Showing posts with label prospects. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prospects. Show all posts
11 April 2016
The Decade of Diaper Dandies
For perspective on just how fat with young talent Major League Baseball is today, may we present to you one Dansby Swanson.
Arizona selected the Vanderbilt shortstop with the first pick of the 2015 draft. Swanson has done nothing to undermine that status during his brief stint in the Minors. Atlanta was over the moon about snagging him in a deal for Shelby Miller this past off-season and he is expected to anchor the Braves' infield into the 2020s.
Dansby Swanson is just the 69th best Major League prospect under 25 according to Baseball Prospectus.
That's no knock on Swanson. BP thinks the world of him. It's just that there are 68 other guys whose early profile suggests even more potential than him.
Take Twins shortstop Francisco Lindor. At age 21 he produced 3.3 wins in 99 games in 2015 while impressing with the leather. And he's just the 14th best prospect in MLB.
Or consider Addison Russell at #20. The Cubs rookie shortstop supplanted Starlin Castro last year and produced about two wins, or what an average starter contributes. But not an average 21-year-old starter. In most years, Russell might have contended for the Rookie of the Year award. He didn't get even a single third place vote. And there are 19 prospects under 25 deemed better than him.
Kevin Kiermaier earned five wins for the Rays last season, mostly with his all-world glove. Now in his third stint through the league, his exploits with the leather in center field make him a Web Gem hog and the subject of Sports Illustrated features. And BP rates 55 young prospects ahead of him.
Trevor Rosenthal's not shedding any tears for Kiermaier. He's saved 93 games the last two spins around the sun, but because he's the ripe old age of 25, he's rated just 87th.
Consider that every one of these guys is already in the Majors. Almost all of the best under-25 prospects have already debuted in the Bigs, and most of them have drained their rookie status.
Consider also that this doesn't account for the phenoms at the top. Describing MIke Trout and Bryce Harper at this point amounts to gilding a lily, but the next group of players include Carlos Correa, a shortstop who smacked 22 dingers as an age-20 rookie; Manny Machado, already an 18-win third baseman; Gerrit Cole, the ace of the Pirates staff; Jose Fernandez, a Rookie of the Year who's back strong from TJ surgery; Nolan Arenado, a slick-fielding cornerman who led the Majors in 2015 with 42 home runs; and other young stars including Corey Seager, Mookie Betts, Xander Boegarts, Kris Bryant, Jose Altuve, Miguel Sano, Noah Syndergaard, Anthony Rendon and Yasiel Puig. What a haul.
That grouping could contain half a dozen Hall of Famers when it's all over but the shouting. But you won't hear the shouting for a long time because they're all younger than my marriage.
So here's the takeaway: forget all the bellyaching you hear about the game. It's a great time to be a baseball fan.
27 July 2015
A Red Letter Day for Royals
Theirs is a most unusual, perhaps even unique formula for winning: no power, no starting pitching; all relief pitching and defense. The Royals are like a man with two broken legs who walks very fast on his hands. It's not that it can't be done; it's just not the way most do it, primarily because it's really hard.
Conventional playoff wisdom demands at least one ace, if not two, which is two more than Kansas City had. So, with an eye towards October, which GM Dayton Moore's club is now seven games closer to than their division rivals, they boldly swung a deal for Johnny Cueto. It feels like a quintessential win-win, even if it doesn't work out well for anyone.
Even with a third of a season of Cueto, the Royals still appear light on the mound in the first six frames of every game. Nabbing Cueto, who has hurled 1,000 innings of 2.72 ERA over the last five years, increases the already favorable odds (at least relatively speaking) of re-capturing the AL crown.
KC was a popular choice for the AL Central basement this year. Banking on reprised performances from a relief corps is a fools errand, and although defense tends to be less fickle than hitting, even a small dip in the field would have doomed the punchless Royals. Somehow, though, they've bottled lightning and charged to the top of the standings.
If you thought Kansas City was talent-challenged before this season, wait until Alex Gordon leaves after it's over. Between that and the unpredictability of their hitting, the Royals could return to perpetual doormat status starting in 2016. So it makes sense that Moore wanted to strike while the iron was hot.
It seems like they gave up a lot of future value for Cueto. No one ever knows with prospects, but 22-year-old Brandon Finnegan was a first-round pick who is pitching like one, now with the big club. John Lamb, a once-and-future Minor League star following TJ surgery, and semi-prospect Cody Reed, round out the deal. It seems like a nice haul for Cincinnati in exchange for 12 starts from a pitcher who can choose his hometown after the last wisps of the World Series trail off into the ether.
So the Royals make a run for it while they can and the Reds stockpile arms at essentially no cost. It's a good deal for both teams. Now we'll have to see whether the gods smile upon either or both ends.
Conventional playoff wisdom demands at least one ace, if not two, which is two more than Kansas City had. So, with an eye towards October, which GM Dayton Moore's club is now seven games closer to than their division rivals, they boldly swung a deal for Johnny Cueto. It feels like a quintessential win-win, even if it doesn't work out well for anyone.
Even with a third of a season of Cueto, the Royals still appear light on the mound in the first six frames of every game. Nabbing Cueto, who has hurled 1,000 innings of 2.72 ERA over the last five years, increases the already favorable odds (at least relatively speaking) of re-capturing the AL crown.
KC was a popular choice for the AL Central basement this year. Banking on reprised performances from a relief corps is a fools errand, and although defense tends to be less fickle than hitting, even a small dip in the field would have doomed the punchless Royals. Somehow, though, they've bottled lightning and charged to the top of the standings.
If you thought Kansas City was talent-challenged before this season, wait until Alex Gordon leaves after it's over. Between that and the unpredictability of their hitting, the Royals could return to perpetual doormat status starting in 2016. So it makes sense that Moore wanted to strike while the iron was hot.
It seems like they gave up a lot of future value for Cueto. No one ever knows with prospects, but 22-year-old Brandon Finnegan was a first-round pick who is pitching like one, now with the big club. John Lamb, a once-and-future Minor League star following TJ surgery, and semi-prospect Cody Reed, round out the deal. It seems like a nice haul for Cincinnati in exchange for 12 starts from a pitcher who can choose his hometown after the last wisps of the World Series trail off into the ether.
So the Royals make a run for it while they can and the Reds stockpile arms at essentially no cost. It's a good deal for both teams. Now we'll have to see whether the gods smile upon either or both ends.
24 December 2008
Stirrings in the Cellar
The Pittsburgh Pirates failed to sign any significant free agents this off-season, nearly guaranteeing themselves yet a record 17th consecutive losing season.
Good for them. They're finally on the right track towards success. If anyone doubts this, may I present the Tampa Bay Rays.
Remember 2000, when the Devil Rays cashed in their draft chips for sluggers Jose Canseco, Fred McGriff and Vinny Castillo three years beyond their expiration dates? Calling that the "Hit Show" was a typo: they left out an "S." Remember 2003, when the same desperate outfit relinquished a useful cog in their youth movement -- Randy Winn -- for a manager? A manager! Billy Beane must have peed his pants over that one.
The erstwhile Devil, now Rays, learned their lessons the hard way and turned a six-pack of first picks into the talented core that skipped to the World Series last season. And that is what you call a blueprint.
It's a blueprint that president Frank Coonelly and GM Neil Huntington have demonstrated they will follow carefully in the Steel City. The trades during the 2008 campaign of Xavier Nady's career year, Damaso Marte and Jason Bay for a boatload of youngsters is the right idea not withstanding questions about the quality of the haul. During the offseason they dangled aging shortstop Jack Wilson to the rest of MLB, recognizing that his halcyon days, such as they were, will not coincide with the franchise's. When no one appeared desperate enough to offer attractive prospects for him, the Pirates put him back in their pocket for in-season discussions with a contender that loses its shortstop and is willing to pony up what Pittsburgh needs.
The team now has an intriguing roster of young (and inexpensive) pitchers -- Snell, Duke, Gorzellany, Maholm -- and players -- Ryan Doumit, the LaRoches, Freddy Sanchez and Jose Tabata that is at least two years and two sluggers away from contention, a country mile closer than they've been all century.
Peter Angelos, of all people, is learning this lesson as well. After dabbling in the decrepit sluggers market (Miguel Tejada, Javy Lopez, Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa) with disastrous results three years ago, the Orioles reversed field last year and dropped the Human Insurance Premium Inflator, Erik Bedard, on Seattle for mega-prospect Adam (not Pac Man) Jones and a package of minor league hurlers.
The Orioles' pitch for Mark Teixeira last week was based on the presumption that he'll be productive long after Jones, Ryan Freel and some minor league call-ups ripen. Baltimore is at once farther along and farther from contention than Pittsburgh because they play in the AL Beast. They will need to cultivate the farm and enter the Big Boy auction each year, making sure to get the right parts -- as Teixeira would have been -- in tandem with the development of their prospects. More than anything, the O's need pitching, pitching and more pitching.
Why are teams suddenly figuring it out? One part of the answer is obvious: there are no longer any Major League franchises operating on the outmoded principles of the 1970s. Every club has a stable of analysts crunching the numbers like Bill James in Boston, Keith Woolner in Cleveland and Oakland's Billy Beane. While baseball reporters still hang their hats on misleading stats like RBIs and pitching wins, every team in baseball understands the superiority of VORP (value over replacement player) EQA (a hitter's value expressed in a single number that looks like a batting average, but taking into account his on-base ability, base runing and power) and other more subtle and revealing measurements. The inefficiencies in the baseball marketplace that Oakland cherry-picked for a decade are now smaller and more difficult to exploit, because everyone is doing the same thing, at least to some degree.
GMs don't have the luxury that columnists and broadcasters have to be 30 years behind the state of the art, because the results of their stupidity are published in the sports section daily. The columnist versions of Dave Littlefield -- he of no clue -- are voting members of the BBWAA enjoying job security and devoted followings.
Good for them. They're finally on the right track towards success. If anyone doubts this, may I present the Tampa Bay Rays.
Remember 2000, when the Devil Rays cashed in their draft chips for sluggers Jose Canseco, Fred McGriff and Vinny Castillo three years beyond their expiration dates? Calling that the "Hit Show" was a typo: they left out an "S." Remember 2003, when the same desperate outfit relinquished a useful cog in their youth movement -- Randy Winn -- for a manager? A manager! Billy Beane must have peed his pants over that one.
The erstwhile Devil, now Rays, learned their lessons the hard way and turned a six-pack of first picks into the talented core that skipped to the World Series last season. And that is what you call a blueprint.
It's a blueprint that president Frank Coonelly and GM Neil Huntington have demonstrated they will follow carefully in the Steel City. The trades during the 2008 campaign of Xavier Nady's career year, Damaso Marte and Jason Bay for a boatload of youngsters is the right idea not withstanding questions about the quality of the haul. During the offseason they dangled aging shortstop Jack Wilson to the rest of MLB, recognizing that his halcyon days, such as they were, will not coincide with the franchise's. When no one appeared desperate enough to offer attractive prospects for him, the Pirates put him back in their pocket for in-season discussions with a contender that loses its shortstop and is willing to pony up what Pittsburgh needs.
The team now has an intriguing roster of young (and inexpensive) pitchers -- Snell, Duke, Gorzellany, Maholm -- and players -- Ryan Doumit, the LaRoches, Freddy Sanchez and Jose Tabata that is at least two years and two sluggers away from contention, a country mile closer than they've been all century.
Peter Angelos, of all people, is learning this lesson as well. After dabbling in the decrepit sluggers market (Miguel Tejada, Javy Lopez, Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa) with disastrous results three years ago, the Orioles reversed field last year and dropped the Human Insurance Premium Inflator, Erik Bedard, on Seattle for mega-prospect Adam (not Pac Man) Jones and a package of minor league hurlers.
The Orioles' pitch for Mark Teixeira last week was based on the presumption that he'll be productive long after Jones, Ryan Freel and some minor league call-ups ripen. Baltimore is at once farther along and farther from contention than Pittsburgh because they play in the AL Beast. They will need to cultivate the farm and enter the Big Boy auction each year, making sure to get the right parts -- as Teixeira would have been -- in tandem with the development of their prospects. More than anything, the O's need pitching, pitching and more pitching.
Why are teams suddenly figuring it out? One part of the answer is obvious: there are no longer any Major League franchises operating on the outmoded principles of the 1970s. Every club has a stable of analysts crunching the numbers like Bill James in Boston, Keith Woolner in Cleveland and Oakland's Billy Beane. While baseball reporters still hang their hats on misleading stats like RBIs and pitching wins, every team in baseball understands the superiority of VORP (value over replacement player) EQA (a hitter's value expressed in a single number that looks like a batting average, but taking into account his on-base ability, base runing and power) and other more subtle and revealing measurements. The inefficiencies in the baseball marketplace that Oakland cherry-picked for a decade are now smaller and more difficult to exploit, because everyone is doing the same thing, at least to some degree.
GMs don't have the luxury that columnists and broadcasters have to be 30 years behind the state of the art, because the results of their stupidity are published in the sports section daily. The columnist versions of Dave Littlefield -- he of no clue -- are voting members of the BBWAA enjoying job security and devoted followings.
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