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I have Loutos coming up on my list several slots higher, upper 20s. He is an example of a thread that runs through my baseball worldview that brick and mortar baseball is played by humans, not by spreadsheets of data manipulated by analytics and algos. It is the measurables which can be reliably quantified that gain in importance because that is what can be reduced to useful input. But intangibles matter in the real world, and intangibles can relate not only to characteristics of the individual, but also to characteristics of the environment that individual is traversing, and to the relationship between the two. In my baseball world, such intangible factors can legitimatly factor into rating and ranking a prospect. This affects Loutos as it does Prieto. They are in the right place at the right time with a skill set that is probably good enough to take advantage of the opportunity presented. Chompers used to call it getting a break and taking advantage of it. A break can affect a player’s career trajectory, and we are forecasting and estimating career trajectories.
