I’ve confused you two enough times just based on the handle

Even if he moves out from catcher, and they move him to short his bat will still be premium for the position. Probably 2nd as well.

Just for the sake of discussion, where would Sandoval be in the rankings if he were still a prospect? I’d put him #4 or 5 In order Bumgarner, Alderson, Posey, Villalona/Sandoval

I haven’t seen those splits before. I guess it’s not a very big sample size, but is the road k rate worrying at all to you? I suppose he may be more of a groundball pitcher in the majors, but I was still excited by the strikeout rate so far.

The Defender season ends before September allowing him to play all season there then get a Sept Callup.

Witter goes to AAA, could be the backup to Posey in future maybe.

Giants seem to like players to stay in one spot their first pro season.

The Giants have already done research that catchers require 300+ games to succeed. I don’t think they will move Posey off the position until then. The only exception being if they are all of sudden in contention within the next 2 seasons and he’s having monster numbers in AA or AAA.

I’d say that the AFL is somewhere AA level because most of the players there are rookies, AAA, or AA players with a few A ballers.

Posey’s pro career has him playing with kindergartners when he should be playing with the sixth graders. Hope they push him to AA in 2009.

Probably after the top 4 since the votes should be less clear cut at that point. Our goal is not to have these fanposts overflowing the site.

When you look at K/9, you undervalue pitchers who allow few base runners:

Two pitchers faced 18 batters:

Pitcher Z: 18 PA’s, 6 K’s, 3 BB’s, 3 H’s.
Pitcher X: 18 PA’s, 6 K’s, 1 BB, 2 H’s.

Both pitchers faced 18 batters and got 6 K’s, but Pitcher Z allowed 3 more base runners, and therefore recorded 3 outs fewer than Pitcher X. So Pitcher Z has a K/9 of 13.5 (6 K’s in 4 innings), while Pitcher X has a K/9 of only 10.8 (6 K’s in 5 innings) – even though they got the same number of K’s, while facing the same number of batters.

It makes sense: Innings = outs. K/9 = K’s per outs. So pitchers who get a lot of outs get penalized. What you really want to measure is K’s per batters faced – K%.

Alderson’s 7.68 K/9 doesn’t represent his true skills, because he walked so few batters this year. His 21.4% K% was very good though – Daisuke Matsuzaka was 21.5% this year. Cain was 19.9%, and Sanchez was 22.6%.

But, at the risk of making this whole comment pointless, I do agree that Alderson doesn’t look like he’s going to be a real strikeout pitcher. Good MLB strikeout pitchers don’t have good minor league K numbers – they have great ones. Cain reached 28.4% as a 20 y-o in Fresno. Sanchez struck out 31.3(!) of the batter he faced in Augusta at age 19. Felix Hernandez reached 27.2 as a 19 y-o in AAA (20.4% in the majors this year).

Not trying to compare Alderson to these guys, I’m just showing that, since pitchers lose a lot of K’s when they get to the majors, usually even good-but-not-elite MLB strikeout pitchers like Cain and Felix post fantastic strikeout numbers in the minors. Alderson just didn’t do it this year. He’s young, but K’s – unlike BB’s, are very hard to improve, even for young pitchers. Alderson still looks like he’s going to be be a good pitcher, thanks to his great command, but elite pitchers are almost always very good K pitchers, and Alderson doesn’t look like one. He is a very good prospect, but not an elite one. Posey, on the other hand, is almost as a sure a bet to make the majors as Alderson, but seems to have a real All Star ceiling. The toughest choice really is between Alderson and Villalona for # 3 – a pretty much classic upside/probability dilemma. I’m leaning towards Tim right now.

is why MadBum is so much more regarded than TimA, when I think, if their stats were adjusted for league/level of play, they look quite similar. Maybe that’s just me. I have much more confidence that TimA will succeed in AA than I do that MadBum will….I guess only time will tell.

Sorry, I’m not sure I understand. What do you mean by, “include the entire list to date in each new post”?

i thought computers voting counted as voter fraud

I agree. Though his numbers aren’t as eye-popping as MadBum’s he did so at a higher level.

I don’t think we’ve got any hitters as dominant and Madbum and Tim2.0, and I’m really ready for a hitter like Posey to race through the system.