Earlier today, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Tampa Bay Rays. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not Tampa Bay’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Rays system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in the Rays system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

Read the rest of this entry »

Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Twins, Astros, Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox, Reds, Phillies & Rays

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

The common narrative about the Rays system is that 1) it’s down from past years and 2) this is because they can’t pick good players unless they pick in the top 10.  Over the 19 years of the franchise, here’s the 7 productive big leaguers over 9 tries they’ve picked from the top 6 overall slots: David Price, Evan Longoria, Josh Hamilton, Rocco Baldelli, B.J. Upton, Jeff Niemann and Delmon Young.

In 21 first round/sandwich picks outside of the top 6 slots, they’ve produced no big leaguers of consequence and the top current prospects of the group are Justin O’Conner (#2) and Blake Snell (#5) on the list below.  There’s obviously something to these critiques, but it’s important to keep in mind that the return from draft picks is exponential: the top few picks are supposed to produce far more value than late first round picks.

Due to all the extra high-round picks and farm-stocking trades, along with an increasingly prominent international program, the Rays system is as deep as almost any other.  Because the high bonus players haven’t worked out for Tampa Bay at even a league average rate, the top of the system is much weaker than others and their #1 prospect was acquired in a recent trade, along with #4 and #8.  There’s enough young, high-upside talent for this high-end shortage to change by this time next year, but it’s impossible to forecast something like that happening.

It’s also worth noting that 8 of the 31 prospects ranked here were acquired via trade; the Rays system has to be deep given the way the organization approaches roster building.  If the system was run like a big market team perennially in the playoffs (think Detroit), where prospects are traded once they have trade value to prop up the big league team, the Rays farm system could pretty easily be the worst in baseball due to their struggles in the draft.

Two things to monitor in the system is the catching depth (which took a hit when Arizona took Oscar Hernandez #1 overall in the Rule 5 Draft last week) and the glut of infielders with prospect value that fit best in Triple-A Durham. Behind Ryan Hanigan and Curt Casali at the big league level, the Rays’ primary catchers starting in Triple-A and moving down the chain should be Luke Maile, Justin O’Conner, Hernandez (who most expect to be returned by Arizona), Nick Ciuffo, David Rodriguez and Rafelin Lorenzo, all of whom are mentioned below as prospects, which is very rare.

In the Durham glut, the Rays have SS, Hak-Ju Lee, SS Jake Hager, SS Tim Beckham, 2B/SS Nick Franklin, 2B Ryan Brett and 3B/1B Richie Shaffer, all with varying levels of prospect value.  There’s hope that one or two of these guys could play their way onto the 25-man MLB roster, but the organization is aware that, barring injuries, some players may have to play out of position or at a lower level than expected to make things work.

Read the rest of this entry »

Another week, another development on the minor league salary front. Less than six days after a federal antitrust lawsuit was filed challenging the minor league salary structure, Minor League Baseball’s (MiLB) vice president, Stanley Brand, announced at the Winter Meetings on Thursday that his organization would launch a vigorous lobbying campaign in 2015, asking Congress to pass legislation protecting the industry from federal minimum wage and maximum hour laws.

Brand’s announcement comes in response to two other class action lawsuits filed earlier this year alleging that the minor league pay scale violates the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) (Wendy Thurm previously discussed the first of these suits here). These cases – filed on behalf of two groups of former minor league players – contend that once all of the hours minor league players work each year are accounted for (including spring training, the regular season, and fall instructional leagues), most minor leaguers are effectively paid less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. And despite often working more than 50 hours per week, minor league players do not receive overtime.

Interestingly, like the minor league antitrust lawsuit filed a couple weeks ago – which appears to be covered by baseball’s antitrust exemption – professional baseball is arguably already exempt from the FLSA as well under an exception covering “seasonal amusement and recreational establishments” (29 U.S.C. 213(a)(3)). Under the exception, any amusement-related business (theme parks, carnivals, circuses, and the like) that operates on a seasonal basis – basically seven months or less per year, although the law is a little more nuanced – is not required to pay its workers minimum wage or overtime. Read the rest of this entry »

By the time the Jeff Samardzija trade became official Tuesday at baseball’s winter meetings in San Diego, Chicago White Sox general manager Rick Hahn was fielding secondary questions about the chances of extending Samardzija’s contract beyond 2015. Most — if not all — of the questions reporters asked Hahn pertained (fairly) in some way to Samardzija, who gives the White Sox a formidable top of the rotation with left-handers Chris Sale and Jose Quintana. It’s possible, however, that another player the White Sox received in the deal with the Oakland Athletics will get a chance to help his new team long after the coming season.

Billed in 2008 as a generational talent who had the signing bonus to prove it, 6-foot-7 right-hander Michael Ynoa is getting a fresh start with the White Sox after struggling with serious injuries, reaching bloated expectations and getting frustrating results since turning pro. In a secondary scrum with reporters that came after the TV cameras shut off, Hahn was excited to talk about Ynoa after trying to explain — for a third or fourth time or 20th time — that the matter of Samardzija’s contract wouldn’t be resolved that day.

Read the rest of this entry »

The image above represents a landmark moment in the author’s own life — and perhaps the life of anyone who derives pleasure from those instances in which the previously marginalized become less marginalized — insofar, I mean, as it demonstrates how, earlier today, Marcus Semien was the most searched-for player at FanGraphs.

On the one hand, it’s not particularly surprising that Semien would be a person of some interest at the moment: he, along with assorted other pieces, was just traded to Oakland in exchange for talented right-hander Jeff Samardzija and still-alive prospect Michael Ynoa. Curious Oakland fans — and curious other sorts of fans, too — are curious about the new additions to the club.

What’s is surprising, however, is that Semien might serve as the “centerpiece” — or an approximation thereof — in a deal that sees Jeff Samardzija (even if it’s just a year of Jeff Samardzija) going the other way.

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier today, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Philadelphia Phillies. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not Philadelphia’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Phillies system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in the Phillies system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

5. J.P. Crawford, SS (Profile)

The Phillies’ first pick of the 2013 draft, Crawford is the only player among the five present here who hasn’t made an appearance above High-A. In terms of Steamer’s computer math, that’s significant, as level of competition is a non-negligible variable in the model — and yet, despite that handicap, Crawford’s production in the low minors (along with his place on the age curve) renders him basically a replacement-level player at this point. That makes him more valuable than Ryan Howard, among a small collection of other major-league regulars.

Read the rest of this entry »

Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Twins, Astros, Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox, Reds, Phillies, Rays & Mets

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

The Phillies are an easy target for the Internet and you’d expect the system to not be very strong, given the way the organization is characterized online.  The system isn’t great and the production from the draft hasn’t been very strong, which is a big reason why they recently hired a new scouting director.

It is worth pointing out that the Latin program is propping up the system right now, despite not having huge budgets, producing 6 of the top 16 prospects in the system.  Of the other ten, one is from a trade, eight were first or second round picks and the last one was a third round pick.  The Latin program run by Sal Agostinelli is propping up a system that only stands out right now because of two recent first round picks in Crawford and Nola.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the latest in a series of legal challenges to the minor league salary structure, a new federal class-action lawsuit filed on Friday alleges that Major League Baseball’s treatment of minor league baseball players runs afoul of the Sherman Antitrust Act. In Miranda v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, four former minor league players (Sergio Miranda, Jeff Dominguez, Jorge Padilla and Cirilo Cruz) contend that MLB teams have violated federal antitrust law by illegally conspiring to fix minor league players’ salaries at below-market rates. Still, despite the merits of the players’ claims, the suit’s odds of success are relatively low.

The Miranda suit alleges that MLB unlawfully suppresses minor league players’ salaries in a variety of ways. By subjecting North American amateur players to the first-year player draft each June, Major League Baseball prevents draftees from selling their services to the highest bidder — instead forcing them to negotiate with only a single team. MLB then artificially reduces the size of the signing bonuses that entry level players receive through its domestic and international signing bonus pool restrictions.

Once players have entered the minor leagues, their annual salaries are then largely dictated on a take-it-or-leave-it basis by their teams in accordance with MLB-imposed, minor league salary “guidelines.” And because MLB teams retain the exclusive rights to their minor league players’ services for seven years, many players go their entire careers without ever being able to sell their services in a competitive market. As a result, the suit asserts that most minor league players earn as little as $3,000 to $7,500 per year. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve done plenty of rankings over the years for various outlets, but this new venture at FanGraphs is the first time I’ve gone through all 30 organizations to rank each team’s best talents. I’ve done some team prospect rankings in the past and the thing I experienced then — and heard about from people all over the industry — are the biases you have to wade through when club officials and scouts talk about their own players.

This is an obvious thing that even the most casual reader of prospect analysis would understand. The team wants to have the profile of their prospects boosted, both for their job security and for trade value. Nearly every source I talk to for these lists will reference a player from an earlier list in the series and ask a question about them, ask where I think their system stacks up so far in my research or ask my feelings about teams I haven’t written up yet. Most teams take the rankings from trusted publications and add them to their internal metrics, and they’re always checked for discrepancies or useful nuggets of information before trades are consummated. This isn’t just some fanboy nerd thing on the Internet. Well, it is that, but it isn’t only that.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll try to complete the FanGraphs analysis of the Josh Donaldson deal, with Dave covering the A’s perspective of the deal and Drew Fairservice covering it from the Jays perspective while I’ll jump in with the prospect end of things. Those two prior pieces do a good job analyzing the various angles of this deal, with the main question being what the next few moves are for Oakland, since they seem far from done shuffling their roster.

Dave’s piece made the points that the gap between Donaldson and Brett Lawrie may be smaller than 2013-2014 would lead you to believe, so if one of the prospects end up as a star or a piece that can be used in another deal, it could swing the balance of the deal toward Oakland.  There’s an expectation that Lawrie won’t match Donaldson’s production, hence the three minor leaguers included. While Lawrie will be the player watched most closely in 2015 from this deal, one exec I talked to last night said Franklin Barreto is the key to the deal, so let’s start with him.

Read the rest of this entry »