Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 656: How to Pick Breakout Players

Episode Date: April 14, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about Jon Lester and then talk to the entire TINO (There Is No Offseason) podcast crew about their breakout-player beliefs.

You know you make me break out, make me break out. I don't want to look like that, I don't want to look like that. No, you make me break out, make me break out. I don't want to look like that, I don't want to look like that. No, you make me break out. Good morning and welcome to episode 656 of the John Lester Pickoff Attempt and Ryan Webb Transaction podcast, formerly known as Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus.

Hello. How are you? Ready to prease our topics from yesterday for a moment. We do have an actual podcast planned. It's going to be a crossover podcast with the Tino There Is No Off-Season BP podcast crew, all four of them. We are going to have six people on this podcast somehow. It's a clown car of a podcast.

We're going to see how it works. We're going to talk about breakouts. But before that, we should talk about, well, we can get Webb out of the way. So Webb signed with the Indians. He went to AAA. So that's Webb. So now we can close the books though on the uh the valuation of that draft pick i mean if the dodgers released him after he

accepted an outright then that means that there was essentially like no in no no inclination to have him he was strictly a salary that they took on in order to get the 74th pick and um they gave up a couple of bit pieces to do that but i mean i think we can basically say that they value the 74th pick in the draft at roughly three million dollars uh-huh which is more than i thought because once you get past what once you get past 25 or 30 i think most people have shown that well yeah you can you can land a star but it's a very low hit rate let's see there's an andrew ball posted beyond the box score how valuable are draft picks there's a tier for 61 to 100 prospects and that is not much that is uh so those are competitive balance picks and the average value there is $1.32 million.

Uh-huh. Well, we don't even need to look at these things. No, because we know. No, the Dodgers have told us. That's the point. That's the point, is that they've told us this is the correct answer, I think. We can just go with that. 74th pick, $3 million.

It's worth $3 million to have the 74th pick. I'm going to see who the best player ever drafted. If you're the Dodgers. If you're the Dodgers. Right, yeah, if you're the Dodgers. Which might change things quite a bit. All right, what next? All right, so Lester. So we talked about L quite a bit. All right. What next? All right.

So, Lester. So, we talked about Lester a lot yesterday. We talked about what would happen when Billy Hamilton started against him. 74th picks throughout history, incidentally. Greg Nettles. Hall of Fame cusp. David Cohn. David Cohn.

Wow. Borderline Hall of Fame. And then Cohn Wow And then it drops Jim Clancy 20 wins Dan Petrie 17 wins John Jay 11 and counting Tyler Chatwood Daniel Norris So there's some names here Jesse Foppert

Was 70 whatever I said Okay So Hamilton didn't start And that was a pregame letdown Poppert was 70-whatever I said. Okay. All right. Go ahead. So Hamilton didn't start, and that was a pregame letdown because we had drummed everyone up into a fervor looking forward to what would happen when Hamilton was on base against Leicester. That didn't happen, but the— 73rd, by the way.

73rd, there's only been one player in history who had more than five wins who was drafted 73rd. So 74th has been a flukily high value pick. The Dodgers knew that. All right, go ahead. Sorry. Yeah. Let down and then it wasn't let down because he threw it. You tell the story.

Everybody knows the story, Ben. Just tell the story quickly. Everyone knows it. Go ahead. He threw to first base. He threw a pickoff attempt. It was wide. Then he threw a pickoff attempt about three first basemen wide.

It was really far off. It was very far. And it rolled all the way to the wall. And Cozart came around and went to third and was thrown out at third. So there was an out recorded on the pickoff attempt, but it confirmed what we imagine were Lester's fears or the Cubs fears. It was, it was not pleasant to watch.

I wouldn't say. I wondered whether there is, I wondered whether there would, whether there were players in Major League Baseball who would not run on John Lester out of sympathy. Like, I don't know if there are or not. I assume there's not, but I

wonder. I wondered if, like, Brandon Phillips was going to be cool about it. And then Brandon Phillips did not look like he was cool. He looked like he was incapable of taking advantage of this. He almost got picked off by the catcher on a back pick, and then he kind of got caught in between uh of wanting to go but not going and he just seemed flat-footed some of the time and so no no more steal attempts after that

and no more pick off throws after that so it does seem like if you take away a player's ability to do something fundamental, it does take a while for everybody on the field to know how to act. This is kind of the equivalent of the— And there is one still in base, the Jay Bruce still in base off of Leicester, yeah. This is kind of the equivalent of you're playing poker, and the guy comes who is just learning the rules. And he is both the fish and the most dangerous man at the table. And that's kind of John Lester right now. Nobody's taking full advantage of it quite yet. But okay, I have a question for you, Ben.

Okay. If you were a major league ball player, what would you want your yip to be? Like what would be the least damaging yip that you could have and like it would be a visit it has to be a visible yip that everyone could see it can't be like oh you know like when i uh i don't know something that nobody would see throwing around the horn oh that's a good one throwing around the horn? Oh, that's a good one. Throwing around the horn. And every single time you chuck it into the sand. Doesn't hurt you. I was going to say discarding a bat after a walk.

You know, like you just sort of like you can't release it. Like it's always sticking to your hand and like this sort of goes toward the pitcher sometimes. I feel like that's a conceivable yip that we would give and that would not uh hurt your game yeah so uh so this was it was were you uncomfortable watching this i was kind of uncomfortable watching this like when we when we when we talked about it i was not uncomfortable talking about it because we hadn't seen him do the thing yet so it was this kind of weird goofy thing where he wasn't going to throw over there ever and it was just strange but now we saw him throw over there now we know why he's not throwing over there he can't throw over there and it's i

mean i don't it's kind of uncomfortable to watch someone try and fail to do something i was not uncomfortable if he were if his if they were were pitching and I were having to watch him do it 100 times in a row and they were all wild pitches and hitting people in the eye, that would make me very uncomfortable. This is just curious. Until it becomes, as long as it's not career-threatening, then I'm not uncomfortable at all. I want to see where it goes.

Yeah, but what if where it goes is more generalized yips? I mean, I have no idea whether there's carry over there. No one knows how these things work. Look, the man has had a very good career. Losing to the yips is no worse than losing to a bum shoulder. Got lots of money coming to him, yips or not. Yeah, I don't know i mean i i think i tend to to feel sympathy toward humans but in this case i am not right now i'm not

remotely there like not even close to there i want to see it and i don't know i'm still thinking about that interview what was it like why doesn't he just say like you know i just don't want to talk about it i'm working on some things i it'll get sorted out how come he had to go like acting like these people who were doing their job i mean if we want to talk about people doing their jobs those guys were just asking questions for their job and he's like you're haters you're blowing this out of proportion you're doing your job bad they're not just. Just say, I'm working on some things, guys. I know it looks funny. You'll probably be surprised by what I do tomorrow.

Instead, it was like, oh, how about those idiots in Boston? They're terrible reporters. And how about you idiots blowing that proportion? How about the idiots on TV who are turning a mountain into a molehill or the other way around? Molehill to a mountain. I don't know. I'm just not feeling that sympathetic toward him right now. He'll figure it out anyway. He's probably going to figure

it out. He'll probably figure it out by tomorrow. I wonder what people ask them after the game or what he said. Yeah, I guess. Alright, and one last thing. Everybody should go sign up for Hacking Mass, which is the anti-fantasy league or anti-fantasy sport that

we run each year on Baseball Perspectives. You pick the worst team you can pick. We give you all the options at each position. All you do is pick the guy who's going to get the most playing time with the least production. And if you win, you get this year the prizes, Tim McCarver singing American Standards, I believe, the CD that is somehow allowed to be sold on Amazon. So you go to baseball prospectus you probably can just control f hacking and find it on the page somewhere but if you can't uh under the fantasy tab there's an option and so that's real simple it's fun it's easy uh and um you can beat me so it'll fill the hole left in your life by the lack of a relievers only league this year okay so that concludes the banter portion of

this podcast and now we are going to welcome in four people from baseball perspective so you're going to hear all of us at once all right so now we're going to go to the uh to the guest portion of the show and this is going to be a disaster we have four guests as well as the two of us there are six of us here the guests are ben carsley bre Brett Serre, Craig Goldstein, Mauricio Rubio. They together are the There Is No Off-Season podcast, which is a baseball prospectus, and which is, for my money, the best podcast devoted exclusively to keeper leagues. How are you guys?

Good. Individually. I want to hear how each of you is. At once. All at the same time. On three. How are you guys? One. Individually. I want to hear how each of you is. At once. All at the same time. On three. How are you guys? One, two, three.

Bad. Craig. My stomach. My Skype screen looks like the Brady Bunch credits. Does that mean Craig Jan? So the reason that we have the four of them here is because I wanted to talk about breakouts and about the philosophy of breakouts and the nature of breakouts, and primarily the nature of breakout predictions,

because this is the time of year when everybody is writing about their breakout candidates for 2015. Even at Baseball Prospectus, especially at Baseball Prospectus. On Friday, we had a staff-contributed lineup card on breakout candidates, and some of the names were like Xander Bogarts and Mike Zanino and Manny Machado and guys who you might think are really good already. And so maybe that's part of it,

is that sometimes breakouts are just guys who are already really good. So anyway, breakouts are a very tricky thing. Ben and I, I think, are always worried that we're going to be asked to name a breakout because we don't know how to do it. And so I wanted to talk to people who are experts at naming breakout players or perhaps experts at getting out of the obligation to name breakout players and find out what they look for in a breakout candidate or whether they do. So you guys have a routine at your podcast that makes it manageable where there are four of you, but you take turns and then you sort of pass the ball to the next person.

So one of you will talk and then say, Brett, and then Brett will talk. So you guys want to do that? Do you feel like doing that or do you just want to talk over each other and we can edit as we go? Oh, shoot. I need to ask one of you to talk to answer that. Ben, Ben Carsley, how should we do this? Yeah, well, usually what I would do is just keep talking to buy time and then eventually

kick it out to Brett or Craig. So I'm very comfortable doing that. All right, so I'm going to just start. I'm going to ask you, Ben, and then you can figure out who you want to kick it to, okay? So Ben, Ben Carsley, guy comes up to you and says, dude, I need some breakouts. I need some sleepers. Sleeper is another word for breakout, by the way. I need some sleepers. I've got my draft tonight.

What do you tell them? So it's an interesting question, mostly because where we come from, I think a lot of this has to do with holding on to what we know about a player from his scouting profile, perhaps sometimes even a little longer than we should. But what happens to me a lot of times in this scenario is, you know, I'm often still on someone's sleeper from the year before, sort of a post-hype prospect, if you will. And I'll get a lot of looks like, no, no, no, I saw him last year and he wasn't very good, or he was just pedestrian. You know, I don't want to hear about Xander Bogarts anymore. I want to hear about Chris Bryant. But I am generally the one who is still on Xander Bogarts because I recognize that

despite what some players would have us believe, these things generally take time. But Brett, considering this is a tricky question on Tino, I would generally kick it out to you at this point. So why don't you pick me up? Yeah, there's, there's, there's just so many ways you can go with it. There, you know, there are the, you know, the obvious types like, like you touched on before, but you know, Xander Bogarts and Manny Machado's guys who have elite prospect profiles who just haven't, you know, become superstars immediately, like superstars immediately like every other guy with an elite prospect profile, except for Ryan Braun and Albert Pujols. But there are different classes of guys. There's sort of that next level of prospect who never quite did anything but is just way lower down on that list.

And you have a couple of guys this year who are off to hot starts that fall into that category, guys who were never elite prospects but really good prospects in that space. And the two guys I'm thinking of specifically are Anthony Gose and Jake Marisnyk. or Anthony Ghost and Jake Marisnyk. So it really depends on how you define it and whether you attach a lot of importance to the prospect profile because there's certainly no shortage of breakout guys and sleeper guys who surprise us all and then have to keep surprising us in order to make everyone believe,

like J.D. Martinez, who's also off to a strong start this year. So, uh, this is the point where I will stop talking and kick it out to Craig. So, uh, Craig, what are your, what are your thoughts? When someone asked me for sleepers, I generally panic and everything I know goes out the window, but aside in terms of identifying breakouts or kind of figuring out if those guys who have broken out are to be believed. I mean, that's kind of what we're talking about here is identifying a small sample performance and then, you know, projecting it out the rest of the year and seeing whether it's something that can hold or even if it if there's a little bit of attrition in terms of performance, that that's the overall production is still going to be worthwhile. even if there's a little bit of attrition in terms of performance, that the overall production is still going to be worthwhile.

And I think, you know, you talk about someone like J.D. Martinez, I think that's an interesting guy to pick out because he's someone similar to Ben Zobrist, once upon a time, who had kind of a complete swing overhaul and changed his swing and all of a sudden starts producing Jose Bautista falls into that camp as well. And, you know, so you look at a guy like that who they reported on something that's actually changed and the results are to follow. And it's a little more believable that those things could be true. Whether they'll continue is another matter, you know, whether the league reacts to them and they're able to adjust back again. But in general, you know, when there's a mechanical change or for pitchers, I like to use if they've added another pitch and you can see it's tangibly good.

My example tends to be Jake Odorizzi and the split change from last year. He went from a guy who didn't have a strikeout pitch to someone who struck out 24% of batters he faced over the whole year. And that was believable because he added a new pitch. He learned from a teammate. And, you know, all of a sudden he had something that he could miss bats with, so it was a little easier to buy into the production. Mau, is there something else that you identify? Yeah, I think that the overarching theme that you heard from all three of my teammates at TNO

is that there's all sorts of different ways to try to pick out a breakout player. And kind of one of the extra wrinkles that I would add in there is that coaching and organizational philosophy is kind of something that I also look at. You can look at the Cleveland Indians and what they've done, not just with Corey Kluber and the work that Mickey Calloway, their pitching coach, has done with him, but also Michael Brantley showed up and he just started hitting out of nowhere. Jan Gomes goes there and he just basically appears out of thin air for them

and he really starts producing for them at a pretty high level. So along with kind of looking at these post-hype prospect guys and looking at guys who are adding pitches, the changeup is a very popular pitch for pitchers who end up breaking out. Just to look at it from a pitching-specific perspective, when you're looking at someone who you think can break out, one of the key things that I look for is two breaking balls and a solid fastball. Because like Jake Odorizzi, it's much easier to learn the change-up

than it is to learn a second breaking ball, to learn a curveball. Those things just don't necessarily happen. But if you have a solid base like that to work with, where you have a fastball and you have the two breaking balls, and you add in the change-up, well, then all of a sudden, all sorts of exciting things start to happen for your prospect stock. But J.D. Martinez, and it's interesting that you bring up Anthony Gose there, Brett, because Martinez and Gose are in the same organization.

Their offense is doing all sorts of wonderful things right now. So, yeah, I think organizational philosophy, coaching is very important when you're looking at breakouts. And that just kind of dovetails in with everything that my guys have said. So, Craig, you mentioned two guys, and one of them was J.D. Martinez. said. So Craig, you mentioned two guys, and one of them was JD Martinez. And you point out that there is a reason to believe that what he did last year was real. But last year was his breakout, right? And there wasn't necessarily a reason to believe before the breakout, that his breakout was impending. He had a new swing, but like, there are 500 new swing stories every spring. There are 500 new swing stories every spring,

and nobody was, so far as I know, really hyping J.D. Martinez until the statistics backed up the breakout thing. And so I wonder where the line is for J.D. Martinez, where he goes from being a guy who's hitting to a guy you believe in and is, sorry, who's hitting and you don't really believe in him to then he's hitting and you guy you believe in and is, sorry, who's hitting and you don't really believe in him to then he's hitting and you do really believe in him, is there like a, is the one day in between that, the transition between, is that the day that you get to claim breakout? Because otherwise it seems like you're either not really a believer or it's too late.

Secondly, with Odorizzi, and you can answer that or you can ignore it. Secondly, with Odorizzi, when a guy adds a new pitch and then he's really good that year, yeah, that makes it more believable that he's going to stay that good, but doesn't that also sort of imply that the gains that he's going to get from that pitch have already been baked into everybody's assessment of him and nobody's really going to be surprised if Odorizzi does what he did last year. So now you really need him to do even better than he did last year,

which does that require another new pitch? Does he need another pitch to become a breakout candidate on top of what he already is? I mean, does that make sense? It's sort of like hard to distinguish between, like, the guy who everybody has the same – I mean, what you're really looking for in a breakout or I guess in a sleeper, either one,

is you're looking for a guy you like more than everybody else. I'm trying to figure out how anybody sneaks up on us at this point. I was giving those examples as two guys who did this breakout thing last year. I was using the new pitch and the swing changes as the reason to buy into those guys maybe earlier last year than other people did. So I wasn't trying to imply that those are the names I would say this year, although I still tend to think Odorizzi falls into that camp because his ERA was over four, and I think he's a better pitcher than that. Phipp would back that up. He gave up a lot of homers, part of that to function because he gives up fly balls, i i still think the underlying skill set is really attractive and that people will see a 413 era and be scared off

um and i'd rather buy the skill set um with martinez and you're talking about kind of like the the tipping point i guess you would say in terms of where you buy in and when you believe i mean i i wouldn't blame someone for not believing in J.D. Martinez entering this season. I mean, there are a lot of guys that have really good seasons who I still say, yeah, I'm not ready. I'm not ready to buy in on that yet. I want to see them do it again. And who, you know, if they can do it for two seasons and I'm just not seeing it, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt because of history of production. But just based off of one season alone, I mean, this is a guy

I'm probably going to be wrong on, but it's a good demonstration of what I'm talking about. Jake DeGrom was absolutely amazing last year and I didn't buy in at all kind of the entire year and I don't in the off season I kind of said look I don't you know begrudge him his 2014 season he earned like all of it all of his peripherals back up his terrific season and I'm not trying to argue that in the slightest what I was what my concern about is that he's not going to be able to do what he did to get those peripherals and get that overall production again. And I don't know what his true baseline talent is. Now, I mean, obviously it's only been a couple starts this year, but he appears to be the same guy. And I'm probably going to be wrong.

And I'll have to live with that forever. to live with that forever. But again, I still think that's something to, you know, again, that goes back to kind of what Brett was talking about in terms of where these guys came from in terms of prospect status and stuff like that. He was somewhat under the radar and he was an athletic guy. So it was something to buy into that all of a sudden something could click for him. But at the same time, I don't think it's unreasonable to say, you know, one season doesn't necessarily set his baseline that high. And he could come back from that, even though his peripherals were all very good. I guess I sort of think of it as the same as the surprise team. I mean, it's the it's the player equivalent of what is the surprise team.

And I always feel like if I can pick the surprise team, then it's not a surprising team. I should be surprised if it's a surprise team. And I sort of feel the same way about breakouts, that if it's really a breakout, it is almost inherently unpredictable. Like if we're just talking about a guy whose BABIP is going to regress or something, you know, at this point, we can all kind of pick that out. But my other complaint just about breakouts, other than the fact that I don't know how predictable they are, is that it seems to me that, you know, 50% of the breakout picks I see are players who I would define as having already broken out. And I don't know whether that's because it's just so hard to pick a good breakout that people just kind of default to someone who was already good but maybe wasn't noticed as much

but like i'm trying to think of breakout picks i've seen this year like i saw like garrett richards or jake arietta or someone and like to me those guys broke out last year like if you had if you had picked either of those guys as a breakout pick last year, I would say, nice job. You nailed that one. And unless they turn into Cy Young Award winners, they can no longer break out as far as I'm concerned. Do you have a threshold, any of you, for how good a guy can be and still be regarded as

a breakout candidate? can be and still be regarded as a breakout candidate? Is there like a percentage change like Pakoda defines it? Or is there some rubric you use? Any of you? Yeah, I don't think I would define it as a percentage change, you know, based on Pakoda or anything like that. And I think certainly in the examples of Richards or Arrieta, yes, those guys have already performed at such a level. Whereas, you know, to say that they're breakout candidates this year is sort of ridiculous. But I will say that something I get all the time is I will mention a former top prospect or a fairly well-known player who has not performed at the level of a Richards or Arrieta, but who hasn't really established himself as a reliable major leaguer yet. And whoever I will say this to is wholly unimpressed with my lack of

deep knowledge. But I mean, the reason I'm picking that person, you know, we all liked them at one point or another for a reason to begin with. So like, from my perspective, do you want me to lie and tell you that I think Brian Johnson is going to break out? Or can I tell you the truth and say I still believe in Xander Bogart? So maybe it's not always the most exciting answer, but I do think a fairly good strategy for finding breakout guys is finding a player who is a year or two removed from this sort of illustrious prospect status and having a good reason to have not given up on him yet, even if his name isn't totally new to everyone.

Yeah, and it's all about timing, right? Because if you – I know a guy who we talk about a lot on our podcast and I think we're all pretty high on is Carlos Martinez, the Cardinals. know, kind of first came into, I guess, national prominence, you'd have people looking at you and be like, okay, that's boring. But now he's been sort of kind of, he's been around but not performing at a high level. And it's a slightly different proposition now. And so it's really, it's all about, it's really more about managing what the, uh, what the expected value that everyone else has for a player versus the expected value that you have for a player. Um, you can't, I don't think it's, I don't think it's definable by, uh, by any

sort of statistical percentage or, or, or anything like that. And, and frankly, I mean, it, it can come across as lazy, but if there's a player who is, you know, generally regarded as, you know, one of the 100 to 150 best players in the game, but you think he can be an elite player, possibly a top 25 player in the game, you know, if that fits your definition, then that's completely fair in my my book i mean not not everyone has to go dig for a mark canna i mean it's uh they're just there aren't that many of those guys around yeah a lot of that has to do with the player profile too as well like you just mentioned martinez and there are a lot of questions about whether or not he can start and you know how he's going to hold up over the 200 innings and if he you know you peg him as a starter

and then he goes out there and he absolutely shows up for 200 you know quality innings like that's that's a breakout even though you know that's a player who we've all had on our consciousness and this this stuff can extend itself out i think ben one of your favorite guys is shelby miller and that's that's kind of an interesting uh situation in and of itself because he's going to an organization that typically does do well with pitchers and you know if shelby miller goes out there and does well even though he's a very well-known name, you look at the profile and you look at what he's done in past production, and that would qualify as a breakout for me big time.

So about a year and a half ago or so, I looked at prospect rankings and guys who had changed prospect rankings from one year to the next to see whether prospect trajectory mattered. So if you had moved up in prospect rankings, like if you'd gone from 60 to 40, were you more likely to be better or worse than the guys who were at 39 and 41? And vice versa, if you had dropped from 40 to 60,

were you actually being overrated or underrated there? And what I found was basically that there was some suggestion that prospect trajectory, that the later rankings tended to lag and that guys who had dropped were actually worse than their prospect status in the second year and that guys who improved were actually better than their prospect status in the second year. Rob Arthur did something a little more technical with the same thing a couple of weeks ago and found similar results. So it seems like a lot of breakout stuff every year is like you're sort of talking about,

guys who have had maybe a little bit of a disappointing trajectory from a higher prospect standpoint. Do you think it's – it seems like in my experience, it takes a long time for people to give up on players that are good prospects. I mean, Delman Young was still getting legitimate jobs for five years and so on and so forth. Is it conceivable that, in fact, we are all operating under the same delusion and that any kind of inefficiency you think you have by getting the disappointing ex-prospect is actually just you falling into the same logical fallacies that everybody else is falling into? That's kind of like an age-old question.

Everybody wants to fix a guy who's got like 97 or someone who can hit like Delman Young. I think that what happens is that a lot of the people making the rankings go in there with the understanding that the development path isn't linear, which is something that Ben was talking about a little bit earlier. understanding that the development path isn't linear, which is something that Ben was talking about a little bit earlier. So, you know, they're more likely to keep Buxton up there, even though he had a very tumultuous 2014 season, because they know that there's going to be bumps along the way, and it's not necessarily always going to be a very smooth ride.

So I think that me personally, I would rather bet on the tools, because, you know, the tools are going to be what carries you into the major leagues. Even though the depth path isn't necessarily always something that's going to be nice and smooth, if you kind of came up to me and told me that you had a guy who had Delman Young's profile and he was kind of struggling at the minor leagues, I'd still be willing to take a chance on that guy just because if he does figure it out, it can be a very, very productive player. because if he does figure it out, it can be a very productive player. To make one minor distinction, I think guys tend to hold on to former top prospects perhaps in real life quite frequently.

Fan bases, we see these former top prospects tossed around between general managers all the time. But we're generally coming from a fantasy point of view, and I often see people are pretty quick to want to denigrate top prospects who don't make it. Not everyone, but I do think there's a fairly decent subset of the fantasy population who loves to be like, I told you that prospect was awful. I told you you're an idiot for liking prospects. me, I think that's what sort of, you know, creates this value in a lot of guys who were on a list two, three years ago and who haven't completely fallen off the face of the earth, but who maybe just now are ready to take that step because they were promoted young or they just had to change something. Or like Craig was saying earlier, you know, maybe it's a third pitch and now you have

another reason to believe in them. So I do think there's a little bit of a difference in terms of, you know, when we're usually asked to pick a breakout and what perhaps a casual MLB fan would be looking for in a breakout. Sorry, I would just say that I think your point's an interesting one. I think it's a definite possibility that people are maybe holding on to these guys too long, even though I do preach the same thing that Mal and Ben were talking about in terms of having patience with these guys. But like you're saying, maybe the amount of opportunity that someone like a Delman Young got was too much. But I think it makes sense at least in terms of mindset, because you look at someone like Edwin Encarnacion and how long he took to click and how good he's been since it did. And I think, you know, you just get guys, you know, if I were a G,

I might be terrified of that coming back because that looks, it looks so bad. No one's going to look at Cincinnati and be like, well, they really did give him enough time. They gave him enough chances. It's not their fault. It looks bad that he exploded into this, you know, like 40 home run hitter in Toronto. And, you know, it's the same thing with, you know, other prospects around the league. And I think, you know, they just, I think it's one of those things where whether it's the best strategy or not, they're more scared of how it's going to look if something goes wrong. So, all right. So to kind of wrap this up, Xander Bogart's Pocota projection, which I don't know, maybe you don't like it, but just for the sake of conversation, Xander Bogart's Pocota projection

and Martin Prado's Pocota projection this year are basically the same. Like they're basically projected in the aggregate to be the same ball player, but they're obviously completely different in the public eye. One is an old guy who maybe is seen as having not a ton of upside or downside, and the other one is Xander Bogarts. So in your experience, which one of these guys is most often undervalued and which one is most often overvalued? It's always the older guy, especially in a fantasy context,

that is going to be undervalued. Once you get a player past about 30 years old, you get people, even in yearly leagues and stuff, and you get people that are just off of you know, even in yearly leagues and stuff and you, you get people that are just, just off of them. They want, they want that new shiny toy. They want, they want Xander Bogarts. They want to have the guy who breaks out.

No one, you know, the, the guys who are, you know, 32, 33, 34 years old and are slightly undervalued and perform well are the guys that are important to building championship teams, whether you're talking about real baseball or fantasy baseball. And the guys that are young, when they look good, they look really good. But a lot of the times, even the players that end up looking good at the end, it's really hard to predict when they're going to look good. I mean, I can say with as much confidence as I can talk about baseball with that I think Xander Bogarts is going to be a very good baseball player. I can't tell you if Xander Bogarts is going to be a very good baseball player in 2015. I wish I could. I am rooting for him to be, but I can't do that. All right. So it would be a very effectively wild thing of us not to ask you for breakout picks in the podcast about breakout picks, but we're going to double confound people's

expectations and actually ask you for breakout picks and see if you function well when actually put on the spot. We've been asking you what happens, what's your coping strategy when it happens. It's happening right now. So give us just a lightning round, and it can't be Carlos Martinez. Ben. I will go with Kevin Gausman, just speaking to Mal's point that development is not linear. And if that slider comes around, I believe he will explode in a good way, not in a bad way.

All right. Brett. I am going to go with Sean Nolan of the A's. I think everyone's completely forgotten about him. And in that park, he could actually be a pretty decent starter. Okay, Craig? I will say Kenny Svargas of the Twins. How come?

Oh, he's really big and strong and hits the ball very far. I trust you. Take your word for it. I just thought being assertive was enough. And Mal. I'm going to go ahead and go with Shelby Miller just because I think that the Braves do well

with pitchers and I think that they're going to figure something out with him and he's going to take a step forward in 2015. And I will go with Martine Prado. That'd be a heck of a breakout. Ben Lindberg, do you have a pick? I was forced to make a breakout pick for the Grantland season preview, and I just went with the standard sort of former top prospect guy who hasn't put it together, Brett Laurie pick,

which probably everyone else picked this year. And then he did his 12 pitches, four strikeouts thing. But that was my pick. It was an impressive feat. It was. He broke out in a way. So tell people how to find your podcast and when and where. That's a Ben thing.

Yeah, that's definitely a Ben thing. That's a me thing. Well, this is very distressing having two Bens on the podcast. It is. I'm still not over it. You can find us on Twitter at Tino Podcast. Email us at gmail at tinopodcast at gmail.com or find us on Facebook thanks to a very haphazard page

that Mau and I threw together at work one day. Cool. Alright, and everyone knows the drill with our stuff. Tomorrow's a listener email show so we could use some emails at podcast at baseball prospectus dot com join the Facebook group facebook.com slash groups slash effectively

wild rate review subscribe on iTunes and support our sponsor the play index at baseball reference dot com use the coupon code bp when you subscribe to get the discounted price of 30 on a one-year subscription that is it thanks guys i'll say goodbye at once thanks for having us wasn't perfectly synchronized but not bad all right that's it i think we need a link was he running well i have so good this is gonna be so good you guys oh my gosh how can it not be great

okay thank you guys that was it was fun was fun hearing Ben Lindbergh's tension. I'm almost done, I think. How much time have I done? 45 minutes? All right, good. If you don't, six people ain't going to convince me to. Thank you.