Posts Tagged “Jason Stidham”

I celebrated the 4th at Veteran’s stadium, where I had the privilege of seeing Arquimedes Nieto take a no-hitter into the 8th inning. I wasn’t able to watch the game with the insane amount of diligence I normally do, as I was entertaining a future in-law who also happens to be a Cardinal fan, but I’ll tell you what I did see. Nieto definitely had us both paying attention with his flirtation with a no-no.

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These days, we’re spoiled for statistical information on our favorite big league players, and it’s trickled down to the minors as well. But we just don’t see a lot of quantitative analysis on college players around the ‘net. It’s a shame, too, because when hearing name after name being called on draft day, there’s little we know about the players who are being called and how they truly performed against their peers. Sure, the top players get some ink, but after the first couple of rounds we’re left with some superficial college stats that may look good on the surface but tell us nothing about the context they were in.

Thankfully, there are some hard workers out there like Mike Rogers, who have taken the time to apply some of the advanced metrics to the college game to give us more information on some of these draft picks out of the D-I schools. He’s also been kind enough to share with me his findings. Mike has used Tango’s wOBA (weighted on-base average) for players, as well as speed scores, isolated power, walk rates, strikeout rates and the like to find some of the top college performers in the draft. He’s even applied things like strength of schedule, average conference stats and park factors for context.

Now, I recommend reading the scouting reports first. Tools trump performance in evaluating amateurs. Just because someone is a good college baseball player doesn’t guarantee success at the major league level. But this does tell us more about what these players have done, and one thing we know, the Cardinals highly value track record in many ways.

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Quick announcement: I’ll be on UCB Radio tonight at 9:30 to talk all things draft.

Here’s some quick snap shots of who the Cardinals took on Day 2
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Now the Cardinals are going the college-performer route. First they go with Brooks Conley, an OF out of the U. of Washington.  Seems like a one-dimensional slugger to me, but for the 7th round, that’s not bad. Conley hit .303/.401/.645 for Washington, and the Huskie’s home ballpark very much favors pitchers. I have his Gross Production Average (a variant of OPS, scaled to batting average) at a .365, adjusting for strength of schedule and park. So he has some pretty nice power.

Stidham is a middle infielder and like Conley put up some pretty prodigous numbers. He hit .363/.465/.650, good for a adjusted GPA of .363. Can’t find anything really on him, scouting-wise. He’s a left-handed hitter, and for a middle infielder the numbers are pretty outstanding.