Offseason Notes – With Final AFL Leaderboards


Matt Antonelli is the Pride of Peabody, Mass.

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

1. Assorted Headlines
2. Final (!) SCOUT Leaderboards: Arizona Fall League
3. Prospecting: John Sickels’ Top-20 List for Tampa Bay

Assorted Headlines
All the nerd that’s fit to print.

Orioles Sign Infielder Antonelli
The Orioles, fronted by new GM Dan Duquette, have signed infielder Matt Antonelli, MLB.com’s Brittany Ghiroli reports. It has come to my attention that Mike Axisa will question the wisdom of this deal later today in these very pages. Do not be swayed by his siren song! Matt Antonelli is a saint of a ballplayer and human! In only slightly related news, Antonelli was a guest on FanGraphs Audio this spring.

Indians, Sizemore Close to Deal
The Indians are close to (re-)signing Grady Sizemore, Paul Hoynes of the Plain Dealer reports. The deal is believed to be for one year and to include a low base salary that could reach approximately $9 million in incentives — which is to say, approximately the same value as the option recently declined by the Indians.

Wigginton Trade Clears Path for Arenado
The trade of Ty Wigginton to the Phillies over the weekend (to be covered this afternoon by Jackie Moore) suggests that the Rockies are serious about Nolan Arenado as their starting third baseman, writes MLB.com’s Doug Miller. While the recently acquired Brandon Wood — along with Jordan Pacheco and Ian Stewart — could all get time at third, Arenado appears to have excellent contact skills and developing power. The 20-year-old finished fifth on the Arizona Fall League’s SCOUT batting leaderboard (about which you can read more below).

SCOUT Leaderboards: Arizona Fall League
Announcement
The Arizona Fall League is now complete. Final SCOUT leaderboards for batters and pitchers are below. Complete SCOUT figures are available by clicking here.

Batting Leaderboard
Here is the final SCOUT batting leaderboard for the AFL. SCOUT represents an attempt to derive something meaningful from small samples and is the average of a player’s standard deviations from the AFL 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
Robbie Grossman PIT 124 13.8% 15.4% 3.9% 0.90 0.70 0.61 0.74
Wil Myers KC 106 14.7% 17.7% 3.1% 1.11 0.30 0.19 0.53
Jefry Marte NYN 90 11.5% 15.8% 3.2% 0.35 0.63 0.26 0.41
Michael Choice OAK 75 10.8% 17.8% 4.0% 0.17 0.30 0.66 0.38
Nolan Arenado COL 129 7.6% 12.1% 3.5% -0.59 1.27 0.42 0.37
Brodie Greene CIN 90 10.5% 15.8% 3.2% 0.12 0.63 0.26 0.34
Aaron Hicks MIN 120 13.0% 17.9% 2.6% 0.71 0.27 -0.04 0.31
Logan Schafer MIL 104 8.8% 12.0% 2.4% -0.29 1.28 -0.14 0.29
Alex Hassan BOS 98 12.6% 17.4% 2.5% 0.61 0.35 -0.11 0.29
Joe Panik SF 102 9.4% 12.9% 2.5% -0.15 1.12 -0.13 0.28

Notes
Despite missing every game after November 8th, Robbie Grossman still finishes atop the SCOUT batting leaderboard this year, with a balanced performance across SCOUT’s three categories. As mentioned previously in these pages, Grossman broke his hamate bone recently; however, he had surgery almost immediately and is expected to be healthy by spring training.

Pitching Leaderboard
For pitchers, SCOUT is the average of a player’s standard deviations from the AFL mean in (regressed) strikeout and walk rate.

Name Org G GS IP BF xK% xBB% Kz BBz SCOUT
Miguel De Los Santos TEX 9 6 30.1 124 30.0% 9.5% 2.20 -0.18 1.01
Travis Webb CIN 7 7 19.2 92 23.5% 8.9% 0.87 -0.04 0.41
Anthony Bass SD 6 5 21.2 94 22.6% 8.2% 0.68 0.14 0.41
Tyler Lyons STL 7 7 29.2 124 22.1% 8.0% 0.57 0.16 0.37
Gerrit Cole PIT 5 5 15.0 59 22.4% 8.5% 0.64 0.05 0.34
Forrest Snow SEA 10 1 16.1 61 22.1% 8.3% 0.57 0.10 0.34
Nathan Adcock KC 6 6 24.1 103 21.3% 7.8% 0.42 0.21 0.32
Nick Schmidt SD 8 4 23.1 108 22.7% 9.2% 0.70 -0.11 0.30
Josh Zeid HOU 15 0 18.0 84 22.5% 9.0% 0.66 -0.07 0.29
Patrick Lehman WAS 12 0 14.2 73 21.3% 8.1% 0.41 0.14 0.28

Notes
Despite a 12.1% unadjusted walk rate over his 30.1 AFL innings, Miguel De Los Santos’s dominant strikeout rate situates the Ranger left-hander convincingly above the AFL competition per SCOUT. The 23-year-old finished his 2011 season by piching 28.0 innings at Double-A Frisco, suggesting he could begin 2012 either at that level or at Triple-A.

Prospecting: John Sickels on Tampa Bay
John Sickels has published his preliminary top-20 list for the Tampa Bay Rays.

Here are some notes on same:

• Unsurprisingly, left-hander Matt Moore occupies the top spot in Sickels’ rankings. Moore struck out over a third of the batters he faced (34.8%) between Double- and Triple-A, and then struck out 37.5% of batters in 9.1 major-league innings.

• More surprisingly, perhaps, is how Sickels ranks former No. 1 overall (2008) draft pick Tim Beckham only 15th in the organization. Beckham’s a strange case in that he made it to Triple-A last season as only a 21-year-old, but that he hasn’t ever excelled at any level ever. Again, he’s been quite young for his levels and is a shortstop and has a great pedigree; still, Tampa’s aggressiveness in his promotions is notable.

• Outfielder Brandon Guyer (seventh in the org) appears to be the sort of player with no particular standout tool, but with a broad base of skills that could make him valuable. The 25-year-old got 43 plate appearances in the majors; it would be surprising if he didn’t receive more than that in 2012.

Image courtesy MiLB’s Jim McGregor.





Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.

2 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Nats804
12 years ago

Where did Bryce Harper finish in the scout rankings? His final line was .333/.404/.634 with a 22/11 K/BB ratio in 93 ABs, sounds pretty good to me but I’m admittedly biased.