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2015-16 Offseason Prospect Rankings
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Dec 15, 2015 22:45:36 GMT -5
Ben Badler @benbadler 39m39 minutes ago Red Sox prospect rankings go up tomorrow at Baseball America. Their top four prospects would all be the No. 1 guy in some systems.
Also I saw a tweet a few days ago that BP Sox will be Dec 19th.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Dec 15, 2015 23:13:13 GMT -5
...and that's the same four top prospects they started the off-season with. That's a credit to the front office given the players they've loaded up on. There may still be a few questions, but it's a lot harder to see them through all the answers they've come up with.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 16, 2015 0:57:41 GMT -5
I wouldn't say that people are indifferent on Devers. BA gave him #5 in the SAL, he is number 2 on this site, #2 on Sickels ranking, and #13 in baseball on mlb.com. I think it's easy to forget him given how stacked our system is, but he's one of my personal favorites. Especially encouraging is that he demonstrated the ability to play an average to above average third base this year, erasing some questions about future position/potential DHing. That gives him a little more wiggle room with the bat. I really think his doubles power and pure swing will translate beautifully as he adds mass with age. Yea, I more meant around here. He seems to be the "high level guy" everyone is most willing to trade. Moncada, Espinoza and AB seem to be on a different level in people's mind, despite Devers being ranked higher than the last 2. Speaking personally, but I think this is what's driving this for others, my relative willingness to trade Devers is based on having too many guys for 2B, 3B, OF. Moving Devers to 1B now seems like a huge loss of value, and Moncada is another candidate for 3B of the future, with Betts, JBJ, and Benintendi as the OF. I think that if they hadn't signed Moncada, or if JBJ hadn't blossomed (as expected ), or if they hadn't drafted Benintendi, everyone would have Devers as a near-untouchable. Doing all three of those things suddenly makes him look like a potential surplus part, just as Margot and Guerra were.
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Post by kman22 on Dec 16, 2015 8:52:41 GMT -5
Yea, I more meant around here. He seems to be the "high level guy" everyone is most willing to trade. Moncada, Espinoza and AB seem to be on a different level in people's mind, despite Devers being ranked higher than the last 2. Speaking personally, but I think this is what's driving this for others, my relative willingness to trade Devers is based on having too many guys for 2B, 3B, OF. Moving Devers to 1B now seems like a huge loss of value, and Moncada is another candidate for 3B of the future, with Betts, JBJ, and Benintendi as the OF. I think that if they hadn't signed Moncada, or if JBJ hadn't blossomed (as expected ), or if they hadn't drafted Benintendi, everyone would have Devers as a near-untouchable. Doing all three of those things suddenly makes him look like a potential surplus part, just as Margot and Guerra were. I think Guerra and Margot differ significantly in how much of their value is derived from their defensive abilities.
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Post by sox fan in nc on Dec 16, 2015 12:22:12 GMT -5
Yea, I more meant around here. He seems to be the "high level guy" everyone is most willing to trade. Moncada, Espinoza and AB seem to be on a different level in people's mind, despite Devers being ranked higher than the last 2. Speaking personally, but I think this is what's driving this for others, my relative willingness to trade Devers is based on having too many guys for 2B, 3B, OF. Moving Devers to 1B now seems like a huge loss of value, and Moncada is another candidate for 3B of the future, with Betts, JBJ, and Benintendi as the OF. I think that if they hadn't signed Moncada, or if JBJ hadn't blossomed (as expected ), or if they hadn't drafted Benintendi, everyone would have Devers as a near-untouchable. Doing all three of those things suddenly makes him look like a potential surplus part, just as Margot and Guerra were. I think there could be an argument for being overloaded @ 2B 3B OF.....with the bust rate....maybe 3B with Chavis/Devers. I just don't have confidence in Chavis. Now in a year & 1/2 when Chavis shows he can hit in AA, then Devers may be expendable. If Devers shows he can hit for power in the upper levels, it may be tough to trade that commodity. 2B is Moncada even though he could play (almost) anywhere. We'll have to see where Pedey is in 2 yrs. AB will force Castillo as 4th OF in 2 years. With Travis, we should be set for some time without HAVING to go thru FA unless filling in gaps here & there.
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Post by jmei on Dec 16, 2015 12:44:42 GMT -5
The Middlebrooks/Cecchini saga should illustrate the folly of projecting guys as starters before they've cemented themselves as such at the major league level, including the dangers of prematurely calling a position "blocked".
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Post by sox fan in nc on Dec 16, 2015 13:03:55 GMT -5
The Middlebrooks/Cecchini saga should illustrate the folly of projecting guys as starters before they've cemented themselves as such at the major league level, including the dangers of prematurely calling a position "blocked". I do agree we can't simply pencil them into the 2018 opening day starting line up. I know Cecchini had some holes even when he was hitting for a high average. WMB didn't exactly have a HOF minor league career either. IMO our top 4 or 5 position players have a more complete game than those 2. I don't see a scenario where DD would have to trade any of them due to the depth of the big club/AAA.
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Post by grandsalami on Dec 16, 2015 13:08:31 GMT -5
Ben Badler @benbadler 39m39 minutes ago Red Sox prospect rankings go up tomorrow at Baseball America. Their top four prospects would all be the No. 1 guy in some systems. Also I saw a tweet a few days ago that BP Sox will be Dec 19th. hopefully it comes out on the 19th
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Post by jodyreidnichols on Dec 16, 2015 14:17:34 GMT -5
Speaking personally, but I think this is what's driving this for others, my relative willingness to trade Devers is based on having too many guys for 2B, 3B, OF. Moving Devers to 1B now seems like a huge loss of value, and Moncada is another candidate for 3B of the future, with Betts, JBJ, and Benintendi as the OF. I think that if they hadn't signed Moncada, or if JBJ hadn't blossomed (as expected ), or if they hadn't drafted Benintendi, everyone would have Devers as a near-untouchable. Doing all three of those things suddenly makes him look like a potential surplus part, just as Margot and Guerra were. I think there could be an argument for being overloaded @ 2B 3B OF.....with the bust rate....maybe 3B with Chavis/Devers. I just don't have confidence in Chavis. Now in a year & 1/2 when Chavis shows he can hit in AA, then Devers may be expendable. If Devers shows he can hit for power in the upper levels, it may be tough to trade that commodity. 2B is Moncada even though he could play (almost) anywhere. We'll have to see where Pedey is in 2 yrs. AB will force Castillo as 4th OF in 2 years. With Travis, we should be set for some time without HAVING to go thru FA unless filling in gaps here & there. Its more likely that Castillo would be traded once AB has had sufficient time to adjust to the majors and then Castillo would have more value to another team than being our 4th OF'er. This assumes the other 2 pieces are still in piece and playing well.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 17, 2015 4:15:52 GMT -5
The Middlebrooks/Cecchini saga should illustrate the folly of projecting guys as starters before they've cemented themselves as such at the major league level, including the dangers of prematurely calling a position "blocked". OTOH, we have had a rather amazing set of results for position players from the BA Top 80 (Kalish was 96, and Devers was 99 last year): 2014 2 Xander Bogaerts 2005 10 Hanley Ramirez 2008 13 Jacoby Ellsbury 2015 17 Blake Swihart 2009 17 Lars Anderson 2015 21 Rusney Castillo 2010 21 Ryan Westmoreland 2014 50 Jackie Bradley 2012 51 Will Middlebrooks 2011 52 Jose Iglesias 2015 72 Manny Margot 2005 72 Brandon Moss 2008 73 Jed Lowrie 2014 74 Garrin Cecchini 2014 75 Mookie Betts 2010 75 Josh Reddick 2006 77 Dustin Pedroia 2004 78 Kelly Shoppach Betts, of course was so good at 75 that he lost his rookie eligibility before he could be ranked any higher, but is a virtual top 10 guy. Westmoreland had the tragedy, Margot is TBD. Swihart and Castillo are works in progress. So you've named two of the three busts out of 13 to 15 guys. (Yeah, I'm declaring JBJ a success.) Name GS bWAR/150 Mookie Betts 191 6.4 Dustin Pedroia 1224 5.5 Jacoby Ellsbury 933 4.2 Hanley Ramirez 1283 4.1 Josh Reddick 584 4.1 Rusney Castillo 77 3.1 Xander Bogaerts 258 3.1 Kelly Shoppach 467 2.6 Jose Iglesias 243 2.3 Jed Lowrie 643 2.1 Jackie Bradley 203 2.0 Brandon Moss 600 1.2 W. Middlebrooks 283 -0.7 Lars Anderson 12 -3.8 If folks don't think this is extraordinary, here's what I would bet is a typical list, covering 12 years instead of 13: Year Rank Name Pos 1997 10 No. Garciaparra ss 1991 10 Mo Vaughn 1b 1994 13 Trot Nixon of 1992 16 Jeff McNeely of 1999 22 Dernell Stenson of 1996 28 Donnie Sadler ss 1991 46 Tim Naehring ss 2000 50 Steve Lomasney c 1998 51 Michael Coleman of 1990 63 Eric Wedge c 1991 64 Greg Blosser of 1990 68 Scott Cooper 3b 1990 79 Mickey Pina of 1990 83 Phil Plantier of 1994 86 Luis Ortiz 3b 2001 87 Tony Blanco 3b 1995 94 Jose Malave of From 15 to 80 on that list, there are 8 busts out of 10. Name GS bWAR/150 N. Garciaparra 1355 4.9 Tim Naehring 504 3.8 Trot Nixon 972 3.3 Mo Vaughn 1465 2.8 Scott Cooper 473 2.0 Phil Plantier 507 0.7
Donnie Sadler 208 -0.6
Name GS bWAR Luis Ortiz 37 -1.2 Jose Malave 25 -0.6 Eric Wedge 22 0.2 Dernell Stenson 20 0.1 Michael Coleman 18 -0.7 Jeff McNeely 11 0.2 Greg Blosser 9 -0.4 Tony Blanco 6 -0.8 Steve Lomasney 0 0.1
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Post by rjp313jr on Dec 17, 2015 8:35:57 GMT -5
How much of that variation has to do with how unreliable publicized prospect lists were back in the day?
The emphasis put on scouting within organizations is night and day compared to what it was and the information available is too. And that's within them let alone outside.
Complete guess, but I bet those lists from the 90s are a lot less accurate than today's lists.
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Post by jmei on Dec 17, 2015 8:56:07 GMT -5
It's pretty cherry-picky to only look at position players. The pitcher side has fared much worse (Bowden, Kelly, Britton, Webster, Ranaudo, Barnes). The last top 100 pitcher they developed was Bard (#98, 2008). If you include the pitchers, their bust rate looks much more typical.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Dec 17, 2015 9:35:45 GMT -5
What rjp said. Those lists are terrible generally. Would mean a lot more to me to compare the Red Sox to other organizations over a given period than to compare the JWH-era Sox with the Sox of the 90s.
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Post by grandsalami on Dec 22, 2015 14:03:58 GMT -5
so it looks like the red sox are one of the last teams to be covered for BP?
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 22, 2015 20:49:22 GMT -5
It's pretty cherry-picky to only look at position players. The pitcher side has fared much worse (Bowden, Kelly, Britton, Webster, Ranaudo, Barnes). The last top 100 pitcher they developed was Bard (#98, 2008). If you include the pitchers, their bust rate looks much more typical. What rjp said. Those lists are terrible generally. Would mean a lot more to me to compare the Red Sox to other organizations over a given period than to compare the JWH-era Sox with the Sox of the 90s. The bust rate on pitching prospects is higher than that of position players in general. It's true that the old lists had a higher bust rate than the more recent ones. However, I've compared the Sox with their contemporaries, and they still seem to do much better. Name me a team and I'll post their lists for 2003 to 2013. In the meantime, here's the Sox list for pitchers from '03 to '15: Year # Name 2008 4 Clay Buchholz 2006 22 Jon Lester 2010 24 Casey Kelly 2006 37 Jonathan Papelbon 2014 40 Henry Owens 2006 54 Craig Hansen 2015 59 Eduardo Rodriguez 2008 64 Justin Masterson 2011 67 Anthony Ranaudo 2007 81 Daniel Bard 2015 82 Brian Johnson 2007 83 Michael Bowden 2014 88 Allen Webster 2014 89 Trey Ball 2011 97 Drake Britton
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 23, 2015 1:00:09 GMT -5
I figured I'd compare our prospect success with the Rays, a division rival that has competed via their farm system and sabermetric smarts.
First, let's look at the busts or likely busts. I'm excluding Hak-Ju Lee, who was acquired from the Cubs and peaked at #44, and Ryan Westmoreland, who's no more a bust than Nick Adenhart.
"Dr" is where they were drafted overall. v## means virtual, as in v22 means he got #22 slot money even though he was drafted much later. I-## means his international bonus was the equivalent of that slot.
We'll sort this by bWAR.
Year Rank Dr Name Pos W/150 WAR GS 2006 1 1 Delmon Young of 0.4 2.5 1031 2005 87 949 Joey Gathright of 1.0 2.2 325 2007 79 74 Elijah Dukes of 1.3 1.9 215 2014 74 v22 Garrin Cecchini 3b 1.0 0.1 8 2009 28 1 Tim Beckham ss 0.0 0.0 52 2009 17 v41 Lars Anderson 1b -3.8 -0.3 12 2007 17 45 Reid Brignac ss -0.3 -0.4 220 2008 96 v60 Ryan Kalish of -1.4 -0.9 97 2012 51 v31 W. Middlebrooks 3b -0.7 -1.3 283 2011 88 v14 Josh Sale of -- -- -- Anderson and Brignac are very similar. Beckham was a much bigger bust than WMB. Sale was a bigger bust than Kalish, even without factoring in that Sale's problems were behavioral rather than physical. Cecchini, if he stays a bust, will be bigger than Dukes because of his bonus, but they're equal in terms of prospect status. And then the Rays add Delmon Young and Joey Gathright. They have top 50 busts at 1, 17, and 28; we have one at 17.
And now lets look at the successes, guys with 5.0 career WAR or who project to get it (the book's still out on the 7 guys whose only or highest ranking was 2015: Swihart, Castillo, Margot, Devers, Steven Souza, Daniel Robertson, and Willy Adames.)
This one we'll sort by bWAR / 150 GS.
Year Rank Dr Name Pos W/150 WAR GS 2014 75 v50 Mookie Betts 2b 6.4 8.1 191 2008 2 3 Evan Longoria 3b 5.8 42.6 1098 2006 77 64 Dustin Pedroia 2b 5.5 45.1 1224 2003 33 1 Josh Hamilton of 4.3 28.1 981 2008 13 23 Jacoby Ellsbury of 4.2 26.4 933 2005 10 I>200 Hanley Ramirez ss 4.1 35.1 1283 2010 75 v182 Josh Reddick of 4.1 15.9 584 2010 6 289 Desmo. Jennings of 3.9 12.2 467 2003 2 6 Rocco Baldelli of 3.3 10.2 463 2014 2 I-86 Xander Bogaerts ss 3.1 5.3 258 2004 78 48 Kelly Shoppach c 2.6 8.1 467 2011 52 I-1 Jose Iglesias ss 2.3 3.8 243 2008 73 45 Jed Lowrie ss 2.1 9.1 643 2014 50 v30 Jackie Bradley cf 2.0 2.7 203 2004 2 2 B. J. Upton ss 1.8 14.9 1232 2005 72 238 Brandon Moss of 1.2 4.9 600 Do I really have to run this down? The Rays have 5 successes to put against their 6 busts, but four of those guys were taken with the 1, 2, 3, and 6 picks in the draft (while they were busting twice with the 1 pick, and of course they never got an inning from the #1 pick who didn't bust). We have 11 successes against our 4 busts. Betts and Pedroia rank 10th and 11th in bonus, and 13th and 15th in prospect ranking (although Betts is a special case here) but are two of the two three players.
I'll look at the pitchers next ...
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Post by James Dunne on Dec 23, 2015 1:31:25 GMT -5
I think the Red Sox have indeed done a much better than average job turning prospects into players. However, the comparison with the Rays is curious, since their reputation for scouting development is way out of line with any actual results. Has there been a team that has gotten less out of players it has drafted since 2008? Snell and Guerrieri look like they have a shot at turning around the disaster of historical proportions that was the Rays 2011 draft, but still - the last 2.0 WAR career player they drafted in the first/supplemental round was David Price back in 2007.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 23, 2015 2:36:45 GMT -5
I think the Red Sox have indeed done a much better than average job turning prospects into players. However, the comparison with the Rays is curious, since their reputation for scouting development is way out of line with any actual results. Has there been a team that has gotten less out of players it has drafted since 2008? Snell and Guerrieri look like they have a shot at turning around the disaster of historical proportions that was the Rays 2011 draft, but still - the last 2.0 WAR career player they drafted in the first/supplemental round was David Price back in 2007. Yeah, I sort of discovered that as I was doing that study! I'm willing to do one more team at a minimum. How about the Rangers, who have been a perennial top farm system? Year Rank Name Pos 2013 1 Juricks. Profar ss 2003 1 Mark Teixeira 3b 2015 6 Joey Gallo 3b 2010 13 Justin Smoak 1b 2008 19 Elvis Andrus ss 2013 22 Mike Olt 3b 2014 42 Rougned Odor 2b 2004 52 Adrian Gonzalez 1b 2014 54 Jorge Alfaro c 2009 73 Tayl. Teagarden c 2005 77 Joaquin Arias ss 2012 79 Leonys Martin of 2009 84 Max Ramirez c 2003 85 Laynce Nix of 2015 87 Nomar Mazara of 2014 98 Michael Choice of 2005 98 Ian Kinsler ss 2012 100 Chr. Villanueva 3b Assuming that Profar's excellent AFL is the start of his resurrection, and that Gallo doesn't pull a WMB*, then Smoak and Olt still make two busts among 7 top 50 prospects. Of the 11 others, you have two major successes, a minor success with upside left in Martin, a borderline sucess in Nix (career bWAR of 3.6, but he had 3.9 in the equivalent of 1.4 seasons as a terrific bench player from 2009-11 ), Mazara who is trending up, Alfaro who's headed downwards, Choice and Villaneuva who appear to be busting, and Teagarden, Arias (the guy they picked over Cano as the PTBL in the ARod / Soriano deal), and Ramirez who have done it already. It might be 4 1/2 hits and 6 1/2 busts. We had 8 out of 11 from 51 to 100, plus Margot and Devers. *WMB, age 23, 2.8 bWAR / 150 GS, .245 K%, .045 UBB%, .075 HR/Contact Gallo, age 21, 2.1 bWAR / 150 GS, .475 K%, .100 UBB%, .118 HR/C Youth is on his side and he's gonna need it.
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Post by James Dunne on Dec 23, 2015 9:28:31 GMT -5
And Adrian Gonzalez probably shouldn't count as being developed by Texas, since he reached Triple-A with the Marlins before they traded him Ugie Urbina.
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Post by jmei on Dec 23, 2015 10:47:43 GMT -5
I think it's fair to say that the Red Sox development of position player prospects in the last decade has outperformed (perhaps by a significant margin) the league average. Is that predictive, though? (I promise not to post the small sample size song again, Eric )
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 23, 2015 13:30:35 GMT -5
I think it's fair to say that the Red Sox development of position player prospects in the last decade has outperformed (perhaps by a significant margin) the league average. Is that predictive, though? (I promise not to post the small sample size song again, Eric ) They've consciously devoted a huge amount of time and effort to evaluating "makeup", which they regard as the key to identifying and developing amateur talent. It's possible that in fact they've either done an ordinary job of it, or that in fact it's not the key, and instead, they got really lucky, and, that furthermore, the fact that so many of the guys who outperformed expectations, like Pedroia, Betts, and Bogaerts, are regarded as having exceptional makeup, is either a confirmation bias illusion, or a coincidence. In which case, the success will not be predictive. What do you think? I think the short version is that when you significantly outperform your peers, and you essentially predicted that you would (in a long conversation I had with Jed Hoyer, where, among other things, he went on and on about Pedroia's makeup when he was still at Portland*), and you had detailed reasons why you would, a small sample size suffices. *Granted, Michael Bowden also had tremendous makeup. Lars Anderson had unique but really strange makeup which may well have proved to be his undoing. And sometimes you draft a guy with irresistible tools more or less in spite of his make up (which I think was true of Hansen). You don't win them all. But by doubling or tripling the weight you put on makeup in your total evaluation, it looks like you can cut you prospect bust rate, at least for position players, about in half. It's quite possible, BTW, that they have a better sense of what the ideal makeup is for position players than they do for pitchers. They are very different roles, psychologically.
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Post by jmei on Dec 23, 2015 13:42:52 GMT -5
Every team thinks they've found a secret sauce, though, whether that's a particular philosophy or more scouts or better scouts or better execs. The pitcher/hitter discrepancy also cuts again the "skill" explanation, especially since most of their pitcher busts were not injury-related.
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Post by jimed14 on Dec 23, 2015 13:46:03 GMT -5
I think it's fair to say that the Red Sox development of position player prospects in the last decade has outperformed (perhaps by a significant margin) the league average. Is that predictive, though? (I promise not to post the small sample size song again, Eric ) They've consciously devoted a huge amount of time and effort to evaluating "makeup", which they regard as the key to identifying and developing amateur talent. It's possible that in fact they've either done an ordinary job of it, or that in fact it's not the key, and instead, they got really lucky, and, that furthermore, the fact that so many of the guys who outperformed expectations, like Pedroia, Betts, and Bogaerts, are regarded as having exceptional makeup, is either a confirmation bias illusion, or a coincidence. In which case, the success will not be predictive. What do you think? I think the short version is that when you significantly outperform your peers, and you essentially predicted that you would (in a long conversation I had with Jed Hoyer, where, among other things, he went on and on about Pedroia's makeup when he was still at Portland*), and you had detailed reasons why you would, a small sample size suffices. *Granted, Michael Bowden also had tremendous makeup. Lars Anderson had unique but really strange makeup which may well have proved to be his undoing. And sometimes you draft a guy with irresistible tools more or less in spite of his make up (which I think was true of Hansen). You don't win them all. But by doubling or tripling the weight you put on makeup in your total evaluation, it looks like you can cut you prospect bust rate, at least for position players, about in half. It's quite possible, BTW, that they have a better sense of what the ideal makeup is for position players than they do for pitchers. They are very different roles, psychologically. I'd guess they wouldn't have rated Buchholz too high on makeup, in regards to eating nothing but fast food and stealing laptops.
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steveofbradenton
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Post by steveofbradenton on Dec 23, 2015 13:56:01 GMT -5
I need some help folks! I'm coming up with some strange numbers for Anderson Espinoza's FIP for 2015. Can you please help me figure this out. Is it possible to get a negative number (that's good by the way)?
Just copied this formula: FIP = ((13*HR)+(3*(BB+HBP))-(2*K))/IP + constant. I hear 2.9 and under is great.
Love to see what you stat guys get.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Dec 23, 2015 13:58:13 GMT -5
I need some help folks! I'm coming up with some strange numbers for Anderson Espinoza's FIP for 2015. Can you please help me figure this out. Is it possible to get a negative number (that's good by the way)? Just copied this formula: FIP = ((13*HR)+(3*(BB+HBP))-(2*K))/IP + constant. I hear 2.9 and under is great. Love to see what you stat guys get. www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=sa872856&position=P
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