Top 100 prospect value

[JTrea81]

Victor Wang released some research in 2007 in the By the Numbers newsletter regarding the top 100 prospects according to BA. He looked at the 100 top prospects from 1990-1999.

Of the top 10 hitting prospects, only 10% bust compared to 31% of top 10 pitching prospects.

From Wang's article:

In conclusion, the ranking of a hitting prospect seems to be a good indicator of future value. A pitching prospect’s ranking has not had quite the same effect. There has been no separation in performance between pitching prospects rated in the top 50. In fact, pitching prospects ranked from 11-50 have performed slightly better than top 10 pitching prospects. However, there does appear to be a clear drop off in performance between top 50 pitchers and pitchers ranked from 51-100. Hitters in each sub group perform better than the pitchers in their sub group. In fact, hitters ranked 51-75 have performed better than any group of pitchers in the top 50. An expanded look at the performance of top 100 prospects has further reinforced my belief that teams should be using more of their pitching prospects to trade for established major league players. There is definite profit available for teams that acquire players in their arbitration years for top pitching prospects. In end though, it seems teams are starting to better understand the value prospects bring through performance and cost control.

[crawdad]

Déjà vu

[Lt Melmo]

First off, duh, we all know pitching prospects bust more often than hitting prospects.

The complete absurdity comes in this assumption that because they bust more often they should be avoided. It's just as prudent, if not more (given the extreme uncertainty of creating a pitching staff any other way), to follow that fact with a devotion to stockpiling as many pitching prospects as possible, to create a young, cheap staff from the parts that DON'T bust. Which is what we're doing. And it's going pretty damn well so far. And this entire paragraph is pretty basic knowledge, and it still appears to be something you like to completely ignore, or shrug off with a silly, meaningless response that disproves nothing.

I would love to trade for a premier hitter, and I wouldn't mind trading some of the pitching to do it. The damn annoying problem, JTrea, is that just as often as you constantly pound your individual trade-crushes into our faces, you do it with PHILOSOPHY too... like in this post. While I agree completely with MacPhail's philosophy of stockpiling arms, I also contain enough open-mindedness to understand that it can't be used 100% of the time and it might be conducive to break the philosophy to trade for a Fielder or a Gonzalez. Most of the regular members here seem to have a similar capability.

I didn't mean for this post to turn into a personal thing, but it's difficult not to: everyone knows by now that you only quoted that paragraph and bolded that sentence because it backs up the philosophy you're constantly jackhammering into our skulls. You're a slave to your philosophy and that's why this thread would've turned personal anyway, with or without this post. These threads won't stop turning personal until you stop acting like a desperate street preacher.

[allstar1579]

Victor Wang released some research in 2007 in the By the Numbers newsletter regarding the top 100 prospects according to BA. He looked at the 100 top prospects from 1990-1999.

Of the top 10 hitting prospects, only 10% bust compared to 31% of top 10 pitching prospects.

From Wang's article:

Sorry JT, you know it's nothing personal, but everyone here knows that you would scour the internet until you found someone, somewhere who agreed and backed up your philosophy.

Thing is, you can't try to draft or develop prospects based on statistical analysis alone. As has been debated here over and over, there are multiple aspects when it comes to developing and drafting talent, and just because you see a certain trend doesn't mean you should start giving more weight to one group versus another. You have to rate every prospect individually and then compare them head to head.

[crawdad]

I guess I'll restate what I said last time this came up.

This study is nice as it shows the volatility in pitcher development and our ability to rate potential performance.

What it fails to consider is the backside. As we all know free agent hitters retain value more so than free agent pitchers, again the issue with our relatively poor ability to predict pitching performance in comparison to hitting performance.

So . . . it comes down to this . . . pitching prospects make more fiscal sense than positional prospects because FA pitching prospects are similarly risky, but cost more per win.

That is it. It is better to supplement a lineup with a bat than a pitcher because the batter has a greater chance of fulfilling the free market price.

[BringBackMagic]

Victor Wang released some research in 2007 in the By the Numbers newsletter regarding the top 100 prospects according to BA. He looked at the 100 top prospects from 1990-1999.

Of the top 10 hitting prospects, only 10% bust compared to 31% of top 10 pitching prospects.

From Wang's article:

Melmo is correct.

If 31% of all pitching prospects "bust" then that means organizations need to invest more money and draft picks in pitchers when drafting because it is more likely that they won't pan out. If top hitting prospects are more likely to pan out, you don't need as much insurance with depth.

I hate to use this morose metaphor, but it's similar to the mindset of having children in 1900 and 2000. In 1900, infant mortality rates were much higher. Does this mean that people were more likely to say "I don't want to have any kids, because they might not make it"...? Nope. They had MORE kids to make sure they got something. Today, more families are having less children because infant mortality rates are low and chances are pretty good that if two kids are born, those two kids will grow up healthy.

[QBsILLEST1]

Dang, and I thought this post was going to be about something itneresting.....