Midseason Prospect List Updates

[CaliforniaRaisin]

22. Owen Caissie
26. Matt Shaw
32. Cade Horton

Pete Crow-Armstrong (18) and Jordan Wicks (41) graduated.

[CaliforniaRaisin]

Keith Law updated his top 50: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5530418/2024/06/03/mlb-top-50-prospects-in-season-holliday/?source=emp_shared_article

15. Matt Shaw
21. Kevin Alcántara
32. Cade Horton

[Tryptamine]

11 minutes ago, CaliforniaRaisin said:

Keith Law updated his top 50: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5530418/2024/06/03/mlb-top-50-prospects-in-season-holliday/?source=emp_shared_article

15. Matt Shaw
21. Kevin Alcántara
32. Cade Horton

Law has always been by far the high man on Alcantara; I'm pretty surprised by Shaw though.

[CaliforniaRaisin]

25. Cade Horton
30. Pete Crow-Armstrong
33. Matt Shaw
38. Owen Caissie
43. Jefferson Rojas
62. Moisés Ballesteros
64. Kevin Alcántara

[muntjack]

I can't read the BA list,  but Law having Emmanuel Rodriguez at 28 means he's sound asleep, imo.  That kid is on another level. 

[We Got The Whole 9]

I don't care how short and fat he is. There are other guys they put above Mo who will probably suck in the field and be mostly bat-only guys. The dude is the 2nd youngest player in the league, has the 4th lowest K rate and 3rd highest BBK, 11th in ISO and 7th in wRC+. 

Honestly I don't even care to see scouting scores anymore. I don't think there's a single scout out there who put a 75 grade on Morel's bat speed, for example. I don't think these guys' visual evaluations are all that meaningful after Statcast's inception and continued innovations. Give me metrics or give me death.

Edited June 5, 2024 by We Got The Whole 9

[Tryptamine]

19 minutes ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

I don't care how short and fat he is. There are other guys they put above Mo who will probably suck in the field and be mostly bat-only guys. The dude is the 2nd youngest player in the league, has the 4th lowest K rate and 3rd highest BBK, 11th in ISO and 7th in wRC+. 

Honestly I don't even care to see scouting scores anymore. I don't think there's a single scout out there who put a 75 grade on Morel's bat speed, for example. I don't think these guys' visual evaluations are all that meaningful after Statcast's inception and continued innovations. Give me metrics or give me death.

Speaking of, it baffles me that FG still has his current hit tool as a 25 with future projections of 50. He's in AA with a 13.4K%, in what world is a 25 hit tool?

[Transmogrified Tiger]

3 minutes ago, Tryptamine said:

Speaking of, it baffles me that FG still has his current hit tool as a 25 with future projections of 50. He's in AA with a 13.4K%, in what world is a 25 hit tool?

They don't update those grades on a rolling basis, it's not including anything from this year.  I'm sure it will be higher upon the next update now that he's demonstrated that potential ceiling at AA.

[Tryptamine]

9 minutes ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

They don't update those grades on a rolling basis, it's not including anything from this year.  I'm sure it will be higher upon the next update now that he's demonstrated that potential ceiling at AA.

Even at A+ last year it as only 19.5%. So while it has clearly taken a step forward this year, even last year it wasn't accurate. The grades have always been one of my big knocks on FG. They're fairly quick to update the FV, but tool grades are painfully slow to adjust if at all.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

1 minute ago, Tryptamine said:

Even at A+ last year it as only 19.5%. So while it has clearly taken a step forward this year, even last year it wasn't accurate. The grades have always been one of my big knocks on FG. They're fairly quick to update the FV, but tool grades are painfully slow to adjust if at all.

It sounds like your issue is more with the idea of present and future value.  A guy who hits .300 at High A in most cases isn't particularly close to being a 45+ hit tool at the MLB level if you jumped over the upper minors.  If they update it midseason it'll almost certainly be 30-35, maybe even 40 if they feel his step forward this year raised the FV to 55.  It's just accounting for the default that prospects fail, and the massive degree in difficulty between the low minors and MLB.

[Tryptamine]

11 minutes ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

It sounds like your issue is more with the idea of present and future value.  A guy who hits .300 at High A in most cases isn't particularly close to being a 45+ hit tool at the MLB level if you jumped over the upper minors.  If they update it midseason it'll almost certainly be 30-35, maybe even 40 if they feel his step forward this year raised the FV to 55.  It's just accounting for the default that prospects fail, and the massive degree in difficulty between the low minors and MLB.

I mean I get that they can't list current production as MLB equivalent otherwise he'd be like a 60 hit tool current, but 25 just seems unreasonable. I mean Alcantara and Caissie have 30s and they strike out at a much higher clip.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

4 minutes ago, Tryptamine said:

I mean I get that they can't list current production as MLB equivalent otherwise he'd be like a 60 hit tool current, but 25 just seems unreasonable. I mean Alcantara and Caissie have 30s and they strike out at a much higher clip.

Hit tool isn't *really* about K rate, Caissie is a great example because he strikes out a lot but also barrels a ton of contact.  He hit .290 at a higher level, so despite only having a 40 ceiling on the hit tool he's clearly further along.  As for Alcantara, his batting average was not far from Ballesteros' at High A, and they only list his ceiling as a 35 so they clearly think whatever is left is more structural compared to about the level of competition, and that he's further along athletically/physically.

[We Got The Whole 9]

10 minutes ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

They don't update those grades on a rolling basis, it's not including anything from this year.  I'm sure it will be higher upon the next update now that he's demonstrated that potential ceiling at AA.

Now that Statcast basically has metrics for everything scouts used to grade on, have you noticed some instances where the 2 just didn't align sensibly? Like for me, I would 'grade' players accordingly:

Hit tool - contact% + some measure of contact-quality (LD%, 90th% EV)

Game power - Average EV

Raw power - Max EV (Judge/Elly/Stanton are 80s and you go down from there)

Speed - I've noticed several players (I can't think of them off the top of my head right now) who graded as like 60 during their prospecting days and then have 98th% sprint speed, for example.

Glove - speed + route efficiency for OF, first step + catchability + footwork for IF.

 

Scouts have the tools to measure these in the lower levels, they just aren't fully collected and published like they are in AAA/MLB yet. I'm sure next year we will get them for AA and gradually each level will have these ready for public consumption.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

1 minute ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

Now that Statcast basically has metrics for everything scouts used to grade on, have you noticed some instances where the 2 just didn't align sensibly? Like for me, I would 'grade' players accordingly:

Hit tool - contact% + some measure of contact-quality (LD%, 90th% EV)

Game power - Average EV

Raw power - Max EV (Judge/Elly/Stanton are 80s and you go down from there)

Speed - I've noticed several players (I can't think of them off the top of my head right now) who graded as like 60 during their prospecting days and then have 98th% sprint speed, for example.

Glove - speed + route efficiency for OF, first step + catchability + footwork for IF.

 

Scouts have the tools to measure these in the lower levels, they just aren't fully collected and published like they are in AAA/MLB yet. I'm sure next year we will get them for AA and gradually each level will have these ready for public consumption.

I haven't really looked, though I have two hesitations about this.

One is that I don't have the same degree of confidence in the quality of the data we're seeing in the minors.  We're 4-5xing the locations and putting them in places with less on hand resources and familiarity.  Not even a statcast thing but the whole Iowa velocity ordeal last month is representative.  I don't think they're junk, but I also think we should be careful to attribute bedrock certainty especially if the data is outside previous norms.

The other is more important, in that while I understand the impulse and think you could build an interesting scale based on these, I don't think it's doing the same thing the scouting scale intends.  Ultimately all of the statcast data is outcomes.  More granular outcomes than counting RBI or looking at BABIP or errors, but still they are results that translate imperfectly when we have to understand expectations 2, 3, 4 levels above.  Can I use Max EV to see if someone's FV on the power scale is too high?  Probably, there are some guardrails that are likely useful checks.  But the point of the scouting scale is to use information that is outside of outcomes/results to contextualize and evaluate how well certain things will translate when facing MLB pitchers/hitters, or at physical maturity, or when certain mechanics get another 12-36 months of pro instruction.  Think of how often there are pitchers that see leaps in either raw stuff or performance when they learn new pitches, sequencing, or find a mechanical tweak that cuts down walks by making their delivery more repeatable.  As metrics get better we need to lean on that part of the evaluation less, and that's a good thing.  But I don't think that need for subjective evaluation vanishes entirely, or at least certainly not based on anything we have access to as the viewing public.

[CubinNY]

FV are ordinal ranking measures like 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. I wouldn't get too hung up on them. They are at best, an approximation of what scouts project. 

[Bertz]

1 hour ago, CubinNY said:

FV are ordinal ranking measures like 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. I wouldn't get too hung up on them. They are at best, an approximation of what scouts project. 

That is literally the opposite of what they are.  FV grades gained popularity on FG explicitly because they are not ordinal rankings.  

[CubinNY]

6 minutes ago, Bertz said:

That is literally the opposite of what they are.  FV grades gained popularity on FG explicitly because they are not ordinal rankings.  

Well, you're wrong. A player who is a 45 FV is not 5 FVs better than a player with a 40 FV. It's just nonsense. it's based on a scouting scale for all attributes and condensed into one number that they think a player will get to. 

Edited June 6, 2024 by CubinNY

[Bertz]

1 minute ago, CubinNY said:

Well, you're wrong. A player who is a 45 FV is not 5 FVs better than a player with a 40 FV. It's just nonsense. 

What do you think these numbers are measuring?

[CubinNY]

Just now, Bertz said:

What do you think these numbers are measuring?

I know what they measure. 

[mul21]

Just now, Bertz said:

What do you think these numbers are measuring?

Weens?

[Bertz]

1 minute ago, CubinNY said:

I know what they measure. 

Great, then you can say it

[CubinNY]

It's pseudoscience masquerading as science. 

[Bertz]

Just now, CubinNY said:

It's pseudoscience masquerading as science. 

Sure fine.  But what do you think these numbers are trying and failing to convey?  I won't bother with trying to argue their efficacy, but what do you think they are pretending to say. 

[CubinNY]

1 minute ago, Bertz said:

Great, then you can say it

I just did. the 80-20 scale that scouts use is an ordinal measure. Some scout says this guy has a 60 hit tool. Another guy has a 50 hit tool. The guy with the 60 hit tool is not 10 hit tools better. The scout thinks he's better based on his professional judgment. Fine. But it's based on order not on any real objective measure. Then they take all those and condense them into one number (which is even worse) because the number obscures the real attributes the player may have and rank orders them. The fact that numbers are used is irrelevant. There I'm done with this.

[CubinNY]

Its fine, but it's no different than saying this guy is better than that guy based on my professional judgment. I think you look at them in rather large boxes. Like all the guys who are 50 are likely going to be better than all the guys at 40, but how much? who know? 

If they think a guy is a 55 FV they are probably basing it on some amount of performance and projectability. That it.