Future Forty 2.1
Well, I’ve been convinced. Enough people responded to the Future Forty 2.0 debut with a common suggestion; abort the lame “rookies only” eligibility, which always spawns questions about missing players and is generally not very helpful. So I listened, and now I present Future Forty v2.1. Welcome back to Jose Lopez, Clint Nageotte, Bobby Madritsch, Bucky Jacobsen, and George Sherrill.
I’ve added a new tier, the graduate level, for players who still fit the mental criteria of an unestablished major league player (basically, less than a full year of service) but are on the 25 man roster in Seattle. As such, Jeremy Reed was moved from the Good Prospect tier to the Graduate tier.
I think this was a good suggestion. I’ve never liked having to stop writing about guys who are 21, 22 years old just because the BBWAA says they are no longer rookies. And you guys obviously still want information on those players, so, this works for everyone.
Enjoy.
Peter’s Limerick-licious AL West Preview
Peter, like Paul, is not dead.
How do I know? His contribution to the AL West Preview for All-Baseball. It is composed entirely of limericks. No, really. It has inspired me to compose the following:
There once was a writer named Pedro
who we put out an Amber alert fo’.
We don’t know when
he will post here again
but his Mariner preview is great, though.
There is no truth to the rumor that we did a Peter White look-alike contest and are soon to replace him with Ewan MacGregor. None at all.
King Felix on the picture-box
Super-reader Jeffrey Wood points out that Felix Hernandez is scheduled to pitch in tonight’s televised split-squad game… and it’s televised (Fox Sports Northwest).
Now, I’m not promising that he’s going to be super-amazing. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that your jaw will drop, and swoon like we do.
But he’s super-amazing, and your jaw will drop, and you’ll be back here later, swooning like we do. Unless you’ve got a hot date or something, check it out. And if you have a hot date, and they’re Mariner fans, maybe you can pitch the game to them– because it’s never too early to test a relationship’s strength.
Matt Thornton
Matt Thornton is out of options. He is not necessarily out of a job.
The hard-throwing lefty hasn’t exactly forced his way onto the major league roster, to put it mildly. But as the above piece by John Hickey demonstrates, the Mariners are loath to just cut him loose. He can’t be sent to the minors without clearing waivers, and if you’re left-handed and throw 95 miles per hour, someone will claim you.
Thornton’s career minor league numbers are underwhelming. Though control problems are often cited — with good reason — as his main bugaboo, he also gave up more than a hit an inning at AAA last year as a 28 year old. So it isn’t like he is wild but totally dominant; he needs improvement before he’s a consistent big-league contributor.
The hope is that Thornton harnesses his control issues and becomes an effective lefty specialist. But for an arguably competitive team, does it really make sense to wait for a 28 year old potential lefty one out guy (LOOGY) to develop — especially when you have George Sherrill? Pretty much any way you slice it, George Sherrill was better last year and is more ready to miss bats this year. Sherrill is also a not quite a year younger than Thornton. Since Sherrill’s spring ERA is about a decimal point removed from Thornton’s (1.80 to 11.47!), you have to think Sherrill is ahead on the depth chart. He certainly deserves to be.
When Bill Bavasi says you’ve been his biggest disappointment of the spring, that’s probably not a good sign for Thornton, either.
With Eddie Guardado and Ron Villone (I know, I know) locks for the bullpen, there would be virtually no chance for both Sherrill and Thornton to break camp together. Since Joel Pineiro is injured, though, there’s a solid chance he’ll be sent to the DL to forestall a roster move. When Pineiro comes back, someone will be on the bubble, and it will be interesting to see what — if anything — they do to keep Thornton.
Future Forty 2.0
If you look over in the left nav bar, you’ll see that I’ve updated the Future Forty. However, I wouldn’t really characterize this as an update. More like an overhaul.
Basically, I’ve never been very happy with the concept of prospect lists. Everyone does them because, well, everyone else does them. Baseball America has been doing their Top 100 since the fall of Rome, seemingly. So, everyone else who wants to come across as a legitimate authority on prospect analysis makes something that they can compare to BA; mainly, a list. So, analyst after anlayst contribute their thoughts, and we get hundreds of prospect lists. And they tell us… nothing.
Seriously, a numerical list is probably the worst way to communicate information. What does it really tell us? That the #13 prospect is any more likely to contribute than the #14 prospect? Not in the slightest. For the most part, we mentally just organize the rankings into tiers. The top ten in the game are elite prospects, the next ten to twenty are good prospects with some flaws, and so on and so forth. Unless we really just want to argue, we don’t really spend any time trying to discern the miniscule differences between guys ranked next to each other. So what’s the point?
Of course, it’s pretty hypocritcal for me to sit here and bash prospect lists when I put one out every month, isn’t it? So, I’ve torn the Future Forty down and rebuilt it from scratch. What you see now is only barely similar to what you used to see. Here’s a rundown of the changes and an overview of what the new and improved Future Forty should mean to you:
Gone are the numerical rankings. There is no #1 prospect, nor #40 prospect. There are still 40 players, but the numbers next to their names are no more. The Future Forty is now a tier based system. It is made up of eight levels, so to speak, of different kinds of prospects: elite, good, solid, future, marginal, projects, suspects, and injured. I’ve included a short definition of each level in the Future Forty itself, and hopefully they are fairly understandable.
The goal, really, was to provide more information to the reader. A lot of the questions used to revolve around things like “why is Justin Leone ranked ahead of Matt Tuiasasopo”, because there wasn’t an explanation attached. Now, instead of saying one is better than the other, I’ve grouped them into seperate categories to help explain the vast differences between the two. Leone is a marginal prospect, close to the majors, while Tuiasasopo is a future prospect who needs several years of development. If you happen to like long term projects, than you’ll probably prefer Tui. If you want someone who can contribute right now, Leone’s your guy. The list wouldn’t give you any information other than “Dave isn’t as high on Tui as everyone else”. Now, rather than giving you my opinion, I’m showing my work, and letting you decide what type of prospects you prefer.
Also gone are the comments, which rarely provided a lot of insight, and were honestly a pain in the butt to write. They’ve been replaced by four categories: reward, risk, stock, and ETA. The reward category measures a players potential, while risk simply measures the chance that the player will not live up to that potential. Stock measures whether a player is improving, declining, or staying neutral in my eyes. ETA is the year that I estimate the player will arrive in the majors if he develops as expected. Obviously, not everyone will, and attrition will knock a lot of these guys off the organizational ladder before they reach the show. ETA is not a prediction of when I think they will make the Mariners 25 man roster, but rather a guage to show how many more years I think they need in the minors before they’ll be ready.
So, there’s the basic guide. Rather than looking at Asdrubal Cabrera as “the #8 prospect”, the Future Forty now tells you that he’s a Future Prospect, needs several years to develop, but has comparable potential to guys like Jeremy Reed and Shin-Soo Choo (the top position players in the system), but is also one of the highest risk prospects in the organization. Based on his expected evelopment, I wouldn’t expect him in Seattle before 2007.
You still get my opinion of the players, only now its broken down into parts rather than a whole. This should make it significantly better for the readers to ascertain what kind of player a prospect is and why he’s in the tier that he is. Obviously, as time goes on, players will move from tier to tier, though I expect movement to be minimal and slow. I’m not going to be moving Adam Jones or Oswaldo Navarro up to Good Prospect status if they start off 20 for 50 in April.
Also, you’ll note that the players are sorted within each tier first by Reward ranking, than by Risk. High Risk, High Reward players will rank ahead of Low Risk, Low Reward players in the same tier, because I believe that potential is more important than attrition in valuing prospects, though both are obviously crucial.
I hope you guys find the Future Forty 2.0 to be a huge improvement over the list style, and for the prospect mavens out there, I’d encourage you to take a look at revamping the way we present information going forward. Just because everyone else presents their data in a list doesn’t mean we have to. After all, everyone else use to evaluate players by batting average too.
Position Roundtables: #3 Starter
Derek: I’ve walked the line on Moyer so far — he could be done, but we thought
that before. He might have lost a bit of control, but what if it’s only
a matter of adjusting? What if there’s a delivery flaw he, or Price, can
find? Or if it’s a problem of approach?
Ichiro! Ichiro!
He’s on fire! Also, some standard-issue quotes from Hargrove for your amusement.
I know spring training stats are meaningless and all, but man, Ichiro! is cool.
So Ichiro’s hitting .579 with a .610 OBP, if Jim Street’s article is to believed. We then get this gem:
Asked if he’s ready for the regular season to start, Ichiro said, “I’m not sure yet.”
Ichiro cracks me up.
Post-per-page fixed, sort of
You’ll note that on any page, search or otherwise, you’ll get served up the six posts closest to your query, but at the bottom of the page you can go to the next six, and from there… so on and so forth. I’m going to clean up the formatting when I have a chance, so let that go for a day, if you would.
Much thanks to Alex King who, like many USSM readers, is far more generous with his help that is reasonable.
BP signing w/ Derek and Jonah
Come pester Jonah Keri with questions about Baseball Prospectus and this year’s book! Because the chapters aren’t bylined, for all you know he wrote it! So ask him really detailed, wonky questions about the team and the front office!
In all seriousness, Jonah’s a fine fellow, and I highly recommend him. I’ll be there, probably heckling and asking him really detailed, wonky questions about the team and the front office. See if you can spot me. I’m sure it’ll be reaaaaaaaaaaaaally difficult.
Third Place Books
Lake Forest Park , Sat Mar 26
Saturday, March 26 @ 6:00pm
17171 Bothwell Way NE
Lake Forest Park, WA 98155
206-366-3333
Everyone’s favorite hyperactive Quebecois will also be on the television, he’s supposed to go on KOMO Friday about 11 AM.
Little computer help
I’m having some more issues with my computer and our wireless network. If you feel like lending a hand, specifics after the jump;