Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 25: The Secretly Successful White Sox System?/Starlin Castro’s Makeup Concerns

Episode Date: August 21, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss Kenny Williams’ contention that the poorly rated White Sox farm system is just misunderstood, then consider whether the Cubs should be concerned about Starlin Castro’s makeup.

🎵 Good Tuesday morning and welcome to episode 25 of Effectively Wild, the daily baseball prospectus podcast in New York, New York. I am Ben Lindberg in Long Beach in his Honda Fit with the door open tonight because of the heat, which is letting the cricket sound in that you're being treated to. It's Sam Miller. I was asked today if we are sponsored by Honda. We are not, although maybe it's something we should look into. I got to say, Ben, these crickets are no treat if you live here they're better than

the ants i uh i actually may have gotten rid of the ants how did you well uh unrelatedly i had a shower project that i had to do and i took apart um the shower faucet and i found a nest now my understanding is that argentine ants have multiple nests around the house and hundreds of queens, but I sprayed a full can of Raid into that wall, killed just about a billion ants and a bunch of queens. And I'm not super confident, but we haven't had an ant since. We both were responsible for some insect genocide then this weekend, it sounds like, because I wasn't just lying by the pool leisurely. I was also taking down two wasp nests, one of which was hanging by the front door

and another of which was on the grill, which was a nice surprise when we opened it up to make some salmon. So I sprayed them from afar and ran. Awesome. Yeah. I want to hear more about this, but I don't know that anybody else does. Yeah, we can talk about it off air. So what's your non-insect-related topic for tonight? Starling Castro.

Okay. And although we just talked about the white socks on friday and i feel sort of silly talking about the white socks again there's another thing about the white socks i would like to talk about is the other thing my pre-season prediction for the white socks that you discovered after after we thought about it i alluded to how poorly the bp staff had done in predicting where the white Sox finished before the season. And then only after the fact discovered that Sam had picked them to finish last, which I would have mocked him mercilessly about if I had known at the time. But I got it in any way, I guess.

Still holding out hope. Twins are winning tonight. Yeah. All right. I guess we can talk about that first since maybe it'll be shorter um kenny williams said some things today about the white socks minor league system and their ability to develop talent uh from the farm so before season, and really for a while now, uh, the White Sox system has sort of been a punchline really has not headed any guys on the top 100 list that various people do other than Addison Reed. And as many of those people have pointed out when your top prospect is a reliever, that says a lot about your system, even if it is a very good reliever. And so they kind of ranked by pretty much everyone who does these things as the worst organization in terms of minor league talent and the system with really no high ceiling prospects.

prospects. And so Kenny Williams today came out and kind of defended the system and said, we have a different method to our minor league system in terms of style and in terms of how we are going to promote and develop our young players so that they are ready for this ballpark and to be ready and hit the ground running at the big league level. It just runs counterproductive toward our minor league players having overinflated statistics. And a lot of these things are statistically driven in the evaluations. I prefer to have, for instance, Nate Jones starting in Class A in 2010 so that he can develop his breaking ball in his third pitch, his changeup, because he just may need that. Even if we do see him as a setup guy or future closer,

we believe he needed more than that 100 miles per hour. Now, could he have taken that 100 miles per hour fastball and blown everyone away in the minor leagues and been put at the top of the prospect list? Absolutely. But he wouldn't have been ready to compete here in the fashion he's been able to compete. And then he used Dan Vissietto as another example of that, saying that he's been taught to drive the ball to right and right center so that he could handle breaking balls instead of being allowed to swing away and pull everything to pump up his home run totals. And the same for Hector Santiago, whom many people said didn't deserve to be sent back to AAA, but he was moved there to be stretched out for a possible spot start. So that was kind of

interesting to think that there might be some sort of industry-wide blind spot where the White Sox system is concerned. Now, I don't know how much of their young talent is really responsible for the season that they've had. As we discussed last week, it's guys whom we didn't really expect to be good, but are veterans who've been good before, who've really been driving this, as well as the injury, the ability to prevent injuries or avoid injuries that we discussed. And if you look at someone like Viciato i mean he has not really exceeded expectations it doesn't seem to me um he's a below league average hitter who's been worth half a win according to our our stats so uh someone like that isn't really driving this um but it it is an interesting thing to talk about. And of course, Jones is just another reliever.

And I mean, I know that his opinion that certain prospect lists are just inflated by stats is probably valid. But I think when you talk about certain guys like Kevin Goldstein and Jason Parks to promote our own people, but Keith Law certainly and some other prospect experts around the industry, they are aware of these developmental plans and look beyond the

stats and often have to kind of talk down people's expectations because of that. On the other hand, the White Sox are known as one of the most secretive organizations. They don't let a whole lot leak. And so I wonder whether even the prospect experts to some extent are not privy to these things and might be underrating players because of it. he's saying in the least i think that it's probably pretty standard for teams at the bottom of prospect rankings lists to have an answer somewhat like this when their local beat reporter comes and asks them about it uh the suggestion here is a that only the white socks put the development of their players ahead of um their league stats, which I think 29 teams would dispute. The other argument is that prospect hounds who, like you named a few of them, seem to actually be, if not necessarily 100% accurate, talented and hardworking and interested in the truth, talented and hardworking and interested in the truth are too dumb to think through some of these things. I think that Kevin probably knows, it seems to me, the organizational purpose for what

every player in every organization is doing and at what level at any given moment. And that's somewhat exaggerated, but not by much. So I don't really accept it. I did just happen to glance at the top White Sox prospects from before the 2010 season, just to see whether they actually had good prospects that were maybe underrated. And really there's only like one and a half guys that are contributing anything right now. And one is Daniel Hudson. And I mean, obviously he's not contributing anything at the moment, but he turned out okay.

And then Veceto and then maybe Tyler Flowers. I also agree with you about Veceto. and then Viciato, and then maybe Tyler Flowers. I also agree with you about Viciato. I was trying to think of who he reminds me of because he doesn't remind me of anything good, to be totally honest. And that's it. The rest of the list turned out to be nothing. I looked at the 2011 list, and it's Chris Sale

and a bunch of guys who turned out to be nothing. Well, and Reed. So I don't know. I think it's um probably nothing i don't i don't know that i really believe kenny williams in this case at all yeah i'm taking this from an mlb.com article and i don't know what the context was what he was asked about this um i don't know whether it was just sort of someone gave him the opportunity to crow about their success a little bit this season, and certainly on the major league level,

I think he's entitled to that. But they have been kind of a punching bag of prospect experts for a while, since under the old CPA, they were one of the teams that held fast to the slotting system and didn't spend a lot on the draft. And the consensus was that they pretty much got what they paid for. So it would be interesting if they were somehow defying that and surpassing expectations there. But just looking at the roster this season, I don't see a whole lot of proof of that either I mean if if the best that they've done is is develop a uh a pretty iffy outfielder uh you know corner guy who's not really hitting like a corner guy and then a few relievers who are decent um I don't

and sale well yeah of course sale um I. I guess he had graduated already from the prospect list before this season. But, I mean, other than that, if the best you can hold up is kind of a weak hitting corner guy and a few relievers, I don't know that it's necessarily the best advertisement for your system. necessarily the best advertisement for your system. But it's certainly something that you have to be aware of that these prospects are on plans that we might not know about. But the people who really are serious and respected and who do this for a living do tend to know about those things. Hey, Ben. Yes. AJ Brzezinski slugging 543. Of course. Naturally. We should talk about the White Talks every night and just update everybody on AJ Brzezinski slugging percentage. Yeah. All right. So Starling Castro, I think that you and I probably both have a reluctance to talk too much about off-field issues, makeup issues,

character issues, any of those sorts of things. Castro, of course, is on the verge of signing a long extension that could keep him in Chicago through, I believe, I don't know what to, what, I don't know what analysts should do about Castro's, you know, personality or makeup or whatever you want to say is, do you think that this is something that needs to be considered? Or are we just introducing something that we can't possibly say anything? Because it does seem to me that the aging curve is somewhat mysterious, but it's also somewhat predictable. But as far as a 22-year-old who has some of the makeup issues that Castro seems to have and that his team has called him out on, I don't know that there's a predictableiding curve for immature 22-year-olds. It seems

to me that a lot of immature 22-year-olds end up being immature 32-year-olds, and the exceptions are rarer than guys who just sort of stay the same. Well, I guess it matters whether it's the kind of immaturity that will really impact his on-field performance. If it's the sort of thing that leads to the occasional error in the field or, you know, a ball going under his glove or him not being positioned right, that's maybe not such a big deal as if it extends to his off the field preparation and and i mean i'm kind of taking my cue from the cubs in the sense that if they had traded him as they were at various times advised to do or rumored to be considering, I would have taken that as some sort of indictment of him, probably. I mean, I think if you consider how good he's been and how young he is, and you do project that forward and assume he follows something like the typical aging curve, then he's going

to be a great player for a really long time. And so if a team in their situation had decided that it was better to trade him, then I would have probably thought less of his potential or would have assumed that the Cubs thought that his off-the-field issues or make-up issues might prevent him from reaching that potential. If they're comfortable with it enough to keep him, then I'm less concerned about it. Yeah, more or less I'm in the tank for Castro as a ballplayer. And I think that it's an extension that I'd be thrilled about if I were a Cubs fan.

I don't know. that I'd be thrilled about if I were a Cubs fan. I don't know. I guess it's more of a question that I have. I don't know. It's a question that we struggle with and there's a move and there are personalities involved and you have smoke and you're trying to figure out whether there's fire and whether it's

responsible uh to to take that into account i mean you rj mentions in a lot of his transaction analysis analyses that you know he there's a there's a conflict between wanting to be deferential to the club because they know more than you and they uh i mean they know infinitely more than you but on the other hand not wanting to just by default being deferential to the club because otherwise every move is a great move. So with Castro, I mean, I guess I guess with Castro, as far as it goes, I mean, I like I said, I'd be happy to to be a Cubs fan right now. I think I'm maybe a little surprised they didn't get a bit more of a discount on him. on him. The extension is, it seems to me to be kind of the upper end of what guys of his level sign for at this stage. And so, you know, I'm a little bit surprised maybe that they didn't get a somewhat better deal, somewhat of a bargain because he has been disciplined multiple times.

He does have these kind of outstanding issues. There is a certain amount of risk about his career going forward. And yeah, he's not quite the sure thing that a player of his caliber should be. Maybe. Maybe not. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm absolutely wrong about all of it. That's what's hard.

Yeah, I don't know. But I agree that he is the perfect guy for them to build around, he certainly seems like someone you would want to keep around because he was called up so young that he is the type of guy that you can envision as a member of the next successful Cubs team. In fact, if he isn't, then things are going to go horribly wrong for them. His slugging percentage, though, is 116 points lower than AJ Perzinski's. Yeah, well, not everyone can be a 35-year-old catcher having a career year. 543, my word. Well, this has been episode 25 of the A.J. Pruszynski podcast.

We thank you for listening, and we will be back on Wednesday with more.