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How Often are Frontline Pitchers Projected as Less?
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Nov 6, 2014 13:26:16 GMT -5
Point stands even for those guys. I'm just afraid "but Eric's study said" will become the new "but Greg Maddux didn't have great velocity." Well yeah. But I've argued pretty much the same thing as the premise of this thread based on the absurd results that Owens has gotten at every level with the exception of his end of year slides when approaching his innings limit. I liked it when he was compared to Pedroia regarding looking at the results rather than what you think a guy that looks like him is going to do in the majors. Was that Speier? Was indeed Speier in the BA chat. I found that particular tidbit interesting as well. (Admission: completely forgot to mention it to him on the podcast.) My thought then, is what is the skill that the scouts miss? With Pedroia, it was otherworldly eye-hand coordination that allows him to swing from his toes every time (it's easy to think that he was discounted because he was small, but it wasn't just that - it was that the scouts thought the swing would never play against MLB stuff, and if it weren't for this, they would've likely been right), plus a uniquely dogged work ethic and attitude. With Owens, it'd probably be something like his pitchability and mound mentality? Not sure whether or not those rise to Pedroia levels. We will certainly see.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 6, 2014 13:42:34 GMT -5
Let's start with the aces, and do the #2's (actually quite a bit more interesting, I think) tomorrow.
There are 33 aces. Fully 11 of them were projected or talked about as potential #1 starters, were ranked by BA in the top 20 in MLB and #1 on their team, and got grades of A or A- from Sickels. (Note that I don't have his 2003 or 2013 books -- if anyone has them handy, I'll add the missing data, and I'll work on getting them in the meanwhile.)
Ace and #2 are the number of such seasons. Pr# is Prospect Ranking in BA's Handbook.
Name Ace #2 Tot BA Yr Tm Pr# JS C. C. Sabathia 4 7 11 7 2001 Cle 1 A- Roy Oswalt 4 4 9 13 2001 Hou 1 A Josh Beckett 3 3 6 1 2002 Fla 1 A Zack Greinke 2 5 7 14 2004 KC 1 A Felix Hernandez 4 4 8 2 2005 Sea 1 A Just. Verlander 3 4 7 8 2006 Det 1 A Tim Lincecum 2 2 4 11 2007 SF 1 A- Clayton Kershaw 5 1 6 7 2008 LAN 1 A David Price 2 1 3 2 2009 TB 1 A Chris Sale 3 0 3 20 2011 ChA 1 A Jose Fernandez 1 0 1 5 2013 Mia 1 ? Another 9 aces were talked about as potential #2's, and were ranked 21-60 in BA's top 100, and among their team's top 5; most got a B+ from Sickels. The exception, Cole Hamels, was only ranked 68 because of health concerns; he had previously been ranked #17.
Note that the 21-30 range in a given year may include guys who are talked about as aces or as #2's, the borderline varying with the depth of the prospect pool.
Name Ace Two Tot BA Yr Tm Pr# JS Jake Peavy 3 2 5 28 2002 SD 3 A- Cliff Lee 5 1 6 30 2003 Cle 3 ? Cole Hamels 3 4 7 68 2006 Phi 1 B+ Jered Weaver 3 4 7 57 2006 LAA 5 B+ Jon Lester 3 3 6 22 2006 Bos 2 B+ John Danks 3 0 3 56 2007 Tex 1 B+ Johnny Cueto 2 1 3 34 2008 Cin 4 A- Jor. Zimmermann 1 2 3 41 2009 Was 1 B+ Matt Harvey 1 0 1 54 2012 NYN 2 B Some BA comments:
Harvey: "anywhere from a #2 to a high-leverage reliever" Weaver: the already quoted ""some scouts think he's more a #3 than a headliner."
Yes, it's very strange for a guy to be ranked 40 as Owens was, and yet be talked about as a mid-rotation starter. The ranking doesn't match the scouting report, and is much more consistent with guys that had "the stuff to be a frontline starter" (a very common line).
Another 9 aces were talked about as being mid-rotation, #3 or #4 types, with 5 in the lower reaches of the top 100 and 4 presumably not that far outside it. Most got a B- from Sickels.
Name Ace Two Tot BA Yr Tm Pr# JS Carlos Zambrano 4 3 7 68 2002 ChN 6 B- Brandon Webb 5 1 6 2003 Ari 5 ? Dan Haren 2 5 7 2003 StL 1 ? Adam Wainwright 4 0 4 2006 StL 6 B- James Shields 2 3 5 2006 TB 12 B- Josh Johnson 2 2 4 80 2006 Fla 6 B- Ubaldo Jimenez 2 1 3 82 2007 Col 6 B Max Scherzer 2 2 4 66 2008 Ari 4 B+ Jake Arrieta 1 0 1 67 2010 Bal 4 B+ Wainwright was a former #18 whose stock had fallen hugely.
Some quotes:
Haren, Arrieta: "middle of the rotation starter" Shields: ""solid fourth starter" Scherzer: ""some scouts who saw him as a starter wondered what the fuss was about." Sickels, among others, thought "he fits better in the pen" (as a closer).
That leaves four aces who were nobodies. Three of them had their ace year this year. More on that in a moment ...
Name Ace Two Tot BA Yr Tm Pr# JS Aaron Harang 2 1 3 2002 Oak 16 C Corey Kluber 1 0 1 2012 Cle --- C Dallas Keuchel 1 0 1 2012 Hou 21 C Tanner Roark 1 0 1 2013 Was dc ? Tanner Roark was a depth chart guy, while Kluber was the #26 guy the previous year and then wasn't even listed on the depth chart.
The obvious question is whether there are other ace seasons by nobodies that weren't repeated. And the answer is no, really. The other guys who had an isolated ace season are John Patterson, Roberto "Fausto Carmona" Hernandez, Edinson Volquez, Jason Jennings (ranked 10, 45, 56, and 87 respectively by BA), and Hisashi Iwakuma, who signed too late to be in the Handbook. As he signed for just $1.5M , he's the closest thing to a comp, but obviously he's an entirely different sort of story featuring far fewer eyeballs on him.
Some quotes:
Kluber: could be "a back of the rotation starter" (BA) or "useful utility pitcher" (Sickels). Keuchel: "back-of-the-rotation" (BA); ""could be a 5th starter" (JS) Roark: never had a scouting report written about him. So, it's about twice as common for an ace to perceived as a future front-line starter than as a future mid-rotation guy, but obviously the pool of the latter is much larger. You'll also note that most of the mid-rotation guys who became aces had shorter peaks in that territory.
Until this year, it was almost unheard of for an ace to have been a fringe prospect, and then we got three such guys. They are literally the three most unexpected ace seasons of the last decade, and they happened together. Any theories?
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Post by James Dunne on Nov 6, 2014 14:22:51 GMT -5
Interesting stuff. It should be noted that Scherzer was kind of the Mookie Betts of pitching prospects. If he hadn't graduated at the end of his 2008 breakout season he'd have been in everyone's top 10. He was getting glowing reports all season.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Nov 6, 2014 15:12:06 GMT -5
On that last point, you're controlling for guys to have more than one, unless they had their first one this year, right? Is it really that surprising that the guys you bent your criteria for are the outliers?
Maybe I misunderstood something?
I also don't think it's surprising that, by and large, the players get less and less truly ace-like the farther down you go. I mean, if you ask someone to name aces of the last decade, is anyone going to say Aaron Harang?
All that said, thanks for this, Eric. Interesting data set.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 6, 2014 16:06:35 GMT -5
On that last point, you're controlling for guys to have more than one, unless they had their first one this year, right? Is it really that surprising that the guys you bent your criteria for are the outliers? Maybe I misunderstood something? I also don't think it's surprising that, by and large, the players get less and less truly ace-like the farther down you go. I mean, if you ask someone to name aces of the last decade, is anyone going to say Aaron Harang? All that said, thanks for this, Eric. Interesting data set. If that trio repeat as aces, so that they qualify without my bending the rules, then they join Harang as the only ace who was pegged as a back-of-rotation guy. And they all turned into aces this year. (Harang, BTW, had a #2 season before he had his pair of ace seasons.) If they never have another frontline season, then they join a different group of pitchers, none of whom were so pegged. But you're right -- if they go on to have some #2 seasons, there's precedent for that. Doug Fister came from nowhere to have an ace season in 2011, and has followed it with three straight #2's. Jose Quintana came off the depth chart to post an ace season and a #2 the last two years. (R.A. Dickey did it backwards (#2, #2, ace from 2010-12), but he sort of doesn't count, and Jeremy Guthrie, who was a frontline starter washout, also did it backwards: #2 in '07 and '08, ace in 2010.) Hmm ... assuming the trio go on to have some #2 caliber seasons, we still have nobody going straight from projected 5th starter to ace from 2005 to 2010, then Fister in 2011, Quintana in 2013, and the trio in 2014. Nobody in the first six years, then five guys in the last four years. Still odd. Hmm ... Fister, Keuchel, Roark, and Kluber all are primarily sinkerball pitchers (Keuchel led MLB in GB%), and Quintana gets an unusual number of GB from his 4-seamer. How likely is it that all five of these guys have above-average GB rates from their FB? (1 in 32 that they'd all be on the same side, but of course there are many variables we could have looked at.) Could defensive shifts be creating unexpected extra value for GB pitchers, causing some to be very underrated as prospects? Remember, if these guys had merely been pegged as potential mid-rotation guys, they wouldn't be in this discussion. Nobody had to see them as potential frontline guys.
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Post by James Dunne on Nov 6, 2014 16:38:11 GMT -5
Three initial thoughts:
1. At least in theory, I could buy that sinkerball pitchers are systematically underrated, but the reason behind it would make some sense. Because they aren't striking out a ton of people, a sinkerballer generally isn't going to have overwhelming minor league numbers because they are playing in front of worse defenses. Take Doug Fister - his minor league numbers aren't all that good (though his peripherals are strong an he pitched in some tough parks), so without flashy overwhelming stuff there wasn't really a reason to look into him so deeply.
2. The players that were missed by the major publications do not appear to be ones who put up dominant minor league numbers with what scouts saw as smoke-and-mirrors stuff, nor were they "high upside" types who needed to figure out their command and/or control to supplement supposedly electric stuff. They are players who either learned another pitch, or were sinkerballers. There is no lesson to be garners from the former, other than the fact that baseball is really hard to project. From the latter, I think it's important not to take the wrong lesson away - having an ok-looking sinkerballer in Low-A who is projected as a 4/5 does NOT mean he is underrated. By contrast, the one potential lesson would be that I'd keep pitchers with extreme ground ball rates in starting roles a bit longer to see if they can climb the ladder. It's the difference between saying a) Kevin McAvoy is totally underrated and will be a 5+ win pitcher because we underrate sinkers; and b) it makes sense to challenge McAvoy with a spot in the Salem rotation, and he probably should keep it even if he has an ERA in the high threes or fours as long as he keeps the walks down an keeps getting grounders.
3. Jose Quintana is a better pitcher than I realized.
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Post by danorder on Nov 6, 2014 17:09:38 GMT -5
I'm curious about the cause of the inaccuracy on the behalf of the rankings and scouting reports. I almost wonder if it's not necessarily inaccuracy, but rather a fear of projecting a pitcher as an ace due to the improbability of a given pitcher reaching ace caliber. One thing that might add some substance to this would be to conduct a sort of opposite exercise by determining the rate in which a prospect fails to meet their #1 or #2 projections. I'm curious to see if scouts chronically lowball starter projections as a response to the nature of the position. Even someone like Buchholz who has had had year(s) of ace-caliber pitching (plural if you count 2013) would probably not get called an ace by most people. I think this just highlights the difficulty in defining what it means to be an "ace" or a "two starter."
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Nov 6, 2014 17:47:30 GMT -5
Everything James said. I do think that groundball pitcher theory makes some sense, Eric. Nice thinking there.
It might be easier to miss a groundball pitcher generally in the minors, as inferior defenses and, these days, a lack of defensive shifting that will be present in the majors would lead to a potential jump in the majors. Especially back when we were having this Moneyball statistics revolution, you could see guys with poor numbers getting bumped down the Handbook rankings a bit.
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jimoh
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Post by jimoh on Nov 6, 2014 19:51:00 GMT -5
Outside of the time-frame, but interesting: Sickels on Derek Lowe www.minorleagueball.com/2008/10/9/631648/derek-lowe-prospect-retro"He has developed into a much better pitcher than his minor league numbers indicated. When I think back to the very marginal guy I saw pitch for Tacoma, and the mediocre-to-poor component ratios he showed from 1993 through 1996, I'm reminded of just how unpredictable pitching prospects can be. I didn't see this coming at all." Lowe made it to 63 and 70 on the BBA top 100.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 7, 2014 2:45:57 GMT -5
I'm curious about the cause of the inaccuracy on the behalf of the rankings and scouting reports. I almost wonder if it's not necessarily inaccuracy, but rather a fear of projecting a pitcher as an ace due to the improbability of a given pitcher reaching ace caliber. One thing that might add some substance to this would be to conduct a sort of opposite exercise by determining the rate in which a prospect fails to meet their #1 or #2 projections. I'm curious to see if scouts chronically lowball starter projections as a response to the nature of the position. Even someone like Buchholz who has had had year(s) of ace-caliber pitching (plural if you count 2013) would probably not get called an ace by most people. I think this just highlights the difficulty in defining what it means to be an "ace" or a "two starter." Very few guys get declared to be future aces (King Felix was one). What they usually say is "has the stuff to be a { #1 / #2 / frontline} starter." Whereas they will say "projects to be a #3." You can see precisely the reluctance you speak of in that choice of language. Nevertheless, it's still easy to identify the guys who were regarded as potential frontline starters. For instance, here's the unusually large list of BA top 25 guys from 2003 (I'll do this later for other years, at some point): 1. Josh Beckett 2. Mark Prior * 6. Juan Cruz 14. Ryan Anderson * 16. Dennis Tankersley 17. Nick Neugebauer * 19. Jerome Williams ** 23. Jon Rauch ** 24. Carlos Hernandez * 25. Ty Howington * The bust rate seems to have gotten much lower since then--another topic for discussion, certainly. But one factor is obvious. As folks may have guessed, the guys marked * above had injuries that essentially ended their careers (Hernandez originally while running the bases), while Williams and Rauch got hurt and were never quite the same subsequently. (Anderson, Rauch, and Hernandez were all named to their spots in the top 100 after being hurt in 2001.) And, agreed, James did a great job of figuring out why groundball pitchers are much likelier to jump from nobody to frontline starter, and what we should do with that knowledge. And, yup, for every Fister there are ten or twenty Chris Balcom-Millers.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 7, 2014 16:00:29 GMT -5
Well, the full report on the 33 number twos will have to wait until the weekend. But here's how they break down.
4 guys who were projected to be aces, and would have been classified as such if not for injury-shortened seasons.
5 guys also projected as aces, including one who may have been prevented by injury, and two with a clear shot at still graduating to that status.
7 guys who were accurately projected as #2's.
4 guys who were ranked along with guys projected to be #3's, and hence can be regarded as having the same projection, but who had frontline starter stuff undercut by health concerns or unusual inconsistency.
4 guys who were projected as #3's without mention of frontline upside.
6 guys who were either projected as #4's, or whose projections were mixed between mid- and back-end rotation.
4 guys projected as 5th starters or relievers.
3 guys who didn't even make the BA Handbook depth chart.
That's pretty much a 50/50 split.
Oh, and I was missing some seasons in the tables in the ace breakdown, for Sabathia, Oswalt, Beckett, Guthrie, Peavy, Zambrano, and Webb. Fixed now. That's what happens when you change the start date of your study mid-way!
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Nov 7, 2014 17:11:58 GMT -5
A suggestion I thought of (may not be useful, so tell me if so):
Is there any way to incorporate something like percentage of a player's seasons in which he pitched like an ace? I bring this up because, for example, looking at Danks in that second group, he sticks out to me as a "one of these things doesn't belong here" sort of guy, at least on that list. Then I see three ace seasons since 2007. With Harang, I see 2 and 1 since 2002. If a guy is an "ace," truly an ace, I'd expect him to pitch like that more than half the time (or in Harang's case, more than 25% of the time). Look at Haren, for example, putting up "ace" numbers twice and "no 2" numbers five times since 2003, and I see the definition of a number 2. Nothing says you can't pitch above your talent level for a season.
I just think saying you need to hit benchmarks in a certain percentage of seasons you've been in the league would make the groups much more useful than setting a low counting number to make sure you rope in more recent guys that also lets way too many older players into the grouping. Eyeballing the list, what does setting the mark at 33% of your seasons meeting a certain innings mark (so that you still rope in guys who got hurt?) being ace-level, and maybe half at #2 or higher get you?
A big part of being an ace is consistency, to me. Getting a couple ace seasons over the course of a decade isn't an ace.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 7, 2014 17:59:52 GMT -5
A suggestion I thought of (may not be useful, so tell me if so): Is there any way to incorporate something like percentage of a player's seasons in which he pitched like an ace? I bring this up because, for example, looking at Danks in that second group, he sticks out to me as a "one of these things doesn't belong here" sort of guy, at least on that list. Then I see three ace seasons since 2007. With Harang, I see 2 and 1 since 2002. If a guy is an "ace," truly an ace, I'd expect him to pitch like that more than half the time (or in Harang's case, more than 25% of the time). Look at Haren, for example, putting up "ace" numbers twice and "no 2" numbers five times since 2003, and I see the definition of a number 2. Nothing says you can't pitch above your talent level for a season. I just think saying you need to hit benchmarks in a certain percentage of seasons you've been in the league would make the groups much more useful than setting a low counting number to make sure you rope in more recent guys that also lets way too many older players into the grouping. Eyeballing the list, what does setting the mark at 33% of your seasons meeting a certain innings mark (so that you still rope in guys who got hurt?) being ace-level, and maybe half at #2 or higher get you? A big part of being an ace is consistency, to me. Getting a couple ace seasons over the course of a decade isn't an ace. I've been thinking about that too, actually. If you subtract the rookie year from 2015, you get the number of years in MLB, and you can see that most of the aces have been a frontline starter more often than not. I'm looking at frontline starter years because my ace criterion is very tough -- a season that in a typical year would make you one of the best 15 pitchers in MLB. Felix Hernandez is an ace, no? His career: late-season ace-caliber callup with #3 value, 4, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1. It's pretty clear that a true ace can show up as a #2 half the time and still be an ace. Kershaw, Cliff Lee, Brandon Webb, and Wainwright are the only guys who don't have roughly that split, and Kershaw's the only guy with a high percentage of ace seasons (5 out of 7). I chose 3 years as a frontline starter, at least 2 years as an ace, because that's half the years under team control. You can argue that you want 4 years as a frontline starter, or 3 including 2014 (promising another). That would move Danks, Ubaldo Jimenez, and Harang into a "brief ace" category and Fernandez, Harvey, Arrieta, Kluber, Keuchel, and Roark into an "new aces in progress" category. I like that. I'll reflect those changes in a final table showing the distributions. Now, if you applied the same criteria to the number twos, you'd lose a whole mess of them. Only 9 of the 33 guys in the next post have had 4 seasons as a frontline starter, although another 4 have had 2 or 3 such seasons in a 3 or 4 year career. I don't see a problem with this: it's related to the truism that the best way to win a pennant is to have a bunch of guys have better than average seasons. I'll take a couple of guys who are 50/50 to have a #2 or #3 season, any time.
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Post by njsox on Nov 8, 2014 9:12:10 GMT -5
Justin Masterson comes to mind in this conversation, was always an "intiguing" arm, but I believe most scouting reports had him pegged as a 7th or 8th inning reliever.
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Post by James Dunne on Nov 8, 2014 19:13:20 GMT -5
Many scouts thought Masterson's size, durability, and ability to get grounders meant that he should be starting. And he hasn't been a great starter. He was a strong #2 in 2011 and 2013, a #5 in 2012, and possibly baseball's worst pitcher last season. That was a real disappointment - he'd seemingly made some gains against lefties in 2013, but to say the least he didn't sustain them.
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Post by sdiaz1 on Nov 9, 2014 12:17:50 GMT -5
I think more than anything else that this chart does highlight the fact that the skill level between "Very solid mid rotation guy" and "front end of the rotation" is not the giant gulf that some believe it to be. I have always been of the opinion that an Ace is a guy who you expect to be in the conversation for Cy Young each year, while a number 2 or even number 3 can always end up in that conversation without any huge surprise. For me Anibal Sanchez always comes to mind. Sanchez has had several years where he was a very good #2 (I define as XFIP - : 81-94) however two years ago for some unexplained reason his K rate shot up from his career norm of around 20% to 27% and he posted an XFIP- of 74. He of course is not that guy, and to point to that season and to call him an ace is silly, but it underlies that player performance can fluctuate.
With that said, the above list has guys who are not aces:
Jake Arrieta is a fine starter, but his success last season was in large part driven a huge decrease in HR/FB rate. His fly bat rate did decrease nominally and he did see a slight uptick in IFFB% but it is incredibly doubtful that he will ever minimize HRs to the degree that he did last season (4.5% HR/FB).
Harang had a long and successful career, highlighted by a four year run from 2004 - 2008 in which he posted XFIP - of 92,85,80, & 95.
Dallas Keuchel has one season of an XFIP - of 85, that is a solid number 2 but not an ace.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Nov 9, 2014 12:45:54 GMT -5
Justin Masterson comes to mind in this conversation, was always an "intiguing" arm, but I believe most scouting reports had him pegged as a 7th or 8th inning reliever. And this highlights one of the problems with trying to do a study like this: prospect evaluation isn't a static process. It's something that is fluid over time. Taking Masterson, yes, this is what scouts thought... in Lowell and A-ball. Then he carved up the Eastern League and the evaluation evolved. It wasn't universal, but the consensus shifted such that he became our top prospect here mid-season. Taking one point in time and saying "this is what scouts thought" is problematic. Seeing that scouts thought something at one point in time doesn't tell us for how long they thought that, or why. I'm assuming here we're using the last handbook before the player graduated, but even that has issues. For example, Mookie Betts wasn't a top 100 prospect in the last handbook, but he'd have probably been top 25 had he not graduated. Masterson's rise was similar. And so forth.
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