by Mike Rogers

Last winter I took three separate looks at the San Diego Padres 2008 draft. I had started adjusting college offensive statistics for parks and strength of schedule to get a better feel for the true talent levels of the players drafted. You can see my methods here in an article that Myron Logan and I penned for Baseball Analysts. I haven’t changed much except the weightings in my “Score” column since that article. My “Score” is a hodge-podge formula that weights adjusted wOBA, adjusted Isolated Power, a small speed score, K and BB%’s, and runs above average. The runs above average is above the average hitter in that particular conference using the conference’s average park and strength of schedule ratings.

Unfortunately for me, the 2009 draft wasn’t as loaded as the 2008 draft was with college bats. Furthermore, the Pads didn’t take as many college bats this passed June as they did in 2008, so my scope of adjusted numbers isn’t as high as my previous breakdown. But, let’s not drag this out any more. Presented in the order by which they were drafted, here are the college bats the Padres took last June (and signed) that are in my current system (which includes 13 conferences that are the ACC, SEC, Sun Belt, Big West, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 10, MAC, WAC, West Coast Conference, Moutain West, Conference USA).

Evaluations after the jump. . . Read the rest of this entry »

by Mike Rogers

Over at Project Prospect, there’s a nice and informative scouting report on the swing of 1st year pro, James Darnell. I had a three part series that looked at the 2008 college bats the Padres took in June of 2008 and I loved everything about James Darnell’s college statistics. I’m still a big time Darnell fan and think the former South Carolina Gamecock can be, at the very least, an average right fielder in the majors (not sure he can stick at third).

The scouting report makes a very interesting swing comparison: Justin Upton. Now, Steve Carter (who is using an alias but did play college baseball), cautioned he’s not expecting near the offensive production of Upton, but that they do have similar swings. An excerpt from the conclusion:

Darnell has the tools, ability, and swing to be a very solid offensive 3rd baseman. Eighteen home runs and a .998 OPS between Low-A Fort Wayne and High-A Lake Elsinore is certainly nothing to scoff at. But, the real test for Darnell will come at the Double-A and Triple-A levels. Then we will find out if he is just a polished college hitter pounding A-ball pitching, or a legitimate prospect. If he can improve his upper body pattern and make a few other refinements, he could go from a potential Casey Blake with patience type, and move toward his ceiling of a pre-2009 breakout Ryan Zimmerman with a higher on base percentage.

So, there’s some things to like. Casey Blake with patience definitely isn’t anything to scoff at and Ryan Zimmerman with better OBP is very good outcome as well. There’s a lot to like about Darnell.

Now, while you’re perusing the Project Prospect website, feel free to read my PITCHf/x look at Jake Arrieta, a Baltimore Orioles right-handed pitcher. Yeah, it’s self-promotion and I will not be ashamed of it! Why should you read about an Orioles pitching prospect? Well, because I’ll be writing these types of pieces for Project Prospect when prospects make their debuts. So, I want you to get used to the format for when I pen my piece on Mat Latos (which I already looked at his debut right here for FF) through the PITCHf/x lens.

by Mike Rogers

Clayton Richard made his San Diego Padres debut on Saturday against the Milwaukee Brewers after being acquired by the Pads for Jake Peavy (trade valuation coming from me sometime tomorrow on Beyond the Boxscore where I’ll be joining the BtB team of writers) on Friday. Before we jump into the PITCHf/x, lets look at the start through the numbers:

5.2 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 5 K, 90 pitches (49 strikes), 8 ground outs, 4 fly outs.

Now, onto the graph-y goodness. First up is the release points (click images to enlarge):

Richard stands 6-foot-5 and weighs in at 240-pounds, but he was consistently “releasing” the baseball at just under 6-foot. So, he comes from a 3/4 arm slot. But, he repeats his delivery well and comes from a very consistent release point.

Now, the strikezone plot:

He only threw 49 strikes out of the 90 total pitches, so he was a bit wild. The view is from the catcher’s perspective, so he worked away from right-handed hitters for most of the night, but given the amount of right-handers he faced, that’s not surprising.

And speaking of how he attacked right-handed and left-handed batters, here’s a couple pie graphs:

Typical platoon split: drops the change-up versus left-handed hitters, and picks it back up against right-handers. Overall, though, he worked the fastball (either four-seam [FF] or two-seam [FT]) all night.

And now the pitch flight graph (again, courtesy of Harry Pavlidis):

My breakdown of Clayton Richard differs a bit from Myron Logan’s. I attempted to split up the four-seam and two-seam fastballs as best I could, but I still might be/am probably wrong on some of them. I wound up with 48 four-seamers and 21 two-seamers while averaging 91.7 MPH on the former and 90.4 on the latter. His four-seamer seemed to have a bit more arm-side run, but less sink (minimally). Just keep in mind that I was eye-balling the fastballs and made some judgement calls, so they aren’t anywhere near 100% accurate (and if they are, it’s absolute luck on my part).

As far as his breaking ball goes, MLB Gameday classified three of them as curveballs, but after graphing them out, there was virtually no difference in flight path from his slider. I don’t know if he throws a curveball or a slider, but on the flight paths I went with curveball as I believe that’s what the scouting report on him says. As you probably noticed, I classified them all as sliders on the other graphs — that’s just a little mistake on my part, but they’re still depicting the same data set. Either way, he’s got a bit of “sweep” on his slider and some decent downward movement.

Meanwhile, his change-up has some arm-side run but very little sinking action.

On the whole, Richard looks to have pretty average stuff for a big, tall lefty, but his results speak for themselves thus far: 4.32 FIP in 142.1 big league innings pitched. So, he’s definitely a back-end starter, but he’s got value as he’s probably above-average for a number 5 starter.

Overall, the Padres got a good haul in the Jake Peavy deal.

by Mike Rogers

UPDATE: Unfortunately, as I was doing this this evening, I mistakenly lumped Latos’ curveball’s in with his change-up’s. I have since fixed this, and re-written the paragraph on his change as well as penned one on his curveball. Whoops.

I’m just going to get this out of the way: I did not see one single pitch Mat Latos threw, unfortunately. I was busy and missed both his abbreviated outing in the Future’s Game, as well as his Major League Debut last night against the Colorado Rockies.

Here’s what I know about him: he can throw the baseball. Hard.

These graphs are made possible by Harry Pavlidis and his Pitch Flight tool.

First up, are the release points. Click on both images to enlarge.

That y-axis is in feet. That means, Mat Latos is “releasing” (data’s actually recorded 50 feet from home plate, I believe, so it’s not “true” release point) the baseball from nearly 7 feet in the air. He’s a big boy as it is, and his tall-and-fall mechanics lead to an even higher, over the top release point.

Now, on to the PITCHf/x flight path graphs. What this shows me is the movement of each of his pitches on its way to home plate. This sort of thing is hard to read for some people, so I am willing to answer any and all questions on it later tonight.

The Fastball (the green line) — 56 of his 70 pitches recorded by PITCHf/x were fastballs and all were coded as 4-seam fastballs. He averaged 94.9 MPH on them. From the graph, I see a very straight heater which is what I saw when I graphed out his Future’s Game performance on the message boards over at Project Prospect. I don’t see a lot of downward movement on his fastball from this outing against the Rockies, either, but coming from such a high release, I’m sure it’s difficult to hit. Ideally, though, you’d like to see a fastball that bends or sinks more than Latos’ does.

The Change-up (the red line) — Latos has a big time arm, but I think his secondary offerings are where his bread is buttered. He threw just one change-up and it clocked in at 82.2 MPH. It came from a lower release point (1st base view) than his other three pitches, but that’s likely because he threw just one of them. Good dive on it and a decent amount of tailing action.

The Slider (the yellow-ish line) — He threw only 8 of these at an average velocity of 82.5 MPH. He’s got a little sweeping action on it (bird’s eye view) and has a lot of downward movement, as well. Both his change-up and his slider compliment his fastball extremely well due to their similar release points, but both dive well below his fastball. I really like both of these offerings much more than his fastball.

The Curveball (the blue line) — He threw five of these averaging 81.8 MPH. It seems very 12-6 but with good drop on it. It comes from the same plane and arm slot as his fastball and follows it pretty well, but it’s kind of slurve-y which leads me to believe that his slider and his curveball are the same pitch, just classified differently by gameday. I’ll defer to Harry Pavlidis’ week New Arms Roundup on Beyond the Boxscore this weekend.

Conclusion

First off, I need to say that there really aren’t any “conclusions” from his outings that were recorded by PITCHf/x. He threw just 8 pitches in the Future’s game and then another 70 last night. That sample is too small to draw any hard conclusions. However, it’s enough to give a decent hypothesis on Latos and his stuff. He’s got the tall-and-fall mechanics with a clean arm action and they seem to be repeatable. Some have panned his mechanics but that’s likely due to not being a fan of the tall-and-fall motion. Alex Eisenberg over at Baseball-Intellect said he’s not a fan of tall-and-fall but that he doesn’t see a red flag from Latos, despite that motion.  I trust Alex’s opinion and some others in the Project Prospect forums have expressed opinions similar to Alex’s: not a fan of that style of pitching (would prefer drop-and-drive), but for what it is, it isn’t overly cringe-worthy.

His stuff features a big time fastball in velocity, but I’d like to see him throw more 2-seamers as his 4-seamer is very straight in both horizontal and vertical movement. His breaking ball and his change-up are great compliments to it — it’s easy to see why Latos’ stuff is heralded. Now, if he can only stay on the field.

Edit to my conclusion: I am not sure what exactly type breaking ball he throws, but they seem to be very similar.

by Mike Rogers

So, I’ve been absent ’round here, well, all year. But, with the MLB draft taking place last week, my forte comes a’callin’ again.

…But not quite yet.

Until then, Paul Depodesta’s taken a look at the 2008 Padres draftees over at his blog. I also took three looks of my own at the Padres college bats taken this time last year.

After perusing the numbers, I must admit that Logan Forsythe’s out-performed my expectations thus far. I thought James Darnell would be the better hitter, as I liked his power potential and his eye at the plate more than Forsythe’s. But, I’m happy to be relatively wrong as Darnell’s only slightly out-performing Forsythe, albeit at a lower level then Logan.

Allan Dykstra really has struggled thus far, but Depodesta notes that they’ve made some adjustments to his swing in Spring Training and that is possibly the cause. His plate discipline has been great thus far (19.5% BB rate), and I suspect that his power will come. I still like James Darnell the most out of the college bats that San Deigo took last year.

Now, as I said before, my college hitters numbers are on the way, but I don’t have an exact date as of yet (nor a real timetable, either). I have 199 hitters — most of which were draft eligible this year — updated with 2009 numbers. I need to flesh those out with the full conference data, and when I do that, I’ll be able to pen something on the college hitters San Deigo took last week. But I can give you a sneak peak.

The Padres top college bat taken in the 2009 draft was Miami (FL) Hurricane’s catcher Jason Hagerty. He had a breakout season in 2009. Of the 199 hitters I have stats for in 2009, Hagerty’s season came out 20th best as judged by my “score” ranking. He had an adjusted wOBA of .447 (26th best in my 2009 numbers), .306 adjusted Isolate Power (20th in my 2009 numbers), while walking 16.5% of the time and striking out 18.8% of the time in 260 plate appearances. The strikeouts are a little disconcerting, but from what I’ve read, he’s likely to stick behind the plate. So, you can live with some offensive short comings for a catcher, as their bats are often less potent and consistent then other position players.

The problem I’ve got with Hagerty is his past performance. I’m always a little leery of breakout players in their Junior seasons. Let’s peruse his 2008 numbers:

64.56 Score*
.358 adjusted wOBA
.220 adjusted IsoP
7.4% BB rate
25.9% K rate
162 PA’s

* = this score is slightly different then my 2009 score. For the 2008 and 2007 seasons, I have calculated an average wOBA for each conference and then adjusted that by the conference’s average park factor and strength of schedule. I use that to get a Runs Above Average number for each hitter in the conference. For instance, in 2008, the average adjusted wOBA in the ACC was .389 — Hagerty was 4.36 runs below the average ACC hitter in 2008. I take this into account in my score, but don’t for 2009 because I don’t have full conference data yet.

And his 2007 numbers:

22.78 Score
.233 adjusted wOBA
.023 adjusted IsoP
9.0% BB rate
27.0% K rate
100 PA’s

The average adjusted wOBA for ACC hitters in 2007 was .383. Hagerty was 13.02 runs below the average ACC hitter in 2007.

Now, these 2007 and 2008 numbers need to be taken with a barrell of salt. Combined, it’s just 262 PA’s, while he had 260 in 2009 alone. He was a utility man of sorts for his first couple of years before finally settling into the starting catchers role this year. So, sporadic playing time in his freshman and sophomore seasons may have been a big part of the bad numbers. That said, I am always a bit skeptical of players that have drastically improved statistics in their junior years. His improvement in the walk and strikeout department is a very good one and if that carries over to the pro game (assuming they sign him), then I think he’s got some offensive upside. As of now, his ability to stick behind the plate could be enough to get him to the majors as at backup backstop.

by Ben Davey

So Baseball America’s Matt Eddy sat down for an interview with Madfriars’ John Coniff.  John asked some  good questions and helped show some flaws:

The big question that so many of our fans have is that many Padres’ fans believed the team was starting to turn the corner under the Grady Fuson, Baseball America had them ranked #12 last year, but this year they are #29. Has the system really taken a step that far back?

Matt Eddy: Yes, the biggest difference is the graduation of Chase Headley. Mainly just a few bad drafts combined with this year’s first-round draft pick getting his bonus reduced because of injury concerns, and it’s not good. Throw that in with a few guys that struggled in Triple-A, Matt Antonelli and Wade LeBlanc, and it was a tough year. Although there were some highlights at the upper levels, such as solid years by Will Venable and Josh Geer, all and all just not enough of the top prospects put together good years. The organizational rankings are difficult and to some extent are reflective of how the big club performs.

My Response:  This isn’t a surprise, we knew the ranking would go down.  Headley was one of the top 30 prospects in baseball last year so losing him was going to be a hit.  Combine that with Antonelli and Leblanc struggling and Latos and Cumberland missing half the year and it did not help the rankings.  The thing that I keep on seeing is that they lowered their rankings of the Padres because Dykstra signed for less money because of his back.  All medical reports said he was perfectly fine (there was not one conflicting medical report), the Padres are just cheap.  The Padres had a bad 2004 draft, but have been solid since then.  I figured we would have gotten credit for a good 08′ draft and would end up 18-22 in the rankings.

What do you see the Padres organizations greatest strength and weakness is?

Matt Eddy: They have built a lot of depth with mid-range ceiling college prospects and I think they have some strength up the middle with prospects such as [Cedric] Hunter, Antonelli, [Eric] Sogard and [Drew] Cumberland. Beyond Mat Latos there is a pretty significant drop-off in power arms. Maybe you could make an argument for Wynn Pelzer and Simon Castro, but it’s tough.

Ben: This just conforms to the popular opinion (which I can’t argue with), that the Padres have a lot of depth, and a lot of players who “could” become major league players, BUT not much in the upper echelon of prospects.

You have both James Darnell and Logan Forsythe ticketed to Lake Elsinore, but both are playing third base. Do you see one of them moving?

Matt Eddy: Good question. They drafted Forsythe higher so he could be in High A - but you know it is tough to say.

Ben: Every report I have read is higher on Darnell.  Darnell is also the most likely to change positions if need be.  I think at least for the 09′ season you will see both at 3B.  My thought would be Darnell would be in Lake Elsinore and Forsythe in Fort Wayne (at least to start the year).

On your CF depth chart you had Brad Chalk and Danny Payne listed above Drew Macias. After the season the first two had, especially Payne who was injured for most of the year, you really liked both of them more?

Matt Eddy: With Payne and Chalk, a lot of it was where they were drafted and some of the guys around the office were big Payne fans and there is always kind of a luster with some of the new guys. Macias repeating a league a few times didn’t help either.

Ben: Macias was also voted as the top defensive prospect.  Is it just me or does it seem like Eddy looks at what round they were drafted in and that determines where they rank.  While I disagree that Payne/Chalk should be higher then Macias, I understand that he is “the expert.”  What I do disagree with his HOW he did it: “a lot of it was where they were drafted and that people were big Payne fans…”  Ummmm….. so you are telling me that your rankings have little to do with how they play, stats, or D; but rather a look at when they were drafted and how big of fans your friends are of them?  Nice way to show you are the “expert.”

If the Padres minor league system ranked first in on-base percentage, second in runs scored and fourth in slugging percentage, how do it rank 29th out of 30 teams?

Matt Eddy: [laughs] Good question. Part of it is the friendly hitting environments in Eugene and Lake Elsinore. The reason is they have drafted so many college guys they tend to be a little older than the competition. They were ranked near the top in many leagues by player’s ages.

Ben: Here is Lake Elsinore, Fort Wayne, and Eugene’s average age compared to the team that won the league.  High A:  Storm’s average age was 22.8.  San Jose won and was 23.5, Lancaster was 23.0 (min 12 G (batters) or 10 IP).  So the Storm were younger than the first or second team (and both the Red Sox and Giants have one of the top systems).  Fort Wayne was at 22, Clinton was at 21.5.  Salem-Keizer averaged 22.1 years old Eugene Ems averaged 21.3 years old.  So I don’t think “age” is really a factor.  What exactly is wrong with a hitter friendly park?  Yes, it might mean that the hitting stats are not as great, but it also means the pitching isn’t as bad, so I think they off set.  Again, they might not be youngest team, but they clearly aren’t the oldest, and thus this argument can’t really be used against the Padres.

Could you clarify if Baseball America uses a five tool approach or a 1 (hitting) + four approach. I could be wrong, but I think they equate “tools” speed and throwing, with hitting. That is why so many of our prospects are underrated by them.

Matt Eddy: We do weigh tools higher, but we don’t negate performance. What we may be guilty is of overrating younger guys and underrating older guys that repeat, such as Drew Macias.

Ben: Well, I guess that answers that.  It’s interesting though that most of the “top” Padre prospects were drafted in the last few drafts.  People like Kulbacki, Decker, Portillo, Antonelli, Sogard, etc… all drafted (signed) in the past couple drafts.  I know he means that they tend to give more credit/hype to “toolsy” high school players, but the funny thing is a lot of them don’t pan out.

Has the Padres drafting of “pitchability” pitchers hurt San Diego in developing top of the rotation pitchers?

Matt Eddy: Yes, and you really need to look no further than Jake Peavy and then compare him to more polished college guys like Wade LeBlanc and Josh Geer. Throw in the fact that many of their top minor league guys like Justin Germano and Dennis Tankersly flamed out.

Ben: Can’t argue that it has hurt the Padres.  Leblanc, Geer, and Ramos were all “safe picks” — they weren’t bad and they will all probably end up helping the MLB team, but no “ace” material.  I agree on Tank, but was Germano ever a “top minor league prospect?”

Matt, have you seen Kyle Blanks swing the bat? If so, what are you impressed with and what can he work on? Keith Law mentioned that Blanks doesn’t put his lower body into his swing. How many home runs would he have if he did that consistently?

Matt Eddy: No, I haven’t seen him in person. If you read the scouting report that is really what we ding him on too, a hands hitter. He’s somewhat resistant to pulling the ball and changing his approach, but I think if he could adapt he is capable of hitting around 30 home runs a year.

Ben:  How do you cover the Padres and NOT see their top (or top 3) prospect play?  In my lifetime I have seen three minor league games in person and I have seen Blanks play (Lake Elsinore two years ago).  How do you make the scouting report if you haven’t seen him hit?

How much has stock fallen on Antonelli? And do they think that Anton can still get back up to his former elite status?

Matt Eddy: There is a good chance he will approach that status because he is smart and athletic, and will be able to maintain a consistency of performance. It’s hard to say why he struggled, the problem was never really diagnosed, and he did break out a little in August. If he sticks with the same approach, I think he could become an average MLB player.

Ben: So, basically he expects Antonelli to regain his status and at the very least be a solid MLB player…Ahhh, I see why they are so down on Antonelli now (sarcasm). By the way, he just singled on a full count, eight pitch AB, as I am writing this.

What about Kellen Kulbacki do you not like? I understand that his defense is a bit of a question, but was surprised that his hitting ability alone didn’t have him ranked higher.

Matt Eddy: We had him #4 and you can make a case for Blanks, Decker or him as the top hitter. Kulbacki had three good months, but I would have liked to have seen it for a little longer.

Ben: Thanks for NOT answering my question (I asked John to ask this; this one about Anton and the next two).  You would have liked him to stay healthy…ok, but it didn’t seem like injury concerns were the big problem for the ranking.  No addressing of his defense or anything else.. GRRRR

What did you think about the Padres 2008 draft? Of the draft picks who do you think has the best chance of being a big contributor at the big league level? Was Robertson a flash in the pan, or is he for real?

Matt Eddy: It’s hard to argue with the pick of Dykstra because of his power numbers, but where do you play him? You have Blanks and Gonzalez already there. Decker is a fantastic pick, first round talent; he just doesn’t look like it. With regards to Robertson he is someone that could make us look bad. He’s just someone that is an all out player that has shown he could do it, a very unconventional player that is very tough to evaluate against future and better competition. [Cole] Figueroa was a good pick and even [Beamer] Weems and Adam Zornes helps the team’s defense.

Ben: Okay, now you are just contradicting yourself.  Earlier you mentioned one of the reason that the Padres were ranked 29th is because of the 1st round of the 2008 draft.  The reason was the “injury.”  Now you are praising Dykstra, but wondering about where he will fit in in San Diego.  I didn’t know MLB players blocking a prospect has an impact on rankings.  Wait, you love the Decker pick?  I love it too, but why doesn’t that have an effect on the rankings.  I’ll give you  a pass on Robertson, I have no idea what he will end up being either.  It seems to me that you really liked the Padres 2008 draft…  Did I miss something or doesn’t that mean that the Padres don’t have the 29th best farm system?

Hunter led ALL of MiLB in hits last year, Robertson broke a league record in hits, three of the Storm were named to Topps All High-A team, Decker and Robertson were named league MVP, Blanks was on the All Double-A team, and that’s not even factoring in a lot of other prospects….why were they 29th out of 30 teams? (This was the last one)

Matt Eddy: What is interesting with Hunter, when the minor league season ended, he had more hits than anyone, including those on the major level. As I said earlier, there were just too many prime guys that took a step backward combined with too many old guys; but Hunter is the exception to that.

Ben: You liked Hunter for how well he did, shouldn’t that partially make up for maybe a struggling Antonelli?  Especially considering that he was a HS draftee (so age helps), was a top prospect the year before (before his bad Fort Wayne season), and led ALL of minor leagues in an offensive category.

Feel free to disagree with me, but it looks like he contradicts himself.  When a team is ranked next to last in terms of minor league farm systems you would expect more negatives then positives about the system. However, the only negative things that I saw where: 1) Headley (#1 prospect in 08′) graduated,  2) Anton and Leblanc had a bad year, Latos was injured,  3) Dykstra signed for less money, 4) Low Ceiling talent.  However, he expects 1) Anton to rebound (and when they expect someone to rebound they don’t mark them down as much), 2) said that Dykstra and Decker were great picks by the Padres, 3) was high on last years top five prospect Cedric Hunter,  4) said that Decker, Kulbacki and Blanks can all be considered the best hitter in the system (and since Blanks is basically proven, this shows that they must be high on Kulbacki and Decker), tried to use age as an issue for ranking them low, but he was wrong, 6) admits to not seeing one of the Padres top prospects playing.  I am by no indication saying that the Padres should be top 5, top 10, heck not even top 15.  I figured they would slot in somewhere between 18-22.  So seeing a ranking of 29, followed by the inability to back up the ranking (without looking foolish), and you have an agitated blogger hoping that the Padres farm system makes Matt Eddy eat his crow.

by Myron Logan

Check out this nugget on Jim Lefebvre, Padres new hitting coach, from Corey Brock:

In fact, Lefebvre has fully embraced statistical analysis and is using that information to his benefit as he works with hitters. He’s worked closely during the off-season with Josh Stein, the Padres coordinator of baseball research and advance scouting. Lefebvre carries all this information in a blue binder and consults it frequently.

Lefebvre likes to talk about on-base percentage but is more concerned with ball flight and measuring balls in plays, run expectancy and non-productive outs. The information Stein provides shows Lefebvre what areas his individual hitters need to work on.

That is interesting, and I think, very good. You surely want a hitting coach that knows the basics of hitting, from a mechanics perspective, but let’s face it, most hitters have heard about all there is to hear on mechanics by the time they reach the majors. A hitting coach willing to embrace the numbers, especially ones more meaningful than batter-pitcher matchups and lineup order splits, can really provide an edge.

The stuff mentioned in the above passage, ball flight, measuring balls in play, run expectancy, all sounds pretty ‘cutting edge.’ I wonder how ball flight is measured. I don’t think it could be with HITf/x, because I don’t think that debuts until this year. Maybe it’s done by using a model similar to Greg R’s at Hit Tracker or maybe just by watching video. I don’t know, but either way, it sounds promising. File this under the ‘interesting to things to follow in ‘09’ category.

And by the way, it’s good to see Corey is blogging again.

by Mike Rogers

Here’s the final part in my three-part breakdown on the Padres 2008 draft in which we looked at the college bats that San Diego drafted last June. So far in Part 1, we broke down the first five and then did the same for the next five in Part 2. Here in part 3, we’ve got the final 3 bats that they took from the college ranks that are in my college hitters study; Robert Lara of Central Florida, Aaron Murphree of Arkansas, and Dan Robertson of Oregon State, right after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

by Mike Rogers

Update: I have included the 2007 numbers for Adam Zornes. Keep in mind that this was over just 67 plate appearances, so his numbers are much more uncertain than his 2008 stats which came across 264 PA’s.

In part one of my look at the Padres 2008 draft, I’ve discussed the stats and scouting reports of the first 5 college bats that the Padres selected – Allan Dykstra of Wake Forest, Logan Forsythe of Arkansas, James Darnell of South Carolina, Blake Tekotte of Miami (FL), and Sawyer Carroll of Kentucky. Here in part two, I will do the same for the next 5 bats that they took in the 2008 draft; Cole Figueroa of Florida, Adam Zornes of Rice, Beamer Weems of Baylor, Matt Clark of Louisiana State, and Derek Shunk of Villanova. So, lets get started…

Read the rest of this entry »

by Mike Rogers

Update: I found an error that occurred in my 2008 numbers across all of the conferences. As a result, the numbers have changed a bit, and I have fixed them, but haven’t updated the blurbs I wrote about each player.

Sorry this is delayed. I got sick last week that ate up my two days off, and, thus, consumed any time I was going to devote to writing this piece. Better late than never, I suppose.

I’m changing this just a little, and dropping the lone college bat that I’ve evaluated that did not sign with the Padres out of the 2008 draft, Jason Kipnis of Arizona State. Also, in my previous post, I outlined my methodology. I forgot to say that I also have an aggregate number which uses park-Adjusted wOBA, park-adjusted Isolated Power BB%, and K%.

Caveats: One, I’m not an expert. Far from it. I’m not presenting this as gospel and I haven’t even gone back far enough to see how predictive (if at all) or accurate these methods are. Two, this, at best, is based on lots of small samples, relatively speaking. I’m dealing with two years of data for each of these kids. However, that’s generally around 350-550 plate appearances total. So, not even quite 80% of a big leaguers season. Add in hundreds of different parks and varying levels of competition, and you’ve got a lot of uncertainty that comes with this sort of thing. Three, regarding that competition, I realized that I didn’t adjust for the level of competition faced. This was an oversight on my part and something I will go back and change at some point in the future. However, I haven’t done that yet, but I’m going to present this anyways. And lastly, there’s big virtual hat tip I want to give to Adam Foster, founder of Project Prospect. I am a regular in the forums over there and through constant email exchange with Adam, he’s been gracious enough to show me his “system” he’s using to help rank prospects. I’ve used parts of his system. Half of my “score” is based on his back-of-the-envelop math and the other half would be too, but I’ve adjusted the weightings in the formula. I’m also using his Speed Score in my study as well. This analysis (for the lack of a better word) isn’t as in-depth as the one Lincoln Hamilton unveiled over at PP a couple weeks ago. He’s been at this for 4-5 months longer than I have been, so I defer to his systems superiority, though from the conversations him and I have had, we tend to agree on most of these kids.

With that long, long intro, lets not stall any longer…

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