Offseason Notes for November 10th
Today’s edition of Offseason Notes was written by two Mark Twains.
Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Offseason Notes.
1. Assorted Headlines
2. SCOUT Leaderboards: Dominican Winter League
3. Prospecting: Baseball America’s Top 10 List for Washington
Assorted Headlines
All the nerd that’s fit to you-know-what.
(Matt) Young Signs with Detroit
Notable among the many players included in Baseball America’s most recent minor-league transaction log is OF/2B Matt Young. The 28-year-old Young became a free agent recently after spending his first seven years of professional baseball in the Atlanta organization. While he possesses almost no power (21 HR in 3637 minor-league PAs), Young has walked more than he’s struck out over that period and appears to rate as an average center fielder. OLIVER projects him as a 0.2 WAR player in 591 PAs for 2012 — which is actually better than Delmon Young, whom OLIVER rates as a 0.0 WAR player exactly.
Battle of the Top 100s
Project Prospect has released a year-by-year comparison of the top-100 prospect lists from a number of notable talent evaluators. Adam Foster looks at each list by categories such as Most Valuable Sleeper Picks to Date, Biggest Omissions to Date, Highest Ranked Prospects Who Have 0 WAR, etc. It’s hard to say what sort of conclusions we should draw from the results of the exercise — “none” might be the answer — but it’s interesting as a reference, if nothing else.
Horrible Thing Happens to Ramos
While it’s probably most appropriately regarded as a social issue that merely happens to involve a baseball player, there’s no harm in noting here what you’ve probably already heard — which is that Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos was kidnapped Wednesday night from his family’s home in Venezuela. I’m unqualified to say more — except that the above link will take you to the Washington Post article by Adam Kilgore and Juan Forero documenting both the event and the early fallout from same.
SCOUT Leaderboards: Dominican Winter League
Batting Leaderboard
Here is the SCOUT batting leaderboard for the Dominican Winter League (DWL). SCOUT represents an attempt to derive something meaningful from small samples and is the average of a player’s standard deviations from the DWL mean in three important (and regressed) stats: walk rate, strikeout rate, and home-run rate. (Click here for more on SCOUT. SCOUT leaderboards for the Arizona Fall League appear here on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Leaderboards for the Venezuelan and Dominican Winter Leagues appear on Tuesday and Thursday, respectively.)
| Name | Org | PA | xBB% | xK% | xHR% | BBz | Kz | HRz | SCOUT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ricardo Nanita | TOR | 70 | 9.3% | 13.5% | 3.2% | 0.07 | 0.63 | 0.53 | 0.41 |
| Efren Navarro | LAA | 73 | 10.7% | 17.1% | 2.8% | 0.36 | 0.10 | 0.38 | 0.28 |
| Brett Wallace | HOU | 63 | 13.6% | 19.7% | 2.2% | 0.97 | -0.27 | 0.11 | 0.27 |
| Wilkin Castillo | ATL | 38 | 8.3% | 14.6% | 2.4% | -0.15 | 0.46 | 0.18 | 0.17 |
| Willy Aybar | IND* | 48 | 10.3% | 15.4% | 1.6% | 0.28 | 0.35 | -0.14 | 0.16 |
| Anderson Hernandez | HOU | 80 | 8.9% | 14.3% | 1.8% | -0.02 | 0.51 | -0.08 | 0.14 |
| Jhonatan Solano | WAS | 42 | 9.1% | 14.8% | 1.7% | 0.02 | 0.44 | -0.12 | 0.11 |
| Brandon Belt | SF | 78 | 11.5% | 18.5% | 1.8% | 0.52 | -0.11 | -0.08 | 0.11 |
| Diory Hernandez | ATL | 72 | 10.2% | 17.9% | 2.2% | 0.26 | -0.02 | 0.09 | 0.11 |
| Erick Almonte | MIL | 82 | 11.8% | 18.1% | 1.4% | 0.58 | -0.04 | -0.23 | 0.10 |
Notes
• Atlanta minor leaguers, catcher Wilkin Castillo and middle infield-type Diory Hernandez, both make their debuts on the batting leaderboard today. Despite their decent performances so far in the DWL, there’s no a lot in their respective minor-leagues resumes to suggest much more than replacement-level production.
• Toronto farmhand Ricardo Nanita remains in the top spot. Since last week, he’s improved his expected strikeout rate by two percent while staying more or less the same in both expected home-run and walks rate.
Pitching Leaderboard
For pitchers, SCOUT is the average of a player’s standard deviations from the DWL mean in (regressed) strikeout and walk rate.
| Name | Org | G | GS | IP | BF | xK% | xBB% | Kz | BBz | SCOUT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Everett Teaford | KC | 3 | 3 | 12.0 | 48 | 23.1% | 7.9% | 0.50 | 0.12 | 0.31 |
| Jairo Asencio | ATL | 8 | 0 | 8.1 | 32 | 23.8% | 8.3% | 0.59 | 0.03 | 0.31 |
| Matt Meyer | LAA | 13 | 0 | 10.1 | 38 | 23.7% | 8.4% | 0.57 | 0.01 | 0.29 |
| Carlos Pimentel | TEX | 8 | 0 | 11.0 | 40 | 24.1% | 8.7% | 0.63 | -0.07 | 0.28 |
| Juan Perez | PHI | 11 | 0 | 14.0 | 52 | 23.9% | 8.7% | 0.60 | -0.07 | 0.27 |
| Raul Valdes | FA | 5 | 5 | 28.2 | 112 | 20.9% | 7.4% | 0.22 | 0.22 | 0.22 |
| Chris Leroux | PIT | 4 | 4 | 20.2 | 76 | 21.6% | 8.0% | 0.30 | 0.10 | 0.20 |
| Alexander Colome | TB | 9 | 0 | 10.1 | 45 | 22.8% | 8.8% | 0.46 | -0.09 | 0.18 |
| Jerry Gil | CIN | 8 | 0 | 10.1 | 38 | 22.4% | 8.9% | 0.40 | -0.11 | 0.14 |
| Erick Abreu | HOU | 11 | 0 | 11.1 | 48 | 21.7% | 8.6% | 0.32 | -0.04 | 0.14 |
Notes
Royals lefty Everett Teaford bursts — in not the gross way — onto the SCOUT pitching leaderboard this week after a 4.2 inning, nine stikeout, no walk effort last Friday. Teaford, 27, actually ended his major-league season by making his only three starts of the season and posting this line: 16.0 IP, 13 K, 6 BB, 18 GB on 45 batted-balls (40.0% GB). So, average-ish.
Prospecting: Baseball America on the Nationals
Baseball America has published its top-10 prospect list for the Washington Nationals.
As you would assume, Bryce Harper is first overall, with third-base prospect and 2011 sixth-overall draft pick Anthony Rendon at No. 2. In terms of likely major-league production, Derek Norris might be a bit underrated at ninth in the organization. Provided he’s close to league-average defensively, the sort of offense that Norris is likely to provide (OLIVER has him at .215/.335/.415, .331 wOBA for 2012) would make him a capable major leaguer already.
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
I agree about Norris, Mark Hulet put him 9th too. People overrate batting average, look at Gene Tenace, Mickey Tettleton and Darren Daulton’s ccareers, low BA but very productive
Is Norris a definite catcher? Or is he a Ryan Lavarnway / Jesus Montero type? Cause if he’s a for-real catcher, I don’t see how he should be ranked 9th.