Risky and Rosy

Today I want to continue with the work in thinking about prospects in accordance with the WAR they might produce in the Major Leagues. With your help, the flaws of the analysis we’ve done so far have been recognized. In some cases, we’re at work behind the scenes. But I also want to flesh out this new thought process in the open. Today, I want to go through the four components of WAR, and talk about how we might treat each when projecting a prospect.

Runs Above Replacement

To keep things simple, this is computed in WAR as just 20 runs per 600 plate appearances. In my first two forays into this brand of analysis, I was after the question of what these players might look like given six full Major League seasons. It allowed for me to keep the math simple, but many of you correctly pointed out that I was overlooking the likelihood that these players fail. This, “Bust Potential,” is one of the white rabbits of minor league sabermetric analysis, but I think we can account for it in these quick-and-dirty projections in this quadrant of WAR calculation. Given that runs above replacement is only concerned with playing time, we can properly account for varying outcomes of each player’s career: a regular player, a bench player, a complete bust.

Today, I’ll be using Philadelphia Phillies top prospect Domonic Brown as my guinea pig. Brown is a consensus top 25 prospect, and the one player the Phillies would not let into trade discussions this winter. I wanted to see how rare he was, so I went to see who else Baseball America has ranked as a top 30 prospect as a “tall” (above 6-foot-2) outielder. In their first 15 years of top 100’s (1990-2004), BA ranked 25 players in that demographic. I’ll make the full list available in the comments. But the cross-section gives a really nice break down of the different possibilities for Brown’s career: 10 players became full-time regulars in the bigs, 8 players were never given a full-time shot, and the rest only got a few seasons.

So, while I’ve been giving guys +20 runs above replacement because it’s more fun to acknowledge a perfect world outcome, even for the top prospects it’s an up-hill climb. I think we can actually do better by saying that Brown’s peak is +20, but also acknowledge all outcomes and conservatively project +10 runs above replacement.

Positional Adjustment

When projecting what a player’s positional adjustment will be, there are two factors to consider: playing time and position. We have taken care of playing time in the runs above replacement adjustment — so like I did with Jesus Montero, this section allows us to look at a player’s specific situation and project a likely position. We look at the Philadelphia Phillies, and we see their outfielders contract situation: Jayson Werth is a free agent after 2010, Raul Ibanez after 2011, and Shane Victorino after 2012. While some scouts have said that Brown would work in center field, his size plus the long-term presence of Shane Victorino allows for confidence in seeing Brown in LF/RF. This means Brown would receive a -7.5 position adjustment in a full season, or -3.7 if we correspond with his conservative +10 runs above replacement projection.

UZR/Fielding

Presently, there are both quantitative and anecdotal offerings available, thanks to Sean Smith’s TotalZone play by play metric (offered at MinorLeagueSplits), or any of the great scouting reports you’ll find at Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, ESPN and more. Domonic Brown, by TotalZone, was a -6 defender in 106 games. Meanwhile, we have Keith Law’s scouting report which reads, “His biggest deficiency is in the outfield, where his reads are poor and he doesn’t set his feet to throw, but he has the speed and arm strength to become plus at the position and already runs down many balls he misreads.” Given the two, which say roughly the same thing, I’m fine with projecting Brown to be -5 UZR/150 as a Major League corner outfielder — and can accept improvement up to +0. These aren’t scientific, but it’s using an acknowledgment of everything available to us in determining a usable round number.

wRAA/Batting

Continuing today’s theme, I think we can look at batting runs in two ways: a median performance that acknowledges many of the guys that have tried and failed; and a rosier projection that comps the player to more success stories. So, I’m concerned with two things: how a player might hit if he lives up to that +10 runs above replacement number, and how he might hit if he gets to +20. However, one note that I’d like feedback on: I don’t think we should assume a lower number of plate appearances in our projection for the former. Since we are discounting a player in the first two columns for the likelihood of not reaching the Majors, I don’t think we need to double-dip when calculating wRAA. It’s essentially what a one-season snapshot in two different paths would look like.

I’m getting predictably long-winded, so I’m going to save you from the specific wOBA-generating math and use some round numbers. It’s essentially: does Brown’s power develop, or doesn’t it?

Paths   BR  UZR  Rep  PAdj    WAR   
Rosy   +25   +0  +20  -7.5    3.8
Mean   +10   -5  +10  -3.7    1.1

One day, I want to get to this point more scientifically, but I think you get the point. I think prospect analysis has a lot of value when we can call Domonic Brown a 1.1/3.8 WAR talent and understand what that means relative to other prospects. Hopefully we aren’t far away.





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JoshEnglemanmember
14 years ago

I’m really interested in seeing how this plays out. I do have one question. Should there be some type of discount factor for when a prospect is expected to come up? Should someone who we assume is a 2-WAR player in 2010 be valued differently than someone who would be a 2-WAR player in 2011. Could it be something like 2 / (1 + r)^x, with r being the discount rate and x being # of years away?

Barry Reed
14 years ago
Reply to  Bryan Smith

Is the WAR you’re projecting here for this year? If so, then in addition to discounting it for later years, wouldn’t you also want to account for improvement during that extra year in the minors?

If I remember one of your earlier articles on this, are you thinking about doing something with “comparables”? As part of that, would you look at a different groups of comparables? In other words (and I’m just thinking out loud), from the 25 similar top 30 outfielders, the 10 that got regular playing time would form one group of comparables (the 8 with partial time would be another group, and the remaining 7 a third group), which you could use to project when the prospect might reach the majors, playing time, etc…

JoshEnglemanmember
14 years ago
Reply to  Bryan Smith

I honestly have no formula idea whatsoever. I was basically taking the one thing I actually remember from my finance courses in college and applying it here. I wouldn’t know where to begin in terms of figuring out the a good discount rate. I’m guessing it would basically be some type of trial & error which fits the “smell test.” Enough people talking about it would likely bring up number that works, though.

Barry Reed
14 years ago
Reply to  Bryan Smith

If you project him to be a 2 WAR player based on the current information and project that he won’t be in the majors for 2 or 3 more years (and hence reduce that value), I presume that you reassess his value the next year to include how he does this year in the minors (progress vs. regress)… My point is that his value appears to be less now the further away he is from the majors, but your assessment of his WAR might go up (or down) as he gets closer to the majors…

While I agree with the discount rate idea, I think the numerator isn’t fixed…

Michael
14 years ago
Reply to  Bryan Smith

Bryan, gotta admit I’m really intrigued right now by this series. Nny has done this sort of work at Marlin Maniac (linked in both our names) and it really helps with valuing prospects in the way they should be valued.

I think Victor Wang has done work on how to discount WAR in future years, and that may be a place to start. I’m not sure if his adjustments in prospect valuation analysis are estimates or more rigorous calculations however.

Trev
14 years ago
Reply to  Bryan Smith

I’d be careful throwing discount rate into prospect analysis. The concept of players as assets (worth more in the future but less now) is something that really only applies when looking at trades.

If I remember correctly Victor Wang’s work already included bust potential. Under his conclusions, you could calculate who won or lost a trade by using this methodology (numbers made up for example):

“The Cubs trade a 1/2 season of Ted Lilly for the No. 35 prospect, with the Cubs paying Lilly’s salary. We expect Lilly to be worth an additional 1.5 wins which for Tampa Bay would improve their playoff odds by 20%. The No. 35 prospect has historically produced 2.5 WAR over the first six years of his career (this number includes all the #35s who didn’t make it so bust potential is built in). Chicago wins the trade because increasing your playoff odds 20% is worth $5 million while 2.5 WAR over 6 years is worth $7 million, but hey flags fly forever, right?”

I guess I just want to point out if we’re viewing players as assets (and applying discounted rates, etc.) you need to take into account a guys 25th percentile (and below) projection of 0 WAR because he never makes it to the majors.