Interesting Prospect I Found

by cwhitman412 on Jul 12, 2008 10:15 AM EDT

I was looking up prospects with the same birthday as me (yes, I'm a loser) when I came up on a very interesting prospect. What made him even more interesting was that he wasn't in the Baseball America Prospect Handbook at all. He's 19, in the Dominican Summer League, with amazing K/9, BB/9, and K/BB rates. I haven't found anything about his stuff, but he still looks like a prospect to me.

http://minors.baseball-reference.com/players.cgi?pid=34919

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well those pitchers aren't legit

look at Reynoso(Darwin De Leon) and his poor number in Oneonta.

by Bravesin07 on Jul 12, 2008 11:02 AM EDT 0 recs

re

DSL pitchers arn’t legit? What? Yeah, the numbers don’t mean a whole lot, but that doesn’t mean there arn’t legit prospects there. De Leon has pitched all of 16 innings in Oneonta this year. How can you judge a guy on that sample size?

by SBcaptain2 on Jul 12, 2008 12:30 PM EDT up 0 recs

+1

I don’t often agree with Braves but the DSL is not a very good judge of talent.

"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
-Jonathan Swift

by King Billy Royal on Jul 12, 2008 1:21 PM EDT up 0 recs

kind of

I agree with Braves that DSL numbers aren’t a good judge of talent but I disagree that there are no legit pitching prospects there. You can’t just lump everyone in.

by was385 on Jul 12, 2008 4:10 PM EDT up 0 recs

Its not that there arent legit prospects there

Its that you cant use numbers to clearly recognize them because the quality of the league, fields, umps, etc… Too many variables to get excited about a guy’s ratios. The numbers cant be put in context.

Im sure there are good prospects in the DSL, but Im equally sure we have to take their numbers with a grain of salt.

by alskor on Jul 13, 2008 6:28 AM EDT up 0 recs

agree that the dsl is a tough judge of talent. disagree with deleon as the example- jury is still out of that guy, give him time to adjust to a new country, league, etc.

a few things that we can know about the dsl that you can apply to your guy-
1)he has been used mixed as a sp/rp. thats a VERY bad indicator. teams that think so poorly of prospects to stick them in relief roles from the getgo- tells you right off the bat what his parent club thinks about him.
2)arm- its less meaningful the lower the level if a lefty is domining than a righty. and dsl is basically the lowest level possible. left handed guys can often dominate inexperienced hitters just by being “different” and something hitters havent seen much before.
3)hit rate. i wouldnt touch a dsl guy that is allowing more hits than ip- in my opinion h/ip is a more important marker of dominance than k/ip. and particularly at lower levels. its nice this guy has a low bb/ip and low whip, but that hit rate would easily scare me off…

anyway, thats my long version of saying i wouldnt put much stock in pedro hernandez at all.

by octopusink on Jul 12, 2008 1:40 PM EDT 0 recs

De Leon

The Tigers think enough of him to have him skip rookie ball and go right to the New York-Penn League. That said, I’ve heard his fastball is only in the high 80s and he’s not a very big guy. He put up ridiculous DSL numbers last year by relying on superior command.

by SBcaptain2 on Jul 12, 2008 4:13 PM EDT up 0 recs

19 years old

and still in the DSL means he is very unlikely to be a prospect. DSL/VSL are what foreign signings intially report to for a year or two. Usually at age 16 or 17. By 19 you’d want to see a guy AT LEAST be stateside if he is anyone more than academy filler down there.

Plus DSL/VSL statistics tend to be about as predictive as college baseball stats, and probably less so.

by nms on Jul 12, 2008 1:48 PM EDT 0 recs