Despite the fact that they are generally cited as probably providing little in the way of predictive power, the batting lines of prospects in the Arizona Fall League are also frequently cited by baseball writers in discussions of those same prospects. Nor is this entirely surprising: one wants to make some sort of comment about Kris Bryant, for example, who’s just finished his own AFL season with six home runs and a .727 slugging percentage. Even after noting that he recorded those figures in just 92 plate appearances, one is compelled to suggest that Bryant’s performance was impressive. And it was, certainly, within the context of the 2013 season of the Arizona Fall League.

The present author, attempting to behave somewhat responsibly, has produced statistical reports for the AFL this fall which utilize an offensive metric (called SCOUT+) that combines regressed home-run, walk, and strikeout rates in a FIP-like equation to produce a result not unlike wRC+. By isolating and regressing those metrics (i.e. not BABIP) which become reliable in smaller samples, one reasons, it’s possible to reduce the noise otherwise present in slash lines — and perhaps to better identify how performances from the AFL might inform future major-league production.

“How successful is this (theoretically) more responsible and (definitely) more nerdy attempt to measure AFL production, to the extent that it might hold within it some manner of predictive power?” one might, perhaps already has, wondered. “Not very,” appears to be the answer.

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The author has published a weekly statistical report for the Arizona Fall League each week since its brief season commenced back in October — not necessarily because such a thing is of great utility to prospect analysis, but more because, for those of us not currently present in the Greater Phoenix area, it’s one of the few ways to participate in that very compelling league.

What follows is the entirely last statistical report for the AFL, following that league’ championship game this past Saturday.

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The polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet — with assistance from celebrity guest Jason Churchill — has published today his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Seattle Mariners.

It goes without saying that, in composing such a list, Hulet has considered the overall future value those prospects might be expected to provide either to the Mariners or whatever other organizations to which they might someday belong.

What this brief post concerns isn’t overall future value, at all, but rather such value as the prospects from Hulet’s list might provide were they to play, more or less, a full major-league season in 2014.

Other Prospect Projections: Chicago AL / Miami.

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In June the Seattle Mariners took the University of New Mexico’s D.J. Peterson with the twelth overall pick in the Rule 4 Amateur Draft. Peterson represented one of the safest, most easily projectable bats in the draft class. He had mashed the ball all Spring for the Lobos and led the team to a Super Regional berth. His 18 home runs were good for third most in Division 1 – although he did play his home games in a very homer-friendly park. His short, explosive swing and quick hands excited scouts and appealed to scouting directors looking for a bat that could help relatively quickly. With a strong pro debut Peterson finished 2013 looking like a player every team would be glad to have in their farm system. There remains some questions as to whether Peterson can stay at third base in the long term though, and where he plays could swing his value pretty drastically.

As someone who covers amateurs and the draft fairly extensively I often see fans that prefer their team avoid a player like Peterson if there is some question of him moving to first base. After all, the defensive spectrum and conventional baseball wisdom tells us that good teams are built up the middle, with players on the right side of the defensive spectrum. Talking to amateur scouts I encounter a different attitude. They find it more than difficult enough to “hit” on a player and are quite often happy to find a safer choice like Peterson than they can project as a major league bat. After all, the general success rate of any first rounder making the majors isn’t great, so for many it’s very enticing to find a player you’re reasonably confident will hit in the big leagues. Both viewpoints have merit, of course. Personally, I have to be really convinced a player has a special bat for me to endorse him as a top of the first round pick. The offensive threshold expected at first base is just so lofty that it troubles me some to spend early picks on players with uncertain profiles. A prospect can develop into an above average major league hitter and still be only the 16th best first baseman in the majors (as in the case of  Nick Swisher this season with a .336 wOBA). When calculating WAR the positional adjustment for third base is +2.5, which is the same as that for second base and center field. The adjustment for first base is -12.5. Given the broad range of available quality hitters in free agency at first base and the extreme developmental demands on a first base prospect’s bat the question that then comes to mind is whether it makes sense for teams to draft a first baseman in the 1st round.

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The Seattle Mariners may have gotten the steal of the 2013 draft when they selected Austin Wilson in the second round. The 21-year-old outfielder is a five-tool player with a world of potential. And he has a Stanford pedigree.

He is also a bit of an enigma. Wilson has never quite lived up his billing: Expectations have been sky high since he was dubbed a potential first-round pick coming out of high school. He hit .295 in three collegiate seasons, but the 6-foot-5, 245-pound right-handed hitter remains more of a work-in-progress than a burgeoning superstar.

Wilson needs to rebound from an up-and-down campaign that has some doubting his future. He missed more than a month of his junior year due to an elbow injury; and in 56 games with Seattle’s short-season affiliate, the Everett AquaSox, he hit a lackluster .242/.319/.414.

Wilson talked about his hitting approach — and his introduction to pro ball — late in the minor league season. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mariners organization features some exciting young arms with seven of the Top 10 players applying their trade on the mound. The front office has done an exceptional job of acquiring talent both through the annual amateur draft and the international free agent market. Every player in the Top 15 was originally signed by the club. Seattle will enter 2014 with one of the best systems in baseball.

To make the Mariners list even more enjoyable this year, I enlisted the aid of a writer who probably knows the the system better than anyone outside of the organization. Jason Churchill of Prospect Insider — who you might also know from ESPN — graciously agreed to provide his thoughts and opinions on each player in the Top 10. We both wrote our comments separately with no input from each other so you may find some contradictions but, for the most part, our reports share a lot of similarities. Read the rest of this entry »

When Increase Mather declared from under his pilgrim hat that “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” what he almost certainly had in mind is the sort of posts an internet baseball writer might produce in the lean months immediately following the conclusion of the season.

Indeed, Mather’s concerns have been realized today, for what follows is little more than a pair of leaderboards which attempt to answer (very roughly) the question, “Who was the best minor-league basestealer of 2013?”

For the purposes of this post, the “best” basestealer of 2013 is not merely the one who recorded the highest stolen-base total. Instead, what the author has done is to apply the linear-weight run values of a stolen base and caught stealing to the relevant totals of every minor-league player.

Such a methodology is not without its flaws, of course. For one thing, because the run environments of each minor league are likely to differ from the present major-league one, the precise value of a caught stealing is likely to differ, as well. Furthermore, one oughtn’t ignore the fact that the minor leagues exist predominantly for the development of future major-leaguers. It’s quite possible, therefore, that minor-league players might attempt stolen bases — for developmental purposes — in situations that wouldn’t otherwise call for such a risk.

For these reasons — and for others which the author is too simple to recognize — what follows represents, as mentioned, merely a rough attempt at identifying the best minor-league basestealer of 2013.

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For much the same reason that he has published weekly statistical reports on the Arizona Fall League over the past month (such as this latest one from Wednesday), the author is publishing here a combined statistical report for the various Caribbean winter leagues — again, not necessarily because such reports are of great utility for evaluating players, but because they provide a means by which to participate in those leagues which doesn’t also require a substantial investment in transport and lodging.

In this case, what the author has done is to identify the regressed hitting and pitching leaders in the Dominican Winter, Mexican Pacific, Puerto Rican, and Venezuelan Winter Leagues separately*. What he’s then done is to combine the hitting and pitching leaders of those leagues into a pair of top-10 lists, which one can find below. Note: all ages are as of July 1, 2013; all organizations, as of the end of regular-season play. Last week’s generally useful report on the Caribbean leagues is available here.

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The polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet has published today his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Miami Marlins.

It goes without saying that, in composing such a list, Hulet has considered the overall future value those prospects might be expected to provide either to the Marlins or whatever other organizations to which they might someday belong.

What this brief post concerns isn’t overall future value, at all, but rather such value as the prospects from Hulet’s list might provide were they to play, more or less, a full major-league season in 2014.

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Austin Brice is a legitimate prospect. The Marlins spent $205,000 to sign him out of high school in 2010, and he was ranked as the sixteenth-best farmhand in the Miami organization by Baseball America coming into the 2013 season, an area of prospect lists he will likely to continue to reside in this offseason. He’s just 21, has two pitches that flash plus, and has a prototypical pitcher’s body and smooth, easy, delivery.

He also has 190 career walks in 279 2/3 professional innings, including 82 in 113 frames in 2013. That’s a career 14.88% walk rate and a 15.16% mark in 2013, a number that was actually a step back from 2012 (14.08%) even though he was repeating the Low-A level (his ERA also shot up from 4.35 to 5.73, and his K-rate fell from 25.26% to 20.52%. Certainly, this past season did not bring the young righthander much good news.

Plenty of pitching prospects pair tantalizing stuff with frustrating inabilities to throw strikes, but Brice (whom I saw five different times in 2013, a virtue of living 45 minutes from NewBridge Bank Park) is an especially frustrating case because, as I said above, his delivery is one of his strengths. In this piece, I’m going to examine the root of his control problems and tie it to some more general and important lessons about the process behind throwing strikes.

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