A couple of weeks ago I made an initial stab at projecting a pitching prospect’s MLB value knowing their prospect grades. I failed miserably, but got some ideas in which to move forward on. Today, I will test some of those theories and see if I can tease out any information.
From the previous study, I found the following on pitcher grades.
1. Pitchers who are a few years from the majors are likely to change quite a bit before for they reach the majors. They could have arm surgery, find command, or add a pitch. Early grades have too much noise to be used for future results.
2. Fastballs are almost exclusively graded only on velocity. For a soft-tossing prospect to get a major call up, their fastball is likely better than just the velocity shows. They likely have plus movement and/or command of the pitch.
3. Almost all pitching prospects will get stuck with a future 50 control grade because getting graded less than 50 is a death sentence for their progress. Not all major league pitchers have average control. Exactly half don’t, so the control grade needs to be adjusted.
4. From some discussions with people in the game, I found that having one or two plus breaking balls can help carry a pitcher with an average fastball.
With these limitations, I decided to relook at pitchers by implementing the following guidelines for this study.
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