Filed under: Baseball Strategy, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Player Draft, Top Lists
This list is a short one because I’m too lazy to actually think of five and there are only three really. This is just a reminder that we don’t need the division title to accomplish our goal.
3. If they don’t win the division, they get a higher position in the draft than the Red Sox, which is always useful.
2. The past few World Series winners have all been from the Wild Card anyways!
1. The team with the best momentum going into the playoffs wins the World Series, not the best team. The playoffs are a crapshoot and any team that reaches the playoffs can win (i.e. the Cardinals).
Filed under: Baseball Scouting, Baseball Statistics, New York Yankees, Player Draft
Hi all, TwentySeven in today with a few minutes of spare time! Yay! So anyways, I was thinking it might be interesting to talk a bit about some ways to analyze players and stats.
First the word on scouting. One thing you have to consider that isn’t always considered is whether the “name value” of a player is making him look better. Recently, I watched Jeff Samardzija pitch for the Cubs in the minors, and I’d been watching a couple of starts. He wasn’t all that bad, but he wasn’t great either. If I had been less talented, I might have said, “Oh, he’s Jeff Samardzija so I’m probably just looking for the wrong thing”. But the truth is, most of us can recognize a pretty decent pitcher. What you need to say is “If I didn’t know the name of this guy, would he be all that impressive? Would I ask myself, ‘Who is this?’?”… That sort of thing. It’s really good to put it in perspective.
Now, for stats. An important thing to recognize is what the stat is actually measuring, and what actual value the stat holds. For example, recently my friend made some bizarre statistic like “Average pitches in an at-bat per strikeout divided homers” or something weird like that and said, “And Sean Casey is the leader in the majors, so he’s really more valuable then anyone recognizes. I think he should bounce back over the next year.”
Really? What does that stat really mean? What are you measuring? That ridiculous stat that I made up just now because I don’t remember what my friend said really doesn’t measure anything at all. Just because you got it by multiplying baseball stats, doesn’t mean it measures anything valuable.
In addition, you need to consider the actual value of the stat. For example, consider the strikeout. You might say that some minor leaguer is really good because he never strikes out, and his strikeout/at-bat ratio is 0.001 or whatever. Because, the truth is that strikeouts really aren’t all that bad. For that matter, players who rarely strike out are often sacrificing other, more important, stats for their strikeout prevention. This season, the players who are striking out the least include Placido Polanco, Juan Pierre, Luis Castillo, Paul Lo Duca, Kenji Johjima, Dustin Pedroia, Jason Kendall, and Casey Kotchman. Of those, Pedroia, Kotchman, and Polanco have been good hitters and Johjima has been decent for his position. Pierre, Castillo, Kendall, and Lo Duca, have all been pretty poor hitters. Just think about it.
By the way, this info on strikeouts really leads into what I plan to write about next – strikeouts and walks. I want to look at correlations between them, the actual negative value of a strikeout (which I suspect is really low compared to what people typically say), that sort of thing. Cheers!
Finally, I want to talk a bit about a new rule that MLB has instituted for the draft which I suspect really harms teams like the Yankees and Red Sox who are high salary, high wins, draft at the end of the round.
The new rule says that if a team doesn’t sign a pick, the next year they get the following pick in the draft as compensation. If Team A drafts 1st overall and doesn’t sign their first pick, the next year they get the second overall pick. This rule is intended to give the teams more leverage against guys like Scott Boras and also is supposed to make the bonuses given to players more in line with what the MLB recommends. Unfortunately, this creates a dilemma for teams at the end of the round for two reasons. For one thing, teams that are consistently among the top winners are also consistently at the end of the draft, which means that the overall talent of their drafts will get worse and worse as more and more compensation picks come up at the beginning of the round.
In addition, it actually lowers the team’s leverage for signability draft picks. The way the rule is intended to work is that if a player has huge demands, the team can just say, “Well we won’t sign you and next year we will just draft a player of equal talent”. Unfortunately, players who fall in the draft (like Rick Porcello did this year) due to signability issues, will get a huge advantage in leverage. Rick Porcello was expected to be a top-three pick until he picked Scott Boras as his agent, which made him fall to pick number 27 for the Tigers. You would think that the new rule means that he would have less leverage. Unfortunately, the Tigers aren’t likely to find a player as good as Porcello is next year with the 28th pick. So, the Tigers had less leverage and thus had to give Porcello a bigger contract. Hence the tie for the record contract for a high school pitcher.
Bud Selig has good intentions, but he fails miserably.
-TwentySeven
Well… Err.. I’ve been busy, you see, with work… and vacation… somewhat contradictory, but true. But now I’m back, though I’ll have to be a bit less active than I used to be.
Name: Ryan Pope
Position: RHP
Date of Birth: May 21, 1986
Drafted out of: College – Savannah College of Art and Design
Height/Weight: 6′3″ / 190 pounds
(more…)
Name: Austin Romine
Position: Catcher
Date of Birth: November 22, 1988
Drafted out of: High School – El Toro HS, Lake Forest, CA
Height/Weight: 6′1″ / 195 pounds (more…)
Name: Andrew Brackman
Position: Right handed pitcher
Date of Birth: December 4, 1985
Drafted out of: College – North Carolina State
Height/Weight: 6′9″ / 245 pounds (more…)
After I’ve promised to review the Yankees draft, I decided on my method for how I’m going to do it. Because of finals, I would have to wait till next Friday if I was to review all the players at once. So, instead, I decided that I will review each pick separately. Here is the format I will be using: (more…)
Some say that it takes a few years, 3-5 years, to properly evaluate a draft. I personally think you have to take ten years before you can truly make an accurate analysis. 10 years is the time it takes for an 18-year old high school player to reach the majors and reach their prime. So, it seems appropriate to me that on the eve after the ‘07 draft, we take a look back at the ‘97 draft.
FIRST ROUND
The very first pick, by the Detroit Tigers, was Matt Anderson, a righty arm out of Rice. Anderson has gone down as one of the all time first-pick failures who never had a major league career. In 256 and 2/3 innings from 1998 to 2005, he put up a 5.19 ERA, 157 walks to 224 strikeouts, 249 hits, a 1.582 WHIP, and a 15-7 Win-Loss.
The second pick, by the Phillies, was the famed J.D. Drew bonanza. Drafted out of Florida State, he never signed with the Phillies and even today receives showers of boos whenever he visits Philadelphia. For this pick, I’ll give it to the Phillies as a failure because they never got any compensation for losing Drew. It’s not really their fault, but then again, most draft failures aren’t.
The third pick was a major success – Troy Glaus was drafted out of UCLA by the Angels. He’s had quite the career, and when it’s all said and done we will look back and be surprised because Glaus had a borderline HOF career.
Other successes in this round include
- Jon Garland (Cubs, out of High School, traded to the White Sox)
- Vernon Wells (Blue Jays, out of high school)
- Michael Cuddyer (Twins, out of HS)
- Lance Berkman (Astros, out of Rice)
- Adam Kennedy (Cardinals, out of Cal State Northridge)
A borderline player from that round is Jayson Werth (Orioles, out of HS)… He has been showing the power quite a bit this year but has yet to put it together for a major league career. He has flashed the power before, though, so that’s not out of the question.
