Some thoughts on the 2011 Top Ten Lists
Posted on January 31st, 2011 by azruavatar in Prospect rankings
Baseball America:
- Shelby Miller, Carlos Martinez, Seth Blair, Jordan Swagerty and Tyrell Jenkins all receive notes regarding their curveballs. With Chris Carpenter, Adam Wainwright and Jaime Garcia all prominently featuring uncle charlie, are we entering a golden age for Cardinal 12-to-6ers?
- Joe Kelly can touch 100 mph with his fastball.
- Daniel Descalso as the “Best Strikezone Discipline” prospect is a poor choice. That’s an obvious category for Matt Carpenter but BA editors remain indifferent to Carpenter.
- Scott McGregor rating as the best control is discouraging. I think it’s questionable but McGregor being considered the top anything in the system is not a good sign.
- The projected 2014 rotation is sick: Wainwright, Garcia, Miller, Martinez, Jenkins.
Baseball Prospectus
- Maikel Cleto over Reifer and Kelly strikes me as too high. Reifer has a better secondary pitch and Kelly’s fastball is as good as Cleto’s but he could stick as a starter. I just don’t get that ranking.
- Goldstein is not a particular fan of Zach Cox. I echo some of his sentiments: questionable defense and an uncertain power projection.
- On Oscar Taveras: “Perfect World Projection: He could be an average to above-average corner outfielder.“
- Ryan Jackson is a sleeper pick . . . if he can keep hitting.
Entries (RSS)
I think it just goes to show you that because these publications have to go through 30 teams they may have less insight into individual players as places like this and Cardinal Nation.
I completely agree. I also came away with the impression that BA puts too much weight on their own previous rankings and largely ignores the lower minors. Considering they do a lot of scouting of high school, college, and international players before they’re signed, I hoped they’d rank them more aggressively. And they could probably stand to use positional value more rather than ranking so many relievers so high.
I don’t think BP’s “nine more” list, which is where Cleto appears, is strongly rank-ordered. That’s just a collection of guys that Kevin Goldstein finds interesting, but not interesting enough to make the list of 11 that he looks at more carefully. You’re right, though; just the fact that Cleto is on that list at all is a bit of a head-scratcher, since Bryan Anderson, Mark Hamilton, Cody Stanley, etc., aren’t. On the other hand, KG ranked Cleto as the Mariners’ 11th best prospect before the 2010 season (although after it, he said that was too high), so it’s not like he’s a complete out-of-the-blue name for the list.
I would like to see what Cleto does before I write him off. He pitched in a terrible pitching environment last year. He may not be much of a prospect but I value the fact that the Seattle GM who is thought of being a good prospect analyzer wanted him last year. Let’s see whether he pitches better in a better situation.
I disagree with people who put so much emphasis on power. It might be the hardest things to project. So to really discount somebody based on the hardest thing to project can be misleading.
That said, third base power might be a bit overrated. Only 5 guys had more than 25 HR. Some even project Bill Mueller as if its a bad thing. But a guy who can hit .290 with an .800 OPS….Would have ranked 7th in all of baseball. I find that pretty valuable.
Love the projected rotation, if two out of three of Miller, Martinez and Jenkins get’s close to any of their potential, along with Waino and Garcia, we’re going to have one hell of a great rotation….. 2011 Phillies rotation = 2014 Cardinals rotation? A man can dream right?
Regarding this comment: ◦On Oscar Taveras: “Perfect World Projection: He could be an average to above-average corner outfielder.“ Disagree, has the ceiling as a great all-star potential corner outfielder, but has the floor of a crappy high-A player, IMHO
I agree that the Cardinals blog lists are truer than the others. I’ve been a loyal BA subscriber almost since their inception but I found their top 31 both odd and self contradictory. Can Tommy Pham or Matt Adams really not be top 31 prospects in a weak organization? Can Tony Cruz be the best defensive catcher in the system and the 25th best prospect or Oscar Tavaras be the 4th best prospect in the Appy League but be 24th best prospect in a weak system? Should either Scott McGregor or Maikel Cleto be mentioned in an article with the word “Prospects” in the title?
Goold mentioned being “overruled” on some of the rankings which sounded like an invitation to read between the lines.
That was about Matt Carpenter…Goold said he put Carpenter into his top 10, but he was overruled by the BA editors: “As one editor put it in a note:”One good tool, and a bunch of ifs.” For me, that was enough in the Cardinals system to be a Top 10. For others, they wanted more sizzle.”
The thing to remember about prospect rankings is that they are affected by a lot of editorial consideration that has little to do with actual scouting. Whether one weighs tools over current or historical performance (see: Daryl Jones), weighing performance in low minors v. high minors, upside v. risk, small sample v. career outcomes, draft reports v. organizational time, weighing values of position or type of pitcher…all that has little to do with actually watching the player in question, and all of that affects the prospect’s final position on an organizational prospect list. You bring up Taveras….even the fan lists disagree where he should be, because both Jeff at this blog and Dustin at Scout.com ranked Taveras outside of the Top 20 (Dustin actually ranked him at 23). Goold does a great job explaining some of that editorial decision-making and analysis in his blog post about the BA rankings: http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/article_0bf68e18-1e89-11e0-a06a-0017a4a78c22.html
Also…as the Cardinals beat reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Goold has access to club officials whose job it is to evaluate the prospects in the system, and its obvious that he uses their input in creating his own rankings. That’s an amount of access to knowledge evaluation from people who do see these players every day that the fan prospects do not have. Disregarding the Cardinals BA rankings because they disagree with what you believe is true based on the fan sites would be a mistake and a half. The fan sites do tend to be more familiar with the organization prospects than most media prospect services, but they are subject to the editorial considerations that we see in the media rankings, and because Goold writes the BA rankings, they do have the same familiarity that the fan sites do.
Well, I guess I don’t really disagree with much of what you’ve said though I’m not sure it accurately addresses what I intended. I may have left the impression that I “disregard” the BA rankings but I meant more that they made less sense to me than they usually do. I “disagree” with many of the particulars of the fan based rankings also but I see less contradiction in them than I see in this year’s BA rankings. It is also in the context of BA ranking the Cardinals’ system towards the bottom of the overall rankings yet ignoring or giving low rankings to players that I, and others, feel may be genuine prospects.
At any rate, I generally respect the BA analysis of prospects or I would not have subscribed these many years. I did feel that this year’s top 31 seemed to be less solid than usual and exercised my right as a kibbitzing, Cardinal prospect fan to state that.
Sorry, the “disregard” comment was more in reaction to Andrew’s comment below.
Not sure who else you can have as the best defensive catchers other than Tony Cruz? With his last season and AFL he’s really shown something. That said I agree, I don’t think national agencies have any much insight as fan sites who specialize in one team.
Nick Derba has always been considered an outstanding defensive catcher. I assume that some of the younger guys, Perez, Castillo, Stanley etc. may also be decent. If Cruz is that good then he’s got to be in the top 15 in my opinion. In addition to the good AFL stint he also has experience at 3b and 1b which could come in handy.
I actually think that we have a very strong catching corps in our organization. I think BA ranked Cruz best because he’s more of a known quantity than the others mentioned.
Tweeted with Goold. He claims club sources rate Cruz better defensively than Derba. As mentioned above, if that’s true, he should be rated higher though.
I actually believe that this year Cruz will take Laird’s place if Laird gets hurt. Anderson hasn’t stuck at backup yet because the major league pitchers aren’t comfortable enough throwing to him yet. I do think Cruz is the backup in 2012 if we sign Albert.
Too bad Daryl Kile isnt around to mentor some of these hookers…
Outside of age, what are the big differences between Carpenter and Cox?
Carpenter has better defense but projects for less power. I think the more pessimistic Carpenter observes would say that his overall offensive profile is lower than Cox’s.
IMO unless Cox changes his swing he won’t have any more power than Cox. Does anyone know if Cox has been working to change his swing?
Anymore power than Carpenter I mean
Overall I think its hard to complain about the depth in our system currently. We graduated a few iffy MLB players and don’t have a ton of talent in our upper minors but combined with our lower minors the depth is definitely there. This should allow for us to go with premium talent in the draft/IFA for 2011 instead of going for the depth. A perfect year for that as well with the premium talent and depth in the 2011 draft class. Overall the depth is more on the mound (RHP), corner INF’s and C’s. We really need to address getting some premium talent in the MI if possible in this draft. Kozma is in a critical year IMO and Jackson is the only other semi-exciting MI talent (not considering Cox a 2B). Also if we can try to find some LHP with upside (like Gast last year) that would be ideal. Most of our OF talent is raw and athletic…so many of them will never make it…so maybe some more established OF talent (like Longmire last year) would be great as well. Here’s to hoping 2011 is the year we see many of our prospects make the big jump to High A, AA or even AAA that are currently in the lower minors.
Don’t like drafting for need. Take the best player available.
I agree and I have been fairly focal about this in the past. But if you have a few guys rated about the same and one is a potential long term SS and one is another 3B/OF type….maybe you lean toward the SS. I can tell you there are some fairly exciting SS in the 2011 draft class that can be had in the first few rounds. I was merely stating a fact on where our system is at today and the weaknesses. There are many ways to address this and the draft and IFA are 2 options.
From that standpoint it would be fine. IF they are on the exact same level.