We’ve all seen it in various TV shows or movies; the main character is sitting on the floor of some room, surrounded by various pieces of hardware after being challenged to assemble some piece of furniture from vague and unhelpful instructions. And then, usually after a cutaway or some kind of time-lapse, we see the proud main character standing next to the completed product, showing off the fruit of his labor to some secondary character, who then rains on his parade by pointing out that while the product looks nice, there are a few leftover pieces that he somehow managed to exclude from the build.

That’s kind of what this Dodgers team feels like at the moment. On paper, this team could be very good, especially if Joc Pederson takes over as the regular center fielder and hits as well as the projections think he might. At that point, you have Carl Crawford and Yasiel Puig in the corners, with an infield of Yasmani Grandal, Adrian Gonzalez, Howie Kendrick, Jimmy Rollins, and Juan Uribe. That group gives them above average projections at every position, the kind of strong supporting cast that can help one of baseball’s best rotations go after the NL West title. So that group looks pretty good.

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With the Red Sox recently adding Yoan Moncada to the fold last week (details and audio interview), the biggest international domino has fallen and now there’s more certainty for teams and agents going forward about what teams can spend on July 2nd. In an early draft of this article, I was going to point out that MLB still hadn’t told teams what their international bonus pools were, in an effort to discourage teams from agreeing to verbal deals since they wouldn’t know the exact figure of what they could spend. MLB sent out those figures this week, and they fell in line with what teams expected: last year’s slots with a 5-7% bump.

I reported back in December that up to 12 teams were rumored to be considering or had already put enough agreements in place to exceed their bonus pool. I conceded that nowhere near that many would do it and that looks to be true, with closer to five teams looking likely to go over, but many more looking to spend their full pool and maybe trade for a little more, along with rumors of teams considering going over in 2016. Part of the reason for the uncertainty about which teams are going over is the uncertainty surround young Cuban players.

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Been talkin’ about BABIP lately. Let’s talk about BABIP again. Let’s talk about Yasiel Puig, and his BABIP.

Last week, I wrote a post on Starling Marte, in which I examined his extraordinarily high batting average on balls in play. I had a hypothesis, and that hypothesis was confirmed. It was far from revolutionary. I knew that Marte was fast, and then I found out that he hits a bunch of line drives and never hits pop-ups. Then I also found out that those three things alone can explain more than 50% of the variance in a player’s BABIP. Again, that’s really nothing new.

The metric I created, BIP Score, featured Marte prominently near the top. Also near the top were a whole bunch of guys with BABIP’s above .330. Yasiel Puig is another guy with a BABIP above .330. It’s way above .330. During his time in the MLB, only two qualified batters have a higher BABIP than Puig. But he’s nowhere to be found in the top half of the BIP Score leaderboard. From the post:

Not everyone with a high BABIP scores well in BIP Score. Yasiel Puig, for example, owns a career .366 BABIP — higher than Marte’s — but actually has a negative BIP Score, thanks to his low line drive and average pop-up rate.

I felt like that warranted an examination of its own. This post is that examination.

I guess, first, we’ll take a look at that BIP Score. That’s how this all started anyway. To get BIP Score, I simply summed the z-scores of every qualified batter’s line drive rate, infield fly rate and speed score and scaled it so 0 was league average. It’s admittedly a quick-and-dirty metric, but the higher the BIP Score, the more likely it is that a player should be able to sustain a high BABIP.

With this methodology, Puig clocked in with a BIP Score of -0.3. To get a sense of the context, let’s look at the other guys around Puig who also clocked in at -0.3.
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I don’t think the Dodgers deserve that much credit for signing Brandon Beachy. It’s not like it’s a particularly innovative idea, and a whole host of teams were interested in landing him. The Dodgers beat out almost everyone in available resources, and they beat out almost everyone in immediate outlook, and they had this other advantage, as well:

Beachy said deciding on the Dodgers was easy, mostly because the surgeon of his second Tommy John, Dr. Neal ElAttrache, is also the Dodgers’ team doctor.

“It’s the best place to be,” Beachy said. “I have a lot of faith in Dr. ElAttrache and the training room’s view for bringing me along meshes well with that.”

Beachy was drawn to the Dodgers, and the Dodgers were sufficiently drawn to Beachy to get him to sign. Given everything, the Beachy pickup hardly qualifies as any kind of genius, but for one thing, the upside is readily apparent — the upside of these things is always apparent — and for another, Beachy makes for an interesting depth play. That point isn’t Beachy-specific. Beachy and pitchers like him make for interesting depth plays.

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Each year, it seems, there’s a hot new Cuban making an impact in the big leagues. In 2011, we got our first full season of Aroldis Chapman. In 2012, it was Yoenis Cespedes in Oakland. The next year, Jose Fernandez and Yasiel Puig finished 1-2 for the NL Rookie of the Year. In 2014, Jose Abreu won the AL version for the White Sox, while the Red Sox and Cubs got brief late looks at Rusney Castillo and Jorge Soler, respectively. This winter, we’ve already seen the Diamondbacks pick up Yoan Lopez and Yasmany Tomas, and we’re currently waiting to see just how mind-blowing the bonuses Yoan Moncada and Hector Olivera (among others) will wring out of rich, talent-hungry teams.

Cubans in baseball aren’t exactly a new phenomenon, of course. According to Baseball-Reference’s Play Index, 185 Cuban-born players have taken at least one plate appearance since the start of the 20^th century. That includes some very well-known names like Luis Tiant, Rafael Palmeiro, Jose Canseco, and Tony Perez, as well as more recent non-elite starter types including Adeiny Hechavarria, Yunel Escobar, Yasmani Grandal, and Yonder Alonso. And also, Yuniesky Betancourt!

Much has been written, here and elsewhere, about the reasons why. Baseball keeps restricting access to spend on young, non-union talent. Cuba’s evolving political situation has made it something of an untapped pipeline. The consistent recent jackpots on these largely unknown Cuban players – remember, when Puig was signed, the reaction was largely, “wait, who?” – have made teams more willing to jump into the market, and the prices, it seem, keep going up.

That will be the trend until one of these players busts, that is, and that’s generally been the feeling around these investments. They keep working, so why not? Which is fine, except that we’ve already seen two relatively expensive Cuban imports well on their way down that “this isn’t going to work” path, and I’m not talking about Dayan Viciedo or Yunesky Maya.  I’m talking about Dodger infielders Alex Guerrero and Erisbel Arruebarrena, who combined to receive $53 million from the team last winter, and who currently couldn’t possibly find themselves less in the team’s plans. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, we gave you a little bit of a tease, giving you a glimpse into the making of FanGraphs Top 200 Prospect List. This morning, however, we present the list in its entirety, including scouting grades and reports for every prospect rated as a 50 Future Value player currently in the minor leagues. As discussed in the linked introduction, some notable international players were not included on the list, but their respective statuses were discussed in yesterday’s post. If you haven’t read any of the prior prospect pieces here on the site, I’d highly encourage you to read the introduction, which explains all of the terms and grades used below.

Additionally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you towards our YouTube channel, which currently holds over 600 prospect videos, including all of the names near the top of this list. Players’ individual videos are linked in the profiles below as well.

And lastly, before we get to the list, one final reminder that a player’s placement in a specific order is less important than his placement within a Future Value tier. Numerical rankings can give a false impression of separation between players who are actually quite similar, and you shouldn’t get too worked up over the precise placement of players within each tier. The ranking provides some additional information, but players in each grouping should be seen as more or less equivalent prospects.

If you have any questions about the list, I’ll be chatting today at noon here on the site (EDIT: here’s the chat transcript), and you can find me on Twitter at @kileymcd.

Alright, that’s enough stalling. Let’s get to this.

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I returned a few days ago from a three-day trip to the Dominican to see top July 2nd prospects (more on that in the coming weeks) and also a workout that had 18 Cuban players in it. Two of those 18 were big-time prospects, the well-known and hyped 29-year-old 2B Hector Olivera and the brand new name, 18-year-old righty Yadier Alvarez.  Here’s my notes and video on those two, along with some quick updates on the other two notable Cubans on the market, 2B/3B/CF Yoan Moncada and 2B Andy Ibanez.

For reference, in my top 200 prospects list that is coming next week, these Cuban players aren’t included on the list, but Moncada would be 8th, Alvarez would be 57th and Ibanez would be in the 150-200 range, while Olivera is ineligible due to his age and experience.

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I suppose I should preface this by saying I have no scouting background, and I don’t pretend to. What I know about Joc Pederson comes entirely from a.) things written by actual, paid scouts and b.) numbers. This post will be using the latter, and not the former, in an attempt to produce an MLB comparison for Pederson, the Los Angeles Dodgers rookie. If that’s the sort of thing you’re into, great. If it’s not, well, thankfully you haven’t spent too much time reading this so far, and there are myriad scouts’ opinions on Pederson. For instance, here are a couple excerpts from our very own Kiley McDaniel, an actual paid scout:
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As I reported on twitter moments ago, MLB sent a memo to clubs detailing the new process for Cuban players to go from leaving the country to signing with an MLB team. The short version is that super prospect Yoan Moncada is eligible to sign now, after a maddening long delay.

For those new to this topic or if you just want a refresher, here’s a recap of my coverage of this Moncada saga from the start:

– October 3, 2014: Moncada is confirmed out of Cuba, but no one knows where he is.  We assume his whereabouts will become clear soon as he’s the most hyped prospect to leave the island in years. Here I first quote the common “teenage Puig that can play the infield and switch hit” comp and break down all the implications about who can sign him, who is likely to pony up the big bucks, game theory implications and more.

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I lived through the 2008 Seattle Mariners. I’m not sure quite how I did it, but I paid attention to that damn team on a daily basis, and I wrote about that damn team on a daily basis, and while I’m sure there were lots of things I cared about and thought were significant in the moment, one of the only things I truly remember about the year, and especially the second half of the year, is Roy Corcoran. Corcoran was a nobody, a journeyman reliever, but he became one of the rare positive stories on a team that went right down the crapper. One of the few upsides of following a team through a disaster year is you uncover these little surprises who otherwise never would’ve gotten a chance. You get to stop caring about a team and start caring about individual players and individual stories, and 2008 put Roy Corcoran on my radar.

And then he fell off my radar the next year, but, anyway. Last year’s Rangers had their own disaster season. It was a disastrous season for different reasons from why the 2008 Mariners had a disastrous season, but it was a catastrophe almost from the start. And as a result, in time, unfamiliar players started to show up in the bigs. I never knew anything about Jake Smolinski. The same goes for Dan Robertson and Tomas Telis and Spencer Patton and Lisalverto Bonilla. And the Rangers also introduced one Ben Rowen. Now, the Rangers are no longer in possession of said Ben Rowen:

In addition to veteran LHPs Erik Bedard & David Huff, #Dodgers also sign 3B Jarek Cunningham and RHP Ben Rowen to minor league deals.

— Matt Eddy (@MattEddyBA) January 23, 2015

…and maybe that’s meaningful. They had him, and didn’t think enough of him to keep him. But I’d like to show you why you should be rooting for Ben Rowen. Daniel Brim already did, having beaten me in a race, but Rowen came up in my morning chat, and had it not been for the Rangers’ 2014 nightmare, Rowen wouldn’t have won me over with his unconventional…ness. They don’t make many like this guy.

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