Welcome to another edition of Prospects Week! It’s like Shark Week except with fewer severed limbs, better editing, and a mandatory mention of Hunter Harvey. It’s been a while since we’ve done a thorough-going procedural refresher before getting into the meat of the week, a rundown of what it is we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how we came to do it this way. For those of you who have been following prospect coverage at FanGraphs for a while, you’ve likely read and/or listened to versions of this before. There have been no significant changes to our process, so for you, the word pile below should mostly serve as a review. For those new to this process, however, welcome! I’m glad you’re here and sorry this is so meticulous.

Let’s start by talking about distributions, the 20-80 scale, and Future Value. Obviously the point of prospect evaluation is to gauge whether a player has the potential to play major league baseball. If the answer to that query is, “yes,” then it’s important to specify how good of a big leaguer we’re talking about. While it comes with its own margin for error, Wins Above Replacement is the best public-facing metric we have for evaluating big leaguers over a meaningful sample. As such, it’s useful for us to try to map our prospect predictions to that metric since it gives us a pretty granular way of distinguishing players from one another. We all know that both Mike Trout and Bryce Harper are very good, but WAR helps us to more precisely understand just how good, and shows us the daylight that exists between players all over the talent and performance spectrum. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a somewhat uncomfortable truth: The majority of rookies kind of stink. Everyone wants their team’s star prospects to take off as soon as they step foot onto a major league diamond, but the reality is that development takes time. Last season, for example, rookie hitters collectively put up a 87 wRC+, and looking at the past ten seasons, that figure has ranged from a low of 83 to a high of just 93. Not everyone hits the ground running.

Enter Brandon Marsh. His first 260 big league plate appearances resulted in a 86 wRC+ — pretty much average for a rookie. That can be interpreted as either a good or bad sign. On one hand, he performed like the typical rookie, and his prospect pedigree suggests room for growth. On the other hand, that isn’t a guarantee, and an 86 wRC+ is an 86 wRC+, no matter the context. This ambiguity could be partially why he hasn’t been at the center of prospect discourse. It’s not as if he shined like Wander Franco, and it’s not as if he bombed like Jarred Kelenic, whom we’re inclined to give the benefit of the doubt. A so-so debut isn’t one people remember.

But I’m here to argue that Marsh is one of the most interesting young hitters around, worthy of your utmost attention. And it all starts with a number one might consider a red flag: a .403 BABIP. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Elias had a background in scouting and player development when he came to Baltimore in November 2018. The Orioles general manager and executive vice president broke into pro ball as a scout with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2007. Four years later, he was hired by Houston to serve as the club’s director of amateur scouting; in 2016, the Astros promoted the Yale University graduate to assistant GM and put him in charge of player development.

The challenges he inherited in Baltimore were daunting. Elias took over a team that had just lost 115 games — the most in franchise history. The Orioles’ divisional competition is comprised of the powerhouses of the American League East. The rebuild was going to be anything but easy. Moreover, it would take time, much to the chagrin of a dedicated fanbase.

But light is starting to appear at end of the tunnel. Under Elias’ guidance, the Orioles have built one of baseball’s best farm systems, with Adley Rutschman, Grayson Rodriguez, D.L. Hall, Colton Cowser, Gunnar Henderson and Coby Mayo all featured on our forthcoming Top 100. Most notable are Rutschman and Rodriguez, who rank as the game’s top position player prospect and top pitching prospect, respectively.

As part of our Prospects Week interview series, Elias discussed the organization’s approach to scouting and player development.

———

David Laurila: I’ve asked you about the relationship between scouting and player development in previous interviews, and I’ll do so again now. In what ways has that relationship changed?

Mike Elias: “It continues to meld. As the days and years go by — given how sophisticated player development is becoming — how easy it is for an organization to communicate with itself is an underrated factor. I joined professional baseball in 2007, so I was already in the internet age, but if you talk to people who were working in professional baseball in the ‘80s, ‘90s, and early 2000s, a lot of effort was put into staying in touch with your remote employees. They would use voicemail. So a lot of the practices and divisions between scouting and player development come out of an era when it was hard for everyone to stay in touch. That’s no longer the case. Read the rest of this entry »

The following is our video tutorial for how to use (and get the most out of) The Board, which houses much of our work on amateur and pro prospects, including Future Value, org rankings, reports, tool grades, and video. The tutorial was initially recorded as part of Prospects Week 2021. A transcript, which has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity, is included below.

0:00 Introduction
0:45 How To Access The Board
1:20 Three Ways To View The Board

We have a great many data and research tools on FanGraphs. Some people are well-suited to clicking around the site, exploring on their own, and learning how to navigate FanGraphs that way, but others might benefit from a written, audio, or video tutorial. It is my aim to provide a version of that in this post. This first tutorial covers The Board, and gives an overview of some of the prospect evaluation methodology that has been used at the site. The transcript you’re reading now has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Due to the size of the text, this tutorial is best viewed in YouTube’s “Theater Mode,” or in full screen. In the header of each section below, you’ll find a link to the relevant section of the tutorial so that you can easily click around to specific topics.

You can find a link to The Board on the site’s Prospects menu header, or from the Prospects home page. There are three main ways to view The Board. There is a “Scouting Only” section, a “Stats Only” section, and a chocolate/vanilla swirl version (“Scouting + Stats!”) that features a mix of both old school scouting tool grades and a collection of telling statistics (K%, BB%, OBP, SLG, etc.). Read the rest of this entry »

The opening weekend of the NCAA season is in the books. Below, we have compiled a roundup of some of the players who sparked our interest, much like our weekly dispatches from last year. We’ll publish a post like this every week between now and either the draft or the end of the nation-wide amateur season, whichever comes first. We’ll also have a separate, more irregular series where we’ll accumulate our collective in-person scouting notes until we have enough for a post. Both of these series may lead to changes in our draft rankings on The Board, changes we’ll tend to note within the relevant player’s writeup.

Speaking of The Board, you’ll notice an update to the “Rank” column there. It’s a change inspired by a question: What is the right number of players to ultimately have ranked on the amateur section of The Board? Historically, our answer has been however many belong on the pro portion of The Board. This has tended to be about four rounds worth of players, though you could make an argument to go deeper, especially in our current era of player development. Read the rest of this entry »

Per the JAWS leaderboard, Adrián Beltré (4) and Scott Rolen (10) rank highest among third basemen not in the Hall of Fame. Beltré will almost certainly get the nod once he becomes eligible, while the currently-on-the ballot Rolen has been making strong headway toward Cooperstown. If and when both players are enshrined, which non-Hall of Fame third baseman will rank highest in JAWS?

The answer is Graig Nettles, who ranks 12th (11th if you don’t include Edgar Martinez). In terms of WAR, Nettles (65.7) ranks right in front of Martinez (65.5), and close behind Rolen (69.9). Beltré (84.1) is comfortably ahead of all three.

Should Nettles be in the Hall of Fame? His accolades and accomplishments include 390 home runs, six All-Star berths, two Gold Gloves — he’d have won more were it not for Brooks Robinson — and a pair of World Series rings. All told, he played in five Fall Classics. Back when Jay Jaffe was writing for Sports Illustrated, my esteemed colleague tabbed Nettles as the most-overlooked player at his position when it comes to Hall of Fame worthiness.

Meanwhile, was Beltré better than Robinson? A clear majority of the people who voted in a Twitter poll I ran yesterday feel that he was. Of the 337 people who weighed in, 61.7% opted for Beltré, while only 38.3% sided with the legendary Baltimore Orioles Hall of Famer. Read the rest of this entry »

Inspired by the loophole-exposing chicanery of former player and manager Eddie “The Brat” Stanky, Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley draft 19 MLB rule changes that were solely or largely precipitated by one player, manager, coach, or owner.

Audio intro: We Are Scientists, “Rules Don’t Stop”
Audio outro: Pezband, “Eddie’s Pals”

Link to A Game of Inches
Link to A Game of Inches intro
Link to King Kelly myth
Link to archaic/obsolete rule changes
Link to story about Chapman and new balls
Link to more on Chapman and balls
Link to story on the spitball’s evolution
Link to story on banning the spitball
Link to Utley slide rule story
Link to Stanky maneuver story
Link to Stanky maneuver image
Link to Stanky maneuver/sac fly rule
Link to story on Randle foul ball play
Link to Randle video
Link to story on foul ball rules
Link to A Game of Inches on fair-fouls
Link to Nate Silver on Barnes
Link to Barnes Stathead WAR query
Link to Stanky running start rule story
Link to base-coach interference passage
Link to Schaefer reverse-running rule
Link to story about the Schaefer play
Link to Schaefer in The Glory of Their Times
Link to The Glory of Their Times fact-checks
Link to story on Harry Davis play
Link to story on Segura play
Link to Veeck’s fences story
Link to Ben on Veeck As in Wreck
Link to Green Cathedrals debunking
Link to A Game of Inches on Lane
Link to Venditte rule blog post
Link to ESPN Venditte feature
Link to 2008 NYT Venditte story
Link to 2008 Venditte video
Link to oversized mitt story
Link to A Game of Inches on oversized mitts
Link to Ben on the Waxahachie Swap
Link to start of Stanky LIFE story
Link to end of Stanky LIFE story
Link to Stanky college mound visit story
Link to Stanky SABR bio
Link to Stanky South Alabama feature
Link to Stanky retirement story
Link to George Wright hat catch story
Link to old hat catch rule
Link to NYT Hornsby story
Link to BP on why players can’t be owners
Link to story on the Spiders and syndicates
Link to ESPN on the foul-strike rule
Link to foul-strike rule in A Game of Inches
Link to Jeff’s Capps delivery post
Link to Weaver’s phantom DH rule
Link to Grant on Posey and Avila
Link to more info on home-plate collisions
Link to post on Gaedel and Veeck
Link to Cooney interference story

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2:02	Jay Jaffe: Hey folks, good afternoon and welcome to my chat! I’m running a few minutes behind here as lunch just arrived and I had a home appliance situation to tend to . Gonna need 5-10 minutes to get settled

2:02	Jay Jaffe: your patience is appreciated

2:06	Jay Jaffe: OK, I’m back

2:06	Jay Jaffe: My piece on the Juan Soto extension offer went up earlier today https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-nationals-350-million-extension-offer-….

2:07	Jay Jaffe: Yesterday, we published my piece on S-JAWS and the dearth of Hall of Fame starting pitchers from recent decades https://blogs.fangraphs.com/cooperstown-notebook-the-incredible-shrink…

2:08	Jay Jaffe: And earlier this week I had a look at the owners’ CBA offer from last Saturday https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-owners-latest-offer-gets-us-no-closer-…

Read the rest of this entry »