Following the Cubs minor leagues in 2012 is probably going to be more fun than following the big league team. Hopefully it will be more rewarding than what we're likely to see from the 2012 Cubs. Each year several sources release their top prospect lists. We talk a lot about them here and I thought I'd take a stab at it. I needed a methodology and came up with something that works for me. Any prospect list is going to be subjective and mine is no different.
We may disagree on some of the prospects that belong in the top 10, but it's most likely anyone in the top 20 will also be in any top 10 list. So what I've done is take John Sickels top Cubs prospects for 2012 as a starting point. This part is about the methodology I'll be using to rank the prospects.
- ETA: The closer a player is to the big league the less uncertainty in our expectations. If a player has an ETA of 2012 he's already played ball in the upper minors and probably even in AAA. The player has not been weeded out along the way like so many other prospects are. This is important and I feel that too many ranking systems ignore this. We know a hell of a lot more about Brett Jackson and his chances of success at the MLB level than we do Javier Baez. Just think about it. We know more about Javier Baez's future in baseball than we do the top Little League player in the world. This is just common sense. I see no reason this information should not be included.
- Position: It's quite important when determining the future value of a prospect to know what position he currently plays. A starting pitcher has more value than a reliever even though relievers have more impressive numbers. A left fielder has less value than a catcher. This information is taken into consideration with pitchers, but far too often it's ignored or not properly weighted when ranking position players.
- Potential: You can call this the ceiling of the player if you want. The potential and ceiling are really the same thing. This is about how good the player could be based on scouting reports available. This already weights heavily in others rankings and it should here too.
- Performance: How well the player has done is the single best indication of how well he'll do in the future. Other take this into consideration when raking players. How could you not? You don't find too many 23 year old shortstops among the top 100 who are average defensively and have a .650 OPS. Performance matters, but it's another thing I believe is not given enough attention.
While the scoring is subjective, I tried to be as unbiased as possible. If the player's ETA was 2012 (or he'd already reached the big leagues like Anthony Rizzo has), he receives 10 points. If the ETA is 2013 he gets 9. I then decreased by 2 for each additional year. So a player whose ETA is 2014 would get 7 points. A player whose ETA is 2016 would get 3. The further the ETA is, the less we know about the player. I dropped the point by only one for an ETA of 2013 because that player has likely already played in at least High A.
The scoring for position is below:
- Catcher: 10
- SS: 9
- Starting Pitcher: 8
- 2B/3B/CF: 7
- LF/RF: 6
- 1B: 5
- Relief pitcher: 4
Arguments can easily be made that a SP prospect is worth more than double a relief prospect, but considering the rate of injuries for pitchers I'm sticking with what's above.
For potential I'm using various scouting reports and keeping things relatively simple regarding points. You get 10 for star player, 8 for above average, 6 for average, 4 for OK and 2 for worse than that. Since we're dealing with top prospects let's hope the Cubs don't have any that are a 2.
To assign points for performance, it's going to hurt most the recent draft picks. I can't assign 10 points for someone who hit well in 17 rookie league at-bats. Those guys are almost entirey potential at this point. The only information we have on these players are their scouting reports. I've long felt that top 10 lists are too populated with last year's draft picks. Many of whom didn't play, or if they did only played for a couple weeks. We've already established that all prospect rankers are including performance, but for recent draft picks they don't. I'm going to evaluate them on the same criteria.
You may be wondering where age factors into this. it's more impressive if a 21 year old is even league average in AA than it is a 24 year old being slightly above average. The fact the 21 year old is already at AA tells us that among his minor league peers he is damn good. You see where age becomes a factor though. It's the performance of the player and his age at the level he's playing in. I haven't explained the points for peformance yet, but they are explained below.
- 8 points for well above average performance
- 7 points for above average
- 5 points for average
- 4 points for below average
A player who has been well above average, say Anthony Rizzo, and is also quite young, earns an additional 2 points. Rizzo's performance would qualify as 10 points. You get 2 points or 0 points for age. I'm using 25 for AAA and a year younger for each level lower. If a prospect is 2 years younger than that, he gets 2 points. Brett Jackson was 23 last year in AAA so he earns 2 points. But that's not enough. That would make Rizzo and Jackson worth 10 points based on performance and that's not fair. Rizzo was younger and better. So in this category there's an additional 2 points available. One of those points will be given out for MVP caliber performance and the other for reaching the big leagues at 22 or younger. Rizzo deserves more points for performance than Jackson. This would give him 12 and Jackson would get 10.
The maximum points would be 42. That would be a catcher, 22 or younger, who has already reached the big leagues, performed at an MVP caliber season in AAA the year before, and have the potential to be a star. Buster Posey probably would have been 41 points on this scale. He was 23 in AAA in 2010.
Here's the list I'll be using with one exception: Gerardo Concepcion will be included. Jorge Soler will be too if the Cubs sign him quickly enough.
If there's something here I shouldn't consider or something I should, make your case in the comments.
Comments
Was this backwards?
Rice CubeQuote Reply
I like the way you think. If I think of any suggestions I’ll let you know, but that’s pretty much how I look at things. I think KG had 17 of last year’s picks in this years Top 101. It’s hard for me to get THAT behind someone who barely has any professional at bats.
It’d be fun using this to look back at previous prospects (both Cubs and not) and see how your system would stack up to what transpired thereafter. A lot of extra work though, and we don’t want you to anti-unrediscredit this blog.
MishQuote Reply
@ Rice Cube:
Fixed. Supposed to say uncertainty. That’s what I get for not editing.
mb21Quote Reply
@ Mish:
Good idea. I might take a look back at 4 or 5 years after I get this done and see how it performed. I don’t expect it would perform much better than the others (if at all). It just makes more sense to me. The rankings have always bothered me. Baseball America has, by far, the best rankings and that’s because they have so many sources and have been doing it for so long. However, they rank more on potential. Thing is, you can do that as well as using other criteria. They all do even if they do so unconsciously.
mb21Quote Reply
mb21 wrote:
I mean, yeah; you’re basically re-arranging the deck chairs here from the other lists. Still some fun intellectual masturbation though.
MishQuote Reply
This system will place additional weight on last season, but I fully intend to use career performance too. Not exactly sure how I’m going to factor that in yet.
mb21Quote Reply
Does Javier Baez get 0 points for performance? And is that counterbalanced by him possibly earning more potential points than a Brett Jackson or Anthony Rizzo?
XoomwaffleQuote Reply
I don’t know if you can draw any inspiration from this, but I’ve always liked the system used by Hockey’s Future to rank their prospects. They use a two-part rating that goes from like 10A to 3E, where the number is the prospect’s ceiling (10 being first-ballot HOF, 3 being organizational filler that will never get a call-up) and the letter is the probability that the prospect will reach that potential (A being a virtual lock, E meaning the prospect could drop four levels).
I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept you bring up about the value of a player as it relates to their distance from the bigs, or just the certainty that you can have of their actual value at the major league level. I’m of the mind that unless a player has shown repeated success at high levels of the minors, you really can’t ever count on them to make any contribution to the big club. However, I’ve been trying to reconcile that with the concept of value — we all know that low-minors players can bring back major-league value, so it almost seems like an entirely different animal.
That’s one of the reasons I’ve been generally OK with the direction the club has taken during this offseason. They’re bringing in guys who may never see the majors, but can eventually be used to acquire major-league talent even if they never make it themselves. It seems like a pretty strong contrast from the old regime, who fell in love with their prospects and rarely moved them for ML value, and who fell in love with their players on the big club and never moved them before they declined in value.
Or so I tell myself (dying laughing)…
uncle daveQuote Reply
For Gary Carter:
Rice CubeQuote Reply
uncle dave wrote:
I liked your post, but i’m not sure about this part. Was the previous regime more in love with their prospects than average? Clearly the new regime hates the old regime’s prospects, but I’m not sure we can predict that they will not overvalue their own. They clearly love Rizzo, for example…
GWQuote Reply
@ GW:
I believe the old regime was definitely happy to move prospects…off the top of my head, they moved prospects to get Aramis Ramirez, Juan Pierre, Tom Gorzelanny/John Grabow, and Matt Garza.
Of course, the “rarely” and “ML value” does qualify his statement a bit. I think prospect-for-prospect swaps probably happened a lot under the radar and you rarely saw an entire farm getting blown up to get talent, if that’s what was the implication.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
@ Xoomwaffle:
From what I’ve read Baez has the most potential in the system so yeah. He’s not done anything with regards to performance, but he’ll have a higher potential score than anyone. That’s what I’m thinking now anyway. Like Mish said earlier, I just can’t take recently drafted players too seriously. All of the highly touted draft picks have a ton of potential. Considering what we know about players reaching their potential I don’t think it does any good to evaluate them based solely on that. Better prospects than Baez have gotten have been weeded out very early in their careers.
Because of this, no draft picks are going to be highly rated. That’s fine with me. That’s how I think it should be. Potential is one thing, but actually going out and doing it is what’s most important.
mb21Quote Reply
uncle dave wrote:
I like that. A lot. I think I’ll try to use that for potential though I’d never have a 10A player. I don’t think any Cubs prospect would be better than 9E.
I was planning on adding the points up and ranking them that way. Getting 10 points (plus the two additional ones for age) made that relatively easy in that each category was weighted the same. Maybe I need to increase them to 14 points in each category and use this approach for potential. 10A would be 10 points, 10B 11 points and then 10E 14 points. Thoughts?
mb21Quote Reply
@ GW:
I think it’s easy for fans of one team to say their GM loves their own prospects. Those are the prospects we pay attention to. We don’t pay much attention to the Giants prospects and have no idea how Sabean is with his own prospects. I don’t know for sure, but unless someone could provide me evidence I’m inclined to say the past regime was average n that regard.
mb21Quote Reply
mb21 wrote:
I think in uncle dave’s example, A should get the most points (due to highest probability of reaching potential) and E the least, but I like that idea.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
mb21 wrote:
well, except for this
GWQuote Reply
RC makes a good point. Hendry did move a lot of prospects and the ones he did worked out very well for the Cubs. I can think of Bobby Hill, Hee Seop Choi, Brendan Harris, Justin Jones (top 50 prospect), and Eric Patterson that brought the Cubs good value. Then there’s Ricky Nolasco, which kind of sucked. That’s 3 top 50 prospects that the Cubs traded plus Harris who was probably just outside the top 100. In return they got Ramirez, Lee, Nomar, Murton and Harden.
mb21Quote Reply
@ Rice Cube:
(dying laughing) Duh. That’s what I meant. I’m an idiot.
mb21Quote Reply
If RC has to correct me any more in one thread I’m going to look even dumber than I already am.
mb21Quote Reply
@ mb21:
I’m sure I’ll do enough dumb shit for it to even out when all is said and done.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
@ GW:
(dying laughing) Sabean wasn’t a great example. I knew it when I typed it. Sabean has said before he’d like to be able to pass on 1st round picks. Seriously. You know what I mean though. I have no idea how other GMs value their previously highly regarded prospects.
mb21Quote Reply
@ GW:
If we’re comparing how they value prospects, at least as members of the Cubs, it’s too early to say. I don’t see that there’s much we can say at all about the Superfriends. They didn’t sign Prince or Albert to a crazy contract. The team might have been able to compete short term with one of those guys, but obviously the cost in terms of money and years was too high. They may be trying to position guys like Rizzo for success in order to bolster moves down the road. I just don’t think we’ve seen enough to know.
joshQuote Reply
@ GW:
Sure, make me provide some data. Thanks a lot (dying laughing)…
It seemed to me, especially during the early ’00s, that they were reluctant to move guys, but that’s just my gut and isn’t based on anything firm. They weren’t exactly like the Angels of recent vintage, but it always felt like they were to that side of the spectrum to me.
uncle daveQuote Reply
@ mb21:
I dunno. I guess you could make the argument that the potential part of the score is wrapped up in the other categories. Not to go all existential here, but what are you trying to measure through the final score? Value of the player? Potential of the player? I’ve often thought hat much of the variation in prospect ranking lists comes from differences in “mission” as much as differences in evaluation. I think answering that question could be helpful in trying to focus your list.
As for the HF ratings, the only 10 I can recall seeing was Sidney Crosby, and I think he was a 10B. Plus, I think hockey prospects are easier to rate because the majority of them come through the junior system. NCAA and international players muddy the waters a bit, but It’s still a hell of a lot easier than baseball, where college and high school players can have wild variations in quality of competition. I also really think that the nature of baseball make it more difficult to project across differing levels of competition (sorta like how it seems to be more difficult to project post players than guards in basketball).
uncle daveQuote Reply
uncle dave wrote:
yeah, i’ve actually felt that way in recent years moreso than the early part of the decade. i remember shaking my head when jay jackson was reported to be untouchable.
GWQuote Reply
Excuse me, I thought this was a website site devoted to dick jokes. Can we get back on topic please?
fonteYESQuote Reply
I’d be happy if the Cubs began to trade most highly regarded starting pitching prospects who will inevitably become relievers. If they can analyze their prospects well enough to figure that out I’ll be damn happy with this front office. I highly doubt that happens though. I don’t think it would happen with any front office.
mb21Quote Reply
mb21 wrote:
The political talk will stop NOW!
Edit:
Wow my phone just wont do auto quotes. Fucking dumb piece of shit
fonteYESQuote Reply
@ mb21:
Suggestion: Potential should be divided into ‘mechanics’ and ‘tools’ with emphasis based on ‘mechanics’. The tools represent the physical capabilities of a player. Example: Concepcion and Soler are both marveled at for their physical prowess and some of the projection is based on the players ability to fill out. Javier Baez is noted for his physical ability. Have either of these three been judged on their mechanics: Can Concepcion throw strikes? Can Baez hit the ball?
For pitchers, K/BB should take precedent, with the ability to throw strikes taken over the overall stuff. For hitters, hitting ability should take precedence over fielding ability. Point: Stats and Mechanics, learned ability, should take precedence over possible future ability. Mechanics is more important than actual stats as it shows the development of a player.
Southpaws should be given extra points too. Lefties are rarer than righties. Statistically, most pitchers are right-handed, and as a general rule, Left-Handers hit right-handed pitching better.
In order of my perceived importance, really incremental in its use:
1. Left-Handed Hitter
2. Left-Handed Pitcher
3. Switch Hitter
4. Right-Handed Hitter
5. Right-Handed Pitcher
Left/Right splits should also be examined closely, with strong Right split preferred.
Some ideas.
PezcoreQuote Reply
mb21 wrote:
Well, except maybe Homer Simpson (dying laughing)
BerseliusQuote Reply
Out of curiosity, here will you be getting the information on ETA? Seems like something that could vary wildly. Castro was a surprise to many when he came up, totally skipping AAA.
RCBQuote Reply
Crappy sports journalism goes global: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120217&content_id=26733152&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb
mb21Quote Reply
@ mb21:
Sports journalism: the language may be different, but the idiocy never varies.
joshQuote Reply
New post
http://obstructedview.net/news-and-rumors/pitchers-and-catchers-report.html
BerseliusQuote Reply
What about risk of making the show, mb? You can’t put too many points because we really don’t know too much about what players are risky and what players are not. Would that be factored into ETA?
For example, I think Junior Lake has the most risk of almost anyone in the system (maybe Reggie Golden). However Logan Watkins, IMO, is a “safer” prospect because he is more polished as a fielder and has a great plate approach. Both Watkins and Lake probably have a similar ETA.
I would consider Vogelbach a “safer” prospect than Baez because Vogelbach has reportedly a great attitude, plate approach, and easy defensive position. Baez has a reportedly diva attitude & defensive position questions.
Just a thought. I would just weigh risk on a 0-4 scale since I personally don’t have enough information to put too much weight on that.
jtsunamiQuote Reply
@ jtsunami:
I like the idea of factoring in risk. I could add two more points in for potential like I did with age and performance. A risky player (Lake, Baez, high walk pitchers, etc) get 0 points. Brett Jackson, since he’s already succeeded at AAA would get 1 point. He’s a risky prospect because of the strikeouts. I like that idea. Thanks.
mb21Quote Reply
With regard to factoring in risk, would you do a plus/minus system? Some prospects might have individual flaws (like no power, no plate discipline, terrible fielding, or bad case of mono) that are so severe they probably hold the prospect back from ever reaching their potential.
EdwinQuote Reply