Article: Cubs Winter Top Prospects Rankings: #4 Owen Caissie

[Jason Ross]

The hulking Canadian outfielder has some of the most prodigious power in the system. The Cubs have aggressively moved him from level to level. How has his development gone so far? And when might we see the Big Maple in Chicago?

Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

2023 Season Review
Entering 2023, few Cub prospects have been pushed as aggressively as Owen Caissie. Making his debut in South Bend before he turned 20 and subsequently making his first start in Tennessee before being legally able to purchase alcohol in the States, Caissie has rocketed through the system at a breakneck pace. At times, he's struggled with swing and miss; other times, he's dazzled with his power. 2023 was another strong season for the giant right-fielder, perhaps his best. 

If there's been a single knock on Caissie, it's that there are significant amounts of swing and miss in his game. A quick look on his Baseball-Reference page or his FanGraphs would lead one to believe that not only had this issue continued, but it had gotten even worse, as his season strikeout rate was 31.1%, tying the highest number he's had at any level. More so than any other prospect in the system, however, this number is highly misleading. 

As I have discussed ad nauseam in these rankings, the first reason is the appearance of the pre-tacked baseball that the Southern League used throughout the first half of the season. During this time, the lumbering slugger struck out 33.9% of the time, an alarmingly high number, regardless of his age, but even many of these strikeouts come very early in his stint. This makes sense; Caissie was one of the youngest players in the entire league. We see improvement from May to July 9th, as he lowered that number to just under 30%. Things get very interesting after switching the ball, and Caissie lowered his number to 27%. A clear progression and learning occurred for the Canadian, and this might be one of the season's biggest storylines for any Cub MiLB hitter. Caissie will always strike out, but he will be very good if he can maintain a level in the high 20s.

Secondly, we must accept that left-handed hitters don't hit left-handed pitchers well at any level. That's not every player, but there is a league-wide issue. As a whole, left-handed hitters at the major league level hit a paltry 90 wRC+ against left-handed pitching. If we look deeper into Caissie's numbers and isolate his data against right-handed pitchers, the strikeout rate goes even further down...to just 25%. That's not just with the non-pre-tacked baseball... that's all season. 

Overall, Caissie's numbers looked great, though. He improved his wRC+ despite the level jump, hitting a solid 144 wRC+. His exit velocities weren't just elite for AA but just elite. It would be impressive enough if the 20-year-old posted the 15th-best average exit velocity in the Southern League, even more so if it was the 15th-best in all of the minor leagues, but what Caissie did was have the 15th-best exit velocity in every level of baseball. This is what elite power looks like.

Defensively, it sounds like Caissie made progress in right field. He boasts a 60-grade arm, so the question with him will always be, "Can he move enough?". While this is a question that most in the industry accept will eventually be "no," we aren't there yet. He made a few highlight plays throughout the season and threw out even more runners with the arm. At least for now, projecting a bit of time where Caissie has decent enough defense at the position is on the table. 

2024 Season Outlook and ETA
Owen Caissie is ticketed for Iowa in 2024 as a 21-year-old. He's six months younger than Pete Crow-Armstrong and is on a similar timeline as the centerfielder. His wRC+ and offensive numbers are better than similar power-hitting-outfielders like James Woods of the Washington Nationals, someone considered by all to be a top-25 prospect and by many to be a top-10 prospect. Granted, part of that is the defensive projection (more on that later), but Caissie is criminally underrated. 

I expect Caissie will struggle, probably through sometime in May; this is a big jump. He's shown a consistent pattern of struggle-growth these last few years in which the first 30-45 days have moments of brilliance surrounded by strikeouts and poor results. But then he begins to figure it out and proves he's ready for the next challenge by the end of the year. There's a world where Owen Caissie helps the Cubs in 2024 at the major league level, though 2025 feels more doable. With the corner spots blocked today, his path will likely be at either first base or DH (depending on this offseason). There's also a chance he's traded... there is risk here with the contact. If he can strike out around 27-30% of the time, he will probably be an excellent power-hitting player. If he's over 30%, it becomes far more difficult to project if he'll walk and hit enough to remain relevant.

The upside on Owen Caissie, regardless of risk, is pretty big. He hits for power, and when he hits, he hits the ball hard. There's legitimate 70-grade power in his body, and you can easily envision him becoming a 35+ home run hitter. Is there some platoon risk as well? Sure, but as discussed, this issue is league-wide right now and doesn't seem unique to the power-hitting outfielder. As we progress in a data-driven world, platoon matchups are just a part of the game, and as a left-handed hitter, he would still be on the "strong" side of the platoon, hitting more often than his right-handed-hitting counterpart. Even if he's confined to a less premium position, he does well enough with the bat where a natural path forward exists, too. I'm a big fan of the future here, and I can't wait to see him (hopefully) peppering Waveland and Avenue with bombs sooner rather than later.

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[Bertz]

It was hard not to think about Caissie every time Evan Carter came up to the plate this October.  For the past two years any time I've looked at Caissies performance in the context of his age Carter was the only guy ahead.

Caissie looks like about as safe a bet to be an impact hitter as there is, not just in the org but in the minors. You mention 70 grade power, but it might be 80 grade by maturity.  He hit, IIRC, 117 MPH last season.  Only 26 guys have crossed that line in the last three years.  And at 20 years old that aspect of his game should be improving still.  The patience too looks pretty elite.

Tbe contact draws a lot of hand-wringing, but I think those concerns are overstated.  We don't have full plate discipline numbers for the minor leagues, so people have to settle for K rate.  But K-rate =/= contact rate.  A guy running an elite walk rate is going to inherently be in a lot of deep counts, which will lead to a lot of Ks.  We do have swinging strike rate for MiLB, and Caissie was 35th out of 64 guys in the Southern League this year.  Caissie is not a Joey Gallo or Patrick Wisdom level contact bat.  He's more Kyle Schwarber, who has bad but not awful contact rates but runs huge K numbers dye to walks.

Schwarber is the cautionary tale for Caissie though.  He had only occasionally been an elite bat, and as a bottom of the defensive spectrum guy you need an elite bat to exceed the 2.5 WAR neighborhood.  I'd expect Caissie to provide more defense than Schwarber, though not a ton.  But there's pressure on the bat to be like a 130 wRC+ or better for him to be an impact player.  That's a tall order for any minor league hitter, and so like several others in the system even though I like him a ton if we need to move him so be it.

[Jason Ross]

1 hour ago, Bertz said:

It was hard not to think about Caissie every time Evan Carter came up to the plate this October.  For the past two years any time I've looked at Caissies performance in the context of his age Carter was the only guy ahead.

Caissie looks like about as safe a bet to be an impact hitter as there is, not just in the org but in the minors. You mention 70 grade power, but it might be 80 grade by maturity.  He hit, IIRC, 117 MPH last season.  Only 26 guys have crossed that line in the last three years.  And at 20 years old that aspect of his game should be improving still.  The patience too looks pretty elite.

Tbe contact draws a lot of hand-wringing, but I think those concerns are overstated.  We don't have full plate discipline numbers for the minor leagues, so people have to settle for K rate.  But K-rate =/= contact rate.  A guy running an elite walk rate is going to inherently be in a lot of deep counts, which will lead to a lot of Ks.  We do have swinging strike rate for MiLB, and Caissie was 35th out of 64 guys in the Southern League this year.  Caissie is not a Joey Gallo or Patrick Wisdom level contact bat.  He's more Kyle Schwarber, who has bad but not awful contact rates but runs huge K numbers dye to walks.

Schwarber is the cautionary tale for Caissie though.  He had only occasionally been an elite bat, and as a bottom of the defensive spectrum guy you need an elite bat to exceed the 2.5 WAR neighborhood.  I'd expect Caissie to provide more defense than Schwarber, though not a ton.  But there's pressure on the bat to be like a 130 wRC+ or better for him to be an impact player.  That's a tall order for any minor league hitter, and so like several others in the system even though I like him a ton if we need to move him so be it.

Honestly, I was trying to temper my bias with Caissie on the 70 grade power. 80 is a real possibility, but I also know I personally adore Owen Caissie and have, for a while. So I probably tend to swing the other way sometimes writing these guys up like that. 

[Outshined_One]

Another prime trade candidate this offseason, but, I agree with the ranking and I would keep him over Alcantara in a hypothetical trade scenario. There's definite bust potential with his swing and miss, but he's been healthy, he showed in-season improvement, and the power potential is seriously impressive.

It's also nice that the Cubs can afford to be patient with him. He strikes me as the type who just needs plate appearances against better and better pitching.

[CubinNY]

I did not get to see him this year when the Smokies played in Montgomery, but the previous year I saw him in SB several times. I don’t know if it was the uniform but he didn’t exactly look athletic. Tall yes, wide hips, rather narrow shoulders,  I was stuck by his appearance. 
 

maybe he’s filled out in year. I do not agree he’s a better prospect then Alcantara, 

I like he cut down the strikeouts. I love the power. If he can be traded for a difference makes, I’d do it and take my chances. 

[Jason Ross]

16 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

I did not get to see him this year when the Smokies played in Montgomery, but the previous year I saw him in SB several times. I don’t know if it was the uniform but he didn’t exactly look athletic. Tall yes, wide hips, rather narrow shoulders,  I was stuck by his appearance. 
 

maybe he’s filled out in year. I do not agree he’s a better prospect then Alcantara, 

I like he cut down the strikeouts. I love the power. If he can be traded for a difference makes, I’d do it and take my chances. 

I'd have him above Alcantara. Let's put it this way, Owen Caissie put up a 144 wrC+ at AA (with the weird baseball) at age 20. Similarly, Alcantara has 20 PAs in AA and posted a worse wRC+ in A+ at a year older than Caisssie did.

I think Alcantara's 99% is above that of Caissie. But I think we kind of forget just how young Owen is and how good he has been. I don't think you'd be wrong in your evaluation, they're close. I just would have Caissie ahead, personally. From a real world position...They're interchangeable on prospect lists.  What's fun is we can have two prospects like this in the system and actually debate where they belong.

 

 

 

Edited November 25, 2023 by 1908_Cubs

[craig]

Caissie, Alcantara, and Ballesteros at 4, 5, and 8 reflect the massive amount of risk within the system.  Each of these three guys are huge-risk guys with failure pathways.  Will Ballesteros really be able to catch at a big-league level?  Maybe yes, but that isn't safe at all.  If he can't, he's not a high-value prospect.  

Caissie and Alcantara both have huge contact risk.  Alcantara with the huge long levers, it wouldn't shock if his power deteriorates against better velocity and fewer mistakes .  K-ing half the time in the no-pitching AFL reflects the risk.  He may hit like Brennen Davis by the time he hits AAA, who knows?  Hopefully he can get smarter and make enough adjustments so that he can make enough contact to make it work.  But yeah, certainly the risk is there that offensively he'll be Patrick Wisdom with less game power.  This season will be a good test for Alcantara, to see if the contact and OBP can improve, and the HR's.  It's fun to talk about his hypothetical power, but last year he hit 13 HR's.  Projecting power is fun, and BP-power is fun.  But you have to hit the ball solidly off of game-pitching to hit real-game HR's.  It's time to see more in-game HR power start to show.  

Caissie:  Do you guys think he's too unathletic to play 1B?  Given Happ/Suzuki, Caissie's going to be blocked for a while, and obviously 1B is wide open.  I know it would waste his strong arm.  And 1B defense is super important, much more so than RF or LF or 3B, so if he stinks at 1B that wouldn't be a pathway.  Just trying to think about options.  

I wonder how fluky some of Caissie's 2023 was?  .289 average and .398-OBP seem lovely for a HR-hitting slugger.  And we've gotten the exit-velocity excellence.  But even with good exit-velocity, is a .407 BABIP real and sutainable for a slow big man?  Replace his .407 BABIP with an above-average-but-not-extraordinary .320 BABIP and he would have been a .235-BA guy.  

1908, I'm not really a believer that his K-rate was so severely tacky-ball sourced.  If I just do his monthly K/AB, it was an extraordinary 52% in April, obviously that got better.  But for May-June-July-August, it was 37%-38%-32%-36%.  (I'm not doing per-AB because milb doesn't tabulate PA per month.).   Anyway, my point is that I'm not seeing a huge pattern beyond kinda random after April.  He's up in the 32-38% range.

I wonder what adjustments if any he will make this season.  If he's holding the .400 BABIP, maybe he'll have no reason to mess with success?  Maybe with another year of experience, he'll be actually better at HR's?  He's big and strong enough that you'd think he might jump his HR's from 22 to 32, or some nice step like that? Every HR is a hit, so a bunch more HR hits is great for BA, OBP, and slugging.  He might also adapt by swinging earlier in the count?  The obvious adjustment for most K-guys to reduce the K's is to swing earlier and try to resolve more counts before reaching two strikes.  Nobody gets hit or HR's with 2-strikes, so perhaps he can trim his scary K-rates some by swinging earlier.  But, obviously that's a balance.  Average, HR's, and slug would probably benefit; but walks would take a dive and OBP as well.  

My guess is that he will reduce his K-rate (and walk-rate) to some degree by swinging more aggressively.  HR's will improve; OBP will drop; my guess is BA was so BABIP-lucky that even with a more aggressive approach, that his BA will still drop despite making contact more often.  

 

[Jason Ross]

57 minutes ago, craig said:

I wonder how fluky some of Caissie's 2023 was?  .289 average and .398-OBP seem lovely for a HR-hitting slugger.  And we've gotten the exit-velocity excellence.  But even with good exit-velocity, is a .407 BABIP real and sutainable for a slow big man?  Replace his .407 BABIP with an above-average-but-not-extraordinary .320 BABIP and he would have been a .235-BA guy. 

I would start by saying there's little to nothing flukey here. We have to frame BABIP in different ways when we look at MiLB data sets. We're used to, many times, looking at it as a "fluke" stat, because in the MLB, it's rare to see a player head above heels the rest of the talent level around him, but the MiLB is a different situation. Many times high BABIP can be a good sign and with Caissie and his extreme exit velocities, this seems like a case of "this dude is better than those around him". We shouldn't expect him to carry a .400 BABIP at the MLB level, but we also shouldn't assume he's a fluke in AA either. It's a positive, not a negative right now. 

Quote

1908, I'm not really a believer that his K-rate was so severely tacky-ball sourced.  If I just do his monthly K/AB, it was an extraordinary 52% in April, obviously that got better.  But for May-June-July-August, it was 37%-38%-32%-36%.  (I'm not doing per-AB because milb doesn't tabulate PA per month.).   Anyway, my point is that I'm not seeing a huge pattern beyond kinda random after April.  He's up in the 32-38% range.

So, I disagree with this as well and the issue is that that you're using the wrong data. You have to do per-PA because walks matter here. What you've created is a wrong data set, especially for a player like Owen Caissie who walks a lot. AB's don't count walks, PA's do, so you've essentially punished him for walking if you use ABs instead (For example, if you hit 10 times and walk 4, while striking out 2 times, in the first example you'd have 6 AB's, or a 33.3% K%, when in reality your K% for those 10 appearances was really 20%.).  If you want monthly k-rates, use fangraphs. You can go under the game-log tab and select certain data points to match dates. For example, here's his K% per month using the proper format of K's and PA's:

April: 43.2%

May: 34.5%

June: 31.7%

July: 25.5% (new baseball alert)

August: 28.6%

September: 23.7% 

Another data set, this time comparing the different baseballs only:

Pre-tacked: 33.7%

Regular Baseball: 27.1%

See how much better these look? This isn't a fun-with-data thing either, it's a proper representation of his K%. I think it's clear both that the pre-tacked baseball was a massive change for Caissie, as one of his biggest single, full month drops was from June to July (the league saw a 3% increase in strikeouts alone) and that Caisisie improved his bat to ball throughout the entirety of the season month-to-month. The strikeouts can become a concern, but his ability to work through this, is probably the biggest story of the entire 2023 year for me. An Owen Caissie who can control his strikeouts has everything in his arsenal to be an elite power hitter.

Edited November 27, 2023 by 1908_Cubs

[craig]

I get exit velocity leading to high BABIP.  Still, .407 seems a little beyond the pale even with that.  My hypothesis is that it's a combination of BOTH some BABIP-luck AND the good exit-velo.  I don't expect him to be BABIP-ing north of .370 next year or in the majors.  

Thanks for the K-rate.  That definitely does show real progress versus mostly random scatter. 

Still, doing the tacky-non split is obviously skewed by April.  Lots more than tacky-ball contributing to 43% April. 

Tacky May-June is low-30's, July-August is high-20's.  5% kind of drop is great and real, but it's not like the K-issue is gone.   29% in August is still bad, and not **that** much below 31.7% in June.  

The 24% September, that's down quite a bit.  But that's also a 1-HR month.  Is 14:1 K/HR what we want?  I hypothesize that every HR/K guy is constantly doing HR-vs-K balancing act.   He got hot in July, between regular new-ball and coincidence.  August, K-rate climbed back up; September it dropped.  Perhaps he really was learning to make contact in September...  Or maybe after high-K August, he cut back a little bit on his swing, and sacrificed some HR bash?  Dancing on the K-bash balance line may always be a challenge.  

I fully agree, *IF* he can "control" the K's, he can be a good hitter.  But how well he "controls" it will impact "elite" versus "good".  Schwarber was analogized, and as a mid-40's HR guy, he's found a balance that works for him.  47 HR, 215 K's, .197 BA, that's fine for his balance to stay at .817 OPS.  But 47HR's is hard.  I hope Caissie blossoms into a mid-40's HR guy like Schwarber, but I'd love it if he could control the K's enough to stay north of .230 BA and match or exceed Schwarber's HR-walk/based .340 career OBP.  Maybe unfair to hope for, but I'd love to hope for somebody BETTER than Schwarber, both defensively and in terms of K-control and overall offense.   

[Jason Ross]

1 hour ago, craig said:

I get exit velocity leading to high BABIP.  Still, .407 seems a little beyond the pale even with that.  My hypothesis is that it's a combination of BOTH some BABIP-luck AND the good exit-velo.  I don't expect him to be BABIP-ing north of .370 next year or in the majors.  

Thanks for the K-rate.  That definitely does show real progress versus mostly random scatter. 

Still, doing the tacky-non split is obviously skewed by April.  Lots more than tacky-ball contributing to 43% April. 

Tacky May-June is low-30's, July-August is high-20's.  5% kind of drop is great and real, but it's not like the K-issue is gone.   29% in August is still bad, and not **that** much below 31.7% in June.  

The 24% September, that's down quite a bit.  But that's also a 1-HR month.  Is 14:1 K/HR what we want?  I hypothesize that every HR/K guy is constantly doing HR-vs-K balancing act.   He got hot in July, between regular new-ball and coincidence.  August, K-rate climbed back up; September it dropped.  Perhaps he really was learning to make contact in September...  Or maybe after high-K August, he cut back a little bit on his swing, and sacrificed some HR bash?  Dancing on the K-bash balance line may always be a challenge.  

I fully agree, *IF* he can "control" the K's, he can be a good hitter.  But how well he "controls" it will impact "elite" versus "good".  Schwarber was analogized, and as a mid-40's HR guy, he's found a balance that works for him.  47 HR, 215 K's, .197 BA, that's fine for his balance to stay at .817 OPS.  But 47HR's is hard.  I hope Caissie blossoms into a mid-40's HR guy like Schwarber, but I'd love it if he could control the K's enough to stay north of .230 BA and match or exceed Schwarber's HR-walk/based .340 career OBP.  Maybe unfair to hope for, but I'd love to hope for somebody BETTER than Schwarber, both defensively and in terms of K-control and overall offense.   

While perhaps not your intention, this feels a bit on the nitpicky side. We can't expect to see linear data, progression isn't linear. His K% went up a pretty "within standard deviation" 3% in September. That doesn't mean ominous things so much as "sometimes you strike out a little more. Sometimes you strike out a little less". Same thing with the home runs in a truncated (half a month) final month of October. It takes about one good week of 2-3 home runs and that's not an issue.

Moving on to the baseballs, sure, 42.3% wasn't only the baseballs, but I also never claimed it was only the baseball. As I stated in the posted above: 

Quote

I think it's clear both that the pre-tacked baseball was a massive change for Caissie, as one of his biggest single, full month drops was from June to July (the league saw a 3% increase in strikeouts alone) and that Caisisie improved his bat to ball throughout the entirety of the season month-to-month

I think it's a combination. But we can't just ignore that the baseball had a profound effect. It did: as did his age, and his learning. It's wrapped up pretty heavily in a hard to distinguish bog of factors. The overall trend line is what matters here, not the small month to month fluctuations. When we're over analyzing a small increase here or a dip here, we're doing ourselves a disservice and hiding the true story, IMO. 

Same with the BABIP. Is .400 maybe a bit high? Maybe? But Owen Caissie crushed the baseball when he put it in play. He's significantly better than most of the talent in AA. He was leading the Southern League in HR's well into August, despite being the youngest player. And this isn't the first time he's had great BABIP's, being over .350 at every level so far. I think it's just a small thing and probably isn't really worth investigating too indepth on. So it's maybe a wee bit flukey, but there's so much good here that it just feels like an unnecessary worry.

None of this is to say we can't find flaw in Caissie. He's not hitting LHP well (though, this is a pretty common issue for almost any lefty in baseball), he does have questions defensively long term, and how he continues to handle K% issues at higher levels are all real things we should be watching. But I think the smaller issues you're looking at are beyond the scope of what we really should be concerned at as of now.

Edited November 27, 2023 by 1908_Cubs

[craig]

I think we're basically in similar place. 

1. I get the "non-linear" and don't-obsess-over-small-trend blips.  My original post, which was faulty, had been that post-April months looked like almost random-scatter in terms of K/AB.  Your more accurate K/PA shows otherwise, and shows that there was a meaningful reduction, on the 5%-reduction scale.  
2. Tacky/regular does not erase the K-rate as a yellow-flag.  Any guy who's K'ing >27% in AA, even on regular ball, it's still high risk.  I'm partly wanting to self-avoid telling myself "Oh, K's aren't a problem; that was tacky-fall fluke.  But K's are fine otherwise." 
3. As you say, things are complex.  His best HR's month was in tacky-ball era.  His K-rate dropped some, but the regular-ball did not result in uptick in HR-productivity.  
4. Exit-velo helps BABIP for sure, but there was surely some non-trivial luck involved in .407.  So wRC+ was boosted to some degree.  Beats me how much.  

How does any of this relate to his future potential?  Beats me!  As I noted, like Alcantara and Ballasteros he's a high-risk guy with also a pretty high ceiling.  . 

1. Big-league pitching is way better than AA; a guy who's 27.1% K-rate at his best, after adjusting and after the regular-ball switch, might have that spike up a LOT in the majors. 
2. Or, young guys often progress and adapt, and maybe he will.  This challenge may never get any more problematic, and maybe he'll  chip away at it over upcoming years, at little cost to his HR-power or his walk rate.  Who knows?  Maybe he'll end up being able to sustain a >.250 average in the majors someday, with lots of HR's and lots of walks?  
3. I think he'll probably need to improve?  Some guys do, a lot, beyond his current age.  Others kind of plateau, and others actually try to adjust and sometimes lose their best qualities in trying.  But I'm guessing that as he was this past 2nd-half, that won't be good enough to succeed.  As with almost all young players, he needs to keep getting better.  
4. Big-league position is a question.  Strictly DH?  1B?  Or not bad in LF/RF?  A platoon DH who can mash, I'll take that for sure.  But being decent at one or more positions can help.  
5. How much HR production?  Having 70/80 power is fun, but how often will he get to it?  Schwarber didn't hit .200, but he still got to 47 HR.  Had he gotten to 27, he'd be in a different place.  Will Caissie get to enough to make his composite value excellent?  Time will tell.  I'd like him to be up in Schwarber, Alonso area, and 80-grade power allows for that possibility.    

 

[Jason Ross]

Yeah, we'll see where we go from Caissie. I'll say this about him: I'm a big, big fan. I think his upside is below that of unicorn Alcantara, his floor lower than that of recent 1st rounder Shaw, but I think between all three, he's my favorite in "tier 2" prospects. I'm probably a bit on an island with that one, and I'll admit some bias here (I've been in on the ground floor of Caissie and him being good will make me feel smarter than I should). With that said, there's so much fun in his bat. This is the profile of a power hitting middle-order force we haven't seen role through the system for a while. We've seen athletic players, we've seen defensive wizards...but someone who can just mash his way to the majors hasn't really been seen for a while outside of Kris Bryant and that's basically a decade ago now.

[craig]

Back to old discusison, but Yup, we'll just see.  I like Shaw ahead of Caissie, because contact hitting takes away so much of the risk with HR/K guys; because I think there's a reasonable chance he'll do OK at 3b, a position of great opportunity; and whether it's 3rd or someplace else, he'll eventually find a position.  (If not at 3B, though, it may not be with us.). 

Caissie is an excellent prospect, but K/HR guys are guy kinda hard to project.  He was 164K/22HR, 8:1 K/HR is higher than you want.  Most guys the K/HR ratio gets worse in the majors than in AA, so the risk is nontrivial.  

As prospects, Caissie and Canario both fall under the K/HR profile.  At big-league level, same for Wisdom/Morel.  All four have plenty of BP-power.  Wisdom's K/HR ratio is just a little too high.  It's often kind of a slender thread that differentiates K/HR guys who hit enough HR's to justify, and those who fall a little short, or a lot short.  

Morel this year has a 5:1 K/HR rate, 116 OPS+, .821 OPS.  If he can sustain that, he's going to be an asset in big-league lineups for years.  Previous year, he was 8.5:1, .740 OPS, not that appealing.  Wisdom was in the 5-6:1 K/HR range two of last three years, the years with OPS of .789 and .823.  But when that K/HR ratio drifted up over 7:1 in 2022, his OPS was .725 and you didn't really want him in the lineup.  It's just really hard for me to anticipate how the HR's will survive against the best pitchers in the world, for guys who are highly K-prone. 

Mervis was 3:1 K/HR in 2022, with the 36 HR.  That made for a .984 OPS, fantastic.  This year he was 5:1 at Iowa, good to support .932 OPS.  But Cubs, it was 10:1, resulting in the .242 OBP and .531 OPS.  It's tougher in the majors.  

Hopefully Caissie will get better and better, and Canario too, and Mervis.  And Morel will sustain or get better.  Would just love to have 2 or 3 of those prospect guys just mashing away, with good K/HR rates, and have Morel sustain his HR-production as well.  But really hard for me to project with surety who will survive and thrive in the majors, and who will get wasted.  

[Jason Ross]

10 minutes ago, craig said:

Back to old discusison, but Yup, we'll just see.  I like Shaw ahead of Caissie, because contact hitting takes away so much of the risk with HR/K guys; because I think there's a reasonable chance he'll do OK at 3b, a position of great opportunity; and whether it's 3rd or someplace else, he'll eventually find a position.  (If not at 3B, though, it may not be with us.). 

Caissie is an excellent prospect, but K/HR guys are guy kinda hard to project.  He was 164K/22HR, 8:1 K/HR is higher than you want.  Most guys the K/HR ratio gets worse in the majors than in AA, so the risk is nontrivial.  

As prospects, Caissie and Canario both fall under the K/HR profile.  At big-league level, same for Wisdom/Morel.  All four have plenty of BP-power.  Wisdom's K/HR ratio is just a little too high.  It's often kind of a slender thread that differentiates K/HR guys who hit enough HR's to justify, and those who fall a little short, or a lot short.  

Morel this year has a 5:1 K/HR rate, 116 OPS+, .821 OPS.  If he can sustain that, he's going to be an asset in big-league lineups for years.  Previous year, he was 8.5:1, .740 OPS, not that appealing.  Wisdom was in the 5-6:1 K/HR range two of last three years, the years with OPS of .789 and .823.  But when that K/HR ratio drifted up over 7:1 in 2022, his OPS was .725 and you didn't really want him in the lineup.  It's just really hard for me to anticipate how the HR's will survive against the best pitchers in the world, for guys who are highly K-prone. 

Mervis was 3:1 K/HR in 2022, with the 36 HR.  That made for a .984 OPS, fantastic.  This year he was 5:1 at Iowa, good to support .932 OPS.  But Cubs, it was 10:1, resulting in the .242 OBP and .531 OPS.  It's tougher in the majors.  

Hopefully Caissie will get better and better, and Canario too, and Mervis.  And Morel will sustain or get better.  Would just love to have 2 or 3 of those prospect guys just mashing away, with good K/HR rates, and have Morel sustain his HR-production as well.  But really hard for me to project with surety who will survive and thrive in the majors, and who will get wasted.  

If you figure that out...any MLB team in the league would hire you! The prospect game is such a horsefeathers show of hopes and dreams, really. It's weird, you fall in love with these guys and most of them, at best, are the answer to some obscure trivia question. 

[Bertz]

On 11/24/2023 at 10:16 AM, Bertz said:

Tbe contact draws a lot of hand-wringing, but I think those concerns are overstated.  We don't have full plate discipline numbers for the minor leagues, so people have to settle for K rate.  But K-rate =/= contact rate.  A guy running an elite walk rate is going to inherently be in a lot of deep counts, which will lead to a lot of Ks.  We do have swinging strike rate for MiLB, and Caissie was 35th out of 64 guys in the Southern League this year.  Caissie is not a Joey Gallo or Patrick Wisdom level contact bat.  He's more Kyle Schwarber, who has bad but not awful contact rates but runs huge K numbers dye to walks.