BA Position Rankings

Starting in AAA.  There's no room on the roster for him until guys get injured.

We're opposite view here. My opinion but BA is significantly better than BP. The loss of Nate Silver was the final death blow. Yes Callis will be missed but Speier in his place isn't chopped liver.

Speier doesn't compare to Callis when talking prospects only. Nor should he. It's what Callis does, while Alex does a lot more. Speier comes across as very RS fanboy with regards to the prospects and his focus is basically in their system and team (which is what he's paid to do) so his perspective on the rest of baseball is most likely much less informed compared to a guy like Callis. Not a knock on Speier, it's not his job to be a minor league expert. It's to know the Red Sox

Yes I realize all above but Speier has input regarding the Red Sox in general even if he isn't replacing all of Callis' functions. Let's keep in mind that we are mostly familiar with Callis because he was the analyst for the Red Sox and he had been doing that for 20 years. If it was Badler that had been covering the Sox, we'd likely be much more familiar with Badler.

None of these services have the resources to cover all of the prospects across baseball, even Callis had to rely on the opinions of his contacts, his job wasn't scouting. I'm pretty sure that when it comes to contacts, Speier has as many Red Sox contacts as Callis had. I also believe that BA always had and has the better contacts and that BP's historical strength was the cyber side of the coverage which I also thought was a BA weakness. Now I don't see anybody replacing Silver's cyber analyst function at BP so I don't see them as having any strengths.

My opinion has nothing to do with how they rank the Red Sox this year. MLB ranked our Sox pretty highly and I'm still not enamored with Mayo. If BP ranked the Sox as the highest system, I still wouldn't think any more highly of Parks than I do of Mayo.

Who's opinion we have the most faith in is a matter of opinion and that's mine, others have different opinions. When it comes specifically to Red Sox players and prospects, the general consensus of this site is who I ultimately have the most faith in and that's what's most important to me. We have an advantage in that area, we really don't need to spend much time thinking about 30 teams and we don't have to publish our collective thoughts on a once a year basis.

Pardon my ignorance, but what does Appel's ranking among draft prospects have to do with where he ranks among other prospects? I would think comparing one with the other is the prospect ranking equivalent of comparing apples with oranges. If not, could someone tell me why I'm wrong? I'm trying to understand this prospect ranking stuff more this year.

Apologies, Mantush, a very fair question.

Appel is a college pitcher that was considered safe as he was/is advanced, but with considerable talent. For those reasons, he was thought to be the top draft pick in the first year he was draft eligible, where he was forgone because of his perceived bonus demands, as well as the next year, where he actually selected as the top pick.

Most top draft picks are considered to be highly ranked in the top 100 prospects overall, like top 25. Appel was consensus #1, or at least top two, for two years running. That's one point, of BA's own making, to suggest that he might be better than where they ranked him positionally (advanced, good raw stuff). He's barely top 20 for RHPs alone?

The plain fact is no other publication that utilizes scouting input would place him behind CJ Edwards and Kyle Crick, among others. We could surely all be wrong five years from now, but they demonstrate nothing to suggest they are talking to more or smarter scouts, or are themselves smarter than the consensus collected by BP, MLB, or ESPN, among others, to think someone like Mark Appel is no longer in the top tier of starter talent.

In short, it has a strong whiff of whimsy, suggesting no one person is running the show, or at least currying consensus among contributors. Sure, it's all subjective, but it's not relative. Make an argument, and have some data to back it up. And for the love of pete, have a clear, consistent, transparent system for evaluation so I can understand why you like one guy over the next, preferably with a lot of outside perspective. Otherwise you're just me spouting off on the other bar stool, and that's not worth paying a round for.

What are you talking about? Silver had nothing to do with BP's prospect coverage.

Shooting from recollection here:

Back in the days when we used to imply that the Yankees were overselling their prospects (when the 3 B's were very highly thought of), I specifically remember how Callis addressed that in some podcast (the topic in general, not MFY only).
What he said was that he didn't think that was the case because the people they talk to don't treat them like idiots and wouldn't want their own credibility hurt by overselling anyone. He went on to say that for every top 20 prospect on every team, they get at least 10 in team opinions and an equal number of other team opinions..

Their job isn't analyzing players, their job is coming up with a consensus view. If they are relatively down on Appel, it's because the people they talked to are down on Appel more than the people others talk to. I would find it extremely difficult to believe that any other service besides Baseball America has anywhere near as many contacts and inputs as Baseball America does, with or without Callis.

To reiterate, you're blowing steam. Nate Silver developed the projection system. He had nothing whatsoever to do with prospect analysis. It was Kevin Goldstein who developed that side of it, exclusively. I actually think Parks does a better job given the excellent staff he has at his disposal. And I do like it.

BP still does all sorts of stathead stuff, but all the easy stuff was cleaned out years ago. That's why analysts have turned to Pitch f/x, to be followed by Hit + Field f/x. That level of detail takes us into a whole new realm. I'll predict right now that Field f/x will revolutionize defensive metrics, with precise timing and route information for outfielders as just one example.

The flood of data has changed the very nature of statistical analysis. If you have all the elements of a data set, you don't need assumptions about its distribution anymore. Its a brand new day.

Add: ...and please consolidate your posts.

Sure, it's all subjective, but it's not relative. Make an argument, and have some data to back it up. And for the love of pete, have a clear, consistent, transparent system for evaluation so I can understand why you like one guy over the next, preferably with a lot of outside perspective. Otherwise you're just me spouting off on the other bar stool, and that's not worth paying a round for. [/quote]

I don't think a clear, consistent, transparent system for evaluating prospects is the sane as ranking them. You can have your system for grading tools. You can categorize things like make-up, proximity to majors, floors, ceilings and even expected outcome, but every player should have such a different profile that figuring out how to rank them with all the different variables is anything but clear and consistent. Add in the fact that these lists are collaborative and it's even more murky. It's why people have started to go with groupings and basically tell us "you guys love lists so we put numbers go them, but you can pretty much take the players between this number and that and put in any order and we won't argue."

Nate Silver would have nothing to do with that, and BP started as a book anyway.