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Baseball Prospectus Red Sox Top 10
jimoh
Veteran
Posts: 3,990
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Post by jimoh on Jan 8, 2014 15:54:53 GMT -5
Wow, really? Instead of Parks thinking that maybe some people with high obp in the minors won't have it in the majors? That's how I read/heard "Some people see his OBP and get weak in the knees over his value" You don't understand the concept of plate discipline. Yeah, Parks doesn't understand the importance of plate discipline and I don't understand the concept itself. Those are both equally plausible claims.
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Post by jimed14 on Jan 8, 2014 15:56:29 GMT -5
To everyone freaking out that Parks doesn't think highly enough of Cecchini, you realize that he has him in the top 101 still, right? This isn't like when Keith Law (correctly) said that Bowden wouldn't be a successful MLB starter. I don't freak out about it, but it's more that he's about the only person who thinks WMB will be better than Cecchini. I think it's also that we are getting completely spoiled and think all of our prospects are awesome.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jan 8, 2014 17:08:26 GMT -5
To everyone freaking out that Parks doesn't think highly enough of Cecchini, you realize that he has him in the top 101 still, right? This isn't like when Keith Law (correctly) said that Bowden wouldn't be a successful MLB starter. I don't freak out about it, but it's more that he's about the only person who thinks WMB will be better than Cecchini. I think it's also that we are getting completely spoiled and think all of our prospects are awesome. Not true at all. BA has Middlebrooks ahead of Cecchini on their under-25 list as well.
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Post by jimed14 on Jan 8, 2014 17:30:58 GMT -5
I don't freak out about it, but it's more that he's about the only person who thinks WMB will be better than Cecchini. I think it's also that we are getting completely spoiled and think all of our prospects are awesome. Not true at all. BA has Middlebrooks ahead of Cecchini on their under-25 list as well. I'm mixing things up. I know I've seen Parks talking Cecchini down on Twitter or somewhere, mainly when people question him.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jan 8, 2014 19:57:17 GMT -5
Not true at all. BA has Middlebrooks ahead of Cecchini on their under-25 list as well. I'm mixing things up. I know I've seen Parks talking Cecchini down on Twitter or somewhere, mainly when people question him. Mixing what up? Parks is big on managing people's expectations. Being in the top 101 doesn't mean a guy is a future superstar. Hell, being in the top 50 doesn't. I honestly don't see a huge disconnect between what BA's rankings and what Parks' rankings say about Cecchini. And again, the order these guys are ranked in doesn't mean NEARLY as much as what is being said about the player. Both outlets say big league regular, as do we. This is a good thing.
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Post by thelavarnwayguy on Jan 8, 2014 21:39:15 GMT -5
I thought Parks showed a lot of insight in the podcast. Overall I think he was giving some great comments for our guys. And it was straight shooting from all indications. One of the best podcasts yet.
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Post by moonstone2 on Jan 8, 2014 23:54:11 GMT -5
The reason why there are so few sites left that take a statistically minded approach to evaluating and analyzing prospects is very simple. It was done and it was a complete and utter abject failure. JP Riccardi's Blue Jays didn't produce players who lived up to their minor league statistics. Brendan Harris really was a utility player. Jeff Natale didn't play a day in the majors despite keyboard jockeys who had never seen a game in their life insisting he was a future star. Heck the famous 2002 "Moneyball" draft really didn't produce above average results and produced only one above average major leaguer. Sites that put org players in their top 100 prospects because of their strong statistics are gone and with good reason.
The problem is that there isn't a complete linear relationship between minor league performance and major league performance. This is especially true with plate discipline numbers that SABR guys value highly. There are so many pitchers in the minors that can't consistently throw strikes. If you know what you are doing, you can easily walk in 20% of your plate appearances as Cecchini did. But that doesn't translate to the majors where most pitchers can throw strikes.
You can't add value by pounding the table about some guy with huge walk rates in A ball despite low power.
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Post by brianthetaoist on Jan 9, 2014 7:05:08 GMT -5
The reason why there are so few sites left that take a statistically minded approach to evaluating and analyzing prospects is very simple. It was done and it was a complete and utter abject failure. JP Riccardi's Blue Jays didn't produce players who lived up to their minor league statistics. Brendan Harris really was a utility player. Jeff Natale didn't play a day in the majors despite keyboard jockeys who had never seen a game in their life insisting he was a future star. Heck the famous 2002 "Moneyball" draft really didn't produce above average results and produced only one above average major leaguer. Sites that put org players in their top 100 prospects because of their strong statistics are gone and with good reason. The problem is that there isn't a complete linear relationship between minor league performance and major league performance. This is especially true with plate discipline numbers that SABR guys value highly. There are so many pitchers in the minors that can't consistently throw strikes. If you know what you are doing, you can easily walk in 20% of your plate appearances as Cecchini did. But that doesn't translate to the majors where most pitchers can throw strikes. You can't add value by pounding the table about some guy with huge walk rates in A ball despite low power. I'm not sure if that bolded statement is about Cecchini, but it's a common refrain about him ... but the guy had a nearly .200 ISO last year in Salem. So I'm not exactly sure where the "Cecchini has not demonstrated power" attitude comes from. I'm with Sickels on Cecchini; I think he's going to be a terrific hitter at the major league level. I also think he's likely to stick at 3rd.
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Post by chavopepe2 on Jan 9, 2014 7:22:28 GMT -5
The reason why there are so few sites left that take a statistically minded approach to evaluating and analyzing prospects is very simple. It was done and it was a complete and utter abject failure. JP Riccardi's Blue Jays didn't produce players who lived up to their minor league statistics. Brendan Harris really was a utility player. Jeff Natale didn't play a day in the majors despite keyboard jockeys who had never seen a game in their life insisting he was a future star. Heck the famous 2002 "Moneyball" draft really didn't produce above average results and produced only one above average major leaguer. Sites that put org players in their top 100 prospects because of their strong statistics are gone and with good reason. The problem is that there isn't a complete linear relationship between minor league performance and major league performance. This is especially true with plate discipline numbers that SABR guys value highly. There are so many pitchers in the minors that can't consistently throw strikes. If you know what you are doing, you can easily walk in 20% of your plate appearances as Cecchini did. But that doesn't translate to the majors where most pitchers can throw strikes. You can't add value by pounding the table about some guy with huge walk rates in A ball despite low power. You're completely missing the point. No one is saying that we want a site to exclusively rank prospects by the statistics they produce. If 50% of the closest comps to Mookie Betts bust, I want a site that tells me that. If low minors bb% and k% corrode by an average of 25% in AA and another 35% in AAA then I want to see that analysis. How much of a difference does it make historically if the prospect is 20 vs. 23. Pointing out a couple examples of players that didn't scout well, but produced doesn't prove anything. I could just as easily kick and scream about Daniel Nava and that would mean just as little. We want a place that takes the theory you just presented regarding low minors walk rates and shows it to be true. I don't want someone just telling me walk rates in the minors don't matter... SHOW ME! Break out a batch of prospects who derived much of there value from walk rates and compare that to a baseline. You very well may be right in your theory, but the point is a site that is focused on the statistical side can show exactly what you are theorizing is true. That's what we want to see.
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Post by ozebaseball on Jan 9, 2014 7:55:34 GMT -5
He also noted that RDLR was well on his way to being better than what Workman could be before his injury. He expects RDLR to make a big leap this year since he is a year out from Tommy John and if he does that he is a more dominant pitcher than Workman as either a starter or relief pitcher. Just for the record, RDLR's surgery was in August 2011, so roughly 2.5 years ago already. Apart from the 'year out from TJ' being wrong, it is folly to compare pitchers based on what perceptions of what they could be were 3+ years ago.
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Post by moonstone2 on Jan 9, 2014 8:00:12 GMT -5
The guy has 14 home runs in over 1200 professional plate appearances and had an ISO of 108 in Portland which if anything should carry more weight. His ISO in Salem implies 50+ doubles/triples a year.
But more to the point, what do you base your opinion on? If it's just his statistical record, then I reiterate. You can't project a player to be a star who will stick at 3B based on his performance against inferior competition.
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jimoh
Veteran
Posts: 3,990
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Post by jimoh on Jan 9, 2014 8:04:44 GMT -5
The guy has 14 home runs in over 1200 professional plate appearances and had an ISO of 108 in Portland which if anything should carry more weight. His ISO in Salem implies 50+ doubles/triples a year. But more to the point, what do you base your opinion on? If it's just his statistical record, then I reiterate. You can't project a player to be a star who will stick at 3B based on his performance against inferior competition. I think the way that Cecchini's power faded after his promotion last year is very concerning, and I remember noticing it happening day by day even as he continued to get on base. Whether it was needing to adjust or fatigue or a sign of his true level of talent is unclear. Time will tell.
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Post by brianthetaoist on Jan 9, 2014 8:26:23 GMT -5
The guy has 14 home runs in over 1200 professional plate appearances and had an ISO of 108 in Portland which if anything should carry more weight. His ISO in Salem implies 50+ doubles/triples a year. But more to the point, what do you base your opinion on? If it's just his statistical record, then I reiterate. You can't project a player to be a star who will stick at 3B based on his performance against inferior competition. Not sure what you mean by those two comments. Why should it carry more weight? And what about 50+ doubles/triples is bad? I assume you're saying that's an outlandish number? I'm not really sure "his ISO number is Salem is clearly off because it's really terrific" is all that persuasive to me. It reminds me of a guy (Joe Foy?) here in the early days that used to argue with me that Pedroia's A and AA stats should be discounted because they were clearly too high, unsustainable. I'm high on Cecchini because a) I've seen him play and was impressed by his swing, approach, and athletic ability at the plate; b) he's shown sustained stretches of power to go along with outlandish OBP numbers; and c) I think people are making too big a deal of his defense at third. I didn't see enough to really know about his defense, but I don't think most of the people saying he'll need to move did, either (I saw 3-4 games with him where he had to make plays). But he looked athletic enough, and I just don't think there's a hard enough baseline of athletic ability needed to play third base for anyone to make an assessment like that without long, extended looks. And I've just gotten really, really skeptical of these kinds of statements about defense over the years of watching prospects ... I really only take much account of that if there's an obvious athletic limitation, like "he's just too slow for centerfield." And, finally, I think he's got a terrific approach to the game, which makes me think he'll continue to get better.
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Post by elguapo on Jan 9, 2014 10:37:52 GMT -5
He expects RDLR to make a big leap this year since he is a year out from Tommy John and if he does that he is a more dominant pitcher than Workman as either a starter or relief pitcher. Just for the record, RDLR's surgery was in August 2011, so roughly 2.5 years ago already. Apart from the 'year out from TJ' being wrong, it is folly to compare pitchers based on what perceptions of what they could be were 3+ years ago. Arguing over semantics. First year post-TJ can be rough especially on control. RDLR is a year out from returning from TJ, and could very well take off performance-wise as well as build on his 92 inning workload from 2013. He ramped up slowly with some poor outings, was dominant for a while, then lost it a bit in the back part of the season. Plenty of room for optimism without judging him entirely on results from his first full season back, which I believe was the point.
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Post by mainesox on Jan 9, 2014 10:40:49 GMT -5
The guy has 14 home runs in over 1200 professional plate appearances and had an ISO of 108 in Portland which if anything should carry more weight. His ISO in Salem implies 50+ doubles/triples a year. But more to the point, what do you base your opinion on? If it's just his statistical record, then I reiterate. You can't project a player to be a star who will stick at 3B based on his performance against inferior competition. I think the way that Cecchini's power faded after his promotion last year is very concerning, and I remember noticing it happening day by day even as he continued to get on base. Whether it was needing to adjust or fatigue or a sign of his true level of talent is unclear. Time will tell. I'm not sure how much weight to put on his decreased power after his promotion, and I agree that it is concerning, at least to a point, but the jump from A ball to AA is supposed to be the toughest jump these guys make, and the eastern league isn't exactly a good place to hit (the Carolina league is an even worse place to hit, for what it's worth - actually that seems to be a theme among Red Sox affiliate's leagues, right down to the DCL and GCL; I wonder if that's coincidence or intentional?).
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Post by jimed14 on Jan 9, 2014 10:43:00 GMT -5
JBJ and Cecchini are almost exactly a year apart in age and games played per level. JBJ's ISO stayed identical in AA while Cecchini's fell off a cliff. It is concerning.
JBJ - 4/19/1990
2012 A+ .167 304 PA - AA .166 271 PA 2013 AAA .194 374 PA
Cecchini - 4/20/1991
2013 A+ .196 262 PA - AA .108 295 PA
That ISO has to bounce back for Cecchini pretty quick for me to believe his prospect status is worthy at this point.
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Post by mainesox on Jan 9, 2014 11:41:19 GMT -5
JBJ and Cecchini are almost exactly a year apart in age and games played per level. JBJ's ISO stayed identical in AA while Cecchini's fell off a cliff. It is concerning. JBJ - 4/19/1990 2012 A+ .167 304 PA - AA .166 271 PA 2013 AAA .194 374 PA Cecchini - 4/20/1991 2013 A+ .196 262 PA - AA .108 295 PA That ISO has to bounce back for Cecchini pretty quick for me to believe his prospect status is worthy at this point. I don't think taking what one player did over half a season and comparing it to what one other player did over half a season is all that meaningful. Sure, it's concerning any time a player has a marked drop in production, but the fact that one other player didn't doesn't make it more concerning, and a drop in production jumping to AA is pretty common.
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Post by mattpicard on Jan 9, 2014 14:05:58 GMT -5
Yeah, it's not fair to get really down on Cecchini just because he posted a low ISO during the second half of the season, considering its a) under 300 PAs, and b) he got a significant promotion where he still hit pretty well and got on base a ton. Now, if he gets up to 600+ PAs between AA and AAA and is still ISOing around .100-.140, then that is a bit more concerning. Still, even if his power doesn't fill out over the next couple seasons, I'm not looking to move a .300/.380/.415 guy with average defense at the hot corner off the position just because he's not going yard as much as people would like out of a corner player. It's not like he's a pure singles hitter either - he seems like he'll rack up plenty of doubles over his career.
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Post by brianthetaoist on Jan 9, 2014 14:28:02 GMT -5
You know who else hit for average, few HRs and people thought was a sub-par defensive third baseman?
Hitler.
Oh no, sorry ... Wade Boggs.
OK, OK, that was a deliberately provocative half-joke, which is why I threw out the Hitler reference ... I'm going to make a corollary to Godwin's Law for prospect message boards (BrainToast's Law): the longer a discussion about a prospect goes on, the probability that a HoF comp gets thrown out there approaches 1.
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Post by jimed14 on Jan 9, 2014 14:42:59 GMT -5
You know who else hit for average, few HRs and people thought was a sub-par defensive third baseman? Hitler. Oh no, sorry ... Wade Boggs. OK, OK, that was a deliberately provocative half-joke, which is why I threw out the Hitler reference ... I'm going to make a corollary to Godwin's Law for prospect message boards (BrainToast's Law): the longer a discussion about a prospect goes on, the probability that a HoF comp gets thrown out there approaches 1. Maybe if Cecchini had an 80 hit tool we could go there. I know it's a joke, not sure why I'm responding. lol
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Post by wcsoxfan on Jan 9, 2014 16:03:52 GMT -5
The guy has 14 home runs in over 1200 professional plate appearances and had an ISO of 108 in Portland which if anything should carry more weight. His ISO in Salem implies 50+ doubles/triples a year. But more to the point, what do you base your opinion on? If it's just his statistical record, then I reiterate. You can't project a player to be a star who will stick at 3B based on his performance against inferior competition. Maybe this last point should push us to evaluate minor leaguers statistically based on their performance vs the top minor league talent. Obviously this would take quite a bit of work and would include a fair amount of subjectivity, but I wonder what Cecchini's stats were when faced off against the top 40% of prospects in the minors. Do they remain high? Or did he kill all of the current/future minor league filler/dropouts? There could be an equilibrium between an unusable SSS and an all-inclusive sampling, which grants us a strong statistical basis for predicting future major league performance.
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Post by wcsoxfan on Jan 9, 2014 16:07:46 GMT -5
You know who else hit for average, few HRs and people thought was a sub-par defensive third baseman? Hitler. Oh no, sorry ... Wade Boggs. OK, OK, that was a deliberately provocative half-joke, which is why I threw out the Hitler reference ... I'm going to make a corollary to Godwin's Law for prospect message boards (BrainToast's Law): the longer a discussion about a prospect goes on, the probability that a HoF comp gets thrown out there approaches 1. Nah - I imagine that Hitler would have had a higher .iso and his defense would have force him to move off his position in order to stick around. That offense only sustained him for so long. Wonder if he liked chicken
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Post by wcsoxfan on Jan 9, 2014 16:17:17 GMT -5
I'm not sure if that bolded statement is about Cecchini, but it's a common refrain about him ... but the guy had a nearly .200 ISO last year in Salem. So I'm not exactly sure where the "Cecchini has not demonstrated power" attitude comes from. I'm with Sickels on Cecchini; I think he's going to be a terrific hitter at the major league level. I also think he's likely to stick at 3rd. I think these newly minted hall of famers could explain it to you better than I could:
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Post by moonstone2 on Jan 11, 2014 13:53:47 GMT -5
That may be but I don't find the logic of assuming a player who hits a double or a triple in nearly 11% of his just over 200 PAs in A ball is going to do that consistently in the majors very convincing either. No qualified player has gotten over 8% over the last three years.
I often see this as a defense of players who walk a lot in the minors. There seems to be an opinion that these types of players will improve faster/more than everyone else. I don't really see any evidence that this is true. There have been plenty of players who walked a lot in the minors who stagnated for whatever reason. Ryan Lavarnway is a perfect example of this.
I also think you are misinterpreting Jason and Chris' opinion of the player. They like Cecchini a lot and rated him highly mainly for a lot of the reasons you did. They didn't say he would definitely have to move, only that his defense would be average in the most optimistic scenario. He projects most likely at a .280/.370/.420 hitter in LF with a very good chance of reaching that. That's valuable property in my book. They also noted that Cecchini as Kevin Youkilis did could figure out a way to start putting balls over the fence and up that HR total from 10-15 to 20-25. If he were to do that AND play an average 3B, as Jason noted, he'd be a star.
You aren't all that clear, but it feels as though you are projecting the most optimistic development scenario as the most likely development scenario. From following prospects as long as you have, you know players very rarely have a development trajectory where everything breaks right. Hence the title of Jason's column.
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Post by moonstone2 on Jan 11, 2014 14:04:39 GMT -5
The guy has 14 home runs in over 1200 professional plate appearances and had an ISO of 108 in Portland which if anything should carry more weight. His ISO in Salem implies 50+ doubles/triples a year. But more to the point, what do you base your opinion on? If it's just his statistical record, then I reiterate. You can't project a player to be a star who will stick at 3B based on his performance against inferior competition. Maybe this last point should push us to evaluate minor leaguers statistically based on their performance vs the top minor league talent. Obviously this would take quite a bit of work and would include a fair amount of subjectivity, but I wonder what Cecchini's stats were when faced off against the top 40% of prospects in the minors. Do they remain high? Or did he kill all of the current/future minor league filler/dropouts? There could be an equilibrium between an unusable SSS and an all-inclusive sampling, which grants us a strong statistical basis for predicting future major league performance. There are a few problems with that too other than the SSS problem that you noted. #1 Even the top minor league prospects are in A ball because they have things to work on. Often they are still developing their command, or refining their secondary pitches. A lot of them don't know yet how to properly set up a hitter and sequence pitches. #2 The object in the majors is to win and that's not the only objective in the minors. Some pitchers maybe working on a new pitch, or refining an old one. They may throw that pitch more than they normally would. Guys who happen to have advanced approaches can take advantage of that whereas they wouldn't be able to do that three years down the road with the same guy. The Jeff Natale's of the world didn't just feast on the future Sunday softball coaches, they also did well against pitchers who were still learning.
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