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.

Just a little shameless self-promotion from me today (and I normally don’t do this, but…). I joined the writing team over at Beyond the Boxscore, and my first article went up today evaluating the Jake Peavy trade last Friday.

I’d really like it if everyone that reads this would go there and read the entire thing, since it’ll please Padres fans to read the outcome. Thanks.

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 Mike Rogers

I’ve been absentee for a while, so before I continue I just want to say how excited I am to be working with Daniel in the foreseeable future. This is a fun blog with a growing community and I look forward to sharing this space with Daniel and Ben. Hopefully Myron stops by more than just a couple of times and best of luck to him in his endeavors in the future.

I am dropping by to link to the San Diego Padres Top 5 Prospects (with 6 honorable mentions) over at Project Prospect. They are:

1. Kyle Blanks
2. Matt Antonelli
3. Mat Latos
4. Kellen Kulbacki
5. Allan Dykstra
6. Jaff Decker
7. Jeremy McBryde
8. Will Inman
9. Cedric Hunter
10. James Darnell
11. Adys Portillo

Now, I do want to say that this was a collaboration. They had released their Top 200 prospect list a couple weeks ago, and thusly, had the top 9 in this list essentially chosen for me. I wrote the blurbs on all the players, but here is my personal Padres Top Prospect list:

1. Kellen Kulbacki
2. Kyle Blanks
3. Mat Latos
4. James Darnell
5. Allan Dykstra
6. Jaff Decker
7. Will Inman
8. Adys Portillo
9. Matt Antonelli
10. Will Venable

I think that the top three are, for the most part, interchangeable (more-so the top two, depending on your opinion of whether Latos is a reliever or a starter in the Majors). The rest are also interchangeable but I feel that 4-10 are a cut below the top three.

That said, I am a HUGE believer in James Darnell. I think he has the ability to be the best player out of this prospect list because I think his floor is very high — perhaps even as high as an average right fielder in the major leagues and his status can only increase from there. If his instincts and lateral quickness improves and he can stick at 3rd base, his value increases enormously in my mind. Big, big fan of his.

by Mike Rogers

Stephen Strasburg started again today against the cross-town rivals, University of San Diego, beating the Toreros 5-3 on the back of another gem by Stephen Strasburg. His line today was:

8 IP, 5 H, 2  R, 2 ER, 18 K, 1 BB, 1 HR allowed, 1 2B.

Yeah, that brings his 2009 line up to:

20.1 IP, 13 H, 5 R, 4 ER, 45 K, 4 BB, 1 HR allowed,  3 2B, 0 3B.

I’m not making these things up. He really is striking out 60.8% (45 K’s)of the batters he faces (74) while walking just 5.5% — which is actually UP from his 4.4% BB rate of last year.

But, his mechanics should be under some scrutiny as they’re very Mark Prior-like. Read more after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

by Mike Rogers

ey, listen, I know there’s been A TON on Stephen Strasburg all over the internet, and recently here at Friar Forecast. That said, this was just way to good to not mention, even if there’s barely a chance that he’ll fall to the Padres at No. 3 overall.

Stephen Strasburg struck out 16 batters last night. No, I’m not kidding and I didn’t create him in a video game. His second start of the year nearly doubled his strikeout total from his first start. So, we can safely assume something in the neighborhood of 27 strikeouts in start 3 for him.

Now, he was pitching against the Nevada Wolf Pack, but still. 16 K’s is remarkable.

His final line in the game:
6.2 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 16 K, 26 Batters Faced.

His line through two games:

2-0, 12.1 IP, 8 H, 3 R, 2 ER, 3 BB, 27 K, 1 HBP, 49 Batters Faced. Yes, he is striking out 55.1% percent of the batters he faces, while walking just 6.1%.

Fun fact: the rest of the San Diego State pitching staff has 21 K’s and 8 BB’s on the season.

by Mike Rogers

With the talk of Stephen Strasburg’s starts in 2008, as well as how his opening start of the 2009 campaign, and some of the work I did breaking down the Padres 2008 draft (albeit, with tweaks I’ve made to my system since writing those, the numbers have changed a bit)  being bandied about ’round here, I’m coming by with some more college statistics-related things.

First up, Myron and I penned an article for Rich Lederer’s fantastic Baseball Analysts website. It basically is an outline of adjusting college offensive numbers to the best that I know how at this point (suggestions are aboslutely welcome).

Some good work has been done recently over at Project Prospect:

-Top 30 pitching prospects.
-Top 50 pitchers under the age of 25.
-Some article comparing the Mets 18th overall draft pick, Ike Davis, and the Mariners’ 66th overall draft pick, Dennis Raben. I bring it up because this cool guy is also writing this linkage post.

But the one that made me most excited: Lincoln Hamilton’s 2009 Draft “Big Board.” This is definitely subject to change, as all ‘big boards’ are, throughout the college season. I plan on manually entering in the numbers of college hitters (and pitchers, though I’m FAR less comfortable divulging that info at the moment since there are so many things that goes into evaluating pitchers) starting in early-to-mid March and tracking it every couple of weeks — I can bring some updates here. There’s also a thread on Lincoln’s article over there. If you’re not a member of those forums, and like studying prospects, I really would urge you to join. The articles are great, but that forum is civil, well-run, and is built on the accessability of the writers, and depth of knowledge of all the people that post there. A ton of great discussion that isn’t always prompted by the site’s founders. Even if you just want to lurk and read the discussion going on, there’s a ton of links, valuable information, and nice breakdowns by guys who do actually have scouting backrounds and/or current jobs as part-time area scouts. Great stuff.

Also, Project Prospect has started rolling out their annual Team Top 5’s (plus 3-5 honorable mentions), which will then lead to their Top 200 Prospect List. I will be doing the Padres top 5 over there.

Speaking of Prospect Lists, a little publication I like to call Baseball America released their top 100 list which means all of the big guns have released their lists. Baseball Prospectus and ESPN (A.K.A. Keith Law) already released their lists and the Sporting News released a top 50 earlier.