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Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings, and Merry Christmas from Minor League Ball!
I hope each of you have a great holiday and that you get to spend time with your families and loved ones.
Of course,at least part of your subconscious mind will be thinking about baseball, so let's find a few things to discuss!
***There are two key prospect articles from recent days that I think bear close notice. First, Conor Glassey (formerly of Baseball America as you likely know) dug deep into the research to look for commonalities among major league players who did not appear on old BA Top 100 Prospects lists, but who still turned out to be outstanding or at least very valuable. This is a comprehensive view and well worth your time to absorb.
Conor boils the data down into five key points to keep in mind when analyzing prospects, or at least when looking for sleeper types:
1) Ignore Draft Status; 2) Age is just a number; 3) Size is just a number; 4) Believe in the bat; 5) Control is more important than stuff.
That's just the summary and you really need to read the entire article. I think Glassey's observations are spot-on and very much in accord with what I've discovered in my own research looking at sleeper guys who exceed expectations.
***The second key article is from Andrew Ball at Beyond the Boxscore, who asks if teams would be better off just using Baseball America's draft list each year, at least as a compliment to their own draft boards. He concludes that
"...major league baseball as a whole should continue to use their own boards and grading systems, though teams at the top might want to reference BA before making a pick. If we broke it down to an individual team basis, it's more likely that we would find teams that aren't doing as well as Baseball America is in their talent evaluation. Regardless, from these results I'd once again say that the best ways to build through the draft with the new CBA is by investing in getting the best evaluators and in turn finding better players in the latter rounds."
Again, that's just the conclusion and the entire article is very interesting and should be read in detail. It would also be interesting to run the same type of study with other expert draft lists, such as Perfect Game's or our own Minor League Ball Bonus Baby lists that Matt Garrioch puts together.
Note how Andrew points out that finding valuable players in latter rounds is one key component of farm system success. Those are the same sleeper success stories that Glassey mentions, the Matt Carpenters of the world.
Everyone take it easy, be safe, and stay warm. We'll be back on Friday!
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