In 24 hours we had 197 legit ballots, a great turnout. (I deleted 16 ballots. Those were sent consecutively, with Allen Craig getting nothing but 1′s and Pete Kozma getting nothing but 5′s. Coincidently, this was right after I tweeted on some of the early returns. To whoever you are, you smell).
I’ve closed the balloting, here are the averages for each hitting prospect. Remember, everything but offense was factored in the poll. This is how confident you are that these players will hit enough to be at least major league average during their team-controlled years.
- Aaron Luna – 2.3
- Adron Chambers – 2.2
- Allen Craig – 4
- Bryan Anderson – 2.4 (ouch)
- Dan Descalsco – 2.8
- Daryl Jones – 3.2
- David Freese – 3.6
- Jon Jay – 3.4
- Mark Hamilton – 2.5
- Pete Kozma – 2.4
- Robert Stock – 3.4
- Ryan Jackson – 2.4
- Shane Robinson – 2.1
- Steve Hill – 2.4
- Tommy Pham – 1.7
- Tyler Greene – 2.6
- Tyler Henley – 2.8
So as a community we like Allen Craig’s chances the best to be at least an average big-leaguer. This could spell bad news for the Thudwick Fan Club, but good news for the payroll come 2011.
We also felt pretty good about David Freese’s chances to be our 3B for the foreseeable future, which represents a darn good return on the charred remains of Jimmy “be still my heart” Edmonds.
Jon Jay is such a good defender that he doesn’t really have to hit a lot to be a valuable player, I think of him as David DeJesus light. His trouble, along with Daryl Jones, (who we also feel pretty good about), is that they have no place to play with this team. Maybe they can win out over Craig for the open spot in RF coming 2011, but I think their throwing arms could be enough of a deterrent to the club to do nothing more than use them as 4th OFers, or package them in a trade.
Robert Stock was the one surprise of the group, it seems the community has generally a fuzzy feeling about him. Is this because of his Appy League performance, or a result of the offensive threshold being so low for catchers, or both? The good news is Stock comes with a back-up plan, but we’re thinking he might not need it.
Tommy Pham on the other hand might want to start thinking about a Sergio Santos career-path, because we’re not feeling so hot about his chances, even after a resurgent second half. He still could go all Daryl Jones 2008 on us all yet, but no one is holding their breath.
I’m a little surprised Tyler Greene didn’t do as well. I guess his 2009 season flew under the radar more than I expected. His offensive floor to be a 2-WAR player is just a .326 wOBA. I know it was one year, but a .390 wOBA in Triple-A from a player who has long-tantalized with TOOLZ. I think I gave him a 3, so I can’t complain, but I think Greene might surprise us. He has been an errors machine this spring, so maybe that’s what is fresh on everyone’s mind.
Anyway, here’s the sheet I used to derive what the player’s wOBA would need to be for 2-WAR for your perusal. Many thanks to Bryan Smith, who was discussing these ideas and others with Marc and I as the FanGraphs team was hashing out their Top 100. (95% credit goes to Marc for the top 100)
Entries (RSS)
Fun exercise and I have almost no quarrel with the consensus. I had Descalso at 4 but that’s the bat in my belfry. I also give Kozma a little better chance than others. Pham’s the wild card but I don’t blame anyone for being pessimistic.
The ratings do seem to reflect the consensus ratings of the system. Quite a few guys who will have careers but no impact players.
@easy: Consensus as far as hitters, you should say. Even Joe Strauss is hyperventilating over Shelby Miller. But yeah, I’d say it’s a good return on the farm system if we can get a couple of average players to go along with Colby. And let’s not forget about the Walrus, who should be a 3 WAR player or maybe a bit better in Toronto.
I’d think the next step(s) would be to gather information about peaks… ie we think Craig is likely to have at least a 0.355 wOBA, but what’s the peak, 0.365-0.370 maybe with a confidence of 2-3. Given those data points we could work up a WAR distribution over the cost controlled years… which is Bryan’s goal as I understand it.
My expectations for Pham’s bat jumped after he moved off short. At the time, I hoped it was a short-term move to take some pressure off that side of the game, but if that’s what it were, it hasn’t worked over a reasonably long term.
The Cards have a lot of budding Skip Schumakers.
And by peak I mean peak in the cost controlled years.
@Steve Sommer: Right, I like the idea. Not sure how to implement it at the moment, but I’m all ears to suggestions.
@erik: I’ve got some ideas on that, just have to put them in a coherent format. I think asking the right question in the poll to get at the peak is more important than the math to get to WAR distributions