LookinUp

1. AR (Reputation grade) 2. DL Hall 3. Grayson Rodriguez 4. Mountcastle (Late season plate discipline was a great tease. Hope it's real) 5. Baumann 6. Hays (Believe he could be #4 if healthy, but he hasn't been) 7. Diaz (I want him at 4, but tea leaves are telling me the org isn't happy with him. So he's rated lower than I think his talent deserves.) 8. Harvey 9. Lowther 10. Gunnar (show me) 11. Kremer 12. Adam Hall 13. Akin 14. Hernaiz 15. Rom 16. Zimmerman 17. Sedlock 18. Wells 19. Hanifee 20. Cumberland 21. Pop 22. Stowers 23. Rizer 24. Watson 25. Welk I'm way out of my comfort zone down here. Figure an international guy or two could make it and I have some of the 10-15 above in particular pretty far off, so it's time to stop pretending. Lol. Not really an Ortiz guy (either one). Bannon could belong in here for sure. McCoy, probably not. Leo Rodriguez? And I'm missing some, no doubt.

National League. I'm not sure if the data supports it, but I think success in that league for pitchers is easier than the AL, particularly the AL East.

I'm comfortable with my position at the time, which was Rendon, Cole, Bundy, in that order. As an aside, that was an insanely talented draft class. Lindor, Baez, Springer and more followed.

The only disclosure that he could be doing so is in his sentence saying this is "for dynasty leagues." I hate to be so critical. He probably has to do this for 32 orgs. I can only imagine how hard that must be, particularly when you get past the top 5-10 prospects, so I think he's doing a fine job all things considered. It's just littered by old or uncontextualized (Harvey, Diaz, Kremer) information, IMO.

I honestly love that he rated Hall higher, not because I necessarily agree or disagree, but because he did it based on projection. He decided there were tools to really like and decided to plant his flag on that player. That's fine, but I thought he was inconsistent in doing so for others, most notably Baumann and Harvey. It was kind of notable to me that he had Elio Prado (of the Cashner trade) at 17. I guess that means at least one person is hearing good things about the kid. Also kind of funny to me that he didn't mention Hernaiz. Kind of a little bit of a tell that his knowledge of the org is a bit shallow, IMO.

I feel like people will have a hard time evaluating Kremer, Diaz and Hays in particular. I personally want to believe that each of their profiles is better than what any of them showed through most of this past year. The Adam Hall write-up was interesting. The rationale for putting him that high is pretty clearly articulated, so I don't hate it. The Gunnar write-up was very bullish, IMO. Sounds like a worthy future 3B type if the bat develops as projected. The McKenna write-up is baffling to me, from his placement at #9 to the bullish assessment of his swing. I'm not giving up on the guy either, but he has changes to make to reach the projections the author makes. His conclusion that Baumann has legit #3 upside and could arrive in 2020 make his placement at #10 weird IMO. I mean, I get his 3rd pitch isn't on par with the first two, but the profile is better than McKenna's, for example. I do like his rationale for having Lowther ahead of Akin, but I'd have both higher on the list just based on their ML ETAs. I think @Luke-OH in particular, but most here, will be pretty unimpressed about his Harvey write-up. Having him at 21 seems pretty silly to me at this point. Finally, #23 was Cadyn Grenier. Enough said. [Edit: This list is a perfect example of the difference between other sites and the OH lists. They sound pretty smart, but I don't think their nearly as informed about O's prospects as the guys who put the OH list together.]

I completely agree with the bolded. The first part is a generalization about analytics. Power can offset a drop in average and rise in k's for certain profiles, but the power has to be real for the math to work. As you and others have pointed out, McKenna doesn't seem to have that power. I'm a little surprised on Diaz though. Maybe I'm looking at him through orange colored glasses, but in between injuries, I think he really started to impress by the end of this year. IDK. Maybe it's a selective memory that I have. I'll look forward to seeing what you guys write up in more depth.

I want to believe this is true, but I can't get over the fact that Jaime Moyers come along very infrequently, and most often as guys who used to throw harder but have transitioned to pitchability types at the end of their careers. He's not very high on my personal list even though he's clearly an exceptional MiL pitcher. Hopefully I'm wrong.

He sounds very much like Ryan Mountcastle, at a high level at least. Profiles as a bat first guy who won't stick at short. With that said, hopefully he doesn't have an obviously deficient arm like Mountcastle. If he turns into a 3B eventually, which is what it sounds like to me, that bat could be a real plus. A ton of development between now and then though. I'd expect them to take it slow with him.

Am curious your opinion... Mine was generally that hard contact is the hardest skill to teach, and that transferring from contact to power was easier than the opposite. When you have a straight power approach and you're on, it's glorious. However, when you're not in a groove, it gets really ugly. I don't recommend that approach for pretty much anyone. Even supremely talented hitters like Giancarlo Stanton can lose value quickly when they lose the line drive approach to their game. Alternatively, when you're making hard line drive contact regularly, it's easier to let yourself go and crush some balls, IMO. It's when you do too much of that approach that your swing starts to develop real holes. Well, this is all my personal experience, at least.

I know the devil is in the scouting details, but using Tony's "who would I rather have in the org" ranking philosophy, this guy has to rank quite high compared to his contemporaries (e.g., recent draftees).

Make no mistake about it, the MLB wouldn't be proposing this if it wasn't saving money, and it wouldn't save money unless someone on the back end was losing money. Subsidies for dream leagues or other independents would likely have no guarantees over time. This would mean fewer professional teams and fewer professional players over the long run. The upshot is maybe that would be good for college baseball.

That's a pretty fascinating article. MLB would save money and the talent would be better concentrated at the MiLB level. Less org guys everywhere. I bet there would have to be a waiver type of process for players coming from the dream leagues to the MiLB affiliates so all the best players can't just choose the same organization.

It seems likely that we'll shuttle pitchers back and forth a lot again this year, so a lot of those possibilities will probably get a cup of coffee. After Akin, I'd wager that Kremer and Lowther are most likely.

No Baumann?

Unfortunately, they're both smart and rich. The Dodgers of the AL. Makes them a tough competitor.

The Yankees have to be up there with the smartest teams too.

Great stat, but I'm still partial to 2,632.

Lol. Trolling alert!!!! It's a good thread. A lot to follow over what is otherwise a quiet time of year for O's fans.

Just thinking more about this. Consider player X. On day 1, player X puts this thing on their body. This player is in a hot streak to end all hot streaks. Coach Y pitches BP, and the machine takes a look at the swing metrics. On day 10, player X puts it on again. He's had a tough week. He's off balance and not seeing the ball well. This tool can identify the differences between day 1 and day 10. You can further break things down by pitch type, velocity and even spin rate (probably from another data source). After all, player X's swing is likely somewhat different for fastballs, curves and changes, inside and outside, up and down, etc. So this is one tool in a larger tool box of analytics in hopes of informing a player about what goes right and wrong over many different circumstances. It's another information gathering tool. Sig and company are then looking at all of that information for an individual player, informing coaches and players, and attempting to build the better approach. It's more systematic than a hitting coach's eye and knowledge of the next day's opponent starting pitcher, that's for sure.

I didn't mean to write the post as skeptical. I think tools like this, which will certainly improve and become more sophisticated over time, help hitting coaches and players become more aware of swing deficiencies, and that can guide training. However, like any teaching tool, if you don't understand the individual, you can really screw them up. I'd say that's particularly true on the mental side in baseball. Smart deployment of tools like this can be game changers in a positive way, but misappropriated use will likely leave some behind. The org needs to be smart enough to know for whom that line exists.

Touche. Five years from now, we'll almost certainly look back and see it very differently.

Yeah. Having 3 of the smarter teams in our division, and 3 of the wealthier teams, makes it tough.

I started listening to Patrick Jones' podcast after I heard he was hired by the O's. After listening to a few, you can tell how much of an art hitting really seems to be. Of all people, Kevin Youkilis was particularly interesting. He (and others) talked about not becoming too mechanical, which some of this technology could make happen if not properly understood. He talked about in game adjustments, hitting off balance and the importance of your own personal cues for timing or fixing your mechanics. Really interesting. Most of the guests talk about the individual hitter needs as opposed to building a robot like hitter. So this technology is important, but it still exists in a realm of maximizing the individual, not completely changing him.

Deepest list I can remember.