You smell that? It’s baseball’s prospect-list season. The fresh top-100 lists — populated by new names as well as old ones — seem to be popping up each day. With the individual rankings coming out, some organization rankings are becoming available, as well. I have always regarded the organizational rankings as subjective — and, as a result, not 100% useful. Utilizing the methodology I introduced in my article on prospect evaluation from this year’s Hardball Times Annual, however, it’s possible to calculate a total value for every team’s farm system and remove the biases of subjectivity. In what follows, I’ve used that same process to rank all 30 of baseball’s farm systems by the surplus WAR they should generate.

I provide a detailed explanation of my methodology in the Annual article. To summarize it briefly, however, what I’ve done is to identify WAR equivalencies for the scouting grades produced by Baseball America in their annual Prospect Handbook. The grade-to-WAR conversion appears as follows.

Prospect Grade to WAR Conversion

Prospect Grade	Total WAR	Surplus WAR
80	25.0	18.5
75	18.0	13.0
70	11.0	9.0
65	8.5	6.0
60	4.7	3.0
55	2.5	1.5
50	1.1	0.5
45	0.4	0.0

To create the overall totals for this post, I used each team’s top-30 rankings per the most recent edition of Baseball America’ Prospect Handbook. Also accounting for those trades which have occurred since the BA rankings were locked down, I counted the number of 50 or higher-graded prospects (i.e. the sort which provide surplus value) in each system. The results follows.
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Previous editions: Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati  / Cleveland / Colorado.

Earlier this week, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the Detroit Tigers. In this companion piece, I look at that same Detroit farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. There’s way more to prospect evaluation than just the stats, so if you haven’t already, I highly recommend you read Dan’s piece in addition to this one. KATOH has no idea how hard a pitcher throws, how good a hitter’s bat speed is, or what a player’s makeup is like. So it’s liable to miss big on players whose tools don’t line up with their performances. However, when paired with more scouting-based analyses, KATOH’s objectivity can be useful in identifying talented players who might be overlooked by the industry consensus or highly-touted prospects who might be over-hyped.

Below, I’ve grouped prospects into three groups: those who are forecast for two or more wins through their first six major-league seasons, those who receive a projection between 1.0 and 2.0 WAR though their first six seasons, and then any residual players who received Future Value (FV) grades of 45 or higher from Dan. Note that I generated forecasts only for players who accrued at least 200 plate appearances or batters faced last season. Also note that the projections for players over a relatively small sample are less reliable, especially when those samples came in the low minors.

1. Michael Fulmer, RHP (Profile)

KATOH Projection: 3.8 WAR
Dan’s Grade: 50 FV

Fulmer enjoyed a breakout season with the Mets last year and kept it going after he came to the Tigers in the Yoenis Cespedes deal. Both his strikeout rate and walk rate improved as he made the jump from High-A to Double-A in 2015, giving him the lowest ERA — and second lowest FIP — in Double-A last year.

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Other clubs: Braves, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Indians, Orioles, Reds, Red Sox, Rockies, White Sox.

To say the Tigers have had a “type” is an understatement. They have consistently brought in hard-throwing pitchers with either command or secondary-pitch questions, and most of them have ended up as relievers by the time they make it to the big leagues. As Kiley pointed out in last year’s rankings, it’s hard to fault the Tigers’ process, as they continue to develop enough talent to reinforce their big league team via trades, and Mike Ilitch has had no problem spending money to fill in the gaps with free agents.

When 2015 didn’t go according to plan, they were able to replenish their stock by trading from the underachieving parent club. And to their credit, they have started to target a more diverse group of players in the draft and internationally. There is still a lack of impact talent in this group, but a lot of depth and interesting prospects that will contribute to a winning club.

I would draw attention to the rankings that differ from other lists, but honestly, most of the grades are so similar you could shuffle them around and we would be saying the same thing. For just a few from the top end, I buy into Christin Stewart‘s power potential despite him being a recent draftee who didn’t used to have much pop. I would bet I also have more faith in Mike Gerber’s steady skill set than most. Otherwise, some guys are lower, some are higher… I can’t argue with anyone who disagrees on these guys because there aren’t big differences between a lot of them, especially on the pitching side.

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In yet another sign that baseball season is coming ever closer, the arbitration process this year is coming to a close. Many players signed one-year deals before the teams and players exchanged numbers last month, while others exchanged numbers and struck one-year deals. A few players have actually gone to arbitration. Four players — Lorenzo Cain, Josh Donaldson, J.D. Martinez, and A.J. Pollock — agreed to two-year deals with their teams, buying out no free-agent seasons, but ensuring both parties that arbitration would not be necessary next year. These two-year deals are common and typically come with a discount for the team. For the four players who signed this season, however, there was no discount.

The arbitration process is set up to provide a discount to teams in the years just before free agency. The players get their first taste of actual millions while the team retains control of the player at a price much less than what the market would yield — all without having to mark a multi-year commitment. Some players sign extensions which takie them through free agency while others are non-tendered and set free by clubs who think that even the small, arbitration-produced salaries are too much compared to the expected production.

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The Detroit Tigers, though they have yet to win the ultimate prize, have clearly been one of the game’s premier franchises over the past few seasons. Before 2015’s 74-87 disappointment, they had reached the playoffs the previous four seasons, earning one AL pennant and two other ALCS berths over that span. In the five previous seasons, going back to the beginning of the Jim Leyland era, they reached .500 in all but one season. It’s been a while since the Tigers’ immediate future appeared bleak.

Last year had to be quite a shot to the old solar plexus for Tiger fans. A team that had been built for the present, featuring relatively newly acquired mercenaries such as Yoenis Cespedes and David Price, was reduced to trading-deadline seller. They have continued to resist the impulse to rebuild; Mike Ilitch isn’t getting any younger, you know.

Well, in the tightly congested 2016 AL Central, within the just as tightly congested AL, there is reason to be bullish on the Tigers. Yes, it is a stars-and-scrubs type of team, and they do lack impact depth at both the major and minor league levels. There are two veteran players, in particular, who were significantly better than they appeared to be last season, and could be key drivers to a post-hype drive to the front for the club this time around: starting pitcher bounce-back candidates Anibal Sanchez and Justin Verlander.

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Sometimes I’ll write a post I know is going to be popular. Like, some weeks back, I wrote about how the Cubs seem like the best team in baseball, and that was obviously going to be big. Sometimes the popularity of a post takes me by surprise. A good example would be when I wrote over the summer about Ryan Goins taking pitches and hitting other pitches hard. And then there are the posts almost exclusively for the nerds. For the nerdiest of the nerds. For the people who love thinking about baseball simply for the exercise. This is one of those. Nothing contained here is all that important, but this is the stuff I find most interesting, and I touched on this briefly last night when writing about Justin Upton on the Tigers. The Tigers play half the time in Comerica Park, and Comerica Park suppresses strikeouts.

I’ve written about some of these weird park factors before. The obvious park factors don’t require much explanation. It’s easy to see why there are more homers in Colorado. It’s easy to see why there are more triples in San Francisco. It’s confusing, though, to think about why some environments might increase or decrease strikeouts or walks. It feels like those things should happen independent of the ballpark, and the effects tend not to be huge, but effects do exist in some places. Detroit is one of them. People always ask how these factors can be. It’s never easy to know for sure, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a conversation.

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Somebody finally signed Justin Upton to a contract late Monday night, and it was the Tigers who seemingly came out of nowhere to lock up the 28-year-old slugger to a seven-year contract. It’s reportedly worth $132 million with a second-year opt-out, but the details aren’t important — at least not in this post. Jeff Sullivan’s got the details, if you want the details.

I’m interested in something specific, something I saw pop up a few times on Monday night after news of the signing broke. I’ll use this one tweet, from the esteemed Jon Paul Morosi of FOXSports, as an example of a common line of thought:

Justin Upton gives #Tigers one of deepest lineups in #MLB, albeit very right-handed. Detroit went 53-70 vs. RH starters in ’15.

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) January 19, 2016

There’s no denying the Tigers now have Justin Upton on their baseball team, and there’s no denying the Tigers now have a deep, formidable lineup. The Tigers already had a formidable lineup, before Upton, and now it’s deeper, and even more formidable. There’s no denying, either, that the Tigers lineup leans very right-handed. It’s something worth questioning, whether it’s a cause for potential concern. It sounds less than ideal, but is it really a problem, given the quality of the right-handed bats in question?

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After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Detroit Tigers. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago NL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles NL / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / San Diego / Seattle / Texas / Toronto.

Batters
This entry regarding Detroit’s position players and their relative strengths looked different at roughly 4pm ET yesterday, when the idiot author originally composed it. That version of the Tigers featured some combination of Anthony Gose (561 PA, 0.9 zWAR) and Mike Aviles (347 PA, 0.3 zWAR) in left field, accounting for little more than a win between them. What happened in the meantime, however, is Detroit signed Justin Upton to a six year, $132.8 million deal. The move, broadly speaking, appears to have added slightly more than two wins to the club’s projections.

While certainly benefiting the Tigers, the acquisition of Upton does little to counteract the team’s recent history of employing stars (on the one hand) and scrubs (on the other). Miguel Cabrera, Ian Kinsler, J.D. Martinez, and Upton are all projected to record a mark of 3.5 WAR or higher; every other field player on the roster, 1.6 WAR or lower. Of course, a distinct advantage to this particular method of roster construction is that it becomes much easier to upgrade this or that position — especially if the club’s owner is both (a) fabulously wealthy and (b) motivated by the proximity of his own, real death.

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The first of them cracked. Justin Upton and Yoenis Cespedes remained on the free-agent market, and all around the league, teams indicated they didn’t want to make the necessary commitments. The players wanted five or six or seven years. The teams wanted to give one or two or three. It was enough to make you think there could maybe be a potential bargain, but the market just doesn’t turn out like that. More often than not, a team gives in, and few should be surprised the team that gave in Monday was the Tigers. As always, all Mike Ilitch wants is to win. He’ll now get to watch his team try to win with Upton every day in left field.

The agreement is for six years and a little over $130 million, with Upton also having the opportunity to opt out two years in. That’ll give Upton the chance to hit the market again at the same age that Cespedes is now, and as we’ve written so many times, the opt-out clause has good value to the player. But at the same time, this is the Tigers — Ilitch’s Tigers. On one hand, Ilitch makes these analyses complicated. On the other hand, you could argue they couldn’t be simpler. Upton’s a good player. Ilitch was willing to pay for a good player.

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You have a choice. I’ll give you $100 right now, or you can let me flip a coin. If it lands on heads, I’ll give you $250. But if it lands on tails, I’ll give you $20. I’m using a fair coin, so the expected value of flipping the coin is $135 based on the 50/50 odds it lands on heads or tails. If you like risk or are a risk-neutral person, it’s an easy decision to take your chances with the coin because the odds are strongly in your favor. If you’re a risk-averse person, however, you’re more likely to take the sure thing because $135 isn’t a whole lot more than $100, and $100 is a whole lot more than $20.

Let’s add another wrinkle. It’s the same choice, but if you choose the coin flip, you have to wait a month. The dollar amounts are the same, but now there’s a time component. To get the value of the coin flip, you need to apply a discount factor to the $135. For some people, that discount factor is pretty close to one, but it might be much lower if you’re strapped for cash and the $100 would dramatically improve your life in the present.

Major league players face a much higher stakes version of this decision when their club comes to them with a contract extension. Do they take a sure thing now, or do they wait and gamble on themselves? While we’re focusing a lot on the 2015-2016 free-agent class this month, there are eight players who could have been free agents for the first time this year but instead chose to cash out early by signing extensions. Did they make the right decision?

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