Bruce Miles Article on Cedeno

[fromthestretch]

I rarely pay much attention to minor league numbers, I look at what the kids do in their big league auditions.

 

That is an extremely poor way of judging a prospect and his chances.

Not to pronounce their careers over, but it worked pretty well for Hee Seop Choi, Bobby Hill, and Jason Dubois, none of whom did anything worth writing home about in their big league auditions and all of whom are now gone and not having much impact on their new teams.

 

Regarding Hill and Dubois, neither was really given what I would call a genuine opportunity. I'm certainly not saying either would have succeeded if they had been give that opportunity, but we'll never know. I probably wouldn't bet a lot of money on either of them to be all that productive.

 

I see Choi differently though. I still feel he can be a productive major league hitter. He shared time with Karros in 2003, and still managed an .885 OPS pre-concussion. Look at the one opportunity he had to play regularly (2004 with Florida before they dealt him to LA).

 

http://www.baseball-reference.com/c/choihe01.shtml

 

For a 25-year old playing half his games in a pitcher's park, his numbers looked pretty nice. Then he gets dealt to LA, where he rotted on the bench (he got a whopping 12 at-bats that Sept....and they were very spread out). I still think that if you give him 500 plate appearances in a season, he's capable of putting up an OPS in the mid .800s. His strikeouts will be high (probably around 130 or so with 500 plate appearances). But 25 homers and 70 walks wouldn't be a stretch, especially if he could play in a more hitter-friendly environment than LA.

[Soul]

Why not just consider all numbers from all sources?

 

Why exclude anything?

 

It all amounts to an educated guess at the end of the day. I see no reason to favor anything or disfavor anything.

[MeatampPotatoesMan]

I rarely pay much attention to minor league numbers, I look at what the kids do in their big league auditions.

 

That is an extremely poor way of judging a prospect and his chances.

Not to pronounce their careers over, but it worked pretty well for Hee Seop Choi, Bobby Hill, and Jason Dubois, none of whom did anything worth writing home about in their big league auditions and all of whom are now gone and not having much impact on their new teams.

 

I don't know what else to say other than that ignoring a much larger sample in lieu of a small amount of playing time under wildly varying circumstances is very foolish.

 

It may be a small sample size, but it's also the only true indicator of performance against that level of competition. AAA is very different from MLB. There are tons of AAAA players out there, who, just by looking at minor league numbers, you'd think are going to do very well in the bigs.

 

Jeter's first exposure to the big leagues, .250 .294 .375

Arod's first year .204 .241 .204

Arod's second year .232 .264 .408

Mariano Rivera's first year 67 IP, 5.51 ERA

Jason Giambi, .256 .364 .398 (looked a lot like Choi)

 

It's foolish guys, really foolish. Otherwise you might have thought Cruz was going to be better than Maddux, or that Jerome Walton would have a better career than Jim Edmonds.

 

Minor league numbers matter.

 

I never said minor league numbers didn't matter, or scouting for that matter...just that small sample sizes aren't necessarily meaningless. It's just a part of the puzzle.