As you may know, I’m running a pledge drive in an attempt to bring to you major league quality scouting reports on our minor league players this year as well as contracting with a professional scouting service to provide us with in season daily performance updates on our guys in Pittsburgh. You can read more about the plans here and here.
The goal is to collect $1,000 over two weeks in order to keep the material freely available here and not put it behind a New Bucs paywall, and so far we’re up to $380. Please donate what you can by clicking the donate button below which will take you to a secure PayPal site where you can pledge anonymously if you like, or use your PayPal account and send your pledge to jake [at] newbucs [dot] com.
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“[T]he future is finally bright for the Pirates, even if the sun is just barely peeking out from behind the clouds at this point.” – John Perrotto at the Beaver County Times today.
Last week a scout told me his focus on minor league players isn’t whether they will break out this year or next, or if they should be able to handle a specific league or not, it’s on what their contribution at the major league level will likely be. Obviously that’s the name of the game when you initially draft the player, but what wasn’t as clear to me was why performance during their minor league development years wasn’t just as valuable.
Consider Tony Sanchez. The kid raked last year while proving quite a few people wrong about his defensive skill set by flashing a 70 glove. When I asked the scout if he thought he’d breakout with his bat this year he said he didn’t know and it really didn’t matter to him. In his mind he felt Sanchez was destined to be a backup catcher type of player for numerous reasons, the most obvious being his large frame size which will continue to grow and his likely inability to hit major league pitching at an average clip down the road.
Other scouts I talked too said basically the same thing – the only people raving about him are media types like Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, and others who are journalistic oriented, not scouting oriented. But all of the scouts echoed what the first scout said, while the signs still point to a higher probability of Sanchez ending up as a backup receiver, he has a chance to break that perception with a strong showing with his bat, but that will have to happen in Pittsburgh over time. What he does in the minors isn’t relevant.
So I took those thoughts one step further by asking all these scouts what they thought about our minor league depth and I was told what we already know – there is Alvarez and everyone else.. a few solid A- or B+ type guys in the system who have a good chance to shine down the road (they mentioned six) and then a system clogged with B-/C+ types better known as average players.
Perrotto mentioned in his article that as many as 40 players have a chance to make the bigs, but that’s a pretty wild assumption he made. If you compare our system with that of the Cards, then they must have 60 – 80 players who have a chance, and the Rangers must have 200. But the game only offers so many slots for Perrotto’s claim to be realistic — unless, of course, he means a Nutting owed club which never infuses cash, rotates out any player who is two years from free agency, and replaces them with developed players from our system regardless of the loss of production. Then I agree, we probably do have 40 players who could fill in here or there.
My point is this - once a prospect enters our system his future is tagged based on his projectability when selected. Obviously that can change over time, but you need to understand it rarely does. Scouting isn’t an exact science by any means but tools don’t grow on trees - it’s next to impossible for players to add tools to the shed if they don’t exist to begin with. They can improve on what they have but it’s a rare bird who is drafted throwing 89 and then starts throwing 96.. it’s a rare bird who is drafted with a power projection of 40 and then starts hitting 30 home runs five years later.. and it’s a rare bird who is drafted with a 45 command projection who then starts effectively painting the black at will.
Realizing that and then looking at the depth of our system, you have to understand that we have quite a few players who have complimentary problems with good tools. One example is that we have quite a few young live arms who also have command issues and/or lack true secondary pitch depth. When you add to those types of issues the inherent high-risk of any high school pitcher ever making it to the bigs, or already broken down and/or repaired risks in guys like Lincoln and Alderson, or huge makeup risks in guys like Tabata, Morris, and a few others I won’t mention here, or potentially highly overrated players like Tony Sanchez, Chase D’Arnaud, or Rudy Owens, you start to see the red flags we have in the depth everyone is currently raving about.
Going forward consider this – right now our ‘core foundation’ 40-man roster in Pittsburgh is made up of many players whose careers hit brick walls.. Milledge, Clement, Cedeno, LaRoche, Donnelly, Hanrahan, Hart, Morris, Morton, Veal, Tabata, Hernandez, Crosby, D McCutchen, Moss, and Church. For whatever reason, they were other clubs rejects or unhealthy players who have found a second life in Pittsburgh. I’m not suggesting these are bad players, just that it’s obvious most of these guys were lacking something.. tools, makeup, health, development, something. Maybe it all comes back together for some or all of them, maybe it doesn’t. We’ll see.
But realize what we have rebuilt the foundation of our new house with is mostly other teams rejects who once had projection, a ton of risk in young high school arms with none of them projected as having top of the order tools, quite a few health or makeup problem players who had projection at one time, and a bevy of others who are considered average.
Some of these risks are going to excel, some of the average guys are going to prove to be more worthy, and some of the health or makeup issues may allow the player to resume their projection, but no matter how you look at it, it’s a shaky foundation at best. Significantly more shaky than the average, stable organization is dealing with. Adding to the shakiness are guys like Duke, Maholm, and Doumit who aren’t likely to see the start of the 2012 season as a Pirate.. if even the 2011 season.
Stay focused — projections of system-wide depth are only as strong as the strength of the tools in those projections. And most of all, the only performance that ever matters is the performance goes in the statistical books as a member of a club’s 25-man roster.
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Just a random question for anyone that is a veteran of spring training … I am going to be in Bradenton from this Saturday the 26th to Thursday the 4th. I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions on things to do, places to eat, or anything else that might be interest. Thanks
There was a recent column in the P-G blog. I believe it was last Friday. Lots of the info you’re looking for. Maybe someone with a better memory or with a link can help fither. Just saying the info’s there and fairly recent.
try this:
http://books.google.com/books?id=P-8euVLYcPwC&pg=PA351&lpg=PA351&dq=fodor‘s+bradenton+sarasota&source=bl&ots=J8E99YPUMn&sig=UzFwEcH8cJMIr4I0F8RPGhWOOt0&hl=en&ei=5jqFS8jhEMLFlAerl-mNAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=14&ved=0CDQQ6AEwDQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false
P-G quoted Coonelly as saying: “The message [in the preseason talk] is that this is the group that’s going to turn this franchise around. For the first time since I’ve been with the organization, I really believe that.”
So the guy just openly admitted he was lying to everyone for as long as he’s been with the Pirates, and somehow we are now supposed to believe him? For a guy who often has his credibility called into question on a regular basis, that was a remarkably poor choice of words. Even if he is telling the truth, why would he risk his reputation by admitting he lied before?
Because thats what he is suppose to say and believe.
what choice does he have erad?
I’m not saying he doesn’t have to tell some fibs to make people happy as part of his job, but he DOES have a choice when it comes to admitting he lied. That was the surprising part for me, not that he had lied. We all knew he had.
There are numerous times when you yourself have pointed out such comments and made a big deal of them.
Sanchez 6′ maybe 6’1 listed 215-220 how much more do u expect a 22 year old to grow? There are plenty of large frame catchers that have done just fine anyway.
he was 220 in college.
He’ll go to 240 easy which is pretty big for a 6′ frame.
Need to keep that boy off the sweets and away from the dollar dogs. Ive seen some publications list him as low as 210. looking through the catchers in mlb id say the avg is what he’s at. I dont see it being a big Deal.
Jake – with the additions of Church, Crosby and Iwamura, do Delwyn, Moss, and Vasquez stand a chance of making the 25 man out of camp? There are a lot of marginal “on the bubble” players this season…more than I can remember in recent years. What about Walker, Pearce and Diaz as well..
there is going to be a lot of players dropped off 40-man rosters across the game this year and I expect us to be very active grabbing some to replace some of the marginal talent we have.
Jake – given your plans to focus on minor league players this year, the Hardball Times had an interesting article yesterday that compared the run production of all the leagues that comprise minor league baseball. If you’ve followed baseball for awhile, you intuitively knew alot of the content, ie. the PCL is a hitters league while the International League favors pitchers – but there’s still some good information. With regard to the Pirates, most of their teams are in ‘pitching friendly’ leagues, so the stats for their pitchers may be a bit ‘overvalued’ – which is a scary thought. In any event, it’s a good read!
here’s the article: http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/minor-league-run-environments/
there are some extreme swings in environmental factors across the leagues which are nearly impossible to account for looking at stats. One great example of that is mound heights which are crazy-different.
Florida parks are as close to regulation as you’ll see because they are ST home parks but then you have heavy, heavy 90-100% humidity choking power, often start play with it 90 – 100+ degrees on the field, and every third game or so in some of the parks the players are scared out of their wits because of the intense lightning in the area at game time.
Then there is the more obvious.. organizations go through swings in player acquisition. For five years they rebuild, then five years later have a selloff and bring in a ton of top talent and rebuild again. Look at the Blue Jays this year – they have something like 10 picks in the first 150 in the draft and they play in the FSL.
But I agree with your thought – our young pitching will look better than they are in the FSL, IL, and EL parks but that’s probably equivalent to having a pitcher’s park like PNC for them to come up to.
looks like neither Neil or John will be getting a contract extension any time soon according to the PG.Wonder why Neil isn’t although I see john has a 2011 option. Thoughts on the Cuban first baseman.Do you think we are going after him?I see the Tigers dropped a RH relief pitcher yesterday with good minor league numbers-Dolosi I think???
Bill
> Wonder why Neil isn’t
he is, they are just waiting for a better time to announce it. I thought it would happen during ST but I guess they will wait until the team wins a few before the announcement.
Tigers dropped Casey Fien to make room for Damon. Jays will be loading up this season 10 picks in the first 126.