It just adds more info to the puzzle that we all love, prospecting. I think each or the bigger places have their strengths and weakness. No one person or publication is ever going to produce a list that doesn’t leave some of us scratching our heads somewhere on the list. The best part about prospect lists these days is the information on the player that comes with it, not the number before the guys names.

I know little about him - what are your thoughts on him?

My biggest issue is there are 6 players with little or no (or negative) positional and defensive value, and that is being generous. This isn’t fantasy baseball.

it almost seems like a cop out. i guess it’s because of injury concerns, but if your so convinced that it’s going to happen, move him waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down. and i’m not just talking down to 10 or so. like 100. shit or get off the pot.

putting him at 4 just opens the door for them to be able to say “look, we had him really high!” if he ends up great, or “well, we did have him lower than everyone else!!!” if he disappoints.

contains 90% of the same players any other list does,

Also from #reds Q&A. Baker said org. has considered turning Yonder Alonso into catcher. DB: “Imagine a left-handed, power-hitting catcher.”

http://twitter.com/m_sheldon/status/8423827407

that’s one way to increase “positional/defensive value”

I can deal with him not being there I suppose, but in their summaries they said Leake was a 2-3… I wasn’t able to read the summary, but is this to mean that the floor of a player >>>>> the ceiling of a player. BA and other sources rave about Perez’s stuff at 19 in AA but the floor can’t be that low, can it?

I just wanted to drop by and say thanks for the link. So far it looks like there has been a lot of good prospect discussion, too — that’s what all this stuff is about.

I’ll go through the comments here in detail tonight.

141.1 vs. 114.2 is a big reason for Bumgarner over Perez.

You could certainly make the argument that Perez has the higher ceiling of the two. That said, while I don’t believe height plays a major role in a pitcher’s durability, I do think there’s a good chance that weight does. And having seen Perez last year in MiLB ST and Bumgarner pretty regularly in 2009, I can tell you that Perez is a gazelle compared to Bumgarner (lion?).

Bumgarner is a full year ahead of Perez in terms of stretching his arm out. I think that should be given a decent amount of weight.

Also note that Perez was strongly considered for our top 25. He’s 28th on our draft top 50 right now. So you’re debating what could only be five spots on the list — that’s top 0.35% of his class vs. 0.43%.

The velo stuff with Bumgarner has been blown way out of proportion. And I most of what has been reported does not align with what I’ve seen from him.

I believe the confusion with his velo largely stems from a questionable report published by Baseball America in the 2009 BA Prospect Handbook. They wrote that he hits 97 with minimal effort and consistently pitches at 93-94.

I’ve saw Bumgarner pitch in 2007 (High School) and twice in 2009 (Spring Training and San Jose). He didn’t sit 93-94 with his fastball any of those times. He touched that range but didn’t set there. I’ve never seen him above 95. He has sat between 89-92 each of the times I’ve seen him.

When he was in the bigs, he was sitting 87-91 and touching 92. So while he did lose some velo, it’s not as big of a drop as some people are making it out to be.

For whatever reason, many prospect publications prefer to publish max velos rather than where guys sit — this has been done a TON with Stephen Strasburg and Aroldis Chapman. When I’m evaluating a prospect, I’d much rather know what range his fastball hits 95% of the time than 5% of the time. When you go with the 5% number, you end up causing a lot of confusion…like what we have with Bumgarner. It’s questionable journalism to me.

I was just doing some Matzek research for the Digital Prospect Guide. Though I usually don’t find high school data to be worthwhile, I found this interesting:

His 2009 BB walk rate was 10.4%, according to MaxPreps.com. What’s more, his BB% increased as the season went on.

March: 9.7% (93 TBF)
April: 10.0% (110)
May/June: 11.5% (115)

With a rate like that, he’d be nearly a full deviation above the Low-A average.

Now I know you get some tiny people and tiny strike zones in high school. And I suppose the umps could have squeezed Matzek because they thought he was asking for too big of a signing bonus. I believe it was Jake Ordorizzi who walked less than 10 batters his senior year, so pitchers can exhibit plus control in high school.

It could also be that Matzek was so good that guys just took every pitch from him. The data could be off, too. Who knows…but I think it’s worth noting, since he gets such good reviews for his command.

Matzek didn’t have elite command in HS. I think that’s a fair statement at least.

I’m confident. We’re confident. But hopefully we come across as reasonable and willing to admit error. Learning is about growing from your mistakes.

I respect my peers.