Projecting the Prospects in the Troy Tulowitzki Trade

While many of you were snuggled up in your beds last night, Alex Anthopoulos and his henchmen were hard at work acquiring Troy Tulowitzki from the Rockies. You can read Dave Cameron’s piping hot take on the trade here and Kiley McDaniel’s scouting-oriented contribution on the three pitching prospects going from Toronto to Colorado here. Below, I’ll be taking a data-driven look at those same three prospects, as follow: Miguel Castro, Jeff Hoffman, and Jesus Tinoco.

Miguel Castro

Castro has already shown us glimpses of what he’s capable of at the big-league level. After a dominant spring training, the 20-year-old broke camp with the Blue Jays as their closer. But Toronto put the kibosh on that experiment after just 13 largely mediocre appearances. He’s thrown 24 minor-league innings since his demotion, with most of them coming in relief.

Prior to this year, Castro pitched entirely in the low minors, with all but 30 innings coming in short-season ball. So there’s very little meaningful data that can be used to evaluate the 20-year-old. Using his 24 innings from this year, KATOH forecasts Castro for 2.9 WAR through age-28, which would have put him 172nd on KATOH’s preseason list. His 82 innings from last year yielded a similar forecast of 2.6 WAR. Due to sample size concerns, I didn’t think a list of statistical comps would be particularly enlightening.

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Jeff Hoffman

Castro should be able to help out the Rockies in the near future, especially if they choose to keep him in the bullpen. But Hoffman appears to be the real prize in this deal. Hoffman was one of the most highly touted amateur arms heading into the 2014 draft, but his draft stock plummeted following Tommy John Surgery. The Blue Jays wisely gambled that his recovery would be a smooth one, and popped him ninth overall in last year’s draft.

After returning to action in May, Hoffman turned in a 3.71 FIP in 11 High-A starts, and holds a 2.38 FIP through two starts at the Double-A level. KATOH, however, isn’t sold on Hoffman. Although his overall stats have been solid, KATOH pegs him for just 1.4 WAR through age-28.

The low forecast has to do with his middling strikeout rate (18%) and also with his age: at 22, he wasn’t overly young for A-Ball. However, KATOH doesn’t know that Hoffman sat out an entire year recovering from surgery, and might still be finding his groove. As he distances himself from his surgery, his stat line — and by extension, his KATOH projection — could easily improve by a wide margin in the next year or so.

With all of that in mind, here are some comps generated by way of some Mahalanobis distance calculations.

*Pitchers who have yet to play their age-28 season.

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Jesus Tinoco

Tinoco has spent all of 2015 as a 20-year-old starter at the Low-A level, where he’s pitched to an excellent 2.76 FIP. His 19% strikeout rate is in line with the Midwest League average, while his 6% walk rate is slightly better than average. However, being that he’s very far away from the majors, his work yields a KATOH forecast of just 1.8 WAR through age-28. Here are his top statistical comps.

*Pitchers who have yet to play their age-28 season.