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Brian, do you remember taking that photo of Fletcher? It appears he is swinging left handed. Do you know if it was just a moment in his warm up routine or if he was actually taking hacks as a lefty?
This has to be the most exciting development in camp so far, right? Delvin Perez 109 mph exit velocity today. There was another that was 105 a few days ago. This is a “measurable increase in skill/ability” as some would say.
Of course there are more skills that go into success than just max exit velo, but this is a very good sign. Other SS with max exit velocity of 109 last year include: Tim Anderson, Trevor Story, Carlos Correa, Willy Adames, Jorge Polanco, Dansby Swanson, and Jean Segura.
How fast and how high can he climb the in-season prospect rankings?
Moments ago …
109 mph off the bat.
270 feet around the bases.Delvin Perez triples in Grapefruit League game — continuing on the main field the revelation he's been on the back field.https://t.co/A1n2WHD1ce @stltoday #stlcards #MLB #Cardinals
— Derrick Goold (@dgoold) March 8, 2021
Two tidbits I find interesting in the lineup construction conversation…
Edman (143 wRC+, 125 PA) is better for his career against LHP than Bader (125 wRC+, 261 PA). Both are small sample sizes, but I find the discussion about Edman leading off against RHP but not against LHP, his stronger side, interesting.
Also, I had no idea DeJong has a reverse split for his career (109 wRC+ vs RHP, 92 wRC+ vs LHP). O’Neill has also struggled against LHP in a smaller sample size. Both DeJong and Bader have more power than Edman, so maybe it makes more sense to swap Bader and DeJong in the 3 or 5 spots instead of leadoff?
I have no idea about the bottom half of the lineup.
1. Edman
2. Carlson
3. Goldschmidt
4. Arenado
5. DeJong vs RHP / Bader vs LHPOr how I think “The Book” lineup would be best construed:
1. Carlson
2. Goldschmidt
3. DeJong vs RHP / Bader vs LHP
4. Arenado
5. EdmanEdman has been much stronger against left handed pitching so far. One possible future scenario is a second base platoon with Gorman taking the strong side. Lots of time for that to play out, though.
Also, I’ve never been under the impression that Edman’s arm is below average. I think he might have a stronger arm than all our infielders not named Arenado.
Lol, Nigel. I’ve been saying the same thing in my head for the past week.
jj– he’s referencing all the comments from a few years back that Carp can only produce when he hits leadoff. Thus, if Carp bats leadoff… he will be an all-star lefty third baseman. 😉
Any chance Hector Soto is on anyone’s radar around here? I haven’t seen any video, but stat-wise he looks a lot like Angel Rondon before he broke out. Soto was one of the guys I thought would get more attention in full season ball if there was a 2020 milb season.
Just a side note, he is struggling in the Mexican Winter League as of now, but this is the only stop he has ever struggled with walks, and probably the most advanced competition he’s faced yet.
Looks like the competitive balance picks were announced earlier this week, as I believe they usually are during the Winter Meetings.
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/12/2021-competitive-balance-draft-pick-order.html
Confirms the Cards get Comp Round B pick, as expected. Tentatively pick 71.
I would love to see them sign Profar. He had a rough start to last season but finished ridiculously strong. This is a bit of a trend for him as he’s started slow and finished hot the past few years. Has kept his K% under 15% for the past three years too.
One potential complication is it has been two full seasons since he has logged any time at 3B. That’s what happens when you play on the same team as Matt Chapman and Manny Machado. I suppose you could play Profar at second and Edman at third if Profar can’t cut it at the hot corner.
Hi Brian. I think I spotted a rare error where you refer to the two-way second rounder as Tink Hence when I think you mean Masyn Winn. Enjoying the write ups so far!
Just speculation, but I think I remember when the Fowler contract was signed, the FO indicated they preferred four years but the fifth year was the cost to finalize the contract quickly. Maybe the FO sees the calculus of the last year of the contract, one that they didn’t expect to be a value a little differently?
Also, even if he would be a part time player, it seems the FO values having a veteran presence like Fowler in the mix with the younger outfielders. Otherwise, I think Bader has the most service time of the 40-man outfielders.
Hopefully the offense comes up to the plate ready to swing. Paddack is among the lowest bb/9 and highest in strike % over the past two years. Doesn’t seem like the kind of match up you hope to fill the bases with walks and run up the pitch count by taking a bunch of pitches.
On a mostly unrelated note, I’m not sure how good the Padres catchers are at framing, but I remember fuming over some of the calls Tyler Flowers got for ATL in the playoff series last year.
Danny Mac mentioned that Mikolas is throwing almost no fastballs. I think this is a statcast error as all of Mikolas’ pitches 90+ mph are being classified as curveballs. Supposedly they are using a new ‘hawkeye’ system for statcast this year instead of the old trackman system.
I agree that Woodford deserves a shot. I just don’t see it coming before Gomber and Ponce de Leon get theirs. Also, Woodford was drafted out of hs and promoted pretty aggressively so he is still very young. It might take another year or two (much like it has for Gomber and Ponce de Leon, who were college draftees and much older) but I think he will get it eventually if he doesn’t get traded first. This will be his first option year and they will run out eventually.
Unfortunately for him, Gomber, and Ponce de Leon, but fortunate for fans, the Cards always have a steady stream of top of the rotation prospects ahead of the mid/back rotation ones. Or maybe you are saying Woodford belongs in the top rotation category?
As a side note, I remember falling in love with Tim Cooney as the next Cliff Lee before his career was derailed by an appendectomy then a shoulder injury. I really want Gomber to succeed so I can finally get over Cooney flaming out and my excitement about him. And Ponce de Leon was dominating in spring training from what I remember after working with Driveline over the winter.
Hi Brian, I agree with your analysis and this doesn’t change that, but re:
As already noted many times, there are good reasons to wait on Carlson, with Dean and Williams long shots at best. (The latter two had already been sent down when spring camp 1.0 ended on March 12.)
I’m pretty sure Dean and Williams were optioned a week or two after the spring schedule was cancelled. Their mlb.com transaction logs say March 19th. Probably the only reason Carlson wasn’t included with them is that he was a NRI and thus “reassigned” instead of optioned, which I don’t think is a recorded transaction.
Again, I agree with your analysis–and the transactions did happen later, so I draw the same conclusions–but Dean and Williams were still in camp and (I think) still playing most days when camp ended.
I’m pretty sure Munoz was stealing when he got doubled up. It’s possible it was a poorly executed hit and run too.
Also, Carlos was throwing his fastball mostly at 90 mph. I think the highest I saw was 92. Plenty of time still to ramp up to max effort.
@bccran – Have you been reading too many of my posts? I thought I was the high one on Williams.
I would rank them 1. Carlson, 2. O’Neill, 3. Williams, 4. Bader.
Not sure how I would rank them including defense. One thing to consider is that Carlson’s Fielding Runs Above Average (Baseball Prospectus) last year at AA (108 games) was a terrible -11.1. This doesn’t match up to the accounts of him looking like a plus center fielder defensively that others have touted. I suppose he could have made big strides toward the end of the year and was just poor there early on.
On the other hand, Williams’ Fielding Runs Above Average at AAA across 2018 & 19 (151 games) was +23.8. For comparison, Adolis Garcia was +17.6 in 132 games last year. Although I’d be shocked to learn that Williams can run with O’Neill and Bader, he still looks to be very strong defensively.
As bccran notes, Williams’ 2017 AA was outstanding. If he wouldn’t have missed a few games, he probably would have won the Southern League MVP. (Same as O’Neill in 2016 and Carlson in 2019).
And I don’t think he needs to make a big swing adjustment to be successful. Sure it will help, but he has a lot of similarities to an early career Christian Yelich who provided a lot of value despite high GB% (63.2% in 2013, 61% in 2014, and 62.5% in 2015). And Jason Heyward hit for a 121 wRC+ during his year in STL despite an awkward looking swing (I think it’s been called an arm or elbow bar). These are the two most common concerns I hear about Williams.
According to Fangraphs, his average exit velocity is 92 (max is 110). Both are the best recorded among STL prospects and among the best of all minor leaguers.
Anyhow, games are almost here. We will find out soon how they do this year.
Just following up on a post and brief conversation I started on page seven of this topic.
I was doing some more research on KATOH-like prospect projection systems and found Alex Isherwood at Pitcher List has essentially built a customized version of KATOH.
In the last update from the 2019 season, it spits out Dylan Carlson as the number 2 hitting prospect overall. Keep in mind this is a 100% stats-based system.
Here is his last update as of 11/30/2019: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oEboGxBUZgKNgAx-BIC_3suN_GRZJKBL3Md1vODISCo/edit#gid=0
You can also see Arozarena at 51, Malcolm Nunez at 71, Justin Williams at 74, Lane Thomas at 93, Elehuris Montero at 97, and Nolan Gorman at 99. Keep in mind this list is only of hitters. Also, given Nunez and Montero’s inclusion it presumably uses multiple years of data.
The spreadsheet also includes beta projections for pitchers. (Oviedo at 23, Cabrera at 34, Rondon at 39, Woodford at 61, Sanchez (from SEA) at 83, and Helsley at 86). Again, keep in mind this list is only of pitchers.
Here’s the framework: https://www.pitcherlist.com/projecting-minor-league-hitters-using-statistics/
I’m not here to defend the fangraphs rankings but I do think there is a little confusion here.
BlackHillsCard said: The same guy who compiles the Top 100 also compiles each teams’ list. So how does he put Carlson as the Cards #1 prospect but then names Gorman higher in the Top 100? What am I missing?
Fangraphs/Longenhagen has consistently ranked Gorman higher than Carlson including on the list that was released January 15th: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/top-34-prospects-st-louis-cardinals/
Bob Reed said: But here’s a neat fact: according to Fangraphs the player who one month ago was the 14th-best prospect for the Cardinals, is now the #107 prospect in all the minors!
The link you provided to THE BOARD is for their 2019 update, which I believe was last updated before the MiLB season concluded last year. (It was not “updated” as of a month ago). I vaguely remember shortly after the trade they posted on twitter that Arozarena would receive either a 55 or 50 FV this year.
However, your point still remains and I definitely agree. It is a massive jump to go from a late season update #14 in the system to a top 100 overall the following year. For comparison, Ivan Herrera was #32 STL pre 2019 season, #6 STL updated 2019 season, and #4 STL / #105 overall pre 2020 season. It makes more sense to me for the big jump to be reflected in the in season update list if he is playing well.
Case in point: I don’t understand why Herrera got a big in season ranking boost last year and Arozarena didn’t (#19 to #14). Maybe it is because Herrera made the big jump from GCL to Midwest League. Or maybe it has something to do with Fangraphs incorporating average and max exit velos as part of their 2020 evaluation? (I don’t think they used exit velos in last year’s rankings). Arozarena’s average exit velo was 90 mph and max was 109 mph.
I agree it isn’t a consensus view (even if I wish it was). I think there is a 50/50 chance Herrera makes Fangraphs’ The Board top 100. If they stick with approximately the same grade distribution as last year, his 50 FV would place somewhere between approximately 50 and 125 overall.
It’s easy to criticize their evaluations of J. Williams, A. Rondon, and I think there were a few others. But I think they are rightfully ahead of the curve on this one.
Buried beneath all the headlines today was a “prospect and farm system survey” on mlb.com https://www.mlb.com/cardinals/news/prospect-and-farm-system-survey
The biggest surprise was Justin Williams garnering a vote for the most underrated prospect in baseball.
Here’s the methodology: “We sent a survey to general managers, scouting directors and executives across all 30 teams asking them to weigh in anonymously on a series of questions about prospects, top tools and farm systems.”
Nootbaar is a possible breakout candidate for 2020. Big left-handed hitter, who is very disciplined. He said last summer he was going to focus on launch angle this offseason to generate more power next season. Something to watch this coming season.
This is music to my ears. I’ve been trying to create a very loose framework based on the old KATOH system at FanGraphs to look at the Cardinals’ prospects. Nootbar rates incredibly well by this measure. He rated well (2nd best of batters at Peoria, Palm Beach, and Springfield). He was just behind Ivan Herrera (and ahead of Nolan Gorman) at Peoria and Palm Beach, and behind Dylan Carlson at Springfield.
Nootbars’ strong rating was driven largely by a ridiculously low K% compared to league average at Peoria and Palm Beach. At Springfield, it was largely driven by him being younger than most of the competition he faced.
Hopefully he can maintain the low k% with an increase in iso… basically what he was doing in Peoria with a GB% closer to 40% than 50%.
Thanks for sharing that, Bob. I’m surprised that O’Neill is that low compared to the others, but 2.4 WAR/600 PA is nothing to sneeze at either.
Regarding Carlson, I think you are spot on. His ridiculous KATOH? number is driven in large part due to his age relative to level. It makes sense that the same thing would work against him in the next 2 year Davenport mean projection.
Also, it’s nice to see Williams get a good rate projection, though I’m assuming the actual projection puts him far below the prorated 600 PA/yr. I can’t wait to see what he does this year, even if it’s mostly in AAA.
Christopher, is it over 1000 characters? If so, you may want to split it into smaller separate posts. Others have hit this restriction in the past.
Thanks, Brian, it finally worked when I just typed the numbers (1,2,3, etc) for the list instead of using the ol li in html.
Way back at the beginning of the offseason, when we were all wondering how the Cardinals would sort out the outfield depth, I started a little project. I always loved Chris Mitchell’s KATOH ratings of prospects, and I tried to run a loose evaluation of the outfield prospects through a KATOH lens.
Thankfully, Chris provided a general framework for how he calculated future WAR contributions of prospects: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-primer-on-a-new-and-improved-katoh/. Perhaps purposefully so, most of these statistics tend to stabilize fairly quickly: https://library.fangraphs.com/principles/sample-size/.
The general inputs are all compared to the league average: age, K%, ISO, BABIP, BB%, and height. Also considered is position and pre-professional origin (international, high school, or college). I obviously wasn’t able to fully replicate the KATOH system, and while I feel comfortable using my infinitely less complex “KATOH?” metric as a very loose way to compare a set of players, it is not at all a prediction of their likely future WAR. Also, I only used seasons in AA and AAA with at least 60 PA for the calculations.
Ranking by KATOH? (Note: this is more of a rate stat than a counting stat. PA’s are provided to indicate sample size).
1. Dylan Carlson 21.9 (562 PA)
2. Justin Williams 12.8 (1206 PA; pre- and post-trade)
3. Tyler O’Neill 12.3 (1405 PA; pre- and post-trade, not including 2019 demotion/rehab)
4. Oscar Mercado 10.6 (950 PA; pre-trade)
5. Harrison Bader 10.3 (996 PA; not including 2019 demotion)
6. Randy Arozarena 9.3 (1007 PA)
7. Lane Thomas 8.4 (879 PA)
8. Adolis Garcia 1.5 (1446 PA)KATOH? ranking by individual stops
1. Dylan Carlson 2019 AA 22.3 (483 PA)
2. Dylan Carlson 2019 AAA 19.4 (79 PA)
3. Justin Williams 2017 AA 18.0 (409 PA w/TB)
4. Justin Williams 2016 AA 17.3 (155 PA w/TB)
5. Tyler O’Neill 2018 AAA 13.6 (273 PA)
6. Tyler O’Neill 2016 AA 13.3 (575 PA w/SEA)
7. Randy Arozarena 2017 AA 11.7 (195 PA)
8. Oscar Mercado 2018 AAA 11.3 (427 PA)
9. Harrison Bader 2016 AA 10.9 (356 PA)
10. Tyler O’Neill 2017 AAA 10.7 (557 PA w/SEA+STL)
11. Harrison Bader 2016 AAA 10.6 (161 PA)
12. Lane Thomas 2018 AAA 10.5 (140 PA)So what does this tell us?
First, keep in mind that this is only looking at minor league performance and doesn’t consider any of what they have shown in the majors so far. What it does do is provide a view of all the players at roughly the same point in time in their careers—right when they are/were ready to graduate to MLB.
The Cardinals kept the three highest upside players in Carlson, Williams (though I suspect not all agree on this one), and O’Neill. Bader probably belongs in the top 4 as well when considering his defensive value.Mercado and Bader, and to a lesser degree Arozarena, rate as surprisingly similar. Again, due to this not adequately capturing Bader’s defense, it makes sense to prefer him. At the same time, it’s understandable why some are frustrated over losing Arozarena and Mercado. They have a lot of value.
This doesn’t particularly defend how high the Cardinals seem to be on Lane Thomas, however there is another way to look at how he rates here. First, like Bader, it likely doesn’t capture all his defensive value. Second, he had a poor showing in AAA this year, which may have been in part due to injury. Just considering only his 2018 line in AA and AAA, he was worth 10.0 KATOH? in 575 PA. This would scoot him ahead of Arozarena, just behind Bader and Mercado.
We can do a similar exercise with Justin Williams. Removing his 2019 line in AA which was partly a rehab assignment boosts his overall KATOH? to 13.6 in 1145 PA. Conversely, considering only his time at AAA (across 2018 and 2019), he has 9.5 KATOH? in 581 PA. While this isn’t quite as impressive, even this lower number is still neck and neck with Arozarena. To boot, Williams rates much better than Arozarena by Baseball Prospectus’ Fielding Runs Above Average metric.
Lastly, this makes for a convincing explanation of why Garcia was traded for only cash considerations.
