Offseason Notes for February 9th

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Offseason Notes.

1. Various Farm Rankings
2. Projecting: ZiPS for Texas
3. Video: Mike Olt in AFL Rising Stars Game

Various Farm Rankings
With many prospect lists having already been completed, or at least nearing completion, a few sites/publications have released farm, or organizational talent, rankings. Here are some notable top fives.

Baseball America
This is from their handbook, which means (I think) that it’s from Decemeber, which means that it doesn’t account for the trade that sent A.J. Cole, Tom Milone, Derek Norris, and Brad Peacock to Oakland for Gio Gonzalez.

1. Washington Nationals
2. Texas Rangers
3. Kansas City Royals
4. Arizona Diamondbacks
5. Toronto Blue Jays

John Sickels
Sickels notes that this is the first such list he’s ever produced and that, in many cases, there is an apples-to-oranges situation going on. (Or, if you’re Romanian, grandmothers-to-machine guns.) Note that this list was produced on January 23rd.

1. Toronto Blue Jays
2. San Diego Padres
3. Texas Rangers
4. Seattle Mariners
5. St. Louis Cardinals

Using Victor Wang’s Prospect Valuation Research
This is the most explicity analytical of the rankings lists here. SB Nations user dougdirt, using Victor Wang’s work on valuating prospects monetarily, assigns dollar amoungs to every prospect grade given by John Sickels and then, more or less, adds up the worth of all the graded propsects. While lacking in premium talent, the Padres benefit from having a number of prospects with at least some kind of value.

1. San Diego Padres
2. Toronto Blue Jays
3. Texas Rangers
4. St. Louis Cardinals
5. Kansas City Royals

Projecting: ZiPS for Texas
Dan Szymborski has published his ZiPS projections for the Texas Rangers.

I wrote some compelling notes on said projections, but then managed to delete them entirely. So, in any case, here are some of the notable projections (with very brief comments) accompanied by rough WAR translations (for hitters per 600 plate appearances and pitchers per 200 innings). All numbers assume major-league competition. OPS+ and ERA+ are park-adjusted.

Mike Napoli, C, 30: .272/.361/.538, 132 OPS+, 4.8 WAR600
That’s Napoli’s WAR with a 0.0 positional adjustment.

Yangervis Solarte, 2B, 24: .279/.311/.392, 83 OPS+, 1.3 WAR600
Per Seth Stohs of Seth Speaks, was a six-year minor-league free agent, from Twins system.

Mike Olt, 3B, 23: .230/.310/.388, 82 OPS+, 1.1 WAR600
Contact maybe a problem, but has plus power and (apparently) plus defense.

Neftali Feliz, RHP, 24: 170.1 IP, 144 K, 64 BB, 14 HR, 3.7 WAR200
The 130 ERA+ (better than Darvish’s 125) is a nod to Feliz’s career BABIP-against of .218.

Yu Darvish, RHP, 25: 194.0, 169 K, 46 BB, 18 HR, 4.5 WAR200
That’s probably as a good as C.J. Wilson.

Video: Mike Olt in AFL Rising Stars Game
Here’s some high-quality video of Mike Olt, from the Arizona Fall League’s Rising Stars game. The first plate appearance also features first-overall pick Gerrit Cole pitching.