Posts Tagged “Jon Jay”

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.

Forgive the slowness of wrapping up this series, we still need to look at our beloved Triple-A affiliate.  I deleted pitchers and players with less than 100 at bats.

It was definitely a banner year for the Redbirds, who won the PCL Championship.

• Allen Craig is my favorite monster, as is yours, but if there is a red flag with him other than the fact that the Cardinals do not believe he can play third base, it’s his BB/K ratio.
• I must have been in a cave, but I had no idea David Freese had the type of season he had, even if it was an abbreviated one.  He’s a year older than Craig, and the Cards do believe he can play third base, which is why there’s talk of Freese starting at third base next year and we saw Craig not even receiving a September call up. I haven’t seen both players play at much length, but my judgment is Craig is the superior hitter, albeit not by a lot. If Freese can play third and be at least average while putting together a .320 OBP and .435 SLG, that’s more valuable than a left fielder who would give you a little better production at the plate.
• Tyler Greene quietly had himself one fine season. Among other things, look at that stolen base/caught stealing numbers. The man has some speed and knows how to pick his spots. With the Boogstache firmly holding on  the SS job, it’s nice to know Greene is there as a fallback option and backup. He may fill up a boxscore with steals, doubles, strikeouts and errors; it’s never a dull moment with Greene.
• As for disappointments, look no further than Bryan Anderson and Jon Jay. Jay pulled himself up after a nose-dive of a second half, but it’s hard to see him becoming better than a fourth outfielder at this point. The Cardinal brass bragged about Jay and his potential future batting titles, so that’s not quite the future they had pegged for the quirky outfielder. Anderson was once a Top 100 prospect and has since tanked it hard. Before hitting the DL he was allowing about a stolen base per game and his offense bit the dust. He’s currently hitting for a .630 OPS in 27 at-bats in the Arizona Fall League, for what it’s worth.

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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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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