On Prospecting
There is a lot of sturm und drang in the diaries right now about the merits of prospect lists from various analysts.
Take a step back people.
I have been doing prospect lists since 1996. You know something? No matter how hard you try, how much you study, or how much effort you put into it, you will ALWAYS be wrong sometimes. Every analyst is a human being, writing about other human beings.
Baseball America, Keith Law, Kevin Goldstein, Deric McKamey, and everyone else who does a prospect list, we all face the same challenge: predicting the future of other humans. All of us have different backgrounds, different emphasis, different ways of looking at things. Sometimes we are right, sometimes we are wrong. We all have good years and bad years. I just wrote a book with 1,074 players in it, and I've already found another 10 guys I should have written about. I'm human, Keith is human, Kevin is human, Deric is human, and everyone at Baseball America is human, too.
Does Keith overrate Mitch Boggs? Maybe. Do I overrate Jed Lowrie? Maybe. But that's what makes it valuable to have different opinions about things: insight doesn't come from conformity. It's the outlier opinions that are most fascinating to me.
And that's what makes this whole thing interesting, to me at least. If everyone produced nearly identical lists, where would be the fun in that?
There is room for all of us, in my view.
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43 comments
Comments
Very classy
by drwmsu1 on Feb 1, 2008 11:49 AM EST reply actions 0 recs
Just some thoughts...
What really matters so much more is the comments and observations about players. This is why I love your book and also why I really liked Law's write-up. Your book offers a great deal of insight that is much more valuable than just looking at your 50/50 list or anything like that. With Law's column, I really liked a lot of the observations that he had mentioned that I hadn't heard a lot of places. He did a good job justifying his feelings on players, and you as well always do a great job explaining your reasons for offering players the grade you do.
Lastly, judging a players future is based on so many factors, its hard to criticize any well-explained rankings/ratings of players. A few years ago so many people thought Hanley was a total bust and would be lucky to ever pan out. People were consistently wondering if Justin Morneau was a bust when he wasnt even 23 yet and then he won an MVP. I could go on and on but I need to get back to work. Basically, its easy to criticize lists, but if someone who has experience and an eye for this sort of thing sees something in a prospect, he should stick to his guns and people should look at the player with an intriguing eye instead of rip apart the writer.
Alright Im off.
Later
by grozzy on Feb 1, 2008 12:04 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
Another reason ranking in a list
If the #1 prospect is a RF for Arizona and the #2 prospect is a SS for Minnesota, in some ways, does it matter who is better? Different leagues, different positions, and certainly they're each helping their team in very different ways. Even if the #2 guy ends up being better, was anybody wrong to rank the #1 guy ahead of him?
I like how John does the grades more than rankings. While grades are certainly very subjective, to me it places players in a more realistic and meaningful category.
Let's rephrase: While it's always fun to say "who's the best?" "Ok, who's after him?" and so on, does anybody REALLY rank ARod, Pujols, Bonds, etc.? Don't we kinda just say "Those guys are the best. Those are the A+ players"? See what I mean? Why don't we just do the same thing with prospects, other than humans like order and lists provide a sense of that?
I'd much rather see a grade, scouting score (so we know that #10 grades to a 65, but #17 is a 62 so it's not really a big difference as 7 spots might suggest), or something like that.
by thejd44 on Feb 1, 2008 12:12 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Baseball HQ
So someone like Engel Beltre might get rated a 9D or 9E, where as Lowrie gets something like an 8A (I don't have the book in front of me, so those might not be exactly right).
by slackerjack on Feb 1, 2008 2:33 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
+1
by sabernar on Feb 1, 2008 5:07 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Thats the thing
by Jdog on Feb 1, 2008 12:06 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
Insight comes from the community?
Have you given thought to creating a "Top XX" list based on your readers, similar to your community projections? While it may be close to your list (since we all read this blog, after all) it'd be interesting to have a poll or some other method for us to generate a collective ranking.
by HavyBeaks on Feb 1, 2008 12:19 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
Most prospect lists are plagiarized.
As far as I'm concerned, unless the evaluator is spending a lot of time watching film, going to games, talking with scouts, etc., he's no better at rating a prospect than I am. I could build a prospect list just by determining what names keep popping up on other lists. How pointless.
One of the reasons I read John's blog (and buy his book) is that I know he actually goes to games, and he spends time talking with scouts and others with professional opinions. I don't think many others do that. I'm appreciative of John for providing this service.
by Statprof98 on Feb 1, 2008 12:33 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
My Bad
Thanks, nms, for having an honest discussion with me on the subject in that thread.
by ajake57 on Feb 1, 2008 1:46 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
Thanks nms.
by abbreviatedman on Feb 1, 2008 2:08 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
I respect scouts
by daveh33 on Feb 1, 2008 2:33 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
he was very clear
by Galt on Feb 1, 2008 3:05 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
an apology and admission of mistake is fine
by daveh33 on Feb 1, 2008 3:11 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Thanks
re: "Does Keith overrate Mitch Boggs? Maybe. Do I overrate Jed Lowrie? Maybe. But that's what makes it valuable to have different opinions about things: insight doesn't come from conformity. It's the outlier opinions that are most fascinating to me.
"
I think the reason I piled on the Boggs rating was a sense of proportion here. I also tried to make a bit of a "funny" about the Lowrie rating, too... but in all honesty, I could tell that the rating was well thought-out and - as someone noted in a diary - this year's prospect list seems to have a lot of "flawed" players among the best. If Lowrie can handle SS at the MLB level, he looks pretty great in this year's crop! And, I certainly think that most of us who resisted his "A-" rating would be quick to say that a "B+" was very reasonable, so it's not like we're arguing "bad" vs. "good" here, merely levels of "goodness".
Perhaps I'm too negative about Boggs, but I'd be surprised if any of the other experts cited here would include him in their top 200. Perhaps not even 300. The only rationale I can see to ranking him in a top 100 list is "in case he makes it", the "expert" in question can then claim he was the only one who saw him coming. Which would be true of Boggs, since in order to prosper, he is going to need to gain better command of his 1st pitch, learn a 2nd pitch, AND convert to relief. While someone other than Keith Law may think highly of him, I suspect they'd realize that's a lot to ask.
But, anyway, I don't think that any of the other three authors named are unaccountable... I find much less "in case he makes it" rankings (i.e. my suspicions of such) going on, and further - in John especially - a willingness to review past rankings and discuss assumptions/deductions which didn't pan out so well. I really appreciate these looks back, as they indicate (to me) a willingness to keep improving on the process.
Finally, I understand supporting others who are making a living in this industry, as it's a small community. Yet I do hope that there's some internal accountability within the community. Supporting a lackluster effort at identifying prospects just because that person is also Sabermetrically oriented seems (to me) to be no more helpful to anyone than having minority managers support a bad minority manager's attempts at managing just because he's also a minority. Truth be told, I do applaud Keith's efforts at resisting MLB club influence. I just wish he'd pick up his game. But hey, it's good news for John if he doesn't. :>
by BobbyMac on Feb 1, 2008 3:22 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
+1
i want to apologize for fanning any flame against Law, as it certainly wasn't my goal to attack him personally. i merely wanted to say how i evaluated his evaluations, which is what all baseball fans have to do with the multitude of opinions offered every day.
i never meant to attack any single ranking of a lone player (or even a few players) he, or anyone else, makes. discrediting someone like this is far stupider than the "bad" ranking. furthermore, nonconformity is certainly a blessing in prospect rankings, so long as that evaluator's nonconformity can be used in a productive way.
i don't apologize, though, for offering an honest opinion of what i glean from his "insights" (which is to say, little to nothing). furthermore, i agree with BobbyMac that Law is guilty far too often of being controversial just for the sake of taking a low risk for the "payoff" of looking smart, with little decent reason behind his opinions, and no real evidence thus far that his "risks" are actually decent picks. it's this latter point that upsets me a little about this community: there are so many people here who defend Law adamantly, but no one really offers any reason why i should trust his rankings, besides telling me "he's a professional" or something akin to that.
however, if it's not possible to start a discussion of how different people evaluate the different evaluators (such as which evaluators are good at finding which types of players) without starting something far too contentious to be worthwhile, i appreciate and will respect that.
by bleedjaxblue on Feb 1, 2008 3:43 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Unbelievable
Leaving Boggs aside, no one is asking you to trust Law implicitly. Over in the other thread others pointed out salient, original comments that Law has made very recently. No one has effectively refuted these comments to my knowledge. I guess what really pisses me off is that, with the exception of the Boggs comment, no one has even tried to show any flaws with Law's analysis, or even acknowledged that reasonable minds can disagree on the subject. Read his stuff and tell me why you disagree, and recognize that his arguments may have some merit.
Generally speaking, I find Law's to be at his most insightful in explaining the subjective factors that account for the differences between his forecast and the consensus/stat analysis. In other words, I think that he emphasizes predicting which players will be able to turn their latent tools into useable skills, and which players' tools will not play as they advance. In this regard, see for example my comment in the other thread regarding McCutchen's power potential, or the comment regarding Masterson also cited in the other thread. People at this site are a pretty sophisticated audience by now who can interpret stats, know about age relative to league, ballpark factors, etc. I like that Law takes the analysis a step further to predict who will outperform or underperform what is currently suggested by the data or other views. So there's your decent reason.
I'm not saying that his word is gospel (it would have been too easy to say "law"), but it is worth considering, and no one has told me why it shouldn't be, only that it shouldn't be. You haven't tried to start a conversation of which evaluators may be good at finding certain types of players, you've summarily dismissed the views of one particular analyst unfairly, and you're doing it again.
So there you go.
by Mario66 on Feb 1, 2008 5:00 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
"unbelievable"...
also unbelievable is the continued hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil attitude you (and a few others) have to the idea of saying how seriously any individual personally takes a prospect list. it's one thing to censor personal attacks. but this? seriously? get off your high horse.
i'm glad you find Law's insights helpful. i don't. end of story.
if the advice he gives you about McCutchen or Masterson bears out and turns into something interesting that you wouldn't have heard somewhere else, fantastic. if it turns out just to be different for the sake of being different, then.....don't say i didn't warn you. but you can know i won't bother warning you again, because, apparently, you believe in pure censorship of any negative opinions.
by bleedjaxblue on Feb 1, 2008 6:31 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
also...
finally, just to address your point about Boggs, because i glossed over it the first time:
"I don't see how you can suggest that with Boggs he's propping a low level risk to look smart in the future on the off chance the Boggs pans out. Clearly in your opinion Boggs is not a low level risk, otherwise you would not find his placement in a top 100 so damned objectionable."
You're confusing the word "risk" in two different contexts.
The "risk" of a prospect not panning out is one thing. In this context, it would be universally almost universally acknowledged that Boggs is NOT a "low-level risk" in this context -- he stands little chance of being a particularly valuable big leaguer.
The second is the "risk" to Keith Law's reputation by putting someone idiosyncratic in a highly ranked position.
As these threads have proven more than anything, people who already like you are willing to forgive and forget a lot of random picks low on prospect lists. (And no one will remember who it was Law decided to "leave off" the top 100 in favor of Boggs.) On the other hand, the reward is tremendous. In five years, if Boggs is good, everyone will trumpet that success as "proof" that Keith Law's idiosyncratic choices are really, really valuable, even if he misses on 19 of 20 (which would make his random picks completely valueless, from an objective standpoint). This is the sense in which Law is taking little risk. It has nothing to do with Boggs' risk as a prospect.
by bleedjaxblue on Feb 1, 2008 7:39 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
my statements...
Well, the truth is that Keith Law can write whatever he darned well pleases. ESPN is good at meeting the desires of some sports fans, and they seem to like his work, so that's sufficient. As far as "intellectual dishonesty", that's what it would have been (on my part) if I'd ranked Mitch Boggs in my top 100, and that's what I asserted. The truth is, I have no idea how "intellectually honest" anyone else is. I did strongly imply that anyone else who ranked Mitch Boggs in their top-100 was doing it to make a point, but I really don't know the "why". I just know that I wouldn't have ranked him unless I was hoping for a "in case he makes it" situation. Perhaps it just shows my lack of integrity.
As far as your invitation/provokation to further discuss Keith Law's analyses ("Generally speaking, I find Law's to be at his most insightful..."), pros and cons, I'm unclear on what healthy goal that can accomplish.
by BobbyMac on Feb 1, 2008 6:45 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Law
John is exactly right. Predicting future behavior of human beings we have no influence over is very difficult. The permanence a list gives does not make that easier.
These lists are subjective without solid quantitative bases. By how much to Longoria outscore Bruce under Law's rankings versus the score of Baseball America's ranking of Bruce ahead of Longoria?
by ephinz on Feb 1, 2008 4:15 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
+1
by themurph on Feb 1, 2008 10:36 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Count me in John's Camp
Like John said he'll be wrong about a few of them but don't be surprised if one or two of the players you rail against break out and some of the players you laud and he doesn't become flops it's just the nature of the game.
As someone who enjoys following this I welcome a radical and informed view
by mattseward on Feb 1, 2008 4:20 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
Oh snap...
by adschofield on Feb 1, 2008 5:04 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
Two points
Let me give an example here. I don't trust Jim Callis to evaluate the A's system. Why? Because I think he has a personal bias. The Moneyball draft threatened to make his profession obsolete. It did not ultimately succeed in doing so, but that doesn't mean it wasn't profoundly threatening. The guy has a vested interest in endorsing scouting over stats, and ignoring that is naive at best. People with vested interests have a tendency to do things like "willfully misuse statistics" (as he's done recently with regard to Oakland).
Two-- I find the irony of people defending Keith Law against personal attacks to be rich and deep. I mean, come on. It's Keith Law, for crying out loud. This is a guy who's made an entire career-- I daresay, an entire cottage industry-- out of making asinine, snarky snap judgments about people based on limited, subjective evidence.
Seeing him hoist on his own petard is highly entertaining, to say the least. Karma is a harsh mistress.
by PaulThomas on Feb 1, 2008 8:30 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
-1
Matt
by WayneCampbell05 on Feb 2, 2008 1:06 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
When you blatantly doctor statistics
Callis wrote a column earlier this offseason in which he essentially said that the A's system sucked because it had only turned 5 of the 19 first-round/supplemental picks in the last 6 drafts into everyday players.
That number of 19 includes THIS YEAR'S PICKS. Out of the entirety of the 2007 draft, exactly one player has played in the majors. For one inning.
There was literally no way in which including them served any intellectually legitimate purpose-- the only thing it could do was confuse underinformed people into thinking the A's were worse at drafting than they actually are. When you actually look at the picks in a year range that actually makes sense, it turns out that they've actually turned into big-leaguers at a higher-than-average rate.
After it was pointed out to him by numerous people that his original claim was, in fact, disingenuous bullshit, he then, in a second article, revealed that, oh yeah, he had actually done a study of this and found out what the percentage of late first-rounders and supplemental picks making it in the bigs was (about 25%)-- and surprise surprise, turns out that the A's were about one-third better than average. (He apparently didn't think including the league average rate was important enough to bother with in his first article-- presumably because it would have exposed how bad his argument was.) So actually, what he meant was that they were bad at drafting AFTER the first round. (This time he didn't bother giving statistics to back up his claim-- perhaps he learned the lesson that when you're libeling someone, it's best to be nonspecific.)
It's possible that he's just incredibly incompetent, but I'm giving him credit for being semi-intelligent and assuming that it was a deliberate attempt to mislead on his part.
by PaulThomas on Feb 2, 2008 1:21 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
LOL
The only person here who has an axe to grind is YOU. You're so blinded by team loyalty that you see conspiracies everywhere. Get off your high horse pal. Every time he has a chat, he has to deal with jerkoffs like you that think he's prejudiced against their team's prospects. So go back under whatever A's fanboy rock you came from and bitch and moan with your fellow Athletic sycophants about your poor, misunderstood team. Mahalo
Matt
by WayneCampbell05 on Feb 2, 2008 7:47 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
+1
by Flynn Blake on Feb 2, 2008 12:33 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Matt..
by slurve on Feb 2, 2008 12:46 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Eh
Matt
by WayneCampbell05 on Feb 3, 2008 6:39 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
pot-kettle
by bleedjaxblue on Feb 2, 2008 1:22 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
:) +1
Matt
by WayneCampbell05 on Feb 3, 2008 6:25 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
You seem to have missed the point entirely
It's literally nonsensical to call what he wrote a "mistake." He knows how long it takes draft picks to get to the majors perfectly well. He chose to print a misleading figure. It's asking an awful lot of me to believe that he somehow "mistakenly" forgot that MLB draft picks hardly ever play in the majors in their first pro seasons.
Occam's Razor. Which is more likely: that a major draft analyst managed to somehow forget not only a study he had himself performed, but also an elementary fact about MLB draftees-- or that he just didn't give a crap because lying made it look like he actually had a case?
I'm not even going to get into the rest of this shit. The person who needs to dismount the raised pony is you. I haven't claimed any "conspiracy" of any kind (a conspiracy of one person? WTF?) much less that they're all over the place.
by PaulThomas on Feb 3, 2008 12:14 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Facts
2001 - '99 B+ '98 C+ '97 A '96 B+
2002 - '00 C '99 A '98 B+ '97 A
2003 - '01 A '00 B '99 A '98 A
2004 - '02 B '01 A '00 B+ '99 A
2005 - '03 C '02 B+ '01 A '00 B+
2006 - '04 A '03 C '02 A '01 A
2007 - '05 C+ '04 A '03 B
2008 - '06 C+ '05 B '04 A '03 C
Wow, I take that back, Callis is monster look at all those C+s he gave Oakland. 45% A grades wasn't enough for a true blue believer like you, huh? Oh, and he really hammered the "moneyball" draft in 2002 too, right. My god, he only gave that draft a B, B+ & A. Yup, that's conclusive evidence if I ever saw it. Looks like he hated the '01 and '04 drafts too, straight As all the way. He really went to town on the '03 class as well, 3Cs when there are obvious All-stars up and down that list, right?
Riddle me this Batman. If Callis is so obviously blinded by his bias against the A's, why would anybody in that organization give him the time of day? His job depends on his contacts on every team. Plus, why would he risk his reputation over something like that? Don't you think other team's personnel would catch onto that? It pisses me off that anonymous, faceless people like you try to impugn his character and his integrity. It's also the height of egotism that you would presume to know what's going on in his head or anyone else's.
Occam's Razor is on my side since I don't perceive nefarious intentions on his part. Only a blinded fanatic like yourself would presume his guilt. Fine, go run away and put your head in the sand. It's much safer in there. You don't have to hear or see anything bad about your beloved As out here. Mahalo
Matt
by WayneCampbell05 on Feb 3, 2008 6:22 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
IMO
by Josh on Feb 2, 2008 6:43 AM EST reply actions 0 recs
Just One Request
by ChrisLDuncan on Feb 2, 2008 2:08 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
Constructive Criticism
Having said that, I'll quote Rany Jazayerli from 2001: "In short, the task of prognosticating minor leaguers is both a science and an art, and the most important step any evaluator needs to take is to recognize the inherent limitations in predicting the future. God is omnipotent; the rest of us just have to do the best that we can with the information that's available, and recognize that even the surest of prospects--like Nick Johnson--is no sure thing."
by jdwilliams1978 on Feb 3, 2008 4:17 AM EST reply actions 0 recs
You're all human?
by squarejaw on Feb 7, 2008 1:12 PM EST reply actions 0 recs













