Future Redbirds 2012 Top 20: Just Missed
Posted on January 6th, 2012 by Jeff in Prospect rankings, tags: Adron ChambersAdron Chambers
Age – 25
Stats
38th Round of 2007 Draft
Adron Chambers got a whiff of the big league club this past year, which was great, but unfortunately, we all got an even better idea of his limitations and ceiling. Chambers is a left-handed only, no power, lots of speed center-fielder who presents good defense in center and plus defense in the corners. However, being that his bat does not play in the LF or RF, he is limited to center.
His position, CF, is filled by a similar type player in Jon Jay. Neither are any longer blocked by Colby Rasmus, but Jon Jay has the a similar profile to Chambers. Chambers offers more speed, but Jay offers slightly more power and both are lefties. Jay is prone to slumps and is not in any way shape or form “blocking” center-field for any prospect. However, Adron Chambers does not have the offensive potential to be a starting everyday center-fielder.
Chambers has dropped off the list as the Cardinals system has improved and Chambers limitations have become more clear. His current projection is looking more like a 5th outfielder/bench/pinch runner/defensive sub role.
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Thanks for the write-up. In a world where Co-Co Crisp is worth 2/14 I would say we undervalue what Jon Jay and Adron are worth on the open market. For example, if Jon Jay is a 3 WAR player over a full season, isn’t he like the 8th best CF in the league in terms of value?
Agree with Jon Jay being underrated.
Jon Jay was actually one of the best offensive CFs in baseball last year.
He was in the top 5 in all of baseball for avg, and in the top 10 for slugging and top 10 in obp.
People knock on him because he stuggled in the playoffs. I don’t put too much stock in it. Its a small sample and had a disporptionate number of lefties.
If Jay goes down with a serious injury does anyone want to see Skip and Carlos platooning in CF for an extended period? Neither is really a CF’er anymore. I certainly won’t argue for a higher ranking for Adron but, like lawless, think he brings value to the organization. And given that he concentrated on football until being kicked off his college team, I don’t think it is beyond hope for Adron to improve with the bat. He is still learning the game. If his ceiling is Jay with better range in the field but less pop, that’s still a nice thing to have in a cost controlled player. I really like the energy he brings to the field.
I would prefer Skip over adron in an injury situation. While not an ideal OF, skip does an ok job at the plate. Had Adron been a normal prospect, i might agree with you. But as a guy learning the game, I would prefer to keep him in the minors for development purposes. I wouldn’t want him to be here and struggle.
define “ok job”….
.280-.290 average. .330-.340 obp.
Skip’s defense in center is beyond bad. He’s only really capable of playing the corners. His limited offense does not cover or make up for what he would provide in the field. Beltran’s does.
if it was something like a 2 week injury, I think beltran could handlte that much injury with skip getting an occasional start.. Not sure i would want either to see more than that.
Komatsu would probably get more of a chance depending on how the 40 ends up.
Just cuirous, what are your expectations for a back up CF?
Skip was horrendous in the outfield in the later half of 2011 after Furcal showed up. He probably was playing hurt but I’ve seen grandma’s in south city who could cover the same ground. Maybe his legs rebound. Maybe not. He’ll be 32 in February. Injuries are to be expected. If Jay goes down I’d call up Chambers and start him in CF to see how he fares.
I just not sure i agree with a “see how he fares” approach for contending teams. At least with skip you have a know quantity.
Realistically, most players cannot handle the transition to the majors. So to expect Chambers to make that jump with limited baseball experience is not really fair to him or the team.
This is a reason I wish the cards had another CF possibility. And I hope Greene gets some time there this spring if he ends up as a reserve player.
And I wouldn’t call skip horrendous…Rasmus on the other hand…
Rasmus was and is better than Shumaker in center, by far.
Seriously? By far? Must be grading on a curve.
Chalk me up in the “by far” crowd….
By far would actually indicate that Rasmus was good
I would be fine with Carlos Beltran playing CF. I certainly don’t want Beltran platooning with Skip Schumaker though.
There is a difference between “being fine with” and realistically possible.
I agree with you. I would love for Beltran to be an everyday CF. I just think its too much to ask. For a guy with injury issues who hasn’t played CF in over a year, I think its too much to expect.
Just to clarify, I’m not saying he doesn’t have value. Just that his value is less than the top 20 prospects the Cardinals have.
Fair enough. “5th outfielder/bench/pinch runner/defensive sub role” @ league minimum has value but I think he might give us or some other team more. Top 20 prospect? No. Agree with the decision to leave out of the top 20.
How the times have changed…
We now have a guy who has and will play in the majors again and looks to be headed to at least a reserve of position. And he doesn’t make our top 20. Heck, 5 years ago he would have been in the top 10.
You are so right. The future of the Cardinals looks bright.
I, for one, wonder how different Chambers and McElroy are. Obviously Chambers is left-handed and McElroy is right-handed, but other than that, aren’t they fairly similar players. Both of their game’s are built around speed and defense. Maybe McElroy has the ability to add a little more power, but they seem very similar to me.
I get the impression that Chambers is more inclined to walk than Jay was in the minors. That likely translates to the majors as well. So they aren’t quite the same player. It also appears that Chambers power is picking up as he matures. Chambers is pretty good depth and I’d sure like to see him kept in the event Jay is hurt.
Your impression is correct. Jay walked in slightly under 8% of his PAs in the minors, with the percentage lower at AAA than earlier. Chambers walked in slightly under 10% of his, and did better than that at Memphis. This is no small thing. Both players seem intelligent (unlike another former CF prospect I might mention…) and could reasonably be expected to continue to learn and make adjustments so that they keep the plate discipline up in the Show.
I don’t think it’s out of the question that Adron develops into a useful leadoff guy who plays center well enough to call it home. Inevitable? No. Possible? Probably.
No skip is pretty horrendous in CF….please do not imply he is better than Rasmus
I don’t think anyone would deny that Raz _should_ be a better defensive CF than Skippy. He is considerably faster and has a stronger arm. However, defense is another one of those things where Raz hasn’t been as good as he “should” be, based on both statistical metrics and the Mark I eyeball. Bluntly, he screws up a lot, and thus far has shown little aptitude for fixing his screwups. Schumaker is more prone to make the play on balls he can get to. As a result, the defensive metrics have them closer together than one might think, probably within the error bars on the metrics. Furthermore, Skippy has improved from his early, disastrous forays into center. Colby has not. Indeed, he may have lost ground.
I am beginning to wonder whether Colby Rasmus is simply too dumb to play baseball at the highest level. It happens; happened to a guy I played basketball with in high school. Most complete athlete I have never known, and should have had either a pro baseball or pro football career. However, when your own coach in college calls you a “slow learner,” as happened to Moose (yes, that was his real nickname), it’s a sign that the muscle between the ears may be a significant problem. Raz may be on this trajectory too. Skippy, I think we can all agree, is not.
Agree 100%.
Problem is, CF is a thinking/reading/anticipating position more than along with a react with athleticism.
Now so sure about Rasmus having a stronger arm either. Arm strength was very disappointing with Rasmus.
Raz threw to the wrong base with strength, accuracy and frequency. . . .
Part of it might have been that he was never really in a good position to make a throw. But he did not show strength or accuracy.
I will imply it all day. Rasmus was horrendous.
I am judging on actuality, not potential. Maybe one day Rasmus will be better. But it hasn’t happened yet. In the games I saw, Rasmus was hurrendous. And I watched alot of games. And my opinion wasn’t changed after the trade. I have been bashing his OF play for the last 2 years.
I still recall rasmus loosing multiple games with his gloves. Too bad at the time people were blaming Franklin for the fact Rasmus couldn’t catch the ball.
And wasn’t it Van slyke that also ripped Rasmus’s defense?
So at this point…Please don’t imply that Rasmus has been better than Skip.
Rasmus did drop the ball from in san fran to lose that game, he should have caught it. But any other ballpark or during the day at san fran that ball is 5 rows into the seats. Franklin sucked last year and people blame him for losing games for good reason.
True. but that one was on rasmus.
i won’t just imply it, i’ll say it out loud.
rasmus is a better centerfielder than skip. rasmus has a -3 UZR/150 after 3000 innings in the outfield. that’s very solid evidence of being a touch below average – nowhere near horrendous.
skip schumaker is a significantly below average in center field.
Problem is , there is no such thing as a good defensive metrick.
All defensive metricks have major problems. There really isn’t such a thing as a good defensive Metrick, even UZR. Which stat is it again that shows mental errors? Throwing to the wrong base, hesitating on throws? playing out of position?
Even this comparison. You are comparing skip who is playing mulitple positions in 2 different home stadiums to colby rasmus, who has had one job.
I still have no problem saying it. Skip shumaker is a better CF than Rasmus. Rasmus has ability to be better, he has yet to display it. in fact, I don’t think he will stay in Center much longer.
the question is not whether UZR has problems. the question is whether it is more or less reliable than an individual fan’s eyes.
if your point is that you think colby rasmus is a horrendous center fielder, then that’s fine. but there’s not any statistical backup that you can give to that intuition (and what statistics there are don’t support your position), and i don’t have any reason to trust your eyes more than mine or anyone else’s.
The metrics, such as they are, seem to agree that Skippy is a somewhat below-average defensive CF — not the complete disaster some here make him out to be, but definitely below average. I don’t think there’s any great disagreement there; the mark-I eyeball seems to say about the same thing. The issue is on the Rasmus side. At this point Raz has three years of major-league center-field defense to evaluate. In one of those years he was rather good, above average although not dramatically so. In another he was somewhat below average, by an amount less than Skippy’s career shortfall but comparable to the way he was for the last year or two. And in the third year — 2010 — Raz WAS awful on defense, via every metric I have looked at recently. This too matches the mark-I eyeball, at least the gruntosaurian version of it.
Tom, you may be thinking of the idealized Raz of his rookie year, when he was an above-average defender. That’s fine; that year probably shows that he “could” be above average, and clearly better than Schumaker will ever be. But what happened to the guy? The two years since then, whether seen through the lens of Fangraphs, baseball-reference or Baseball Prospectus, seriously call into question just what kind of defender he’s going to be going forward. Go check the data. They’re … disturbing.
Meh.
Colby was 9th out of 20th qualified CF in DRS last year.
If you combine 2010 and 2011, he’s 13th out of 19 with a DRS of +2.
If you combine 2009-2011, he’s 7th out of 17 qualfied CFs in DRS.
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=cf&stats=fld&lg=all&qual=y&type=1&season=2011&month=0&season1=2009&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&players=0&sort=9,d
It’s not difficult to find mainstream defensive stats that show that Raz is a competent, average-ish defensive CF.
defensive statistics require a huge sample size to be meaningful. two seasons’ worth of data are useful; three seasons’ worth is much better (a view endorsed by MGL, the designer of the metric). so, picking apart colby’s defensive metrics season by season is a misuse of the data.
that’s why i used colby’s career numbers. they tell you much more than one season.
i didn’t cite skip’s career numbers in center, because his career numbers in center are in a small sample size (700 innings). but they do say he’s a -10 CF, which is pretty terrible. over a more substantial sample of 2000 innings in the OF – which includes lots of corner outfield time – skip has a net -5 UZR/150, which correlates well with being a -10 or worse CF, since being a corner outfielder is less defensively challenging.
and that correlates with his general outfield defensive rep. moreover, it’s unlikely that he got better as a centerfielder in his age 30 or 31 seasons. it’s hard to see how defensive statistics support anything other than the conclusion that skip schumaker is significantly worse defensively than colby.
And I am not asking to trust my eyes. All I am asking is for other people to use their own eyes and also understand the limitations of defensive metrics.
The problem is that Offensive metrics can show a very good picture of a a person’ts hitting ability. However, their is a huge gap when it comes to defensive. The guys who put the stats together admit this. But many fans don’t realize that gap and consider defensive metrics just as reliable.
And by the way, the defensive metrics don’t support rasmus to be a good outfielder either.
At least look at the defensive stats, before you purport to give a tutorial. The “guys who put the stats together” also say that the stats become more reliable over several seasons. So let’s do that:
From 2009-2011, Rasmus’ OF defense is +3.4 using TZL, +8 using DRS, and -2.4 UZR/150. Those are the three “major” defensive stats usually used. And they say Rasmus is somewhere around average, either above it, or slightly below it.
Van Slyke was saying things that were patently false. It spent a lot of time digging up the inaccuracies.
I struggle to understand how you could argue that Skip is a better fielder than Rasmus.
Because I didn’t didn’t get sucked into all the Rasmus hype. What I saw of his play I wasn’t impressed.
I don’t give Rasmus a pass for potential. His play in the OF was subpar. And this is comming from a guy who has played it everyday for his entire life vs. a guy who started playing of as a professional along with other positions.
For the record, I don’t consider skip to be starter quality. I think he is fine in a sub roll.
I struggle to understand how you could consider Rasmus a good OF.
I’m still not sold on Adron at this point. For some reason I keep thinking Kerry Robinson. I see his upside as 5th outfielder at best along with Thomas Pham and Aaron Luna. Hopefully he’ll prove me wrong, but I’m not putting any money on it.
As long as the argument is about which CF’er is worse, I can’t get very worked up about it. Neither one is worthy of being an everyday player. Glad to see Rasmus gone and hope that Beltran and Jay remain healthy.
I have and will continue to be higher on Chambers than most. The questions will continue to remain around his hitting ability at the big league level. You get the right hitting coach working with him to show how to approach AB’s to maximize his speed and he could be a legit leadoff hitter and play good D in CF. He still needs more seasoning in AAA IMO and should work on what will help him in the bigs. I’m not trying to say he will be an all-star caliber player but I can definitely see a scenario where he could be a regular CF in the bigs one day. Since CF is a premium position that is quite a valuable player to have in your back pocket.
A reason we were able to jettison Rasmus was Chambers. He can get another season at Memphis to work on hitting skills. If Jay were injured, Chambers could get a promotion.
Chambers is an aggressive runner, unlike Darryl Jones. He did not show stage fright in the majors, but battled at the plate.
Chambers is not going to slug. His keys will be defense and on base percentage.
If Chambers had abandoned baseball, moved to a South Pacific island and started to spend the rest of his life meditating, Raz was still going to get traded.
Now that there is a well written post.
That’s so Tony wouldn’t have felt obliged to chamber one…so to speak.