I forgot to mention that the "power" column in the first table refers to Robert Dudek's statistic, "Manifested Power," defined in this post. I am using his alternate version:

MANIFESTED POWER = (2B+3B+2*HR)/(AB-K)

The other statistics with which some may be unfamiliar are commonly defined as follows:

$H = (H-HR)/(AB-HR-K)
$BB = BB/PA
$K = K/PA

They can be read out loud as "batting average on balls in play," "walk rate," and "strikeout rate." Robert defines slightly more precise versions in this post by throwing IBB's, SH's, and HBP's out of various numerators and denominators. Next time I'll fall in line with his definitions.

Why did I go back to BA/OBP/SLG in the second table? Because I'm lazy. If someone would like to do the math, it would be interesting to see exactly how Adams has slipped -- is he striking out more, or is he not making as good contact when he does hit the ball?

I don't think Adams has been all that dissapointing since his promotion from Dunedin.
He hit badly last year, but his numbers in the sally league are actually quite good this year when compared to league average. The league as we know is notorious for being pitcher-firendly.
The sample size in AA is too small, i mean he came out the blocks fast and has leveled off a bit, but not to dissapointment, a few big games and his numbers actually look quite good.

I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that Adams will be a +0.300 hitter in the majors as will Hill, i agree though i am more excited about Hill as a prospect, his power from the middle infield and Adams' poor defence give him the edge.

Both very very good prospects, same with Rich, he's maybe a tier below though

Maybe it's just me, but I kind of liked the idea of the Auburn Doubledays being the '27 Yankees of the NY-Penn League.

Kudos to Hill and Vermilyea, though.

hey john, how about Diaz?
The jays may have found themsleves another top draw catcher. His BA in any league is impressive and coupled with his age suggests this guy could be for real.
He played a few for the baby jays last year if i remeber correctly and he should be moved up to auburn or maybe charleston soon.

That batting average and his sluggling pct of .636 are stand outs. limited experience and small sample size aside,

I smell GQ number 2!

The major difference between Russ Adams on July 20, 2002 and Aaron Hill on July 27, 2003 is that Adams was seven months older on the former date than Hill was on the latter.

This reminds me of something that I don't think ever has been mentioned by prospect analysts: men mature and age at different rates. Some boys already need to shave by the time they're 12, and have reached their full adult height at 14; others don't mature until they're much later in their teens. Would differential maturation rates have an effect on the age at which players peak, or do things more or less even out by the time prospects reach their early twenties?

I don't think anyone has studied, or even thought of, this issue.

Nice comparison between Hill and Adams. A lot better than some idiot trying to recall things off the top of their head. Who was that? Oh, nevermind.....

The league as we know is notorious for being pitcher-friendly.

Wouldn't the FSL help someone like Adams (high OBP, low SLG)? He's not going to hit a lot of HRs so if anything I would think larger parks (is that the reason it's a pitcher's league?) would give him an oppurtunity for more doubles and triples.

Why did I go back to BA/OBP/SLG in the second table? Because I'm lazy.

I wish I was as "lazy" as you, John; I'd get a lot more done. Thanks for another great post -- with your contributions adding to Jordan's farm reports, Da Box has become the best place to follow the progress of the future Jays. We're glad you joined the team.

how about Diaz?

Sooner or later, Ken, the Jays will call up Cash, promote Quiroz to AAA and challenge some of their catchers at the lower levels. Paul Chiaffredo is hitting well enough as GQ's backup to warrant more playing time in AA. Diaz (his bat at least) would look good in Charleston right now -- the incumbents are hitting their weight, more or less. However, we don't know much about his receiving skills, other than a scary 6 errors in 22 games. His teammate Joey Reiman (320/424/474) is another possibility; the 16th-rounder was 395/483/605 at Grand Canyon University, where he was twice all-conference and named a Division II first-team All-American. He plays 1B when Diaz is behind the plate.

Lets not forget a SS has to have good defensive capabilities as well as having a good bat, how do you compare Hills and Adams defensively

Waht are the chances of Bush getting to Syracuse before the year is done?

Adams will in all probability be remembered as a solid player who was thoroughly undeserving of a 1st round selection. His major redeeming skill is an ability to get on base; he's fast, but that's not a skill valued highly by the organization. Power is non-existent (beyond the doubles and triples he's able to leg out) and defence isn't good enough to play SS.

I'd be astonished if Adams is able to post an .800+ OPS at the major league level with any regularity.

Thanks for another great post -- with your contributions adding to Jordan's farm reports, Da Box has become the best place to follow the progress of the future Jays. We're glad you joined the team.

I'm not one for giving constant kudos, but truly this is the best Jays related sites online. I might say that this is one of the best baseball sites out there as well. Good lord! I can't believe that there can be an online group of people who discuss things intelligently without using the words "idiot" or "$%*^@$!". On second thought, maybe those words do come out during discussions of certain pitching changes... Nevertheless, another great job John.

It seems to be that the chances of Adams and Hill both sticking to the SS position are slim to none. In my opinion I can see either Adams switching to second, or Hill taking third, with emphasis on the first scenario. Realistically, I can see Adams finishing the year in New Haven, with a Gross-like callup to AAA in mid-2004, and a callup to the bigs in mid to late 2005. By that time, Hudson will have ~1500 major league PAs, and might be a pretty big trading chip.

Ken: I don't think Russ Adams has been a Josephang Bernhardt-sized disappointment. Nevertheless, if you'd said at the moment of his promotion to High-A that he'd hit ~.260/.355/.355 in Dunedin and .269/.329/.335 in New Haven over the next year, you wouldn't have had much company. I didn't make any sort of prediction at the time, but I was hoping for a .300 average in Dunedin. Adams was a very good prospect at the time of his promotion; he had a lot of room to decline without becoming organizational filler, and he still does. But that in itself doesn't mean that he didn't decline at all.

Adams hasn't hit .300 at any level since short-season. He very well may turn into a .300 hitter in the majors, but I wouldn't want to assume that he will.

I am starting to get excited about Rob Diaz. Time will tell.

Dave: I fully agree that men don't mature at equal rates or at identical ages. That being said, I have no reason to believe that Russ Adams is any more of a late bloomer than Aaron Hill. Anything that increases the uncertainty of our player evaluations will narrow the perceived gap between these two players, but the gap won't disappear until someone provides real evidence that Adams has more development left in him than Hill does.

I also agree that your question is a fascinating one, and I'd love to see someone try to answer it.

Pistol: I agree with you that Adams is exactly the sort of player who wouldn't get hurt all that much in the FSL. That's part of the reason why I think he's been a modest disappointment.

Coach: Thanks for the kind words. I'm much more bullish on Diaz on on Reiman simply because Diaz is two years and nine months younger. From a quick look at Chiaffredo's stats, he looks more like Izzy Molina v.2001 than like Simon Pond.

Shadow: Reports that I have read suggest that Hill's defence is better than Adams'. I have no way of objectively verifying these reports.

Gerry: I'd guess slim to nil, but I hope he starts there next year.

Wasif's comments on Adams are pessimistic, but they may turn out to be correct. My only caveat is that it's much easier to make these assessments in hindsight than on draft day.

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but the Sports Illustrated Minor League Baseball Site has lefty/righty splits, home/road numbers, GB abd FB numbers, and situational hitting and pitching for some minor league teams. Syracuse only has home and road splits, New Haven doesn't have home and road splits, Dunedin and Charleston have everything, Auburn has only home/road splits, and I can't seem to find a team page for Pulaski. Thanks to poster "Silver822" on Fanhome for pointing this out.

I'm having a lot of fun looking at the splits.

John,

Considering JP compared Adams to Walt Weiss and said this year that Hill was a much more interesting prospect than Adams(ie. "If you guys liked Adams, you'll really like Hill"), maybe we should be the ones tempering our enthusiasm more than JP. He seems to have a pretty good idea of expected performance levels.

DS: I'm not quite sure I get your point. Certainly we Bauxites might have been more excited about Adams than JP ever was; nonetheless, I think JP is probably somewhat disappointed with how Adams has developed. Do you think JP would have spent his first round pick on Adams if he knew that he would hit .279/.380/.388 in Dunedin and .265/.329/.335 in New Haven during the season in which he will turn 23? I don't think so either.

I don't mean to write Adams off; he may still turn out to be a shortstop who can hit .290/.390/.430 out of the leadoff hole. But the chance of him doing so must be lower than it was in the summer of 2002.

Do you think JP would have spent his first round pick on Adams if he knew that he would hit .279/.380/.388 in Dunedin and .265/.329/.335 in New Haven during the season in which he will turn 23? I don't think so either.

Maybe not. But last year's draft wasn't considered nearly as strong as this year's. I don't think JP ever had allusions that Adams was going to be an all-star, just a competent player who could get on base. Kind of like this guy.

John:

One of the more interesting draft picks this year by the Jays was the drafting of Matt Foster of the USNA, a LHP, do you know if the Jays ever signed him, if so I understood that USNA grads have to serve 2 years in the service, how could his pitching skills mature in that time if he's at sea or on duty elsewhere

Foster is signed; the Jays signed their first 15 picks and something like 16 of the first 17. I believe Foster was in the 13th round.

I think how it will work is Foster got a cup of coffee in Pulaski this year and made an impression K'ing 10 of 28 batters faced (though he also walked three and gave up a homer). His season is now supposedly finished and he is off to nuclear school as part of his Navy commitment and has to complete a full year there.

If he does so successfully, he will be free to pursue a pro career under the provision that he works recruiting for the Navy in the off-season. So he would spend the remainder of 2004 in extended spring training and begin his pro career full time in 2005. It might take another two or three years from that point for him to be ready for the bigs.

So while he is an intriguing prospect, there's a reason he fell to the 13th round. I'm kind of surprised he commited to a pro contract this early but I guess he gets the signing bonus and the chance might not be there a year or two later.

he will be free to pursue a pro career under the provision that he works recruiting for the Navy in the off-season

Ah, L. T. Smash gets another up-and-coming young star to work with.

And if Adams does turn into Walt Weiss, that would be a heckuva find.

Catchers depth chart: Cash-Quiroz-Whittaker-Diaz
Quiroz and Diaz having the higher upside due to their age.

http://www.baseballamerica.com/cgi-bin/03draftdbx_team.cgi?team=TOR
If you click on my name you'll see the list of Jays draft picks and their signing status at Baseball America.

Looks like Jordy Reiman from Grand Canyon U was signed recently. The Jays have signed their top 18 picks and 24 of their top 27 picks and 28 of 33. Seems like a pretty high %.

I'm not sure if Walt Weiss is as favourable a comp as one might think. His best five park-adjusted OPS's were 93, 89, 84, 82, 81. He was a good defender if I recall correctly, but my impression is that JP was comparing the two players with the bat. His career on-base percentage was .351 as compared to a park-adjusted league average of .346. Not a great mid-to-high-end projection for a first-rounder, if you ask me.

Please believe me when I say that I am neither trying to dismiss Adams' chances nor denigrate JP for drafting him. I think that Adams has been a modest disappointment but still has a reasonable chance of having a productive major league career. I don't know a great deal about JP's options in the 2002 draft, so I have no basis on which to criticize the choice of Adams, and based on JP's overall record I have to assume that he made a pretty good choice with the information that was available to him.

R Billie: Matt Foster was indeed a 13th-round pick, as you remembered him to be.

John, Weiss was a very useful player for a long time: good defender, competent with the bat. His OPS+ suffers from a very poor slugging percentage, but Weiss had good on-base skills and was a very good ninth-place hitter.

R Billie thanks for the Foster info, very interesting

There was Kazmir (15th), Swisher (16th), Hamel (17th), and of course Blanton (24th) who might end up being better major league players. Kazmir and Hamel are high schoolers though which disqualified them as Jays first rounders.

John, i know you have stated that you don't want to dismiss Adams and that he is a good prospect but i don't share your pessimism.

Would your opinion not change if he puts up a high OBP this year in New Haven. I think its too early to tell, he has only had 155 ABs so far. The only thing that has me worried is his K/BB ratio which he hasn't maintained at AA, but give him time. Yes, he is 23, but he needs time to adjust. Look at Gross, in his second full year he was even worse that Adams at AA (a different league but i think thats a non-factor), Gross has proved he is a good hitter and worthy of a first round draft pick. Gross has developing power, but Adams is just as valuable with lower power numbers from SS/2B position.
As the thread has debated people mature at different rates, I think we should wait until 2005 until we say that adams will be an average major leaguer. If you compare his growth with that of Gross, he is on the same curve. This time next year if Adams is in Syracuse with a .380 OBP then he looks like a very good prospect.
The important thing for him is to maintain the plate discipline as he moves up, if it disappears then he has something to worry about.

Diaz has me excited too, his DSL stats suggest he could be something special. would give a link but i don't know how exactly.

R Billie i don't think Blanton can be seen as a better choice than adams so far, he's a league below and is not a sure-fire major leaguer as i think Adams is. Time will tell and he "might end up being a better player", hope we get him if JP decides to ship Esco to the A's, i'm not high on Lilly though. Just a bit of a shame the jays didn't get Kazmir or Hamels, but the risk and the cost to sign them was too high at draft time.

I'm with Brent, this is the best jays site on the net by a british kilometre, my first stop everyday and i especially enjoy the minor league talk (prospect fiend), keep up the great work everyone!

While the risk was what it was, the cost was higher but depending on their budget maybe not prohibitively higher.

Adams $1.8 mil
Kazmir $2.2 mil
Swisher $1.8 mil
Hamel $2.0 mil
Blanton $1.4 mil

Now $200K to $400K probably means a lot to a team with the Jays amateur budget. It could mean another four or five lower round picks signed. Combine that with the inheirant risk in 18 year old arms and it's understandable. I guess the shame is that the A's had so many picks that year and the Jays didn't have a chance at Blanton.

I would also hope that Adams has hit a Gross-like wall in AA and will do better his second time around. But it's also true that numerical performance means less and less the further you get from the big leagues. Achieving in short season, low-A, or even-high A isn't the best test. AA is usually the first real test as most pitchers in that league have gained decent command of their offspeed pitches.

I'll be going into more detail on this is my July Farm Report (which will be a few days late, due to the August Long Weekend), but I have very few concerns about Russ Adams. Like John, I would consider his year up till now mildly disappointing, but only in relation to what was expected of him. He's not going to develop much more than 10-HR power, so his contributions are going to be on-base percentage, speed and defence, and it's hard to get a read on those last two from minor-league stats (even errors, of which Adams has made more than a few, don't tell the whole story, particularly at shortstop; it's a position at which many current big-league stars made dozens of errors in the minors). Let's give him a full season at New Haven to see what he can do; remember, he's holding his own at AA after only 420 professional at-bats. That's pretty good.

R Billie i remember a chat on BA, someone asked why the blue jays draft was rated so highly. The person from BA, maybe Callis but can't remember, said that it was so good because the jays had the chance to develop 6/7 major leaguers from one draft. You illustrate this point exactly, basically the money saved from not signing Kazmir was used on other prospects in later rounds. The risk of putting all the eggs in the Scott Kazmir basket was too great for a team like the blue jays, fine for the mets, but too much for a smaller budget club.
Now the jays have lost Perry from the draft and Maureau is not doing well this year but the jays could conceivably get 5/6 major leaguers from one draft, not bad going at all.

Adams
Bush
Peterson
Pleiness
De Jong

maybe Waugh and I'm confident Maureau will turn it around if he gets hold of that amazing curve. Plus Chris Leonard who could turn out to be special if he stays healthy.

In relation the Mets draft looks rather poor apart from Kazmir and maybe Elliot, although they didn't get 2nd or 3rd round picks because of cedeno and weathers signings. Kazmir was a huge doubt on draft day, but he signed for less than was expected and with limited fuss, plus he was a high schooler and by JP standards he was behind the plane flying behind the storm clouds on the horizon.

Jordan basically summed up my thinking on Adams, not brilliant but certainly not a dissapointment.

The A's evidently have moved Blanton from low A to their AA franchise Midland, first game allowed 3 runs in 7 innings

Now the jays have lost Perry from the draft

For anyone interested, Perry isn't putting up such hot numbers for the A's. He's got a 283/344/327 line in 125 PA with High-A Modesta.

Ken: Diaz's stats can be found here. To put a hyperlink in your comment you type here

These are my last comments on Russ Adams for now: Jordan said that he "would consider his year up till now mildly disappointing, but only in relation to what was expected of him," which as far as I am concerned is not very different from my phrase "modestly disappointing" with the "in relation to what was expected of him" implied. I would guess that I'm slightly less optimistic about Adams than Jordan is, but this is a difference of degree, and we are working with imperfect information and methods of analysis that are as much art as science

I don't agree that Adams' 155 New Haven at bats are too small of a sample to influence our evaluation. Who here wouldn't be on the bandwagon if Adams was hitting .350/.460/.470 in that many at-bats? Everyone except Robert Dudek, I imagine. Who wasn't excited when Adams put up those very numbers in 113 at bats in Auburn last year? On what basis other than those 113 at bats can one project Russ Adams to be an above-average major league player?

Evaluating prospects is not a matter of saying "Adams' projection has slipped from .280/.380/.390 to .270/.370/.380 because of a slow month in AA." Rather, it's a matter of saying that the best guess about Adams before his promotion was that he had:

a 10% chance of being a .310/.410/.440 hitter (borderline All-Star)
a 20% chance of being a .280/.380/.390 hitter (above-average middle infielder)
a 30% chance of being a .250/.350/.350 hitter (slightly below-average middle infielder)
a 30% chance of being a .230/.320/.330 hitter (fringe major-leaguer)
a 10% chance of not making the big leagues or only having a cup of coffee

and following his slow month, the best guess was that he had:

a 07% chance of being a .310/.410/.440 hitter (borderline All-Star)
a 15% chance of being a .280/.380/.390 hitter (above-average middle infielder)
a 25% chance of being a .250/.350/.350 hitter (slightly below-average middle infielder)
a 35% chance of being a .230/.320/.330 hitter (fringe major-leaguer)
a 18% chance of not making the big leagues or only having a cup of coffee

I'm making these numbers up off the top of my head, so don't try to nail me on them. If Adams catches fire for the rest of the season, then the numbers will come back up. Is this bandwagon-jumping? No. It's using all the information at hand and recognizing that even small samples will alter one's projections to a small degree. If you want to be technical, it's Bayes' theorem.

With regard to the Gabe Gross comparisons, no one knew coming into 2003 whether Gross would turn it around or not. There was a good chance that he would, but there was also a pretty good chance that he wouldn't. I'm not arguing that Adams' upside is any different now or that his probabilities of reaching certain levels of performance have fallen through the floor. I'm arguing that they've fallen by a modest amount.

And I'm not worried about Adams' ability to walk, swipe a few bags, and play a good second base in the major leagues. The two big questions in my mind are:

1. How well can he play shortstop?
2. What will his batting average be?

If he can play SS, great, and Woody should probably keep renting. If not, he's going to need to hit .280/.380/.390 to dislodge Orlando Hudson. If he instead hits .250/.350/.360, he's not a great player.

Craig, I agree that Walt Weiss was a useful guy to have around, and you could do a lot worse at shortstop, especially in the pre-Rodriguez days. But if Walt Weiss is the upside, then Adams isn't a great prospect, and I can't imagine that JP would use a first-round pick on a guy whose upside was Walt Weiss.

R Billie, spending an extra $200K-$400K on Scott Kazmir or Cole Hamels might mean you'd be unable to sign four or five lower round picks. Or it might mean you'd be unable to sign Doug Creek. Let me unequivocally state that I do NOT mean to criticize JP for drafting Adams over Kazmir or Hamels. Rather, my point is that if the Jays had reason to believe that Kazmir or Hamels would be a significantly better player than Adams, the extra $200K-$400K shouldn't have played much of a role in decision making. I have no reason to believe that Adams was a "signability pick," so this point remains purely hypothetical.

Ken, Craig, R Billie, et al, it's been nice debating with y'all.

John, a quick hijack if you don't mind. You seem to be quite knowledgeable in the field of Statistics. What did you take in school (if you don't mind the bluntness of the question)? Imagine, someone I can talk to about prior distributions!

And now back to your regularly scheduled program...

Brent: I majored in mathematics (pure, not applied) at Queen's. I took two half-courses in stats and couldn't stand the way it was taught, so I didn't take any more. In retrospect I wish I had stuck with the subject despite my frustration with the courses.

If you ever want to discuss statistical approaches to baseball analysis, I'd be interested to hear what you have to say. What's your background?

Ken: Aargh. The second "here" should read <a href="http://www.sports-wired.com/players/profile.asp?ID=20430">here</a>. I always forget that when I go through "preview your comment" it formats the HTML twice, so you lose all your literals, if that makes any sense.

Ken: Here are Chad Pleiness's 2003 rate stats:

                 $H   $BB  $K   $HR
Chad Pleiness   .267 .104 .176 .020
FSL average     .333 .099 .203 .013
Dunedin average .287

Put differently, here are the numbers of hits on balls in play, walks, strikeouts, and home runs he has recorded relative to team average (for hits) and league average (for everything else) so far this year. In each category, positive numbers mean that he has performed better than average:

               #H   #BB   #K     #HR
Chad Pleiness  6.3  -2.7  -12.4  -3.1

Now that's disappointing. I'm not saying that three walks and three bombs are significant, but it's hard to argue that Pleiness has been an above-average pitcher in the FSL this year. He still has a reasonable chance of doing something in the majors, but I think that the odds are much worse than they were at the beginning of the season.

In terms of performance relative to expectation in 2003, I'd rate the top six 2002 picks as:

(performance > expectation)
1. Bush
2. Peterson
(performance < expectation)
3. Adams
4. Pleiness
5. Perry
(performance << expectation)
6. Maureau

As far as I can tell, David Bush is by far the best Toronto prospect from the 2002 draft at this point.

John: I'm doing a double Stats/ActSci major at UWO. I'm currently going into my third year, so I'm fairly new to the material. Actually, I'm glad I found someone who is knowledgeable and has an interest in baseball, because I'm quite surprised at the level of applicability of the stats material. My email is up at the top if you, or anyone else for that matter, wants to get a hold of me.

Now onto the good stuff. There seems to be quite a few sites out there that have tons of baseball related information. For example, I would love to find out were I can find league wide data (possibly historical data) for the different minor leagues rungs. Perhaps we can start a thread were we can post some of our more obscure favourites? I mean, the more informed everyone is the better in my opinion.

http://economics.about.com
One thing I'd *love* to be able to get my hands on is a database of college stats. Maybe I can get a grant from Ivey to build one up. That'd be fun.

When you look at it, assembling a baseball roster is nothing but a portfolio management problem with a bunch of constraints. As long as you can put some sort of distribution on the future value of a player, it doesn't seem like the problem should be too difficult.

I think the big revolution is going to come in usage patterns, not changing how players are acquired. There's no way that current pitching usage is at all optimal, let alone the ratio of pitchers to fielders on a roster. I have a feeling this is going to involve platoons of a more non-traditional nature (say fastball vs. curveball).

Mike

John, i appreciate your points, the main thing i was getting at was that i am more optimistic. I know you didn't say give up on him, yet still i don't feel that below expectation results shoudl immmediately change the future expectation of a player. I admit that if Adams struggles for the rest of the season and has a very low OBP in relation to expectation at seasons end, i would be worried.
We both agree time will tell.

Just a note on the Gross mini-debate, I was always confident that he would rebound, not blowing my own trumpet or anything, just that his walks to strikeout ratio stayed consistent with previous peformance if my memeory serves me correctly. I, infact, was a bit angry when some baseball analysts suggested Gross would not turn it around, which surprised me as i don't usually get frustrated over baseball.
That statement makes me wonder why i follow the blue jays!! d'oh

Similarly i have the same faint in Russ Adams, and to a lesser extent Maureau.

I do not have as much faith in Pleiness, your numbers are worse than i would have imagined however. I think Peterson will take longer to reach the show than people expect, he did very well in high A and has been far from dominant in AA (having only pitched 9 innings). De Jong has seemed overmatched in AA, i wonder if they will try to start him this year?

Bush has been outsanding. I would say he and Adams have very similar potential.

Also, when you put the money into perspective (i.e. doug creek), it could have been better spent. Scott Kazmir is an amazing prospect, but the problems around his signability costs were, as we all know, very high at 2002 draft time.

I gave up maths when i reached 17, and seriously i have forgotten absolutely everything. except, extraordinarily, the ability to do an engineering related matrix! freak is the word you're looking for.