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Last week, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the San Francisco Giants. In this companion piece, I look at that same San Francisco farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. The Giants have the 26th-best farm system in baseball according to KATOH.

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EVALUATING THE PROSPECTS 2016 Angels Astros Athletics Blue Jays Braves Brewers Cardinals Cubs Diamondbacks Dodgers Giants Indians Mariners Marlins Mets Nationals Orioles Padres Phillies Pirates Rangers Rays Red Sox Reds Rockies Royals Tigers Twins White Sox Yankees

The Mariners organization won’t be confused for having one of the top farm systems in baseball, but the developments of the past year help bring some legitimate optimism for its future contributions to the big-league product. A number of low- and medium-level trades have bolstered the middle of the pack, with guys like Boog Powell and Nick Wells providing some high-floor, moderate-upside additions to a prospect pool that has seen better years.

On top of that, and maybe most excitingly, the 2015 draft class is already proving to be a kickstart for the organization. Though it’s way too early to anoint a lot of their fresh faces as sure big leaguers, it’s hard to have a better start than what they have put together so far. Drew Jackson and Braden Bishop were both known as excellent defenders, but it was their hitting performances that were the story of the post-draft months. Nick Neidert and Andrew Moore lead a list of 2015 draftees who are quality contenders for at least upper-minors success as pitchers, and both have a reasonable chance of eventually being starters for a major-league team.

The very recent success of the prospect class couldn’t come at a better time, when less recent high draft picks like Alex Jackson and Austin Wilson have seen their stocks plummet in a very short time. Jackson is particularly troubling for me: although you can still see similarities to the hitter he was before being in conversation for a first-overall pick, nearly everything has gone south for him statistically and physically. Though the player development and scouting staffs still have their work cut out for them, new management under Jerry Dipoto promises to at least add some fresh voices to the fold. If you buy into momentum, they have plenty of it heading into the 2016 season and this June’s draft.

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While the Mariners won’t officially confirm the news until later today, Jesus Montero is currently on waivers, free to any team who wants to pay the $20,000 waiver fee and is willing to put Montero on their roster. This is quite the downfall for a guy who, not that long ago, was drawing comparisons to some of the best hitters in baseball.

“In terms of hitting ability, Montero can be a Manny Ramirez or a Miguel Cabrera,” [New York Yankees general manager Brian] Cashman told ESPN New York’s Ian O’Connor. “As a catcher, he’s got a cannon for an arm. As far as everything and what I want him to be, I want him to be Jorge Posada.”

Cashman added, “He has a chance to bat third or fourth. He has the potential to be a beast in the middle of our lineup.”

And before you start thinking that Cashman was simply participating in the Yankee-prospect hype machine, this is what he said about him after he traded him to Seattle for Michael Pineda.

In a tweet Friday night, Bergen Record columnist Bob Klapisch quoted Yankees general manager Brian Cashman saying, “To me, Montero is Mike Piazza. He’s Miguel Cabrera.”

To this point in his career, Montero has 865 plate appearances and a 92 wRC+, which puts him in the Orlando-to-Asdrubal tier of Cabreras, rather than the Miguel tier for which Cashman hoped. A guy who hits like a shortstop but can’t run or play the field isn’t much of a big leaguer, which is why the Mariners are willing to give Montero away to anyone who wants him. And why Montero serves as a reminder about how little certainty we should have when it comes to forecasting the future performance of hitters.

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August has already walked you through the rest. Now let us together take a walk through the best! The best, according to our preseason projections. It sounds better to leave out that last part, though. Always gotta remember to think about marketing. By the way, here’s a reminder of what we’re doing. It should be easy enough to figure out even without that link, but I just wanted to cover all my bases, which is a baseball expression. Here are the starting rotations, ranked:

Below, the Mets get the coveted #1. Not that they don’t deserve it, but as you’ll see, or as you can see in that plot, the Mets and the Dodgers are tied. So maybe that’s kind of a bummer, because it’s more fun to have ties broken, but this does leave the door open to arguments. Nothing quite as healthy for a person as Internet arguments. Especially about statistical projections of the unknowable future.

Mainly, the right thing to do here is think about tiers, and less about specific ranks. The Mets and Dodgers are separated from third place by more than a full win. There’s more than a win between fifth and sixth, and there’s a win between sixth and seventh. Then there’s one win between eighth and 14th. There’s a half-win between ninth and 14th. Many of these teams are close to one another, so don’t fret too much about how this is organized. Really, don’t fret too much at all, about anything. I know I just encouraged you to argue earlier in this introduction, but I’ve had a change of heart. Don’t: do that. Do: read what follows! Let’s talk about the 15 best rotations, as we see them.

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For two seasons, Time Warner Cable, owners of SportsNet LA, the exclusive local television home of the Los Angeles Dodgers, have failed to get their network into more than half of the cable homes in Los Angeles. With losses mounting (a reported $100 million of them last season), Time Warner has offered a significant cut in prices in hopes of luring DirecTV, Verizon, and Cox into carrying the network for the 2016 season. The Dodgers and the mayor have gotten involved, invoking Vin Scully’s last season in what appears to be a desperate public-relations move to broadcast Dodgers games throughout all of Los Angeles. A closer look at the offer shows that Time Warner is not yet in desperation mode.

Using Dodgers like A.J. Ellis and Joc Pederson in order to curry favor with the fans in this dispute — and attempting to leverage legendary icon Vin Scully’s last season into greater public interest — certainly looks like a plea for help, a final Hail Mary to get the Dodgers on television. Publicizing a 30% price drop, from $4.90 to around $3.50 per subscriber per month, reinforces the perception of desperation that Time Warner has lost and that they are finally ready to give in. That is not the case.

Upon further examination, one finds that the aforementioned discount currently being offered by Time Warner applies only to the 2016 season. DirecTv (and Verizon) would pay $3.50 per month per subscriber in 2016 (around $75 million based on 1.8 million subscribers), but next year would be faced either with paying a higher price for the channel or once again removing it from their lineups. From DirecTv’s perspective, it would be far easier, in terms of customer relations, never to have the channel in the first place as people are more likely to complain, or perhaps even switch carriers, if a channel is taken away.

Jeff Passan called the Time Warner-Dodgers deal an “unmitigated disaster,” and for the most part, he is correct. Time Warner’s loss of $100 million last year on the channel is a big misstep for them, and the company has made big mistakes since launching two years ago. But the channel is also not so far away from being a success.

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Over the last few weeks in this space, we took a position-by-position look at the ball-in-play (BIP) profiles of 2015 regulars and semi-regulars to gain some insight into their potential performance moving forward. As I wrote the following, snow fell outside my window in blatant disregard for the dawn of baseball season. Regardless, we continue our similar BIP-centric analysis of qualifying 2015 starting pitchers, division by division. We began with NL East starters. Today’s second installment focuses on the NL Central.

First, some ground rules. To come up with an overall player population roughly equal to one starting rotation per team, the minimum number of batted balls allowed with Statcast readings was set at 243. Pitchers are listed with their 2015 division mates; those who were traded during the season will appear in the division in which they compiled the most innings. Pitchers are listed in “tru” ERA order. For those who have not read my previous articles on the topic, “tru” ERA is the ERA pitchers “should” have compiled based on the actual BIP frequency and authority they allowed relative to the league. Here we go:

Most of the column headers are self-explanatory, including average BIP speed (overall and by BIP type), BIP type frequency, K and BB rates, and traditional ERA-, FIP-, and “tru” ERA-. Each pitchers’ Adjusted Contact Score (ADJ C) is also listed. Again, for those of you who have not read my articles on the topic, Unadjusted Contact Score is derived by removing Ks and BBs from opposing hitters’ batting lines, assigning run values to all other events, and comparing them to a league average of 100. Adjusted Contact Score applies league-average production to each pitchers’ individual actual BIP type and velocity mix, and compares it to league average of 100.

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And now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the Positional Power Rankings of starting rotations before they actually get good.

It should be noted that the Diamondbacks’ rotation at 16 really projects no differently than the Rays’ rotation at 15, which Jeff will be writing up in his More Important post on the 15 best starting rotations. Which, in fact, serves as a useful reminder that, when dealing with the 7-10 moving parts of which these rotation depth charts typically consist, the actual ranking of teams matters far less than the grouping of teams. We can be pretty certain that the No. 16-ranked Diamondbacks rotation, projected for about +13 WAR, is better than the No. 30-ranked Braves rotation, projected for just +7 WAR. It gets a little cloudier in the middle, though, and just because the A’s (+11.3 WAR) are three spots ahead of the Tigers (+11.0 WAR), that shouldn’t be taken as any kind of definitive statements of Oakland’s superiority. A guide, is how these rankings should be used.

#16 Diamondbacks

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Name	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	BABIP	LOB%	ERA	FIP	WAR
Zack Greinke	212.0	8.3	1.9	0.8	.294	76.8 %	2.91	3.20	4.6
Shelby Miller	183.0	7.5	3.1	1.0	.296	73.7 %	3.84	4.08	1.9
Patrick Corbin	160.0	7.6	2.3	0.9	.303	73.0 %	3.58	3.65	2.5
Rubby de la Rosa	141.0	7.3	3.0	1.1	.302	71.2 %	4.24	4.26	1.2
Robbie Ray	129.0	8.6	3.7	0.9	.306	72.8 %	3.86	3.89	1.7
Archie Bradley	85.0	7.5	4.5	1.0	.303	70.3 %	4.54	4.56	0.4
Zachary Godley	28.0	7.3	3.5	1.0	.301	70.8 %	4.27	4.31	0.2
Tyler Wagner	19.0	6.2	3.4	1.2	.301	70.1 %	4.67	4.75	0.1
Josh Collmenter	9.0	6.0	2.1	1.2	.292	73.3 %	3.94	4.28	0.1
Total	965.0	7.8	2.9	1.0	.300	73.2 %	3.75	3.88	12.7

So, the team that lost Zack Greinke this offseason is tied for first among projected starting rotations. The team that gained Zack Greinke is hanging around the middle of the pack. This tells us a couple useful bits of information, the first being that that Clayton Kershaw fella is quite good. Kershaw alone accounts for the same projected WAR total as Miller, Corbin, de la Rosa, Ray and Bradley combined, and the Dodgers still have other pitchers, too. As for the Diamondbacks‘ position on this power ranking, it gives us an idea as to why, even with Greinke, many are still skeptical of the organization’s position as a legitimate contender in a competitive National League.

One caveat, in the Diamondbacks’ favor: they have one of the largest differences between their projected ERA and FIP. The sixth-largest, in fact. That is to say, if these rankings were sorted in order of RA9-WAR, rather than FIP-WAR, the Diamondbacks would stand to gain more from it than most every other team. Greinke was worth 10 RA9-WAR last year, and would see his projection increase by a full win if we went with the runs-allowed model. Shelby Miller also has the early signs of being a FIP-beater, and his projection would increase by nearly a win with the RA9 model.

So maybe the top half is a bit underrated, but the bigger issue lies within the bottom half. Rubby de la Rosa is now entering year three of “maybe that 95-mph fastball will miss some bats soon!” and this could be his last chance. Nearly all of Archie Bradley’s prospect sheen has worn off, and at this point the Diamondbacks might be happy if he winds up being a serviceable fourth or fifth starter. Zack Godley had a shiny ERA last year, but still has major command issues and was a 25-year-old who started last year in High-A for a reason. The top three can go pitch for pitch with most trios in baseball — Patrick Corbin looked every bit the budding-ace of 2013 after returning from Tommy John — but if any of them suffer prolonged injury, or de la Rosa pitches his way out of the rotation, Arizona could be handing out less-than-ideal starts in the midst of their playoff hunt.

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Episode 641
Rob Arthur both/either has written for Baseball Prospectus and FiveThirtyEight and/or continues to write for those same internet sites. He’s also the guest on this edition of the FanGraphs Audio.

This episode of the program is sponsored by SeatGeek, which site removes both the work and also the hassle from the process of shopping for tickets.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 56 min play time.)

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