Adam Frazier 2023

[wildcard]

13 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

 

Ok, so apparently after 20+ years of you guys knowing my ability to scout, you both decide that you will go with "pipeline" lol and a quote from Roch on his speed. 

So since you don't believe me, maybe use statcast which doesn't lie. Although only a few bolts were measured, he has 79th percentile running. So while Ortiz has never been a base stealer, he covers 28.2 ft/sec vs Frazier's 26.3 ft/sec good for 31st percentile. 

He's much faster on the base paths pure and simple.

As for range, it's not just footspeed that determines range. first step quickness and reaction times are much more important overall on the infield dirt. Ortiz provides much better range than Frazier, who has been well below average range wise. 

Thanks Tony.  I always respect your opinion.  

Edited May 22, 2023 by wildcard

[owknows]

9 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I’m not trying to make this personal, so I apologize if the tone of my post was too strong.  You are a good poster and I enjoy reading your perspectives.  

I appreciate the reset in the interaction.

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That said, there’s a point in your post above that I’m not following, where you say “You pointed out in this thread that his WAR had dipped to 0.1 pm April 30th. When his OPS was .759.”   But his OPS wasn’t .759 then, so I’m not sure what you were saying. 

Maybe we're talking past one another. I posted his performance for the months of March/April and it showed an OPS in the mid .600's for the entirety of that time. (and that I thought his WAR was replacement level at that time... which is to say near zero)

In what I took to be a rebuttal, you told me you were tracking WAR over time, and you posted a table showing that metric...  which included an OPS of .759 for the time period you calculated (which was considerably higher than the mid .600's that he posted for the entire months of March/April.) It would appear that your data spanned only a 19 game subset of the 29 which comprised March/April. And depending on whose WAR you use, his figures could have been anywhere from 0.1 to 0.6 over that time..

I consider WAR to be a little bit polluted by confirmation bias to begin with, so I really am a little disappointed with myself for prolonging a conflicted discussion over it.

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As to your statement that May’s .840 OPS is a hot streak, I agree with that.  I’m don’t expect him to post an .840 OPS over an extended period of time.  I’d guess he’s likely to finish under his current .742, not over.  But I’m also pretty confident that he’ll be positive in both rWAR and fWAR when the year ends.   He’s at 1.0/0.6 as of this morning.  

He's wearing orange... he seems like a great guy and a great team mate. Hard not to root for him. And I do.

I characterized his current state as a tick below replacement. In retrospect that was probably a little harsh.

All that said, my larger point has nothing to do with Frazier or his performance per se. My concern has never been Frazier's contribution to the big club. It has been the impact of his acquisition on the choreography of player advancement through the minors and into the majors. We spent a lot of tough years waiting patiently for the building of a top notch farm. And it is now starting to see it's way into the majors.

But for probably sound statistical reasons..  Elias tends to favor middle infielders when drafting skill positions (they have a substantially greater probability of playing at least 4 years in the majors than do pitchers or other skill players for example).

But with that focus, we now have a considerable excess... a bumper crop if you will.. of such players. Good ones. And soon will for outfielders as well.

We are starting to see players bump their heads against the ceiling at Norfolk. And it will be less than a season before players that need to be promoted TO Norfolk have no place to go... People generally say this is a good problem to have... but if not strategically managed... it isn't. It's going to cost you players that you don't get a chance to fully evaluate... It's going to cost you trade value in forcing you to deal players that other teams know you have to deal.

This club already needed to do some strategic pruning of middle infielders. And instead of doing that it added another one in Frazier. I guess ultimately I think that Frazier could post a great season and still not be the correct move strategically... because it its going to rob you of trade value and accordian all of your farm.

[LTO's]

11 hours ago, owknows said:

It has to do with what signing Frazier (and not trading Mateo or Urias) is going to do to our farm system. The one we suffered a 5 year drought to build into a powerhouse. It really isn't that hard to see the beginning of the pileup... and if they don't deal with it... it's going to needlessly cost us some good players that we endured a hellish rebuild to stock up.

 

Urias, Frazier and Mateo are not going to "cost" them any good players. I don't know why people keep saying this. 

[Sydnor]

55 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Frazier is on a nice heater slashing .314/.368/.543/.911 over his last ten games. I'm happy that he's playing well offensively overall, but his defense has been much worse than I expected from him and he's one of the slowest Orioles on the team.

I also still think Ortiz is a much better player overall than Frazier which still goes back to the lack of need to sign him.

But, saying that, I hope the guy continues to play well and I hope his defense evens outs a bit though nothing is going to improve that lack of arm strength. The good news is that overall, his arm while it lacks strength, is accurate. 

So I know that the pro Frazier people (the few that there were) are going to be running victory laps, and that's fine. But things to remember, Ortiz is a much better defender than Frazier, much faster, and if given the same amount of PAs as Frazier, who's to say he would not be doing as well or better? 

We also have to think of how many PAs Urias did not get because of Frazier so Urias' production pre injury was out performing Frazier both offensively and defensively.

So great, I'm happy that Frazier is doing well, but nothing he does will take away from the fact that Elias signed a player to a position that we did not have a need for and while he's been good of late, He was OPSing .674 just 8 games ago.

I hope he continues to do well, but I would not be surprised if this is not his high water mark for the season.

Well said. I think Ortiz is going to be very good, and would give us top of the scale defense at second, so even if he slumped with the bat, he would be providing value that Frazier does not if his hitting declines.  But, I am a big Ortiz fan. When I first saw him in Norfolk, he (and Gunnar) just looked like pros to me. I loved his elite reactions, hands, and ability to make contact. He is the reason I hated the move to sign Frazier. In fact, this might be outlandish and I’ll probably be wrong, but if I had to bet on 1 prospect to hit his 90th percentile outcome, it would be Ortiz.

[maybenxtyr]

8 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

I don't think there is a "significant" difference in range between Mateo or Ortiz. I'd have to look at the data provided by Fangraphs and Statcast, but I would give Mateo a slight edge, but not significant. Mateo has the better arm but Ortiz is more accurate and probably about major league average.

If you had to make a decision within a month considering where the team currently sits, and where they hope to be at the end of the season, would you replace Mateo with Ortiz? 

 

 

[Bemorewins]

2 minutes ago, Sydnor said:

Well said. I think Ortiz is going to be very good, and would give us top of the scale defense at second, so even if he slumped with the bat, he would be providing value that Frazier does not if his hitting declines.  But, I am a big Ortiz fan. When I first saw him in Norfolk, he (and Gunnar) just looked like pros to me. I loved his elite reactions, hands, and ability to make contact. He is the reason I hated the move to sign Frazier. In fact, this might be outlandish and I’ll probably be wrong, but if I had to bet on 1 prospect to hit his 90th percentile outcome, it would be Ortiz.

"One prospect" out of how many? All of out top 100 guys? All of our top prospects? All of MLB's top prospects? All of the guys who started at Norfolk this season? ... Something else?

[Mr-splash]

14 minutes ago, Sydnor said:

Well said. I think Ortiz is going to be very good, and would give us top of the scale defense at second, so even if he slumped with the bat, he would be providing value that Frazier does not if his hitting declines.  But, I am a big Ortiz fan. When I first saw him in Norfolk, he (and Gunnar) just looked like pros to me. I loved his elite reactions, hands, and ability to make contact. He is the reason I hated the move to sign Frazier. In fact, this might be outlandish and I’ll probably be wrong, but if I had to bet on 1 prospect to hit his 90th percentile outcome, it would be Ortiz.

You may be right, however right now Frazier is better than Ortiz and Gunnar. Which to be fair to them, is not necessarily a knock on them. Frazier is an experienced veteran who is still young enough to get it done. If Ortiz and Gunnar were veterans and Frazier was a rookie they would probably be better than Frazier. The value of Frazier is he simple better in the now than what we currently have. 

Edited May 22, 2023 by Mr-splash
Typo

[Just Regular]

I don't know how it could be calculated, but one of the things I think that Mike Elias thinks is that while Frazier's overall production is weak, its more resilient against top pitching.

Mountcastle and Mateo run hot and cold and at year end some of the 162 baseball card numbers are better, but do you prefer them or Frazier against Pablo Lopez or Gerrit Cole?

All 7 of the other regulars are OBP .330 or better except the two big laggards.    MLB average this morning is .320.

[Sports Guy]

While I agree some are too dismissive of Frazier at times, it’s hilarious how over the top people are being about Frazier’s value and abilities. 

[Mr-splash]

5 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

While I agree some are too dismissive of Frazier at times, it’s hilarious how over the top people are being about Frazier’s value and abilities. 

He has outplayed Gunnar and Ortiz (albeit very small sample size with Ortiz) so far. Why doesnt that compute?

[Sydnor]

29 minutes ago, Bemorewins said:

"One prospect" out of how many? All of out top 100 guys? All of our top prospects? All of MLB's top prospects? All of the guys who started at Norfolk this season? ... Something else?

All of the guys who started the season at Norfolk. I should’ve been more specific. Not trying to have a hot take, I just really like Ortiz’ game.

[interloper]

13 minutes ago, Just Regular said:

I don't know how it could be calculated, but one of the things I think that Mike Elias thinks is that while Frazier's overall production is weak, its more resilient against top pitching.

Mountcastle and Mateo run hot and cold and at year end some of the 162 baseball card numbers are better, but do you prefer them or Frazier against Pablo Lopez or Gerrit Cole?

All 7 of the other regulars are OBP .330 or better except the two big laggards.    MLB average this morning is .320.

I like this take. 

[Frobby]

44 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

 

Ok, so apparently after 20+ years of you guys knowing my ability to scout, you both decide that you will go with "pipeline" lol and a quote from Roch on his speed. 

So since you don't believe me, maybe use statcast which doesn't lie. Although only a few bolts were measured, he has 79th percentile running. So while Ortiz has never been a base stealer, he covers 28.2 ft/sec vs Frazier's 26.3 ft/sec good for 31st percentile. 

He's much faster on the base paths pure and simple.

As for range, it's not just footspeed that determines range. first step quickness and reaction times are much more important overall on the infield dirt. Ortiz provides much better range than Frazier, who has been well below average range wise. 

Honestly, I just read the Roch quote yesterday and was too lazy to look up whatever you had said.  I didn’t look at Statcast because I wouldn’t have thought there was enough data yet to rate his speed.  He’s only played in 10 games.   Now that I look at your scouting report, you had his speed at 50, which is not far off Pipeline’s 45.   I’d say if he’s really 79th percentile (and I’d prefer a bigger sample to confirm that), he’s more of a 55 than a 50, right?

[Sports Guy]

13 minutes ago, Mr-splash said:

He has outplayed Gunnar and Ortiz (albeit very small sample size with Ortiz) so far. Why doesnt that compute?

Mentioning Ortiz is idiotic. He has no sample size to go off of. Just stop.

As for Gunnar…yes he has been better so far. He has been worth .4 more fWAR and that’s with Gunnar playing about as bad as he could.

Good for Frazier. He has outplayed a rookie who is learning and adjusting and has barely been better and up until the last week, it was even closer.

By the end of the year, this won’t be the case. Probably won’t be the case by the time July starts.

I stand by what I said. You all are being foolish and over the top with how you are talking about Frazier…just as a complete dismissal of Frazier is equally foolish.

 

Edited May 22, 2023 by Sports Guy

[Bemorewins]

19 minutes ago, Sydnor said:

All of the guys who started the season at Norfolk. I should’ve been more specific. Not trying to have a hot take, I just really like Ortiz’ game.

Understood. We are probably not going to be able to retain Ortiz, Westburg, and Cowser in the long run. But I hope no matter where they all end up, they all succeed.