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Post by jmei on Aug 21, 2023 11:26:31 GMT -5
Also, to be fair to Kiley, most farm systems' future value is concentrated in the top 100-type prospects and recent high-round draft picks. As an empirical matter, most future MLB production will be from each organization's top 10-ish prospects, which the above is a reasonable proxy for. It makes sense for the national guys to focus on the top prospects and not worry too much about guys beyond the top 15 or so. But if you do that won't you systematically undervalue depth? Of course most value comes from the top 15, but if you can get one extra big leaguer out of your 16-50 range or whatever at any given time, that's a very meaningful contribution to your system's overall value. That's a virtue, I think, of fangraphs' approach to valuation. Yes, you will, which is one of the reasons (along with differential weighting for pitching prospects vs. position player prospects) why Fangraphs' rankings differ so much from the more qualitative ones.
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Post by jmei on Aug 21, 2023 11:14:49 GMT -5
Also, to be fair to Kiley, most farm systems' future value is concentrated in the top 100-type prospects and recent high-round draft picks. As an empirical matter, most future MLB production will be from each organization's top 10-ish prospects, which the above is a reasonable proxy for. It makes sense for the national guys to focus on the top prospects and not worry too much about guys beyond the top 15 or so.
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Post by jmei on Aug 21, 2023 9:31:01 GMT -5
It feels a little early to me to start the "they need to win X of Y" and counting games and that kind of stuff. It's still early enough that each individual game doesn't matter so much. They just need to keep winning games.
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Post by jmei on Aug 21, 2023 8:53:58 GMT -5
One thing working against Rafaela is that he arguably needs the development time in AAA the most of those options. (Of course, you could flip that the other way and say that he has the most upside and most to gain from a AAA cup of coffee.)
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Post by jmei on Aug 21, 2023 8:32:03 GMT -5
I'm not sure grouping Bleis and Rafaela together as "wait-and-see types" makes any sense. One is a high-ceiling teenager in A ball who just missed the better part of a season and the other is a high-floor guy in AAA who is likely to make his major league debut either later this year or early next year.
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Post by jmei on Aug 20, 2023 19:25:21 GMT -5
If there are some prospects that are more volatile than others, there are some farm systems that are more volatile than others. I don’t think it’s that crazy of a criticism.
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Post by jmei on Aug 18, 2023 14:12:28 GMT -5
Couple other high-level thoughts on the OF picture:
-I would not rely on Duran being a starting-caliber outfielder for the entire season next year. He should get first shot at playing time, but they need to have a robust backup (read: someone better than Refsnyder) in case he struggles again. His 2023 line is inflated in part by an unsustainable BABIP, defenders who aren't ready for him to be aggressive in stretching singles into doubles and defensive metrics that are prone to fluctuation. If he's a league-average hitter with meh defense (which is what a lot of the projections see), that's a potential weak spot.
-Refsnyder is a useful bench player but not more than that. Despite being heavily platooned across his career, he's got just a career 90 wRC+ and his power production in 2022 increasingly seems like an outlier. I would not hesitate to try and upgrade that roster spot (for instance, by re-signing Duvall and trading Refsnyder). I'll root for any Asian American player, but he's 32 already, only has one more year of team control and guys who are the short end of a platoon in the OF without plus power or defense are just not that valuable.
-I'm a big Rafaela fan, but wouldn't just pencil him as the starting CF. He will earn plenty of playing time on his defense alone, but his offensive production is volatile enough that I would feel better if he was in the pre-2021 Kiké Hernandez role at least to start the season.
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Post by jmei on Aug 18, 2023 13:54:22 GMT -5
I don't see any issue with both promoting Rafaela (and giving him a good chunk of playing time) and re-signing Turner (or a similar player). You'll have to sit one starting-caliber guy every game if everyone is healthy, but I see that as a feature, not a bug. For all of this front office's purported emphasis on depth, one of the biggest issues with the team over the past few years has been gaping black holes that persist for big chunks of the season (2023 so far: -1.0 fWAR at 2B and -0.4 fWAR at SS; 2022: -0.5 fWAR at RF and -0.7 fWAR at 1B).
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Post by jmei on Aug 18, 2023 9:24:54 GMT -5
No one is rubbed the wrong way about you being positive about a Red Sox prospect, it’s this constant cycle of condescension, receiving a warning for said condescension, apologizing, and then starting right back up being condescending again. If you approached the discussion with any sort of legitimate reasoning or analysis then it would be received much differently but in your very short stint on this board so far there’s been none of that. What you are saying about previous condescension, and the prior warning, is valid. That warning is something that I took quite seriously. But I would claim that you are being condescending and unfair with that response in your own right, as I know that I have provided legitimate reasoning and analysis in plenty of ways. I find the statement "in your very short stint on this board so far there's been none of that" to be quite rude (and condescending). Please move on. This is the second time in three days that you've turned a perfectly legitimate difference of opinion on a player into a personal pissing match. You need to be able to accept that other posters may disagree with your opinions and let it go rather than getting frustrated and turning agro.
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Post by jmei on Aug 17, 2023 15:33:48 GMT -5
Casas' emergence as a legitimate offensive weapon has been one of the more enjoyable parts of the season so far.
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Post by jmei on Aug 16, 2023 18:37:54 GMT -5
Demand is the axis that's collapsing Disagree. If the the demand decreased while supply remained constant there would be an excess of starters which is 100% not the case. The supply axis collapsed and teams are doing what they have to in order to cover innings. This is empirically false. Teams are asking guys who would have gone 6+ innings in the past to throw 5 innings instead and asking guys who would have been mediocre starters to be bulk bullpen weapons. They aren’t trying to stretch out relievers into starters.
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Post by jmei on Aug 16, 2023 14:43:05 GMT -5
Pitchers, as a class of player and in the aggregate, are just less valuable across baseball now. Starting pitchers are throwing fewer innings and every team (Boston included) is tilting towards throwing a bunch of relievers (of both the one-inning and bulk varieties) at the wall rather than having a steady five-man rotation. In that world, are the remaining traditional starting pitcher prospects more or less valuable? I tend to think less. If I can cobble together decent bulk innings out of the Crawfords and Pivettas of the world, I'd rather just do that than draft a bunch of high-risk high-reward domestic pitching prospects. Again, I could not agree more in the aggregate.. I believe at this point it has even been objectively proven. That being said, do you have a list of the teams that have gone with the "throw a bunch of relievers at the wall rather than a steady 4-5 man rotation" and won a World Series? The Tampa Bay Rays made that formula work for the better part of 15 years. And they have not won a World Series, and have won the AL Pennant once since 2008. It makes complete sense why they went that direction (they are a below mid-market team, spending-wise). As in, I don't know if they've ever crossed the $80 million threshold in any season, in terms of active payroll... But the Dodgers and Astros are more in line with Red Sox spending, and their formula with drafting/international signing pitchers seems to be working tremendously for them. And they essentially stick with 4-5 man rotations. And they have 3 World Series and about 10-11 Pennants between them in the last 6 years. It's pretty self-evident? Of the top five teams in World Series odds this season, none of them have more than three starting pitchers who qualify for the ERA title. Starting pitchers are throwing a smaller percentage of innings league-wide than ever this year, a trend that seems unlikely to change going forward. Your vaunted Dodgers have zero starting pitchers who qualify for the ERA title and their starting pitchers have averaged 5.0 innings per start this year. If you object to characterizing it as the demise of the five-man rotation, than fine, we can call it the demise of the starting pitcher instead, but my point is that starting pitchers are responsible for a smaller proportion of team success than ever. In that context, I think it's a perfectly reasonable decision to focus on position players in the early rounds of the draft, and I don't see it as a problem if the Red Sox farm system is systematically tilted towards position players for the foreseeable future.
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Post by jmei on Aug 16, 2023 13:54:08 GMT -5
Pitchers, as a class of player and in the aggregate, are just less valuable across baseball now. Starting pitchers are throwing fewer innings and every team (Boston included) is tilting towards throwing a bunch of relievers (of both the one-inning and bulk varieties) at the wall rather than having a steady five-man rotation.
In that world, are the remaining traditional starting pitcher prospects more or less valuable? I tend to think less. If I can cobble together decent bulk innings out of the Crawfords and Pivettas of the world, I'd rather just do that than draft a bunch of high-risk high-reward domestic pitching prospects.
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Post by jmei on Aug 16, 2023 8:54:10 GMT -5
He's down to .300/.357/.468 (123 wRC+), which is good but not great. His walk rate in particular is down to 6.8%, which is actually below the MLB average of 8.6%. Pitchers are throwing him a ton of strikes (46.0% BIS zone percentage, which is well above the 42% league average and ranks fourth highest amongst qualified hitters (Alex Verdugo interestingly ranks third highest)). He needs to be able to show that he can do more damage on those pitches in order to get that walk rate up.
Yoshida's slumps have been a sneaky big contributor to the up-and-down Red Sox season as a whole. His signing hasn't been as big of a coup as it appeared at points in the season. Hopefully he can pick things back up in the last six weeks of the season.
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Post by jmei on Aug 16, 2023 8:45:01 GMT -5
The main source of disagreement seems to be the fact that they're so hitter-heavy. MLB doesn't spell it out, but you can infer from the write-up that they're dinging the Red Sox for having few top pitching prospects (which Law also did), whereas the FG list actually rewards them for that by valuing hitters more than pitchers. So I think this is the difference in approach I've mentioned and why I really don't think the FG ranking can be viewed the same way as other sites' rankings. Fangraphs looks only at the FV number, hitter vs. pitcher, and nothing else. Not the player's level of risk (beyond inherent pitching risk). Not the player's level. Not the player's position. Not the system's depth at different positions and levels. Now, some of this should be accounted for in a FV number but I just see major issues with a system that assigns every 45 the same value (a AAA 45 with injury history is not worth the same value as a complex-level 45 who's raw as hell) as limited in some sense. It also doesn't take a team's success in development into account, although you could argue whether it should if your goal is to assess present-day value. It's just very different. It's an interesting discussion point to include in the conversation, 100%. But there's so much it doesn't take into consideration. Let me add positives. It does account for the much greater value of better prospects well (a 60 is worth 2 50s? A 50 worth 4 45+s? Sounds right.). It attempts to remove subjectivity, which is admirable (but it can't do that entirely when the basis for the computation is a subjective FV score). I disagree with your conclusion here. Things like the player's level of risk, level and position ought to be baked into the FV ranking. Ditto for how good an organization is in terms of player development (that ought to show up in the number of good prospects they churn out). I'm not sure why the system's depth at different positions and levels matters when you are ranking a farm system (why would you increase or decrease the value of a prospect if the organization has too many or too few other prospects at that position/level?). If your point is that assigning all 45 FV prospects with the same dollar value isn't the best way to do it, I agree, but that's a precision issue (maybe we should have 42.5s and 47.5s (I will note that we already have that to some extent with 45+s), or maybe the dollar values should have a slight adjustment based on how close they are to the majors) rather than an issue with the methodology writ large. More importantly, it is a much more systematic process for ranking than having one guy squint and make judgment calls, which is largely how the other MLB farm system rankings are done. It's far from perfect, but there's at least a methodology that tries to remove as much subjectivity/bias from the exercise as possible.
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Post by jmei on Aug 15, 2023 18:34:04 GMT -5
Don’t think it’s likely, but would also suggest moving Story to 2B (and adding a SS) as an option.
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Post by jmei on Aug 15, 2023 17:53:35 GMT -5
Abreu is interestingly kind of the opposite of Rafaela in terms of approach. He takes a lot of pitches and works a lot of walks, but that also means he strikes out more than his contact rate would suggest (his 2023 AAA contact rate is 74.3%, which is not that much worse than Rafaela's 77.0% at the same level). If his major league K% is in the sub-25% range, he's got a good chance at carving out a potential starter (or at least platoon) role. If he strikes out 30%+ of the time, he's a backup at best.
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Post by jmei on Aug 15, 2023 10:42:03 GMT -5
In the role that is available on this team (backup running back behind a bellweather guy who needs to be able to contribute on all three downs), Elliott fits much better than Harris and comes cheaper than Cook.
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Post by jmei on Aug 15, 2023 10:38:00 GMT -5
Zack Littell in six starts for the Rays: 24.1 IP, 7.03 K/9, 0.37 BB/9, 2.96 ERA, 2.90 FIP, 3.51 xFIP
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Post by jmei on Aug 15, 2023 9:10:51 GMT -5
I still think there's a deep underappreciation for defensive value even among the SABR literate folks. Tristan Casas has had a nice rookie season, with a .251/.354/.482 (124 wRC+) line. But, because of his mediocre defense at the second-lowest position on the defensive spectrum (plus bad baserunning), that's only worth roughly 1.5 fWAR (prorated for 600 PAs). Compare that to someone like Michael Taylor, who, despite a career .239/.293/.385 (81 wRC+) line, is at 1.9 fWAR per 600 PAs over his career due to his defensive value and has put up a solid 10 year (and counting) MLB career.
Even if Rafaela is an objectively bad hitter, he's going to have a long and productive major league career based on his defense alone. Guys like that don't get the love that they deserve but can be key pieces of a good team, especially during their cost-controlled years. Another guy in that vein is Manny Margot, who lots of folks dismiss as a guy that didn't amount to much but has become an important part of the Rays' recent success.
That's all if Rafaela is a bad hitter, by the way. If he's a league-average hitter, he's a no-doubt above-average starter a la Kiermaier. If he's an above-average hitter, he's a perennial all-star a la Luis Robert.
I'd have him #2 in the system and a top 50 prospect in MLB.
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Post by jmei on Aug 15, 2023 7:55:22 GMT -5
I wouldn't be comfortable penciling him into a starting spot (even in a platoon role), but every team needs depth outfielders with options and some upside, so I'd start there with Abreu.
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Post by jmei on Aug 14, 2023 14:23:52 GMT -5
Here's an amazing stat. Ceddanne Rafaela apparently hasn't had a strikeout looking since 2019 in Low A: www.soxprospects.com/stats/batter.php?player=678882. That's at least 1,381 PAs and 281 swinging strikeouts ago. That's preposterous to me. Anyone with a Stathead account and more time than me want to take a look and see if that's some sort of record? I've been assuming that data just isn't populated because on every player I've looked up it has had a 0 for strikeouts looking. Oh that would be a bummer. Seemed too good to be true…
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Post by jmei on Aug 14, 2023 14:15:31 GMT -5
Here's an amazing stat. Ceddanne Rafaela apparently hasn't had a strikeout looking since 2019 in Low A: www.soxprospects.com/stats/batter.php?player=678882. That's at least 1,381 PAs and 281 swinging strikeouts ago. That's preposterous to me. Anyone with a Stathead account and more time than me want to take a look and see if that's some sort of record?
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Post by jmei on Aug 14, 2023 14:07:15 GMT -5
Can I nominate this for worst thread in SoxProspects.com forum history? It's the same ten people arguing the same ten points in circles over and over again, and I'm afraid I don't see an end on the horizon. Even the Betts trade thread mercifully topped out at 66 pages (granted, because we locked it).
Remember, you don't have to respond to every post (or part of a post) you disagree with.
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Post by jmei on Aug 11, 2023 7:25:32 GMT -5
The ump in the Yamamoto clip has some serious rizz.
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