Fangraphs: Evaluating the Prospects: Baltimore Orioles

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/evaluating-the-prospects-baltimore-orioles/

At one point or another, this master list was referenced enough that I saw some trends where the Orioles own list would diverge from my own.

They skewed high for the near big league ready players, with down list players like Dariel Alvarez and Henry Urrutia much higher than I have them and thus some lower level players like Stephen Tarpley lower than I have them. As you would expect, they also have some information a typical scout may not have, regarding injuries and progress in private workouts, so some players with subpar 2014 season are higher than I have them, like Urrutia, Michael Almanzar and Josh Hart. Other than those two main differences, our lists ended up being pretty similar, with only a handful of players we disagreed on that didn?t fall into one of those two groups.

Pretty comprehensive piece.

I was interested to ready Bundy's cutter might be back on the table and that some in the org want him considered for the rotation now if he shows worthy. I know in general with young guns there is a bit more of a sense to use them while you can and they're still young enough to have their best velocity, but this spring would be really aggressive.

Reading that both the org views Sisco as its catcher of the future and Heim has a fan in Buck is an early signal that Sisco may be more of a Dan guy. I know Buck loves his defense and it'll be interesting to see how that plays out if Wieters leaves and Duquette stays.

And there was some good details on the Garcia Rule 5 pick, that will only add to the picking up steam hype train.

Very nice read.

Good article, though I think the rankings hedge too much toward guys in the lower levels. Wilson and Alvarez seem especially low.

Love the in depth write up on why the O's selected Garcia.

The Orioles have a video system in Sarasota that logs every game at their stadium and when it came time to discuss Garcia for the Rule 5 Draft, they realized they video of six full innings of Garcia from instructs. In those six innings (where he recorded 18 outs), Garcia had 14 strikeouts and a 15th where the batter reached on a dropped third strike, along with a popup, fly out and two groundouts. Orioles execs concede they wouldn’t have been able to make the case to pick Garcia without this video, which included Garcia striking out multiple high level Orioles prospects, like Chance Sisco.

So, if Garcia pitched for any team other than the Rays, Twins or Red Sox, the Orioles couldn’t have picked him, since it would’ve just been a scout or two on short looks with no video.

One of the more interesting Oriole prospect reports I've read in a while. Overall, he seems pretty bullish on our guys compared to other things I've read.

Just for reference sake for those who were unaware, the author (Kiley McDaniel) worked in the Orioles scouting department at one point. Just FYI

...the Cuban defector, like a 70 arm and 50 raw power, but he’s a below average runner that’s limited to a corner so he can’t be a true 4th outfielder

Alvarez.

Just for reference sake for those who were unaware, the author (Kiley McDaniel) worked in the Orioles scouting department at one point. Just FYI

Ahh, that makes sense. It was a very uncommon amount of knowledge about our farm system from a national website. Very in depth.

It's funny how they compare Connaughton to Samardzija, another two sport athlete from Notre Dame. Seems a bit lazy. Overall, this is a great piece though. Love the Bundy and Harvey videos.