Eric Longenhagen Chat: 3/6/2020

12:01
Eric A Longenhagen: Morning from Tempe. I’m gonna keep it tight to the hour today so I can, among other things, watch Kiley on today’s ESPN spring training broadcast.

12:03
Brendon: Looking forward to the Jays list! What’s the most interesting thing you’ve learned after making calls about the system?

12:04
Eric A Longenhagen: That aside from Pearson, Roither Hernandez is the hardest-throwing dude in the system.

12:04
Vslyke: Curious why Nick Green didn’t make the Yankees list? Not a great 2019, but he was a guy FG had been fairly high on at one time.

12:04
Eric A Longenhagen: Could’ve been a 35. Like the ground ball-getting stuff, but two years of command regression on a 24y/o isn’t great

12:04
Alan: Likelihood that Franklin Perez debuts in DET this season?

12:05
Eric A Longenhagen: If he’s healthy they should push him, so I’ll say yes

12:05
Honky: Do you know if Chris Paddack has ever tried using a cutter or slider during his career?

12:05
Eric A Longenhagen: I’ve never seen one, even on the backfields.

12:05
Tom: How do you compare a prospect who has ideal pitch characteristics and puts up impressive numbers (e.g Ethan Small) versus another prospect who might have better velocity and a more typical delivery/approach but lacks ideal pitch characteristics (say, someone like Daniel Lynch)?

12:07
Eric A Longenhagen: This is a thing I’m still trying to decide. Is poor spin efficiency actually a good thing because it’s so easy to change? Should I be projecting on Charez Butcher to fix his?

12:07
12:08
Eric A Longenhagen: Or should I prefer someone like Small, who throws less hard but it’s perfectly uniform seams and backspin?

12:08
Eric A Longenhagen: I still don’t know, that’s something I hope to have a better answer to after year two of high speed video

12:08
BarryBondsJuicedForOurSins: Who do you think is the Indians next great pitcher development success: Torres, Morgan, someone else?

12:08
Eric A Longenhagen: Eli Morgan. Not that I dislike Lenny, just think Morgan is the scouting/dev success story because of where he was drafted

12:09
JJ Bleday: 35 current grade on hit tool is just because I have not played above AA, correct? Cuz you know me ain’t nothing but hit.

_everyday is Bleday_

12:10
Eric A Longenhagen: Right. Hit tool grades are standardized because I think it’s ridiculous to think one could accurately gauge how well a hitter in college or Low-A or whatever would hit in the big leagues. So…
Teenager with poor/neutral feel to hit: 20
Teen with advanced feel to hit: 25
College-aged hitter w poor/neutral: 30
Advanced college-aged bat: 35
Hitters at Double-A and up get what I actually think their hit tool is

12:10
BarryBondsJuicedForOurSins: Can you describe what you mean by “pitchability”?

12:11
Eric A Longenhagen: Locating stuff with intent, in places where it makes sense to locate it. Lots to do with breaking ball command

12:12
Jabroni: What have you been hearing on Mlodzinski? I’ve watched a couple of his games and it seems pitch calling is an issue. They want him to keep pumping that 2 seamer in there and generate weak contact even in 2 strike counts when he should be using one of his put away pitches. It’s very frustrating.

12:12
Eric A Longenhagen: Def heavy on the cutter and 2sm usage, guess I’d like to see more curveballs but (shrug) the stuff is what’s important right now

12:12
Tom: Are there any 2020 draft prospects who have particularly impressive trackman/rapsodo profiles?

12:13
Eric A Longenhagen: Teams guard that stuff from me more closely than the pro data, so I don’t have anything beyond what I took down at some showcase stuff last summer

12:13
Jack: Mitch Keller has been ranked high on prospect lists but he got shelled last year and now this spring. What’s your thoughts on him? Bad luck or deeper problems?

12:13
Eric A Longenhagen: I’m still in

12:13
Jabroni: Does Cade Cavelli profile as a starter or will he end up a high leverage reliever?

12:14
Eric A Longenhagen: I’m on the fence. Spoke with a trusted source yesterday who believes he starts.

12:14
Jeff: What made cj van eyk jump in your rankings, his control looks terrible?

12:15
Eric A Longenhagen: He didn’t jump so much as a couple guys in that tier dropped due to injury

12:15
PatEdMartin: Do spring training games where MLB teams play college teams ever amount to more than just reps? Are guys discovered/scouted in those matchups?

12:16
Eric A Longenhagen: College teams tend to throw inconsequential pitchers in those games since they don’t count, so they’re not often great to scout. The Canadian Jr. National Team vs Toronto is a good look, though.

12:17
Mitch: Going down to FL for a ST trip next week and I’m way more interested in the backfields than the big league games. I know they are mostly open to the public, but where are they located usually? Or are they even open to the public?

12:21
Eric A Longenhagen: They’re typically on the same property as the big league field but each facility has its own rules and level of security oversight. You can probably dig online to see where exactly the backfields are (they’re easy to see on Google maps if there aren’t explicit directions somewhere) at any facility. Game times tend to be the same every day (they’re 1pm in AZ, times can change on weekends or toward end of schedule)

12:21
Eric A Longenhagen: There’s gonna be trial and error unless you can get a schedule, which some places have at an info desk on site

12:21
Pip: Luis Garcia (WAS) looks like he has filled out a lot more this spring, and hit a pretty impressive homerun in a game. It feels like a more important factor in his success will be learning to walk though. If the power is closer to 20HR than 10 and pitchers start being more careful with him rather than just attacking the zone and he adjusts well, is a prime candidate to be top 50-25 by next year?

12:22
Eric A Longenhagen: Think his approach will make it so he hits for less power in games than the raw. It’s 50 raw but he swings at stuff he can’t really damage, lotta oppo contact. It’s still a good skillset ,though.

12:23
Guest: Sam McWilliams was up to 98 consistently out of the BP the other day from a 6’7” frame. Is there any real upside there as a reliever or short stint swing guy?

12:23
Eric A Longenhagen: Def frame/arm strength interest but consistency/secondary stuff is middling.

12:24
Narvain: Seems like no prospect analysts like Jorge Ona anymore. He’s had some good times over the last year even though he was out for injury for a while. Do you see a path to him being productive in the majors?

12:25
Eric A Longenhagen: Probably caused by the farm’s depth. If you have an arbitrary number of prospect you’re covering, deep systems get punished in the work. I like Ona fine, his SLG was way over what’s realistic given the lack of present launch, but he does hit the ball hard and might be an adjustment away from hitting for real power. As a corner OF, that tweak’s gotta be made.

12:25
Brad: Who has more star potential Maximo Acosta or Luis Matos

12:25
Eric A Longenhagen: Matos, I’m lukewarm on Acosta

12:26
TomBruno23: Justin Williams…sleeper to get some playing time in the Cardinals OF this season?

12:26
Eric A Longenhagen: Gonna refer you to his player page with links to the past few prospect lists he’s been on. I’ve written a lot about his issues/potential over the last several years.

12:27
Steve O: Any Brandon Lockridge or Tanner Myatt thoughts for NYY? Thought they would be on others of note list.

12:30
Eric A Longenhagen: Lockridge is a bench OF ceiling for me. Lots of 50s on the card, corner guy. Myatt throws really hard — 91-96, t98, 2400rpm, has a relatively vert-friendly axis — but obvs the control is an issue and he’s not throwing so hard that I felt like including him anyway

12:30
Brad: Could Kevin Alcantara take a similar step forward this year that Kristian Robinson took last year? Their tool grades at the time seem pretty similar and both seem to have big frames to grow into.

12:30
Eric A Longenhagen: Yep, that’s what I think the path is

12:32
Devo: Does Peter Lambert still have the same future as a #4 starter, or are you concerned by last year’s stat line?

12:33
Eric A Longenhagen: Spoke with a scout who saw him this spring who thinks he ends up in the bullpen

12:33
Matt: I was curious about rankings of pop-up guys who seem to come out of nowhere like Jose Urquidy or Tarik Skubal. Does the shorter track record of pitching at a high level factor into their evaluation/rankings at all? Is there less certainty about their ability to keep it up?

12:35
Eric A Longenhagen: Any pitchers with new stuff or command, skills way above what they had done to that point, deserve a lower degree of confidence than someone exactly the same with a longer track record. There are teams who look at upticks in velo as the start of a trend and some who caution against recency bias. In those two cases, Urquidy added velo and a second breaking ball. Skubal took forever to right the ship after TJ and was the guy he was in college at his best.

12:35
A cat: With this season circling the drain does BOS push Mata to the parent club as a bulk reliever to prepare him for a rotation spot in ‘21? There is only Groome behind him for the next two years.

12:36
Eric A Longenhagen: I think that’s a good idea

12:37
Walter Sobchak: Your top 100 mentioned that you were as confident in Heriberto’s hit/power projection as almost anyone you’d seen in the AZL. What separated him from any number of other guys who rake there?

12:38
Eric A Longenhagen: Some of it is circumstantial (the amount I saw him, who I saw him touch up {especially in the fall}) and some of it is data (go look at the hitters’ TM data on The Board)

12:38
Eric A Longenhagen: That’s a 20 y/o doing that

12:39
Brutus: I’m friendly with a draft prospect on THE BOARD who is openly anti analytics. In discussions with him he has stated numerous times how he thinks things like launch angle, exit velocity and optimizing swing plane are BS. Would an organization make adjustments to how they grade a potential draftee based on how open/averse he is to making new-school changes? Could it be used as a tie breaker is two players are close?

12:41
Eric A Longenhagen: Whether a team views buy-in as important or not varies, club to club. There are area scouts who have derisive views on that stuff, too, so they might *love* that the prospect does, too. It might be viewed as a positive for some scouts and not for others. I don’t think cookie-cutter, uniform application of swing principles is smart, but I do think some hitters need help and can get it from buying in to modern methodology.

12:41
Guest: For leisure, do you prefer watching an amateur and/or MiLB game to watching an MLB one? Why?

12:41
Eric A Longenhagen: Big league talent still transports me on occasion

12:42
Logan: If you were watching a baseball game in which there were no names on the jerseys, no team names, and no other way to identify the players involved, could you tell what level of competition you were watching (e.g., MLB, AA, college, etc.) simply by the quality of play?

12:42
Eric A Longenhagen: I’d like to think so

12:42
27th man: Concerned with Emerson Hancock’s start to the season?

12:42
Eric A Longenhagen: Not really. Stuff is fine

12:42
Brandon J: After the announcement that Ginn had surgery, what percentage chance do you see that he does not sign if drafted this year?

12:42
Eric A Longenhagen: (shrug)

12:43
Eric A Longenhagen: (Boras-related shrug)

12:44
Steve O: If Estevan ends up being a 35 hitter in the bigs is there a path to him being a 2 WAR CF?

12:44
Eric A Longenhagen: Yeah, Drew STubbs in the template for that

12:44
Marc: I like the new player page update, but I’ve had just one problem when it comes to this site and prospects. Maybe I’m missing something, but could you guys make it so that you can access a prospect’s latest scouting report directly from their player page? It gets a little annoying to have to open successive tabs and have to find prospects on the BOARD in each tab when I’m comparing more than one. Maybe right next to their scouting grades?

12:45
Eric A Longenhagen: It removes incentive for people to go to The Board at all

12:45
Eric A Longenhagen: or the lists

12:46
John: Weird question – When you put together a prospect list (whether a top 100 or a specific teams top 20 or so) – are you ordering how you believe each player will actually end up compared to each other or more what their trade value is at that particular point in time?

12:47
Eric A Longenhagen: Sometimes the “would Team A trade Player A for Player B?” question is instructive as to how to rank players but it’s not the overarching theme. I’m trying to FV guys based on anticipated WAR production with risk-related dilution baked in.

12:47
Eric A Longenhagen: We really peel back the curtain in the book

12:47
Eric A Longenhagen: It’s probably stupid, everyone else might just start doing it.

12:48
Wanderlust: What’s bothering you about Justin Dunn and Justus Sheffield? I assume you have doubts about command or strength of a 3rd pitch, but isn’t it equally likely that they’ll take the step forward this realize their 50-55 FV potential?

12:49
Eric A Longenhagen: Dunn’s heater averaged 92 last year, Sheff’s 92.8 (and has sinker shape). I got tired of riding the Sheff control/command roller coaster, too. Like both guys, just not more than I do the 50 FV dudes.

12:50
Roman Numeral Three: You mentioned that the Yankees farm system had a staggeringly high number of injuries. Ummm, so did their big league club. Is there anything to suggest that this is a top to bottom organizational problem? Or is this just weird bad luck?

12:50
Eric A Longenhagen: Injuries tend to regress to the mean in all sports. NYY also has the hardest-throwing org in baseball and I wonder if those two go hand in hand.

12:51
i am definitely working rn: What kind of info do scouts/teams get on a player’s vision? I remember reading that most position players are better than 20/20, but will teams recommend Lasik for someone who is an average performer with the hopes that better vision will translate to pitch recognition or the hit tool?

12:51
Eric A Longenhagen: Gaze tracking and VR stuff is growing but I know very little about it right now

12:52
TK07: Will Craig didn’t make FG’s top 42 Pirates prospects. Not even as a potential role player. Any hope for him at all?

12:52
Eric A Longenhagen: I’m just not on him. You could 40 him if you really wanted but I think he ends up mashing in Korea or something.

12:53
Jeff: On the Pirate “Top 42” the other day you had Burrows as #21. Your comment that he was a “spin rate monster” got me curious as to what is his spin rate and how does it compare to other pitchers in MiLB and pitchers already pitching in MLB. Does Fangraphs have a listing of pitcher’s spin rates?

12:53
Eric A Longenhagen: I really need to do a better job marketing this shit.

12:53
Michael: No Luke Williams on the Phillies list or HM. You have any opinion on him as a potential to play utility infielder?

12:54
Eric A Longenhagen: Quick bat, contact-heavy LF profile, not sure the defensive versatility for a role is there, but buy that the bat gives him a shot.

12:54
Smoosh: Do you have a sense for how useful it is for teams/evaluators to have bat speed information from blast motion sensors? Potential way to identify under-the-radar prospects, or just noise?

12:54
Eric A Longenhagen: Spoke with an A GM of a smart team who told me they fight about whether bat speed is important or not

12:54
Jay: Taylor Trammell’s swing looks different to me this spring, more Franchy Cordero-like. Is it my imagination or are the Padres molding his swing?

12:55
Eric A Longenhagen: It’s definitely different but I haven’t seen him from the open side in a game yet and don’t have the words to describe it yet

12:55
Jolly Joe Timmer: Jump in the DeLorean and see a prospect you missed out on. Who is it?

12:57
Eric A Longenhagen: ASU Barry Bonds

12:58
Eric A Longenhagen: Also would like to see young Arvydas Sabonis play in Europe

12:58
Johnny5Alive: Mets kid Johneshwy Fargas hit for the cycle yesterday. That’s got to be at least a 65 grade name, no?

12:58
Eric A Longenhagen: oh yes. Great athlete, was fun to watch at bottom of SFG system while it lasted

1:00
Oh yah: Any new buzz worthy players from the backfields?

1:00
Eric A Longenhagen: Drew Rasmussen sitting 97-99

1:01
Eric A Longenhagen: Okay, games are starting. I’m gonna split. I hosted FG Audio which should drop later today, so there’s more of me available if you want it.

1:01
Eric A Longenhagen: Be well, talk to you next week





Eric Longenhagen is from Catasauqua, PA and currently lives in Tempe, AZ. He spent four years working for the Phillies Triple-A affiliate, two with Baseball Info Solutions and two contributing to prospect coverage at ESPN.com. Previous work can also be found at Sports On Earth, CrashburnAlley and Prospect Insider.

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