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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 22, 2023 22:48:09 GMT -5
Because not all prospects are created equal and the existing information prior to those 60 career at-bats still matters a lot. That’s interesting. Well don’t look at Tristan’s WAR this year because he’s tied with Kluber dead last on the team. Also last 7 games because he looks like a lot more of a AAA player. 2/21 8 strike outs 2 walks. Yet everyone on this thread is very quick to have his back. Right… because of the reasons I just said…
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 22, 2023 18:46:29 GMT -5
I mean the guy only has had 60 career AB's. Isn't it a little early to say he's just a really good up and down guy? He's 24 years old and he's improving. Why cant we give every prospect the respect we give Casas? Because not all prospects are created equal and the existing information prior to those 60 career at-bats still matters a lot.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 21, 2023 14:50:14 GMT -5
The lineup doesn’t matter? 😂 The stats say that the lineup doesn’t matter much. Additionally 3rd is less important than 1,2,4, and 5. 3rd despite the traditional value placed on it, actually is the 5th most important slot in the lineup. Since I don’t think the guy you’re responding to picked up on this the first time, I just want to make explicitly clear the topic is the ORDER of the lineup, not the players that are in it.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 20, 2023 21:42:21 GMT -5
A lefty hitting middle infielder is sooo valuable to have, even if he’s just not a guy you ever want to pencil in as a full-time starter
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 19, 2023 19:21:44 GMT -5
You know it’s a bomb when the outfield crowd doesn’t even move lol
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 19, 2023 10:39:16 GMT -5
Fun!
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 19, 2023 9:04:22 GMT -5
I care less about who ranks at the top of prospect lists than I do about who makes up MLB teams/regulars/stars. This is from Bleacher Report but should be easily verifiable. bleacherreport.com/articles/2894865-mlb-draft-2020-do-more-future-stars-come-from-high-school-or-collegeI think what this guy missed on the future piece is that college players are going to graduate from a list sooner. If you draft a player in year 0, but year 3, if he is a top prospect, he's probably in MLB, whereas that's far less likely for a high school draftee. Run that scenario over the draftees for 30 teams over 5 years and I think you're always going to have more HS guys on lists. One other thing I think makes it a little flawed (and this is admittedly going against my argument), is that there has been a trend towards drafting a greater number of college players with the new bonus demands, so it's as much of a quantity game as a quality game. So maybe you are going to have a higher number of college players be 5+ WAR guys, but you might not have a higher % of college draftees be 5+ WAR guys, if that makes sense. Now, you can still be a valuable MLB player without ever hitting 5 WAR, so I still think the data will be pretty favorable for college players, but that would be the type of numbers I'd like to see (and am fine with not seeing because it would be a ton of work that I'm not willing to do lol).
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 18, 2023 21:42:48 GMT -5
Blaze Jordan is a guy I would really like to be revisited at some point. If you told me before the season that he'd be running a .213 ISO (I don't know what average is but he's 13th in the system and higher than Kavadas so I'll take those things to mean it's at least good) while also only a 16.3 K%, I would've thought the hype would be a little more palpable. Yeah, I get he's first base only which makes it a little less exciting. Yeah, the walk rates aren't great. Yeah, the lower levels are a little diluted. But it's not like this is a senior Niko Kavadas or anything, he's 20 years old and hitting extremely well even without factoring in age advancement. Truthfully I am not even going to argue he should be ranked all that much higher, I could pretty comfortably make an argument for him over Wikelman but I think the top of the system is strong enough to where I get him being where he is. I more so would just be interested in a checkup on how his peripherals (swing and miss, chase rate, exit velo, stuff like that) are holding up and whether his performance so far fundamentally changes his outlook at all, even if it's jump bumping the FV on the hit from a 40 to a 45 or something. I mean, we knew he had power. Based on the April numbers, the 39% chase rate needs to come way down. Would like the hard-hit rate to come up too. Also sees the fourth-lowest pitches per plate appearance among hitters with 50 PA. That said, this is all SSS and he's been decent in May, so let's see what these look like on June 1. But yeah nothing there is terribly inspiring. “Inspiring” is a strong word but I’d argue that the K rate is a pretty good sign. Also, this season is certainly a small sample, but he’s also hit pretty consistently better than I’d have expected since he’s become a pro. He certainly has a lot of improvements still to make but I think he’s shown that he has the ability to continue to make them, which is nice to see from a guy that was expected by most to be pretty volatile.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 18, 2023 21:08:05 GMT -5
Blaze Jordan is a guy I would really like to be revisited at some point. If you told me before the season that he'd be running a .213 ISO (I don't know what average is but he's 13th in the system and higher than Kavadas so I'll take those things to mean it's at least good) while also only a 16.3 K%, I would've thought the hype would be a little more palpable. Yeah, I get he's first base only which makes it a little less exciting. Yeah, the walk rates aren't great. Yeah, the lower levels are a little diluted. But it's not like this is a senior Niko Kavadas or anything, he's 20 years old and hitting extremely well even without factoring in age advancement.
Truthfully I am not even going to argue he should be ranked all that much higher, I could pretty comfortably make an argument for him over Wikelman but I think the top of the system is strong enough to where I get him being where he is. I more so would just be interested in a checkup on how his peripherals (swing and miss, chase rate, exit velo, stuff like that) are holding up and whether his performance so far fundamentally changes his outlook at all, even if it's jump bumping the FV on the hit from a 40 to a 45 or something.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 18, 2023 20:27:21 GMT -5
Are there more high schoolers in the top 100 than collegiate? You only went to 20 lol Also, there are more than 100 minor leaguers at a time. Just FYI. “Choosing heads is the optimal strategy when flipping a coin because when I was flipping coins I got heads 21 times”. This conversation isn’t really going anywhere productive, so I’ll leave it at that comparison for you to do what you’d like with. I'll us Fangraphs preseason T100 because I can search for "HS" and "Signed" to get the breakdown, note that a few of the guys on the list may be different from MLB's updated T100, but it's easier than going through every page to see where they were drafted. From the Fangraphs preseason T100 HS - 43 International - 30 College - 27 This article is far from proving my point in its entirety, mostly because it doesn't talk about the hit rates of the individual archetypes, but I'd argue it is a better piece of evidence than anything you've provided because it talks about things that have actually happened as opposed to arbitrary prospecting rankings that don't *actually* mean anyting. A little dated but the general idea stands. And truthfully, I'd argue that this article even still overinflates the value of a high school player, because logic seems to follow that you're more likely to get a 1-2 WAR player from a collegiate as well, which is not represented here. bleacherreport.com/articles/2894865-mlb-draft-2020-do-more-future-stars-come-from-high-school-or-college
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 18, 2023 20:16:49 GMT -5
I never said it was a random snapshot in time, I said it was a convenient one, and you followed it up by proving my point. Anyway, if you value seeing Red Sox players on top 100 lists, that is certainly your right. I would rather the Boston Red Sox get good baseball player, and for that I don't think you have nor plan on providing any kind of relevant data or logic that'd show a high school player is inherently more valuable when it comes to accomplishing that. Should we use the 2018 prospect rankings instead to value the current prospect marketplace? Also do you think non T100 prospects has a better chance of becoming a good baseball player than a T100 prospect? If T100 prospects have a better chance of becoming a good baseball player than a T100 prospect, and more T100 prospects are HS players than college players, it suggests that a team should draft a HS player if they want a better chance of landing a T100 prospect who becomes a better player. This logic obviously doesn't work if you think non T100 prospects have a better chance of becoming a good baseball player than a T100 prospect. Are there more high schoolers in the top 100 than collegiate? You only went to 20 lol Also, there are more than 100 minor leaguers at a time. Just FYI. “Choosing heads is the optimal strategy when flipping a coin because when I was flipping coins I got heads 21 times”. This conversation isn’t really going anywhere productive, so I’ll leave it at that comparison for you to do what you’d like with.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 18, 2023 20:00:48 GMT -5
Drohan's fastball is more like a sinker. One of them that he tried to throw up in the zone for a swing and miss was crushed for a home run. This was his first statcast game. His fastball/sinker is very similar to Jordan Montgomery's data-wise. So what you're saying is Shane Drohan will be Jordan Montgomery. Got it. Expectations set, thank you!
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 18, 2023 19:58:03 GMT -5
I think that’s incomplete information if you’re trying to argue that they’re more valuable overall. It is a convenient snapshot in time that there aren’t any college guys in the top 20 (as opposed to last year when you’d have an Adley, a Torkelson, etc.) but the goal isn’t to get top prospects, it’s to get productive MLB players. I think most would agree that high school players represent higher upside types that are likely to be represented on prospect lists because of some of the reasons you mentioned, but without having the exact numbers off the rip it’s safe to assume the bust rate is also considerably higher. So I guess the non-answer way to conclude it is what is more valuable depends a lot on what you value, but I don’t think one is inherently more valuable than another in a vacuum if you’re talking about purely expected value. Also, I don’t mean this in a rude way, but pulling those numbers isn’t exactly rocket science so I think if there were actually something there you’d see teams pivot to exclusively investing high picks on high school players, which you don’t see happen and likely won’t in the future (because one archetype doesn’t inherently carry more value than the other). It's not some random snapshot in time haha, its the current picture of the prospect marketplace. Even in 2021 the T10 breakdown was: 5 HS, 2 International, 3 College. Sure, you'll get a few college guys every few years who go 1-1 and make T10 immediately, but looking at college players as a whole leads a lot to be desired in current prospect rankings and its not because a bunch got promoted recently. Also the split between college and HS in the draft IIRC is pretty even most years. Despite that, we see the disparity in T100 prospects previously and currently. For that reason, if you want to get a T100 prospect, you have a better change of getting one if you go HS over college statistically. Does that mean they will a better major leaguer? No. Does it mean that they are more valuable to the organization when they are a prospect? I believe so. I also think you see teams going college guys for 2 reasons: 1) money, 2) timeline. The Red Sox shouldn't have landed Mayer in the 2021 draft, but did so because the Pirates went money and timeline and took the less valuable player because he was closer to making an impact than the HS shortstop and should have been cheaper. I never said it was a random snapshot in time, I said it was a convenient one, and you followed it up by proving my point. Anyway, if you value seeing Red Sox players on top 100 lists, that is certainly your right. I would rather the Boston Red Sox get good baseball player, and for that I don't think you have nor plan on providing any kind of relevant data or logic that'd show a high school player is inherently more valuable when it comes to accomplishing that.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 18, 2023 19:14:58 GMT -5
Is there actual data that supports this? There is. Look at the updated MLB Top 100 list: Of the Top 10: 7 HS , 3 International, 0 College Of the Top 20: 14 HS, 6 International, 0 College I first heard about this value of HS prospects during a BA podcast produced concurrent with their T100 list earlier this season. The rankers said that when valuing prospects, younger players are always more exiting than a comparable college player because they have more room for error and more projection. Younger guys have the ability to improve physically unlike most college players and that increases their upside. Also, HS players can have a bad season or two in the minors and still reach the majors at a young age. Look at a guy like Nick Yorke who is bouncing back in AA this season after a tough/injury year. Yorke's still only 21 and on track to reach the MLB when he's 23-24. If Nick Yorke were a junior in college he'd be 21 when he gets drafted and a few tough/injury seasons set his MLB track back to 25-26. MLB teams will always prefer the younger guy because they can struggle in the MLB for a few seasons and still be younger than college guys who enter the MLB when they turn 25. I guarantee Bobby Dalbac would have more trade value right now if he were 25 instead of 27. I think that’s incomplete information if you’re trying to argue that they’re more valuable overall. It is a convenient snapshot in time that there aren’t any college guys in the top 20 (as opposed to last year when you’d have an Adley, a Torkelson, etc.) but the goal isn’t to get top prospects, it’s to get productive MLB players. I think most would agree that high school players represent higher upside types that are likely to be represented on prospect lists because of some of the reasons you mentioned, but without having the exact numbers off the rip it’s safe to assume the bust rate is also considerably higher. So I guess the non-answer way to conclude it is what is more valuable depends a lot on what you value, but I don’t think one is inherently more valuable than another in a vacuum if you’re talking about purely expected value. Also, I don’t mean this in a rude way, but pulling those numbers isn’t exactly rocket science so I think if there were actually something there you’d see teams pivot to exclusively investing high picks on high school players, which you don’t see happen and likely won’t in the future (because one archetype doesn’t inherently carry more value than the other).
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 18, 2023 13:09:41 GMT -5
Can you humor me and let me know the 5ish guys that went after pick 50? In order: Alexander Clemmey, Travis Sykora, Josh Knoth, Will Sanders, Alex Mooney, Mike Boeve, AJ Ewing, Josh Rivera, Brice Matthews, Jackson Baumeister, Spencer Nivens. Will Sanders would be interesting there even though his star has dimmed a bit this year, although if last year's pitching draftees were an indication of a "type", I'm not sure he fits it.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 18, 2023 13:06:26 GMT -5
Still think the sox go HS bat up the middle because they are inherently more valuable and have a longer development runway. Is there actual data that supports this?
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 18, 2023 13:06:03 GMT -5
If you click on the 2019 draft class in the "Draft History" page, it destroys the links to the other draft classes
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 18, 2023 12:20:44 GMT -5
Can you humor me and let me know the 5ish guys that went after pick 50?
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 18, 2023 12:17:55 GMT -5
I'm starting to get really in on Matt Shaw. Welcome to the party! Not going to post my whole rant on draft strategy again but assuming the potential fallers don't fall I think he'll be the guy I want the absolute most, with Tommy Troy and Kyle Teel just behind.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 17, 2023 15:06:30 GMT -5
Selling high on Kavadas, in my eyes, would be if he hits well enough to get to Pawtucket and continues to hit well enough to where a team would be willing to trade some semblance of a prospect haul for him in the event of a first baseman injury or just if they need a platoon guy. With Casas likely to be here for the long haul, I think he's pretty blocked here, but he's also not going to have any real value until he's essentially major league "ready", IMO. This sounds right to me. Well, except the Pawtucket part, that'd just be missing the exit for the Pike or 495 on his way down from Maine. But also, what you're talking about here is holding onto him as he builds up his value, which is the opposite of selling high. It’s not the opposite of selling high if that represents the most likely “high” point. If you trade him now you’re not getting anything for him, so the high point in reality would have been pretty much as soon as he could’ve been traded post-draft.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 17, 2023 14:46:43 GMT -5
I mean he's already hitting something like .093 against LHP. I'd really sell high on Kavadas while you can... Sell high in what way? Not sure other teams are looking at his two-week SLG and scrambling to buy. They can see the strikeout rates, problems with lefties, and trouble with breaking stuff too. It's not a high-value profile, so if the Red Sox think he can figure out the hole in his swing then he's worth more as a hold. Trading someone when they're playing well ≠ selling high. Selling high on Kavadas, in my eyes, would be if he hits well enough to get to Pawtucket and continues to hit well enough to where a team would be willing to trade some semblance of a prospect haul for him in the event of a first baseman injury or just if they need a platoon guy. With Casas likely to be here for the long haul, I think he's pretty blocked here, but he's also not going to have any real value until he's essentially major league "ready", IMO.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 17, 2023 12:17:58 GMT -5
Maybe the staff can work with him on his approach. The power's not a problem, that's certain. But yeah, he's got to be able to get to the ball more often. I would hope they've been working with him on it since August 1st, 2021 haha
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 17, 2023 10:33:01 GMT -5
Taking a long term view ++ Jarren Duran is the most significant development. He's gone from an afterthought to now looking like a guy who could give you 10 cheap WAR. + Long term pitching on the ML roster is about holding serve, some up a little, some down a little. This is Houck, Whitlock, Bello, Winckowski, Crawford and Schreiber. I will give them a plus for zero arm surgeries. + Shane Drohan has taken a leap forward and is now in the big group of guys you could reasonably stick at the end of a top 100 prospects list. If he gets through the year healthy he should be an early 2024 major league contributor. + Yoshida's contract looks pretty good + Long term hitting prospects are doing pretty good. Marcelo is the most important guy and he's been good. Bleis won't be on the Ronald Acuna career path, but he's been okay. Yorke has been good, and there's a handful of lower tier guys improving their stock. Nobody has really fallen off a cliff. = Devers is the most important guy in the org and he's holding steady. He's been murdering the ball, getting unlucky, has shown worsening plate discipline and improving defense. = Next wave of hitting prospects is holding serve. Abreu and Hamilton have increased their stock. Valdez has hit in the majors, but not the minors, and his defense is as bad as advertised. Rafaela is the most important guy in this group and his stock has fallen some. - Casas' bat has been a little bit worse than expected, although he's currently on a major heater so I don't think there is much concern there. His defense has been much worse than expected, unfortunately. - Next wave of pitching prospects is looking like an airball. Mata and Murphy are playing themselves off the 40 man roster, and Walter has just been an average AAA pitcher coming back from his significant injury. Expectations were not especially high for this group, at least. - A-ball pitching has been a disaster. None of these guys were significant investments, but very few are playing well. What criteria are you using to base your perceptions of the lower level prospects on? It seems like you're just going off of the basic stats which, for one, I'd argue is a flawed way to go about it, but I'm also confused about the seeming inconsistency between calling the A-ball pitching a "disaster" while saying Bleis has been "okay".
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 16, 2023 22:13:37 GMT -5
Christopher Troye has struck out 31 of the 62 batters he's faced so far.... seems good! Nice to see him building off of some preseason buzz, I'd imagine once someone out of that Guerrero/Fernandez/Dehlinger group gets promoted to Worcester, he's the likely candidate to fill that void as he's already old-ish for his level.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on May 16, 2023 10:39:23 GMT -5
Would be interesting to know if that is tied to a development in a secondary pitch, or if he's just overpowering guys with the fastball. Either way, exciting indicator given he's so young still.
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