data. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re not already into college baseball, I’ll give you the briefest possible form of my annual elevator pitch. It comes in three parts. First: The regional round of the NCAA Tournament isn’t for another four months, but it’s one of the best weekends of TV in all of sports. That’s true even if you drop in cold, but it’s better if you know some of the characters involved. The time to start one’s homework is now.

Second: If you watch college baseball, you can have opinions about the draft that’ll make you look smart in front of your friends. If you’re wrong, no one will remember who you were even talking about, but if you’re right, you can dine out on that prediction forever.

Third: What are you going to do, watch spring training? Davy Andrews wrote last week about a blurry photo of a white guy with a goatee in a blue uniform. He says that was Nolan McLean, but for all I know, it was Civil War General Daniel Sickles. You can watch meaningful regular season baseball tomorrow, or you can delude yourself into thinking there’s anything to be learned from watching Carlos Correa get walked by a minor league pitcher with a uniform number in the 80s.

An actual exhaustive college baseball preview takes months of research and dozens of articles, even for specialist publications that can devote a full staff to the undertaking. Me? I’m one guy with about 3,000 words to play with, so I’m giving you a brief rundown of seven teams I’m interested in. These seven teams include national championship contenders — specifically the two heavy preseason College World Series favorites — but this is not a ranking. I tried to pick good, talented teams from a few conferences that could end up having interesting seasons. Make of it what you will. Read the rest of this entry »

Scout long enough, and you’ll write every kind of report. Good ones, bad ones, accurate projections for the wrong reasons, misfires despite a good process. Like baseball itself, evaluating players is hard. You’ll be right plenty, but everyone has whiffs. While some reports miss the mark more than others, the ones that sting most are the ones you don’t learn from. Even the worst reports can turn into a positive if they change your thinking or provide a valuable lesson along the way.

Sometimes, these lessons are simple. Bet on the athletes. Be leery of the guy with a 55% contact rate. Others come in waves, sometimes over an extended period of time. Such was the case with Richy Valdez, a Royals pitcher with a live arm who was both the subject of the report with the greatest misalignment between the grade I submitted and what wound up happening, and the bridge between two lessons that made me a better evaluator than if I’d never come across him. We’ll come back to him in a second. Read the rest of this entry »