Archive for the “Prospect Confidence Polls” Category

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)

I’m sorry that we skipped the FR Reader rankings this year. That was lame of me. In order to make it up to you, the reader, I thought we’d try something a little different. This idea was inspired by Bryan Smith’s article at FanGraphs and some of the cool stuff he does. (Bryan is very smart).

Please click on this poll and enter your input on some of our hitting prospects. This poll is designed to seehow confident Future Redbirds readers are on a prospect’s ability to be an average big leaguer during their first six full seasons. The wOBA presented for each prospect is the minimum based on their defensive position and skill for them to be a 2 WAR player, or a major league average regular. DO NOT CONSIDER IF THE PLAYER IS CURRENTLY BLOCKED. And remember, this is what you think the player is capable of averaging during their first six major league seasons, or in other words, when they are under team control.

For those of you not hip to wOBA, well, get with it. wOBA is the new and improved OPS. Instead of just combining slugging and on-base percentage, wOBA takes the run values of offensive events and then scales it to a rate that is scaled to on-base percentage. You can read up on wOBA here and here and here.

To give you some frame of reference, Albert Pujols had a .449 wOBA last year. NL average is about .335. To give you further frames of reference, Nate McLouth had a .350 wOBA last year. Billy Butler had a .369. Ryan Sweeney had a .330. Cristian Guzman had a .301. Adam LaRoche had a .357. Orlando Hudson had a .342. Got it? Good.

Again, the reason why I picked the wOBA for each prospect is based on the minimum requirement based on their position and defensive skill to be at least two wins above replacement player, or in other words, an average player. For their position, I took the position they currently play, or what Baseball America pegged them for, as in the case of Steve Hill. (Catcher was a nice idea, at least). Their defensive skill is hidden, but it comes from their CHONE projected defensive runs above average. If a projection wasn’t available, I just went with their scouting report and fudged a number. This explains a bit why Ryan Jackson’s offensive threshold is so low.

You can skip any player if you’re not quite sure, but try and answer as many as possible. It’s on a scale of 1-5, 1 being not confident at all, while 5 would be that you feel very confident the player will hit for that minimum batting requirement on average during their first six seasons in the majors.

Thanks for your input.

Poll away.  <——–Um, yeah. Go here.