2013 Baseball America Reds Top 10

[M2]

Originally Posted by Superdude

I guess projecting is the wrong word. Translating maybe? Pitching, as a fixed skill, is easier to gauge than hitting skill is IMO. Obviously pitchers are unique in that they can completely lose that skill, making them less projectable, but I still think the skill itself is easier to judge. For instance, all injury risk aside, I think Stephenson has a better chance of being an impact player than Hamilton does. We still have no idea how Hamilton's bat is going to adapt to big league pitchers who know every hole in his swing. Stephenson's stuff, if developed properly, is going to be extremely hard to hit no matter who's in the batters box.

Well, if you take injury and the maddening frequency with which pitchers lose their stuff out of the equation, I'd argue you don't have much of an equation, but I suppose you could then make a case either way.

You really don't how well a guy's stuff will play up a few levels. For instance, not all 100 MPH heaters are created equal. Sometimes hitters at higher levels feast on breaking stuff that allowed a pitcher to plow through A ball. Sometimes at higher levels a slight lack of command becomes a tragic flaw.

I'd say hitters and pitchers generally face similar adjustment challenges as they move up the ladder. The next level always comes with the possibility of exposing your flaws. Pitchers, however, are vastly more likely to suffer a critical injury or to lose their stuff, which makes them a harder projection.

[redsof72]

When you start crunching the numbers, all of that may be true. But we are talking about two players with rather unique skill sets. When you talk about pitchers being hard to project, you are including in your illustration all of the 87 mile per hour thumbers who dominated in A-ball and couldn't hack it in the majors. We are not talking about those kind of guys here. We are talking about a guy that is consistently 95-97 with no major control issues. Give me just a list of those kind of guys, no one else, and, assuming they stayed healthy, tell me how many of those guys fizzled out.

On that list of Reds prospects that you listed, the only guy who throws as hard as Stephenson is Chapman. The rest really are not applicable to the discussion.

As far as the injury argument, yes, Stephenson's ability to stay healthy is the first given. That's why the Reds limited him the way they did last year. My point is, if he stays healthy, he is going to have a big league career with an arm like that. He is not going to be a "4A" player with that kind of arm.

[M2]

Originally Posted by redsof72

We are talking about a guy that is consistently 95-97 with no major control issues. Give me just a list of those kind of guys, no one else, and, assuming they stayed healthy, tell me how many of those guys fizzled out.

I agree Stephenson technically has all the stuff to succeed. Yet young flamethrowers sometimes do lose velocity (Colt Griffin, Mark Pawelek). And you simply can't take injury out of the equation (otherwise we'd all be singing the praises of Adam Miller).

I love Stephenson's stuff and I'm thrilled the Reds picked him and I think he's been handled just about as well as possible to date. He's exactly the kind of high ceiling talent the Reds should have been after with a lower 1st round pick. But he's got a lot of innings and a few years between here and the majors. We don't know how his arm is going to respond to that. I hoping he hits the majors with every ounce of that heater intact and finely polished secondary offerings, so I don't want to dwell on whether something could wrong outside of saying pitchers can make you bang your head against the wall.

Anyway, my point wasn't about Stephenson. It was about projecting hitters vs. pitchers in generic terms. The tilt is pretty strong towards hitters.

[lollipopcurve]

The reason it's safer to bank on hitters than pitchers is health. There are various components of that (age, pitch selection, mechanics, to name 3 biggies) which remain imperfectly understood, so it'll be a while before teams can keep the guys who throw as reliably healthy as the guys who hit.

[Salukifan2]

All of the advanced scouting and statistical analysis implemented today really cuts down on the number of bust prospects. If a player is highly touted today i think it translates to success more than it used to.

[Superdude]

Originally Posted by M2

You really don't how well a guy's stuff will play up a few levels. For instance, not all 100 MPH heaters are created equal. Sometimes hitters at higher levels feast on breaking stuff that allowed a pitcher to plow through A ball. Sometimes at higher levels a slight lack of command becomes a tragic flaw.

I'd say hitters and pitchers generally face similar adjustment challenges as they move up the ladder. The next level always comes with the possibility of exposing your flaws. Pitchers, however, are vastly more likely to suffer a critical injury or to lose their stuff, which makes them a harder projection.

You're sort of expanding my point into performance when I'm talking about "skills" only. All of those flaws are easily spotted by any scout. It's the reason Chris Manno is an irrelevant prospect right now.

I don't think you could even draw data on this, but how many pitchers were projected to be great and failed inexplicably without any injury, loss of command, etc.? I'm going through baseball america's top 100's and it seems like the vast majority of pitchers turned out to be who we thought they would be, unless of course they got hurt or lost velocity or something like that. The hitters on the other hand are littered with guys who, without any explanation or reason, just couldn't hit upon reaching the big leagues. The scouts just flat missed and missed badly on a whole bunch of hitters.

[M2]

Originally Posted by Superdude

You're sort of expanding my point into performance when I'm talking about "skills" only. All of those flaws are easily spotted by any scout. It's the reason Chris Manno is an irrelevant prospect right now.

I don't think you could even draw data on this, but how many pitchers were projected to be great and failed inexplicably without any injury, loss of command, etc.? I'm going through baseball america's top 100's and it seems like the vast majority of pitchers turned out to be who we thought they would be, unless of course they got hurt or lost velocity or something like that. The hitters on the other hand are littered with guys who, without any explanation or reason, just couldn't hit upon reaching the big leagues. The scouts just flat missed and missed badly on a whole bunch of hitters.

If you lost velocity or command then you didn't turn out to be who they thought you were. Pretty much the same thing as position players who never got their bats working.

And how do you sort out a Jerome Williams who flopped and then got injured? Would he have put things together without the injury or was his initial flop a sure sign of future misery?

[Superdude]

Originally Posted by M2

If you lost velocity or command then you didn't turn out to be who they thought you were. Pretty much the same thing as position players who never got their bats working.

You can't see the difference at all? If a pitcher loses velocity, that's a tangible change in skillset. Justin Smoak or Dustin Ackley or anyone of that ilk has the exact same skills that every scout saw in the minor leagues, but they haven't translated effectively at all. Two completely different scenarios.

[dougdirt]

Pitchers today are staying healthier than ever before. When they do get hurt, they are able to come back healthier than ever before.

They are still riskier because of the injury risk, but like I have been saying for 5 years or so, in 10 years when we can look back at 2000-2010, when compared to the pitching prospects of the decade before them, the success rate is going to be MUCH higher. Young arms used to be flat out abused in the minor leagues, particularly high school arms. That isn't the case anymore. We are seeing the benefits from it in the Majors today.

[M2]

Originally Posted by Superdude

You can't see the difference at all? If a pitcher loses velocity, that's a tangible change in skillset. Justin Smoak or Dustin Ackley or anyone of that ilk has the exact same skills that every scout saw in the minor leagues, but they haven't translated effectively at all. Two completely different scenarios.

No, it's just that we measure pitch velocity and not bat speed. A drop in velo also sometimes reflects a pitcher struggling with command. It's a lot easier to stroke your fastball if you don't have to worry about where it's going. As you move up the ladder placement becomes every bit as important as speed and movement. So a kid might drop from 94-96 to 92-94 when he faces the requirement of spotting that fastball.

[Superdude]

Originally Posted by M2

No, it's just that we measure pitch velocity and not bat speed. A drop in velo also sometimes reflects a pitcher struggling with command. It's a lot easier to stroke your fastball if you don't have to worry about where it's going. As you move up the ladder placement becomes every bit as important as speed and movement. So a kid might drop from 94-96 to 92-94 when he faces the requirement of spotting that fastball.

Alright, agree to disagaree.

[kpresidente]

Wasn't Homer Bailey some kind of 98-MPH flamethrower at the outset as well? He didn't become a multi-year top-5 prospect for nothing.

[Superdude]

Originally Posted by kpresidente

Wasn't Homer Bailey some kind of 98-MPH flamethrower at the outset as well? He didn't become a multi-year top-5 prospect for nothing.

He probably threw harder than he does now according to reports, but I don't think he ever "pitched" much above 93-95. He scraped 97-98 on occasion, but I don't think that was a regular occurrence by any means.

[Tony Cloninger]

Originally Posted by M2

Is Stephenson sitting that high? I don't doubt you, I just thought he was a tick or two lower than that (94-96 range). I love the kid, think he's the most exciting Reds pitching draft pick in ages.

Wasn't Howington working 93-94 in 2001? Anyway, I brought him up mainly as a reminder that Howington had one heck of an arm before he got ruined. He might be the most criminally mismanaged pitching prospect of the early 21st century.

Thanks for the stuff on Gullett and Nolan. I knew both had arms on loan from Olympus when they were young, but I didn't start watching until 1972 and really don't recall Gullett or Nolan much prior to 1975 (wee little me was fixated on the position players). For whatever reason, Pedro Borbon was the first Reds pitcher to make any real impression on me (probably because he pitched in every game).

What did they do to Howington? I just recall that he was getting hurt but no specific as to why, other than....he was just not lucky in regards to injuries.

[Drugs Delaney]

Originally Posted by Salukifan2

All of the advanced scouting and statistical analysis implemented today really cuts down on the number of bust prospects. If a player is highly touted today i think it translates to success more than it used to.

This is a great point. The fact of the matter is that there is way more information out there about prospects than there ever was before. And there are much more advances ways of measuring and interpreting that info.

Prospect rankings are always going to be somewhat of a crapshoot just by their nature, but I think it is fair to say that they are less of a crapshoot now than they were 5 or 10 years ago.