One of the best pitching prospects in all the minors

… but I’d also note that he’s not striking a lot of guys out (around 7 per 9), which is something I like to see in a young pitcher. He was also fairly old for the Carolina League (23), though that’s not far out of line in the Eastern.

But he’s also not walking many (about 2 per 9) or giving up home runs, and God knows the Nats could use some good news.

strasburg and zimmerman would have been a great 1-2 punch for many years to come… to bad for zimmerman

I don’t post often, the reason being I think that there’s too much “groupthink” not just in Mr. Sickels forum but regarding prospects in general, so I find it difficult to discuss players. I think it’s easy since there’s so much unknown regarding prospects and we rely on stats so much that it’s easy to discount or justify one player verse another. Maybe one player has better numbers every level in the minor leagues compared to another, let’s say same age and the scouting reports back up the numbers for each player. But on the major league level, the “lesser” prospect has a better career. While it seemed ridiculous to think Player A would be better than Player B, it happens so much. We know this yet still keep our projections of prospects "inside the box:. We know how unpredictable prospects are at the minor league level let alone their major league career, and we accept it. Yet we discard obscure ideas and comparisons rather easily despite knowing how inaccurate our prospect lists and comparisons will be down the line. . When someone brings an unpopular view about a prospect, we criticize it.

Now, to brings this topic around to Meyers. Here are the top 5 pitching prospects according to Project Prospect.

Matusz, Tillman, Rondon, Chacin, Carasco.

Is it really that hard to believe Meyers can be better than most/all or will at least be as solid of a pitcher as the rest of the group at the major league level? No? I love Matusz I really have no qualls against him or Rondon. But Tillman’s flyballs care me, Chacin ptiches in Coors, Carasco is inconsistent even year to year. Even though I think Rondon and Matusz are near flawless, they could also have some troubles or get hurt. Is it that hard to believe that Meyers keeps doing what he’s doing? Striking out a decent amount, displaying plus control, and most importantly for him, keeping the ball in the park at an impressive rate.

You knew the arguments were coming “Meyers was old for his age”, “he doesn’t have the stuff that other guys might”, etc. But when we retrospectively look at prospects it’s clear that doesn’t necessarily matter, which is ultimately the great unknown. Maybe he just knows how to pitch. It was his fault he was put in A ball last year, but he did still pitch well with a 3.72 FIP ERA. His stuff? He has a decent fastball/slider combination so we know this isn’t completely a mirage.

My point being, if he continues to translate his numbers there’s no reason to think he won’t be a middle of the rotation starter at the major league level with the ability to improve. I’ll leave you with one last note on Meyers, his HR/9 is superb, better than most top level prospects. Why is that important? It’s been proven that Hr/9 correlates with major league sucess more than walks, hits, or strikeouts.

I’ll try to summarize this long post…

We see how low we ranked certain pitchers (or hitters) as prospects (look at any old list or prospect retro John’s done) and we aren’t necessarily surprised how a player develops even if we underrated them severly. This doesn’t happen once in a while it’s more of the majority in fact. Despite knowing and accepting this, we pigeon hole ourselves to the popular belief, which is what burned us in the first place.

but he is a very intriguing arm. Weren’t there past reports saying that, if he reached back, he could hit the mid-90’s? Good 3-pitch offering. The guy he actually reminds me a bit of is Justin Masterson. I think it’s possible that Meyers can be a solid middle of the rotation arm, a possible “2” perhaps, if thins break right. I could also see him be moved to the pen eventually. It looks like his stuff isn’t playing as strong against lefties in AA right now. It’ll be interesting to see how he finishes. I imagine he’ll start in Harrisburg again next year. Good for H-burg fans – getting to see some solid talent. I’m not as big on Mandel.

In general, I think the Nats have made tremendous progress in rebuilding the system. It looks like it’s still a work in progress, and with the attrition rates of arms, they need quite a bit more. That said, there seems to be a solid base to build from. I think they need to work on adding some positional talent, particularly up the middle. If Zimmerman gets back to form in 2011, this could be an intriguing rotation with Strasburg and Zimmerman at the top.

Keep that quote in mind, and I appreciate the civil discussion. Alright, Dewey’s 1B list. There’s really no reason to think that King Billy’s list is a lock to be better than the players on Dewey’s? Especially since the first two are the same players. I’m 50/50 to which list I like better for reasons that I won’t get into, the actual debate is irrelevant. But the fact that it’s so lopsided is ridiculous. Is it that hard to believe Davis, Allen and Carter will have better careers than Freeman, Morrison and Carter? Yet the voting is 86/14, and you could see that coming a mile away before you checked the results. You might say, “well with the data available it’s not hard to believe everyone likes the same guys and that’s why it’s a blowout.”

That’s exactly my point, everyone’s using the same data (lists, scouting reports, articles, etc). Based upon the available data an opinion is formed and grows person-to-person into something more than opinion but closer to fact as some lead to believe.

See how I left stats out? While we all have the same data as far as stats go, we perceive them in different ways. Based upon my experiences and knowledge I’ll make a completely different view of a player than someone else with the exact same data. That’s easy to comprehend to some who understands the idea of sabermetrics at the lowest level.

With scouting reports and articles it’s not exactly the same. Obviously some players can have all glowing reports from every publication and blog, other’s can be terrible. Maybe all agree a flaw or strength of a player. But they’ll always be some degree of difference report to report. It seems as people accept the ideas of others much quicker because they can’t see every player for themselves, and that’s a big problem. People aren’t forming opinions for themselves but are instead accepting the ideas of others with little variance or at the least are unwilling/tentative to accept another radical idea.

But, there have been players scouts loved and numbers guys hate that ended up great players and vice versa any way you cut it. Obviously, the only way to go is a combination of efforts because neither is the only answer in player evaluation (stats vs scouting). Again, we’re willing to accept that fact, that both are needed to evaluate a prospect. But when Baseball Prospectus, Baseball America, Mr. Sickels and just a handful of other industry publications say anything about a player we are willing to accept it. Then when Dewey, the old Baseball Notebook list that was against the popular beliefs, they would get ripped. Yes, those publications like BA, BP etc. are taking a variety of sources to come up with an opinion, but they are also coming up with their own opinion. You could say this is what people of the community do with those publications but their really just taking the ideas of a bunch of other people instead of analyzing the player themselves as BA does with their reports and BP does with stats, which both are often wrong.

It’s not even about things that get us excited about prospects like strikeouts, being young for a level, having terrific power, having no power, etc. If a 9 K/9 translated from AA to a 7/l per 9 at the ML level every time things would make much more sense. But since some things translate better as players move up the latter, like BB/K ratio for hitters, we are a little smarter than the pre saber metrics age. But even that doesn’t truly translate. Since every player is unique we need to pick out what we think will translate to higher levels, believing some breakout seasons are more real than others, projecting power growth, an eroding ability to make contact, etc.

I had trouble getting this out but I think I just realized what I’m trying to say. I think people think “prospecting” is more difficult than people realize while admitting it’s a hard task. There are a million things to look for in a prospect even past complicated peripheral stats, park factors, etc. they are human after all. I don’t think people dig deep enough to form their own independent opinion and it leads to limiting our ideas.