Grading the best tools in the major leagues

If you follow the draft or the minor leagues at all, you probably are familiar with the 20-80 scouting scale that has been in place since the days of Branch Rickey. As players ascend towards the majors, you can often hear or read phrases like, "Prospect X" has a 55-grade hit tool" or "Prospect A is a 75 runner." Unfortunately, these notes on player skill seem to fade away once the prospects reach the show. Maybe it's because most think of tools only in terms of projections, but grades are also placed on the present tools players have, something that I'm saddened to see not applied to big league players in the public domain.

Once a year, however, the fine folks at Baseball America take it upon themselves to poll the managers across Major League Baseball to find out which big leaguers do possess the best tools in a number of categories, teasing us just enough to keep us wanting more scouting reports on the stars of now. While polling managers is not a perfect way to evaluate tools, aside from possibly asking pro scouts to chime in, I can't think of a much better source to rate the top tools in the game. But as much as I value these opinions, the annual column always leaves me feeling a little unsatisfied because they players are never given actual grades in their respective categories. At a site that thrives on objective analysis, simply saying someone is the best in a certain area of the game just isn't good enough. No, instead we have to ask the question - how do the players that take home BA's Best Tools actually grade?

To answer said question, I used the idea from Mark Smith's saber 20-80 scale, selecting slightly different stats to represent each category. I pulled data from 2010 to the present, including only hitters with at least 100 plate appearances and pitchers with at least 70 innings pitched in a season, and found the league average and standard deviation in each of the various categories to create the scale. Then I took the Best Tools players and graded them based on their production in the given categories over the same time frame. Due to the uncertainty with defensive metrics, I chose to only grade players in the offensive and pitching categories. Lastly, because of the sample period some of the breakout players (Chris Davis, Max Scherzer, etc.) may grade out better at present, but I think the extended period gives a better true picture of the talent level of these players.

Position Players

Below you will find tables that feature the players managers selected with the best tool in each area, along with their grades in the corresponding stats. Before that, though, here you can see the benchmarks that make up our scale.

Grade	AVG	BABIP	LD%	SLG	ISO	HR/FB	O-Swing%	BB%	OBP	BsR	UBR
80	0.362	0.416	30.52	0.628	0.317	27.71	11.17	17.3	0.439	8.04	6.27
70	0.325	0.375	26.94	0.551	0.259	21.66	17.09	14.2	0.399	5.39	4.20
60	0.289	0.335	23.36	0.474	0.201	15.62	23.01	11.2	0.359	2.73	2.13
50	0.253	0.294	19.79	0.396	0.143	9.58	28.92	8.1	0.319	0.08	0.06
40	0.217	0.254	16.21	0.319	0.085	3.54	34.84	5.1	0.278	-2.58	-2.00
30	0.181	0.214	12.63	0.242	0.028	-2.50	40.76	2.0	0.238	-5.23	-4.07
20	0.144	0.173	9.05	0.164	-0.030	-8.54	46.67	-1.1	0.198	-7.89	-6.14

Best Hitter

NATIONAL LEAGUE
Player	AVG	BABIP	LD%
Buster Posey	65	60	55
Joey Votto	70	70	70
Yadier Molina	65	55	60
AMERICAN LEAUGE
Player	AVG	BABIP	LD%
Miguel Cabrera	75	65	55
Mike Trout	65	65	55
Joe Mauer	65	65	65

Sticking with easily available statistics, I feel that the combination of batting average, BABIP, and line drive rate best reflects a hitters ability to consistently make hard contact. Maybe something like Ken Woolums' WHB stats would be more effective, but I think this gets the point across just fine for now. As for the selections themselves, managers did a fine job highlighting players that all rate as plus to plus-plus hitters across the board. My only slight discrepancy is I would have taken Ryan Braun (70 BA, 60 BABIP, 45 LD%) over Yadier Molina, though given his recent off-field troubles I do understand his exclusion.

Best Power Hitter

NATIONAL LEAGUE
Player	SLG	ISO	HR/FB%
Carlos Gonzalez	70	65	70
Giancarlo Stanton	70	75	75
Pedro Alvarez	55	60	70
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Player	SLG	ISO	HR/FB%
Chris Davis	65	70	75
Miguel Cabrera	80	75	70
Edwin Encarnacion	65	70	60

When evaluating amateur players, scouts give prospects two different power grades, one for raw power and one for usable power. For young players, I'd say the raw power grade is more important because it grades the potential for power in the long-term based on things like bat speed, leverage, and strength. As players mature, however, usable power, or how much power the hitter actually shows in game action, is the only number that matters.

Admittedly, I was a bit surprised to see Carlos Gonzalez rated as the top power hitter in the National League, but he has the grades to back up his place atop the list. The rest of the list looks solid, especially considering Pedro Alvarez and Chris Davis' would even better grades if we only focused on their 2013 season. The only exclusion that stands out to me is Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista who grades as a 75 in both slugging and isolated power, and a 70 in HR/FB%.

Strike Zone Discipline

NATIONAL LEAGUE
Player	OBP	BB%	O-swing
Joey Votto	80	75	55
Marco Scutaro	55	50	70
Shin-Soo Choo	65	65	60
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Player	OBP	BB%	O-swing
Miguel Cabrera	75	65	45
Joe Mauer	70	65	60
David Ortiz	70	65	60

Purely using statistics, strike zone discipline is a very difficult skill to capture. OBP incorporates the ability to hit, walk rate is inherently biased towards power hitters that see fewer strikes due to their power, and o-swing rate penalizes hitters that can make hard contact on pitches outside of the strike zone. With that said, using all three together paints a decent picture of what kind of judgment these hitters have.

Baserunning

NATIONAL LEAGUE
Player	BsR	UBR
Everth Cabrera	75	65
Andrew McCutchen	60	65
Carlos Gonzalez	70	65
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Player	BsR	UBR
Mike Trout	80	75
Jacoby Ellsbury	75	65
Rajai Davis	80	70

Other than Michael Bourn, not much of an argument can be made that these are not the best baserunners in their leagues. My only other thought before we move on is that Mike Trout and and Carlos Gonzalez are unquestionably five-tool players, evidenced by their inclusion on multiple tool lists.

Photo credit: USA Today Sports

Pitchers

As with the hitting stats, here is a breakdown of where the pitching grades come from.

Grade	ERA	FIP	fWAR	RA9-WAR	vFA	wFA/C	wCH/C	wCU/C	wSL/C	BB%
80	0.94	1.74	6.4	7.6	96.58	5.49	11.79	5.31	7.58	13.91
70	1.94	2.48	4.8	5.6	93.98	3.62	7.69	3.47	5.11	11.82
60	2.95	3.22	3.3	3.7	91.38	1.76	3.60	1.62	2.65	9.72
50	3.96	3.96	1.8	1.8	88.79	-0.11	-0.49	-0.23	0.18	7.63
40	4.97	4.70	0.3	-0.1	86.19	-1.97	-4.58	-2.08	-2.28	5.53
30	5.98	5.44	-1.3	-2.1	83.59	-3.84	-8.68	-3.93	-3.84	3.44
20	6.99	6.18	-2.8	-4.0	80.99	-5.70	-12.77	-5.78	-5.70	1.34

Best Pitcher

NATIONAL LEAGUE
Player	ERA	FIP	WAR	RA9-WAR
Clayton Kershaw	65	65	70	70
Matt Harvey	65	75	80	75
Adam Wainwright	60	65	70	65
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Player	ERA	FIP	WAR	RA9-WAR
Max Scherzer	55	55	65	60
Felix Hernandez	60	65	70	65
Matt Moore	55	50	55	55

Although I'm not sure that "best pitcher" really fits in on a best tools list, I obliged in trying to give grades. I used ERA (actual production), FIP, and two versions of WAR/200 innings to attempt to encapsulate total value. Here I think the managers did much better with the National League pitchers, though picking those three starters wasn't exactly a difficult task. In the American League, Felix is the easy top choice for best pitcher, but the other two spots could be debated. Scherzer would grade out better if we were only looking at the last half of 2012 and all of this season, so his inclusion makes sense. The third spot is actually a very tough choice, though. Some of the top pitchers like Justin Verlander and C.C. Sabathia have had been down this year, and others like Moore and James Shields have not been consistent enough to be in the same conversation with the others. Personally, I'd go with Yu Darvish or Chris Sale, though I think the argument could be made for a number of arms.

Best Fastball

NATIONAL LEAGUE
Player	vFA	wFA/C
Aroldis Chapman	80	55
Matt Harvey	75	60
Craig Kimbrel	75	60
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Player	vFA	wFA/C
Max Scherzer	70	50
Justin Verlander	75	55
Kelvin Herrera	80	50

In the best pitch categories, I looked at velocity for fastballs and then I used PITCHf/x's pitch weights per 100 pitches for each category to hopefully put the starters and relievers on the same scale. Truth be told, I don't love that measure because I think the data is somewhat limited and lacking a great amount of context to judge how effective a pitch type has been, but in an effort to keep this somewhat simple that's the method I used. Along the lines of that thinking, I really have no issue with any selections in these categories, and I'll just offer a few surprising results that maybe could have been on the list.

With an average FB velocity of 96.7 mph and a wFA/C of 1.09, Trevor Rosenthal would be the one pitcher that grades well in both areas that missed the list, although I'm not sure he's more deserving than Chapman, Harvey, and Kimbrel. But my favorite snub goes to Koji Uehara, who judging by pitch weights has a 60-grade fastball, despite an average velocity of just 88 mph.

Best Slider

NATIONAL LEAGUE
Player	wSL/C
Craig Kimbrel	65
Sergio Romo	60
Matt Harvey	55
American League
Player	wSL/C
Chris Sale	55
Max Scherzer	55
Yu Darvish	60

With a 65-grade slider, Aroldis Chapman easily could have replaced Sergio Romo here to make the NL's list identical to top fastballs in the circuit. The biggest snub, if you can call it that, actually goes to Rays' rookie Chris Archer, who has a 60-grade slider that he has thrown over 30% of the time in his young career.

Best Curveball

NATIONAL LEAGUE
Player	wCB/C
Adam Wainwright	60
Clayton Kershaw	60
Jose Fernandez	65
American League
Player	wCB/C
Clay Buchholz	50
Justin Verlander	60
Felix Hernandez	55

Best Changeup

NATIONAL LEAGUE
Player	wCH/C
Cole Hamels	60
Hyun-Jin Ryu	55
Tyler Clippard	55
American League
Player	wCH/C
James Shields	55
Felix Hernandez	55
Fernando Rodney	55

Every pitcher on the curveball and changeup boards has at least an above average offering that they use often, so I again think the managers did well in picking these players. The only pitchers that really ranked ahead in either category were pitchers that used the pitches very infrequently, or ones who are currently injured and therefore discounted like Ryan Madson and his wicked cambio.

Best Control

NATIONAL LEAGUE
Player	BB%
Adam Wainwright	60
Cliff Lee	70
Jordan Zimmermann	60
American League
Player	BB%
Bartolo Colon	65
Hisashi Iwakuma	55
Felix Hernandez	60

The final pitching category looked at is control, and like Mark Smith I thought about using a combination of metrics before settling on just good-old-fashioned walk rate. If we are only considering starters, the six pitchers selected here represent some of the best walk rates of the past few seasons, showing yet again that the managers intuitively did a good job of agreeing with the numbers. If we decided to include relievers, which I would have done, I would have replaced Iwakuma with Koji Uehara or even the immortal Mariano Rivera, both of whom are 70-grade walk rate pitchers.

Managers

Lastly, for fun I wanted to quickly look at the Managers that were rated the best by their peers. I did not go back and actually assign grades, but rather I looked at the winning percentage and expected winning percentage for each team so far this season. And once again the Managers did a pretty good job of selecting top-skippers, that is if you believe that outperforming your Pythagorean winning percentage is a good measure of managerial success. Only Jim Leyland's Tigers have not overachieved, and he gets a pass for being in the World Series just last season.

So there you have it, some grades for the tools that managers say are the best in the game. Trust me when I say that this is an imperfect measure, and going forward we will have some more work on scouting big league players, but for now I hope this adds some value and context to a terrific column that BA runs every year. If nothing else, it gives another chance to marvel at just how great players like Mike Trout, Miguel Cabrera, Matt Harvey, and Craig Kimbrel really are, even when compared to the top talents in Major League Baseball.

. . .

All stats courtesy of FanGraphs.

Andrew Ball is a writer for Beyond the Box Score, Fake Teams, and Fantasy Ninjas.

You can follow him on twitter @Andrew_Ball.

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