Finishing up with part three of the series, it’s been a pretty fun ride. According to the translations, we found out we have a future star CF, and future above average catcher in Anderson, a power hitting first baseman in Hamilton (trade bait), a possible future all star 3B in Craig, and a pretty fine SS in Jose Martinez. And we have at least an average 2B in Hoffpauir. Not too shabby. Of course there is always the “grain of salt” warning attached to all this, but it’s at least been entertaining. To wrap up, let’s look at some others of note:
Peak translated line: .301/.337/.541. EqA .291. (Quad Cities only)
Like his fellow first baseman, Buckman slumped upon being called up to the next level. But for a good while, he terrorized the MWL and because of that his peak translated line looks pretty good. .279 was MLB average for a 1B last season, putting Buckman in above average territory. After watching Buckman play several times over the course of the season, I like him. His swing is a bit long, but my impression is his power is real and he’s a very nice fielder at first.
AA peak translated line: .278/.352/.538. EqA .308
AAA peak translated line: .226/.309/.428 EqA .239
Like I said earlier about Hoffpauir, I would put more stock in what translation is given based on what the player did I AAA versus AA. I think the truth could lie more in the middle here for Mather. I really doubt Mather is quite the monster he was in AA this past season, but I think he should be better then what his peak line shows based on his #’s in AAA. Power prospects peak between the ages of 27-30, he’s 25 now and will be under team control for a good while. It’ll be interesting to see if he fully blossoms.
Finishing this up, let’s look at three more outfielders peak translations:
Luke Gorsett .299/.335/.489 EqA .272
Mark Shorey .258/.313/.589 EqA .258 AA, .282/.329/.507 EqA .279 A+
Cody Haerther .274/.355/.466 EqA .278
Here are more corner outfielders, a rather fungible group. The average EqA of a major league corner LF is .269; think the current version of Luis Gonzalez here. Haerther looks better then what I’ve been giving him credit for, but he can’t hit lefties and he doesn’t field well, so it’s hard for me to imagine him being a regular. Then again, you can say the same thing about Chris Duncan, but he had an admirable .284 EqA. Here also is your sleeper alert for Gorsett and Shorey, two players who both quietly had good years. Both show decent upside in the power department. Luhnow and Co. seem to do a good job of finding these types of hitters on the wrong side of the defensive spectrum later in the draft who. Like I said, corner OF’s are a pretty fungible group on a whole, unless their names are Crawford or Holliday.
We’ll look at pitchers possibly as soon as next week.
Filed under: Cody Haerther, Joe Mather, Luke Gorsett, Mark Shorey, peak translations
erik
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Is Gorsett weak defensively? i’ve always assumed he was at least fundamentally sound (or am
I giving to much credit to the Nebraska bb program?)
Erik, thanks for doing the hard work here.
You’ve found an interesting pattern: The AA numbers seem to over-project our guys, while the translations from AAA numbers seem too pessimistic.
Somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but the hitting atmosphere in Springfield seems a little too good to be true, even by Texas League standards. Meanwhile, we’ve known for a while that Memphis is kind of an island in the PCL, a place where pitchers look better and hitters look worse than they would in most other PCL venues.
The Cards have a really odd pattern in their affiliates. JC seems to favor hitters and punish pitchers, while Batavia, QC and PB are the opposite — tough for hitters, good for pitchers.
A prospect who makes it to AA then has a great place to hit/tough place to pitch, followed by the opposite in AAA. And the new Busch seems to play somewhere in between. We’ve seen Duncan, Ryan, and Schumaker hit better in St. Louis than they did in Memphis.
Maybe the best way to look at our prospects is to take projections based on their AA and AAA translations and split them down the middle.
It’ll be interesting to look back at these numbers when we have a group of guys who’ve played in Springfield, Memphis, and the new Busch, and see if that kind of pattern emerges.
If our hitters eqa’s are over inflated at Springfield than our pitchers eqa’s (what is their equivelent?) should be under inflated.
I really think Eric hits it on the head with is assertation about our corner outfielders, they are basically 4th outfielders in the bigs. Haether and Mather may prove me wrong but I just don’t see anything that excites me in the least. I actually prefer Haether over Mather as I believe in his consistency. I think Cody could be a useful player. I hope Mather proves me wrong, but I just don’t see him as being anything more than a 4th outfielder-power type pinch hitter.
Chris, Mather strikes me as following the same pattern as Chris Duncan, except that he hits from the right side, found his stroke in AA at age 24 vs. 23 for Dunc, and seems to be a better defensive player.
Haerther, OTOH, seems to be caught in a glut of lefty-hitting corner-outfield types. He has Jay coming up behind him with the same type of offensive profile and better defensive potential, and Dunc and Ankiel in front of him.
That said, I’ll be happy about any of these guys making it to the varsity, in any capacity. They’ve all worked hard and deserve whatever shot they get.