Future Redbirds

It turns out Baseball Prospectus erred on Bryan Anderson’s PECOTA projection. I thought it didn’t look right. According to BP’s new upside score, Anderson is the 3rd best catching prospect in the minors behind Chris Iannetta and Jarrod Saltypreztelsmakemethristy-achia. His #1 comp is the Braves’ Brian McCann, a very nice compliment.

Here are the rankings revised according to Pecota on what it projects what VORP a player would do right now if given a chance in the majors. I’ll add Josh Kinney in for fun, and we all know he will get his chance.

1. Jay (19.4)
2. Rasmus (19.3)
3. Jaime Garcia (15.9)
4. Bryan Anderson (11.7)
5. Haerther (11.1)
6. Tyler Greene (9.0)
7. Kinney (9.0)
8. Narveson (5.2)
9. Perez (3.2)
10. Stavinoha (2.6)

Pecota likes Anderson much more then Yadier Molina (projected VORP 2.2), probably due to the fact that Anderson has hit. Imagine that. Pecota also likes Josh Kinney a little bit more then Braden Looper (7.0). Now this new upside score BP is introducing is very interesting. I probably can’t explain it very well, so I’ll quote Nate Silver’s explanation.

Upside gives credit only for performance above league average at the player’s position, and zero credit for everything else. If a player winds up being a bench guy in the majors, or gets stuck at Double-A, or quits baseball to work in a lumber yard–none of these outcomes is desirable. On the other hand, the cost of employing a prospect is relatively low, both in terms of financial outlay and opportunity cost…Upside works around this negative value problem by giving credit for the good, while treating all different types of bad performance as having zero (but not negative) value. The version of Upside that we’re using here is the peak-adjusted variant, which measures a player’s most valuable five-year window up through and including his age 28 season (or simply his next five years of performance if he’s already age 25 or older).

…. But the intuition behind our methodology is fairly simple: we’re attempting to measure the degree and probability of above-average performance while the player is under the control of his parent club. This is the real fruit of the unforgiving labor of scouting and development: getting impact performances from players who are still cheap under the reserve clause, or in arbitration.

I hope I didn’t copy too much of the article but I wanted to get the point across. Upside in a nutshell: it evaluates a player’s potential for above-average performance while still club controlled. Here’s the ranking of players according to their respective upside scores. It’s important to remember that BP only does so many PECOTA cards, and a lot of minor leaguers are left out. These prospects are mostly the ones you’ve already seen in various rankings the last few seasons. Also, they have Daryl Jones’s Pecota incorrect, he’s listed as a 1st baseman for the Fort Wayne Wizards. edit: I’m told they have the wrong Daryl. I have an email out to the guys at BP letting them know and I’ll post where he would fit once they fix it.

Excellent Prospects
None (players with 100+ upside scores)
Very Good Prospects (players with scores 50-100)
1. Bryan Anderson (88.1)
2. Colby Rasmus (68.4)
Good Prospects (players with scores 25-50)
3. Jon Jay (47.8)
4. Jaime Garcia (40.0)
Average Prospects (10-25)
5. Tyler Greene (22.6)
6. Chris Narveson (21.4)
7. Josh Kinney (18.3)
8. Nick Stavinoha (14.7)
9. Skip Schumaker (12.4)
10. Adam Ottavino (11.6)
11. Chris Perez (10.8)
Marginal Prospects (0-10)
12. Cody Haerther (9.5)
13. Mark Hamilton (9.0)
14. Chris Lambert (8.7)
15. (T) Mark McCormick (8.4)
15.(T) Blake Hawksworth (8.4)

Wow. According to upside scores, Anderson is the most valuable player in the system. Pecota doesn’t seem to be as big of a fan of Rasmus as the rest of the crowd, but that’s not to say it didn’t like him, it still rates him as very good. I don’t know what all factors have came into play here to create such a variance between him and Anderson. No doubt Colby is the system’s top talent, but I’ll gladly take the fact that stats and scouts both really like Anderson. One of Jay’s top comps is Milton Bradley, and I’m thinking that’s about right. Jay’s projected to hit for better average over the next 5 seasons, but in terms of runs I could see them being pretty similar. One of Garcia’s better comps is Zach Duke, I’ll gladly take that as well.

I’d personally rate Ottavino and Perez above average, and I certainly would not put Greene, Haerther, McCormick or Hawksworth in the fringe category. Hawksworth was probably hurt by injury histories, but that didn’t stop Narveson from being ranked quite higher, so I’m not sure what is up there. I’d drop Schumaker in the fringe group and call it a decent ranking.

Here again is Kevin Goldstein’s rankings, he takes more of a mixed approach of stats and scouting, with more of an emphasis on the latter then the former.

Excellent Prospects
None
Very Good Prospects
1. Colby Rasmus
Good Prospects
2. Jaime Garcia
3. Adam Ottavino
4. Bryan Anderson
5. Daryl Jones
Average Prospects
6. Chris Perez
7. Blake Hawksworth
8. Mark McCormick
9. Cody Haerther
10. Tyler Greene

The stat method and the scout method certainly have their variances, but overall they come to pretty similar conclusions. You don’t have to be an expert to know that Ottavino, Perez and Hamilton are better then Schumaker and Narveson. I’m sure that they really didn’t get a fair shake from Pecota on their true worthiness due to small sample sizes. While scouts love McCormick’s stuff, his poor control hurts his upside score and drops him lower in the rankings then Goldstein’s. Perhaps that is for the best. You can look at both lists, use your brain a little and come to a pretty sound conclusion on where these players belong.