2015 will be my twelfth year of minor league coverage for Batters Box. 2004, when it all started, seems like a long time ago, and in many ways it was. I remember the trip that got it all started. In the summer of 2004 Robert Dudek and I headed to Buffalo to see the Syracuse Chiefs play. We interviewed several players on that trip, names from the past. We talked to Stubby Clapp, Russ Adams, Gabe Gross, and Jason Kerschner.
As it happens Stubby Clapp is still with the Jays, he is now the hitting coach in New Hampshire. But Gabe Gross, Russ Adams and hundreds more have come into the Blue Jays system and gone. It is a relentless business where failure is more common than success.
A lot has changed since 2004. Back then Batters Box was either the only Jays community on the web or certainly one of a few. Minor league coverage was limited to Baseball America. Baseball Prospectus existed but they didn’t do much minor league scouting. Kevin Goldstein was emailing nightly game stats, similar to what BA does today, but at that time I believe he was independent, he later joined BA and then BPro. John Sickels had not started his site, minor league ball. There were no podcasts and video of players was not available, in fact YouTube didn’t exist in 2004. We easily forget how far technology has moved in a short time.
This recap makes me feel like an old-timer which is not the intention of this post. Today there are a lot of sites that track minor league players and provide scouting commentary. There are several that do so for the Jays and many more that do so for minor league ball in general. But given that this site mainly covers Blue Jays minor leaguers I wanted to recount some of what I have learned over the past eleven years and provide this as a public service to all the budding minor league writers and followers out there.
I don’t want to review commonly held prospect beliefs, for example that most minor leaguers will not be impact major leaguers, what the various tools and rankings are, etc. I want to relate some things that might not be appreciated by most prospect followers.
Players don’t know what the plan is for them
Players generally have no clue where they will be playing tomorrow, they only know where they are playing today. Players don’t know when they will be promoted until the day they are told. This is why you read all these stories about managers pranking players before a promotion, the player has no idea what is the plan for him, and if the manager says he is traded, or demoted, the player has to go with it because he knows no better.
Some players heading into spring training have a good idea of where they will be assigned but many players are just guessing. They don’t know how they rank versus other players in the system and it could be that a newly-signed AAA free agent will push players at the same position down a level all the way down to A ball.
Managers and coaches don’t know when a player will be promoted
Managers and coaches focus on their day jobs, getting the players ready to play that day. They don’t know when a player will be promoted, the only ones who know will be Doug Davis or Charlie Wilson and they will only decide a few days in advance. There are no master plans, there might be "like to happen" plans but all of those are written in pencil, not pen.
Front offices and minor league staff don’t have an exact plan for a player
Most minor league players are under 25, and at that age their performance is not linear from year to year. A player or pitcher who dominates one year can lose it the next, and vice-versa. As a result the front office does not know when player X will be promoted from Dunedin to New Hampshire. They wait and see how he plays, they wait and see if there is an opening, and until the decision is made they are on the fence. They may have a plan that the player should get promoted mid-year but they won’t tell anyone because they don’t know how the player will perform this season.
Front offices and minor league staff don’t make decisions based on a four week sample
When I talk with a coach or manager about a prospect who is off to a hot start the coach or manager will be non-committal. Over time they have seen a lot of hot months, or hot six weeks, and they don’t lock it in until it continues for two or three months. I often see prospect followers start speculating at the end of April about when a prospect will be promoted. If he is absolutely dominating and not being challenged a promotion might happen but in 95% of those cases the front office will sit and wait for the bounces to even out.
The front office manages the career of the top prospects
If Doug Davis wants to move Chaz Frank up to Dunedin he can act freely. But if he wants to move Daniel Norris from AA to AAA he needs front office approval. High profile prospects are managed from Toronto, everyone else from Dunedin.
Minor league coaches and managers don’t make decisions based on stats
Players and hitters can get lucky, balls fall in for the hitter, hitters hit the ball at the fielders for the pitcher. Coaches and managers are looking for players to dominate the opposition and show mastery of a level. Hitters should hit hittable pitches and not be fooled when they shouldn’t be. Pitchers need to hit their spots and use more pitches as they progress up the system. Those are the measures that the front office use when deciding to promote a player, not the stats.
There are priority players
Some organizations talk up how equal all the players are and how everyone gets a chance. Everyone does have an opportunity but the priority players get more of a chance. Priority players bat in the top half of the batting order, rarely miss a day, and get multiple chances to succeed or fail.
Talking with players only goes so far
Players can tell you lots about their background and when they were drafted. They can’t tell you much about the game they are playing. First, they have no idea of where they will be playing tomorrow (see above). Many hitters are “see ball, hit ball” guys and they are just trying to get a consistent swing on a hittable pitch. We hear that cliché all the time “I was just looking for a pitch to get a good swing on” and it is a cliché but that is what players are trying to do. They have little control over what pitch they get to hit, what they control is their swing. When you interview a minor league hitter 90% of the time they will say I am trying to be more consistent. What that means is they are trying to get a hit off a hittable pitch. Do that two or three times a week and you move from a non-prospect to a prospect.
Most hitter interviews you see in the media will talk about the players background, getting drafted, and about getting a good pitch to hit. Other than that they don’t provide much insight into the game. Having that insight is often detrimental to success. Players who think too much get a bad rap in baseball, it’s often better to see ball, hit ball, rather than try and analyse the situation.
Pitchers are a little different. They too are trying to be more consistent with their mechanics, to improve their command of their pitches. The difference is that they are usually trying to work on pitches other than their fastball and that can lead to some insights in an interview.
When I started my minor league coverage I interviewed lots of players (see above), but recently I have stayed away for this reason. However catchers are an exception. We know that catchers often become managers because they are heavily involved in both sides of the game. Catcher interviews can give you a good read on a pitching staff. If I had time to interview just one player on a team, I would interview the catcher.
You need multiple looks
Scouting is a tough business. All players, hitters and pitchers, will go through streaks within a season when they feel really locked in, and at other times they feel “off”. A scout could see a player when they are on top form or when they are struggling. A good scout can tell the difference and adjust his ranking accordingly. But it can be tough to do that so scouts don’t just see a team once.
Each major league team will assign a scout to cover a team. That scout will generally be expected to sit on that team for five days, twice a year. Five days gives you the chance to see every starting pitcher and twice per year allows the scout to see individual player development and to compensate for a player who is hot or cold on the first look. By the time a player gets to AA a team should have at least four and possibly many more reports on the player. Four is the minimum because some teams don’t scout the lower short season leagues.
Pro teams have decided over time that they need all that time to get the best read on prospects. Scouts can give you a good summary after one look, but if you are looking for a flaw, a weakness, you might only spot it over several looks, given a range of in game events.
Do internet scouts get multiple looks?
There are a lot of internet based minor league scouting sites. Many need to be read carefully. A major league team has figured out they need to see a hitter play ten games a year and a starter pitch twice each season. Yet you can have an internet scout look at a hitter play two games and already have a fully formed opinion on him.
Some sites, such as Baseball America and John Sickels, rely on discussions with scouts and managers. This can be the best of both worlds, you talk to several scouts who follow a team and you can get feedback from what amounts to twenty or thirty games. That is better than many teams get. But what I don’t know is how much information you really get from scouts. If a scout finds what he thinks is a flaw in a player, will he tell BA, or will he keep that information to benefit his team? The same applies to a player who the scout thinks will be much better than the consensus, that might be proprietary information.
Many sites read each others work and regurgitate it. That is why consensus players fail at times. It is tough to be an outlier. Lets say I am a scout and I really like Kevin Pillar. If I say he will be a star then I am sticking my neck out, I might be right but it is usually better for my career to be in the pack. Similarly if I think that Daniel Norris will be a bust, it is tough to be on the record with that. If I am wrong my outlier view will be well known, if I say he will be a #2, then I am one of hundreds who say so. Some analysts are not afraid of being alone, but they are in the minority.
The first question I ask myself when I see a scouting report is “where does this information come from?”. Has the writer seen the prospect? Has he spoken with scouts or managers? Or is he spinning what the internet says about the player.
I know that Batters Box prepares our top 30 list each season and while I am proud of the work, it can’t carry the same weight as Baseball America. Now BA does have their own biases that we all know but they get more input than we do. I do go to games and develop my opinion on players as do others who write or post on Batters Box. We do have some first hand information as well as Blue Jay insider interviews. But we don’t have the benefit of as many looks as BA. But we do probably have more looks than several other sites that produce lists. Before you look at a list or a scouting report, ask “where does this information come from?”
Certainty can be the enemy of knowledge
Here are two fictitious scouting reports:
Pitcher X features a 94 mph fastball and a good curveball with a strong 10-6 break that should get a lot of swings and misses.
Pitcher X showed a decent fastball and a curveball that looked good but he only threw six of them in the game.
You will have more faith in the first review because it sounds definitive. It will resonate more with the reader. But the second review has a greater chance of being correct, it is more vague but it doesn't sound as good.
Research has shown that experts who go on TV, especially political and financial TV, have terrible track records at predictions but the more definite they sound the more they are believed. A professor named Philip Tetlock has studied experts and they have a terrible record of predicting the future, but they continue to make predictions, people like to hear predictions, and certainty breeds believability.
Baseball predictions have a lot in common with stock market forecasting. Think of a player as an individual stock. The record shows that it is very difficult to predict the future prices of individual stocks. Stock prices change based on the company performance, interest rates, general feelings about the economy and a host of other factors. Similarly player fortunes rise and fall based on skill, opportunity, luck, injuries, and various mental attributes. We know that forecasting success for baseball prospects is hard. Numerous number one draft picks and number one prospects have failed to deliver value for their teams. But we like future forecasts even if the record for them is not great.
To summarize, baseball player future performance has a lot of volatility but if an “expert” has a definitive opinion, we tend to believe him or her.
Some baseball scouting sites will see a player once and then give you a very detailed scouting report that you tend to believe because it is opinionated. But because it is detailed is it right? If a scout needs ten looks at a hitter, should you believe someone who has seen that player twice?
Now I and we on Batters Box do provide scouting reports on players after a weekend view. But when I do it I am not definitive, I will say player X looked good or player Y didn’t. You can go look at a player for four days and he will have one ball hit to him in the field or he will walk five times. You have to be cautious but caution doesn't sell.
But you can see talent
I do have a caveat, and that is true talent can be spotted quickly. A player might not be able to get the best out of his talent but you can see it. It is harder to scout a 50 prospect than a 70 prospect. Everyone can see that the 70 prospect has value and 95% of them will reach the major leagues. But depending on the level, a lot fewer 50 prospects will reach the majors and some will turn into everyday players and some will never get there. If a scout can tell the difference in those 50 prospects he will probably deliver lots of value to his team. It is also easier to spot talent at the lower levels, the gap in abilities there can be significant. But by the time players get to say, AA, everyone can play and the gap between the good and average players is a lot smaller.
Sinker, slider pitchers can dominate the lower levels
The prospect trails are littered with sinker slider pitchers who dominated the lower levels of the minor leagues but flamed out at AA or AAA. The Jays have gone though many of these guys and that is why we need to know how a pitcher is putting up big numbers in the lower minor leagues. A pitcher who has a 1.50 ERA in Vancouver because he has a good sinker will be less of a prospect than another pitcher who can spot a fastball on the corner and adds a good change-up. Better hitters can adjust to sinker, slider pitchers. Many of these sinker, slider guys end up in the bullpen.
Trick pitchers also can do well at lower levels, such as side-armers
Like the sinker, slider pitchers, guys who are different can do well at lower levels. This includes side-armers and guys who throw 90% junk, or off-speed pitches. These guys also find it tough to get past AA.
Age 21 is a big year for players, and particularly hitters
Until recently the Blue Jays had few high school hitters in their system. AA changed that approach and we now have many young hitters who often struggle in their first or second exposure to minor league pitching. In my opinion you don’t put too much projection on the hitting stats in those first couple of years. There are numerous stories of hitters who suddenly developed after a few years of professional experience. There are similar discussions of hitters who were college backups until their senior year. For me the age 21 year is the big year. For high school hitters it is usually their third season and it is the age that they would likely be draft eligible if they went to college.
For hitters there are 5 tools but one really matters
Everyone loves a five tool player. Most players who are called five tool players are not really five tool players, they are just speedy and reasonably good at most parts of baseball. But you cannot steal first base so the tool that matters is the ability to hit, or to put it another way, the ability to make contact. Is Anthony Gose a five tool player? A reported five tool player is often a speedy outfielder who can run and play good defence. His arm might be decent and now you have three tools. If he swings hard and hits a few bombs you are up to four tools. But they don't matter if you can only hit .200 in the major leagues. Don’t get distracted by the other four tools, in fact it shouldn't be a five tool player, it should be one key tool and four nice to haves. The concept of five tools often hides a deficiency in the most important one.
For pitchers, fastball command matters
I wrote above how sinker, slider and trick pitchers can do well at lower levels. But as pitchers move up the hitters eyes get better. Particularly in AA, hitters will take pitches that lower hitters would swing at. In that case a pitcher needs a good swing and miss pitch or, more importantly, he needs to command his fastball. A pitcher who can command his fastball can move it up and down, in and out to give a number of different looks to the hitter. I saw Drew Hutchison pitch once in Lansing and it reminded me of the movie Groundhog Day. Time after time the catcher would set up on the outside corner and Drew would hit the glove. When I saw that I thought, this guy has a great chance to make it to the major leagues.
The hitters will let you know
That is an old baseball cliché but it has a lot of truth in it. In other words it doesn't matter how you look as a pitcher or how hard you throw, the results will be obvious. Mark Buehrle is a great example of this, the scouting report is uninspiring but the results are very good. I remember seeing Shaun Marcum pitch in AAA in 2005 or 2006 and he completely dominated the Buffalo lineup throwing his 85, 86 mph fastball. I turned to a scout and asked if that would work in the major leagues? He replied that if the hitters keep getting fooled like that it would work. Velocity is often a big scouting issue for minor league followers. But velocity alone will not get you far, you need movement or command or deception, or a good change up. The hitters will let you know.
We don’t always know why players are injured
Baseball is a physical game and players pick up minor injuries all the time. Sometime they play through it even though their performance suffers, and usually we don’t hear about it. But sometimes they miss a day or two. This gives rise to anxious questions across the Blue Jay fan sites “what’s wrong with Tommy, he didn't play today?’. We don’t know, and we probably will never know. Minor injuries are part of the game.
The US also has privacy laws that prevent teams from being too specific about individual health issues. This can prevent getting a detailed discussion of why a player is not playing.
Teams cannot force players to have surgery
If a pitcher has a sore elbow I will see a lot of online comments say something along these lines: “they should schedule the surgery now, it’s not going to get better. What are they waiting for?”.
What these comments neglect is that the decision to have surgery is not the teams decision, it is the players. Players do not want to have TJ surgery, it will be painful, they will miss a year of development time and they will be apart from their teammates. They hate the idea and the reality of it. Most pitchers will do anything to avoid the surgery. The Blue Jays may know that the surgery is inevitable but they cannot force a player to have it, his health remains his decision. They can suggest surgery, they can recommend surgery, but they know that most pitchers will stall and not have the surgery until they absolutely have to.
The major leagues are the gold standard
Players cycle through the major leagues at a reasonably fast pace. Other than AAA, a player’s time at a level ranges from three months to three years. It rarely goes above that, you move up or you move out. The major leagues is different, players can stay there for ten years and in that time develop a lot of premium skills. The major league attract the best coaches, the best scouts and the most video. Minor flaws or tendencies, that go unnoticed in the minor leagues, will be noticed and exploited in the majors.
The world has changed
As I said at the start of this article, the information available to minor league fans was very limited back in 2004. Today we have gameday, MiLB TV, radio commentary, YouTube and hundreds of minor league websites. Video allows many to get a feel for players from their own homes, without having to travel. Scouting should be easier today than it ever has been. But have we got better at understanding which prospects will thrive over those last ten years? I am not sure if we have, or if we have the improvements are nominal. Most prospects still fail. Being a number one team prospect on BA’s list is no assurance of future success. Being a 25th prospect on a team list, or an undrafted free-agent, doesn't mean you won’t have a nice major league career. We still are working in a field full of uncertainty and for many that is the appealing nature of following the minor leagues.
Given that being an outlier can be hard on your reputation, in a very uncertain market it is easy to see why there is so much agreement between the various ranking systems. Players get reputations early and they stick. If we were to compare the top 50 prospect lists of the major publications they would look very similar. Yet if there was true evaluation going on, there should be a lot of variability between the lists. I think there is too much talking to the same people and reading the same websites going on.
Anything else?
I hope these insights of mine will give you a better understanding of the minor leagues and will assist you to navigate through the upcoming season. If you have any more minor league related questions ask away in the comments.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20150114170757407