A Note Of Caution On Short Season Results
Posted on June 20th, 2012 by Jeff in Batavia, Johnson CityIt is that time again! Time for Batavia, Johnson City and the Gulf Coast League to get started. And it is time for me (after the jump) to throw some cold water on any excitement you may have generated for getting to see the stats on these new (and old) players.
Short season results can be aberrational for many reasons. We have had players like Nick Longmire who have torn it up in short season ball, but have not even come close to those results in the following years.
There is also the issue of the growth curve for these players. Most of them are between 18 and 22 years old and are still growing as baseball players. These results (and scouting reports) could be totally null and void in a few short years or even months. Some of these players, including 2nd round pick Carson Kelly, have started professional baseball within a month of their high school graduation.
Additionally, the competition in these games is often poor, and usually variable from pitcher to pitcher and batter to batter. The GCL is basically an organized scrimmage. Some players are playing against other players that are 4 years their junior.
I’m not telling you to stop checking the box scores and the DFR, but just be mindful of the early numbers. The numbers are part of a much larger picture, that we have not gotten all of yet. A few of these players will last the trials and tribulations of the minor league development system and will be able to get to the majors in or around five years from now.
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Haha saw this title and thought of nick logmire. Then see him in the article, poor guy.
Is there a more perfect poster child of “beware of short season success!!!” than Nick Longmire?
Robert Stock.
Did anyone actually believe he wouldn’t eventually be a pitcher? I always thought it was just a matter of time. Although it took longer than I thought it would.
niko vasquez
Longmire was somewhat old for Batavia (19/20 would be age-appropriate for an actual prospect at that level) and had issues making contact. His subsequent sub-mediocrity was pretty foreseeable when you get down to it — tools or no tools.
On the other hand, one of the posters at scout.com had Anthony Garcia a borderline top-100 overall prospect based solely on his hitting performance in the GCL at age 18, even though Baseball America left Garcia completely off their GCL top 20 prospects.
How does that look today? ;)
When Oscar Taveras hit .322 with power, as the *youngest* regular in the Appy League, Baseball America rated him the #24 prospect in a middling Redbird system, while that same poster ranked Oscar in the top 50-60 prospects in all the minors. We know how that one turned out.
Performance. Age. League. That’s all ye know, or need to know. (When it comes to position players, that is.)
Speaking of short season ball, down in the DSL, 17-year-old Colombian southpaw Dewen Perez whiffed 10 guys yesterday, bringing his overall line to: 3 starts, 14 IP, 2 runs (1 earned), and a sturdy 18-4 K/BB ratio. Looks like someone worth watching….
I don’t mean to belittle your premise, Jeff. I agree 110% that caution is the course, when it comes to short season players who are old for their leagues. But the age-appropriate (or young) guys sometimes let us know how good they are when they’re waaay down in the lower minors bowels. ;)
Taveras, I think most people would agree, is not your normal prospect. He also came out of nowhere–his Dominican Summer League performance the season before was underwhelming in the same small sample size at a lower level of competition. The fact remains was that he was a Cardinals scouting and developmental staff find, so there wasn’t a lot of information or out-of-organization evaluation on him, so many prospect people were wisely taking a wait-and-see approach.
According to the Scout site in an article abotu the 2011 signings. Perez was the one of the most highly rated out of that class and according to BA his signing bonus was 450k so the orgination obviously like him.
there’s really no evidence for this.
i went back and looked at the leaders in the 2008 appy league by OPS. guys under the age of 20 appearing in the top 25 include: niko vasquez (19), angel morales (18 – now stuck in high A with a .547 OPS), wilmer flores (16 – now in high A with a .795 OPS), yeldrys molina (19 – now out of baseball), jon gilmore (19 – now in AA with a .483 OPS). of those guys, only flores is still a prospect.
same thing in 2007. beau riportella (18 – playing indy league ball), cody johnson (18 – still in AA), travis mitchell (19 – played indy league ball last year).
there’s very little correspondence between success in short-season ball. collecting a couple of anecdotes where someone was good as a teenager in short-season ball doesn’t prove that short-season statistics are reliable, even for teenagers.
They’re a lot more reliable…once we look beyond mere OPS.
Morales and Johnson struck out a LOT in the Appy, which is a big crimson flag.
Ripper and Mitchell, on the other hand, showed neither patience nor power. Gilmore also had a miserable sub-5% walk percentage. Yeldrys Molina had barely 80 AB’s, a truly small sample.
There are no guarantees, of course, at ANY level, that current performance predicts future success. But hitting performance examined from *every* angle usually has much more value than scouting reports…even at the very lowest short season levels (see Ben Badler’s March 2009 Baseball America article on the Dominican Summer League).
I think the main issue we need to look at when looking at SS ball is age level the the level of competition the player has previously played again.
Think about Robert Stock. Catcher on a nationally rated program playing D1 players everyday. He comes into JC against albiet pro’s but guys just out of HS 18 year olds from in the US for the first time from the Dominican and JC and CC players and dominted. Despite being young we should have all seen that it would have been like a SR in HS playing in the freshman game. Jeremy Schaffer should not be at JC. He holds offensive school records at Tulane and just graduated college. Why would he be playign on the same team as 17 year old Carson Kelly?
When we see players making large jumps in competition and still dominating that is when we shoudl take notice.
I am much more interested in the JC team this year except for a few at Batavia. I want to see how Breyvic Valara handles more mature players. I believe he will do very well. I want to see if Patrick Wisdom can get his average back up. Also want to see more of opening day starter Ben Freeman, who put up gaudy numbers in HS and is a very projectable lefty.
In JC- Despite playing last year Castillo is still very young and raw. Victor De Leon and Juan Bautista are both jumping GCL to pitch in JC. Possibily forgotten Bryan Martinez who everyone was very high on until shoulder issues sidelined him last year.
I think its more that Carson Kelly should not be at JC more than Schaeffer. We need places to put all of the newly drafted players and there are simply not enough slots (especially for low positional value players like Schaeffer) at more age-appropriate levels. In addition, I don’t think its a bad idea to make players have success at the lower levels, no matter how old, to create an atmosphere of “earning your promotion” to some degree.
And to clarify, I think it might be better for Kelly, with how raw he is, to be in EST working exclusively with the coaching staff on fundamentals. Love the kid, but he is soooo young and will probably take a long time so no rush. On this topic, did Tilson even start at JC last year?
EST is over but him being in GCL would be good. Tilson was in in GCL until the last few games of the year.
Oh…I thought EST went on pretty awhile longer, but i guess that makes sense now all the short-season squads have started.
Thanks for the info on Tilson
Tilson didn’t sign until the end of the signing window. He had 12 ABs in the GCL and 15 for JC.
What is Carson Kelly’s actual age? Even though I completely agree with you on Short Season stats, I do feel that the stats of kids playing in the league that are quite a bit younger than their peers do mean something.
Carson Kelly is still 17.
I don’t like to pass judgment on players until they’re at least half my age.
Speaking of which, I think that Jon Jay kid out of Miami has potential!
Kelly might be in JC as part of a genteleman’s agreement as part of his contract. Agents sometimes push for advanced development (even if it is not in the player’s best interest0
gentleman’s
Good one Lou..lol
Is it fair to lump JC results in with Batavia results here? Longmire was at Batavia but it seems to me (might be wrong) that most of the players that put up numbers in SS ball that get us excited and then disappoint are at JC.
That’s a good question, CC. The Appy League is so hitter-friendly, it tends to distort the relationship between skill and environment, and of course the SSS problem distorts that even more.
Here’s a hypothesis I’m working on regarding all MiLB stats, not just short-season ball:
1. With IFAs playing in the U.S. for the first time, a strong short-season performance rarely turns out to be a fluke. I’m just relying on memory here, but just about all our examples of short-season stats getting us too optimistic were of U.S. kids. (Catchers may be the exception. Good hitting stats in short season don’t seem to tell us anything.)
2. With high school draftees, the first year of full-season ball seems most telling. The kids who played on elite travel teams aren’t too far out of their comfort zones in short-season assignments. But I can’t imagine anyone being comfortable playing in QC in April, against generally older guys, with a mix of top prospects and former college players. I don’t know this because I’ve never been in their situation, but I would guess that this is when the reality of being a pro ballplayer kicks in.
3. With college draftees, it’s hard to say when the biggest challenge occurs. Some guys, like Allen Craig, were pretty much the same player from their time in the FSL until now. His first go at full-season ball was indicative of his true skill set. Others, like Jon Jay and maybe Zack Cox, have extended hot and cold stretches that leave us without any true indication of their MLB potential until they actually play in MLB.
So maybe when we’re looking at advanced college players — those who played D1 at top programs in power conferences — we just have to take everything with a grain of salt until they reach the majors. That doesn’t mean MiLB doesn’t matter, just that it’s harder to tell which parts of their performance give us the best idea what to expect from them.
But with the kids from Latin America, short-season stats could be meaningful, just because they’re going through what U.S. high schoolers probably don’t experience until they reach full-season ball — culture shock, the grind of being a pro athlete and a teenager at the same time, the struggle of playing against older guys who’re comfortable in their environment.
That still doesn’t get around the SSS problem, but it helps me sort things out when I’m trying to figure out which guys to follow more closely than others.
Good thoughts. So there is the level variable and also the source (college/HS/Latin) variable. i’d also think within the Latin variable there is an age variable as well as they tend to be of varying ages and experience levels when they get here.
Another good point.
One guy I’m watching this year is Ronard Castillo, who’s repeating at JC. Last year they jumped him up to JC from the DSL, bypassing the GCL, which makes me think they saw something special in his bat. Now he’s 20 and in his 3rd year as a pro.
It’ll be interesting to see what he can do. 20 isn’t old for the Appy League, and now he may have an edge in terms of experience and familiarity.