A look at the 99 pitchers who made the BA top 100 prospects list, 2008-10

[Frobby]

About a week ago, in a thread about BA’s rankings of Rodriguez and Hall, I tossed out a statement that the chances of a BA Top 100 pitcher becoming a reliable starting pitcher was only maybe 50/50.    Later, I posted a link to a study that had looked at 20 years of data that more than supported that conclusion.

 

But, I wanted to drill a little deeper.    Who are some of these guys?   How old were they and what level were they at when they were ranked?    How high on the list?    Were they on the list more than one year?    It was too much for me to look at 20 years of data, so I looked at three years, 2008-10.     I found that in that period, 99 different pitchers appeared on the BA top 100 list at least one of those years.    Of those 99, they appeared on a BA list 201 times, so an average of two each (this includes appearances by those pitchers either before the 2008-10 period).    The 99 pitchers have averaged 7.9 rWAR in the majors.     92 made the majors; 7 never did.    I consider 31 of them to have met my criteria for having been a “reliable starting pitcher,” which I decided meant either 150 starts or 10+ WAR primarily as a starter.    Here’s a further breakdown.

 

The No. 1 Studs:   I count six – Clayton Kershaw, David Price, Johnny Cueto, Max Scherzer, Madison Bumgarner and Stephen Strasburg.     Each of these pitchers has been worth 30+ rWAR and made 239+ starts.

 

The Solid No. 2’s:  There are six of these, too – Gio Gonzalez, Carlos Carrasco, Jordan Zimmermann, Jhoulys Chacin, Jake Arrieta and Julio Tehran.    Each has been worth 20+ rWAR and made 183+ starts.   I know some would argue Arrieta belongs in the “stud” category but his dominant period was actually pretty short.   Gio Gonzalez actually has a higher WAR total (29.2) than Arrieta does (25.5).

 

The Middle of Rotation Guys: I put five pitchers here – Clay Buchholz, Rick Porcello, Ian Kennedy, Jeff Samardzija and Mike Leake.    Each has accrued 15+ rWAR and made 218+ starts.  

 

The Middle/Back of Rotation Guys: Fourteen pitchers go here: Homer Bailey, Brett Anderson, Jair Jurrjens, Justin Masterson, Chris Tillman, Trevor Cahill, Derek Holland, Jon Niese, Martin Perez, Jeremy Hellickson, Matt Moore, Zack Wheeler, Kyle Gibson, and Andrew Cashner.   Of these 14, 12 met my 150 start criterion, and 7 met my 10+ WAR criterion.   Of the latter 7, Jair Jurrjens and Zack Wheeler didn’t make 150 starts.     The five who met both criteria are Brett Anderson, Justin Masterson, Trevor Cahill, Jeremy Hellickson and Andrew Cashner.

 

So, that leaves 68 pitchers who didn’t meet my criteria for a “reliable starting pitcher.”    I think you can see, eyeballing the above list, that many of these “reliable” starters still flamed out after a few years.

 

I’ll make a few other posts looking at the other 68 pitchers and also getting into some of the questions I asked about whether there are other indicators of which pitchers are more likely to be a successful starter.   

[Frobby]

2 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

Impressive research once again. 

Thanks.   Alternative thread title: How I killed my weekend.

[waroriole]

This is why I visit OH. Shows how important the second phase of finding serviceable back end SP out of the mid and lower tier prospects actually is. 

[MurphDogg]

Good stuff, although technically your 50/50 post was in response to the top 10 position list post, which is a smaller, more elite subset than top 100 prospects and presumably had more success (or at least they did in the one year I looked at).

[Just Regular]

Hear hear!

If you now as I imagine have a worksheet of 100 pitchers, with '08, '09, and '10 BA rankings placements and rWAR tallies, I'd be curious to see how those percentages shift around by basket.  To an extent "BA Top 100" prospect is a somewhat broad brush - Clayton Kershaw is nothing like Jon Niese.  I'm guessing success percentages increase fairly sharply as one pushes towards the Top 40, then Top 20, then Top 5 - that's the precipice Rodriguez and Hall are approaching now, as are other possible future Orioles like Hancock, Rocker and Leiter.

This is the year we find out if the current Big Two are going to grow from someone with a ~30% shot to become Front Half of rotation relevant to perhaps a ~75% shot.

And then for our pitching braintrust, there's the job of curating the likes of 9th round picks into Jacob DeGroms.

[Frobby]

The Other 68 Pitchers

So what about the other 68 pitchers?    Well, I wouldn't call all of them failures, though many were.    Some went on to become stud relievers, or at least, reliable relievers.     Others managed to hang around for a pretty long time despite being very mediocre.     And, a good number had a cup of coffee and were gone.    Here are some more buckets:

The Stud Relievers:   I put three pitchers here -- Wade Davis, Zack Britton and Aroldis Chapman.    Each has been worth 10+ rWAR primarily as a reliever.     Davis and Britton were starters for a while before being shifted to the pen.   Chapman started in the minors but never started a major league game.

The Reliable Relievers:  Each of these 10 pitchers has pitched at least 300 games or been worth at least 5 rWAR -- Joba Chamberlain, Franklin Morales, Jake McGee, Neftali Feliz, Brett Cecil, Jeremy Jeffress, Dan Hudson, Alex Colome, Chris Perez and Drew Storen.   It's worth mentioning that Perez and Storen, and possibly a few others among the 99 pitchers, were relievers even in the minors when they were ranked.

They Played at Least a While:   These 17 guys pitched 100 major league games and avoided having a negative WAR:  Nick Blackburn, Chris Volstad, Luke Hochever, Troy Patton, Jordan Walden, Scott Elbert, Michael Bowden, Tommy Hanson, Brian Matusz, James McDonald, Daniel Bard, Mike Montgomery, Aaron Crow, Tanner Scheppers, Shelby Miller, Jenrry Mejia, and Arodys Vizcaino.

Short Timers:  There are 12 guys who pitched under 100 games but managed to stay above water on WAR.    Two deserve special mention.     Jarrod Parker was named to the BA Top 100 five straight years, and had a successful start to his big league career, amassing 6.5 rWAR in three seasons.   But then he needed a second TJ surgery (he'd had one in the minors, and twice needed surgery to repair fractrures in his elbow.    The other special mention is Nick Adenhart, who made the BA Top 100 four times in a row, and tragically died in a car accident after making four major league starts.    A promising career cut short by tragedy.

Negative WAR Guys:  There are 19 of these and I won't mention them all by name but a few deserve special mention because they lasted pretty long despite their negative WAR.    Jordan Lyles made 143 starts and pitched in 245 games while amassing -1.6 rWAR.    Manny Parra made 74 starts and pitched 322 games while totaling -2.1 rWAR.   Ross Detwiler made 95 starts and pitched in 208 games and accumulated -0.1 rWAR.    There are a few others who pitched 100+ games.

Never Made It:  Seven guys never made it to the majors at all.    Four of those were guys who were listed towards the bottom part of the list and never made a second appearance, three of whom were very young and with little or no track record when listed.    But one guy deserves special mention.    Cleveland prospect Adam Miller made the BA top 100 list five years running, was as high as 16 at one point, and reached AAA.    But then he tore a tendon in the middle finger of his pitching hand that required surgery, and he was never the same again.   Sad story, and I'm sure, far from the only case where injuries derailed one of these prospects.

[Can_of_corn]

3 minutes ago, Frobby said:

 Cleveland prospect Adam Miller made the BA top 100 list five years running, was as high as 16 at one point, and reached AAA.    But then he tore a tendon in the middle finger of his pitching hand that required surgery, and he was never the same again.   Sad story, and I'm sure, far from the only case where injuries derailed one of these prospects.

Can he still double barrel flip people off?

[hoosiers]

The successful SP code is a tough one to crack.  Nice work, Frobby.

[Aristotelian]

Joba Chamberlain will always have a special place in my heart for his role in the 2014 ALDS.

[O's84]

1 hour ago, Can_of_corn said:

Can he still double barrel flip people off?

I'm sure, how else is he going to drive?

[Frobby]

4 hours ago, MurphDogg said:

Good stuff, although technically your 50/50 post was in response to the top 10 position list post, which is a smaller, more elite subset than top 100 prospects and presumably had more success (or at least they did in the one year I looked at).

 

4 hours ago, OrioleDog said:

Hear hear!

If you now as I imagine have a worksheet of 100 pitchers, with '08, '09, and '10 BA rankings placements and rWAR tallies, I'd be curious to see how those percentages shift around by basket.  To an extent "BA Top 100" prospect is a somewhat broad brush - Clayton Kershaw is nothing like Jon Niese.  I'm guessing success percentages increase fairly sharply as one pushes towards the Top 40, then Top 20, then Top 5 - that's the precipice Rodriguez and Hall are approaching now, as are other possible future Orioles like Hancock, Rocker and Leiter.

I did in fact create a spreadsheet.     As mentioned, many of the pitchers were on the BA list more than once.    So, I've sorted them into four buckets according to the highest ranking they attained.

BA 1-25:  30 pitchers achieved this level, and that group averaged 12.5 rWAR.     Of the 31 pitchers I categorized as "reliable starters," from this bucket you have four of the No. 1 Studs (Kershaw, Price, Strasburg and Bumgarner), one of the Solid No. 2's (Teheran), two of the Mid-Rotation guys (Buchholz and Porcello) and eight of the Middle/Back of Rotation guys (Bailey, Anderson, Tillman, Cahill, M. Perez, Hellickson, Moore and Wheeler).    So, that's 15 of the 30 who became reliable starting pitchers by my definition.  Two of the Stud Relievers, Davis and Chapman, also came from this bucket.

BA 26-50: 26 pitchers achieved this level and the group averaged 7.3 rWAR.    The group includes one No. 1 Stud (Cueto), four Solid No. 2's (Gonzalez, Carrasco, Zimmermann and Chacin), one Mid-Rotation guy (Kennedy) and three Mid/Back of Rotation guys (Jurrjens, Holland and Gibson).    Nine out of 26 became reliable starters.   Stud reliever Britton also came from this category.

BA 51-75: 23 pitchers reached this level, averaging 6.1 rWAR.   They include one No. 1 Stud (Scherzer), one Solid No. 2 (Arrieta), one Mid-Rotation guy (Leake), and two Mid/Back of Rotation guys (Niese and Cashner).   5 of 23 became reliable starters.

BA 76-100: 20 pitchers were in this bucket.    Only two became reliable starters: Samardzija in the Mid-Rotation category and Jonathan Niese in the Mid/Back of Rotation category.

Hall and Rodriguez both fall into the second bucket for now, though it's possible they could move up in future years.

 

[Philip]

I think “stud” should be an official term.

[murph]

3 hours ago, Aristotelian said:

Joba Chamberlain will always have a special place in my heart for his role in the 2014 ALDS.

I cannot ever read his name without picturing his neck swarmed with gnats.  
 

Awesome research Frobby.   The Orioles better not ever hire you away!  

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, murph said:

I cannot ever read his name without picturing his neck swarmed with gnats.  
 

Awesome research Frobby.   The Orioles better not ever hire you away!  

I don't think they can afford his rates.

[DrungoHazewood]

11 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

I don't think they can afford his rates.

He might be at the point in his life where he can leave the Washington lawyering game behind and go put in 80-hour weeks for the O's for free.