KATOH Projects Pittsburgh’s Return for Gerrit Cole
The Astros have acquired right-hander Gerrit Cole (for real this time) from the Pirates in exchange for Michael Feliz, Joe Musgrove, and prospects Jason Martin and Colin Moran. Below are the KATOH projections for the latter two of those players.
Note that WAR figures account for each player’s first six major-league seasons. KATOH denotes the stats-only version of the projection system, while KATOH+ denotes the methodology that includes a player’s prospect rankings.
*****
Colin Moran, 3B (Profile)
KATOH: 3.0 WAR
KATOH+: 2.8 WAR
The Marlins made Moran the sixth-overall pick back in 2013, but his stock has cratered since. His bat never developed the way scouts thought it would, culminating in a paltry .259/.329/.368 line in 2016. He showed signs of life last year, however, hitting .308/.373/.543 in his second crack at Triple-A. For the first time as a professional, he hit for power — largely by upping his fly-ball rate by 10 percentage points — while simultaneously cutting eight points off of his strikeout rate.
KATOH somewhat buys Moran’s 2017 breakout, but does not think he’s particularly likely to produce more than a few wins in the majors. Even if his offensive spike ultimately sticks, he’s still a 25-year-old third baseman who isn’t a terribly good defender and who has, consequently, started getting reps at first.
To put some faces to Moran’s statistical profile, I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Moran’s 2017 performance and every Triple-A season since 1991. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues.
Please note that the Mahalanobis analysis is separate from KATOH. KATOH relies on macro-level trends, rather than comps. The fates of a few statistically similar players shouldn’t be used to draw sweeping conclusions about a prospect’s future. For this reason, I recommend using a player’s KATOH forecast to assess his future potential. The comps give us some interesting names that sometimes feel spot-on, but they’re mostly just there for fun.
| Rank | Player | Proj. WAR | Actaul WAR |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tim Hummel | 2.5 | 0.0 |
| 2 | Scott Cooper | 2.9 | 6.3 |
| 3 | Aaron Boone | 4.4 | 11.5 |
| 4 | Casey McGehee | 2.8 | 4.5 |
| 5 | David Freese | 2.4 | 9.5 |
| 6 | Peter Ciofrone | 2.0 | 0.0 |
| 7 | Greg Norton | 2.5 | 0.4 |
| 8 | Corey Koskie | 2.7 | 23.5 |
| 9 | Brandon Wood | 3.8 | 0.0 |
| 10 | Terry Jorgensen | 2.5 | 0.1 |
*****
Jason Martin, OF (Profile)
KATOH: 2.1 WAR
KATOH+: 1.6 WAR
Selected in the eighth round of the 2013 draft, Martin split 2017 between High-A and Double-A, where he slashed .278/.332/.487. Martin is an undersized left fielder whose performance doesn’t stand out in any one particular area. That said, he doesn’t have any major weaknesses, either, and has hit quite well the last couple of years. He was one of the top players available in December’s Rule 5 by my math, but he went undrafted. He could carve out a role as a bat-first bench outfielder, but his statistical profile does not suggest he’ll be anything more than that.
| Rank | Player | Proj. WAR | Actaul WAR |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aaron Guiel | 2.3 | 1.4 |
| 2 | Cody Ross | 2.7 | 7.3 |
| 3 | Kelly Johnson | 2.3 | 15.5 |
| 4 | Kevin Burford | 2.4 | 0.0 |
| 5 | Sean Henry | 2.2 | 0.0 |
| 6 | Cole Gillespie | 2.3 | 0.1 |
| 7 | Brad Nelson | 1.3 | 0.1 |
| 8 | Jonny Gomes | 2.3 | 4.3 |
| 9 | Mike O’Keefe | 1.8 | 0.0 |
| 10 | Chris Durbin | 1.7 | 0.0 |
Chris works in economic development by day, but spends most of his nights thinking about baseball. He writes for Pinstripe Pundits, FanGraphs and The Hardball Times. He's also on the twitter machine: @_chris_mitchell None of the views expressed in his articles reflect those of his daytime employer.
Looks like a nothingburger of a return for a top 30 SP. Good thing Huntington just got a 4 year contract extension so he has time to conduct his dogmatically risk-averse rebuild in style. I predict he’ll draw even more pitchforks and torches than Dave Littlefield did in 2008 by 2020! The combination of his disregard for fan perception, his ability to reduce all transactions to “years of control” in the press, his penchant for quantity of return over upside quality and his ability to exasperate the fans by explicitly stating stuff like the year after a 98 win season was no more than a “bridge year”. He’s a real talent.
Must have been downvoted by someone who’s not a Pirates fan so not as much NH fatigue.
crazy you got downvoted more than actual spam
Looks a little one sided in favor of Houston.
Frazier seemed better than any of the four they recieved.
Puzzling,the Yanks offer seemed better?
Any offer would have been better than the one the Pirates accepted. Frazier is better than all four combined. One high-ceiling prospect from High-A would have been better. Hell, I would have been better and I am 75. Seriously, the Pirates appear to have received nothing more than the dreaded “organizational depth”.
This is simply a matter of ceiling vs. floor. Frazier has higher ceiling but if he busts (which is the most likely scenario), then the Pirates get nothing. But if he reaches upper end of his projections he can be worth worth as much as Cole for 6 years of team control.
Meanwhile the Astros players have lower ceiling but Musgrove is already big-league capable and Moran/Feliz are basically AAAA players at this point. They don’t need to be much better to contribute but unlikely to turn into star.
It’s not always a bad idea to go for the latter if you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. This is something Kiley McDaniel has noted teams are preferring these days.
Yes they are, and if you are outgunned on payroll it is a great way to make sure you never win the division. Risk aversion is a luxury for the best or richest teams, not a strategy for building a winner. I remember when a contender would pay for a certainty of performance at the cost of overall upside, not at the cost of cheaper versions of readily available MLB free agents.
This smells a bit like the Reds trade for Jose Peraza – get a decent MLB ready guy or two to tread water on the cheap until the next time we can contend…and if that day never comes, who cares?
Cannot blame the Pirates for not trying to leverage the Cutch years – they sorta tried and it failed..Kang, Marte and Polanco (and of course Liriano) no longer look like core players to make a 2018/2019 run reasonable, and the Cards and Cubs are just way out in front.
Wow, Corey Koskie was pretty good.
It’s weird how concussions have totally screwed the careers of two Twins greats (Koskie and Morneau), while I can’t think of a single other MLB player who had ever had a serious concussion.
John Jaso
Michael Morse last year.
Uh, Joe Mauer?
Last I checked he is still an everyday player. I’m talking about career-ending concussions.
Travis Buck.
Ryan Church
First one that I remembered as well, he had several.
Brandon Belt lost 1/3 of last season to one
Joc Pederson missed a month with concussion symptoms after colliding with a rock aka Yasiel Puig
Brian Roberts
Well other than all them!
A *serious* concussion. As in, career-ending. You know, like the two players I mentioned.
If you can still play, it’s obviously not serious.
I see you also missed the “totally screwed the careers” part of my comment. Pro tip: If you’re going to be sarcastic, have a valid criticism.
Mauer and Jaso had to stop catching because of concussions, and in Mauer’s case he basically turned from HoF catcher to barely replacement level 1B overnight.
Meanwhile, Morneau never suffered a career-ending concussion. He played regularly in 2012, 2013 and 2014, played through the end of 2016 and was healthy and could have played in 2017 if he wanted to, so you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
Stop moving the home plate.
as a Bucco fan, each day it gets a little harder to believe that this management team is the same one that built a quality farm system as well as a team that averaged 93 wins from 2013-2015. This is the kind of trade you make when you have to move a guy, not when you have two years of control and a locked in $6.8m 2018 salary.
I’m going to copy-paste some of Kiley’s thoughts on Colin Moran way back in his first stint here.
https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/evaluating-the-prospects-houston-astros/
“It’s clear after talking to double digit sources about Moran that people from rival organizations are pretty unanimously killing this guy and there is often something to it, like one scout who said he saw Moran run 4.8 to first base on a double play ball (for reference, that’s not even close to being on the scouting scale). Scouts and other traditional types pretty universally complain about the Astros for one reason or another and, given the well-known history of the Astros being the high club on Moran all along, take this opportunity to treat Moran like a bit of a referendum on the Astros’ methods. It’s a little unfair, but it’s hard to blame a scout for not liking a guy that’s low effort and hasn’t decided what kind of player he wants to be.”
Hoo boy that’s a lot to process, but the main takeaway is that teams like the Astros (and Pirates) are going to be way higher on this guy than a lot of other teams.
I think that the numbers probably put him in a similar category as Clint Frazier, except Frazier is two years younger and doesn’t have any of those red flags.
Looking at Musgrove and Moran, the Pirates are putting a lot of faith in being the smartest guys in the room, which is really freaking scary when it comes to the return for your second-best player.
If the Pirates had the highest evaluations of both Musgrove and Moran, maybe the should have followed the basic concepts taught in Negotiation 101 and NOT disclosed those evaluations to other teams, namely the Astros.
I think the main takeaway is that that info is stale by more than three years, even putting aside the value of it at the time.
Moran’s change in work ethic has been publicized since then in Astros’ circles. As well, more recently, Moran’s explicit change in approach to pull the ball in the air more – a la David Murphy and Yonder Alonso – has been publicized. And Moran’s scouting reports, especially his size/strength and bat-to-ball skills, fall right in line with others who have successfully converted to the so-called air-ball revolution.
I’m not saying he’s going to bust, which is always a possibility with a prospect. There are definitely some risks with the bat-first 3rd baseman who broke out with a power surge at 25 in Fresno, but he broke out so dramatically it might be enough.
It’s just that other teams never valued him the way the teams like the Astros and the Pirates did. If you think that less quant-heavy teams now think of him as highly as the Astros and Pirates do–then yes, Kiley’s details from 3 years ago are out of date.
Wasn’t it the same Astro scouting group that also selected Appel over Bryant? Seems like they had a glitch in their Cardinal and Astro merged files… Moran last year finally changed his approach after seeing the poor results of 4 years.
Meh. 2016 was the only year with poor results.
It’s a little weird to panning a pick for someone who was considered a possible 1-1 two years in a row.
Also, I am sure the Astros are very upset over Mark Appel not panning out.
Seems like the only ones talking up the value of what the Pirates got are Astros fans who are embarrassed at how they apparently fleeced the Bucs. Sometimes these things work out differently than apparent or conventional value assessments- but overwhelmingly they don’t.
There’s been some weird reporting on this trade, as I think it was Olney who said, “the Pirates expected to get more.”
That’s fairly in line with the overall public sentiment, but it certainly doesn’t explain why they went through with it.
Sure it does. Perhaps some folks with the Pirates (the ones Olney talked to) expected that one or more teams would value Cole in line with his public perception as an ace or almost-ace, or that his good 2015 would hold more appeal to teams, rather his middling 2017. Indeed, that idea is reflected in a lot of comments wondering how there wasn’t more of a market for Cole. Moreover, the Pirates likely recognized that as more teams fill rotation holes with FA pitchers (Arrieta, Darvish, Lynn, Cobb, et al), Cole’s market goes down further (not to mention performance and injury risk as ST and the season begins).
Biggest turn off with Moran and Musgrove is their age.both are 25 and haven’t done much in the majors. If they were 22-23and at the same stage they wouldn’t be bad prospects.
With moran a lit depends on thethe glove. He improved his fb rate and could hit 20-25 hr in the majors but then again two third of all mlb 3b hit 20 hr last year, so basically 20 hr is about average.
So the deciding factor will be the glove. With a bad glove (like some reports say) he could be a 1.5 win player even with 25 hr but with a decent glove he could be above average.
It’s also worth remembering that as a point of reference, Cole himself is 27.
I notice Steamer has Musgrove out performing Cole next year. Is he the key to the deal with the other three guys just the icing on the cake?
Probably. But that projection seems questionable at best.