Posts Tagged “Daryl Jones”

With a downright awful 2010, Daryl Jones continues to be one of the more frustrating prospects in St. Louis’ system. What at times has been seen as a toolsy, athletic, above-average corner outfielder, is starting to look like an average fourth who doesn’t have the outfield instincts to stay at center, the arm for right, or the power for left.

Jones, an extremely athletic three-sport athlete in high school, was selected in the third round of the 2005 draft. After struggling to translate his tools to results in his first full two years of pro ball, Jones broke out in 2008, posting a .316/.407/.483 line with Palm Beach, and Springfield.

While he did hold on to a steady 21.5 LD% in 2009, his first full attempt at AA was hampered by a quad strain, and he’s never been the same since. While Jones has never been expected to hit for plus-power with his linear swing, he hasn’t even been capable of posting average power numbers lately, topping a .400 SLG in just one of his past nine months of ball. In ’10, his LD% trailed off to 19.7%. With a .292 BABIP, Jones posted a park-adjusted line of .241/.332/.345.

I had previously thought that if Jones could carry his success from ’08, and the first half of ’09, he could have a legitimate shot at earning a spot with the big league club in the 2011 Spring Training. That appears to be a long-shot now. And while Jones is still just 23-years-old, this stunt in progression is startling, and something to note, in my opinion.

What say you, readers? Is the injury still hampering him? Is it too early to give up on a 23-year-old? Has your projection of his upside been changed considerably with his awful ’10 season?

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.

Well, this has been an eventful day. I meant to get this up much sooner, thankfully I didn’t. Wagner Mateo would have been my #4 prospect on this list, but who knows what is going on now.

A caveat here — I still like waiting for fall leagues to get over with before I come up with an “official” ranking, but in the name of collaboration and blogging, here’s my ranking. This system has greatly thinned and now looks a bit thinner without Mateo, who’s ceiling as a hitter I had at least believed to be higher than others. I’m starting to sour a bit on the whole international signing scene, there’s just too much shady dealings going on. I’m not saying the Cardinals should abandon it. It’s just not always the bonus babies that rise to the top of prospect lists, as evidenced by my #6 rated prospect.

1. Shelby Miller – No brainer here, even though he hasn’t thrown more than 10 professional innings. You all know the scouting report. Miller’s a potential 1-2 starter. The road from here to there is long, and there’s a lot of ditches along side that road, but it’s exciting to have a pitcher with Miller’s ceiling in the system.
2. Jaime Garcia – Jaime is back from Tommy John, which was the only knock on him the previous season. He’s burning worms and missing bats, just like before. Ceiling is #3 starter, which is why he is here.
3. Daryl Jones – 2009 was better than his bad seasons but worse than his terrific year last year, no thanks to injury issues that dogged him all season long. Scouts remarked as to Jones looked more like a 4th OF due to his lack of speed and power, but the speed part was because of knee issues. Carl Crawford lite is the lofty comparison. I think he can be an average LF because his range will make up a little bat for a lack of thump. My semi-realistic but maybe overly optimistic hope for DJ Tools: .280/.355/.445, +5 defense, double-digits in steals.
4. Lance Lynn – The big hoss does nothing super spectacular, but avoids ugly innings, misses an average number of bats and gets a little better than average ground ball outs.
5. Allen Craig – Met with a big dose of skepticism from the scouting community despite mashing year after year. He got off to a slow start and still managed to have his finest season to date. I know he’s a little older at 25, but after this season in Triple-A I believe Craig can help the club now, whether that be at the hot corner or in the OF.
6. Eduardo Sanchez – The breakout prospect of the year. He’s about on par with Reifer and Samuel in terms of stuff, only the big difference about Sanchez is he can command it more often than not. Look for him at some point in 2010.
7. Robert Stock – People seem to forget he’s only 19. He mashed in the Appy, not sure if that amounts to much, but after suffering through the slumps he suffered through at USC it was nice to see him hit. The back-up plan of pitching has to be on the shelf for now. I do hear some concerns about Stock’s swing mechanics. I’m not fully on the bandwagon yet, but he was formerly mentioned as a possible first rounder and he has a nice ceiling. I just don’t get too thrilled after good Appy stats, call it the Niko Vazquez shakes.

Sean “Chone” Smith has applied his TotalZone defensive metric on minor league data for the past few years, although it didn’t become available until last year at MinorLeagueSplits.com. Recently updated data has become available for games up to July 31st. While every defensive metric have their own quirks (especially metrics that depend on scorekeepers coding of batted balls as “line drives” or “fly balls”), the quirks can only be heightened when not dealing with a full season.

I’d trust the scouting reports first, then go with two or better yet three seasons worth of data before making any hard conclusions on a minor leaguer’s glovework. Or better yet, go watch them yourself for a few games.

But for what it’s worth, let’s check out some of the Cardinals’ top prospects and how their TotalZone numbers look. It’s also important to know these numbers translate a better for infielders than outfielders. Let’s start with the up the middle positions first.

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Today’s player feature is Nick Derba.

Nick Derba is currently the catcher for class AA Springfield. He’s 23 and a very good catcher defensively. However…he has originated the phrase “Derba Line” for his work in the batting box as he is batting .098 on the year. .100 is the Derba Line if you haven’t guessed.

All in good fun as we obviously wish Nick Derba the best as he is the second best defensive catcher in the system behind Matt Pagnozzi.

Matt Baker has a great write-up about Nick here.

Also, here’s what Ben Badler of BA had to say about yesterday’s topic, Mr. Daryl Jones. (Update: DJ Tools is back on the DL for the same injury Ben references below.)

Ben Badler: Hard to get a real feel for Jones’ abilities yesterday because he’s only played in two other games this month due to injury. A lot of scouts will look at him and see a fourth outfielder, but I think he could be a starting left fielder in a different mold from your typical plus-plus power LF who gives half of it back in the field. The power is going to need to continue to develop, but that’s typically the last thing to come around for a hitter. If he’s a high on-base guy with moderate power and above-average defense, that’s good enough to be a starting left fielder in the big leagues.

Let’s rock 4 games tonight.

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Per Leach.

JMakes sense, these two are 1-2 in my little personal prospect rankings in my head.

I’ve been talking about TotalZone and prospects the past week at BtB. (Way more often than I had planned, I’ve had way too much extra free time lately. I’ll get a job eventually, right!? Right???)

We’ve talked about some of the leaders and laggards with TotalZone before, but I thought I’d throw together this handy-dandy chart together before the season starts.

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John Vuch has been with the Cardinals ever since he was a teenager, and has has played a vital role in several departments before settling into the role of being the Director of Minor League Operations. Few, if any, know more about the Cardinals and the inner workings the farm system. After settling down in Jupiter for spring training, John was kind enough to answer questions from myself and the other writers at FR. Good stuff, as always. Enjoy.

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Ben Badler is one of the many talented writers at Baseball America, the standard bearer for all things prospects. Recently I asked him if he’d be up for some Q and A and he very graciously agreed to rap with us. I thoroughly enjoyed his answers and I’m sure you will as well. Thanks to Ben for taking the time out of his busy schedule to give us his insights on the Cardinal farm system.

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