Projecting Derek Fisher, Part of the Return for Ken Giles

On Wednesday night, the Astros acquired lights-out reliever Ken Giles from the Phillies in exchange for Vincent VelasquezBrett Oberholtzer, Thomas Eshelman and outfield prospect Derek Fisher. Velasquez and Oberholtzer both pitched a substantial number of big league innings the last couple of years, and since KATOH’s only built for minor league stats, they fall a bit outside of my jurisdiction. I wrote about Velasquez when he was called up in June. Eshelman was the Astros’ second-round pick, and threw all of just 10 professional innings after signing. That’s not nearly enough to formulate a meaningful projection.

That leaves me with Derek Fisher — a toolsy outfielder who’s coming off of a 20-30 season in A-Ball. A 2014 supplemental first round pick, Fisher slashed .274/.364/.481 between Low-A and High-A last last year. His power is his most redeeming quality, as he posted ISOs north of .200 at both stops. The downside was that he struck out in 23% of his trips to the plate. A strikeout rate that high is a huge detractor for a guy in the low minors. KATOH projects Fisher for 2.6 WAR through age-28, which makes him roughly a back-end top-200 prospect.

Fisher’s upside is tantalizing. Last winter, Kiley McDaniel gave his raw power and speed grades of 60 and 65, respectively, making him one of the toolsiest players out there. But the 6-foot-3 slugger will need to work on making more contact at the higher levels. While he’s made it work in the low minors, low-contact hitters often sputter against better pitching. Here are his Mahalanobis comps.

Derek Fisher’s Mahalanobis Comps
Rank Name Mah Dist PA thru 28 WAR thru 28
1 Ian Desmond 0.50 3,152 15.7
2 Danny Espinosa 0.64 2,371 9.6
3 Ben Petrick 0.83 764 0.4
4 Rod Smith 1.03 0 0.0
5 Jon Nunnally 1.05 1,049 5.4
6 Dave Krynzel 1.06 54 0.0
7 Royce Clayton 1.17 3,724 13.1
8 Mario Lisson 1.25 0 0.0
9 Scott Moore 1.37 430 0.0
10 Chris Bostick* 1.37 0 0.0
11 Ryan Lane 1.38 0 0.0
12 Rickey Cradle 1.39 8 0.0
13 Michael Crouse* 1.47 0 0.0
14 Ezequiel Carrera 1.49 670 0.8
15 Christopher Grayson* 1.51 0 0.0
16 Dee Brown 1.57 871 0.0
17 Tyler Goeddel* 1.59 0 0.0
18 Dave Silvestri 1.62 372 0.0
19 Rod Myers 1.64 191 0.5
*Yet to play age-28 season

Fisher’s statistical comps are riddled with toolsy players who fizzled in the high minors, from Dave Krynzel to Rod Smith to Dee Brown. On the bright side, players like Ian Desmond and Danny Espinosa made enough contact to make it work. Fisher’s a boom or bust prospect, whose ultimate future will likely depend on whether he makes enough contact to leverage his impressive power.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.




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.

4 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
kdm628496
9 years ago

interesting that he’s comp’ed to tyler goeddel. they could be fighting for playing time in a few years.