How Much Do Prospect Rankings Really Affect the Cubs?

yes, it's also worth pointing out that the FV grades are based on best guesses and don't really mean anything other than the level of confidence people have about a particular prospect. A 40 guy is not 5 FVs less than a 45 guy. It's just ordinal ranking.

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Baseball, more than any other sport, is a guessing game of which prospects will pan out and which ones will burn out. Never has there been a more accurate characterization of an event than when we all started calling the MLB Draft a crapshoot. 

I…don’t agree and even suspect the binary is once again talking (if we don’t know everything then we know nothing). Sure no one can speak with 100% certainty, but if this was so true Rebuild 1.0 would have gone very different. Instead the Cubs took a specific draft approach with confidence and the conversation was less whether these guys would hit ML pitching and more how long they’d last

7 hours ago, CubinNY said:

yes, it's also worth pointing out that the FV grades are based on best guesses and don't really mean anything other than the level of confidence people have about a particular prospect. A 40 guy is not 5 FVs less than a 45 guy. It's just ordinal ranking.

Absolutely - this is a great point. These "values" are assigned to prospects as a means of tiering them, but so often prospects in the same tier are there for a multitude of reasons; some have 1 big carrying tool and a lot of lagging ones, some are a jack of all trades, master of none, and others simply just aren't beloved because of their baseball "acumen". It's arbitrary on a grand scale, and incredibly complex on an individual one. 

Of course... all of this is what makes the prospect side of the game so fun. 

5 hours ago, TomtheBombadil said:

I…don’t agree and even suspect the binary is once again talking (if we don’t know everything then we know nothing). Sure no one can speak with 100% certainty, but if this was so true Rebuild 1.0 would have gone very different. Instead the Cubs took a specific draft approach with confidence and the conversation was less whether these guys would hit ML pitching and more how long they’d last

 

Of course, it's fine to disagree (welcome to the world of prospecting). But to take the point that we colloquially refer to prospects as "busts" or "successes" (after their development arcs have been completed) and then suggest that that's how all of prospecting works is a clear misrepresentation of the main argument of the article (and of course, that may be a failure of my own to properly articulate said argument). There are innumerable "generational" prospects who fail (Mark Appel for instance) and a ton of "organizational depth" guys who last a long time in the bigs (e.g, Kyle Hendricks). It's a guessing game for fans, and a reason why every organization invests so heavily in player development. 

Also - a TON of guys from the first rebuild didn't pan out: Albert Almora, Arismendy Alcantara, arguably Soler (at least before he got to the Braves in '21), Billy McKinney, and the list goes on and on. Obviously the Cubs had a strategy when drafting college bats with more advanced feel in that era, but to suggest that they "gamed" the prospect system completely disregards the fact that 1) they got extraordinarily lucky with some of their top guys panning out rather quickly and 2) the strategy didn't hold up whatsoever. If you ask anyone who's studied prospects for a long time (with any sense of humility about it), they'll be the first to tell you that there is no such thing as a "guarantee" when it comes to prospects. 

On 9/6/2023 at 7:03 PM, Brandon Glick said:

Of course, it's fine to disagree (welcome to the world of prospecting). But to take the point that we colloquially refer to prospects as "busts" or "successes" (after their development arcs have been completed) and then suggest that that's how all of prospecting works is a clear misrepresentation of the main argument of the article (and of course, that may be a failure of my own to properly articulate said argument). There are innumerable "generational" prospects who fail (Mark Appel for instance) and a ton of "organizational depth" guys who last a long time in the bigs (e.g, Kyle Hendricks). It's a guessing game for fans, and a reason why every organization invests so heavily in player development. 

Also - a TON of guys from the first rebuild didn't pan out: Albert Almora, Arismendy Alcantara, arguably Soler (at least before he got to the Braves in '21), Billy McKinney, and the list goes on and on. Obviously the Cubs had a strategy when drafting college bats with more advanced feel in that era, but to suggest that they "gamed" the prospect system completely disregards the fact that 1) they got extraordinarily lucky with some of their top guys panning out rather quickly and 2) the strategy didn't hold up whatsoever. If you ask anyone who's studied prospects for a long time (with any sense of humility about it), they'll be the first to tell you that there is no such thing as a "guarantee" when it comes to prospects. 

First bold; Did they though? Top college hitters moving fast is becoming more the thing over time, and by the early 2010s it was pretty well known college bats were by far the safest picks in the top 10 

Second bold: They’d also tell you that the options aren’t guarantee or it’s purely a guessing game all the time! Baseball, at least before say the mid-2010s, maybe had the most active online fanbase of any sport with tons of people hired for their research including prospects and the draft. Right now it’s less straight than it seemed to be getting because 2020, but I would attribute some of that to the higher demand for turnkey players than like a dearth of info (other than there’s always a dearth of info bc it’$ never enough) 

I’d also pick on Appel being generational. Only maybe in the sense that his quest for a $6+ million bonus was a big deal for the newly capped draft

Edit: I’m probably just missing your point and being miserly

15 hours ago, TomtheBombadil said:

First bold; Did they though? Top college hitters moving fast is becoming more the thing over time, and by the early 2010s it was pretty well known college bats were by far the safest picks in the top 10 

Second bold: They’d also tell you that the options aren’t guarantee or it’s purely a guessing game all the time! Baseball, at least before say the mid-2010s, maybe had the most active online fanbase of any sport with tons of people hired for their research including prospects and the draft. Right now it’s less straight than it seemed to be getting because 2020, but I would attribute some of that to the higher demand for turnkey players than like a dearth of info (other than there’s always a dearth of info bc it’$ never enough) 

I’d also pick on Appel being generational. Only maybe in the sense that his quest for a $6+ million bonus was a big deal for the newly capped draft

Edit: I’m probably just missing your point and being miserly

I think all your arguments have plenty of validity. In no way am I attempting to degrade your opinion on things (as I know you are not on mine either). 

My stance ultimately comes down to this: there are SO many prospects in minor league baseball, and the path from the lowest levels to the major leagues is STEEP. It's absurdly difficult to project guys out years in advance, especially as the talent level across all of baseball continues to rise exponentially. Having strategies with prospects (like drafting college bats) or playing to your organization's strengths (like the way Cleveland and Tampa do with drafting and developing young pitchers) are ways to mitigate the risk of a prospect falling off the development curve. But there is never a way to ensure that any given player - no matter how much of a "can't miss" guy he is - will truly succeed at the major league level. That's what makes prospecting so hard.