Archive for Prospects

The MLB Draft is unique in that it happens during the season. For the football and basketball drafts, they happen well before the season starts because the players can contribute for the upcoming season. With baseball, the odds are against one single player getting the call this season. That doesn’t mean fantasy owners, especially those in keeper and dynasty formats, shouldn’t possibly be making some moves depending on their needs.

The biggest key for anyone considering rostering a just drafted player, know your league rules. First, some leagues may not allow the drafted players to be rostered until the next offseason draft. Other leagues don’t allow owning a player until they’ve at least played a minor or major league game. In some other leagues, the players are rosterable this next FAAB period. Each one is unique. Let me start the discussion with the last league type.

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On Friday — in honor of the upcoming amateur draft — I checked in on some of the players selected in the second round of the 2017 draft. Today, I’m going to review some of the catchers selected in the first five rounds of the same draft.

More specifically, let’s look at four of the top hitting catchers so far in 2018 — because we all know how hard it can be to find offence from a backstop. For this exercise, I’m going to omit Arizona’s Dalton Varsho because I recently wrote about him.

M.J. Melendez, C, Royals: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this might be one of the biggest steals of the 2017 draft… and Melendez could be the perfect player to eventually take away the on-field leadership mantle from Salvador Perez. Just 19, this second-year player is showing solid offensive skills in low-A ball despite 44 strikeouts in 34 games (30% K-rate). Melendez hits the ball hard and 22 of his 36 hits have gone for extra bases — including eight homers in a league that doesn’t see a ton of power. His walk rate of 8% is not bad given his age. His caught stealing rate of 26% is respectable but not outstanding. He’s made a whopping eight errors in 22 games behind the plate and is definitely still working on the finer aspects of fielding the position despite his above-average athleticism and canon of an arm. I believe he’ll eventually show enough skill behind the plate to stick there if he keeps hitting like he has recently. Overall, there is work to be done but it’s hard to find a teenaged catching prospect showing this kind of offence in full season ball.

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With the 2018 amateur draft just around the corner, we’re going to take a look at some 2017 draftees to see how they’re doing in their first full year of pro ball.

Stuart Fairchild, CF, Reds: Looking back at Fairchild’s pre-draft reports, they continue to remain spot on. He was expected to go in the second round and that’s exactly where the Reds nabbed him. His bat was a bit of a question mark but he was known for a strong arm and excellent center-field defence. Cincinnati has gone easy with him so far and he opened 2018 in low-A ball — whereas most top college hitters are in high-A or better during their first year. Now, Fairchild is hitting well… but he should be doing just that based on his pedigree. The biggest knock against him so far has been the swing-and-miss tendencies that carried over from his collegiate career. It’s not terrible but he’s struck out 40 times in 43 games (Good for just shy of 23%). On the plus side, he offsets that with a healthy number of walks (12%) and I believe he’ll eventually start tapping into his raw power as he consistently hits the ball hard. He might never be a guy that hits for a high average, but Fairchild gets on base nonetheless and could eventually be a 20-20 threat if he generates more loft to his swing.

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Today at the Stock Watch we look prospects in the Oakland, Toronto and Houston minor league systems.

Cavan Biggio, 2B, Blue Jays: As the son of Craig Biggio, Cavan’s name stuck out when he was selected in the fifth round of the 2016. He wasn’t really on many people’s radar, though, and was seen as more of a way for the Jays to keep the budget down so they could afford second rounder Bo Bichette (son of Dante Bichette). Now, he’s more than just a name. He’s a legitimate prospect leading the double-A Eastern League in homers and tying for the third overall in the entire minor leagues. Along with the pop, Biggio also has 25 walks in 36 games. His 39 strikeouts are an issue and could prevent him from hitting for average at higher levels where the pitching will pick apart the holes. Defensively, he’s stiff as a middle infielder but the power will play at first base or maybe even left field. He might eventually become a platoon or part-time player in The Show but that’s still a crazy increase in value from a year ago.

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A week ago, I examined how prospect rankings could add more context to hitter projections. It’s time to take the research a step further by dividing up the prospect list to see if projections can be refined. And they can be.

Initially, I shied away from dividing up the prospect lists because the sample size quickly gets into single digits. I started dissecting the data hoping to keep reasonable sample sizes. I sort of achieved my goal.

I used the same parameters in the last article. I compared a hitter’s Steamer projected OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) from 2010 to 2017 to the actual results in their debut season. To designate prospects, I used Baseball America’s top-100 which has been compiled since 1990. I collected the average and median change in OPS. The median value helps to smooth out any major outliers.

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Rarely is OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) a fantasy stat. It’s off many people’s radar but it’s widely available and closely mimics a position player’s overall hitting talent. While other stats (e.g. wOBA and wRC+) also give a hitter an overall value, these stats aren’t available at every website. Most sites have their own unique blend but OPS is commonly available. Because of this availability, I’ve been using it as a baseline in recent articles on adjusting projections based on prospect pedigree and when hitters get platooned ($$). Now, it’s time to use OPS to help predict the individual categories.

The process I used for this study was to simply see how much various stats changed when OPS changed a certain amount. For rate stats (e.g. batting average) the conversion is straightforward. For counting categories, I put the stats on a per 600 plate appearance scale. Additionally, I only compared data from 2015 to 2017 during the current “juiced” ball era. I know the process is not close to being 100% precise and that is fine. I’m just trying to create general adjustments and can look to hone the process later. I’m putting in 20% effort to get 80% of the answer.

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Today at the Prospect Stock Watch we take a trip through the minors league systems of the Nationals, Diamondbacks, Padres and Astros.

Juan Soto, OF, Nationals: With 20-year-old outfielder Ronald Acuna now in the Majors with the Braves, Soto is now the most exciting outfield prospect in the game — surpassing his better known org mate Victor Robles. The 19-year-old outfielder is an exceptionally gifted hitter who has an extremely mature approach at the plate that is somewhat similar to Toronto’s phenom, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Soto might actually be in double-A by now had he not lost most of last year to injury. There really isn’t much that he doesn’t do well. He has a .367 career average and is hitting .380 in 2018 split between two A-ball levels. He’s shown an exceptional eye with 24 walks and 17 strikeouts in 28 games. And he’s no singles hitter; 11 of his 41 hits have gone over the outfield fence — and he has a total of 23 extra base hits. He also hits left-handed pitching with four homers and a batting average just shy of .500 in 31 at-bats this year. If Bryce Harper leaves Washington after this year, this is the player that’s going to soften the blow.

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As I did last year, I’m going to periodically review the top minor league prospect performances from a pure production standpoint (using linear weights based FanGraphs points). The annual top prospect lists do a good job of identifying the top talents in the minor leagues, but sometimes a prospect is lower ranked due to their extreme youth and long path to the majors, but then hits so well that their omission is glaring (think Fernando Tatis Jr.). In other cases a player not well thought of by scouts just continues to hit at every stop, and demands to be taken seriously (think Rhys Hoskins).

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My current aim in fantasy baseball is to find instances where player evaluations can be improved. With several prospects recently getting called up, I am trying to answer the simple question: is there any projection information to be gained from being a highly touted prospect. The short answer is yes, but it took me a while to get good results.

I wanted to keep the analysis simple so I used all available Steamer projections which to back to 2010. Additionally, I used Baseball America’s top 100 ranked prospects for that time frame. From these two data sets, I compared the hitter’s projected results to the actual results for their first few seasons.

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It’s always interesting to look back at lopsided trades like the one that sent Teoscar Hernandez to Toronto, especially because the team that gave him up was the Houston Astros, a franchise that the vast majority of knowledgeable fans would agree tends to make many more smart decisions than dumb ones. With that in mind, I think what was amazing about the Teoscar deal is just how down the Astros were on the talented young outfielder.

On July 31, 2017, the Astros traded Teoscar and Nori Aoki to the Blue Jays. The return? Francisco Liriano, who brought with him a truly shameful 5.88 ERA, which was largely fueled by his 4.68 BB/9. Even at the time, it seemed pretty clear that the Astros knew Liriano was washed up, as the club converted him to a glorified LOOGY. Liriano pitched a grand total of 16.2 IP with the Astros — 14.1 IP in the regular season, 2.1 IP in the playoffs — over the course of 25 appearances.

Of course, this post is not about Liriano, but it’s important to contextualize how little the Astros valued Teoscar that they were willing to part with him (and Aoki) for 16.2 IP of replacement-level relief pitching. With George Springer, Josh Reddick, Marwin Gonzalez, Derek Fisher, and Jake Marisnick hanging around the major-league club — and stud prospect Kyle Tucker climbing through the minors — it’s certainly true that the Astros were dealing from depth. Still, the Jays did one hell of a job landing Teoscar in exchange for a 34-year-old pitcher fighting to keep his ERA under 6.00.

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