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    2017 Minor League Baseball Analyst
    2017 Minor League Baseball Analyst
    2017 Minor League Baseball Analyst
    Ebook263 pages1 hour

    2017 Minor League Baseball Analyst

    By Jeremy Deloney, Rob Gordon and Brent Hershey

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    About this ebook

    The first book of its kind to fully integrate sabermetrics and scouting, the 2017 Minor League Baseball Analyst provides a distinctive brand of analysis for more than 1,000 minor league baseball players. Features include scouting reports for all players, batter skills ratings, pitch repertoires, performance trends, major league equivalents, and expected major league debuts. A complete sabermetric glossary is also included. This one-of-a-kind reference is ideally suited for baseball analysts and those who play in fantasy leagues with farm systems.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTriumph Books
    Release dateMar 1, 2017
    ISBN9781633196926
    2017 Minor League Baseball Analyst

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      2017 Minor League Baseball Analyst - Jeremy Deloney

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      INTRODUCTION

      Translation

      by Brent Hershey

      The task of covering the baseball prospect stratosphere is, at its essence, about translation. Strip away all the detailed scouting terms (two-plane break, arm bar, etc.) and the plethora of statistics on minor leaguers that are now available, and it boils down to one thing: How will Player X perform in the major leagues?

      Too simplistic? Maybe. As prospect coverage has exploded over the past decade-plus since the first Minor League Baseball Analyst (MLBA) volume appeared in 2006, the details mentioned above have been important pieces of information that have helped us make projections about the future. And make no mistake—you’ll find both detailed descriptions and plenty of numbers in this book. They all meld to add color and dimension to a once-flat picture of a prospect. It’s our view that this added detail is a good thing.

      How do we gain that level of detail? The founding author of the MLBA, Deric McKamey, stressed the importance of seeing prospects in person, doing their thing at the ballpark. Deric has since moved on (he’s now a scout for the St. Louis Cardinals), but this tradition of getting eyes on as many players as possible throughout the season is a tenet of our MLBA coverage. It’s one reason we expanded our staff, from primary authors Rob Gordon and Jeremy Deloney, who took the reins from McKamey seven years ago, to include myself, Chris Blessing, and Alec Dopp. The team, with our different locations around the country—as well as differing opinions, experiences, backgrounds, and contacts—continues to make the MLBA a rich resource for fantasy players and prospect hounds alike.

      But all that collected information must aid us in the translation of what each individual player profiled in this book will become, once he dons an MLB uniform. Our guiding principle with the MLBA each year—our Mission Statement, if you will—is to provide readers with our best projection of a player outcome. In the end, we seek an accurate translation more than anything else.

      But there is another translation going on in these pages that is perhaps more subtle, but just as—if not more—important. And that’s the translation that the MLBA provides for fantasy baseball players.

      Undoubtedly, one benefit of the increase in minor-league coverage in the past decade-plus is that prospect information is everywhere. One can find an avalanche of online opinions, observations, in-person scouting reports, player interviews, and player videos with a rudimentary Google search. This ease of accessibility means that one can easily find information on players as diverse as a top prospect in Triple-A, to a Latin American teenager in the Gulf Coast League—and everyone in between. At your fingertips, indeed.

      And as the general prospect coverage market has developed (or exploded, depending on your point of view), sites with a minor-league bent have become specialized. There are resources that focus on just one particular minor league, or sites that just hone in on one organization. These forays have been very valuable, since their narrower emphasis allows them to examine prospects at a level of detail that broader services often can’t cover. So when looking for information on any particular player, these specialized sites can provide helpful background and context that add depth to a player’s stat line.

      But often, there’s one thing missing for the fantasy player. What so few of these information services provide consistently is an application suited directly to fantasy baseball. The thirst for prospect information is partially—if not wholly—fueled by readers looking to get a leg up on their fantasy competitors. The goal: to acquire information about minor league players to either A) select them as farm-system players in a keeper/dynasty league, betting that these prospects strengthen one’s fantasy team, or B) to have all the information necessary (or know where to find it) to inform a decision to claim, or pass on, a player when he gets called up in mid-season. At the risk of overstating the influence of our own industry, fantasy baseball has contributed to the proliferation of MLB prospect information available to the general public. But while the information is easily available, its fantasy application is sometimes non-existent.

      In most cases, readers are left to take general prospect reports and translate them into their own fantasy baseball realm. There are intricacies in fantasy—how small or large depends on your own preferred format—that are often unaccounted for when consuming other reports. A defining feature of the book you have in your hands is that the Minor League Baseball Analyst (as well as all of our prospect coverage at BaseballHQ.com) provides this translation to fantasy baseball as a part of its coverage. The translation is built in, an integral part of all our presentation of prospect material. We are all fantasy baseball players, and the evaluations herein reflect that point of view.

      In a sense, the MLBA cuts out the middleman, and brings the evaluations, rankings, and commentary direct to you, with potential fantasy impact our first—and only—goal.

      We’ve been doing this for a while. In the summer of 2016, BaseballHQ.com celebrated its 20th anniversary. Our sister publication, Ron Shandler’s Baseball Forecaster, just published its 31st edition. Given our track record, you can trust the authors and viewpoints in the pages that follow. We know fantasy baseball, and that starting point engulfs our prospect coverage.

      Of course, sometimes this translation doesn’t vary much from traditional sites. Yoan Moncada? Near the top of general baseball prospect lists due to his explosive bat speed, premium athleticism, and emerging power. He’s near the top of our HQ100 prospect list, too, for much of the same reasons. Moncada’s impact will be felt statistically, as well as on the field, once he takes that final step into the major leagues for good.

      But other times, our rankings and evaluations will look different than other lists. Given the unique qualifications of catchers, for instance, we will likely not be as high on a defense-first catching prospect as others (or, on the flip side, may rank a sure-fire offensive catcher higher due to the impact he could have on a fantasy roster, given the catching pool). You can make similar determinations on other kinds of players—SB sources, for one, given the league-wide decline in thefts.

      In addition, given the advantage a fantasy owner receives when a high-impact talent develops and translates well, some of our rankings may skew a bit towards raw tools, especially at the lower levels of the minors (where players are still under development). Sure, these players have risk attached. But dreaming on what players might become stars is a long-standing prospect watchers activity. And with the results when one does hit on a player (Gary Sanchez, we’re looking at you), it’s something that we as fantasy prospect evaluators readily embrace as well.

      So if the lists, rankings and evaluations in the MLBA look a bit different—that’s because they are. We’re attempting to do the translation for you, so that you can build the strongest possible fantasy team. We embrace being slightly different, and it is a good thing. We hope you agree.

      Most importantly, these translations (prospect-to-MLB player; MLB prospect-to-fantasy prospect) are continually evolving. What is so exciting about scouting, writing, and evaluating prospects is that each season—even each month, or each game—is but one data point (or one opinion) in a larger story of each individual player.

      As such, our process of identifying which prospects will benefit your fantasy team the most is in constant motion. We learn from the past—about which players we were right on, and which ones we weren’t—and attempt to incorporate these lessons into our future. And thus, we thank you for each of your input (by way of feedback) of our process in the past, and extend the invitation for continued discussions and feedback as we head into the future.

      These prospects are still 17- to 24-year-old human beings that are tasked with completing (and repeating) athletic actions in an ever-changing environment, so anything can (and will) happen as they move towards their personal goals. We at the Minor League Baseball Analyst will strive to provide the best projection we can of their future, using all the data and information we have at our disposal.

      We’re glad you’re along for the ride.

      Long-time readers of the Minor League Baseball Analyst will no doubt recognize most of the elements of the pages that follow in this 12th Edition. Though in 2017, we have added a couple twists that highlight our strengths, and provide you the reader with the easiest way to access all of what the MLBA has to offer.

      The Insights section provides some narrative details and tools you can use as you prepare for getting the most out of your farm system and the rookies that will emerge during the 2017 baseball season. All the essays are designed to help you assemble your teams, as well as give you some food for thought on the prospect landscape, delving into prospect readiness; the top international players; reviews of the 2016 Arizona Fall League, the Rule

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