Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1173: Actual Stats vs. Actual Scouts

Episode Date: February 9, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about two reports citing anonymous sources, Scott Boras’ boat metaphor, “Memento Mori” as a motivational tool, a John Jaso update, and a Patreon plug, then bring on the FanGraphs prospect team (Kiley McDaniel, Eric Longenhagen, and Chris Mitchell) to talk prospect-ranking philosophies, scouting-the-stat-line successes, how record home run rates […]

No, they're a part of me And they all mean one thing The will to death is what keeps me alive It's one step away, step away Limitations are set, only then can we go all the way, all the way Hello and welcome to episode 1173 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs made possible by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. And usually this would be our middle of the week email episode. This week, it is not. You know how

some weeks I'll say, man, there were a lot of good questions this week. We don't even have time to get to all of them. This was not one of those weeks. So I think the emailers are out of material, much as we and everyone else who is trying to produce baseball content right now is so we're just gonna skip the email show this week it happens to be fangraphs prospect week so we're gonna do a prospect pod we're gonna have the entire fangraphs prospect team on the show in a short while but we have a bit of banter to get to before that okay two things uh one is something i'm pulling from a bob nightingale article which already i understand that's my bad but i'm gonna i'm gonna read it anyway this is a recent article from usa today and it's an article where he's trying to place

his eight best remaining free agents or whatnot and there's the article for the most part is perfectly reasonable and nightingale is a professional i know that for a fact he's certainly doing this for his job yes and in the section about alex cobb he is writing about how cobb was expected to sign with the cubs and quote cobb wants to be paid like a premium starter by the way stop me when you hear something that doesn't sound reasonable cobb wants to be paid like a premium starter a number two starter in virtually any rotation with his filthy arsenal of pitches yet despite staying virtually injury free last year going 12 and 10 pitching 177 in the third innings with a 3-6-6 era last season the cubs point out

that last year was the first time he won more than 11 games okay i'm gonna stop myself what is who is i'm gonna okay i'm gonna read that again the cubs point out that last year was the first time Cobb won more than 11 games. What do you think are the chances that anybody who either works for the Cubs now or has even been aware of the Cubs in the past five years would ever, under any circumstance, cite the number of games that Alex Cobb won with a bad team in 2017? games that alex cobb won with a bad team in 2017 what is this bullshit sourcing that bob nightingale thinks he can write a reasonable article and just slip in oh the cubs yeah they're worried that alex cobb only won 12 games last year and he's never done that before there's not a chance you should not a single chance you don't see it attributed to the entire franchise. Just the franchise as a whole is speaking about Alex Cobb's win total. I mean, I guess you could probably find someone who is employed by the Cubs. There must be someone in ticketing or marketing or something who, if asked, might say something about Alex Cobb's win total. But yeah, I don't know. Like even as a negotiating tactic or something, it seems like the sort of thing that you probably wouldn't even bring up at this point.

It's dumb. Look, if you want to talk about Cobb's limited track record of durability, whatever. That's fine. Use something, use innings as a proxy. But if anyone actually said this, then, and I'm not even necessarily believing that's true, but if anyone working for the Cubs actually said that, said and i'm not even necessarily believing that's true but if anyone

working for the cubs actually said that said that about alex cobb and that's why the cubs are hesitating then what that reveals is exactly the age of the people that bob nightingale still has connections to okay so anyway well along those lines there was uh just a recent twitter interaction between john hayman and josh donaldson because John Heyman wrote something about Donaldson he starts the story Josh Donaldson is believed to be seeking a monster payday according to friends and while he may not hit his goal some think he may be shooting too high he benefits from many Machado's move to shortstop blah blah blah blah so Josh Donaldson tweets at John Heyman and says I respect what you do for a living but you don don't know my friends, nor do my friends know what I want because there is still information to be gathered.

I haven't asked for anything. What I have said is I would like to stay. And then it continues. I would listen to an offer, but I haven't had one to listen to. So it's been pretty easy. Thanks for your concern about my future. your concern about my future and next time i hope you put a name by it because you're using my name in a manner i don't appreciate so i mean i i assume he is looking for a monster payday he should be he should get a lot of money he's really good at baseball but what is like the according to friends what where do you find the friends i don't i have to ask like a a newsbreaker type person about this like are you on his facebook page just like messaging people he's friends with is this like teammates that he was friendly with is it like people he went to high school with what is friends how do you find a player's friends and ask them about the player i guess josh donson is saying that he probably didn't,

but I assume at some point, like one of these reports that cites friends of someone is actually citing those people's friends, but I wouldn't even know where to begin. And I don't even know why I would begin because I don't really care what his friends are saying anyway. Whoever used this phrasing first probably thought they were genius because you think, oh, sources say that doesn't mean anything. But friends, this is intimate.

This is inner circle knowledge. But I mean, this is John Heyman. He got it from an agent, probably not even Josh Donaldson's agent, maybe just someone who's like evaluating the future market. But of course, it's not.

It's really nonsense. Effectively wild media criticism today. This is a... Well, we're not done. Well, actually, no, I guess we are done because I have nothing bad to say about Ken Rosenthal, but I just want to now cite Scott Boris. Scott Boris has been spending a lot of time being very creative, not with contracts, but with the ways he's talking about the contracts he doesn't have. And recently he was speaking about, I don't know which of his clients, because they're all still unsigned. But in Ken Rosenthal's words, Boris offered him a parable in explaining the course of this off

season this is uh of moderate length i will read it and then we will discuss it scott boris on why the off season has gone like it has the off season is like the america's cup we have 30 boats in the water they take off and eventually they get to the free agent docks normally there are trade wins and there are economic investments in the capacity of the boat which allow those eventually they get to the free agent docks. Normally, there are trade wins and there are economic investments in the capacity of the boat, which allow those boats to get to the appropriate free agent docks. This year, there was a detour to Japan where there was a $250 million asset available for $3 million. All boats went to Japan. Then they sailed back a good distance.

They came to Florida and found a sinking ship and all of its cargo was in the water. All teams tried to load it onto their boats. That took additional time. Then, as they moved forward to the free agent docks, they found other ships dumping cargo. Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay and a few others, which then slowed their arrivals to the free agent docks. So, trade winds, Japan, shipwreck in Florida, more cargo spewing all those things artificially delayed the arrival to the free agent docks what in the fuck is scott morris talking about this analogy just really clears everything up for me i totally understand the market now that i can visualize it

as 30 boats what i'm i look i have never i am i'm not i'm not connected to the kinds of people that would have me being someone who has watched the America's Cup. I know that it is a competition where billionaires race boats that is dangerous, I guess, and it's very exclusive. It's a race first. So why would racing boats be picking up cargo that's been discarded by ships that are sinking is it common for america's cup boats to salvage for stuff in the water that's just floated what what why not just why why say the america's scott boris did not know where this is going he offered his first line and then he thought oh no i don't know anything about yachts. Well, I'm going to do this anyway, sticking with the nautical theme. Yeah.

So Scott Boris, in explaining the market, made absolutely zero sense at all in explaining the market. I think he's just trying to top himself with each analogy now, right? Because there was one last month where he said, I think it was last month or maybe it was earlier this offseason, where explaining the market, he said, I wouldn't blame the baker if the flour doesn't show up, which I guess he's the baker. The flour is the money the teams are not spending on his clients. So that was, I mean, that was, that only took one sentence to say, whereas this one, that does not clear anything up for me. Who was he telling this to? Where was this report?

This is Ken Rosenthal. This is an article in The Athletic. Why would the boats go to Japan if they weren't planning to go to Japan? Where do you go in the America's Cup? Otani came here. They didn't have to go to Japan. I mean, I guess he's from Japan. But I'm trying to imagine Ken Rosenthal just like on the

other end of the line, just listening to this entire thing that must have taken a minute or two to get out and just like transcribing it, Ken Rosenthal transcribing. I don't know if the athletic has interns who would do this for Ken Rosenthal. I hope so. But man, I guess everything he says is like reported as news. So I guess he just is feeling the pressure to just up the ante every time he says something. But this is way out there. So did you see the Dan Halem quote the other day? Yeah. MLB's response to Scott Boris, just in case anyone didn't see it.

Let me pull up the exact quote. So Boris was complaining about about i don't know collusion and then the league fired back let's see where is the exact quote yeah from from uh from top major league baseball executive dan halem responding to scott boris quote if mr boris spent as much time working on getting his players signed as he does issuing inflammatory and unsubstantiated statements to the press perhaps the events of this offseason would be different kabam yeah that's i mean i can't disagree with him after this extremely labored comparison so i have uh

one quick thing i just i want to remind you that you and I are both going to die someday. And I tell you that not to put you in a bad mood, but possibly to improve your podcasting, because we received an email earlier today from listener Scott. And I can't believe no one sent us this before. This is a study that appeared in the Journal of Sports and Exercise Psychology in October. The title of the study is He Dies, He Scores, Evidence that Reminders of Death Motivate Improved Performance in Basketball. It is by a few different authors. I believe that they are professors at the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona. We've talked in the past on this podcast about how baseball is a distraction from our own mortality. And it turns

out that being reminded of your own mortality can possibly be a performance enhancer. And this has all sorts of baseball implications here. So this was a research study that was performed with basketball players. So the question was basically whether being reminded of your impending death makes you better at basketball. And what, wait, it turns out, what was the origin? I don't know. Who thought? So evident, so terror management theory, which is a thing I didn't know about terror management theory, talks about striving for self-esteem and why we want to accomplish things in our lives and be successful. Everybody has their own thing in which they invest that is their legacy and symbolic immortality. So the idea is that, you know, we're all trying to leave our legacy, make our mark before we all just die and rot away.

And this is a very short term application of that idea. So your subconscious tries to find ways to defeat death, to make death not a problem, and the solution is self-esteem. That was the theory here, that you want to feel like you're part of something bigger, that you have a chance for immortality. So what they did was they theorized that being reminded of your death should make you better at basketball in the short term. So 31 participants, fairly small sample, but people were playing one-on-one basketball games with one of the researchers who was posing as a participant in the study. In between the two games, which lasted about seven minutes each, participants were randomly assigned questionnaires to complete. Some participants received packets that included prompts about death.

to complete, some participants received packets that included prompts about death. Please briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you and jot down as specifically as you can what you think will happen to you as you physically die and once you are physically dead. Others were asked instead to think about playing basketball. Please briefly describe the emotions that the thought of playing basketball arousing you etc and then there was like some slight delay so that the people could think about death to allow death thoughts to work outside of conscious attention the researchers didn't know who got the death thoughts and who got the basketball thoughts. They found that those asked about death improved their personal performance in the second game

by 40%, while those asked about basketball saw no change in performance. Those who thought about death also performed 20% better as a whole in the second game than those in the other group. Before the questionnaires, the performance of both groups was roughly even. So then there was a second study where one of the guys, they were doing a basket shooting challenge. One of the guys wore a black t-shirt emblazoned with a large white skull made up of several iterations of the word death. Study participants were brought one at a time onto the court where this guy gave each person a 30-second description of the challenge and rules.

He wore the skull T-shirt in front of half of the participants. With the other half, he had his jacket zipped up to cover the shirt. There was a coin flip used to determine who saw the skull, who didn't. Then there was this one-minute basket shooting challenge. Participants who saw the shirt outperformed

those who did not by approximately 30%. They also attempted more shots, an average of 11.85 per minute versus an average of 8.33 by those who didn't see the shirt. They took more shots, better shots, and they hustled more and ran faster. And this guy says that the implications here, not just basketball specific. This can be other sports. It can be real world behavior. This is a potentially untapped way to motivate athletes, but also perhaps to motivate people in other realms. So that's why I reminded you of your impending death before we started this little segment here. So this is a possible baseball market inefficiency,

here. So this is a possible baseball market inefficiency, players not being reminded of their own deaths. So how, I mean, should you have like a mortician in uniform on the bench, just as they head up to the plate, like a Roman emperor whispering in his ear that you're going to die just to keep them humble. But in this case, as a performance enhancer, forget the donuts, just remind them that they're going to die. The Astros buried Carlos Beltran's glove in the outfield, and they won the World Series. It works. It works. I mean, this is unorthodox, to say the least.

I've heard of performance coaches and psychological counseling for players. I have not heard of this particular strategy. But based on this study of 31 participants, sounds hard to argue with. It's been a challenging few weeks at my fiance's job, and I cannot wait to improve her mood later tonight when she gets home by reminding her that one day she's going to be dead, or maybe I will first. Yeah, I don't know if it improves your mood. She will be very thankful.

It just makes you better at whatever you're trying to do. Well, productivity determines much of my mood often. Yeah, that's true. They're inextricable. Let's just remind each other that we're going to die before we podcast every time. We'll see if it improves our performance. We're going to be texting a lot more. If we remind our Patreon supporters that they're going to die,

will they pledge more money to support this podcast? You can't take it with you, people. You might as well. So I don't know. Anyway, I like it. Thanks to listener Scott for drawing our attention to this, and shame on all of you who didn't. I mean, you think of all the athletes who just would tweet out, I can't think of it,

like affirmations, just like statements of great self-support. Like, oh, every day is a treasure, too blessed to be stressed, or whatever nonsense it is. And you figure that Mike Trout probably just has like a one a day, like this is what pictures of death looks like calendar, like on the nightstand by his bed. He just looks at it and he's like, yeah, I'm ready for dallas keitel yeah all right and uh last thought our our friend and former podcast guest fernando perez crossover here between players who have been on or have

mentioned uh been mentioned on this podcast so john jay so famous on the podcast for his philosophical post-game quotes He, of course, is the one who said, such is the game and such is life. And then at the end of the season, he just sailed off into the sunset. He took one of Scott Porras' boats. To Japan, to Florida. Yeah. He just retired and he had a sailboat and he just said he was going to see the world. So haven't heard anything from him since until now. Fernando Perez just tweeted out the lock screen from his phone on which appears a text from John Jaso, who is in Fernando's phone as John fucking Jaso.

And it just says, quote, we are the custodians of life's meaning, end quote, Carl Sagan. John Jaso is just out there on the water somewhere in his sailboat texting Carl Sagan quotes to Fernando Perez. I just asked Fernando if this is a regular thing. Does he often get texted Carl Sagan quotes from John Jaso? And Fernando says he's been trying to find the screenshot he took when he got a text from John Jaso that said, you ever look into Carl Sagan?

Question mark. Anyway, Carl Sagan's great. So if John Jaso's ever back on land and wants to come on the show to talk about Carl Sagan, game. I bet John Jaso would be delighted to just get hired by a team to inform every player in the 49 roster that they're going to die. Yeah, that's the perfect job for him. All right. By the way, I do want to do a quick plug for Patreon since I just brought it up. This past weekend in the Facebook group, I posted a thread,

just kind of an update about how the Patreon support is going. Our last month was actually technically our lowest month of support ever. That's partially just because the processing fees have increased, not because the support has decreased. But it has been fairly stagnant for a while now, the last year or so, even as our audience size has increased. So I posted something in the Facebook group just asking people what they would recommend. And quite a few people pointed out, well, you could try mentioning Patreon on the podcast, which I never really do. I mentioned it very briefly at the beginning of the episode and then at the end, probably after a lot of you have stopped listening. But I never actually plug it or describe what it is. So very briefly, Patreon is a site where people who make stuff can get supported by people who like that stuff.

You pledge some monthly amount. It can be a very small amount and it's just a recurring charge. I am not on the Fangraphs staff. I'm not paid by Fangraphs. So Patreon is the thing that helps me continue to justify the fact that I'm doing this podcast to my friends and loved ones. If you go there to patreon.com slash effectively wild, you can sign up at various tiers. There are little perks and rewards at each of those tiers. If you give enough, you get preference in email shows or you get automatic guaranteed email answers. You get an ad free Fangraphs membership, which costs $50 if you buy it from Fangraphs. If you just support effectively wild at the $30 level or higher for two months, you get the same reward. You can get a signed book.

You can appear on an email show if you're in the highest tier. You get access to a couple exclusive broadcasts Jeff and I do during the playoffs. So there are various incentives. I know that some of you can't afford to support a podcast. That is perfectly fine. But if you can, if you like the show,

we really appreciate it. The proceeds go to us as well as to Sam and to baseball prospectus and fan graphs a lot of different parties here who are or have been involved in the podcast so it keeps the show going and we really appreciate all the support so far again that is patreon.com slash effectively wild and a bunch of people mentioned that some of the shows they listen to that are patreon supported will have exclusive Patreon only episodes. So people suggested we'll make one of the shows a week, just a Patreon supporter show. And I know that that has been a successful model for some shows, but I'd really rather not do that.

I like everyone being able to access everything we do and hope to keep it that way. So if you can afford to help out, please do. So we will take a quick break and we will be back with Kylie McDaniel, Eric Langenhagen, and Chris Mitchell to talk about their respective top 100 prospect lists and where they differ. All right. It is time for Prospect Talk, something we probably don't do often enough on this podcast, but we're not qualified to do it usually. So we have the entire FanCraft crafts prospect team on one podcast which is

logistically a terrible idea but content wise hopefully a pretty good idea we're going to talk to chris mitchell who is the keeper of the kato projection system for minor leaguers hello chris hi there glad to be on we also have with us eric longhagen and Kylie McDaniel, who are the co-creators, I guess, of the Prospects Fangraphs rankings, the old school Prospect Eye Test rankings. Hello, Kylie. I'm going to conduct this entire interview talking about only my gut feels. Please do. Yeah. Both of you guys are just like your leathery skin from being out in the sun with your panama hats and your sunglasses and your stopwatches eric hello to you too you're not far off so being in arizona for four years now it's like oh look at that spot on my forehead great very excited meanwhile i actually

had avocado toast for breakfast but let's just cut that part out. Wear sunscreen, guys. So I, of course, I've got to hear both sides. I went to scout school. Kylie saw me there. I was getting sunburned. He can vouch for my attendance. But I'm not sure flicking me off was the right thing to do. But, you know, teach his own.

I also signed independent league professional ballplayers based purely on their stats. So I am sympathetic to that viewpoint too. So I'm fascinated by the disagreements between you guys. And we're going to get into that. You each have a list. They are different lists. They obviously have some overlap. But Chris has the purely scouting the stat line based list.

You guys have the somewhat scouting the stat line but also scouting the actual human beings and talking to other human beings list so we were going to talk about the places where those two diverge but i want to first i think give each of you a chance to praise yourselves for the work that you have done so i want to start kylie and eric i i admire your prospect lists and you've been generating a lot of lists and conversations all week. And it seems to me that you're going for more of a real world ranking here, at least than the typical prospect list, which historically is like tons of toolsy guys, really exciting prospects. guys, really exciting prospects, the guy who is like close to major league ready, but is like an average player at best is not going to be on the list, that kind of thing. You guys really, and I don't know if it's because Kylie, you were just recently in actual draft rooms, but you seem to be

trying to mirror the real life thing, which I like. Like if you're a prospect writer, of course, everyone remembers if you called like the sexy like, a year before everyone else. And no one remembers if you got the, like, fourth starter who is decent. But you seem to have de-emphasized pitchers somewhat. I think you have 37 pitchers on your list, not counting the two two-way guys, which we will get to. which we will get to. And you're also using Colin Moran as like a baseline for your prospect list, because he's like a, an average ish major league ready guy. So you did like a little chat kind of transcript of yourselves talking about this process, but I want to hear a little bit more about that from either or both of you. Uh, well, I would say also the transcript between us,

it was done in Slack. So we're, we're trying to stay with this whole ringer millennial thing that you've got going on good uh yeah uh i'll go first eric you have no say in this so without like casting aspersions on other lists because we ask questions a lot from fans or people yeah on twitter that oh why do you think you guys had this guy here but keith law had him there it's well, half of that is something we don't know. Like it's where Keith put him. And also we didn't sit while Keith did his list. We did our list. So we can only kind of speak from our context, but there have been many studies, including I think Baseball America does it on their own studies.

We've done it on their lists. I think we've done it on our own lists. I don't know if we've had them long enough, but every study I've seen, I'd be interested if there's one that doesn't say this, says that there are too many pitchers at the top of the list and they are ranked too highly in general because the outcome of all of these war-based studies of what does the 50th overall prospect, if it's a hitter do and a pitcher do, the reason they separate them is because they don't do the same thing. The hitter almost always outperforms the pitcher. And obviously there's a reason for this with pitcher attrition that even if you nail everything correctly as far as the projection if they blow out their arm and then their velo goes down two

ticks now it's a different player and with hitters that obviously sometimes can happen if they you know blow out their knee and they're never the same but that happens at all nowhere near as often as it does with pitchers so the the aim we tried to make this year, not in a systematic way, but just in like a keep it in mind as Eric and I spent like 12 hours on the phone one week going through every single player, we'd be like, this guy or that guy,

this guy or that guy. And we did like a thousand times. I'm sure his wife wanted to strangle me. My dog definitely did. But the idea would then be, okay, so if every pitcher is essentially overranked to varying degrees, let's try to lean toward the hitter when it's close. When we think it's close,

it's probably not actually close. And on any one case that may be wrong to do that, maybe us moving Brent Honeywell down a couple more spots and we'd have him organically, it turns out he's going to be the best starter in baseball. And so that individual decision is wrong, but on the whole, I think it's pretty obvious it will be correct. Yeah. And you've got, let's see, other than Otani, who is technically the top prospect on your list, you have Forrest Whitley, right-handed pitcher at number nine, and then the next pitcher is at 15 and that's it. Otherwise it's all hitters up top so i like it i don't know i guess there's the viewpoint that well you need pitchers and like teams need pitchers they have more pitchers than ever and so in that sense like pitching prospects obviously still matter and you don't want them not

to be on your list at all but if you're drafting then you know i mean i don't know if you're if you're drafting like your team you need to fill out your staff. So maybe it's a little different than if you're just ranking prospect lists. I mean, the, the stakes and the goals are a little different, or at least historically they, they have been, cause there are much lower stakes, I guess, many millions of dollars, not really so much at stake with this list. Yeah. I guess it depends what you're trying to do is if like your goal is, all right, with my top 25 prospects, do I want to make sure all of them are solid everyday guys and I don't have a miss? But then if a guy turns out to be a star and I haven't ranked 50th, that's okay. Or do you want to make sure every guy that ends up being a star is in

my top 25? And so obviously if you're trying to do one or the other, then your list is going to look a little different. I don't think we necessarily are trying to do one or the other, then your list is going to look a little different. I don't think we necessarily are trying to do one or the other, but I think the pitcher thing along with the, hey, Colin Moran, we think he's essentially going to be an average everyday player for two war starting this year or next year, or maybe he's one and a half this year, two next year, whatever. So the expectation is this guy seems very likely to put up eight or 10 war. Why would we put some rookie ball guy that we think might be a little better than him, but it's four years away and has tons more sort of risk to his outcomes. Like it would seem silly to rank that guy higher when, when you sort of make that sort of determination of this is what these players are. And teams are obviously acting that way and

taking the Colin Moran in hand, if you will. And so it seems, you know, kind of nuts to just sort of ignore that we have, you know, what, a couple decades worth of prospect lists that say that the guy that's seen is too safe and the super high upside pitcher, one is ranked too high, one is ranked too low. Well, why don't we, without trying to just make a list and then move everyone 50 and 80 spots to move them where these like historical rankings say they should be, let's just make a list and then maybe round up and round down on the guys and try to be a little more correct. And then

maybe in the future, we can have a more systematic way if there is one to be had to sort of improve the list as a whole. Right. I don't think that what we did was radical. And we talk about it in the transcript about how we compiled the list, which is on the widget on the main section of the site, if people want to check that out about how we determine each guy's future value. And that process is the same. We're still projecting to a ceiling based on all the relevant information, whether that's scouting reports or performance data or whatever people in baseball will tell us. But the mindset that we're talking about here is just really how the guys sort of started lining themselves up within a given tier. And so the logic that we're talking about here really governed how the players lined up within a given future value tier more than they dictated how the list ranked out from top

to bottom. It was like we applied this extreme forward thinking strategy to the list as a whole, just sort of, like Kylie said, it broke ties and it was light and shade here and there. And that was, and that this is how it turned out. And I do think that it's, that it's pretty interesting. Would you find that there's, I guess this is kind of a question for, for all of you, but of course, Kylie and Eric, when you're doing your research, putting together your list, of course, you're, you're looking at the numbers and you're taking information from your various sources, but you're also evaluating players based on what you've actually seen so in a sense they're they're like more personal evaluations and chris of course you were the complete opposite of that and so i would

imagine that it's for for you kylie and eric that maybe you get a little more invested in the list and so how is there sort of a a discrepancy in how the three of you but really the the two genres here deal with disagreements because if you're chris you can say well you know this is what the numbers say and that's so be it that's not my fault but do you take it more personally kyle or eric or if people strongly disagree with what you have to say no i mean i've seen internet comments for a long time and they always tell me i'm stupid so i've i've gotten used to that but the yeah the concept of of having like something not work out in a very objective way like you rank this guy 20th other people had him at 90 and he ended up being terrible

so you were the most wrong like it's just kind of part of it like i i mean not to like make myself seem more important but like i've sat in draft rooms where rooms of hundreds of years worth of experience are all convinced that some guy is going to work out. And then two or three years later, it's already obvious he's not going to work out. And it's like that's kind of embarrassing for those guys. But they all realize if they're better than a coin flip, then they're providing value. And it's not like we're necessarily any more accurate than like the best scouts are in terms of predicting what 18-year-olds are going to become. So there's going to be a lot of incorrect projections and it's just ours are public, so it's easier to make fun of us. And I think it's because there are so many

different layers for failure because we're talking about mostly teenaged human beings who have their own rate of failure. And then the people that we talk to who evaluate them have their own sort of rate of failure. And just disagreeing about players in general is so common across baseball. All sorts of people in different positions of power have different opinions about all of these guys top to bottom. So disagreement in baseball is common when we're talking about prospects within the same front office, from GM to GM, from scouting director to director. And I think that when you're sort of immersed in that for five, 10 years, like we have been at this point, you just sort of get numb to it. It's not necessarily a big deal. It just is part of the gig. And I think that's why public facing prospect writers in general, when there is a huge disagreement about players, which just sort of, it does elicit a shoulder shrug from

us because we know that other people are doing, like they're applying a sound sort of system to whatever it is they're doing and just coming up with a different result at the end. And the ordinal rankings make the opinions seem like they're farther apart than they really are. And like, there's a whole bunch of this that just ultimately it adds up to like us caring very little about disagreement, as long as the process that produced those disagreements is sound. So people who listen to the Ringer MLB show may remember about a year ago, we had Chris on and Eric on to do the same sort of exercise for the first time. And we went down the list and we looked for guys who were on Chris's Cato list

and were not on Eric's prospect rankings. And we sort of just had Chris talk about why they were there and Eric, why they weren't there. So Chris, I want you to kind of do a little year in review. I know you went back and looked and obviously it's hard to assess. It's just a year a lot of these guys are still in the minors and their futures are very much up in the air but if you want to just uh quickly recap I guess the the notable names there that maybe went more toward

your side or Eric's side in the past year and also just like the the guys that Kato was high on that really made a splash of some sort this past season? Because I know you did a post on this spec, I think in September, just like the guys who maybe were not ranked or were ranked pretty low and the stats always liked them. Yeah, sure. So when we did this last year, we mostly focused on the guys who Eric liked and who Cato didn't like. So Eric was kind of talking them up and I was talking them down. And it was, as you'd expect, it was kind of a mixed bag. Some of them fell my way, some fell Eric's way, some we really don't know yet.

But we can get kind of an idea a year out about kind of how they're trending. And some of the guys who, we'll start with the ones that the scouts got right. Brent Honeywell, he was someone that Cato liked, but didn't see him as a top 100 prospect at that point. But he took a step forward last year and now he's way up there on Eric's list and he's right up there on Cato's list as well. Francisco Mejia, the catcher, he's another one who Eric was right about. Cato was a little hesitant to get on board at this point last year, but he's put it all together. Then there were a few who have kind of taken a step back or haven't progressed the way that

I think Eric would have expected. Guys like Yadier Alvarez, who's still a prospect, but the performance still isn't there at this point. It's really just, he has really good stuff and just kind of okay minor league numbers. Cato was way down on him last year and remains down on him. And he plummeted on Eric's list from 2017 to 2018. Anderson Espinosa is another one that's maybe not totally fair just because he got injured. But I would also argue that that's part of what Cato is looking at. Like if it sees a pitcher who is years away from the major leagues, kind of like what Kylie was talking about earlier, it prices in all that injury risk and things like that. So when I do these Cato rankings,

it's always about two thirds hitters and one third pitchers. And the main reason for that is just because so many things can go wrong with pitchers between the time I'm looking at them in the minors and by the time they've exhausted their team control years. In terms of hitters, Corey Ray is one that went my way. He was just okay in the minors last year. And then in 2017, things kind of fell apart. He struck out a lot and didn't hit for any power. And he's kind of in limbo at this point.

Jorge Alfaro is another one. He's a really toolsy catcher who just hasn't really of in limbo at this point. Jorge Alfaro is another one. He's a really toolsy catcher who just hasn't really hit all that much to this point. The worst approach in professional baseball, maybe? Yeah, it's pretty bad. He doesn't walk. He strikes out a lot and it's just, yeah, it hasn't really come together for him. Reynaldo Lopez is another one that hasn't panned out yet. Obviously, it's still kind of early for him. He's just now making it to the majors. But to this point, it's been more stuff over performance for him. And then finally, we have Robert Gisellman. He's another one who

his minor league numbers were never that good, but he kind of had a weird uptick in stuff. So Eric was on him at this time last year, just because the stuff was so much better than the performance. But today, his numbers in the majors have looked basically like his long-term track record in the minors. So it's a mixed bag. Over that sample of 10 or whatever players, more have gone my way than Eric's way. But I think we're all smart enough to know that if you're looking at 10 prospects, it's just not really a definitive sample or anything like that. There are going to be prospects that pan out, ones that fail just for no reason in particular.

It's not necessarily that someone is right or wrong. So I guess the lesson is that the lists are very different. It's not necessarily that one is better than the other. And if someone's on one list and not on the other list, I think there's a good chance that the real answer is probably somewhere in between. And it's just a matter of figuring out exactly where you should fall. Man, I was hoping for a heel turn where you just came out and just blasted Eric for his awful scouting. How could you ever? This list was fake news well and among major league guys you had a bunch of guys who were unranked on on most or all top 100 lists last year but were on the kato list guys like reese hoskins matt olsen let's see matt

chapman all the the oakland mats ch, Chad Green, Mitch Hanegar, Austin Barnes. So these are, I don't know if there's like one thing that links all of those guys, but those are the kind of guys that Cato was higher on maybe than the traditional type of list. Yeah. I think a lot of them are guys who just basically were performing in the upper levels of the minors. And at that point, it's really not that much different playing in AAA compared to playing in the majors. So when you're looking at someone like Hoskins, who was completely mashing in AAA, even if he loses a little bit, and yes, he is a first baseman, it's not too hard to imagine him coming up and hitting in the majors. I can't imagine anybody could have predicted that he would have

the success that he did, but Cato certainly saw something in his minor league numbers with all the power, the good strikeout numbers. And so it's kind of the same thing with those other guys, Olsen and Chapman. They were also upper level guys who were putting up really good numbers maybe not like jump off the page numbers but they were solid and Cato saw that and put them in its top 100 even though most other outlets kind of saw them as guys who were on the fringes. With someone like Chapman of course his reputation coming along is that he could hit for power but he's an elite defensive player and of course Kylie and Eric could see that for themselves. And they could also talk to people who would affirm it. But what is your defensive input for minor league records? Because I don't actually know where I would begin to look. He tracks all of this stuff. He has for each year going back a long time now, he has defensive position and also runs above average.

That's my primary source because as you say, it's not data that's really out there in the public. Like it's not on fan graphs. It's not on baseball reference. I mean, we do have like just the basic put outs and errors and things like that, but it's not aggregated in any way that's really meaningful. So that's where I pull it from. And in applying it to past players and looking forward, that stuff is pretty predictive, not just the position they play, but also how good

of a defender they are. And Chapman, his numbers at third base defensively were off the charts. I think he was a plus 20 defender or something like that. So that was a big part of why Cato was in on him. And of course the power was really good too. And he was someone who was 22 years old playing in double A and triple A. And that's, there's a lot of positives there. And it was enough in Cato's eyes to outweigh the negatives. And I would say the Clayton Edelport defensive numbers also was a nice sort of sanity check for us uh because like for example i saw christian pache a guy that was a center fielder in low a for the braves uh i had followed his career pretty closely obviously being there from like kind of the beginning for him but scouts would say oh this guy's like a 60

70 defender in center field right now and might be an 80 and he was plus 22 runs in 114 games this year and you'd get similar things on victor robles i don't remember i don't have his in front of me and might be an 80 and he was plus 22 runs in 114 games this year. And you'd get similar things on Victor Robles. I don't remember. I don't have his in front of me, but I think he was like plus 15 or something in triple a. And it was like, okay, it's good to know that, you know, even a somewhat crude metric will come up with almost the same answer for these outlier guys. Yeah. And like those defensive numbers, they're, they're not perfect.

Like you do see somewhere you're like, okay, I don't, I don't know how that is, but you just kind of have to roll with it anyway. But I would say on the aggregate, they're pretty good. They line up pretty well with the scouting reports and obviously plugging them into the Cato model, they improve things and they have shown to be predictive of what these guys will do once they get to the majors. Can I ask each of you to find some more common ground here? Each of you really has the top

prospect, same guy on your list other than Otani. You both have Ronald Acuna. Number one, so can you give me the stats-based case for him as the best prospect in baseball and the scouting-based case? I mean, Chris, I guess the case for stats is his stats are really good yeah there's really not much to complain about there obviously he's 19 years old he shot through the minors last year anybody who just playing high a at 19 that's that's impressive as it is but the fact that he made it all the way to triple. I mean, you don't see very many 19-year-olds in AAA that don't become very good big leaguers. And it's not just that he played at those levels. He was really good there too. He hit for a decent amount of power. He runs well, plays great defense.

I guess he does strike out a little bit. So if you want to criticize him somewhere, that's it. But he doesn't strike out that much. And frankly, his strikeout rates went down with each level he advanced to last year. And usually it goes the other way. Usually you see a guy, his strikeout rate will climb as he climbs through the minors. But Acuna, he cut it down. He was down below 20% in AAA. So he's pretty much the full package statistically. He makes contact contact he hits for some power he he runs very well and plays it well and he's super young and all those things are positive indicators in Kato's eyes so it's really not hard to see why a model like Kato would be all over him he was a guy that even I guess I was joining the Braves when he was in short season

and we could see like you know his exit velo's and just seeing him on backfields and stuff. And we're like, oh, this is a guy. And I think the big adjustment he made while I was there is he went from a guy that swung hard and hit the ball hard and could run where it really catches your eye. Like, I think it would catch anybody's eye that he started lifting the ball more, you know, right when that became an in vogue thing in the big leagues. And so I think he just sort of figured out like, oh, the ball comes off my bat like a rocket. I should probably hit it in the air more than on the ground. And so when he did that in this past year, it's kind of when he turned into a monster. And I think his, you know, sort of speed and defense may have regressed a little bit. And we've speculated that he may

go the Justin Upton route where because ncrt and pache are probably the center fielders for a while for the braves that he won't have to play center so he might get a little bigger he might uh add another grade or two of power he might lose a grade of defense and contact but even if he does that like justin upson was a 5-1 player last year in his sort of current state and he's seems to be a talent on that level and also justin upton was seen as like a standout talent when he was 15 or 16 and i think akuno was probably somewhere around 17 or 18 so uh yeah it's probably 70 raw power anywhere from 50 to 60 hit depending on how much he wants to tap into it 60 runner with a 70 arm and would probably be above average in right field

today if he wants to and could probably be average in center field. It's a rare set of tools. And then obviously the fact that he somehow got better statistically at each level while he was young for all of those levels and wasn't facing guys anywhere near his age. I wouldn't say unprecedented, but I know in general, I think Andrew Jones, ironically, another center fielder with the Braves, was the last guy to do that sort of thing at that age performance-wise and have the tools to sort of match it.

And then in the not common ground department, I have to ask you about Brendan McKay, because he is the second two-way player on your list, left-handed pitcher slash first baseman, I guess. So fourth overall pick last year for the Rays. And he is someone Cato has historically not liked. I think you've done a whole post on that, Chris and Eric and Kylie, you have him at 22. And I'm just going to quote from my colleague, Michael Bauman on Ringer Slack earlier today with his permission. He says the difference between McKay and Otani is that Otani is good and McKay isn't. McKay might be the best college baseball player I've ever seen, but because his skills and tools were a step above your average ACC 19-year-old, and he's got little to no physical

upside. At the absolute best case scenario, you're picking one of Jay Happ and James Loney, which is harsh, but I guess Bauman's been was that skiff bayliss using bauman's login i mean she's the human personification of of kato i guess because that's what kato thinks too and i'm also interested because eric and kylie you one of you likes him more as a hitter and one of you likes him more as a pitcher and i guess kato doesn't like him as either so well, well, Chris, do you want to give us the anti? What is the system seeing and not liking? So, well, with him, I don't really have a lot of data to work with on the pitching side,

just because he didn't pitch much as a professional. When I did do the college Cato over the summer, it really liked what he was doing there. Yeah. You had him number one on the Cato board pre-draft from basically college metrics. His college pitching numbers were very good, but professionally, they kind of babied him a little bit and he didn't throw a lot of innings. So I didn't calculate projections for guys who had that small of a sample. But on the hitting side, Kato just isn't really into it. For one thing, he's a first baseman and to be a first baseman, you obviously have to hit a lot. And for that reason, Keio just, it's very picky about putting first baseman on its top 100 list or even anywhere close to that.

And McKay, I'm looking at his numbers right now. He kind of struck out a lot in the New York pen this year. He didn't really hit for a lot of power. His numbers just were very mediocre across the board. And statistically, that's the stat line of somebody who probably won't even make it to the majors, someone who will maybe get to double A and fizzle out at some point. But I realized that there's a lot more to it than just the stat line, especially for someone like McKay, who wasn't really focused on hitting

until recently. And also, we're looking at a very teeny tiny sample here. It's just 149 plate appearances. But when I was doing the college Kato thing, it also came to a similar conclusion as well. I thought that he was a good hitter for college for sure, but not the type of hitter that would necessarily be pushing for playing time in the major leagues. So that's kind of where Cato comes down on him. Thought he was a really good pitcher coming out of college. Haven't really seen enough on the pro side to really have an opinion. And offensively, it's just not into it. All right. Scout guys, going to speak in his defense. I slightly prefer him as a hitter. So I'll talk about that. And then Eric can talk about just it's just not into it all right scout guys gonna speak in his defense i'll i'll i slightly

prefer him as a hitter so i'll talk about that and then eric can talk about him as a pitcher which is where he slightly prefers him or i think more than slightly so the interesting thing with him as a hitter is he is run of the wear cases where the what these scouts think he's capable of doing he wasn't even trying to do so like like the scouts would tell you, you can't measure him by stats because he wasn't trying to do that. So going into his draft spring, teams were having private meetings with McKay and, you know, meeting him, you know, getting makeup information, all that kind of stuff. And multiple teams told him, we prefer you as a hitter. And he told all of those teams, why? No one's ever told me that before. Like he'd been a two-way guy his whole life and he obviously was good enough to go to a top program like louisville and play both ways

and he was shocked when teams would tell him we prefer you as a hitter and he was like what do you mean and they're like well we think you can be a six hitter with six power and he's like okay why do you think that and his answer was essentially to these teams i've never even thought about hitting i don't focus on hitting. That's the thing that they have me do because I'm one of the nine best hitters we have when I'm not pitching. And I think about pitching. And they were like, that's part of the reason we think you're going to be good at it because you have like 65, maybe 70 raw power. And you're having like a low effort line drive up the middle swing.

And we see you hitting it off the scoreboard and batting practice. And you're not trying to do that in the game because you're not really thinking about hitting and so we think if you do this you will do that if you change your approach you will sort of perform at that level and you're such a good hitter we think you can maintain your hitting ability while tapping into your power more and he did that more during the spring like he grew into it a little bit but still wasn't doing it a lot and you're also uh like chris is talking about the smaller sample as a pro he also was pitching and hitting the whole time. And so he was more fatigued than a normal pitcher or hitter would be from college. And then he was also doing both in

pro ball. And I can say from seeing the sort of track mandate on the team side, especially with players after they sign, their sort of exit feels and stuff all go down because they're fatigued. Imagine as much for a guy that goes into the postseason pitching once a week and then hitting every other game so i i wouldn't say throw his stats out in pro ball like he's still becoming the player he's supposed to be which is somewhat unique for a 22 year old but i know if you were to uh take an industry survey of who are like the most trusted amateur scouts who's the guy that you want pounding the table and dictating uh you know between the two guys everyone's split on who do you want there were some guys borderline doing backflips and screaming in rooms to get this guy because they thought he would be six at six power he's a first baseman he can pitch two that's great it

gives us a backup plan maybe he can pitch once a week and be a spot starter or be a matchup reliever or give you an interesting piece but like some of the most respected scouts in the game are convinced this guy's gonna hit even though they know he's not even the type of hitter they think he's going to become which is super rare for a fourth overall pick in the draft and then my counter to that is i mean from a stuff perspective when i saw mckay last year he was like 9193 with plus curve ball, flashing a plus change up, had been working on a cutter mid-season that wasn't good yet. But again, you're projecting on everything because this is a two-way guy whose focus has sort of shifted away from what you'd

like to see him doing full-time in pro ball. And just the track record of college first baseman is like, it's not good. And there's just no margin for error on the bat. So if the entire projection on the bat exists in abstraction, that's pretty risky when there's nowhere for this guy to fall down the defensive spectrum. So you really are kind of getting out on your skis a little bit, projecting a guy to have... I mean, I know the raw powers there. I saw this guy torch a grand slam into the upper deck of the stadium at the ACC tournament, and it is remarkably easy, but there's just nowhere for this guy to go if he doesn't hit quite that much. And then you risk him becoming like AJ Reid or something like that, and just languishing away

as a foray hitter in the upper minors. But here's where we did find common ground was developing him because the innings limit that he'll have after the draft, the innings limit that he'll probably have in his, the innings limit that he'll probably have in his first full pro season means that you have the opportunity to evaluate him further as both and eventually get to the right decision. And it was close enough for me that I don't know, which is correct, but I do think it's ultimately just one of them. And it is easier to go from hitting every day to pitching. It is easy to be Kenley Jansen or Jason Mott or whoever

and get on the mound and just start throwing again. We've seen guys have success with that more than we've had guys transition from pitching to hitting. That's harder to just make up for three, four years of not hitting live pitching and then just go do it again. That's not really feasible. So there are arguments for developing him primarily as a first baseman to start, but if I were forced to pick one pre-draft, it would have primarily as a first baseman to start but i if i were forced to pick one pre-draft it would have been as a pitcher maybe in a few years he can be as good a hitter and pitcher as jd davis uh i wanted to ask you as a sort of general question in particular in this era and this is again a question for for all of you really but it's been observed by uh all of

us present presumably that the ball is flying at the major league level and home run rates have skyrocketed. And they've skyrocketed in particular at the major league level, which has separated itself from the levels down below. So you go into this, you have years and years of experience in putting your evaluations together. But how do you all at least mentally adjust for the fact that you just need less power in the majors than you used to? This is something I've thought about a lot. I agree with you. Something is going on and I do think it's the baseball. And I'm still trying to sift through which guys it benefits the most, or even if the sample that we have is large enough that we should start adjusting the way we evaluate guys based on the way the major league baseball flies. I think so much of the game is

evolving in different ways, like all at once right now that it is hard to sort of get ahead of what's happening from a player evaluation standpoint. And I would do want to see the, I want to see, I mean, I don't actually want to see it, but before I start changing how I think about prospects in this particular way, I do want to see like more years of ridiculous home run rates like this. But yeah, I mean, at some point, just like we've sort of... Some teams have and some teams haven't adjusted their scale for pitching velocity over the last couple of years because of the way VLO is taking up in the big leagues. Teams will at some point have to reckon that as far as in-game power is concerned at the big league level too. I just don't know if it's right now. All right. So I want to go through and do like a little lightning round here where we just take the

top five guys, let's say. We'll see how we get through this on each person's list who are not at all represented on the other person's list. So I'm going to start with the guys that the stats-based system, Cato, likes who are not ranked on the prospect, the top 100 from Kylie and Eric. So I'll have, I guess, Chris give the pro side what the system is seeing, why it likes them, and then either Eric or Kylie can jump in and explain why they're worthless human garbage. Just unworthy of any spot on on any prospect list in the land so i'll start with the the highest ranked stats guy who is not a scouts guy that is zach granite who is number six on the kato list he is a twins center fielder. So Chris, can you give us the pro Granite spiel? So Zach Granite is a guy that Cato has been on for a while now, going on two years at this point.

His biggest asset is his speed. He's someone who puts up just ridiculous stolen base numbers in the minors. And that also carries over to the defensive side where he's a tremendous center fielder. And he was actually someone I was touting last offseason as well. And things have changed a little bit for him because he's actually started hitting in the minor leagues. Last year in AAA, he hit.338. He struck out just 11% of the time. And if you have a guy like that with that speed and that defense, you don't necessarily need to hit a lot to be a productive big leaguer. I mean, just look at Billy Hamilton, for example, he hasn't hit at all really. And he's

still been like a two to three win player every year. So you figure if Granite can do kind of the Billy Hamilton thing at the very least, that's a pretty solid floor. And if what he did in the minors last year carries over and he's able to hit for a high average as well and put balls in play, then you can have a really good player there. Someone who hits a little bit, wreaks havoc on the bases and plays tremendous center field defense. So that's kind of Cato's thought on the whole thing. And on top of that, he's also six foot one. So even though he hasn't hit for a lot of power yet, there's the potential that maybe a little bit can come along. Like not that he'll ever be a power yet, there's the potential that maybe a little bit can come along.

Like not that he'll ever be a power hitter, but maybe he can be a little more than he has been in the minor leagues. I'm sold. Who wants to unsell me? All right. First of all, I prefer quartz countertops. So this, I think, would be a classic example of the sort of Cato versus Scouts thing where having more walks than strike or close to walks and strikeouts being even having speed and contact and all this sort of thing. And then saying, oh, that gives you like a high floor to be a contributor of some kind. Whereas the scouts or the scouting information would say this guy will have zero power as long as he's doing this extreme contact approach with the walks and strikeouts and batting average and babb up and all that the way it is. So they would

say, well, if you're going to get some power, he's then going to become a slightly different player and probably less attractive. So then that will sort of cap his upside offensively to where if he's not a seven year, eight year runner, it's going to steal 30 or 40 bases or be, you know, plus 20, 30 runs in center field. Then it's, you know, maybe a guy puts up a two-win season as a starter for a year or two if it really works, but there's the chance that he ends up the guy that they knock the bat out of his hands. Maybe he loses a step as he matures physically and is just sort of an okay outfielder for three or four years that, you know, puts up a couple of war. So yeah, and I think that's, again, a classic example where the scouts will poo-poo him. One out of 10 or 15 of those guys will end up being really good or turn into, you know,

Cole Calhoun or something like that. But most of them end up not being anything. All right. Next guy, Trent Grisham, Brewers right fielder ranked number eight by Cato. So this is actually an interesting one because he has a really weird batted ball profile, but I'll get to that in a minute. First, I'll start with kind of the more standard things that he does well. He was 20 years old in high A last year, which made him

very young for his level. And overall, he held his own. He didn't put up great numbers, but he drew a ton of walks. He stole a real lot of bases. He's started to move to the outfield corners at this point, but he has played center in the recent past. So that combined with his stolen base numbers suggests that he can be an asset on defense as well. Now he's kind of a weird outlier on the batted ball side. I'm actually working on an article now kind of touching on this a little bit. When I look at the Cato favorites from this year, he hits a real lot of balls to center field, like basically more than any minor leaguer that we've seen since we started having batted ball data on fan graphs. And guys who do that tend to run very high BABIPs, like around 350 or so.

But Grisham, he was down below 300. So it might just be that he's a weird outlier who does something weird, but it might also be that he was quite unlucky this past year. In addition to that, he also started hitting balls in the air a little bit more last year than in the past. So even though he didn't necessarily hit for a ton of power, Cato sees something there that it likes, like a little bit of power potential, I guess. So kind of group all that together and you have someone who, yeah, he's probably a right or left fielder who doesn't have a corner outfield power, but he's someone who could be an on-base machine and also steal bases and provide value on defense. And I think you just look at like Brett Gardner, for example, he has made a very good career doing that sort of thing. That's not

to say that Richum will be Brett Gardner, but that's just kind of an example of someone who did this sort of thing and was very good. And if Grisham can just do like a fraction of that, then he's a solid everyday player. Eric, you want to rebuttal? Yeah. Grisham is a guy that we get a 50 future value on. So he was essentially on the overall hundred honorable mention section. He does project as an average everyday player for us. Yeah. I mean, going back to high school, he's been sort of a strange and divisive prospect. He was an undersized, sort of physically maxed out, like a six foot 205 high school hitter

with advanced bat to ball skills. And he was sort of on the fringe of playing center field and no one was really sure what kind of power there'd be. So if he doesn't stay in center field and has to move to a corner, then that power had better be there or else we're not really talking about a very good prospect. And what we're seeing across the minors in general is that players like this who have bat control as an amateur, you can sort of engineer their swings

to produce that raw power or at least more fly ball contact and in-game power. And so yeah, that's what we've seen with Grisham's batted ball profile, the way it's trended over the last couple of years. And so like, yeah, we like him too. I guess if you have to nitpick something, it's that the swing change has, and he's made several of them over the last couple of years. The swing changes have sort of eroded away his contact profile a little bit, and it does look like he's going to move to a corner. So now instead of talking about a hit first prospect who might have to move to a corner, like we were in high school, we're talking about a power first prospect who looks like he's going to have to move to a corner. So again, there's not a whole lot of margin for error there, but he is someone who we think is a good prospect.

You don't both get to like these guys. If he's not on your top 100, you hate him and he's never going to amount to anything. That's how the commenters feel for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I would say one small thing to add to that is an important distinction that Eric and I have begun to point out on a player by player basis. And we did it with Eson Diaz, who was with Milwaukee and traded to Miami and the Christian Yelts trade.

And this fits Clark also. So it could be a thing Milwaukee's teaching in their minor leagues, which wouldn't surprise me is that there is a difference when we say contact issues for a minor league hitter between pitch selection and back control. And our current theory is that if a guy has really good pitch selection but not great back control, but they're hitting for power, that the pitch selection as they go to higher levels will allow them to still pick out good pitches and get to their power. But then the bad back control will mean they're going to hit 230 or 240

with a bunch of home runs along the lines of a Pedro Alvarez or Joey Gallo or something like that, which is obviously a sustainable thing, especially these days. And Trent Clark is another one of these guys where he has very good pitch selection. So I think he's going to continue to draw walks and hit for whatever power he has been. But it may be one of those sort of 240, 250 with a bunch of home runs, which will allow him to profile, which is why we made him a 50. But I thought he's another outlier in that way too, which further adds to his peculiar profile. And for anyone confused at home, Trent Clark

changed his name to Trent Grisham last November. Okay. Yeah. If you're searching for him on Fangraphs, he's Trent Clark. But if you look for him like in a newspaper article, he'll be Trent Grisham. I see.

All right. Let's, we can go a little faster, make this more of a lightning round, just the bullet points on each guy. So do you have the wrong people on the podcast? Probably. So next guy Daz Cameron number 16 on the Cato list uh Tiger center fielder all right I'll try to be quick here he steals a lot of bases

uh he hit for a decent amount of power in the minors last year uh and he's a center fielder who grades out really well defensively so there there's really no weaknesses there. Plays a premium position and great defense. All right. You're doing this wrong. You say he's good and then they say he's bad. Boo! So no weaknesses, we've heard from one side. Give us some weaknesses, other side.

We just think that, I mean, he's always, Daz kind of popped up early as a high school kid because he matured physically and became very high profile. Also, he's Mike Cameron's kid. But the tools really are just sort of pretty vanilla. They're well-rounded, but vanilla. And so the ceiling is probably a 50.

And so since we're talking about someone who's an A ball, the future value grade that gets backed out for risk and proximity and all that stuff, just detracts from that 50, maybe 55 ceiling. And so we just have someone who's not a 50 future value yet, but who has the potential to be when they're Colin Moran and in AAA and performing and that sort of thing. Yeah. He'd be on a top 250 or something like that. He's a solid 45 with some tools and some pedigree. Make a top 250, stop being so lazy. You have done that in the past, right? You made like a 200. I usually sleep at night. You're right. I should probably quit doing that.

All right. Number 17 on the Cato list, Jake Rogers, also Tigers, a catcher. So Jake Rogers, he is a catcher, like you said, and the defensive metrics like him there, they think he's an excellent defensive catcher. And on the offensive side, he did some really encouraging things as well. He was an A ball where he walked a lot, he hit for some power, didn't strike out too much, and he actually stole some bases, which is not something you see from catchers. And obviously the bar for offense from the catching position is very low, especially when you're a good defensive catcher. So if he can just continue doing what he did in A-ball up to the major leagues, you can

have someone who is a sound defender and will provide something with the bat as well. All right, scouts. We heavily considered Rodgers. He is an excellent defensive catcher. I think the reports and the numbers as far as the offense are concerned, do not line up. The approach is definitely there. We think he could probably be a high OBP catcher with elite defense. I think there's some power on contact. When I've seen Rodgers, there is like some, there's just swing and miss issues that I think, you know, a college hitter in a ball. I think that there might be some stuff that's exposed, but we put him, we put him on our 45s and 40s that we're buying as top 100 guys next year.

And I would say he's another guy that's like a solid 45 that we think would probably be on a top 200 or 250. And I think him and Cameron were in the same trade from Houston. Yeah, they were. All right. And the last stat first guy, this is Anthony Banda, number 50 on the Cato list. He is a Diamondbacks left-handed starter. Yeah. So Banda, he pitched in AAA last year. He was in the PCL. And on the surface, his numbers don't look all that good. He had an ERA over five. But if you kind of look a little deeper, his peripherals were pretty solid. We have FIP and XFIP for minor leaguers on the site. And

I think that does a good job of illustrating that it's almost a run lower. So if you take someone who's 23 and pitched decently as a starting pitcher in the PCL, that's pretty promising. Someone like that, he's not the most exciting prospect. He won't necessarily have a huge upside, but he's someone who has very high probability to produce something in the major leagues in the near future. So that's kind of what Cato sees in him. It sees a very high likelihood of being a productive big leaguer. Yeah, we had him in the honorable mention on the top 100. It's sort of, you know,

lefty with solid average stuff, average command, will flash you some 55s. It's big league ready. I mean, he would sort of be the pitcher version of the Colin Mor some 55s it's big league ready i mean he would sort of be the pitcher version of the colin moran where it's you know obviously a little lower on the list because it's a pitcher versus hitter uh but we have 50 on both and think they're pretty comparable and again going back to what we said before we wanted to not as a scouting list not miss on the guys that are performing and like just ignore them because they're not sexy and i think this is a decent example where all the guys except for zach granite that he's brought up it's like oh yeah they're in the top like 200 like we like all these guys like we're recognizing they're performing

and they have tools like they're real players and i think it's always interesting because i found when these um you know when teams will do you know a good uh job evaluating certain players it's usually because you can use the stats and the scouting and the makeup and all these different things and create a cohesive narrative and all of them point to the same conclusion and i feel like in a lot of cases this is kind of what we're doing all right and we'll wrap up as quickly as we can with the scout first guys so number 14 on the scout list is the first highest guy who is not on the Cato list at all. That is Miguel Andujar. Is that how you, there's a accent mark on the U evidently, Andujar? I don't, anyway. Yep, Andujar.

Might be a smudge on your monitor. So number 14, he is of course, Yankees third baseman who they are seemingly counting on to be pretty good. So they are hoping that Cato is wrong about that. But what do you guys like about him? He's a guy that made one of those big swing changes the last couple of years. And his has been more general from 15 to 16. He made a change from 16 to 17. He made a further change. He's always been a guy with huge 55 to 60 tools across the board, kind of a twitchy guy. One of those guys anybody will recognize when they're looking out on the field. And he's still a little inconsistent, but the sort of launch angle, the exit velocity, all these sorts of things that you can see reflected in his numbers as far as hitting for average and home runs and fly ball rates, all sorts of things. He's done all of that.

He's basically gone from tools goof that needs to put it together and is a little immature to a guy that's basically tapped into all of his tools right as he's getting to AAA in the big leagues, which is why you hear him asked for in all these trades with Yankees. But then also you don't seem necessarily as high on the list because two years ago he wasn't seen as this kind of guy. And so Chris, if a guy changes his swing and is suddenly better than I guess his, his old seasons are still going to be counting against him. Right. Yeah. That's kind of the sort of thing that's hard to quantify from the standpoint where I'm looking at it. I mean, we do have batted ball data on Fangrass,

but it's hard to really get at someone who completely overhauls their swing and completely changes their upside. That being said, there are some things about his 2017 season that Cato is not totally thrilled about. Like, yeah, he was a 22-year-old in the upper levels who made good contact and hit for a decent amount of power, but he also really didn't

walk at all. And he doesn't have a ridiculous amount of power either. I mean, in today's game, 16 homers, that's nothing all that special. He also doesn't provide anything on the bases or anything like that and defensively he plays third base which is something of a premium position but it's not as though he's a shortstop or a center fielder or something like that and the metrics that i use aren't terribly fond of him at third base either so you kind of have a guy who plays a semi-premium position, doesn't necessarily play it all that well, and he's a very good hitter, but not necessarily a great one. I mean, he's in the top 150 for Cato, so he was almost on the top 100, but definitely doesn't like him as much as most scouts do. All right. Brendan Rodgers, Rocky's shortstop,

number 18 on the Kylie Eric list. Rodgers has just been hitting since he was like 16. Everywhere he's been against elite competition in high school, young for the level, reached double A last year at like 20 or 21. Yeah, the reports at shortstop are kind of mixed, but I think that teams are becoming a little bit more inclusive about what they consider a viable defensive shortstop now, especially as far as lateral mobility is concerned because of what batted ball data allows you to do in positioning guys efficiently. So we're cautiously optimistic about him staying at short and he's done nothing but hit since

he was, you know, before he was shaving. So Cato is never like Brendan Rodgers, even going back to last year. I've been hearing about him for a couple of years now. People are very upset that he's not never on Kato's top 100 lists. And the thing with him is that he's made it up to double A last year as a 20-year-old. But the numbers have always been just okay and never that great, except for in his brief stint in high A last year. He doesn't walk much at all.

He doesn't make elite contact either. The power has been more good than great. And defensively, he plays shortstop, but isn't necessarily a good shortstop there. So you kind of pair all of that with the holes on the hitting side and the fact that he doesn't steal bases like you typically see from someone playing a premium position like that. And Cato just thinks he's an okay prospect and not someone who belongs on a top 100 list so next guy I don't know if this is how you actually say it

but this is how I'm gonna say it Carter Kaboom the Nationals third baseman Carter Kaboom number 40 on the scouts list. I don't want to ruin this for you. Let's just say that's right. Don't you remember his brother, Ben? Yeah, but Spencer Kaboom. Spencer Keeboom? Spencer Keeboom, yeah. That's not it. I mean, Carter Kaboom is much better.

So I am predisposed to agree with you on his high ranking here, but tell me anything about him other than his name, which is all I know. This was another high school guy who was sort of on the fringe of playing short, right, Kylie? I mean, he was sort of, this guy might be a shortstop, might be a third baseman. The reports that we've gotten are bullish about his ability to stay there. But yeah, I mean, at the same time, then the bat looks good.

He was hurt a bunch last year, but we've gotten some probably overzealous, but not to be ignored, Troy Tulewitzki comps on this kid. And analysts we've talked to, scouts we've talked to, agents we've talked to, they all really like him and think that he's,

I think the lowest aggressive projection I got regarding Kibum as we bounced the 100 around, because he was one of the guys I specifically asked about because I knew we had him ranked pretty aggressively was like a 50 or 55 so I feel pretty good about where he's at do you have anything else on him Kylie that I didn't touch on yeah it's not uh everyone likes him and some will say oh he might be a left fielder oh it might be second or third I might be short oh but everyone's like yeah this guy's gonna hit he's a big leaguer he's gonna be at least a 50 maybe a 55 like everybody likes him even if you don't know exactly what it's gonna be all right penultimate prospect here willie calhoun of the

rangers i guess d8 no we didn't we didn't get chris to oh yeah oh yeah yeah yeah please waiting to rip on carter yeah please all right rip him to shreds i don't even want to hear the the downside of car Kaboom. I'm so eager to get to the next guy. Yeah, go ahead. So a big part of why Cato doesn't like him is just because he's very far from the majors. He's barely made it to full season ball even, and he doesn't have a huge track record. So that's kind of a boring reason, but that's part of it. Cato just doesn't have a lot to work with. So it kind of regresses someone like this down a little ways.

On top of that, I mean, his numbers had been really good overall, but he does have a very pull-heavy approach. And that's not like a deal breaker or anything, but that's a knock against him. Cato would prefer if someone wasn't like that. And he also isn't necessarily great at shortstop even at that at that low level he still grades out as below average so all those things combined uh lead Kato to be down on on Carter Kaboom thank you for

saying it the right way so I'll say it the right way all All right. Penultimate prospect here, Willie Calhoun of the Rangers 46 on the scout list. Yeah, I was pounding the table for Calhoun who, interesting, it's plus hit, plus power. I think Cato still probably, like Calhoun's like 5'6", and he does look like a human fire hydrant. So, and I think the Cato does probably correct me if I'm wrong, Chris, like it does take away from guys who are this size, right? Yeah. That's part of why Cato isn't a huge fan of him for sure. Kylie and I don't think he has any positional value. Like he's a DH only for both of us. It was hilarious watching him try to play second base in the fall a couple of years ago.

But like, I've been scouting this guy since he was a freshman at arizona and then he went to uh juco at yavapai up in prescott arizona and he's just done nothing but hit for me and has done that up through the minors and so even at dh we think he's uh a 55 i would also add ironically being like 5 6 220 and kind of swinging uh really, like he's swinging a tree trunk or something, you'd think this would be the guy the scouts don't like and the numbers love, and it's the other way around. And I'll also add that being on the Rangers, if he wears an alternate Sunday uniform, he might actually be mistaken for a fire hydrant. All right, Chris, give us the anti. So people were very upset in the comments that Willie Calhoun wasn't on

Cato's top 100 I mean it's not that Cato doesn't like him at all it just sees him as like more of the 150th prospect than the 50th prospect and I mean that's the difference between number 50 and 150 it's it's sizable but it's not all huge. Once you get out of the top 40, 50, 60 prospects, it all starts to get more or less interchangeable. But the thing with him is, yeah, the defense is not good at all. He was very bad at second base where he's played there. He's played some left field as well. Not good there either. So that's a big negative. And the height, which we talked about previously, that's also a knock against him and he is a very good hitter but at the same time he he doesn't really walk much at all he doesn't steal

bases so what you have is someone who has basically no defensive or base running value and he has an offensive profile that's really good but but not great. And Cato, it just doesn't really go for guys who don't have really a position like that. All right. Last one, Jesus Sanchez, raised right fielder, number 49 on the scout list. Yeah. This is just a pretty tooled up teenage outfield prospect who has performed as a hitter who has been young for his level. Everything is sort of still fuzzy. There's a chance he stays in center field. A lot of people think he moves to a corner,

but there's great feel for contact. There's tremendous power on contact for somebody this young. The body still has a little bit of room. So yeah, it's just a good combination of, of on field performance for a young guy with the tools, the reports that we're getting from scouts. And also,

I'll say when the Rays signed him, they signed a guy for $3 million and signed this guy for $300,000 or $400,000. And they told me, hey, this guy might be better than the guy we signed for $3 million. I'm like, are you sure you want to say that? And then, lo and behold, it turns out the guy they gave way less money to is much better right now. Are you talking about Adrian

Rondon? Yeah, who's fine. He's a prospect. He's got some tools, but Sanchez is better than Rondon now. All right, Chris, last word. So this is another one who Cato doesn't necessarily hate. It just sees him as more of like a number 140 prospect than a top 100 guy. There's nothing that really jumps out on his stat line that's bad. He's just kind of, he has a little bit of everything there,

but kind of the downside is that he's so far away from the majors. He's just played in low A and he's also a corner outfielder, which Cato doesn't like. So really it's just a matter of him being a corner outfielder who's far away from the majors. And typically guys like that, they don't pan out all that often. But Sanchez given that he is in that in that demographic he's he's hit pretty well in low a and I imagine that

he's a guy who if he does this again at a higher level next year Cato will will start to buy in a little bit more and I will add that on the clay Davenport numbers Jesus Sanchez was plus 14 runs and 78 games in left field oh look at the scout wow i like it and probably playing a corner spot in deference to josh low who is like a plus running like more more uh stereotypical center field prospect and they took in the first round and gave a couple million to who they took in the first round yeah all right well i always enjoy this exercise i think it can be illuminating. I wish you guys would yell at each other and criticize each other's judgment

and knowledge about baseball a little bit more, but even though you are a pretty charitable and, and polite, I enjoy this a lot. So everyone go check out all of the fan graphs, prospect week stuff. There's been new everything every day. You can find it all.

There's a little widget on the top of every article, thanks to Sean Dolinar, that will point you to all the other prospect content. It's great. So Kylie, Eric, Chris, thank you very much. And I'll also tease that on Monday, we have draft rankings coming for the 2018, 2019, and 2020 draft. So if you want to get ahead of the next

Brennan McKay and get in another fight with Michael Bauman, we're going to have all the ammunition you need. 2020 draft. We got high schoolers for the 2020 draft, too. I've been talking to people this week. Some agents are telling me. Are you allowed to talk to people about players that young? I have video of three

of them from two weekends ago We need to end this call right now I think it's time for this to end What's that clicking? Is someone listening to us? Alright, thanks guys You can support the podcast As mentioned earlier on Patreon By going to patreon.com slash effectively wild

Five listeners have already done so Include Molly McCullough, Alexander Payton Nick Koss, Eric Clemente Our guest of the podcast, volcano expert Eric Clemente Effectively Wild. Five listeners have already done so include Molly McCullough, Alexander Payton, Nick Koss, Eric Clemente, our guest of the podcast, volcano expert, Eric Clemente, and Wilson Taylor. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. You can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. You can contribute to our wiki, the Effectively Wild wiki, which a lot of people have been doing since I first mentioned it last week. Lots of people signing up for old episodes. Really appreciate it. It's been fun seeing the pages pop up on the wiki. If you go to the Facebook group,

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has been an Effectively Wild guest. Glenn Healy, Harry Pavlidis, Jonathan Judge, and Jeff Long, Travis Sochik, Stephanie Springer. So I don't know if you should vote for me, but vote for someone. The voting is going on now at Sabre.org. Also at Baseball Prospectus, Fangraphs, Hardball Times, Beyond the Boxscore. You can vote at any and all of those sites. I think they just average them all together. And the voting is open through Monday. There are also a couple other categories, Contemporary Baseball Commentary and Historical Analysis Commentary. Lots of great stuff. You should go check it out even just to read the pieces if you haven't. I will link to the page at Sabre where you can vote in the Facebook group and on the show page at Fangraphs.

Thank you to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And please do keep your questions and comments coming via email at podcast at Fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We will be back with the next team preview podcast very shortly. Next episode up is the Dodgers and the Marlins. Talk to you then. Bye. Go for Kylie. All right. We're all here.

Wow. This is a terrible idea.