8th Round - Torsten Boss: CF, Michigan State

[pdiddy]

Anyone who sounds like they could be a 19th century German aristocrat better have the facial hair to back it up!

Is there a prohibition on spiked batting helmets?

[weams]

Is there a prohibition on spiked batting helmets?

Not to my knowledge.

[lovetoaster]

Is there a prohibition on spiked batting helmets?

Brett Lawrie approves of spiking batting helmets.

Oh, you meant something else.

[Frobby]

BA had him at no. 141 overall. Nice that he was still around in the 8th round.

[Roll Tide]

I assume that Jake Boss Jr is his father and the manager at Michigan State?

[Stotle]

Boss was in my region so I did a lot of work on his this spring. Here's the snippet from the piece I wrote for Camden Depot (link) this morning:

Boss isn't quite a "toolsy" player, though he flashes five of them throughout his game. While his 15% walk rake and .323/.443/.497 triple slash line (as of mid-May) jump out as impressive, his stats are buoyed by a heavy starter/reliever split, with Boss walking 24% of the time against relievers and triple-slashing .329/.505/.579 vs. an 8% walk rate and .319/.394/.442 triple-slash against starters. He also shows his pop almost exclusively against righties, with just 3 of his 20 extra base hits (as of mid-May) coming against southpaws. Making a name for himself with homers against St. John's Kyle Hansen and Texas A&M's Michael Wacha, Boss otherwise struggled some against elite pitching, striking out 22% of the time against arms that figured to go in the top 10 rounds, as compared to a 15% strikeout rate on the season. He is a coin-flip to stick at third and should at minimum be able to provide a little bit of versatility between the hot corner and the outfield.

[bobmc]

Boss was in my region so I did a lot of work on his this spring. Here's the snippet from the piece I wrote for Camden Depot (link) this morning:

Thanks for the update!

[Tony-OH]

Boss was in my region so I did a lot of work on his this spring. Here's the snippet from the piece I wrote for Camden Depot (link) this morning:

Excellent job of breaking down his work against the "elite" pitchers. How did you come upon those stats? Did you just go through his game log? Nice job though. I've always wanted to have a way to do this with minor leaguers as well but it was just too much work to determine.

[Stotle]

Excellent job of breaking down his work against the "elite" pitchers. How did you come upon those stats? Did you just go through his game log? Nice job though. I've always wanted to have a way to do this with minor leaguers as well but it was just too much work to determine.

Exactly -- game logs (mostly). Painstaking back trail work. Lots of the game logs are available on line if you search it out. On occasion, you have to contact a team to figure out some of their indicators in the game logs. You don't want to know how many days (weeks?) worth of hours I spent on stat analysis this spring. Ready for the pure scouting stuff to start up again next weekend.

[Tony-OH]

Exactly -- game logs (mostly). Painstaking back trail work. Lots of the game logs are available on line if you search it out. On occasion, you have to contact a team to figure out some of their indicators in the game logs. You don't want to know how many days (weeks?) worth of hours I spent on stat analysis this spring. Ready for the pure scouting stuff to start up again next weekend.

Excellent stuff Nick. Sounds like you are doing an outstanding job. I've actually never heard of a scout doing that kind of legwork with stats and its impressive.

[Stotle]

Excellent stuff Nick. Sounds like you are doing an outstanding job. I've actually never heard of a scout doing that kind of legwork with stats and its impressive.

Helped us make some decisions on coinflip guys, so it was appreciated. Still fiddling with the position player splits to see what is most useful. It's the pitcher splits and rate stats I've been working on that I really like. I think it's an untapped aspect of evaluation, primarily because the folks who tend to fall in love with that type of stat work (no offense to them) don't tend to be the guys who know what they are looking at when it comes to the scouting side (not that I'm any sort of expert).

That said, I can say I HATE doing the stat legwork! But I think it helps me do a better job.

[weams]

Helped us make some decisions on coinflip guys, so it was appreciated. Still fiddling with the position player splits to see what is most useful. It's the pitcher splits and rate stats I've been working on that I really like. I think it's an untapped aspect of evaluation, primarily because the folks who tend to fall in love with that type of stat work (no offense to them) don't tend to be the guys who know what they are looking at when it comes to the scouting side (not that I'm any sort of expert).

That said, I can say I HATE doing the stat legwork! But I think it helps me do a better job.

It is very in depth.

[AgentOrange]

Helped us make some decisions on coinflip guys, so it was appreciated. Still fiddling with the position player splits to see what is most useful. It's the pitcher splits and rate stats I've been working on that I really like. I think it's an untapped aspect of evaluation, primarily because the folks who tend to fall in love with that type of stat work (no offense to them) don't tend to be the guys who know what they are looking at when it comes to the scouting side (not that I'm any sort of expert).

That said, I can say I HATE doing the stat legwork! But I think it helps me do a better job.

So is it safe to assume this guy is a coinflip guy?

Thanks for all the information. There was hours of work that went into that one sentence.

[Lucky Jim]

Helped us make some decisions on coinflip guys, so it was appreciated. Still fiddling with the position player splits to see what is most useful. It's the pitcher splits and rate stats I've been working on that I really like. I think it's an untapped aspect of evaluation, primarily because the folks who tend to fall in love with that type of stat work (no offense to them) don't tend to be the guys who know what they are looking at when it comes to the scouting side (not that I'm any sort of expert).

That said, I can say I HATE doing the stat legwork! But I think it helps me do a better job.

Really great stuff. It's the kind of thing that would be helpful in translating performance across other contexts, too, I bet (Cuba, Japan, AAA, etc) (though probably not as drastically).

[Stotle]

So is it safe to assume this guy is a coinflip guy?

Thanks for all the information. There was hours of work that went into that one sentence.

Yeah, that's probably fair as a general term. I think the O's scout covering Michigan (or maybe a Florida scout or cross-checker saw him along the way?) probably feel it's better than a coin flip -- that is, that either he'll have the versatility to play both 3b and outfield, or the bat will develop, or both.

Pretty common outside the top tier of drat prospects (and even in that top tier) to have a wide variety of opinions on players -- even to the point where one org views a player as a long shot and another views him as a potential MLB contributor in some form.

EDIT -- sorry, didn't see my use of "coinflip" in the post you quoted. To be clear, the above response was referring to probability of providing MLB value. The "coinflip" reference in the post you quoted above was in reference to our org's decision whether or not to target a particular player. So, that would arise when the area scout and upper-management get together to discuss a player and assign a value to him for draft day.