BBS III - The Reckoning. Taking on the Community Prospect List.

In this final edition of The Blind Baseball Scout we’ll compare P-Sabr’s 2011 rankings with Baseball America’s, discuss the rankings of all Giants hitters in 2011, and take a close look at some trends in prospecting.

Baseball America and P-Sabr agree on the Arizona League top prospect Yoan Alcantara, who received the second highest P-Sabr score (77) of 2011, though it should be noted that the Arizona League had the highest of all P-Sabr scores in 3 of the 6 years that all 5 leagues were run, suggesting that further downward weight due to league level and duration could be added to the system. 5 of the top 15 BBA hitters make up the top 6 P-Sabr ranked players (Alcantara, D’Andre Toney, Marco Hernandez, Alberth Martinez and Gioskar Amaya) though there’s no overlap in the rest of list. Historically less than 10% of all the position players in the league will make it to the majors, so either list will do well to pick 5 players. Giants who made the top 15 include league MVP and relative old man, Jose Cuevas who has an outside chance to become a poor-mans Matt Downs, whatever that means. Cuevas ranked 7th by P-Sabr standards and his teammate Kelby Tomlinson ranked 8th in the league.

In the Northwest League BBA and P-Sabr agreed on the top 2 position players being Joe Panik and Cory Spangenberg, though they diverged on their order with BBA ranking Spangenberg ahead of Panik. Of the 11 position players who were ranked by BBA, 7 of them made the top 11 of P-Sabr’s rankings (Panik, Spangenberg, Pin-Chieh Chen, Zeke DeVoss, Jesus Galindo, Donavan Tate, Rougned Odor). Joining Galindo and Panik in the P-Sabr top 10 was teammate Mike Murray, so here’s to hoping he can find a position.

No obsessed Giants fan and prospect hound was surprised to find zero Giants on BBA’s top ranked Sally League position players. P-Sabr didn’t find any either. Five players who made BBA’s top 15 position players also made P-Sabr’s list (Jurickson Profar, Christian Yelich, Brandon Jacobs, Marcell Ozuna and Jacob Realmuto). This did not include BBA’s top two prospects, Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, who did not have enough At Bats to qualify for P-Sabr, though their third ranked prospect Jurickson Profar scored the highest P-Sabr score (83) of 2011.

Once again the top of both P-Sabr and BBA are similar, with both systems agreeing that Jedd Gyorko and Gary Brown were the number one and two position players in the league. Of the 15 position players ranked by BBA, 5 also made the P-Sabr top 15, Brown, Gyorko, Nolan Arenado, Michael Choice and Tommy Joseph. P-Sabr favored high contact hitters like Henry Roriguez (#3, P-Sabr score of 44) and Vincent Catricala (#5, P-S score of 41) to player like Chris Dominguez (#78, P-S score –77) who ranked as the 13th best position player in BBA’s rankings.

The Eastern league saw 1 Giant position player make the BBA top 12 position players (Francisco Peguero), but no Giant ranked above the Median in P-Sabr. The 2 systems agreed on 2 of the top three players in the league Anthony Gose and Travis D’Arnaud. Bryce Harper, who did not qualify for P-Sabr was replaced by Sterling Marte as the top player in the league.

Since this writing coincides with the McCoven Group community prospects list, I’ll post the P-Sabr top 35 hitters. This is a league-adjusted list, there’s nothing too scientific with this adjustment, so feel free to call B.S. I don’t care. The “adjustment” is I’ve given a bonus or penalty to the players league, and then another bonus or penalty depending on their quartile ranking in their overall league. All the information is there, and you’ve read this far in the third installment of this system, so you must be a geek…you figure it out.

Obviously the presence of Jose Cuevas at number four is a big “whaaaaaaa…?”, so there’s some work that needs to be done on grading the lower levels. But, aside from that, not so bad.

TRENDS

Now let’s take a look at some of P-Sabr’s historic trends and in prospecting trends in general.

First let’s look at top prospect Gary Brown. In the last 7 (2003-2010) years there have been 7 players that have had a P-Sabr score of 46 or more. 15 of those players have gone on to play in the majors, the best (by O-WAR) being Howie Kendrick, Pablo Sandoval, Erik Aybar and Billy Butler. So, the unscientific conclusion is that he’s got a 75% shot at being a major leaguer and a 20% shot at being a really good one – OK, I’ll take it.

Now let’s take a look at some outliers, and their value as predictive measures.

The basic theory of P-Sabr is that what is good or acceptable in the sabermetric measurement of player value at the major league level, is not necessarily a good predictor at the minor league level. P-Sabr gives a bonus to age and penalizes low contact indicators like high K-rates an low BA. Here we’ll look at the outliers in K-rates and BB rates over three leagues, the AZL, the California and Eastern.

Here are the players with the outlying best BB% in the AZL (2003-2008) who have gone on to see ML action. That’s the top five ranked each year from 100 qualifying players.

Of the 35 outliers over a 5 year period only Richardson has seen Major League time. Since close to 10% of AZL hitters go on to see some ML time, this seems like a very small number and suggests that it is not valuable as a predictor of future value, though it is small sample size, so let’s just say that further investigation is warranted.

How about the other side of the BB% spectrum? Here are the future ML players who fell in the bottom (worst BB%) of the outlying spectrum.

Not much better really, but the addition of Sandoval makes this list look a lot better in terms of value.

Now let’s look at K-Rates. Here are all the outliers of the players with the lowest K-Rates who have gone on to see ML time.

This is much more like it! 6 players of 35 who have gone on to see ML action, in a league where less than 10% of the hitters make it to the show, that’s a nice number. It looks as if at least at this lower level, the ability to make contact is a premium predictor. SSS of course, further investigation is required.

There have been zero players who have fallen in the bottom of the K% outliers who have gone on to see ML action, implying that the P-Sabr theory that high K-Rates (along with advanced age) are the biggest negative predictors in prospecting.

In the Cal league, where close to 30% of all the P-Sabr qualified players will go on to see Major League time the lists look a little fuller. Here are the outlying best BB-rates from 2003-2008.

The 2009 and 2010 season have seen four outliers thus far who have seen ML time, including Brandon Belt.

How about the bottom side of BB%?

I would expect as the sample grows larger to see more players on the higher end of the BB% spectrum to see ML time, but still this percentage does not imply that this outlier has great value in finding future major leaguers.

Now let’s look K-Rates.

This percentage (26%) is much closer to a number that would indicate a positive predictive value, though outside of DeWitt and Sandoval, player value is thin at best. Nick Liles was 5th among outliers in 2011, while Gary Brown just missed the list at 6th.

Here’s the bottom of K-Rate outliers.

So, it appears that high K-Rates even in high A are very difficult to overcome as one moves up through the ranks, though here Napoli clearly benefits from being a BB% outlier as well.

In the Eastern League approximately 45% of the P-Sabr qualified players will go on to see ML action, though for most it will only be a cup of coffee. Here are the BB% rate outliers.

Here 37% of our outliers went on to see action in the show, with Youkilis and Granderson being legitimate stars. How about negative walk rates?

Finally, we see as we graduate to higher levels a more traditional Sabermetric valuation play out as predictive measure.

Let’s look at K-Rates. Here we see that even at the higher levels, low K-rates seem to be a consistent predictor in finding future major leaguers.

As with the positive BB-rates, there were 13 players and 2 legitimate stars in this list, Mauer and Pedroia.

Surprisingly (to me) the outliers of negative K-Rates also produced 13 Major Leaguers, though realistically they amount to Ryan Howard and 12 cups of coffee.

Well that’s it. Thanks for humoring me. If I can get it together, next I'll do a pitching system.