FanGraphs Baseball

Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Twins, Astros, Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox, Reds, Phillies & Rays

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

The common narrative about the Rays system is that 1) it’s down from past years and 2) this is because they can’t pick good players unless they pick in the top 10.  Over the 19 years of the franchise, here’s the 7 productive big leaguers over 9 tries they’ve picked from the top 6 overall slots: David Price, Evan Longoria, Josh Hamilton, Rocco Baldelli, B.J. Upton, Jeff Niemann and Delmon Young.

In 21 first round/sandwich picks outside of the top 6 slots, they’ve produced no big leaguers of consequence and the top current prospects of the group are Justin O’Conner (#2) and Blake Snell (#5) on the list below.  There’s obviously something to these critiques, but it’s important to keep in mind that the return from draft picks is exponential: the top few picks are supposed to produce far more value than late first round picks.

Due to all the extra high-round picks and farm-stocking trades, along with an increasingly prominent international program, the Rays system is as deep as almost any other.  Because the high bonus players haven’t worked out for Tampa Bay at even a league average rate, the top of the system is much weaker than others and their #1 prospect was acquired in a recent trade, along with #4 and #8.  There’s enough young, high-upside talent for this high-end shortage to change by this time next year, but it’s impossible to forecast something like that happening.

It’s also worth noting that 8 of the 31 prospects ranked here were acquired via trade; the Rays system has to be deep given the way the organization approaches roster building.  If the system was run like a big market team perennially in the playoffs (think Detroit), where prospects are traded once they have trade value to prop up the big league team, the Rays farm system could pretty easily be the worst in baseball due to their struggles in the draft.

Two things to monitor in the system is the catching depth (which took a hit when Arizona took Oscar Hernandez #1 overall in the Rule 5 Draft last week) and the glut of infielders with prospect value that fit best in Triple-A Durham. Behind Ryan Hanigan and Curt Casali at the big league level, the Rays’ primary catchers starting in Triple-A and moving down the chain should be Luke Maile, Justin O’Conner, Hernandez (who most expect to be returned by Arizona), Nick Ciuffo, David Rodriguez and Rafelin Lorenzo, all of whom are mentioned below as prospects, which is very rare.

In the Durham glut, the Rays have SS, Hak-Ju Lee, SS Jake Hager, SS Tim Beckham, 2B/SS Nick Franklin, 2B Ryan Brett and 3B/1B Richie Shaffer, all with varying levels of prospect value.  There’s hope that one or two of these guys could play their way onto the 25-man MLB roster, but the organization is aware that, barring injuries, some players may have to play out of position or at a lower level than expected to make things work.

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Over the last five years, a lot of good work has been done on valuing prospects. Victor Wang — now employed by the Indians — got the ball rolling in 2008, and his work was followed up by research from by Scott McKinney in 2011 and Kevin Creagh in 2012. Each piece was well done and is worth reading even now, especially if you’re interested in the various rates at which prospect tiers tend to go bust.

But we’re almost into 2015 now, and baseball revenues are exploding, making the valuations from even a few years ago look a little bit outdated. Just in the last year, we’ve seen three Cuban free agents — Jose Abreu, Rusney Castillo, and Yasmany Tomas — sign for around $70 million each, suggesting that teams are willing to pay significant prices for young talent with upside, even when there’s not an established Major League (or even minor league) track record from which to evaluate. We’re going to get an even better look at the market value of a premium prospect when Yoan Moncada is declared a free agent, and the bidding for his services is expected to reach $80 million once the taxes are accounted for, and that won’t even cover any of his future salaries; that’s just the cost of acquiring his rights.

So, helpfully, Kevin Creagh and Steve DiMiceli decided to update their study this week, adding in new data and using updated calculations for the price of a win based on recent inflation. Let’s look at what they found.

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Well, the final 24-36 hours of the Winter Meetings sure were fun-filled. The Red Sox rebuilt their rotation, importing a slew of ground ball guys to help combat the Fenway effect. Their rotation, however, will not include Jon Lester, who was lured away by the Cubs and a nifty $30M signing bonus, among other amenities. Perhaps most notably, the baseball world got an inkling of what the Dodgers’ new braintrust is all about, as they largely re-made their club, installing a brand new middle infield, adding to their already imposing starting rotation, deploying multiple clubs’ prospects here, there and everywhere, and moving slugger Matt Kemp within the division, to the Padres. It’s all pending physicals, of course. How will moving from Dodger Stadium affect Kemp? Are the Padres getting an impact bat, or something less than that? Read the rest of this entry »

Coming away from 2014, we knew some things. The Royals were going to have a little extra money to spend, after getting as far as is possible to get without winning the World Series. The Royals were also going to be in the market for a designated hitter, and additionally perhaps in the market for a right fielder. They plugged the DH hole not long ago, giving two years and $17 million to a bounceback candidate in Kendrys Morales who was most recently absolutely godawful. And now the Royals have a new outfielder, who has had good seasons before:

alex rios agrees to one-year with royals. $11M.

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) December 16, 2014

Over the last three years, Alex Rios has about the same WAR as Josh Hamilton, Coco Crisp, Shin-Soo Choo, and Jose Altuve. That’s the good part. This is the worse part:

2012: 4.2 WAR (31 years old)
2013: 3.1 (32)
2014: 0.2 (33)

Maybe you prefer something as simple as plate appearances per home run:

2012: 25.6 PA per dinger
2013: 36.8
2014: 130.3

Rios is getting up there in years, and just last season it seems like his power completely eroded. Now, prior to that, he was productive as a regular, so Rios — like Morales — seems like a decent bounceback candidate, but now the Royals have guaranteed $28 million to a couple guys who last year were worth a combined -1.5 WAR. Last year’s performance isn’t the best indicator of next year’s performance, but even if Rios and Morales bounce back some, it doesn’t look like the Royals will be getting bargains. They’ll be getting acceptable players, eating up what looks like a high salary on that team.

This is a .gif of fastball heat maps to Rios over the last two years:

Rios bats right-handed, so what you’re seeing is a shift a little more inside. Over the last two seasons, 122 different right-handed batters saw at least 500 fastballs each year. In 2013, about 33% of fastballs to Rios were over or beyond the inner third. In 2014, that rose to about 43%. The increase of 9.3 percentage points was the biggest such increase in baseball, by a couple percentage points, and it might indicate rising confidence pitching Rios in. To the pull side, he has a career .295 ISO, but last year it dropped to .145, with only two dingers. The point of all this being, pitchers changed their approaches to Rios, and Rios had a bad year, and he’s in his mid-30s now.

Because it’s a one-year contract, it can be only so bad. Rios isn’t a great defender, but he’s not a bad one. He can add some value on the bases, and he still hits for an above-average contact clip, so in those ways Rios isn’t a lousy fit for the roster model. Used properly, he can help what’s already an athletic and capable outfield, and it’s not like the market left Dayton Moore an infinite supply of options. Also, note that Rios signed for one year and $11 million the same day Brett Anderson signed somewhere for one year and $10 million, with incentives. Cheap fliers aren’t so cheap anymore. But as good as Rios was once, he presumably will be no longer so good. And if Rios and Morales don’t bounce back, the Royals will have spent some of their windfall on players who weren’t good the very season before they became Royals. That would be ripe for mockery in hindsight, which is the best and worst kind of mockery.

The White Sox won’t stop. I mean, at some point they will, because they’ll have to, and maybe they’ve reached that point now that they’ve signed Melky Cabrera, but Rick Hahn and the rest of his front office have had an incredibly busy month, adding to a roster that featured a handful of big-leaguers and not too much else. I had a thought, in early November, to write about the few teams who I figured wouldn’t be contenders in 2015. The White Sox were among them. I didn’t write the article, because I didn’t like it, and now I’m glad I didn’t because the front office has had maybe the most active few weeks in the league. It’s pretty clear that the team intends to win.

I still don’t think the White Sox are ready to win. This is where there’s a bit of important nuance: I don’t think the White Sox are ready to win, but I don’t have a great disagreement with the direction of all the activity. Generally speaking, I like what Rick Hahn has done, and he’s certainly managed to build fan enthusiasm around a team many were prepared to ignore not even that long ago. Why not spend, if you can spend? Why not improve, if you can improve? The White Sox haven’t lost too much of long-term value in making all these additions. I just think, despite everything, there’s not enough in place. It’s not an easy thing to do, to turn a pretty bad team into a pretty good team in a couple of months.

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Kyle Blanks heading to #Rangers, as @ChrisCotillo reported. Will make $1M if he's on MLB roster. $600K in bonuses based on PA's.

— Jerry Crasnick (@jcrasnick) December 15, 2014

Right-handed power — for reasons both that do and don’t entirely appear to make sense — has been expensive thus far this offseason, as generous contracts for Billy Butler, Nelson Cruz, and Michael Cuddyer all illustrate.

Recently, the present author sorted through the Steamer projections with a view towards identifying targets for those clubs searching for economical alternatives to Butler and Cruz, et al.

The result of that brief study? That, issues of health aside, giant corner-type Kyle Blanks — recently non-tendered by Oakland — appeared to be the best option for a club looking for a right-handed power hitter. Today, the Texas Rangers have signed him to a split contract that’d pay the former Padre $1 million plus incentives should he reach the majors.

There would appear to be ample opportunity for Blanks to contribute. Currently, Mitch Moreland and “others” constitute the entirety of their DH depth chart. Moreover, there’s the distinct possibility Prince Fielder will benefit from rest as he attempts to recover from a herniated disk — and the attendant surgery to repair it — that reduced him to fewer than 200 plate appearances in 2014.

Of course, health is an issue for Blanks himself. Worth roughly 2.0 WAR per every 600 plate appearances over the course of his six-year major-league career, Blanks has also only recorded 862 of those (i.e. plate appearances) during that same interval — largely the result of injuries, as opposed to ineffectiveness.

In this case, the Rangers’ gamble is a modest one. If healthy, Blanks can reasonably be expected to provide $1 million of production in roughly 50 plate appearances. A low bar for repayment, that.

Here’s some news.

Astros have agreed to terms on a three-year contract with free agent shortstop/infielder Jed Lowrie

— Brian McTaggart (@brianmctaggart) December 15, 2014

And maybe we should have seen this coming. After all, this is what the Astros shortstop depth chart currently looks like.

#28 Astros

And here’s their third base depth chart.

#29 Astros

The big numbers in the upper left corners represent where the Astros ranked in our positional depth charts, with data from the Steamer forecasts for 2015. At both shortstop and third base, the Astros looked to be about as bad as any team in baseball. Jed Lowrie has primarily played shortstop to this point in his career, but his defense is declining to where a move off the position seems inevitable at some point, and perhaps he profiles better at second or third base.

Second base is taken in Houston, but third base clearly is not, so the Astros are free to let Lowrie try to prove he can still play shortstop in 2015, and if it doesn’t work, they have an alternative position open as well. And that seems to be the plan.

The Jed Lowrie deal is worth more than $20 million guaranteed, source says. He’s there to play shortstop, not third base.

— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) December 15, 2014

Drelich clarifies that the deal is for $23 million over three years, with a fourth year option that could bring it to $28 million over four. That’s a bit less than both the crowd and myself expected, as I had Lowrie at 2/$22M and the crowd guessed 3/$30M. As a roughly average player, this seems like one of the nicer bargains of the winter so far, given what other average players have been signing for.

Of course, Lowrie isn’t any kind of star, and his health issues make this a bit of a risk for the Astros, but even if he declines or misses a bit of time, he’ll still be a significant improvement over the in-house alternatives, and that will be true whether he plays shortstop or third base going forward.

The largest signing bonus ever awarded to a Cuban player was just handed to Yasmany Tomas by the Arizona Diamondbacks. There are serious doubts about his game. Is the market for Cuban players out of control?

In what could easily become a yearly tradition, the most recent Cuban signee has a showcase video on youtube — once again complete with jump cuts, slow mo, and a soundtrack (no Michael McDonald this time, though). Even as the video is edited to show Tomas at his best, the laymen’s eye might notice a ‘thick lower half,’ a long swing, and some iffy moves on defense.

While praising Tomas — by pointing out the scarcity of power and lauding Tomas’ raw ability in that department, and calling his swing short for a power hitter — FanGraphs’ Kiley McDaniel admitted that he owned a “riskier bat” than the Cuban immigrants that have been so successful in recent years.

Ben Badler of Baseball America mentioned that Tomas’ weight ballooned in Cuba last season, and then pointed out risk factors beyond the outfielder’s body type in an email. “He’s a high-risk player because of his pitch recognition and swing-and-miss tendencies, both in and out of the strike zone,” wrote Badler of Tomas.

The numbers tell the same story — Tomas is one of the riskiest big-money signings out of Cuba so far.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

Maybe the most important thing you learn early on in any basic stats class is that you can’t just throw out data. At least, not just because you want to, and not just because the data doesn’t fit. Just about all information is legitimate information, and you simply have to decide how heavily to weight it. Take Chase Headley, for example. No one figures he’s going to hit 31 dingers again, like he did in 2012, but the reality is that Headley did have a seven-win season just a few seasons ago, and we can’t justifiably ignore that. It’s a part of his record, and it hints at his true-talent level, or at least where it was in San Diego that one time. Because of that year, Headley gets a more favorable projection, and I don’t think you can argue that away.

If you’re going to eliminate data from a sample, you need to have a damn good reason. You need to be able to prove that the data is irrelevant. If you’re a research scientist, maybe the data came out of an experiment run you know you messed up. You accidentally buffered a solution to the wrong pH. As baseball fans, we’re not research scientists, but we’re still always looking for reasons to eliminate data. This is basically the same thing as having a disagreement with a given player projection. Overall, the projections do well, because they don’t eliminate data. But we’re always trying to beat them. Last year gave reason to eliminate prior data from J.D. Martinez. The White Sox saw reason to eliminate prior data from Zach Duke. And now the White Sox have also signed Melky Cabrera for three years and something like $42 million. Cabrera’s another interesting case, like Duke — he didn’t just overhaul his mechanics, but there’s something about his record that makes you wonder how much you should care about his 2013.

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