[BA]John Manuel's Prospect Pulse
http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/minors/050304pulse.html
John Manuel's Prospect Pulse
How The Sausage Is Made: Inside The Ranking Process
by John Manuel
March 4, 2005
Baseball America has been putting Top 100 Prospects lists together
since 1990, when Steve Avery graced the top of our first list.
Just over one year later, Avery was winning a National League
Championship Series MVP, and he won 47 games from 1991-93 as the
Braves began their still-unbroken string of division titles. He was,
in other words, a deciding factor in helping his team win
championships.
That’s the essence of an elite prospect. While Avery’s career took
a path few anticipated—early highs followed by a sudden loss of arm
strength and drawn-out period of dwindling returns—he fit exactly
the profile the Braves had set out for him. He was a
front-of-the-rotation power pitcher, and only John Smoltz surpassed
him as a big-game pitcher for Atlanta.
Players with a peak value like Avery, short career and all, are what
scouts look for in the draft, what organizations look for in their
farm systems, and what Baseball America looks for when it compiles
its Top 100 Prospects list. The goal of teams is to win
championships, and when ranking prospects, we seek out players who
can help their teams do that.
Of course, if a player can help his team win a championship, he won’
t be in the minor leagues for long; these players, for the most part,
aren’t ready yet. So organizations have their scouts project what a
player can do against big league competition. By definition, divining
the major league future of minor league players is an inexact
science. It’s also an area of disagreement in baseball today that
has been well chronicled.
Use All The Evidence
While statistics are an important tool in assessing a player’s past
and predicting his future, championship tools make championship
players, so the top of BA’s top 100 will always be dominated by
players with above-average tools in several categories. To understand
how BA ranks players, let’s break down Joe Mauer, this year’s No. 1
and the first repeat holder of the top spot since Andruw Jones in
1996-97.
First and foremost, Mauer projects to bat .300-.320 as a big leaguer,
making his hitting ability a well-above-average tool. The Twins also
project him to hit for above-average power, despite his minor league
track record of hitting just nine homers and slugging .423 in 1,030
minor league at-bats. Their power projections gained credence when
Mauer mashed six homers and slugged .570 in 107 at-bats in Minnesota
last season before he went down with a knee injury.
In any era since Babe Ruth came along, the bat has been the most
important tool in the game for position players, and the offensive
surge of the last decade has just reinforced this fact. Mauer’s
hitting tools are enough to merit consideration for the top spot, and
his defense at a crucial position puts him over the top. His blocking
and receiving skills rate as 80s on the 20-80 scouting scale as does
his amazingly accurate arm. He’s also considered a first-rate person
on and off the field, a leader for pitchers and for the entire Twins
team despite his tender age of 21.
So if he stays healthy, Joe Mauer should be more than just a good
major league player; he should be a perennial all-star.
The evidence for Mauer’s lofty prospect status comes from both
scouting and statistical analysis. Mauer hit .330 as a minor leaguer
and was one of the youngest players in his league at every stop. Twins
’ scouts, however, had to rely on their acumen as talent evaluators—
and the track record they had built by seeing Mauer play more than
100 times as an amateur before they ever signed him—to project Mauer
to hit for power, because the evidence wasn’t in his minor league
numbers. And while the numbers can say how Mauer threw out 52 percent
of opposing basestealers in 2003, a scout with a stopwatch tells you
whether that’s because of arm strength and a quick transfer rather
than because of the ability of pitchers to hold runners.
It’s not news that BA emphasizes tools in putting together its
rankings. However, the magazine doesn’t have a monolithic approach
to the top 100, or to any of our prospect lists. Our Prospect
Handbook, for example, has 17 different writers who assemble the top
30 rankings for the 30 organizations. While Jim Callis, the book’s
editor, and other BA staffers and sources help massage the lists, the
book still allows for different viewpoints on the rankings to come
through.
Rankings 101
Tools for hitters are the basics—hitting, hitting for power,
fielding, running and throwing (arm strength). For most positions on
the diamond, that’s also the order of importance that scouts place
on position players’ tools. For pitchers, tools essentially boil
down to his stuff—how hard he throws his fastball, the quality of
his secondary pitches and the command of his repertoire.
Some other important basics of BA’s prospect analysis philosophy
include:
‧ Age. Elite major league players usually get to the big leagues at
an early age. The younger a player is for his league, the better his
chances of being a prospect, though just being young for a league
(say, 18 in the Double-A Texas League, as was the case for Mariners
righthander Felix Hernandez last year) isn’t enough. Performing well
while being young for the league speaks volumes. Similarly, seeing
big numbers out of a 24-year-old in the low Class A South Atlantic
League—hello, Sally League home run champion Jon Benick—demands a
hefty dose of skepticism.
‧ Inside the Numbers. Some statistics in the minor leagues mean more
than others. For hitters, strikeout-walk ratios usually provide a
good indicator of whether a batter will be able to continue his
success at higher levels, against more discriminating pitching. A
classic example of this in recent years is Diamondbacks outfielder
Reggie Abercrombie, formerly of the Dodgers. One of the minors’ most
athletic players, Abercrombie would be a five-tool player if he could
develop the plate discipline to be a better hitter. But his career
strikeout-walk ratio, a downright hellish 666-96, indicates better
pitchers will carve him up consistently at high levels.
For pitchers, so-called secondary numbers such as strikeout-walk
ratio, strikeout-to-innings ratio, and hits-to-innings ratios matter
more than wins, losses or even ERA, which pitchers have less control
over. But ratios alone do not a prospect make. Pitchers like Cubs
farmhand Jon Connolly, a lefthander with below-average stuff
(particularly in terms of fastball velocity), have less margin for
error against better hitters at higher levels. Connolly, 21, has gone
29-17, 2.86 in four minor league seasons, and won the midwest League
ERA title in 2003, yet doesn’t rank among the Cubs top 30 prospects
because scouts doubt his ability to repeat his success at higher
levels with his below-average stuff.
These basic principles, which continue to grow and evolve in the
magazine’s 25th year, guide BA in its prospect rankings. In that
time, we’ve amassed a track record of informing our readers of the
best and brightest future big league stars. Those are the players
major league organizations try the hardest to find, and that
continues to be the type of player who graces our Top 100 Prospects
list.
QUICK HITS
‧ Cubs lefthander Raul Valdez, the 27-year-old Cuban defector whose
visa trouble relegated him to pitching in the Rookie-level Dominican
Summer League last year, put himself on the prospect map with a
dominant Dominican Winter League performance. Valdez went 5-2, 0.79
in 57 innings for Azucareros, but he broke his left thumb on a
comebacker late in the winter season and was expected to miss up to a
month of spring training. When he gets healthy, he’s a candidate for
the big league bullpen due to his average fastball and inconsistent
curve and slider, which at times are above-average pitches.
‧ Padres first baseman Daryl Jones, the organization’s fourth-round
pick last year, had ankle surgery in February and was expected to
miss up to three months. Jones, who hit .295-1-25 in the Rookie-level
Arizona League in his pro debut, will start 2005 in extended spring
training as he recovers from the surgery.
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