This has got to hurt

This is starting to get a little old . . .but that’s fine.

Yes, he could possibly be a No. 3 starter. There are certainly those who think that he could be more or less than that, though. This should not be surprising to you, nor should it be offensive to you.

Yes, there is one scout who said that he thought that Mazzaro was better than Rick Porcello. One scout. In your last thread I said that I think you’d find something on the order of 8 out of 10 GMs would take Tommy Hanson over Mazzaro, and I’m guessing it’s probably in the 7-8 range for Porcello as well. That the minority opinion was the one that was published does not make the majority opinion irrelevant. Often the point of news blurbs is to express interesting and/or distinct information. Certainly the vast majority of fans, being more familiar with Porcello, would be inclined to think that Porcello is the better player . . .this news blurb, however, does not challenge the idea that Porcello is an outstanding young pitcher, only that you can find SOMEBODY (one guy, which actually underestimates my personal prediction) who thinks that Mazzaro is better at this point.

The community list had Mazzaro at No. 98, which was perfectly defensible and said a lot about his merits. The 98th best prospect in baseball is still a REALLY good prospect with a good chance of having a quality MLB career. I think you make the mistake of not understanding how fluid the idea of ranking prospects really is . . .it doesn’t take much for a guy to, say, jump 20 places in somebody’s mind, or to fall 40 places . . .but does that alone tell you anything about how good the guy is, or even necessarily what you think of him?

Ranking lists are subjective . . .for instance, in 2006 Matt Cain had just finished his age 20 season, in which he reached the majors and pitched 46 innings of 2.33 ERA ball, had struck out 176 guys in 145 PCL innings with a solid-for-the-league 4.39 ERA, had unbelievable stuff . . .and yet was “only” the No. 10 prospect for BA. Hell, Cain was only the 4th best pitching prospect in baseball that year, which actually was a DROP for him from 2005 in which, despite being the No. 13 prospect in baseball, he was the 3rd best pitching prospect. In other words, his ranking had a LOT to do with what BA thought of his peers, regardless of his ability. And beyond this point, there are many more than 100 good prospects in baseball.

There’s really not much to learn here, other than a reinforcement of the usual caveat that with prep draftees you often have to compare their development with their make-believe counterpart that went to college. Mazzaro would have been very comparable to many high draft picks out of college who, after underperforming their first couple of years, took off in their junior season . . .and if he had been a first rounder coming out of college with the kind of performance he’s had the last couple of years, he might actually be OVERRATED compared to what he’s likely to do. But in any case, Mazzaro was, regardless of how he was ranked, considered by virtually everyone to be a talented young pitcher with the ability to succeed in some capacity at the major league level.

for how screwed up the current performance estimation process is.

My observation has been that what little valid data was on Mazzaro was ignored and most people merely regurgitated (sp?) inaccurate data to decide what kind of prospect he really is. As late as 2 weeks ago then was some concession that he had number 3 potential when there was data (not just statistical data) to suggest that the ceiling was much higher.

The question remains: is there a way to bridge the gap in the information age?

A couple of decades ago Bill James started an new age by making decision making information available based on statistical analysis of just the numbers. I would maintain that the next generation of decision making information will include the carefully surveyed observations of people who have to coach against a player and those who have to play against players.

The information provided by scouts is still important, but I would think that the information from carefully crafted surveys of, for example (again Mazzaro is simply a metaphor), the players who played against the guy in the California league and the Texas league and the coaches who coached against him is pretty indicative of the kind of player he is.

I would think that a site like this one could be a trend starter in creating a new age of decision making information for predictive estimation of prospects.

JMO.

I hope he fails, because this is nonsense.

DUSTY RYAN went 1-2 with a double in his season debut last night and you guys didn’t even rank him on the top 100 list on the site!! WTF??? I knew he was a future hall-of-famer because his Mom said he’s very good at baseball and I even heard he volunteered at a soup kitchen last winter. See, there was data beyond numbers to show his great upside, and only I could see it.

Sincerely,
Bill Bavasi

Peter Gammons is a fine source and knows a lot, but go back and check how many times he lavished praise on George Lombard. And I found this item from 2000 after a little Googling:

1. Corey Patterson reeks of star, and has the modesty, intelligence and work habits to build on it. Cubs fans, get ready.

this fanpost is just beating a dead horse

I have always loved MILB’s prospect list because it is from actual scouts..

Just like point made on Mazzaro being voted as the pitcher of the year.

I doubt Mayo’s uses any methodology to determine if his list is actually based on data that is statistically significant. We probably would have heard of it.

In any system where there are many shades of gray (in developing medicines or predicting prospect performance for example), one would need to set up a carefully controlled system to determine the effectiveness of ones efforts.

If you are interested in the topic of design of experiments, there is a nice write-up of it in wikipedia.

I like Mazzaro, but the Carpenter comp reeks of hyperbole, and this spam level of posting is obnoxious. You’re not Vin’s mother. Give it a rest.

I will give you credit, since you were saying he should be in the community poll since around #33:

http://www.minorleagueball.com/search?btn=Go&order=date&q=david.aaron&type=Comment

He started getting some serious consideration in the second half of the top 100. Didn’t make it on until 97, as you know. And some folks felt that was too high.

Looking ath poll posts, I started saying he should be on around 90. In fact, by the time 97 came aound i voted Ivan Dejesus, but there were some posts where I ws saying he belonged on before Adenhart (may he rest in peace).

Someone else posted their topp 300 and had mazzaro 199, but said he had real potential to shoot way up the poll.

I also thought he could shoot up my personal list. Is he better than Feliz? maybe for now he is, but Neftali really could be something special (not saying mazzaro can’t be eiither. Jhoulys Chacin also profiles a s a groundballer. I don’t know that he is better than Chacin based on. or cahill, although he seems more polished out the gate, but cahill is improving as the season goes on.

These aren’t my top 3, just guys I am throwing out there who have been raised in comparison for one reason or another.

Will Mazzaro be bettter than Aaron poreda? Brad Holt? Chris Tillman? Nick barnese? Kris medlen (a guy who didn’t make the top 100 and is struggling now but lit up the IL this year)? Who the hell knows yet? Maybe you do and he’ll be better than all of them.

But I wouldn’t beat this horse as much as you have. So far, you look ok in having championed him early on.

Do you still think Daric Barton is a better prospect than Justin Smoak? Because you posted that as well.

…because I’m not going to spend three hours reading through every reply in this threat. But I’ve read some, and maybe this is too simple a question to pose at this point in the discussion..

But —

It’s been 26 innings, folks. No one has "hit’ or “missed” with their prognostications for Mazzaro yet. The jury’s not just still out on him, but the only crime that’s been committed is all this huffing and puffing and bickering and ego-stroking. No one’s right or wrong about Mazzaro yet because he’s still learning his way around the A’s clubhouse. He hasn’t done anything to make anyone “hurt” for underrating him. And in no way can you glean enough information from 26 innings to say someone was a “huge” miss. The Mazzaro hit-or-miss conversation shouldn’t be had until the end of the season.

If the real point was to investigate the current paradigm of prospect evaluation, then there are literally thousands of better prospects with which to start that discussion. You know, guys who have definitively over- or underperformed expectations over the past 20 or so years, guys who “are who we thought they were” or were nothing of the sort.

For all the preaching going on about signals and noise and the null hypothesis, you’d think the original poster would understand the only thing to reject here is the premise that there’s enough data to justify holding up Mazzaro as evidence of anything conclusive.

Mazzaro has pitched 25 innings at the big league level. He’s made four starts. He has 14 strikeouts. His ground-ball rate is basically average.

I’m an A’s fan, but I firmly believe that anyone who is not kidding themselves should be able to see that his performance so far is a combination of small sample size and luck. The scout’s quotes are more or less ridiculous— it’s results-based analysis at its very worst, and it’s going to look really dumb in about a month.

Side note: we’d better hope he isn’t Chris Carpenter, who was basically somewhere between mediocre and terrible for six seasons with Toronto while often being injured. It’s not often that a #4 starter gets hurt, misses a season, then miraculously comes back with vastly improved control and better stuff— and more to the point, in Carpenter’s case, he did it for another team.

Exactly what was he talking about and what did he do?

Please be specific if possible.

Personal issues in this thread that sort of deflect from the discussion aside, the case of Vin Mazzaro has gotten me interested enough to join this forum after several years of just reading.

I do have a special interest in Mazzaro after drafting him in a strat keeper league this winter. Back then, I liked the reports of how his overall game had progressed – which isn´t all that unusual for a young pitcher to finally harness or improve his stuff and especially his command in the strikezone.

What I do find interesting is that Mazzaro´s prospect profile is that it is somewhat similar to that of Brandon Webb about 6 years ago. Both were drafted as promising pitchers with a nice sinker but questions regarding their ceilings and ways to go. Both spent a couple of seasons posting mediocre stats in A-ball before bursting onto the scene with a breakout year in Double A. Both received some recognition with prospect sources after that strong Double A season but failed to get mentioned among the top P prospects in Baseball and weren´t even on most top 100 lists.
Both – along the way – saw their stuff & command improve to a point where a lot of people are / were surprised about their initial major league results.

Now, of course, Mazzaro has a very, very long way to go to even get close to Brandon Webb. I just find it interesting that both – up until now – have had very similar paths to the majors and in terms of how their were regarded as prospects.

Mazzaro – from what I´ve seen – does have a plus fastball – in terms of velocity, movement and command, plus – at least so far – seems willing to challenge hitters with it which is a very good starting point. The big question going forward for him is whether his breaking pitch and changeup will be good enough to be effective even on days when his fastball isn´t in such a great shape and to be able to keep hitters off balance too. That will probably decide whether he´ll be a solid middle of the rotation starter like a Jake Westbrook or a Jon Lieber or whether he can become a frontline type along the lines of a Brandon Webb or a Tim Hudson eventually. And – of course – assuming he remains reasonably healthy.

Finally, Mazzaro was somewhere in the # 90 to # 120 overall range in just about every prospect ranking prior to this season, so the # 98 spot on this list was in the upper range compared to other sources.