Kole Calhoun and the Best Non-Prospects
Every Angels player, I’m sure, loves Mike Trout, but every Angels player is also competitive, and on some level self-interested. No one wants to be so consistently over-shadowed, so I’m happy for Kole Calhoun today, as he gets a few moments to himself. Calhoun has long been tremendously underrated, but now he’s in the news thanks to a new multi-year contract extension that’ll set him up for life. It’s nothing that sexy, at least not for anyone not already a member of the Calhoun family, but this is one opportunity for Angels fans to think about Calhoun without also thinking about the guy who plays beside him.
You can’t really write about Calhoun without writing about how he’s under-appreciated. He’s under-appreciated as a big-leaguer, but it dates back further than that. When he was in the minors, Calhoun was never really on any major prospect radar. Neil Weinberg investigated that a couple years back. And in 2010, Calhoun was an eighth-round draft pick. The Angels selected 12 players before him, and their combined WAR is -1.1. Cam Bedrosian is nice, but he’s no above-average everyday outfielder.
Thinking about Calhoun always reminds me that he wasn’t a prospect. And that always makes me think about other good players who weren’t prospects. I did some analysis on this topic in February of 2015, and I’d like to re-visit that real quick. Who are the best players around right now who weren’t thought of as high-quality prospects when they were younger?
As then, I’m making use of the Baseball America all-time top-100 lists. That’ll be my authoritative source. Of course, BA isn’t perfect, and of course, there are good prospects who aren’t top-100 prospects, but that should capture all the best prospects, and then some. Anyone who never made a top-100 list wouldn’t have counted as a blue-chipper. Maybe you’d prefer guys who never made a top-200 list, or guys who were never even in an organizational top-10, but I’m working with what’s easily available. It’ll do.
As for my measure of present ability, I went into our depth-charts projections and pulled out every player projected to be worth at least 2.5 WAR in the majors in 2017. For now, this is based just on Steamer, because ZiPS hasn’t yet been folded in. When I did my initial analysis, I used a WAR cutoff of 3, but back then I was looking back on performances, and now I’m using projections, which are always regressed. So, to boil it all down: 2.5+ WAR players. Top-100 prospects. Should be easy enough to understand.
For the year ahead, there are 140 players projected to be worth at least 2.5 WAR, from Mike Trout down to Ivan Nova. Of all those players, 98 of them showed up at least once in a top-100 list, meaning there’s a 30% overall rate of good “non-prospects.” It might not surprise you that the distribution isn’t so even if you break things down further.
Of the 12 players projected to be worth at least 5 WAR, 11 showed up in a top-100 list. That yields a prospect rate of 92%.
Of the 24 players projected to be worth between 4 – 4.9 WAR, 18 showed up in a top-100 list. That yields a prospect rate of 75%.
Of the 58 players projected to be worth between 3 – 3.9 WAR, 40 showed up in a top-100 list. That yields a prospect rate of 69%.
And, of the 46 players projected to be worth between 2.5 – 2.9 WAR, 29 showed up in a top-100 list. That yields a prospect rate of 63%.
The better the player, the more likely the player was to have been a good prospect. That’s not by any means a total shock, but we’re still seeing some strong representation from the non-prospect player pool. Now we can dig into the title subject a little bit better. Kole Calhoun is a good player, and a very good player for one with his own background. But by this method, he ranks just 24th among the best projected players who never appeared in a top-100 list. Players like Calhoun are somewhat unusual, but it would be a stretch to call them rare. The best non-prospects are even better than he is.
You know who many of them are. Calhoun himself is sandwiched between Brian Dozier and Joe Panik, in terms of projected WAR for former non-prospects. Those are middle infielders who developed surprising bat-to-ball skills. But now here’s the full top 10. These are the highest Steamer-projected WAR figures for 2017, among those players who never once featured in a BA top-100 list.
- Josh Donaldson, 6.0 WAR
- Corey Kluber, 4.9
- Paul Goldschmidt, 4.2
- Kevin Kiermaier, 4.2
- Jose Quintana, 4.2
- Dallas Keuchel, 4.1
- Kyle Seager, 4.0
- Jose Altuve, 3.9
- Jacob deGrom, 3.9
- Robinson Cano, 3.8
Justin Turner just barely missed, as did Jonathan Lucroy. But this is an impressive crop, and Donaldson is very easily the leader. Kluber is comfortably in the second position, first by a good margin among pitchers. It’s of some note not to see Matt Carpenter, since he’s been one of the faces of this group, but that just goes to show how deep it really is.
I doubt I need to educate you much about these backgrounds. Donaldson’s a converted catcher. He topped out as the Cubs’ No. 7 organizational prospect going into 2008. Kluber never showed up on a top-10 list for the Padres or the Indians. Goldschmidt never showed up on a top-10 list for the Diamondbacks. Kiermaier topped out as the No. 10 prospect, once, in the Rays’ system. Quintana never showed up on a top-10 list. Keuchel never showed up on a top-10 list. Seager topped out as the No. 9 prospect, once, in the Mariners’ system. Altuve never showed up on a top-10 list. deGrom topped out as the No. 10 prospect, once, in the Mets’ system. Cano was actually the Yankees’ No. 2 prospect going into 2005, but he still didn’t make the top-100. There was a large canyon between him and Eric Duncan.
Five of those 10 were never even organizational top-10 guys. They’re maybe the best peers for Calhoun, who was never a top-10 guy himself, despite coming up in a mostly empty system. What we see is that Calhoun isn’t alone. Not by a long shot. Which is kind of a bad thing and a good thing. It’s a bad thing, because it means our young-player analysis still has a ways to go to improve. But it’s a good thing, because, ultimately, you never know who’s going to break out. They’re all so incredibly talented, all the players in all the systems. There’s nothing wrong with a baseball that keeps things surprising.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
It’s somewhat curious to look back on minor league stats for these players and try to figure out how they weren’t more heralded.
DeGrom had a mediocre (to be kind) K rate all throughout his minor league career that suddenly exploded the second he got to the majors. I’m annoyed because I missed him in my draft after that year because I thought it was a fluke.
Robbie was often very young for his league, and my memory is that he was sometimes overshadowed by (ahem) D’Angelo Jimenez, who had a better eye and was also blocked at SS by Jeter. In retrospect, of course, that seems preposterous, and not just because Jimenez never panned out.
Cano was often holding his own against older guys, which is a good, but not 100%, indicator of MLB success. In reality, it looks like something happened for him in ’04, and then again in ’05, so that he very quickly went from unheralded kid to RoY candidate to perennial All Star quality player. At almost every stage, Cano has surprised people: he was better in the high minors than anybody expected, he was better as a young MLB player than anybody expected, he matured into a bigger star than anybody expected, and his prime has lasted longer than anybody expected. If you could unlock the secret to finding that kind of player, you would very quickly become a rich man, I think.
Jimenez made his ml debut 2 years before cano was signed and was traded 6 months after cano signed. Unless Jimenez was overshadowing Cano from San Diego/Cincinatti somehow…
Also, Jimenez himself was overshadowed by another (ahem) shortstop named Alfonso Soriano, who ended up at 2B when Jimenez broke his back in the offseason before he was traded to the Padres. So Soriano was blocking Cano until he was traded to Texas for Cano’s good buddy Alex Rodriguez.
I can see it for some of them. Altuve is outlier in terms of body type and being able to hit for power at his size. Seager is solid all around but doesn’t have any particular tools that would have stood out a ton. 1B only prospects tend not to rank particularly high since the threshold for the bat is so high there (Goldy). Keuchel, Kluber and Quintana don’t have big velocity. Also, Kiermaier’s value is so tied up in his defense, but I think it would be hard to project him becoming sooooo much better than everyone else defensively. Especially since his ability seems to be tied to getting good reads and jumps rather than nuclear speed like Billy Hamilton, which would be easier to see quickly.
Groupthink.
No surprise that for the most part these are guys that are hard to root against. The exceptions being Donaldson and Cano. Cano because he always has a bored look on his face, even when he oppo-biscuits a ball 420 feet. Donaldson just looks like a douche to me.
If Calhoun can make it after not being a top-10 Angels prospect, there really IS hope for Sherman Johnson.
You know, the enormity of Calhoun not being a top-10 ANGELS prospect only struck me after reading this comment.
I still can’t believe nobody picked Sherman Johnson in the Rule 5 Draft.
Calhoun was a top 10 prospect in John Sickels list for the Angels back before the 2013 season (#7). In his mid-season review he noted he was doing great in AAA and always outperformed his tools. In that half season in AAA he had a 174 wRC+, his best performance yet. And an 11.7% to 11.7% k/bb rate. I think by that time people knew he could be a regular. He had Goldschmidt top 10 as wqell (9) and also noted his outstanding half year in AA and improved strikeout rate. That was also his best minorleague season, 178 wRC+.
Goldschmidt made Baseball America’s mid-season top 50 update in 2011. Sickels tends to be more into guys that may not have the tools that BA looks for. And guys who get promoted mid-yer of their best minor league season don’t make the next year’s lists since they no longer qualify.
So look for great or improving eye ratios and overall numbers as guys climb the minor league ladder.
Donaldson is a fascinating player. How does a MLB organization not give a 7+ WAR player not regular playing time until he’s in his mid-late 20s? Shame. He’s unlike most players on that list, who even though they were not a “top prospect”, still most of them got to the majors in their early-mid 20s. I wonder how many 4+ WAR players made their major’s debut after their 25th birthday(excluding internationals like Darvish)? I wonder how many of those players had at least 12 WAR over 3 consecutive yrs?
Kole Calhoun just about makes the cut…
Reading past scouting reports on him and the others, Cano for instance, are worth a chuckle, but the worst miss that I can think of is Paul Goldschmidt, who was, and is, the poster boy for bad scouting. How bad you ask. Well he was pigeon-holed as a lead footed ox who could not play an adequate 1st base. That is a Gold Glove ox with 32 SB’s in 2016, thank you. We are only talking true superstars here and pitchers are better treated separately.
A guy like that can prove the bad scouting reports wrong all the way to Cooperstown 🙂
I remember reading an account about Goldy’s early scouting reports. One scout gave Goldschmidt an 80 on the 20-80 scale for leadership/work ethic/intangibles etc. He was called into the office to account for this grade, presumably pressured to lower the grade. When pressed the scout responded by saying that if anything the grade he had given was too low. I remember reading that anecdote right around the same time Goldschmidt hit that bomb 30 rows deep at the futures game and my brain just went kaboom!
Well, it’s not like Donaldson’s organizations thought nothing of him – from 2007 to 2010 he moved up a level every year, was roughly average at AAA in 2010 and 2011 (104 and 94 wRC+), had a mediocre year in MLB in 2012 with great numbers at AAA, then had his breakout in 2013. He was basically treated fairly reasonably based on his production and treated like a real prospect, if not a great one.
How often does a 6+ WAR player spent a full yr in AA, and a full year in AAA? Can’t be common b/c there are even many 6+ WAR players…
They either screwed up in 2011 and 2012, or are geniuses that transformed him. I’ll let you guess which I believe… His wRC+ of 187 in 2007, 151 in A+ in 2008, 120 in AA in 2009, were better than average.
Look at someone like Bryant, another 7+ WAR player. Made the majors when he was 23. Spent 2013 in A- and A+. Spent 2014 in AA and AAA. Majors fulltime in 2015.
Altuve: 2010 in A and A+. 2011 in A+ and AA. Skipped AAA
Seager: in 2011 he was in AA, AAA, and MLB
Donaldson had obvious swing changes that transformed his play. And there are so so many guys who post a 120 wrc in AA who don’t pan out.
Also, Donaldson was a catcher until the A’s converted him for good to 3B. Guys like Carlos Delgado and Mike Sweeney didn’t break out either until they moved from behind the plate.
Sweeney’s career best WAR was 4.0, once. Delgado had a 7 WAR season but he became a regular at 24. Carlos’ first 2 seasons he was a 1.5 WAR player. Donaldson’s first full season he was worth 7.6 WAR. Not that similar. That’s my point. There has been no one like Donaldson that I know of.
Join the discusNot saying these guys are comps for Donaldson. Just adding on to LHPSU’s comment about Donaldson’s arriving in the big leagues as slowly as he did.
Obviously, Edgar Martinez is one. (With the DH penalty he may not have quite reached 7 WAR, but it’s close.) I’m sure there are others.
But the actual important question is how many of them made an appearance on the Fringe Five.
The real question is, “What will happen to Max Schrock?”
He will have to wait for his 2nd year on the ballot for HOF induction bc the BBWAA dings him for his low pedigree
I love Calhoun because he is a “jack of all trades, master of none.” He’s got slightly above average power, average-ish OBP (for his career), above average defense at a non-premium position, above average baserunning. He’s been very durable the last two years.
He’s not elite or even really great at anything, but he’s good at a lot of things and it adds up to being a very solid regular.
He’s the kind of guy who makes the difference between the White Sox of the last few years and the Blue Jays of the last few years, in the right context. No, he’s not Mike Trout. He’s not even Kyle Seager. But he’s the kind of player who helps you win championships.
Yeah, when people talk about “average” players his name gets thrown around a lot because he doesn’t do anything in particular of note, but he’s definitely not average because he’s just decent all around.
One way to express Calhoun’s excellence as a ballplayer is to observe that he doesn’t have any weaknesses, including platoon splits. His above average across the board skill set achieves a synergistic excellence all its own.
Was surprised to read that, as much as Kevin Goldstein loved Altuve, he only ever ranked him as high as 11th on his Astros top 11. Even the flag bearer for Altuve couldn’t bring himself to put the guy in his top 10…
The problem with BA is that they only want to put their guys on the top 100, what I mean by that it that the only ones who get there are the ones they’re high on in the draft. They are hesitant to insert anyone who is not because that means sticking your neck out for that player and they’re not willing to do that. It is why I always look at the farm system rankings and go who cares.
I might eliminate first round picks from this analysis next time, since I don’t think the Joe Paniks of the world are who we are looking for here.