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Chasing a Gold Glover: Ceddanne Rafaela
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Post by maxwellsdemon on Jan 16, 2023 14:52:42 GMT -5
I had the speed and glove, not the arm, but did have that ability to get a jump, it let me go a lot further than I probably should have.
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Post by sarasoxer on Jan 16, 2023 17:47:28 GMT -5
I got one major leaguers autograph..Jimmy Piersall. He came to a shopping center in southern Maine when I was a little kid about 9. To me he seemed god like...tall, tanned and handsome. I gazed up at him transfixed like "Ralphie" staring at 'Santa' in the Christmas story. I can still see that in my mind's eye.
Maybe my grandkids can someday feel the same about Rafaela.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Jan 16, 2023 18:27:11 GMT -5
philsbosoxfan Coolidge Corner area of Brookline, local park was the Lawrence School field. ETA: Now perhaps it's clearer why I am so reluctant to include Rafaela in any trade except for a top talent. Noting that the MLB average OPS in 2022 was only .706 that means that if Rafaela is only a .650 OPS guy you are giving up 34 Total Bases per 600 at bats, Looks like he could save that many bases in his sleep and of course if he hits at all... We had the Piersall family to our house multiple times when I was 7 or 8 (I was still a Braves fan at the time). Barely remember but there were a lot of kids, a lot, and they drove a station wagon and lived in Framingham. Maybe 1956 or 57.
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Post by patford on Jan 16, 2023 21:46:49 GMT -5
Rafaela is definitely a good defensive outfielder, but I’d have him at least a half tick behind JBJ. JBJ had the best routes/instincts of any outfielder in recent memory, and “perennial gold glove contender” is a high bar. Seems like Bradley was moving before the ball left the bat sometimes. His instincts were off the charts. The best I have ever seen and I've seen a lot of Kiermaier. My guess is Bradley was so incredibly good at routes and reads that he ended up not having as many highlight reels as Kiermaier simply because he was not having to lay out so often. Not taking a thing away from Kiermaier who was also amazing. Statcast data actually has JBJ's routes as average in efficiency, and of course he had only average speed for a CF. But larrycook nails it. He would beat the cameraman and/or director in reaction time, and the first you ever saw of him, he was already in motion.
I wouldn't call it "instincts"; I think he had a hard-wired ability to tell roughly where a ball was going to land essentially as soon as it came off the bat. And he figured out that you should take off in that general direction immediately, even if you had slightly misread the ball because you used so little data in your estimate. Then you a take a second look, nail down exactly where it's going, and go there. Hence the whole route is average technically in efficiency. But he's gone multiple steps in roughly the right direction, and gotten up to speed, at the point where even good fielders are just getting started.
If you include in the route the time spent standing still and eyeing the ball as it heads into the outfield, yeah, his were great. Because his time spent waiting to create a route was as littlle as possible.
Edit: just saw that Stacast had him as just a bit above average for distance traveled in the first 3 seconds, but that's a much longer time frame than I'm talking about; that factors in a lot of foot speed. The bottom line is that a guy with well-below average initial direction (which I have as part of his methodology) and only a bit above average distance traveled in the first 3 seconds, who gets to Gold Glove territory (top few guys in the league) with his results, has to be doing something Statcast isn't measuring.
He was also really sure-handed, really good at getting the right part of the glove to the ball.
Maybe there are "better" routes in terms of direct to the ball and better routes in terms of making the catch is a way which puts the fielder in optimal throwing position? Which is to say maybe JBJ was just so damn good that he could take a route which was not a straight line but one which ended with him moving towards the infield as he is making the catch.
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Post by patford on Jan 26, 2023 22:54:48 GMT -5
A question asked on the Red Sox Stats Twitter account makes me think about some observation by Chris and Ian as well as how numbers can be deceiving. Based on his average exit velocity of 86 mph it might appear Rafaela does not hit the ball hard but as Rafaela does not have a lot of swing and miss and as a result makes weak contact on pitches he should lay off his average exit velocity is certainly being dragged down by contact on pitches other batters would miss if they happened to swing.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Jan 26, 2023 23:45:31 GMT -5
A question asked on the Red Sox Stats Twitter account makes me think about some observation by Chris and Ian as well as how numbers can be deceiving. Based on his average exit velocity of 86 mph it might appear Rafaela does not hit the ball hard but as Rafaela does not have a lot of swing and miss and as a result makes weak contact on pitches he should lay off his average exit velocity is certainly being dragged down by contact on pitches other batters would miss if they happened to swing. I don’t really see how that’s deceiving. It’s just averages. His average exit velo being dragged down by weak contact doesn’t make it look better, it means he’s making a lot of weak contact. Seems about right to me.
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Post by seamus on Jan 27, 2023 0:27:41 GMT -5
It's deceiving in the sense that it implies he doesn't hit the ball hard when it COULD mean he doesn't hit the ball hard, but it could also just mean he doesn't hit the ball hard consistently. If a guy hits one ball 120 and taps two balls 70, that averages out to about 87. That's a very different type of player than a guy who just hits a lot of balls 85-90. You should look at something like max EV if you want to understand a guy's raw power. The average just isn't descriptive enough without other data points.
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ericmvan
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Supposed to be working on something more important
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Post by ericmvan on Jan 27, 2023 5:24:43 GMT -5
It's deceiving in the sense that it implies he doesn't hit the ball hard when it COULD mean he doesn't hit the ball hard, but it could also just mean he doesn't hit the ball hard consistently. If a guy hits one ball 120 and taps two balls 70, that averages out to about 87. That's a very different type of player than a guy who just hits a lot of balls 85-90. You should look at something like max EV if you want to understand a guy's raw power. The average just isn't descriptive enough without other data points. Absolutely.
What you really want is a) Hard hit % of all AB, and b) average EV of hard-hit balls.
How often you make hard contact (when not walking of getting HBP), how hard it is when you do.
(And for accuracy hard hits should maybe be 96 or better, not 95. The 95 was picked because it's a round number. But last time I checked there were more balls hit 96 than 95, and then you start to see a decline in frequency as you move up. I'll have to check to see if this was still teh case last year.)
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jan 27, 2023 7:59:02 GMT -5
I think you're debating a semantic point. You're both correct.
His 90th percentile exit velo was 102.1 in Greenville, 100.8 in Portland. Hard-hit% 30.0% and 27.1%, respectively. Those are good, not great, and as we said all year, pulled down by him making bad contact on pitches outside the zone.
It's better than him being slappy like, say, a Gilberto Jimenez (a scout friend was very worried about his exit velocities in Lowell and while it's not that we ignored him, I wonder if we'd have maybe not pushed him QUITE as high - our thought was he'd hopefully work on driving the ball more with better swing mechanics), but it's still indicative of an issue.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Jan 27, 2023 9:36:54 GMT -5
It's all about selectivity given pitch recognition. The development staff surely understands that and will emphasize it. He's got to buy in of course. He's a sharp kid so hopefully that's the next step.
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Post by scottysmalls on Jan 27, 2023 9:43:15 GMT -5
It's all about selectivity given pitch recognition. The development staff surely understands that and will emphasize it. He's got to buy in of course. He's a sharp kid so hopefully that's the next step. Yeah this to me is why the distribution matters. If a player hits it hard when he selects his pitches to swing at well, but his average is brought down by weak contact when chasing, then there is a clear chance for him to rocket up the EV rankings by improving swing selection. This feels to me like an easier tweak than a guy who has good pitch selection but makes weak contact, though I don’t know if that’s actually true or not.
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Post by oldfaithful2019 on Jan 27, 2023 9:53:16 GMT -5
It's all about selectivity given pitch recognition. The development staff surely understands that and will emphasize it. He's got to buy in of course. He's a sharp kid so hopefully that's the next step. I had a great conversation with a young Jacoby Ellsbury when he was at Portland. We talked about his approach as I was impressed by his ability to see pitches and not swing at the bad ones. Worked allot of 2-2 and 3-2 counts before putting the ball in play. He was genuinely pleased to here my observations, despite my simply being a fan in his late 40's vs a scout or coach. He got a big smile and said " Thanks !!, I have been really working on that !! ". A cool memory !! Hope Ceddanne buys in and adjusts like Jacoby did.
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radiohix
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'At the end of the day, we bang. We bang. We're going to swing.' Alex Verdugo
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Post by radiohix on Jan 27, 2023 17:57:20 GMT -5
Regarding Rafaela’s approach, here’s what he said to reporters during the rookies camp about what he needs to improve on: “….Offensively, just get on base and try to score runs to help the team win. Just play where the team puts me and help the team win. … Just try to get more base on balls. That’s maybe going to help me more this year, and if I get on base, it’s going to be more runs for the team and we can win more ballgames.” SOURCE: theathletic.com/4119873/2023/01/24/ten-red-sox-prospects-questions/
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Post by patford on Jan 27, 2023 20:53:41 GMT -5
It's deceiving in the sense that it implies he doesn't hit the ball hard when it COULD mean he doesn't hit the ball hard, but it could also just mean he doesn't hit the ball hard consistently. If a guy hits one ball 120 and taps two balls 70, that averages out to about 87. That's a very different type of player than a guy who just hits a lot of balls 85-90. You should look at something like max EV if you want to understand a guy's raw power. The average just isn't descriptive enough without other data points. Putting it as simple as possible. If you have players A and B and both hit 30 HR, 40 2B, 10 3B, a total of 180 hits and both have 600 AB but player A has 200 strike outs and player B has only 25 but has 175 more weak contact outs then the 175 weak contact outs are going to drag the average exit velocity down even if on all base hits player B has a higher average exit velocity. Maybe a better picture would be assigning a zero exit velocity to a K and see how that looks.
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jimoh
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Post by jimoh on Jan 28, 2023 7:58:43 GMT -5
It's deceiving in the sense that it implies he doesn't hit the ball hard when it COULD mean he doesn't hit the ball hard, but it could also just mean he doesn't hit the ball hard consistently. If a guy hits one ball 120 and taps two balls 70, that averages out to about 87. That's a very different type of player than a guy who just hits a lot of balls 85-90. You should look at something like max EV if you want to understand a guy's raw power. The average just isn't descriptive enough without other data points. Putting it as simple as possible. If you have players A and B and both hit 30 HR, 40 2B, 10 3B, a total of 180 hits and both have 600 AB but player A has 200 strike outs and player B has only 25 but has 175 more weak contact outs then the 175 weak contact outs are going to drag the average exit velocity down even if on all base hits player B has a higher average exit velocity. Maybe a better picture would be assigning a zero exit velocity to a K and see how that looks. My version of putting it as simply as possible: a guy who’s doing everything right and maxing out his ability and is averaging an 87 EV does not have as much potential as a guy with an 87 average EV who has some glaring potentially fixable flaws.
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Post by patford on Jan 28, 2023 11:04:54 GMT -5
Putting it as simple as possible. If you have players A and B and both hit 30 HR, 40 2B, 10 3B, a total of 180 hits and both have 600 AB but player A has 200 strike outs and player B has only 25 but has 175 more weak contact outs then the 175 weak contact outs are going to drag the average exit velocity down even if on all base hits player B has a higher average exit velocity. Maybe a better picture would be assigning a zero exit velocity to a K and see how that looks. My version of putting it as simply as possible: a guy who’s doing everything right and maxing out his ability and is averaging an 87 EV does not have as much potential as a guy with an 87 average EV who has some glaring potentially fixable flaws. Absolutely true and that seems to be Bloom's philosophy when making trades. As a result Bloom strikes out a lot but he is committed to high risk-high reward prospects.
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Post by azblue on Jan 28, 2023 16:40:20 GMT -5
It would be interesting to see the difference in exit velocity numbers for all players for pitches inside and outside of the strike zone. Having access to median (in addition to average) exit velocity numbers brokern down by pitches inside and outside the strike zone would be very helpful, also.
Is that data available?
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Post by iakovos11 on Mar 7, 2023 8:17:57 GMT -5
From the pening paragraph from Sam Sykstra's MLB.com article about Rafaela's defensive skills (https://www.mlb.com/news/boston-red-sox-ceddanne-rafaela-defensive-highlights-breakdown?partnerID=mlbapp-android_article-share)
"He’s a future Gold Glove contender. Water covers 71 percent of the Earth’s surface; he covers the remaining 29 percent. He’s a highlight reel all to himself."
Might be one of the coolest things ever written about propspect
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Post by chr31ter on Mar 7, 2023 10:06:33 GMT -5
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Post by stevedillard on Mar 7, 2023 10:29:22 GMT -5
From the pening paragraph from Sam Sykstra's MLB.com article about Rafaela's defensive skills (https://www.mlb.com/news/boston-red-sox-ceddanne-rafaela-defensive-highlights-breakdown?partnerID=mlbapp-android_article-share) "He’s a future Gold Glove contender. Water covers 71 percent of the Earth’s surface; he covers the remaining 29 percent. He’s a highlight reel all to himself." Might be one of the coolest things ever written about propspect I'm old enough to remember Garry Maddox en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_MaddoxAs if to prove that 1975 was no fluke, Maddox proceeded to earn a Gold Glove in each of his first eight seasons as a Phillie. Dubbed the "Secretary of Defense" in 1976 by Daily News columnist Bill Conlin,[8] Maddox and his ballhawking prowess later provided inspiration for one of baseball's better known quotes: "Two-thirds of the Earth is covered by water, the other one-third by Garry Maddox."
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Post by incandenza on Mar 7, 2023 10:31:41 GMT -5
I'm a dummy about the finer points of prospect development, but something I've wondered... Would it make sense to say that Rafaela's hit tool, while questionable, has a high floor? I'm thinking of the fact that he has good contact skills and seemingly just needs to improve his pitch selection to avoid a lot of the weak contact. So it seems unlikely that he'll have a career-crushing K rate. And with his speed, even weak contact ought to result in some number of hits. By contrast a hitter like Kavadas, with more swing-and-miss but better zone judgment, seems more like a boom-or-bust case. Does that make sense?
If so, then it seems like a decent bet that he could hit, say, .232/.296/.382 in the majors. That happens to be Kiermaier's battling line since 2018, during which time he's been a 3.3 WAR/600 PA player. If the scouting reports about Rafaela's defense are right, that outcome seems in reach for him.
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Post by Foulke_In_Athol on Mar 7, 2023 10:36:58 GMT -5
From the pening paragraph from Sam Sykstra's MLB.com article about Rafaela's defensive skills (https://www.mlb.com/news/boston-red-sox-ceddanne-rafaela-defensive-highlights-breakdown?partnerID=mlbapp-android_article-share) "He’s a future Gold Glove contender. Water covers 71 percent of the Earth’s surface; he covers the remaining 29 percent. He’s a highlight reel all to himself." Might be one of the coolest things ever written about propspect That quote is absolutely perfect, the whole article is really good. I love this kids attitude and view towards the game " Sometimes I like making plays more than hitting homers"
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Post by wcsoxfan on Mar 7, 2023 11:12:42 GMT -5
I'm a dummy about the finer points of prospect development, but something I've wondered... Would it make sense to say that Rafaela's hit tool, while questionable, has a high floor? I'm thinking of the fact that he has good contact skills and seemingly just needs to improve his pitch selection to avoid a lot of the weak contact. So it seems unlikely that he'll have a career-crushing K rate. And with his speed, even weak contact ought to result in some number of hits. By contrast a hitter like Kavadas, with more swing-and-miss but better zone judgment, seems more like a boom-or-bust case. Does that make sense? If so, then it seems like a decent bet that he could hit, say, .232/.296/.382 in the majors. That happens to be Kiermaier's battling line since 2018, during which time he's been a 3.3 WAR/600 PA player. If the scouting reports about Rafaela's defense are right, that outcome seems in reach for him. I think you can argue 'higher ceiling' as well. At least in my mind, it should be easier to teach a player plate discipline than to teach them how to make consistent contact. The potential value of Rafaela's skill-set gets slept on a fair bit.
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Post by patford on Mar 7, 2023 11:21:22 GMT -5
He looks really good at SS as well as CF. Which leads to the question as to which of the two positions has the greater defensive value. A SS gets on average more chances per game but a CF has more chances which take runs off the board. In general a SS is turning singles into outs where as a CF is turning not only singles but doubles, triples and home runs into outs. As all outfields are not created equal in my opinion CF at Fenway is of even more defensive importance than in most (any other?) park. It's a beautiful canvas for a JBJ to paint memories on. in contrast LF at Fenway has it's quirks but I wonder if maybe Duran (assuming he hits) might not be a good fit there. He has never had a great arm and seems to have most of his issues going back on balls hit over his head. He could play deep in LF and use his speed to come in on balls in front of him which are a much easier read.
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Post by fenwaydouble on Mar 7, 2023 11:56:19 GMT -5
I'm a dummy about the finer points of prospect development, but something I've wondered... Would it make sense to say that Rafaela's hit tool, while questionable, has a high floor? I'm thinking of the fact that he has good contact skills and seemingly just needs to improve his pitch selection to avoid a lot of the weak contact. So it seems unlikely that he'll have a career-crushing K rate. And with his speed, even weak contact ought to result in some number of hits. By contrast a hitter like Kavadas, with more swing-and-miss but better zone judgment, seems more like a boom-or-bust case. Does that make sense? If so, then it seems like a decent bet that he could hit, say, .232/.296/.382 in the majors. That happens to be Kiermaier's battling line since 2018, during which time he's been a 3.3 WAR/600 PA player. If the scouting reports about Rafaela's defense are right, that outcome seems in reach for him. Super rough estimate here, but I did a quick Fangraphs leaderboard search to see the range of wRC+ of guys in the last 5 years with a ~20% K rate. (This might be a generous projection of where Rafaela will end up, especially if he tries to be less aggressive and finds himself deeper in counts more often.)
It looks like these guys bottom out at around around a 70-75 wRC+ if they 1. don't walk much and 2. don't hit for power. We're talking Albert Almora Jr., Orlando Arcia and Nick Senzel. As much people here seem optimistic about Rafaela's chances of learning to take a walk, I'm not so bullish. Still, based on his speed and his performance last year, I think he taps into enough power that we're looking at more of an 80 wRC+ floor than a 70.
If the glove lives up to the hype, that probably puts him right around 2 WAR?
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