|
Post by patford on Jan 23, 2023 12:59:22 GMT -5
MLB got him ranked 10th in the MLB in 1st Base Prospects. I think my man needs to be on our top 10 list overall! We'll know about him soon enough. There's no reason to keep him in the minors if he hits in AAA. He has a refined approach and is a bit on the older side.
|
|
|
Post by oldfaithful2019 on Jan 23, 2023 13:13:52 GMT -5
MLB got him ranked 10th in the MLB in 1st Base Prospects. I think my man needs to be on our top 10 list overall! We'll know about him soon enough. There's no reason to keep him in the minors if he hits in AAA. He has a refined approach and is a bit on the older side. Hope he at least starts the season in Portland. Need to get my eyes on him a couple times. See how he handles the plays and see if he's got the Fenway swing or if it more of a pull swing like Rizzo and Shaw had at AA. Life has kept me away from the games for several seasons. Not this year though !!!
|
|
|
Post by freddysthefuture2003 on Jan 23, 2023 13:14:28 GMT -5
MLB got him ranked 10th in the MLB in 1st Base Prospects. I think my man needs to be on our top 10 list overall! We'll know about him soon enough. There's no reason to keep him in the minors if he hits in AAA. He has a refined approach and is a bit on the older side. I can't imagine he'll see AAA anytime soon since he has just 81 at bats in AA. I'd be willing to bet he spends close to 75% of the season in Portland
|
|
|
Post by greenmonster on Jan 23, 2023 13:14:56 GMT -5
MLB got him ranked 10th in the MLB in 1st Base Prospects. I think my man needs to be on our top 10 list overall! We'll know about him soon enough. There's no reason to keep him in the minors if he hits in AAA. He has a refined approach and is a bit on the older side. At AA last year Kavadas struck out 40 times in 81 AB's and then followed that up in the AFL with 24 strike outs in 46 AB's. I am not sure I would call a 50% strikeout rate a "refined approach". Even if you count his 2022 AB's at the lower minors he still struck out 40% of the time in 2022. Add in his defensive limitations and I don't expect to see him in Boston
|
|
|
Post by joshuacoffee on Jan 23, 2023 13:36:00 GMT -5
MLB got him ranked 10th in the MLB in 1st Base Prospects. I think my man needs to be on our top 10 list overall! Not sure if you're being serious with this or not. For broader context on what MLB Pipeline thinks of Kavadas, while MLB has him as a Top 10 first baseman, they also have him as the 20th prospect in the Red Sox system, just like Sox Prospects.
|
|
|
Post by redsoxfansince94 on Jan 23, 2023 13:56:54 GMT -5
MLB got him ranked 10th in the MLB in 1st Base Prospects. I think my man needs to be on our top 10 list overall! Not sure if you're being serious with this or not. For broader context on what MLB Pipeline thinks of Kavadas, while MLB has him as a Top 10 first baseman, they also have him as the 20th prospect in the Red Sox system, just like Sox Prospects. Is this the norm for a position like 1B? You have a couple studs but rounded out by lesser type prospects?
|
|
|
Post by 0ap0 on Jan 23, 2023 14:16:34 GMT -5
Is this the norm for a position like 1B? You have a couple studs but rounded out by lesser type prospects? Yes.
|
|
|
Post by ramireja on Jan 23, 2023 16:19:31 GMT -5
We'll know about him soon enough. There's no reason to keep him in the minors if he hits in AAA. He has a refined approach and is a bit on the older side. At AA last year Kavadas struck out 40 times in 81 AB's and then followed that up in the AFL with 24 strike outs in 46 AB's. I am not sure I would call a 50% strikeout rate a "refined approach". Even if you count his 2022 AB's at the lower minors he still struck out 40% of the time in 2022. Add in his defensive limitations and I don't expect to see him in Boston Not arguing that we're going to want to monitor Kavadas' K% moving forward but you're going to want to look at Ks as a percentage of PAs not ABs, especially for a guy like Kavadas who walks so much (and therefore those walks aren't counted as PAs). His K% was 40% in AA (not good), but was less than 30% at the single A levels. Nowhere did he have a 50% K-rate though.
|
|
|
Post by bosoxnation on Jan 23, 2023 16:26:53 GMT -5
He was Red Sox prospect of the year for a reason. This man will be on the ML roster 1 day. MARK MY WORDS! Lets go Niko!!!
|
|
|
Post by julyanmorley on Jan 23, 2023 16:51:29 GMT -5
One thing to keep in mind about Kavadas' strikeouts is that he takes tons of pitches and gets into two strike counts a lot. His swinging strike % was not high in A-Ball, and it was high but not disastrous in AA.
|
|
|
Post by patford on Jan 23, 2023 17:17:20 GMT -5
We'll know about him soon enough. There's no reason to keep him in the minors if he hits in AAA. He has a refined approach and is a bit on the older side. I can't imagine he'll see AAA anytime soon since he has just 81 at bats in AA. I'd be willing to bet he spends close to 75% of the season in Portland He's on the Portland roster. Next stop would be AAA. No reason to not move him fast if he hits at each level.
|
|
|
Post by patford on Jan 23, 2023 17:22:45 GMT -5
We'll know about him soon enough. There's no reason to keep him in the minors if he hits in AAA. He has a refined approach and is a bit on the older side. At AA last year Kavadas struck out 40 times in 81 AB's and then followed that up in the AFL with 24 strike outs in 46 AB's. I am not sure I would call a 50% strikeout rate a "refined approach". Even if you count his 2022 AB's at the lower minors he still struck out 40% of the time in 2022. Add in his defensive limitations and I don't expect to see him in Boston I'm just going by this: www.soxprospects.com/players/kavadas-niko.htm" Advanced approach. Knows the strike zone and will take a walk. Has swing-and-miss in his game within the strike zone." To be clear I have no idea. I've never seen more than a tiny number of clips.
|
|
ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,923
|
Post by ericmvan on Jan 24, 2023 20:54:08 GMT -5
One thing to keep in mind about Kavadas' strikeouts is that he takes tons of pitches and gets into two strike counts a lot. His swinging strike % was not high in A-Ball, and it was high but not disastrous in AA. I was inspired to do this research, using the 277 MLB hitters who had 300+ PA last year.
K% explains 3.2% of a hitter's wRC+.
BB% explains 16.8%.
In terms of predictive power, every walk you draw counterbalances four strikeouts.
The best single stat I could come up with involving both numbers is a form of K to BB ratio, where it's measured as walks per total of strikeouts and walks. It explains 18.3% of a hitter's wRC+. I decided to call this PAC, plate appearance control-- how much you rather than the pitcher is in charge.
Obviously, if you knew both the K and BB rates, that's more info than just their numbers relative to each other, and that gets you to explaining 21.0% of the hitter's success.
Kavados is the poster child for guys with a potentially misleading set of K and BB numbers -- one that PAC can make better sense of.
There were 292 players last year who had 200+ PA in A ball. Kavados was the leader in wRC+. He ranked 5th in BB rate and 196th in
K rate. Great and really bad. We can guess how good that combo is, but we know we're just guessing.
His PAC was .435, and that ranked 26th. That's 91st percentile.
When he was promoted to high-A his PAC fell all the way to .433. He again had a 186 wRC+ and would have led the league if he qualified. This time there were 272 hitters with 230 PA or more, and Kavados would have ranked 21st if he qualified.
So how badly did he struggle in AA? His PAC fell to .286. There were 286 guys with 250+ PA, and he would have ranked 169th, which is 41st percentile. Below average, but by no means a disaster.
In the AFL he got his PAC up to .351, which would have been 68th percentile in AA.
List of guys in MLB who were between .359 and .343 last year:
Paul Goldschmidt Ketel Marte Christian Yelich George Springer Jake Cronenworth Bryce Harper Santiago Espinal Mookie Betts Christian Walker Kolten Wong Pete Alonso
|
|
|
Post by Underwater Johnson on Jan 25, 2023 0:35:16 GMT -5
Niko "PACman" Kavadas!!
|
|
|
Post by ponch73 on Jan 25, 2023 0:44:15 GMT -5
So how badly did he struggle in AA? His PAC fell to .286. There were 286 guys with 250+ PA, and he would have ranked 169th, which is 41st percentile. Below average, but by no means a disaster.
In the AFL he got his PAC up to .351, which would have been 68th percentile in AA.
List of guys in MLB who were between .359 and .343 last year:
Paul Goldschmidt Ketel Marte Christian Yelich George Springer Jake Cronenworth Bryce Harper Santiago Espinal Mookie Betts Christian Walker Kolten Wong Pete Alonso
What's the correlation between AFL PAC's and MLB PAC's? Wouldn't it stand to reason that the list of players who were between .343 and .359 in MLB would have absolutely crushed it in the AFL at age 24? Which might imply that Kavadas is good trade bait and unlikely to post between .343 and .359 PAC's at the MLB level, no?
|
|
ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,923
|
Post by ericmvan on Jan 25, 2023 4:05:59 GMT -5
So how badly did he struggle in AA? His PAC fell to .286. There were 286 guys with 250+ PA, and he would have ranked 169th, which is 41st percentile. Below average, but by no means a disaster.
In the AFL he got his PAC up to .351, which would have been 68th percentile in AA.
List of guys in MLB who were between .359 and .343 last year:
Paul Goldschmidt Ketel Marte Christian Yelich George Springer Jake Cronenworth Bryce Harper Santiago Espinal Mookie Betts Christian Walker Kolten Wong Pete Alonso
What's the correlation between AFL PAC's and MLB PAC's? Wouldn't it stand to reason that the list of players who were between .343 and .359 in MLB would have absolutely crushed it in the AFL at age 24? Which might imply that Kavadas is good trade bait and unlikely to post between .343 and .359 PAC's at the MLB level, no? The point was simply that some great hitters have a PAC like what Kavados had in the AFL. Hence, he doesn't need to return to his elite A-ball PAC to have a successful career -- just maintain the AFL level of control as he moves up the latter to MLB.
Sure, at 23 he was a year older than his average teammate, but that's not uncommon for a college guy.
|
|
|
Post by Chris Hatfield on Jan 25, 2023 10:42:17 GMT -5
The number to watch (through your friends at SP who can access it) for Kavadas will be in-zone whiff rate. He doesn't chase, which keeps his OVERALL whiff rate down, but his in-zone whiff rate in Portland was the highest in the system (min. 100 PA) at 36% last year (each level for each player being one entry). The "top" ten:
1 Niko Kavadas Portland 36% 1 Nick Decker Greenville 36% 3 Franchy Cordero Worcester 34% 3 Roberto Ramos Worcester 34% 3 Brandon Howlett Greenville 34% 3 Nick Northcut Greenville 34% 7 Jaylin Davis Worcester 32% 7 Darel Belen Salem 32% 9 Niko Kavadas Greenville 31% 9 Alex Binelas Portland 31%
The only guys in this list who weren't struggling were punishing anything they DID hit (Franchy, Northcut, Niko in Greenville).
This was a huge reason why we had concerns about how he'd fare in Portland, which bore out. He doesn't chase but he needs to make contact in the zone, which is tougher now for him because high minors pitchers can fill the zone with better quality pitches. His turn to make an adjustment.
|
|
|
Post by patford on Jan 25, 2023 11:15:44 GMT -5
The number to watch (through your friends at SP who can access it) for Kavadas will be in-zone whiff rate. He doesn't chase, which keeps his OVERALL whiff rate down, but his in-zone whiff rate in Portland was the highest in the system (min. 100 PA) at 36% last year (each level for each player being one entry). The "top" ten: 1 Niko Kavadas Portland 36% 1 Nick Decker Greenville 36% 3 Franchy Cordero Worcester 34% 3 Roberto Ramos Worcester 34% 3 Brandon Howlett Greenville 34% 3 Nick Northcut Greenville 34% 7 Jaylin Davis Worcester 32% 7 Darel Belen Salem 32% 9 Niko Kavadas Greenville 31% 9 Alex Binelas Portland 31% The only guys in this list who weren't struggling were punishing anything they DID hit (Franchy, Northcut, Niko in Greenville). This was a huge reason why we had concerns about how he'd fare in Portland, which bore out. He doesn't chase but he needs to make contact in the zone, which is tougher now for him because high minors pitchers can fill the zone with better quality pitches. His turn to make an adjustment. Many players struggle with velocity. That's a big problem because hitting velocity does not seem to be something a player can learn. Hitting off speed or learning to lay off off speed can be learned in some cases. Usually where a player is still raw. If Kavadas is getting blown away by high heat then he's probably not ever getting over that problem.
|
|
|
Post by Chris Hatfield on Jan 25, 2023 14:18:20 GMT -5
Do you have anything to support that proposition? Not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing, just asking.
|
|
|
Post by seamus on Jan 25, 2023 15:19:34 GMT -5
Do we have data showing what type of pitches Kavadas was struggling with in Portland? For instance, I think I recall talk last year about Blaze Jordan's damage being against off-speed stuff and/or to the opposite field last year, with the concern being that he couldn't pull heat, but I don't know if that was an observation or something that was tracked more directly. (Correct me if I'm misremembering.) Is it possible to look and see that Kavadas really struggled against a particular pitch type or a particular location? If it's something like a high fastball, that does seem (anecdotally) to be something that pitchers are willing to go to repeatedly in a way that they don't with other batter weaknesses.
|
|
|
Post by patford on Jan 25, 2023 16:14:27 GMT -5
Do you have anything to support that proposition? Not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing, just asking. Nothing other than not being able to recall anyone doing it. It strikes me as a slow twitch slow bat speed issue. I guess there are guys who maybe shortened their swing or changed their approach (say if Duran reverts back to a slap it on the ground thing) but if Kavadas is overpowered by high heat (Chavis) and becomes a singles hitter then he's not very useful at all. I don't see him running out ground balls and being a terror on the bases. There may also be cases where it's a 17-18 year old kid who just isn't used to velocity and makes a jump but older guys in their mid-twenties already?
|
|
|
Post by larrycook on Jan 25, 2023 20:25:30 GMT -5
I saw a few games at Portland and Niko was late on a lot of swings of pitches in the strike zone.
|
|
|
Post by ancientsoxfogey on Jan 25, 2023 22:44:56 GMT -5
I saw a few games at Portland and Niko was late on a lot of swings of pitches in the strike zone. So maybe Kavadas has such good plate discipline because he utilizes an extra millisecond to judge that a pitch is truly in the zone before committing. IF that is true and will hold him back, then the questions are (1) is there a slightly different balance of plate discipline/contact where he commits a tiny fraction earlier, losing some pitch discernment to improve his contact rate on pitches in the zone to an extent that on balance improves his performance; and (2) is Kavadas knowledgeable and skilled enough to realize he has to do this and implement such a fine tuning?
|
|
|
Post by ancientsoxfogey on Jan 25, 2023 22:48:09 GMT -5
My bet on Kavadas is that at some point circumstances will allow him to get at least a cup of coffer in the Majors, but he will never be a productive player in MLB.
|
|
|
Post by foreverred9 on Jan 25, 2023 23:24:17 GMT -5
The good thing is that if we can notice this, then we can be certain that the team knows this and has been giving him this feedback. I would have to imagine that getting better in zone contact is the number one thing he's working on this offseason. No different than Cedanne being forced to work on chase rates, let's just hope they're able to make the adjustments.
|
|