2010 Pitching Leaders on BA Top 100 Prospect List

by Jeff Zimmerman on Apr 14, 2011 2:36 PM EDT

About a week ago, I looked at how many of the top hitters in 2010 were on any of Baseball America's Top 100 Prospect List at any time. Today it is the pitcher's turn to see what percentage were ever on the list. The following is a list of how many pitchers, grouped according to fWAR, were at any time on the BA top 100 list:

WAR	% on BA Top 100 List	Total Pitchers
>5	100.0%	13
4 to 5	72.2%	18
3 to 4	70.0%	20
2 to 3	61.7%	47
1 to 2	41.8%	79
0.5 to 1	28.2%	71

Notes

All 13 pitchers that generated over 5 WAR last season were on the list at one time.
List of pitchers between 4 and 5 WAR that didn't make BA Top 100 List: Dan Haren, C.J. Wilson, Hiroki Kuroda, Mat Latos, John Lackey
List of pitchers between 3 and 4 WAR that didn't make BA Top 100 List: Mark Buehrle, Wandy Rodriguez, Shaun Marcum, Randy Wells, Carlos Marmol, Dallas Braden

One trend I did notice rather quickly is how BA under values relievers when using fWAR as a measuring stick. The only reliever (defined as more innings pitched in relief than starting) with over 3 WAR, Carlos Marmol, wasn't on the list. The following is the percentages broken up by starters and relievers:

WAR	% of Starters on List	% of Relievers on List
2 to 3	71.1%	22.2%
1 to 2	52.6%	31.7%
0.5 to 1	32.4%	24.3%

Baseball America does not seem to rank good relievers compared to average to below average starters. Finally, here is a comparison of hitters and pitchers:

WAR	% of Pitchers	% of Hitters
>6	100.0%	77.0%
5 to 6	100.0%	75.0%
4 to 5	72.2%	79.0%
3 to 4	70.0%	74.0%
2 to 3	61.7%	56.0%
1 to 2	41.8%	49.0%
0.5 to 1	28.2%	34.0%

The values are surprisingly close, with the only trend I see is that some elite hitters (>5 WAR) will not get ranked by BA, while all the pitchers have been identified by them.

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FWIW

Latos was highly touted and his omission was likely a timing thing.

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by JD Sussman on Apr 14, 2011 2:40 PM EDT reply actions

It makes sense that more elite hitters than elite pitchers are being left out

1. It’s been shown that BA’s highly-ranked pitching prospects are more likely to fail than highly-ranked position prospects. Which suggests that pitchers are essentially being overrated in the rankings due to their riskiness not being fully accounted for, pushing some worthy hitters down off the lists.

2. Hitters peak later, which creates a larger proportion of position players than pitchers who suddenly break out long after they’re off the radar of prospect watchers (from the misses list, see Angel Pagan, Dan Uggla, Matt Holliday, Andres Torres, etc).

by psiogen on Apr 15, 2011 12:05 PM EDT reply actions