Comparing Farm System Rankings
by Satchel Price on Jan 28, 2010 11:03 AM EST
14 comments
As a follow-up on yesterday's postings of Keith Law's organizational prospect rankings and a FanPost ranking the organizations based on John Sickel's Top 20 Lists and Victor Wang's research on the value of prospects, I thought it would be worthwhile to look at the biggest disparities between the two rankings.
Sickels and Law have always had the reputations of being very willing to go against the grain on the evaluation of certain prospects, especially in comparison to the rankings produced by Baseball America. They are, in my opinion, two of the best in the business at minor league and amateur evaluation, but they often disagree on prospects.
Sickels has long been known to be a skeptic when it comes to player's with limited information and/or track records, primarily amateur players signed out of Latin America and American high schools. Law, on the other hand, has shown a larger willingness to be won over solely by tools and his own personal scouting reports rather than minor league statistical track record, but not nearly to the extent of the guys over at BA.
The bigger discrepancies were the Red Sox (#2 in Keith Law, #9 in John Sickels), Athletics (#14 in KL, #2 in JS), Orioles (#6 in KL, #18 in JS), Brewers (#26 in KL, #8 in JS), Giants (#20 in KL, #10 in JS), Rockies (#8 in KL, #22 in JS), Twins (#13 in KL, #23 in JS) and Marlins (#12 in KL, #25 in JS).
Details on each team after the jump.
With the Red Sox, it's not surprising that Law has them significantly higher than Sickels. The farm system is based primarily around high-upside guys in the lower levels of the system, the types of prospects that Law values more than Sickels. Presumably Law likes high-ceiling, lower-level guys like Ryan Westmoreland, Casey Kelly, David Renfroe, Jose Iglesias and Alex Wilson more than Sickels does. The B+ rankings for Kelly and Westmoreland and C+ rankings for Renfroe and Iglesias were probably lower than a lot of evaluators would give them.
In Oakland, the story is essentially the opposite of Boston: many of their top prospects are close to MLB-ready. Chris Carter and Michael Taylor, a guy that Law is generally not that high on, are guys that Sickels loves, and he gives the farm system huge credit for its depth, something that Law doesn't do to nearly the same extent. Presumably, Law doesn't like guys like Adrian Cardenas, Josh Donaldson and Sean Doolittle as much as Sickels does. It'll be interested to see what Law's Oakland prospect rankings look like.
In Baltimore, Law apparently likes the top tier of Baltimore's system significantly more than Sickels does. Brian Matusz, Jake Arrieta, Josh Bell, Zach Britton, Brandon Erbe, Brandon Snyder, Matt Hobgood and Mychal Givens give them a pretty impressive core, but Sickels did pan the system for its clear lack of position player depth. Law has been one of Bell's biggest supporters for a while, but it's still a tad surprising to see them that high after the graduations of Chris Tillman, Matt Wieters, Nolan Reimold and David Hernandez.
Milwaukee is another one of those systems that Sickels gives huge credit for his depth. Law, as noted before, doesn't weigh the depth nearly as much, and apparently isn't that impressed by the top tier of Alcides Escobar, Brett Lawrie, Mat Gamel, Eric Arnett, Jonathan Lucroy and Jake Odorizzi. Law mentions the problems that he had with the farm system's dearth of impact pitching prospects.
San Francisco is one of the systems where Law docks an organization the most for a lack of depth. Obviously, with Madison Bumgarner, Buster Posey, Zach Wheeler and Thomas Neal at the top, the organization has some solid impact prospects. But Law didn't see nearly as much in the remainder of the system as Sickels, apparently.
Colorado is another farm system that Sickels knocks for a lack of depth. The big three of Tyler Matzek, Christian Friedrich and Jhoulys Chacin obviously props up the farm system, but he's not nearly as high on guys like Wilin Rosario, Hector Gomez, Esmil Rogers, Tim Wheeler, and Eric Young Jr. It just seems like another system where Law is bowled over by the top tier more so than Sickels.
With the Twins, it's once again about Sickels' skepticism when it comes to players with limited minor league track records. Some could regard Aaron Hicks and Miguel Jean (Sano) as two of the best prospects in the game, but Sickels has Hicks as a B+ prospect, while Jean's given the C+ that Sickels gives to most top Latin American amateurs. Law presumably weighed them more significantly, considering there's not a whole lot else in the system beyond those two, Kyle Gibson, some decent B-quality position players, and low-level pitching talent. Law is also known to like Max Kepler-Rozycki, a toolsy teenage outfielder out of Europe regarded as one of the best prospects to ever come from the continent. Sickels considered him a C prospect, not even among the top 20, presumably much lower than Law.
Florida has a monster top four that clearly impressed Law more than Sickels in Mike Stanton, Logan Morrison, Matt Dominguez and Chad James, and Sickels only rated 11 Marlin prospects as a C+ or higher, which obviously explains the low ranking.
When looking at the rankings, there are three immediate differences between Law and Sickels:
- Law weighs upside and star potential significantly more than Sickels
- Sickels weighs organizational depth more than Law
- Sickels weighs minor league statistical track records more than Law
Obviously it's worth noting that Sickels very well could have put those farm systems in different order had he ranked them personally, but the idea of combining his grades to monetary values and ranking the farm systems seems nearly as good to me, especially when the leg work is being done by good minds.
That's just a snapshot look at the biggest disparities between the farm system rankings of two of the biggest names in the prospect ranking world, and an interesting look at where the two evaluators differ in how they look at farm systems. I personally was surprised to see Law so down on Oakland, and calling Baltimore the sixth best farm system in baseball was surprising as well. And seeing the Royals at #9 was probably nice for Royal fans, especially after the years that Hosmer and Moustakas had.
0 recs |
14 comments
|
Email
Print
Comments
Potential vs Production
I am not hugely familiar with Keith Law’s work, but I have followed Sickels quite closely the past year.
I think the big downside to what Sickels does is that most of his work is based on statistical results and patterns. That information is as well and good, but that is not what minor league baseball is all about.
Its more about development than results when it comes to evaluating prospects and with that, tools, ability and upside have to be put into the equation. Sickels does do some “upside” work in his rankings, but his work is largely based on what a player has done as opposed to what he could do or what his tools are capable of producing. Results have their place in player evaluation, but if MLB teams made roster decisions on minor league results instead of tools and ability, there would be a ton of AAAA players in the game right now.
I actually like Sickel's ranking because it has required the player to do something usually to be ranked
I really want to see what HS players can do against players of similar abilities.
Jeff Zimmerman - Protecting the world from RBI's and Wins from my mom's guest house.
by Jeff Zimmerman (TucsonRoyal) on Jan 28, 2010 12:49 PM EST up reply actions
I like Sickels' rankings a lot too
There still just seems to be something weird about $3M+ bonus babies like Miguel Jean and Michael Ynoa being rated as C+’s, even without pro track records. The upside alone would seem to garner at least a B- rating. Obviously Sickels disagrees.
If you squint really hard, it almost looks like my name is Satchel Paige.
I write for Beyond the Box Score and The Hardball Times Fantasy
by Satchel Price on Jan 28, 2010 2:12 PM EST up reply actions
Agreed
I think any analysis of scouts has to have a multiple pronged approach. If youre sitting in the front office of an organization you want to have all of the bases covered, and Sickel’s analysis is a great example of one of those approaches. Standing alone though it has its limitations.
AAAA players
Most prospects who fail at the major league level are the ones who have tons of promise and upside but never showed much in the minors. These days its pretty rare for a top prospect to completely flame out after producing in the minors unless they have injuries. I’d say Sickels is doing it the right way.
Prospects who show nothing in the minors
never even get to the majors in the first place. I don’t necessarily agree with Sickels’ method completely, but I do think that it’s better than Baseball America, which quite frankly does overrated tools and upside on a general basis.
Nearly every top prospect that flames out was excelling in the minors. The vast majority of prospects. with the exceptions of guys like Chapman, Sano and Ynoa, are rated so highly because of their minor league track records.
Obviously nobody cares about the guy who sucked at every level of the ladder.
If you squint really hard, it almost looks like my name is Satchel Paige.
I write for Beyond the Box Score and The Hardball Times Fantasy
by Satchel Price on Jan 30, 2010 12:57 PM EST via mobile up reply actions
Apples and Oranges
First off, it’s important to clarify that the Sickels ranking is not John’s ranking of farm systems. Rather it’s a compilation of grades by a user which aggregates the number of dollars that the organization is likely to save by utilizing the given farm system instead of buying production off the free agent market. That distinction is really important when making statements like “Sickels weighs organizational depth more than Law”.
I think it’s likely true that having higher impact prospects is more advantageous toward the goal of winning a championship above and beyond their aggregate $ value when compared to more marginal players. The reason being that having a glut of fringe/average players makes it harder to leverage their value with playing time.
Anyway, there’s definitely reason for Klaw’s rankings and I would actually imagine that John’s own system rankings would probably be somewhere in between Klaw’s rankings and the aggregate rankings.
I agree that using that version of Sickels list is not an accurate representation of his thoughts
There are many ways to compile his grades and this one is no more correct than any other.
Even atheists believe in Matt Wieters
More surprises:
Law having Perez over Feliz and Smoak. Again, a guy with a ton of potential vs. a couple guys very close to the majors.
Honestly, I think you could even say that about Stasburg vs. Heyward.
Sickles doesn't rank farm systems
Because John Sickels doesn’t do rankings of farm systems, I don’t think we know how much he really values organizational depth. Those rankings you are looking at are someone else’s (dougdirt) based on the letter grades given to individual prospects. This person is the one who, in deciding how much to weigh each grade, and how deep to go (he counted up to C+ prospects), decided how much weight to give to depth.
In addition, I think the biggest differences between the two rankings are from the decision to use the Wang research, resulting in values for top pitching prospects that are much less than for top hitting prospects. Again, I don’t think we know that Sickels himself would agree with that.
Red Sox – here you are probably right, in that Law likes the farther away upside guys more. But very likely he also is giving more weight to the excellent organizational depth.
Oakland – here I think the cause of the discrepency is mostly the use of the Wang valuations, as Oakland is thin now in pitching prospects, but still has a good collection of bats.
Baltimore – the “clear lack of position player depth” observation is accurate, but Baltimore still has some very good pitching, and it is the Wang research values, not Sickles himself, which decided this wasn’t worth much.
Milwaukee – again it’s not so much depth, but the fact that there is depth in hitting prospects, but a “dearth of impact pitching prospects”, which causes the discrepancy. Again, it is because of the use of the Wang values. Law thinks both hitting and pitching prospects matter. The Wang based ranking gives much more weight to top hitting prospects.
Giants – here I think it maybe is a bit more a question of differences on depth. John did give a good number of C+ grades there, so maybe he thinks the depth is pretty good as well as the top.
Colorado – Again, the big three here are all pitching prospects, accounting for most of the discrepancy. The overall depth really isn’t bad either. Sickels makes no negative comments about depth, other than that “the hitting is weaker” than the pitching. But he also goes on to say he thinks both Young and McKenry are “underrated”. And notably, he also says that the system as a whole deserves more attention, which he probably wouldn’t say if he really thought it ranked in the 20s
Twins – Part of it is Keith Law is likely giving more weight to organizational depth than dougdirt’s Wang value based rankings. John mentions that there is tremendous depth here in C prospects, which were not counted in that ranking. It is also true that John is more conservative on Hicks and Sano.
Marlins – Keith does seem to grade Dominguez higher than John does, and does mention that the system is top-heavy, so he probably is valuing those top 4 more. Perhaps he also likes some of the guys John graded C (and who thus weren’t counted by dougdirt).
Milwaukee
The Brewers have a lot of pitching prospects. It is just at the low levels. Seems like Law is mostly interested with the top levels from his lists.
To use Sickels list as an example, they have 10 pitches rated C+ or better and another 11 graded as a C. The problem is a large chunk of these pitchers are below AA still.
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
Recent FanPosts
BtB on Facebook
Certain photos copyright © 2010 by Associated Press or Getty Images. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of Associated Press and Getty Images is strictly prohibited.
