Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
I caught a couple of innings of Sunday's exhibition game between the Yankees and Phillies--saw Giambi punch a double into the left center field gap, saw Alex Rodriguez just get under one and fly out. I was struck by how, what's the right word?, rusty, the fielding was. Not that it came as a surprise, but it reminded me just how smooth most major league fielders are once the season gets going. How talented they are. The routine plays looked difficult on Sunday.
Also saw Jorge Posada take one off the face mask and Ken Singleton, the YES announcer, said, "First one of the year." I wonder if veteran catchers like Posada are so used to getting banged up by foul balls that they hardly notice it (that is, if it is physically possible to hardly notice getting pounded in the grill), or if he says, "Oy, there's the first one, only a hundred plus more to go." Does it get harder and harder the older you get?
Couple things: Mike Mussina talked about how young pitchers are handled with reporters yesterday.
And, behind the pay wall at ESPN, Rob Neyer links to a recent article by Tyler Kepner about Robinson Cano, and the best deal the Yankees never made:
What's striking is just how wrong everybody was about not only Cano, but about the Yankees' farm system generally. Do you remember all those stories about the Yankees' supposed inability to make mid-season trades because they didn't have anything to offer other teams? I sure do, because I repeated them every time someone asked me.In the spring of 2005, everybody rated Eric Duncan as the Yankees' No. 1 prospect. In that year's Baseball America Prospect Book, three of four editors had Duncan as the only Yankee among the top 50 prospects; the other editor didn't list any Yankees at all. Overall, the organization's young talent was ranked 24th, with this comment: "Plenty of emerging players, especially power arms, but none has played above Class A."
The power arms, they mean. Cano had played in Triple-A. The Yankees also had Melky Cabrera (who had not played above Class A). And they had Chien-Ming Wang, who'd pitched brilliantly in 40 Triple-A innings (and it's not clear why he wasn't considered a "power arm," as he routinely threw his fastball in the low- to mid-90s).
As usual, I don't mean to pick on Baseball America. My friend John Sickels' ratings were essentially the same. He had Duncan as a B+ prospect, the 24th-best hitter, but had no other Yankee among the top 50 hitters or top 50 pitchers. He rated Cano, Cabrera, and Wang as B- prospects.
Of course, within a year all three were playing key roles for a team that won 97 games. And Eric Duncan, the jewel of the organization just three years ago? He's still in the organization. Still only 22 last year, he spent the entire season in Triple-A and batted .241 with 11 homers. In their latest Prospect Handbook, Baseball America doesn't rank Duncan among the Yankees top 30 prospects.
Wonder if there will be any rookies that come up and impress us in the Bronx this year?
Is Jorge hip to enough Yiddish to pull off something like that?
I don't have time at the moment to look at Cano's minor league stats, but I'm guessing he's been a solid contact, low strikeout guy to some degree his whole career. There's the old saw about Latin guys that you "don't walk your way off the island." If this is true, and as MiL pitchers have less solid control, then you might see a guy hitting .270 with a .310 OBP in the minors who can eventually become a .310/.370 guy, gaining 40 points of BA with some added strength and selectivity and an additional 20 points of "patience" with the addition of some more experience and confidence.
As for pitchers, where were Kennedy and Horne on the lists last year vs. now? A guy like Kennedy is never going to be considered sexy, but at some point you have to say, "OK, he's had pinpoint control and success at A, AA, AAA, maybe it's ok to squint a little bit and see a Maddux-type, rather than be disappointed that he's not a Gooden-style flamethrower."
I liked what I saw of 'Dorf last year, and am rooting for him to be a bullpen surprise.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/index
2009 is going to a lot of fun from a prospect stand point. A number of these guys are going to be ready to bust a move.
but to answer your question - no it is not just you - he looks pudgy - granted his windbreaker is blowing so that doesn't help, but when you stand near dmitri young and don't look fit there's a problem
8 agree with your take. the position players are not advanced enough to be ready nor to really know how they will pan out - but with all those pitchers it is certainly within the realm of serious possibility that a solid staff and pen can be constructed for the next handful of years.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/03/04/obit.gygax.ap/index.html
:(
The Yankees themselves clearly undervalued Cano and Wang. They may still undervalue Melky, though that's not clear.
It's a still developing process. but it's getting better.
As for Cano / Cabrera / Wang, Wang was actually the highest profile amoung the 3. he had the largest signing bonus by far. and it's obviously also high profile because he was like just the 4th player ever from Taiwan to comeover stateside.
He's career in the minors was a little odd, it was scewed by injury in the early going. it's hard to tell when he was truely healthy . he also pitched for the national team quiet often which scewed it even more(particularly his clutch performance in 03 propelled Taiwan into the Olympics for the first time in 12 year) .. like in 04 when he was in Athen in the summer.
During all this he also changed his pitching style. which basically just throws every sample out of the window. in another word. Wang's basically a guy you had to completely rely on scouting report. he's big, he throws hard, he has pretty good command and good poise.
Cano and Cabrera 's path are fairly similar. both moved up pretty fast. not showing a ton in the process consistently except maybe the ability to hit for contact pretty consistently. and at least some flashes of power while staying at a reasonablly preminum position. they both went ballistics in the upper minor . maybe they're really just the type of guys that excell more in higher level competition or maybe it was all the fast tracking that's scewed their minor league stats.
There are PLENTY of big time star who either didn't have incrediablly high profile or didn't hit a ton in the minors. Albert Pujols might be the most extreme case as he was basically on NO ONE's list until he won the job out of ST. Miguel Cabrera's path is strikingly similar to Cano / Cabrera . and Hanely Ramirez sucked before he was traded.
minor watching is a combination of a lot of things. really.
For example. Jeff Marquez is a interesting case. he's got a solid ERA . but his periphals been deminishing. in terms of stats I'd say he's not gonna make it as more than a backend SP or RP...
but scouting reports i've read suggest that he's stuff is pretty damn good. and he's shown solid control. he just might be a pretty big sleeper. Curt Schilling was a lot like that in his minor league days. scouts liked him a lot more then the numbers. but he also struggled BIG TIME in the majors from the get go. then they spinned him to the Astros... who spinned him to the Phillies.. for Jason Grimsly LOL!!!
At the same time, you shouldn't let the fear of making a bad decision paralyze the organization completely. Sure, sometimes the best trades are the ones you don't make - but those can be bad trades, too.
It's also not enough to say, well, if you're going to lose them in the rule 5 draft or as MiL FAs, then trade them. That insures that you get the least possible value for them - it's wasting your assets.
You have to have good evaluators, but you also have to take chances. Some of them won't work - but otherwise you're not making the best use of your farm system.
And to respond to someone from the last thread: no, it's not Nick Johnson + Rivera + Navarro + Halsey for Randy Johnson. The Vazquez deal turned out to be a bad one, but it was a sunk cost and doesn't figure into the RJ deal.
I think ML data have a far greater predictive value than do those generated at minor league levels especially A+ and below for a number of reasons. Most importantly players are typically working on skill mastery and generalization at those levels. At the big leagues they're working on winning and therefore there is a substantially greater probability that any data captured there will be a reflection of the true useful skill set of a particular player.
MiL numbers shouldn't be and aren't ignored but the need to be used the right way in conjunction with scouting; typically to determine if work is paying off and for short term comparisons. The problem is for any set of data developed for a hitter we can never really control what the pitchers he was facing were working on either. Therefore we have to be cautious when employing the numbers.
http://www.baseballmusings.com/archives/025111.php
Oh. OK. Just me.
27 Nice >;)
http://jeteupthemiddle.blogspot.com/2008/03/community-projections-2008.html
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