Baseball America Roboscout Top 100

[RZNJ]

1. Coby Mayo

4. Samuel Basallo

9. Jackson Holliday

21. Chayce McDermott

35. Colton Cowser

37. DL Hall

95. Dylan Beavers

99. Joey Ortiz

What is RoboScout?

The high-level basis for how projections are created boils down to one simple truism: past performance—despite what the legal disclaimers on your 401(k) may say— are related to future returns. By looking, for example, at the average paired-year performances of hitters and pitchers historically, weighting by sample size, adjusting for survivor bias, one can generate expected age curves with reasonable accuracy of various statistics, such as walk rate (of both hitters and pitchers), strikeout rate (of both hitters and pitchers), ground ball rate (of both hitters and pitchers) and home runs per plate appearance and OPS (of hitters). Given a hitter’s OPS, walk percentage, and strikeout percentage, one can reasonably infer what their batting average is, and so forth. 

We can apply this same approach to the minor leagues. Take paired-”level” performances of hitters and pitchers historically, one can estimate what a pitcher’s strikeout rate would be in Double-A given that he had, say, a 12% strikeout percentage in High-A. By understanding the expected equivalent performance at a higher level—including MLB—we can thus generate an “expected” major league performance based on a minor leaguer’s performance (after additionally adjusting the statistical performance to the league’s run environment and also from Matt Eddy’s park factors. Now add in the “age curve” calculations from the previous paragraphs to this expected major league projection, and you can estimate what the hitter’s projection would be in his prime performance years.

Depending on how deep you wanted to go—for example, incorporating platoon splits, quality-of-competition or deriving independent age curves for different “phylums” of similar hitter archetypes—more granular adjustments can be made.

Hitting a home run on opening day does not imply a player will likely finish the season with 162 home runs. Likewise, we also apply regression to more accurately reflect expected season-long performance based on performance from small sample sizes. 

The final piece to the recipe is minor league Statcast data. Supplementing the performance inputs used in the “projections” for hitters are barrel rate, exit velocity, contact percentage and other metrics that are shown to be correlate to future wRC+. For the pitchers, RoboScout folds in the pitch-level metrics (movement, velocity, etc.) that are inputs into traditional Stuff+ models.

 

Edited February 13 by RZNJ

[btdart20]

4 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

1. Coby Mayo

4. Samuel Basallo

9. Jackson Holliday

21. Chayce McDermott

35. Colton Cowser

95. Dylan Beavers

99. Joey Ortiz

To state the obvious:  No HK and the McD ranking are both notable.

 

[RZNJ]

2 minutes ago, btdart20 said:

To state the obvious:  No HK and the McD ranking are both notable.

 

Yes.  Surprised not to see Kjerstad.   Some nationally ranked top ten and top 20 prospects are down the list some.  I’ve seen Colton Montgomery top 10 and he’s 63 on this list.  It’s interesting but I’m not sure how predictive it is.   Guess we’ll see.  Three of the top ten looks pretty good.

[CaptainRedbeard]

I’m assuming Kjerstad gets dinged because of the age. He’s a weird case where he didn’t have his first real action until he was 24 (and he did play in 2022, but wasn’t really back to being himself until the end of that season/AFL).

It’s very unusual in that he was a 24 year old who did good-not-great at AAA, but that performance in your first full year as a pro means there’s probably more untapped potential there than your typical 25 year old (like Joey Ortiz, who is pretty much maxed out and just barely cracked the list). 

What Mayo and Basallo did last year at their respective ages was amazing. It feels like it’s gone overlooked because they’re following Gunnar, and Holliday was doing it at the same time and they both have defensive question marks, but they really look like the potential future true middle of the order bats that we’re lacking. Sky high upside. 

[Just Regular]

Kjerstad for robo-scout and projection models generally is somewhat of a Jackson Holliday mirror image.    Different root causes, but Kjerstad and Bumbry both have the thing where they didn't get to play baseball all throughout their early 20's.

Basallo/Mayo...yeah!    I'm no robot but just playing with filters for Age and wRC, last 10 years only Matt Olson put up '23 Mayo numbers at age 21, and only Tatis and Vlad '23 Basallo numbers at age 18.    Past performance no guarantee of future results as always.

Today happens to be Basallo's half birtthday - now 19.5.    Elias probably just misspoke when he said Basallo was "through AA" recently; surely he meant "to AA".

 

[Can_of_corn]

No one is overlooking Basallo.

That's nonsense.

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, Can_of_corn said:

No one is overlooking Basallo.

That's nonsense.

He’s too large to overlook.  

[CaptainRedbeard]

3 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

No one is overlooking Basallo.

That's nonsense.

From the consolidated top 100 thread:

Basallo 10, 17, 13, 27, 20, 20

Mayo 25, 30, 15, 19, 27, 12
 

Both rank much higher by this methodology which is just using their age-adjusted numbers and Statcast data. A lot of that difference is the defense, and perhaps rightfully so. But my point was I think it’s gone under the radar just how exceptional they were offensively at their ages and levels, when half the time they are bucketed in that 20-30 range.

I also think amongst Orioles fans if we hadn’t just gone Rutschman-Gunnar-Holliday there would be more excitement for these two. Maybe not necessarily on the OH. 

[Can_of_corn]

The lowest ranking is 27.

Was he ranked by anyone last year?

He's not being overlooked.  He's rocketing up the lists.

[CaptainRedbeard]

4 hours ago, Just Regular said:

Basallo/Mayo...yeah!    I'm no robot but just playing with filters for Age and wRC, last 10 years only Matt Olson put up '23 Mayo numbers at age 21, and only Tatis and Vlad '23 Basallo numbers at age 18.    Past performance no guarantee of future results as always.

 

This is precisely what I mean by “under the radar.” Of course he’s rocketing up lists and I’m not even saying he necessarily should rank higher on top 100 lists, because they should consider defense in a way that (I presume) this Roboscout methodology does not. But I don’t think there’s widespread recognition that Basallo’s age 18 offensive season was this rare.

[Can_of_corn]

4 minutes ago, CaptainRedbeard said:

This is precisely what I mean by “under the radar.” Of course he’s rocketing up lists and I’m not even saying he necessarily should rank higher on top 100 lists, because they should consider defense in a way that (I presume) this Roboscout methodology does not. But I don’t think there’s widespread recognition that Basallo’s age 18 offensive season was this rare.

You sure you don't mean He's an Oriole so I'm going to look for anything that could vaguely be construed as disrespect?

No one has been anything but laudatory toward the young man.

How much digital ink would they have to spill for you to be satisfied? 

For the most part I've seen him listed as the #2 Catching prospect in the minors.

 

It's one season of data spread out over multiple small sample sizes.

 

Edited February 13 by Can_of_corn

[Frobby]

49 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

You sure you don't mean He's an Oriole so I'm going to look for anything that could vaguely be construed as disrespect?

 

Nobody said anything about disrespect, and from observing @CaptainRedbeardfor a long time, he’s one of our most objective and dispassionate posters.   It can easily be the case that Basallo has been getting plenty of attention and yet people don’t realize how rare his accomplishments last year were.  I didn’t, until this year was pointed out.  That doesn’t mean anyone’s rankings should change, it’s just an interesting data point that a lot of people overlooked.  

[CaptainRedbeard]

12 hours ago, Frobby said:

Nobody said anything about disrespect, and from observing @CaptainRedbeardfor a long time, he’s one of our most objective and dispassionate posters.   It can easily be the case that Basallo has been getting plenty of attention and yet people don’t realize how rare his accomplishments last year were.  I didn’t, until this year was pointed out.  That doesn’t mean anyone’s rankings should change, it’s just an interesting data point that a lot of people overlooked.  

Thanks @Frobby. @Can_of_corn, I’m not sure what I said that’s got under your skin, but I don’t think any of the top 100 rankings for Mayo or Basallo are disrespectful. And I certainly don’t think it’s anything like “the national media is out to get the Orioles!” In fact, when it comes to prospect rankings, I think it cuts the other way and the Orioles system is so lauded that the Orioles hitting prospects can get overrated. Enrique Bradfield Jr is the most prominent example. He was drafted mid-1st round and is cracking top 100 lists already, that requires belief that he’s going to be able to make mechanical adjustments to develop his power and I think people are more inclined to believe the Orioles system is capable of doing that.

My point was that just by going by their offensive age-adjusted production, Mayo and Basallo had exceptional seasons that are pretty rare, and I think it’s gone under the radar just how much so that was the case.  Being #1 and 4 prospects by this methodology, which by the sounds of it is pretty much just looking at that and adding in Statcast data, is evidence of that. They outperform even Holliday by this methodology, who in his own right had an exceptional age 19 year but presumably is ranked lower due to lesser power and the Statcast incorporation. Holliday is the consensus #1 overall prospect and Basallo and Mayo generally are viewed at least a cut below his tier, and that is correct due to the massive difference in defensive value. I said already I don’t necessarily disagree where they are ranked on top 100 lists for that reason. But purely offensively, Basallo and Mayo put up seasons that place them within the very top tier of prospect production. 

It’s not like I’m saying that the projection systems are biased because they project the Orioles to win 86 games 

[Can_of_corn]

I just don't think the National media needs to spend more time on them. Yes he had a great year and it was noted, everyone doesn't need to mention it,  The both of them have received plenty of attention.  They do have 29 other teams with good young prospects to talk about,