2038, BBA Draft Chatter

[RonCo]

This draft is wild.

Can't wait to read your first round overview this year.

[agrudez]

Can't wait to read your first round overview this year.

This 10 contact, 10 power prospect is really good.

And so is this one.

And this one.

And... these other ones.

[aaronweiner]

I'm sure it'll be more nuanced than...oh, wait, maybe not.

[crobillard]

No chance all of these guys make it right? I would imagine a lot of them will lump hard.

[RonCo]

That's the price we pay.

[recte44]

It brings a touch of "reality", and I like it.

[crobillard]

Yeah, hopefully they'll all get injured and never progress. I'm kidding of course. I don't really care all that much. I guess I like the value it places on depth.

[RonCo]

It does keep us GMs on our toes.

[JimBob2232]

I did all my analysis...and settled on RF Manobu Shimizu.

Then i realized he was gone. Ugh.

But im very happy with Donestavez. But then again, my draft pickings are garbage...

[Bumstead]

I did all my analysis...and settled on RF Manobu Shimizu.

Then i realized he was gone. Ugh.

But im very happy with Donestavez. But then again, my draft pickings are garbage...

That would have been fun to say!

[recte44]

Getting more and more excited as my pick comes closer. I still have three players I classify as "elite" on my board.

[Ted]

It brings a touch of "reality", and I like it.

Reality in that lots of the top picks will flame out. I suppose. Reality in that there are 30 players with the ratings of hall of famers? Not so much. Show me the MLB draft where the scouts said, "Holy shit, the top 25 players in this draft look as good as the top 25 players currently in the league!"

[recte44]

You gotta start thinking of them as scouts saying what their peak potential COULD be. And everyone knows how scouts love to exaggerate.

Off Topic

Coming out of Shawnee High in Lima, Brad Komminsk was billed by the Braves as the organization’s next Dale Murphy.

“He will do things Dale Murphy hasn’t dreamed of,” said Atlanta’s farm director at the time, Hank Aaron. The Braves reportedly turned down a trade offer from the Red Sox that would have sent future Hall of Fame outfielder Jim Rice to the Braves. Rice turned 30 years old in 1983, the year Komminsk made his big league debut that August.

Off Topic

They called GARY SCOTT the "Can't Miss Kid" in Chicago.

Off Topic

Baseball America ranked Nick Neugebauer ahead of Ben Sheets on an org Top 10

Off Topic

Joe Borchard agreed to terms with the Chicago White Sox on Friday for a signing bonus that his financial advisor said is $5.3 million, a figure $2.3 million more than any draft pick has received this year. The bonus is the largest minor league contract in baseball history. Only a handful of major league contracts given to draft picks have been been worth more.

Off Topic

I had the pleasure of watching UNC first baseman Dustin Ackley a dozen or so times over the past couple years. It's evident to everyone who's spent any time watching him that he's a special prospect. Watching Ackley walk onto a college field was like watching Matt Damon walk into the judge's game in the movie Rounders. Some guys are so far beyond their competition that it almost defies description. Dustin Ackley is one of the most polished, patient, well-rounded hitters to come out of college in a long while. He's on the same tier as guys like Justin Smoak, Gordon Beckham, Buster Posey, Matt Wieters, and Evan Longoria. Ackley should consistently be among the league leaders in batting average as well as OBP, with the potential for more power after a few mechanical tweaks. He could do this while being a good defender at a key, up-the-middle position.

His ultimate upside is a Chase Utley-type, MVP caliber all-around player.

Off Topic

In 1987 Mark Merchant was the #2 pick behind Ken Griffey, Jr. Some felt the Mariners made a mistake. Merchant got a higher bonus than Griffey, Jr.

Off Topic

Bill Pulsipher- A brash lefty who said “You’ll never find another of me”–they did, his name was Jason Isringhausen–and ripped the minors to shreds looked to be the next Seaver or Gooden, only left-handed. All the great Mets teams in history were built on the backs of powerful starting rotations, and Pulsipher was to be the herald of Queens’ third mighty squad.

Off Topic

Lastings Milledge has the best overall potential of any prospect in the Mets farm system, and one of the highest pure physical ceilings in the game overall. If he can develop the skills to go with his tools, he can be a star.

Off Topic

John Marzano- “Blue chip type. Can be front liner in ML with imp on hitting. Running speed has improved, 4.4 to 1B. Knows how to receive. Shifts easy. On US Olympic team. Wants to sign.”

Off Topic

Jeff Suppan- “Parents changed their minds and now say he can sign if college is included and he is drafted high. … The best RHP I’ve seen in the last 6 years. Better than Jack McDowell or any college pitcher I have seen this year.”

Off Topic

Scouting Directors and GMs could only imagine what Bubba Starling could be if and when he gives all of his attention to baseball.

Off Topic

Ruben Rivera hit .293/.402/.523 with 37 walks and 16 steals and nine homers in 71 games for Double-A Norwich in '95, then .270/.373/.598 with 15 homers and 26 walks in 48 games for Triple-A Columbus, at age 20. I gave him a straight Grade A in the '96 prospect book, and compared him to Bobby Bonds. I expected that Rivera would put up Bonds-like numbers as a major leaguer: so-so batting average with a lot of strikeouts, but tons of power, lots of speed, and a high walk rate keeping his OBP very good despite the strikeouts. -John Sickels

Off Topic

If there was a Hall of Fame for baseball prospects, Delmon Young would be a shoo-in. He might be the greatest prospect of all time, at least, if you take a scouts word for it.

This is just from 10 minutes of googling.

[felipe]

I dont google much, but I oogle a lot

[Ted]

Matt, "scouts can be wrong" does not equal "scouts rate entire first round of draft as hall of fame quality players." your example are about scout mistakes across decades of drafts.

Scouts do not "love to exaggerate". That is akin to saying, "Scouts love to do their job poorly." They are just wrong sometimes. It's exceptionally hard to predict what a player will do. I can see your idea about looking at it from the top end of a player's potential, but that's useless from a GM standpoint.

Hell, if we looked at it that way, the entire draft would be 80 grade prospects. See Albert Pujols and Mike Piazza. No one thought they'd be anything, and they were drafted crazy late. You can't practice in an environment where GMs look at guys from an "if everything goes right" standpoint, when most of them will fail. That basically means you're just throwing darts, and there's no point to scouting at all.

[Bumstead]

Do you know how much I got for Delmon Young TWICE in the same fantasy baseball league????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Ted]

I know some people like deep drafts. But when all that means is that most of the top players will have to lump, I fail to understand the excitement. I think it's far more fun to be sorting a bunch of very average looking prospects by round 4 and 5 and digging for gold by rounds 6 and 7. Then you're pleasantly surprised later when they bump.

If you're drafting guys who look like starting positions players in round 3, you're just going to have to deal with the disappointment when everyone lumps. All you got to do is have a shiny new toy for a season or so that never even made it out of the low levels.

These players simply HAVE to lump for the game to work. You can't have players in round 5 and 6 or the draft making the bigs regularly. . Same as every other year. So all these bloated ratings mean nothing.

If even half these players made the bigs (this draft looks like everyday players through at least 5 rounds), you'd have 70 starting player caliber players come in every year. A league that functions like that is essentially broken. For comparison, in MLB, only ten percent of minor leagues make it to the bigs. Note that not all minor leagues come in through the draft. About 66 percent of first round player make it. Second round is 49 percent. 32 percent for rounds 3-5, 20 for 6-10. And that's for a single appearance, not for having a "career". Those percentages are considerably smaller.

So let's look at that. If 66 percent of these first rounders make it without lumping, we just added 10-14 hall of famers in a single draft. That's stupid and unsustainable. Not only do many of this picks have to lump to where they don't make it, most of them have to lump at least a little period.

And that's just the first round. The expectation for lumping in subsequent rounds has to be even higher.

You have to understand that. Which means that being excited about the 7/7/7 player you got in round 2 or the 6/7/6 player you got in round three will end in disappointment far more often than not.

This draft isn't deep. It's misleading.

[agrudez]

I'm really loving the well developed prospects this year. I miss the "college vs. high school" debates of old since we switched to this all teenager draft pool. I hope that's a trend that continues.

[RonCo]

90% of this conversation is philosophical, the other half is OOTP moneyball.

I liked Matt's comment about there being a couple elite guys left. I mean, yes, there are a lot of "80s" and "75s" and "70s," ans yes, Ted's almost certainly right that many of these guys will lump, but all of these 80s have different values, and yes, a few I think are more elite than the rest. It's all in how you see things. I'll not that I don't believe OOTP's ability to assign the 20/80 scale is particularly good...

As far as gameplay goes, the only real "problem" with that is that it takes some of the advantage that early drafters have away. Deep drafts are better for the "haves." But that's neither here nor there. The fact is that wen so many players are really good, then in a lot of ways the drafting process is no different than when they are all "Average." You're looking at guys with lots of blue bars and finding holes...which you then judge them by. Whateves.

It also makes the game of managing your minors after the drafts more a game of cattle-call attrition rather than a game of finding a hidden gem and finding ways to hone him.

I'm on record for preferring less deep drafts, but I'm fine with either way.

If ratings bloat up to where everyone is about the same, then the OOTP part of the game becomes more of a "stats only" kind of a game (because most ratings are the same). Which is fun, too.

In other words, I'm rolling along with whatever.

[RonCo]

Matt, "scouts can be wrong" does not equal "scouts rate entire first round of draft as hall of fame quality players." your example are about scout mistakes across decades of drafts.

Scouts do not "love to exaggerate". That is akin to saying, "Scouts love to do their job poorly." They are just wrong sometimes. It's exceptionally hard to predict what a player will do. I can see your idea about looking at it from the top end of a player's potential, but that's useless from a GM standpoint.

Hell, if we looked at it that way, the entire draft would be 80 grade prospects. See Albert Pujols and Mike Piazza. No one thought they'd be anything, and they were drafted crazy late. You can't practice in an environment where GMs look at guys from an "if everything goes right" standpoint, when most of them will fail. That basically means you're just throwing darts, and there's no point to scouting at all.

As I said a moment ago, one thing to remember is that part of this problem is that OOTP has never, ever, been able to deal with overall ratings, ever. Stars? 2-8? 1-10? 20-80? Never. If you're using "80" to mean what scouts mean, then you're wrong...though it feels more baseball like to say "80" rather than "five-star" which sounds like college basketball or college football.

One can get mad at OOTP for that, and it's totally justified. But the game is going into its 20th version and, like a friend who always pisses you off when they get drunk, it's never been good at this. At some point or another you have to look at the guy and just say..."we'll, yeah, he's an asshole, but he's my asshole," and move on.

----

To Matt's view that there's realism here, well, as bloated as the ratings are, there is -some-realism to the feel of lots of prospects coming in shiny and then crapping out in silence. The real gameplay deal will be how the future plays out. DO the same number of guys make the bigs, or not? Do these kids hold their ratings well enough to force our population get super young for awhile? How will it influence the scarcity model (pitching, for example, is going through a down period. This will eventually bounce back, but will it happen via the draft or development or finds or...???

I dunno.

Bottom line, while I think the two of use are in the same basic camp on how we'd like the gameplay to work, the bottom line is that the game's use of overall ratings is such that there is no "realistic." Only different processes that can be pretended to be.