As we inch closer to the 2013 season, top-100 lists are being released with Byron Buxton ranked prominently. As the number-two overall pick in 2012, high rankings are expected. A few years ago, organization mate Aaron Hicks was held in equally high regard.

Today, Hicks ranks towards the bottom of top-1oo lists as five professional seasons have yielded mixed results. For those expecting Buxton’s tools to translate into production immediately, Hicks serves as a cautionary tale. But Hicks’ mini-breakout in 2012 and subsequent shot at the center field position in spring training serve as a reminder to bet on tools — Even if they take awhile to develop.

Video after the jump

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Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, are being released at FanGraphs this year. Below are the projections for the Minnesota Twins. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other 2013 Projections: Angels / Astros / Athletics / Blue Jays / Brewers / Cardinals / Cubs / Diamondbacks / Dodgers / Giants / Mariners / Marlins / Mets / Nationals / Padres / Phillies / Pirates / Rangers / Rays / Reds / Rockies / Royals / Tigers / White Sox / Yankees.

Batters
The Twins probably don’t have the least impressive set of offensive projections among the now-26 teams considered so far, but they probably do have the least impressive set of offensive projections for a club that also includes a player as good as Joe Mauer. Ben Revere and Denard Span, now both a part of the NL East, combined for seven-plus wins in 2012, and are projected for ca. five wins this season. Their replacements for the moment, Darin Mastroianni and Chris Parmelee — in center and right field, respectively — are projected to be worth only a fifth of that.

The reader will note that Ron Gardenhire’s actual deployment of Ryan Doumit, Joe Mauer, and Justin Morneau will likely be more nuanced than it’s represented in the depth-chart graphic below. The triumvirate made 48, 42, and 34 starts, respectively, at DH in 2012. Plus, Mauer made 30 starts at first base. Plus, Doumit made 56 at catcher. It’s not unreasonable to assume that they’ll be used similarly in 2013.

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A league-average hitter swings at about 46% of the pitches he sees. That much hasn’t really changed over at least the last decade. Roughly 5% of the time, a league-average hitter will end up in a 3-and-0 count. Roughly 7% of the time, a league-average hitter will swing at the next pitch. There’s nothing inherently wrong about swinging in a 3-and-0 count — the pitcher, often, will try to throw something straighter and over the plate. Often, then, there’s potential damage to be done. But a good deal might be learned about a hitter by examining his behavior in 3-and-0 counts. You can get a sense of a hitter’s eye, and you can get a sense of a hitter’s passiveness. Or, you might prefer, pickiness.

Joe Mauer is far from a league-average hitter, in both results and approach. For his career, Mauer has swung at about 37% of the pitches he’s seen, and last year he had the lowest swing rate in baseball. He swung at just about 8% of all first pitches, tied for the lowest rate in the league and against an average of 27%. Of all of Mauer’s career plate appearances, 9% have proceeded to a 3-and-0 count. In 3% of those plate appearances did Mauer offer at the next pitch. Joe Mauer has the eye to swing 3-and-0, but Joe Mauer has not often swung 3-and-0.

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Allow me to try to simplify the sabermetric revolution as much as I can:

Late 20th Century: we are evaluating baseball players
Early 21st Century: we were so wrong about our baseball player evaluation!
Less Early 21st Century: we were so wrong about our baseball player evaluation, again!

First, there were players, then there were numbers. Then there were better numbers, then there were still better numbers. The numbers will only continue to improve with time, and a lot of the things we currently think we know about baseball will probably end up being at least partially untrue. Keep that in mind next time you express a particularly strong opinion. But anyway.

Several years ago, people started to care an awful lot about on-base percentage and offensive productivity. This was warranted, because it is important to get on base and be offensively productive. A little later on, people started to care an awful lot about defense. Turns out some of those OBP-happy sluggers were subtracting runs almost as fast as they were adding them. Whoopsadoodle.

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At the end of last May, Phil Dumatrait announced his retirement from professional baseball. It was an announcement that went largely unnoticed — note the three retweets — and that makes sense, because Dumatrait hadn’t pitched in 2012, and for his career he threw just 151 major-league innings over parts of four seasons. Many of them were not good innings, and while there are the usual qualifiers about how Dumatrait was one of the very best pitchers in the entire world, relative to his big-league peer group, he was lacking a certain something. “Ability to have consistent success,” is what he was lacking.

Dumatrait, like all professional ballplayers, once had a lot of promise. Dumatrait, unlike all professional ballplayers, was selected as early as in the first round in 2000. In fairness, that wasn’t much of a round — the two guys selected before Dumatrait have been worth negative WAR, and the six guys selected after Dumatrait fell short of the bigs — but Dumatrait found his way to prospect lists. According to Baseball America, he was seventh in the Red Sox’s system before 2002. He was fifth in the same system the next year, and the year after that, he was sixth in the Reds’ system, one behind Joey Votto. Phil Dumatrait looked like he could be something, for a while. And, ultimately, he was a big-leaguer, if a relatively unsuccessful one.

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In a stunning development, the Yankees reportedly have no interest in former Rays, Twins, and Tigers designated hitter and “outfielder” Delmon Young. A glance at a current rumors (as of this posting) about Young’s free agency seems to turn up at least as many reports of teams not being interesting in Delmon Young as teams that might be. Part of that might be that Young is waiting to get serious about shopping his services until he recovers from ankle surgery. Part of it might be Young’s public history of less-than-stellar behavior, both recent and in the past. And part of it might just be that over 880 major league games and 3575 major league plate appearances, Delmon Young has been mostly terrible. But is there still reasonable hope for Young to be a decent everyday player? After all, he just turned 27, was once considered the best prospect in baseball, and he has mashed the ball in recent postseasons. It might just be worth looking a bit more closely at Young alongside a player with a somewhat similar history and skill set to see where that kind of thinking can lead.

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J.T. Chargois and Adam Walker are both players I saw as amateurs in 2012, they both went in the top 100 picks to the Twins and both have interesting tools that had evolved by the time I saw them in instructs. Chargois is a right-handed reliever out of Rice that was a 2nd round pick (72nd overall) and signed for slot, just over $700,000. Walker is an outfielder from Jacksonville University that went in the 3rd round (97th overall) and signed for slot just under $500,000.

I saw Chargois late in the amateur season, shutting down UCF in series that decided the conference championship. He worked at 91-94, touching 95 mph with an above-average changeup that flashed plus and an inconsistent 79-82 mph curveball with three-quarter tilt that was above average at times. Scouts that saw him earlier in the season told me they saw a plus breaking ball and that the changeup was a third pitch, so when you put those two accounts together, you can see what got the Twins excited.

Despite having three above average pitches, Chargois isn’t really a starting option. He was primarily a hitter his first two year at Rice and has an athletic cut from both sides with average raw power. Beyond his lack of experience, Chargois has effort in his delivery and while he’s got a chance to have average command, he is more of a thrower than pitcher.

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Armed with a new measure for offensive volatility (VOL), I wanted to revisit research I conducted  last year about the value of a consistent offense.

In general, the literature has suggested if you’re comparing two similar offenses, the more consistent offense is preferable throughout the season. The reason has to do with the potential advantages a team can gain when they don’t “waste runs” in blow-out victories. The more evenly a team can distribute their runs, the better than chances of winning more games.

I decided to take my new volatility (VOL) metric and apply it to team-level offense to see if it conformed to this general consensus*.

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Last week I said that Byron Buxton was the headliner at Twins instructs due to being the consensus top talent in the recent draft. Unfortunately, Buxton was overmatched at times against advanced competition so the most entertaining Twins prospect to watch was Miguel Sano. Sano has had plenty of fanfare himself after he signed for $3.15 million as a 16-year-old in 2009 after highly contentious negotiations with the Pirates. This drama and the Dominican amateur baseball system as a whole were covered in the documentary Pelotero

Sano had an up and down full season this year in Low-A Beloit, hitting .258/.373/.521 with a 14.5% walk rate and 26.0% strikeout rate. Strikeouts and contact were issues all season, but Sano was also 18 years old at the start of the season. What I saw in instructs jives pretty well with the stat line and what I’ve seen of Sano in the past. I was also reminded of his upside from one swing: a two-strike fastball up and in that he hit halfway up the batter’s eye.

His power is an easy 80, stemming from obscene raw strength, very good bat speed and the torque, loft and high finish you expect from big boppers. The thing he does that sets him apart from other sluggers is he keeps his hands pretty low throughout his setup and Sano also doesn’t have a pronounced load. Most hitters have to do both things to create power and give away some contact ability, but Sano doesn’t need to and that’s why he has a chance to be the rare high-average cleanup hitter.

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The headliner at Twins instructs was their recent first rounder, the second overall pick from a rural south Georgia high school, center fielder Byron Buxton. He was considered the top prospect in the draft by most scouts on the strength of his prodigious toolset, compared most often to Matt Kemp and the Upton brothers. Buxton signed for $6 million, just below slot recommendation for the pick and will be 19 all of the next year in his full-season debut, very likely with Beloit in the Low-A Midwest League.

The thing that sets Buxton apart from other top prospects is his athleticism and the easiness of his actions. The first time I saw him take batting practice, it was hard to believe how much more fluid his actions were and how quickly he made them, even compared to the other top draft prospects I had seen the weeks before, including top 10 picks like Albert Almora and Mike Zunino. That said, Buxton doesn’t have huge current raw power (45 on the 20-80 scale) and while his athleticism allows you to round up with somewhat limited physical projection left, I can’t go higher than 55 on the projected raw power. His approach at the plate and his mechanics are not geared for power, so I’ve got Buxton pegged as an average game power guy at maturity, but he’s young and raw enough to beat that projection.

One tool that Buxton’s quick-twitchiness shows up in now is his speed. Scouts tend to use the term “off the charts” too liberally considering the chart was designed to cover everyone, but Buxton, like Reds prospect Billy Hamilton, can regularly put up times that aren’t on the scale most teams use. 4.3 seconds from the right-handed batter’s box to first is considered average (50 on the 20-80 scale), 4.2 seconds is 60, 4.1 is 70 and 4.0 is 80, the top of the scale. I’ve clocked Buxton in the 3.9s from the righty box on multiple occasions on digs and got two 4.03s in on instructs game on routine ground balls where Buxton didn’t look like he was even exerting himself. Buxton also has an excellent first step and acceleration, normally the downfall of speedsters with some size, a sign that they will slowly lose it as they age. It’s rare to find an 80 runner with any kind of other skills, so you can see why scouts get so excited about Buxton, a 90 runner with a chance for above average power.

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