2016 Minor League Baseball Analyst
By Rob Gordon, Jeremy Deloney and Brent Hershey
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About this ebook
Rob Gordon
I live in central New Jersey. I have a B.S., spent over six years in the US military, and have used observations and experience, conversations with others, much reading, and a bit of imagination in developing this story.
Read more from Rob Gordon
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2016 Minor League Baseball Analyst - Rob Gordon
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INTRODUCTION
by Jeremy Deloney
We are beyond excited to share the eleventh edition of the Minor League Baseball Analyst (MLBA). For the new readers here, it all started in 2005 with Deric McKamey, now a scout with the St. Louis Cardinals. His unique and expert insights added a lot of color to the ambiguous world of minor league prospects and the tradition continues today. Deric passed the torch to Rob Gordon and me seven years ago and we’ve done our best to maintain the consistent, objective perspective that Deric brought to the table. While we’ve added several names to the mix, the goal remains the same: to bring readers fresh ideas in an inimitable format while adding our own personal assessments. Brent Hersey, the editor of the MLBA and General Manager of Content for BaseballHQ.com, continues to bring out the best in all of us.
For the 2016 edition, we are excited to add the expertise and knowledge of Alec Dopp and Chris Blessing to the MLBA. As you will see in the pages that follow, these new contributors have keen eyes and the ability to articulate scouting observations in a clear, succinct manner. Both were tremendous additions to the BaseballHQ.com staff in 2015 and have continued their incredible work with this 11th edition of the book. Chris and Alec spend a lot of time at minor league parks in different parts of the country, which makes our coverage that much more well-rounded.
The space for prospect coverage has gotten awfully crowded—and that is a good thing. Not only does it give all of us plenty of resources and insight, it also forces us at BaseballHQ.com to remain consistent and find new ways to keep our readers informed and entertained. I believe we’ve done that with the MLBA as well as the coverage at the site. You’ll see some new features in both in 2016 and we’re excited to bring you along for the ride.
There is little doubt the MLBA attracts fantasy baseball players with its statistical focus and valuable compilation of lists and rankings. However, the MLBA also is a poignant resource for any minor league baseball fan. With assessments on over 1,000 prospects, most any minor league game you might attend in 2016 will have at least a few players featured in this book. I’ve actually seen the MLBA at a few games myself.
We truly appreciate the thirst for prospect information and we enjoy bringing our assessments to you. While we also understand there are several other qualified prospect sites and outlets available to you, we encourage you to make the MLBA a staple of your annual routine, whether it be taking it with you to a minor league game or enjoying the daily and weekly analysis via BaseballHQ. com. Rob and I have done this for a long time and have several connections within the game.
That’s why we believed it to be important to gather new voices and add them to the MLBA. Chris and Alec both have different perspectives that add to the overall experience of the book as well as to BHQ.
While the general format of the book remains the same with valuable statistical information, impactful essays, and a multitude of lists, you’ll see some slight tweaks to our coverage. The player commentaries are more structured and will tell you more of the hows and whys behind the statistical outputs of the various prospects. The essays are written from different perspectives and will shine a different kind of light on the topics.
Because of more contributors to the MLBA, we believe this allows us to have greater coverage all across the U.S. Most of us have contacts within the game that can provide us with scouting tips and valuable information on various prospects and organizations. All of us attend games each year and like to chat with the scouts in attendance. While we all have our own personal biases and likes/dislikes, the collaboration of this project is more evident than usual.
The organizational coverage continues to be diverse and well-rounded, as each writer was responsible for the write-ups on players from on a per-team basis. I took the entire American League and SD, while the rest of the National League was split up between Rob (MIA, CHC, PIT, STL, COL, LA), Chris (NYM, ATL, CIN, ARI), Alec (MIL and SF), and Brent (PHI and WAS). Because of our year-round sharing of information, there is definitely more of a collaborative feel for the coverage. After all, the competition in this industry forces us to be at the top of our game.
The BaseballHQ.com rating system (detailed at the beginning of the Batters and Pitchers sections) continues to be a source of debate, but also an effective way to evaluate minor league prospects. The Potential Ratings is a two-part system in which a player is assigned a number rating based on his upside potential (1-10) and a letter rating based on the probability of reaching that potential (A-E). A 10 implies Hall of Fame potential whereas a 1 is minor league roster filler. Given our coverage of 1,000+ prospects, you won’t find any player with less than a 6 in this book. The letter/probability ratings, on the other hand, are all across the board and for good reason.
Rating minor league baseball players can be a difficult exercise, just like any assessment system dealing with 17-24 year-old individuals. Some prospects improve. Some prospects regress. That’s just the nature of the business. That’s why this system wasn’t designed to be your only way to assess prospects. We rate players first by the upside potential. We absolutely have internal debates on whether any certain five-tool player should be a 9 or an 8, for example. The letter/probability rating comes next, and we have just as much debate over that. We consider all kinds of factors and variables including, but not limited to: athleticism, tools, ability to improve, and historical performance. Ratings can and will change, though not typically in a drastic fashion from year to year. Our goal is to give you a snapshot of a player’s ultimate upside and likelihood of success. A player’s final rating—made by the team author—can be a difficult decision. But in the end, it is just a rating, given at one moment in a player’s development. The more valuable information is in the player boxes and commentary.
As mentioned previously, the outline of the book will look and feel similar to previous editions of the MLBA. The Insights section is filled with premium essays designed to shine a spotlight on more free-form assessments. Some of the essays are topics from previous years—this is, in large part, by design as we’ve gotten positive feedback from our readers—such as Sleepers Outside the HQ100, Top 20 International Prospects, 2016 College Baseball Names to Know, and a team-by-team 2015 Draft Recap. We also have added an article on the December Rule 5 draft; as a way for fantasy leaguers to become familiar with those players who have switched organizations, and their likelihood for success both in 2016 and over the long haul.
One of the more difficult exercises this year was the Organizational Ratings/Rankings section. As most of you know, the player movement during—and after—the Winter Meetings was unprecedented and we had to continually revise the rankings. From the Rule 5 draft to trades to free agent acquisitions, all created havoc with the ratings and rankings. But we stayed current through mid-December, and those grades reflect the player movement.
The bulk of the book continues to be made up of the hitter and pitcher profiles. We bring you expanded stats, tool assessments, expected arrival dates, draft into, potential roles, and the BaseballHQ rating. While a player’s skills may improve or regress from year to year, our goal is to qualify/quantify and measure a player at one certain point in time. Equally important as the statistical tables is the tool analysis. Over-analysis of statistics in the minor leagues can be a dangerous proposition. Not only are there severe hitters/pitchers environments, but these are mostly still young players who are developing their bodies and their games. Don’t get too caught up in a hitter’s BA or a pitcher’s ERA—look deeper at their skills and how their tools project. That’s where the BHQ team comes into play. It’s one thing to look at an OBP and draw conclusions. It’s another thing to provide reasons why the OBP is at a certain level and why it may get better or get worse.
As mentioned previously, the player commentaries have become more consistent and provide more information on how a prospect’s tools and skills project rather than just a regurgitation of their statistical outputs from previous seasons. While stats