I think he’s better with some organizations and weak with others. His contacts within the Giants organization must be limited.

I like that he gives out all this information for free, but yeah, these days he’s not really telling me anything that I couldn’t figure out myself by looking at a player’s statline or reading a few blurbs from BA’s free content.

Sickels actually has very good contacts within baseball, although I don’t know specifically about the Giants. He lives in Kansas, I believe, so he sees much, much more of prospects who play (or travel) through the midwest. I’m guessing he doesn’t see a lot of baseball on the coasts, which eliminates pretty much all of the Giants’ affiliates.

That being said, I like him a lot and I check his blog daily. I’ve been ordering his book for years, partially for the analysis and partially for his irreverant writing style, which can be quite entertaining. It’s true much of his analysis is stat based, but he certainly doesn’t shy away from discussing specific tools in his write-ups and he is careful to consider performance vs. level, age of the prospect and any specific scouting reports he has received and/or put together.

Sickels says he has poor plate discipline, and the Giants say he has the best of anyone in the system…the two are not necessarily inconsistent.

Those were his rankings prior to the year, not as of now. But yeah, his analysis is pretty limited to Giants prospects.