Dated Information
In almost every mainstream write-up of a trade involving a minor league prospect that is consummated, the author will reference the prospects off-season ranking by Baseball America, and for good reason – BA is the market leader in prospect analysis. John Manuel, Jim Callis, and the rest of the crew over there do really good work, and have established themselves as the best source of information on prospects around.
However, I’m beginning to feel like the reliance on a ranking compiled months ago is carrying too much weight when discussing current trades. Let’s use last night’s Wilson Ramos/Matt Capps trade, for instance. The normal reaction is that the Twins overpaid, trading a “top catching prospect” for a useful but not elite reliever. Many Twins fans are outraged that they would give up such a valuable trade chip in exchange for a one inning guy, especially after he was rumored to be part of the package that would bring them Cliff Lee a month ago.
A lot of the perception of Ramos’ value comes from the fact that BA rated him #58 on their pre-season Top 100 and #2 overall in the Twins system. However, since those rankings occurred, baseball has been played, and Ramos’ value has diminished. He hasn’t hit at all in Triple-A this year, as more advanced pitchers are taking advantage of his aggressive approach. He also hasn’t shown much in the way of power, as only 19 of his 67 hits have gone for extra bases.
If BA were to do re-do their Top 100 today, I guarantee you that Ramos wouldn’t rank #58. I’m guessing that he wouldn’t even be in the Top 100. He’s has a bad year, and the things that were questions about him last year are problems this year, giving teams reasons to think that his bat might not be enough to make him more than a defensive-minded backup. So, his pre-season ranking does not really reflect his value at the moment. Things have changed.
We saw this last year as well, when Tim Alderson (#45 pre-season prospect) was traded to the Pirates for Freddy Sanchez. The reaction at the time was that the Giants were crazy to give up a top pitching prospect for a decent, but not great, infielder. However, Alderson had spent the previous four months without any velocity, showing almost none of the stuff that made him a first round pick to begin with. The Pirates received a significantly lesser version of Alderson than had been assumed based on his prospect status, and that’s continued to carry over as Alderson has fallen off the prospect map at this point.
In prospect land, things can change a lot in a short period of time. A year ago, Mike Trout went 25th overall in the draft, but if you gave teams a do-over today, he’d go #2, as he’s now the consensus best prospect left in the minors. His stock has risen dramatically in the last four months, and his pre-season Top 100 ranking of #85 is now as outdated as shag carpet.
The guys at BA do great work. You should subscribe to their magazine and follow them all on twitter. But, don’t be slaves to pre-season rankings when trying to determine a player’s value. Things change between the time those lists get made and the time those prospects become trade chips.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
I’m not disagreeing that we should use up-to-date information, but I feel like prospect evaluation is far to subject to small sample sizes. Is four months of playing at the highest level a player has seen really enough to change an evaluation? If so, I think that we need to downgrade our evaluations of evaluations, because that original evaluation wasn’t very good, was it?
Scouting doesn’t need the same sample sizes as statistics. When Tim Alderson’s fastball disappears, four months is not a small sample. It’s more than enough information to conclude that there’s something wrong. When Mike Trout displays a far better approach at the plate than teams realized he had, it doesn’t take years for us to wait for that to regress. It’s new information, and it rightly changes our evaluation.
In Ramos’ case, the concerns about his offense aren’t new, but they’ve certainly been highlighted by how weakly he has hit this year. Instead “that may be a problem in the future”, it becomes “this is a problem, and one he hasn’t made any strides to fix”. If you don’t change your opinion based on that, you’re behind.
But how long does a player’s new developments have to be in play before they become part of his scouting profile? Like what if Trout next year all of a sudden looks nothing like himself this year?
Maybe, but in Ramos’ case it isn’t a matter of his *losing* anything, so the comparison to Alderson is a poor one. And if nothing has essentially changed except that Ramos is playing one level higher and actually appears to be healthy for a change, then I’m not sure what your point is. Unless the scouts are telling us he’s a markedly different player than last season, you are, indeed, basing your opinion entirely based on his Triple-A stats. His defense also hasn’t changed, and as has already been pointed in an other article here, that’s where his value has lain and will lie. If Fangraphs doesn’t value an every day catcher with plus defense and some power, no one will. I mean, if you’re going to write column every time some homer treats Wilson Ramos like he’s Matt Wieters, you’re going to be pretty busy.
In Ramos’ case, he’s a 23 year old catcher struggling to hit in his first season in AAA after being a consistently solid hitter in all other levels. I certainly hope that prospect evaluators would not place much in that small sample size of data.
BA agrees ranking him higher in their midseason rankings than in their preseason ones:
http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/prospects/rankings/top-100-prospects/2010/2610314.html
That’s fine, but the current ranking for Ramos has also benefited from a lot of prospect graduations within the majors the last year and a half. I think the Minor Leagues in general has been wearing pretty thin lately beyond the top 25 or so guys.
Ramos hitting .400 with a homer and a triple, OPS north of 1100 so far for the Nats AAA club. Darn that dated info they had …
Spot on, philosofool. And would BA really be so capricious as to drop Ramos 40+ spots based on a few bad months with the bat? Besides sample size, there’s also the fact that he’s a catcher to consider.
Prospect rankings are more relative than that…
Nothing could change with a player’s scouting report, and he could bump up the charts several slots just because of prospect graduations or poor performances from his peers (and vice-versa).
Let’s not muddy things by lumping this into Yet Another Small Sample Size argument. The issue isn’t the size of the sample, it’s the nature of it. Things (particularly pitching) can change pretty dramatically from one level of the minors to the next. Prospect evaluations are often loaded with caveats about whether a player can “continue to hit at the next level” — and even when they’re not, it should be implicit. This is a case where more recent information should be given heavier weight despite the smaller sample — just as even more recent information should be if he then demonstrates an ability to hit a higher level of pitching.
There’s definitely a difference between the evaluation of what a prospect has done so far and the projection of what he might do at another level of pro ball in the future.
“I’ve got information man! New shii has come to light!”
I don’t disagree that some observations are more reliable than others. I only need to taste vinegar in a bottle of wine once to know that the rest of the bottle tastes like vinegar. I need to see a player hit about 1,000 balls before I know whether he’s especially good or bad at reaching base on balls in play. (Obviously, there’s not “bright line” for BABIP, our confidence should be a function of the sample size, and it takes many observations for confidence to be large.) It depends on the nature of what we’re observing. My point is that it’s premature to downgrade Ramos (and, as commenters below point out, he’s now in BA’s top 50.)
One could argue though that Ramos has a case of big-league-itis. Not saying thats a strong argument, but something to consider.
Really?
He went 4 for 5, two hits banging off the wall, in his first MMAJOR LEAGUE GAME, and followed that with a 3 for 4 game.
BA released a Mid-Season Top 25, with 25-50 in alphabetical order. Ramos was in that 26-50 range.
http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/prospects/rankings/top-100-prospects/2010/2610314.html
“If BA were to do re-do their Top 100 today, I guarantee you that Ramos wouldn’t rank #58.” -> “BA released a Mid-Season Top 25, with 25-50 in alphabetical order. Ramos was in that 26-50 range.”
See, this is why I wouldn’t even guarantee that the sun will rise tomorrow.
Because all the top talent is in the majors and no longer qualifies for prospects, Posey, Strasburg, Santana etc etc – they mentioned it up top in that article.
If you were to do the top 100 with those players included he would be lower.
Case in point – RS prospect Casey Kelly – Pre season #24, midseason #24,despire how 11 of the players above him in the preseason rankings are no longer eligable, and another 1 (westmoreland) is out of baseball at the moment recovering.
So, all else being equal – Kelly should have gone up many many places.
What did they write about Kelly in the preseason rankings? how he is struggled…
Dave is spot on in his assessment on how prospect rankings work.
BA’s list didn’t include 2010 draftees. Their end-of-season list will. Ramos won’t be in the top-50.
Dave, I understand the larger point you are trying to make, but BA has Ramos in the top 26-50 prospects, according to this mid-season update as of July 9 (see the bottom of the post or search for “Ramos”:
http://goo.gl/hDLw
I doubt Ramos’ value dropped much since they tried to package him for Lee a month ago. He put in a pretty good showing in a limited stint as Mauer’s replacement when Joe went on the DL this season, if memory serves me (and it often doesn’t).
Its a delicate act, more art than science, but that’s why trades are so interesting. Maybe the Twins thought Ramos was overrated and wanted to trade him too early, instead of too late (e.g., I recall the Angels holding on to Dallas McPherson, Jeff Mathis, Brandon Wood and Casey Kotchman when their reputation was spotless and could fetch real talent, only to squander their trade value by holding on to them).
Maybe the Twins floated Ramos’s name to their beat writers in connection with Oswalt, Lee, etc in order to pump his value even more but Houston & Seattle didn’t bite. Only Washington took the bait on a soon to be career back-up.
That’s one scenario.
Take Kotchman off that list. He brought in Texiera, and if I’m not mistaken, that turned into Trout through compensation picks. I’d say he got pretty good return for his value.
Exactly. The others work, but Kotch did tons for the LAA organization by not even being there.
“However, since those rankings occurred, baseball has been played. . .” Not according to FG’s minor league stats pages.
Excellent post, Dave. I completely agree with it.
Nah, on July 9th BA had him in their top 50
http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/prospects/rankings/top-100-prospects/2010/2610314.html
I agree with the post though
just like how 9 Strasburg starts is enough to anoint him god? 🙂
It was for me. One start was enough for me to believe he had arguably the top stuff in the league and justified the hype. He blew away my expectations, which were already very high. And while I had scoffed at Curt Schilling’s claim of him immediately becoming the best pitcher in the majors at the time, I did a complete 180. He might already be the best pitcher in the majors (when healthy). In that case, seeing for myself outweighed the usual caveats about young pitchers.
In Ramos’ case, the numbers haven’t been there this year (though if you’re into small sample sizes, he’s hitting pretty well post-ASB). The scouting reports, though, are the same as they’ve always been- and I’ll trust the scouting reports and career numbers rather than a half-season’s worth of stats. Like with any prospect, I’d rather make use of all the data available (scouting reports and 1500 ABs of competent hitting in Ramos’ case) and weight the different factors according to that player’s individual context. And personally, that half season- even if it’s the most recent data- doesn’t factor particularly strongly in my evaluation (unlike the overstatement of Alderson’s or Bumgarner’s velocities to begin with).
While Ramos’ stock has undoubtedly fallen since the preseason list was published, I’d argue that there isn’t simply an overreliance on older data rankings. Rather, people place far too much emphasis on the rankings themselves.
I understand the purpose of the rankings- that they provide a neat, ordered list of great prospects cor comparison- but they are only prognosticated proxies for how an individual team might truly value a prospect. Should a team value ceiling or floor? Are we looking at value on the diamond, or in all facets of the business of baseball? How strongly does a team value specific components of a player’s abilities (Mike Scioscia and Jeff Mathis come to mind)?
There are a myriad of factors that go into both the definition and evaluation of prospect value, and as good as BA is at their jobs, they are hardly the sole or last word of the matter, especially in the world of prospecting where there will be more misses than hits.
Ultimately, I agree with parts of your argument- that prospect valuation is hardly static, but I disagree with some key points of it. First, even if your stab at BA’s current ranking of Ramos were correct, you’re overrating the importance of the ranking to begin with. With the high rate of attrition for even the best prospects, a 25 spot drop isn’t particularly telling. Using such a ranking isn’t particularly illuminating, and using an estimate of how another party (BA) might rank someone is even less so. Second, you try to make an apples to oranges comparison between Ramos and Alderson. While Alderson does illustrate the dynamism of prospect evaluation, it was hardly fitting given how different their individual situations are (ie evaluating catchers vs pitchers). Ramos hasn’t performed particularly well, but both the scouting reports and a decent-sized past sample are positive. In alderson’s case, the scouting reports had already soured pretty quickly, there was reason to suspect previous reports of his velocity, and his previous numbers didn’t match particularly well with the scouting reports (lack of dominant K rate in A+). Finally, you fall into the same trap we’re all liable to fall into. You present BA’s prospect ranking as the final arbiter of prospect value. Again- I’ve got much respect for BA for doing great at a difficult job- but simply pointing to a ranking (or an estimate of a ranking) vastly oversimplifies prospect evaluation.
Yeah there’s a critical flaw in here. I totally agree with Dave in general: it’s silly how analysts will simply default to a pre-season ranking without taking into consideration what’s happened this season. Sure four months is a limited sample, but it’s not an insignificant sample, and values most certainly change.
The problem with the Ramos reference: he would most likely still rank roughly where he was ranked, simply because of all the advancement of guys higher than him on that list. Remember, hardly any of the top talents from this year’s draft have signed, and those who have have started playing have such a small sample size that their status can’t be any different than it was pre-draft.
So in essence, Ramos has likely maintained his prospect ranking by default, but that’s not a good thing. A good prospect should actually advance in the rankings, making his way toward the top before advancing to the ML level. If you think of it along the lines of, “how many guys who were previously ranked ahead of Ramos now rank behind him versus how many guys who previously ranked behind him now rank ahead of him” it’s pretty clear that his stock has fallen a bit.
As has been noted above, he has advanced to 18 spots to 40.
Okay, I lied. But at least to 50.
Again, no he hasn’t. There were no 2010 draftees on that list.
But a mid-season top 50 is less valuable than a pre-season top 50 spot. Promotions subtract from that list, but the next draft hasn’t added to it yet.
The point is, he said “If BA were to do re-do their Top 100 today, I guarantee you that Ramos wouldn’t rank #58. I’m guessing that he wouldn’t even be in the Top 100.”
I’m simply responding to that statement. Ramos has moved up to at least #50 on the list. The overall point being made, using pre-season Top 100 lists are worthless in late July, is one I agree with. I think most people agree with this statement.
However, if Ramos is still top 50 in late July, in order for him to not make the top 100 next year would mean that 50 (!) players from the 2010 draft would have to overtake him on the list. Maybe he won’t be #58 or higher next year, but I can’t see him falling out of the top 100 entirely. Maybe he will, but I’d say it’s a bad bet to assume he will.
How that relates to your own personal evaluation of this trade is for you to decide. I was simply trying to provide information that Dave was not aware of.
If a team like the Mariners, a team that needs catching help badly, passed on Ramos then I think his BA ranking was too high
Why would the fact that a single team passed on him (for a better prospect in Smoak) lead to the conclusion that BA had him ranked too high?
I’m a Mariners fan, and this comment doesn’t make any sense? Are you saying that Z is so brilliant that therefore BA is wrong? I love Z, but lets not get crazy. Smoak > Ramos (and Montero > Ramos), simple as that.
And Montero>Smoak.
So are you saying that, at this point, you’d rather have Trout than Ackley if you are the Mariners, Dave?
Probably not. Trout is a long way away, while Ackley will probably be ready next year around “avoiding super two time.” Trout has loads of upside and looks like it may manifest, but A+ is the highest level he’s ever seen, which means he’s almost never seen a guy with two plus pitches.
I’d trade Ackley for Trout right now.
Dave, you’d trade Ackley for Trout? Any particular reasons why? I mean for all the hype about the 18-year old, he’s slowed in the 2 weeks since his promotion (.238/.333/.381). It’s only 16 games, but based on this article, sample sizes are less important in prospecting.
That’s a great question Decatur, if only we knew their WARs.
I wonder if Dave himself is also using dated information… a closer look at Ramos “lack of hitting”:
July : .307 Avg (don’t have the slash line)
June: .297 Avg
This is 41 games of his 71 game Triple A career. His overall average is .241, which when you see the #’s above is obviously impacted by a dreadul April and May. Think there might be an adjustment period for a catcher making the transition to Triple A for the first time?
The guy still strikes out way too much and is allergic to walks, but the lack of hitting tag might be a bit exaggerated and nearly as bad as using the outdated preseason evaluation.
sorry the June #, should be since June (includes July)
Let’s see, there are (approximately) 30 teams in MLB, each of whom carry at least two catchers, 30 x 2 jobs available, and if Ramos is 4th, 5th 6th or even 7th best catcher in all of the minor leagues, he is likely to make it to the show, probably as a Nat.
The Nats gave up Capps for a few months, but have a replacement already on the squad. So, any way you slice it, a great long term value trade for the guys from DC.
The real question is, “Is Wilson Ramos better than Wil Nieves?”