KATOH on the Cape: Projecting Cape Cod League Hitters

The college baseball season wrapped up in June when Coastal Carolina defeated Arizona in the College World Series, but most of the top college players’ seasons don’t end when their team’s season does. Players with dreams of going pro often spend the summer months playing in collegiate summer leagues to gain extra reps and exposure. Teams in these leagues are composed entirely of college players, and — unlike at the college level — hitters use wooden bats instead of metal ones.

The most well known of these leagues is the Cape Cod Baseball League, which aptly takes place along Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The Cape attracts most of the best college players, and many of today’s stars spent their college summers playing there. Josh Donaldson, Evan Longoria, Buster Posey and Mark Teixeira are just a few notable alumni.

As I did with minor-league players and college players, I deployed a series of probit regressions to see what stuck when it came to forecasting major-league performance for Cape League players. I used those results to generate an expected WAR total — in this case, through age 28. These projections are far from gospel. Scouting the stat line is always dangerous. It’s even more dangerous than usual at the college level, where the samples are small, the players are raw, and the quality of opposing pitching runs the gamut. Nonetheless, statistical performance is an often overlooked component of prospect evaluation, and the performers often go on to exceed expectations.

A couple of caveats. Due to the poor quality of publicly available data, these projections do not directly account for players’ defense or defensive position. So you’ll need to mentally adjust for hitters’ defensive prowess. Secondly, these projections take into account only what these players have done this summer. Ideally, they’d account for college stats and summer-league stats. I do plan to link these two data sets at some point, but, unfortunately, it’s easier said than done.

Below, you’ll find a few notes on performances that I deemed noteworthy. Below that, you’ll find a giant table for all hitters who recorded at least 100 PAs in the Cape Cod League this year. The two right-most column refers to each prospect’s ranking on Baseball America’s Cape Cod top-30 list and Frankie Piliere’s top-150 list from D1 Baseball.

*****

• Although he was excluded from Baseball America’s top-30, Nick Dunn did a great job of getting on base as a 19-year-old on the Cape this year. He slashed .311/.372/.402 with very few strikeouts. My college model also liked Dunn due to the on-base skills and doubles power he showed as a freshman at Maryland.

• Ernie Clement earned MVP honors for his .353/.400/.395 batting line and 19 steals on the Cape. Clement is a contact machine, but his lack of power is somewhat concerning. Clement’s 19 steals might also be a mirage. He stole just six bags as a sophomore at Virginia last year, and therefore didn’t project as well by my college model.

• Joey Bart slashed .309/.389/.433 on the Cape, which was encouraging coming from a 19-year-old catcher. Bart underwhelmed as a freshman at Georgia Tech — especially in the power department — so it will be interesting to see if that power shows up next year. Bart struggles to make contact, but his high strikeout numbers are justifiable when paired with the type of power he showed this summer.

• After a strong freshman season at Wake Forest, Justin Yurchak sat out 2016 after transferring to Binghamton. He showed few signs of rust this summer, however, by hitting .295/.393/.363 on the Cape. He missed Baseball America’s top-30, but his performance suggests he’s a legit prospect.

• Michael Gigliotti built on his two excellent seasons at Lipscomb with a strong showing on the Cape. Though he struck out rather often, he still managed a .404 OBP with some power and speed.

• Dylan Busby has an exciting combination of power, on-base ability and speed, but his strikeout numbers stifle his projection a bit. My college model was also concerned weary of Busby’s strikeout numbers from his sophomore season at Florida State.
• Zach Rutherford ranked highly on Baseball America’s list, but scuffled on the Cape. While his .278/.333/.432 batting line wasn’t bad, it came with 41 strikeouts and just 11 walks over 43 games. KATOH doesn’t see Rutherford’s newfound power as being enough to outweigh the issues with his approach.

• KATOH’s a fan of Cal Stevenson’s even though he didn’t even crack D1’s top-150 list. Though he posted a laughable .009 ISO on the Cape, he walked more than he struck out and swiped 10 bases. Stevenson stands at just 5-foot-9, but controls the strike zone and gets on base.

*****

All data purchased from The Baseball Cube.