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.

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We’re used to making little adjustments all the time. Most commonly, it’s because of ballpark environment. A .350 wOBA in San Francisco is a hell of a lot more valuable than a .350 wOBA in Arizona. Sometimes you’ll also see adjustments for era, which is relevant now given increasing strikeouts and decreasing runs. There are raw stats, and there are adjusted stats, like, say, wRC+, but there’s one adjustment we seldom talk about even though it’s right there in front of our faces. What about the opposition a player actually faces?

It’s like strength-of-schedule, on the player level. No one debates the utility of strength-of-schedule measurements. Now, in baseball, what’s convenient is that the samples get pretty big so we can generally get away with assuming that things even out. Over broad windows, no one’s going to face exclusively awful opponents or awesome opponents. But in certain cases, it’s worth digging in when we have a suspicion. As such, I want to go into more detail on something I noted about Cole Hamels earlier.

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Boy is it ever easy to trade away other people’s stuff. From a distance, it’s easy to recognize when a guy has to go, as things are uncomplicated by memories and emotions. It sucks the Philadelphia Phillies just about have to trade Cole Hamels. He’s great, and he’s been there forever, through some really good times, and people have developed an attachment to him. Even the Phillies have officially recognized the era is over, but moving Hamels would be a painful kind of closure. The front office doesn’t want to deal Hamels for younger, unfamiliar talent. But it has to happen. As popular as Hamels is, from an objective standpoint, he’s not getting better. And he’d mean a lot more to a team with a prayer of winning something over the next couple years.

So the Phillies ought to be looking to cash in on Hamels. More seriously than they did around the deadline, I mean. The Phillies are poised to gut what there is to gut, and Hamels is a front-line starter who’d hit a market thirsty for front-line starters. Probably the most popular rumor so far: Hamels leaving the Phillies for the Boston Red Sox, in exchange for a package that involved young players. Clearly, nothing has yet been agreed to, but clearly, there will be some more negotiations. So what could we conceivably see as a trade? Let’s design a Red Sox move for Cole Hamels.

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The days of having to rail against runs batted in as a particularly useful indicator of individual offensive value are long behind us. That does not mean there might not be potentially interesting research to do on situational hitting or the like, but simply that the straight-up use of RBI is not something that really needs to be debated.

Nonetheless, it is still interesting to see what sorts of hitters can accumulate high numbers of RBI, something we recognize with an award named for two players who managed big RBI numbers despite less than impressive advanced hitting metrics: the John Carter-Tony Bautista Award.

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Yasmany Tomas, LF

Hit: 40/45+, Game Power: 55/65, Raw Power: 70/70, Speed: 45/45+, Field: 45/50, Arm: 45/45+

Upside: .275/.350/.480 with 25-30 homers, fringy defense & baserunning value in left field

Note: The “upside” line is basically a 75 percentile projection as explained here, while the tool grades are a 50 percentile projection. See the scale here to convert the hit/power tool grades into production.

Tomas is the latest Cuban defector to hit the market: he should be declared a free agent shortly and is holding private workouts in the Dominican this week after a big open workout for over 100 scouts from all 30 clubs on Sunday at the Giants Dominican complex. The above video is from last summer when the Cuban national team faced college Team USA in Durham, North Carolina. The Cuban team had a lot of trouble making contact against a loaded USA pitching staff (five pitchers from the staff went in the first round last June) and Tomas in particular struggled, going 3-for-19 with 3 singles, 1 walk and 8 punch outs over the 5 game set. Tomas was in bad shape and looked lost at the plate at times when I saw him, but he has shown big league ability in other international tournaments and as a professional in Cuba.

The carrying tool here is raw power, which draws anywhere from 60 to 70 grades on the 20-80 scale from scouts, but the question mark is how much he will hit.  Tomas has a short bat path for a power hitter and quick hands that move through the zone quickly.  The tools are here for at least an average hitter, but Tomas’ plate discipline has been questioned and he can sometimes sell out for pull power in games (here’s video of a particularly long homer in the WBC).  Some scouts think it’s more of a 40-45 bat (.240 to .250 average) that may keep Tomas from getting to all of his raw power in games, while others see a soon-to-be-24-year-old with the tools to hit and think the hot streak of Cuban hitters in the big leagues will continue with him.

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Sometimes, you talk with a guy and there isn’t a great narrative that ties it all together. That’s what happened when I talked to Jimmy Rollins before a game with the Athletics this month. Sure, the general question was how he’s been able to stay fresh and relevant and productive through the latter part of his career. How he’s known what to change and what not to change. But Rollins has enough character to leave it alone and let him speak in his own words.

Eno Sarris: I noticed that last year you had 666 plate appearances.

Jimmy Rollins: Did I? Wow.

Eno Sarris: That explains everything!

Jimmy Rollins: I thought it was me! That’s crazy.

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I don’t usually like to look too far ahead to the offseason when the September pennant races are still in full swing. There’s plenty of interesting baseball right now, especially with four of the six divisions still up for grabs, to say nothing of wild card spots. We’ll have months to talk about winter moves; if you remember how many words were spilled on Stephen Drew and Kendrys Morales by writers desperate to fill space in January and February, too many months.

But you understand how fans and employees of teams long since out of the race will be all too happy to turn the page on 2014 as soon as possible, and earlier this week, that’s exactly what Phillies GM Ruben Amaro, Jr. did:

Ruben Amaro Jr. said today there will be more adjustments to the Phillies’ roster in the future, following yesterday’s trade that sent John Mayberry Jr. to Toronto for Minor League third baseman Gustavo Pierre.

“Not that it’s a huge change, but we’re going to have to start churning the roster in a way that it’s going to have to be improved,” Amaro said in the press box at Turner Field.

Does he believe those changes could be significant?

“I do,” he said. “I think we need it. I think we need it because what we have on our roster right now is not working. How much we’ll do will depend on what makes sense for us. We’re still kind of assessing what we have. But I think it would behoove us to make some change because we need to be better.”

You don’t need to come to FanGraphs to know that the Phillies weren’t expected to be a good team this year, aren’t a good team this year and don’t seem to  have a bright future. But finally, we’re at least hearing Amaro admit to it. That’s a step in the right direction, probably. So the question, really, is what can he do?

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Check out some recent versions of this series with Dilson Herrera, Jorge Soler and Rusney Castillo (though he’s still in the minors). I made the cutoff for a write-up a 50 Future Value, meaning a projected peak role of 8th/9th inning reliever, #4 starter or low-end everyday player. Take a look at recent prospect lists for the Rangers or Rockies to get a better idea of the distinction between 45 and 50 FV. The last of the 50 FV prospects is generally around the 150th best prospect in the game.

Joc Pederson, OF, Los Angeles Dodgers
Hit: 45/55, Game Power: 45/55, Raw Power: 60/60, Run: 55/50, Field: 50/50+, Throw: 50/50+

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When our other prospect writers submit scouting reports, I will provide a short background and industry consensus tool grades.  There are two reasons for this: 1) giving context to account for the writer seeing a bad outing (never threw his changeup, coming back from injury, etc.) and 2) not making him go on about the player’s background or speculate about what may have happened in other outings.

The writer still grades the tools based on what they saw, I’m just letting the reader know what he would’ve seen in many other games from this season, particularly with young players that may be fatigued late in the season. The grades are presented as present/future on the 20-80 scouting scale and very shortly I’ll publish a series going into more depth explaining these grades.   -Kiley

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When our other prospect writers submit scouting reports, I will provide a short background and industry consensus tool grades.  There are two reasons for this: 1) giving context to account for the writer seeing a bad outing (never threw his changeup, coming back from injury etc.) and 2) not making him go on about the player’s background or speculate about what may have happened in other outings.

The writer still grades the tools based on what they saw, I’m just letting the reader know what he would’ve seen in many other games from this season, particularly with young players that may be fatigued late in the season. The grades are presented as present/future on the 20-80 scouting scale and very shortly I’ll publish a series going into more depth explaining these grades. -Kiley

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