Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 692: The Year of Top Prospects

Episode Date: June 11, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about Bryce Harper and talk about the unusual number of top prospects making the majors early this season.

Here they come, yeah, some are walking, some are riding, here they come, yeah, and some are flying, some just gliding, released after years of being kept in hiding, they're climbing up the ladder on my rock. Enter the young, yeah, now they've learned to think, enter the young, Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. That was so weird, Ben. Saying good afternoon? Not just saying good afternoon, but after saying good morning, re-recording to get good afternoon, when in fact it is currently morning. Where we are, I suppose.

And when you post it, it'll probably be morning. I'm still... And normally you post it at night. Yeah. And you don't care about that. Yeah, but people listen in the morning. I don't care about where I am. A lot of people Yeah, but people listen in the morning. I don't care about where I am. A lot of people will probably listen to this in the morning.

I'm thinking about the listeners, and my heart is still on East Coast time. It was a lot of effort. I'm just saying it was a lot of effort to get something that was maybe right. I know our afternoon listeners appreciate it. It must be jarring for me to say good morning when it's not morning. They probably just turn it off. It's not meant for them. This podcast doesn't know anything.

Yeah. Anything else going on? No. Sad to see the Bryce Harper streak of not facing a younger pitcher come to an end. Somebody on the Facebook pointed this out, but i found this as well it's crazy how bad the mainstream is at fun facts they're so bad at fun facts that they get handed to them a perfect fun fact and they completely water it down everybody i heard was saying he's never faced a a younger hitter than him in the major like like they'd say oh yes 2300 or whatever at bats as a big leader but that's not

what makes it so interesting what makes it so interesting is that he had a rehab assignment last year right it's his whole professional career and possibly his whole plot it's a large chunk of his amateur career right what did we what did we conclude that? We don't think... Maybe 9 or 10, probably. It seems like not a safe bet, because he might have faced a sophomore in high school on a varsity team. You can definitely

go back to sophomore in high school. He certainly hasn't faced anybody younger than him since he was 15 or 16. But there's some chance that you could go back to like nine like nine or ten sure i would think so and and instead of focusing on that uh we heard a watered down version of this i mean he had a rehab assignment last year he played in like low a or something yeah played it well high a but all the same that's what makes it fascinating it's a decent fun

fact without the rehab stand decent but not great you could say that about i bet you could say that i bet he's not the if you take out the rehab assignment i bet he's not the first player you could say this about over a similar time frame probably time frame yeah yeah you could say this about. Over a similar time frame, probably. A similar time frame. Yeah, you could take A-Rod or Andrew Jones or someone like that and probably get the same thing. Yeah, exactly. You could take exactly A-Rod or Andrew Jones would be two good examples. And Urias, you could probably do the same thing on the other side. But he had a rehab assignment.

He went back to the minors after establishing himself as an all-star. Two years after establishing himself as an all-star. Two full years. More than two years. And this survived. This fact survived. But people don't care about fun facts the way they used to. The fun fact, you know, we exported our fun fact factories. Fun factories. Well, Jordan Schusterman predicted that it would be Jacob Lindgren before this season, so well done.

He did very well. That was well processed. Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. Hang on. Yeah. How would you spell Bryce?

If you had to come up with the pronunciation, a phonetic pronunciation for Bryce, like in a dictionary, how would you do it? Don't click anything. I'm looking at it, and if you go look for it, you're going to get it. How would you phonetically do Bryce? Probably just replace the Y with an I. That's what I was thinking, too. Baseball reference has B-R-i-y-s no that could be bris yeah i i mean there is no example in the english language that i know of of an i and a y in that in that order and so that like i don't know what an I-Y combination, I don't know what sort of diphthonginess that would create.

Wait, how would you do Harper? How would I say Harper? How would you spell Harper phonetically? Pretty much the way it's spelled. Yeah, right? Yeah. Reference inserts an extra H before the R. That seems unnecessary.

It does. I love, I, first of all, the only reason that I bring this up at all, by the way, Harper in my dictionary is exactly as it is. There's no, there's no extra. The only reason I bring this up, Ben, is that besides being a phenomenal resource, the baseball reference pronunciation guide, I use it probably at least twice a week and the listeners don't that besides being a phenomenal resource, the Baseball Reference Pronunciation Guide, I use it probably at least twice a week, and the listeners don't even

know. And they don't know specifically because I used it. If I didn't use it, you would know. Besides being a phenomenal resource that I'm a huge fan of on the site, there are occasionally Easter eggs in the pronunciation guide. Such as? Such as, like, I think this is one i think that

i'm not yeah shoot it's not cassia uh one of the players whose name changed for instance uh the pronunciation is his old name you know like uh like it's a little gag you know and yeah so like roberto hern' pronunciation guide is Carmona. And I just, I find that amusing. And I've seen others, I've seen other Easter eggs in there. But then I get to, now I look at them and I always wonder, is this an Easter egg? Is there a joke here? So, like, for instance, I remember, I almost unfiltered on this one time, on all the different ways that Cabky is k-u-h-k and miguel

is k-a-h-k and then miguel has a rah r-a-h at the end and melky has an uh u-a-h and and of course they're both cabrera and so then i i went and I looked at all the Cabreras, and I was trying to figure out, what, is this an Easter egg? Or is it just, you know, these are both correct pronunciations, and so they just go with it. So that's why I wondered about Harper. I was looking at Harper and trying to figure out if I'm supposed to get a joke there. Anyway, it does...

I don't know, maybe Miguel or Melky called up Sean Foreman and just told him about the nuance, the way that he pronounces his name. It's more of an A than a U. Yeah. Okay, so prospects. We've talked about how it seems like there have been a lot of prospect call-ups so far this season, or at least for this point in the season. So I'm going to read you the list of baseball prospectus top 101 prospects from this February that are in the major leagues now

or have been in the major leagues for the first time. And it ends with Vincent Velasquez, who pitched for the Astros last night. So that was his debut. He was the 15th in order of ranking from highest to lowest. Addison Russell, Carlos Correa, Chris Bryant, Noah Sindergaard, Archie Bradley, Joey Gallo, Blake Sweetheart, Austin Hedges, Chi-Chi Gonzalez, AJ Cole, Carlos Rodon, Michael Lorenzen, Eduardo Rodriguez, Velasquez, and Kevin Ploiecki. Does that still strike you as a lot? You're asking me?

Yeah. It still strikes me as a lot, yeah. Okay. But is there a hammer coming? I'm going to talk about it, but I'm just wondering if your impression has stayed the same. It strikes me as a lot, and partly it strikes me as a lot because there were a couple guys that I just was not like mentally prepared for this year at all like i didn't think that i would see right uh joey gallo

like that seemed inconceivable to me that joey gallo would be up and and russell came up earlier than i thought and so there are a few of those guys and so yeah it feels like it feels like the normal allotment plus a few yeah and if And if you use a different prospect list, you get slightly different names. But if you use Baseball Americas, you still get 15 guys who are up from that list. It's just three different guys. And so I went and looked to see whether this was actually a lot by this point in the season. And I wrote about it. There's an article at Grantland with some graphs you can look at if you want graphs, but I will summarize.

So I used baseball prospectus top 101 lists and top 100 lists from 2007 on, and then used baseball America lists before that, going all the way back to 1990. And for each season, I got the number of top 101 prospects who debuted in the big leagues through June 10th. And obviously opening day is a little different in every year. This year was a late opening day. So if anything, you would think there would be fewer prospects by June 10th this year. you would think there would be fewer prospects by June 10th this year. And so the average number of top 101 prospects to have debuted by this point in the year is 12, 12.3 to be precise. So we've seen 15. So in that it's above average a little bit, but not unprecedented. There are five previous seasons in the 26 in my sample that have had more than 15

top 101 guys called up before that point in the year. So that in itself is not all that notable, but I think part of why we have noted this is that a lot of the prospects that have come up have been top five prospects and top ten prospects. It's been three of the top five, four of the top ten. These are big, big name prospects, the biggest prospects in baseball and Kevin Ploiecki. But still, mostly, yeah. Can I interrupt a couple, just a couple questions on your methodology? Sure.

Get those out of the way. This is, to some degree these these call-ups aren't independent of each other because the super two clock changes it moves based on who has been called up right yeah if everybody brought all their product like if 98 people came up in april then the super two deadline would be like way it'd be in april basically and so then you could bring up more guys. As you bring up more guys, you can bring up more guys, perhaps. Secondly, what did you do about September call-ups?

Or guys who already had a taste last year. Do they count as a call-up? No, they don't count. They're the only guys who have not played in the big leagues at all. And so I wonder if September call-ups have changed. Do you have any feeling about whether fewer or more prospects are being called up late in seasons these days? It feels like less because...

I don't know for sure. I also looked at returning players on top one top 101s just to see how many guys on each year's list had already played in the major leagues um so i will i'll get to that in a minute i don't know about the the patterns of september call-ups really is there some guys who've been called up like you know dylan bundy played in 2012 in the major league so he shows up as a guy who was already in the majors even though he hasn't played in the majors the last two years so so it's a slightly above average number of top prospects by this point in the calendar year but as i was saying the the caliber the pedigree of these prospects seems very high. It's not just Velasquez and Ploiecki. It's Bryant

and Russell and Correa. So I tried to combine quantity and quality. So what I did was kind of rank everyone inversely, or I assigned a number to each guy that was the inverse of his rank on the prospect list. So if you are the number one prospect on a BP top 101 list, you get 101. And if you were the 101st prospect, then you get one. And then I combined, I added up all the ranks of all the prospects who were up before that point in the year. So it combines quantity and quality. The more prospects are called up, the higher the number, and the better prospects are called up, the higher the number. So if you look at it that way, then this year stands out even more because the average rank of the prospects who've been called up this year is 31,

average rank of the prospects who've been called up this year is 31. And that is the third lowest average rank, or I guess I should say third highest. It's the third best group of prospects that have been called up before June 10th in terms of average rank on the list. So like sixth most prospects and third best prospects. And if you combine those two things then this year is the third most prospect year in this sample of 1992 2015 and the and it's it's a lot it's like 50 more than the average prospectness of the first two months of a season. And the previous two years that were more than this year, I think, have explanations for them. Or there are reasons why those were the years. Or I will at least propose theories as to why they were the years.

And you can tell me whether you buy them. So one of them, the number one most prospect a year was 1995. And so that I think is kind of a special case. There was no September 1994 because of the strike. And so, you know, the prospects who might have gotten a cup of coffee or whatever in August or September of that year did not get one. And there was kind of a backlog. And so by the time the 1995 regular season started in late April of that year, there were a bunch of prospects ready to go. And there were 12 guys from that year's top 101 who were on opening day rosters basically who you know played either on opening day or in the couple days after opening day wait so normally we have 12 debuts by june 10th right

we had 12 debuts by the second day of the season yeah basically yeah um so and and more you know like six or something more also before june 10th that year. So my theory is that that was a weird year. That was after the strike year, and all the prospects who would have diluted this group by coming up the previous year did not. And so that's why 1995 shows up there. I buy it. What? You buy it?

I buy it. Okay, good. I'm glad. The second year that is higher the only other year that is higher than this year in prospectness is 2007 and i wrote earlier this year about the parody that we have today i wrote about how the projections this year, the standings in the projections were closer than they had been in the team projections era. And I went and I looked back at that time to see basically how close every season was. I just I looked at the standard deviation of win totals or records in every season going back to 1998, the first season when there were 30 teams. And last season was very, very tight, very low standard deviation, not a lot of variation

among win totals. But the year that was lower than last year, basically the closest year since 1998 was 2007, which was a weird year. It was a year where no team won or lost 100 games. No team in the National League was even projected to win 90. The top projected team in the National League that year was 86 wins. And I think in the end, the number one team in the national league won 90 games that year something like that um that was the weird year with like the diamondbacks were not very good but won 90 games and made the playoffs it was a very very close year not a lot of large margins of victory in the divisions so that is my theory about why 2007 was a big year for Prospect Collapse.

It was basically the closest year that we have had in the 30-team era. Wait, was it clear that it was that close even in 2007? Well, I think it was because if you look at the— Sorry, I don't mean to say even. I mean to say even on June 10th. Well, the projections were very close that year. Like there was no... I remember just from writing about it just in the NL, the projected top team was projected to win 86 games.

So there was no clear favorite there. So I think so i would i would hazard a guess that at the time teams were maybe aware that it was going to be a closer year because there was no clear projected super team and and it worked out that way i don't know what the standings looked like on june 10th of that year but certainly by the end of the year, it was close. There was not a lot of daylight. There were a couple of teams that I think won divisions by a game or two and close wildcard races. And so there was no great team that year. My theory would be then that prospect call-ups are linked to parity

and that if you have a very close year where there are lots of teams in the race and knowing that they don't have a big lead in that race, then they might be more willing than usual to call up a prospect early. And we've gotten to the Super super two point at this at this year dave cameron wrote something earlier this week about steven matt's the mets prospect who's pretty close and basically said that you know it's not a concern anymore that probably even correa and vasquez are past the super two deadline or at least it's it's close they could be fairly confident that they are and that from this point forward we're almost definitely past it so matts or lindor or you know uh corey seager

or whatever other big top prospects we might see this year are now past that point but a lot of the guys who came up earlier this year were not which know, Russell, as you mentioned, was kind of surprising because it was not past that deadline. There was not a big clump of prospects coming up around that time. They were coming up in April and coming up in May. So that's my theory, essentially, that we explain 1995 by the strike. We explain 2007 and 2015 by parody. Do you buy it? So it's always hard with the wild card to know what a close race is.

But I'm going to tell you some standings. Okay? Okay. So first I'm going to start with 2008, which was not the year that was noted for its parity and prospect calling. All right, 2008. The AL East, one game separating, first and second place. I'm going to set nine games as the you're out of it.

If you're nine games back, you're out of it. So nobody nine games or more out in the East. AL Central, half a game separating, and nobody nine games or more out of it. West, three and a half games separating, and one team, the Mariners, was more than nine games out. The NL East, half a game separating, and one team was exactly nine games out. The NL Central, two and a half games separating, and one team was nine and a half games out. And in the NL West, four and a half games separating the Diamondbacks and the Dodgers, and two teams were nine games or more out.

So pretty close. We got four divisions that are essentially almost a virtual tie, one that's still pretty close, and then one that was four and a half game spread. And there are one, two, three, four, five teams throughout the league that were nine or more out, and you can just say we're done. So 2007 now, the year that we're talking about, AL East, ten games between first and second place. Four teams were nine or more out.

AL Central, five games separating first and second place, Wow. nine or more out uh nl central six and a half games separating first and second and one team was nine and a half out and then the nos was close it was a tie at the top and no team was nine or more out so basically one race one division race was was exciting and there were one two three four five nine teams that were effectively out of the division race okay i would again there's the wild card changes things and this is only on the snap this is only on june 1st is a snapshot of the standings there's there's some i mean and you might think that we're competitive but you know felt that they maybe they maybe this is why they brought up the prospect maybe they right like what

are we doing five and a half games out and that that's why they brought him up. Yeah, right. There was a Jeff Sullivan post earlier this week about how even at this point in the season, preseason projections are a better predictor of how you do the rest of the year than how you've done this year to that point. And so, you know, definitely if there are actual close races, then you'd think there would be more prospect call-ups. But teams are still factoring in what they think they are and what they think their opponents are. But yeah, that's right. So that's fair to point out.

The other possibility is that this this was just you know just random it's just uh either a cyclical thing or it's just a a bunch of things happened to happen in ways that would lead to top prospect clubs now the one thing that you could say i looked at the average age of the top 101 list i wondered whether maybe this year's prospects were older than usual and closer to the majors than usual. And in terms of average age, they are not. Actually, the age of prospect lists has fallen in the last several years, like by about 0.3 years or so on average, which might mean that prospect list makers are more appreciative of how important age is, or it might be a product of the fact that teams are drafting a lot more high schoolers

in the last several years than they did immediately after Moneyball, and maybe more of the top prospects actually are younger. I don't know. but it doesn't seem that this year's top prospects were collectively older than usual. And I looked at also the holdovers from previous lists, and this is a possible explanation because the number of guys who had already appeared in the majors who also appeared on a top 101 list. The average is 21.9 players on a top 101 have already gotten their big league debut out of the way. And this year there were only 14, which was I think the maybe third lowest or fourth lowest total on a top 101 list. lowest or fourth lowest total on a top 101 list. So this year's list was unusually inexperienced, or at least there were fewer guys on this year's list

who had already been ruled out of making their major league debut by having made one in the past. So there were more potential prospect call-ups this year. So that's possible. Right, so this goes back to this. It's conceivable that what we're identifying as more prospects being called up earlier is actually a accounting issue and that we're seeing more prospects being called up later. Yeah. We're talking about like literally the exact opposite of what we think we've been talking about.

opposite of what we think we've been talking about. Yeah, although there's no, well, there's no trend in the last few years toward this being the case. Like the, there were an unusually low number of prospect debuts last year, and 2012 was extremely low, and 2013 was a little above average number of prospect debuts, but it doesn't seem like there's been any, any trend toward really in one way or another. Was anybody, is there anybody who's made their debut this year that could have made their debut by this point last year that,

that jumps out at you? I mean, there are definitely guys who could have made their debut last September, right? Like most notably Chris Bryant, but people were talking about made their debut last September. Like, most notably, Chris Bryant. Yeah, Bryant. People were talking about Syndergaard last year. Oh, right.

People were talking about Archie Bradley, probably. Or people were talking about Archie Bradley starting the year. Bradley, yeah, exactly. So, again, it could be that last year's low total plumped up this year's high total. And again, like for Brad, for those guys, we, we could be talking about them being held down longer. Yeah, could be. I mean, if we actually look at the list of names, I mean, I think there are, there are a couple of guys here who probably don't fit any trend that we could

possibly come up with. I think they are just, just basically emergency desperation cause like, like Swihart was called up by the Red Sox. But I don't think they were planning to call up Blake Swihart. They kind of had to call up Blake Swihart because they were just out of catchers. Martinez was hurt, and Hannigan was hurt, and they didn't have a catcher. And he was the best guy around, even though he probably wasn't ready and hasn't seemed to be ready. And, I mean, I guess they could have just, you know, gone and gotten some veteran journeyman guy. So you could say that maybe the fact that they didn't do that says something. But, I don't know, he was the best guy around.

They had injuries. Maybe the same with the Mets, who called up Ploiecki after Darnot got hurt. So those were injury replacements. I don't know whether they mean anything. But on the other hand, like Gallo is an injury replacement, and yet not a serious long-term injury. Just, you know, Beltre is out for a bit, but they could have gotten by somehow without calling up their top prospects. So how many guys on this list do you think would not be up if the teams that called them up were not contending, right? I mean, like if you, like, you know, Russell and, I mean, Bryant, maybe you couldn't possibly hold him down any longer, no matter how the Cubs were doing this year. But Russell, if the Cubs were still a losing team this year, you'd think Russell would not be up yet.

If the Astros had not kind of, you know, hit the competitive phase, you would think that probably Correa would not be up. And maybe McCullers would not be up. I don't know. He was doing fine. He's not a top 101 guy anyway. But maybe Velasquez would not be up. I don't know. He was doing fine. He's not a top 101 guy anyway. But maybe Velasquez wouldn't be up. I mean, you know, they've called up a bunch of guys, and clearly it seems related to the fact that they are now a contending team.

And I don't know. Maybe Sindergaard would probably be up regardless, even if the Mets were not contending for first place. I don't know. You could make that case. Hedges is just a weird one regardless. I mean, I think you could probably say that's because the Padres are contending, or at least they have Preller, who has shown this pattern of just doing whatever it takes to contend immediately, and whether that was making tons of offseason moves or promoting H hedges to basically be a rarely used backup catcher, which seems odd.

But that seems to go part and parcel with the whole Preller-Padres contending immediately thing. And I don't know. Who else? I mean, the Nationals called up A.J. Cole. Obviously, they're a good team. The Rangers with Gallo and Gonzalez, they were on a hot streak. They were a few games out. I don't know whether that happens if they are still losing by a ton like they were in April. And the Red Sox, Eduardo Rodriguez, obviously contending team. So there are lots of contending teams that you would think called

these prospects up because they're contending teams. And if they were not contending teams that you would think called these prospects up because they're contending teams. And if they were not contending teams, then a lot of these prospects, most of these prospects would not be up yet, I would think. Yeah. I mean, but then I don't know. I think I need something more scientific for your definition of contending. I mean, like who's not a contender? of contending. I mean, like, who's not a contender? That's the thing. No one is now.

I mean, everyone is. But how do you decide? It seems like you can decide who's a contending team based on whether or not they've called a guy up after the fact. I mean, would the Indians have brought up Lindor if they were one game back? Maybe. But are they, said they're seven and a half back. Is that out of it or not? I don't really know does the does what

their pre-season projection said their chances were still inform whether they're contenders i think it does yeah i mean it would be hard to to define this for every year because it's not just the record it's also the underlying numbers and the run differential and what they were projected to be and all those things factor into it but it was clear coming into this year that there were fewer teams just out of it. I mean, we talked about that, I think. I wrote about how close the projections were. I mean, a lot of the teams that for the last few years were not even really trying, were just building for the future, suddenly switched into contender mode this year and it

hasn't worked out well for all of them like the white socks although they they called up rodon although rodon's a guy who people were talking about calling up last year too right so i don't know it could be a i mean it doesn't doesn't necessarily matter whether it's a real trend or not like i don't you know i talked a bit about whether it might be and why it might be but it's just kind of cool that it has happened you know regardless of whether it means anything about baseball or whether it's just a coincidence and a lot of things happening to come together at the right time it's it's exciting if you like young players and prospects and guys who might be superstars for the next decade, decade and a half.

We've seen a ton of them come up already this year in an unusual way. So whether you think it's real, whether you think it'll continue into subsequent seasons, we can just kind of appreciate that it happened and it's cool. And if you'd waited maybe two weeks, you might have gotten to include Buxton in Lindor. Who knows? Yeah. If you had that, then we'd have all five of our top five, of VP's top five.

That's right. Yeah, well, you would think by the end of the year, you'd get Lindor. I don't know whether you'd get Buxton. But there are definitely going to be some more top guys. Seager was like a top 10 guy, right? So Seager is pretty close. Yeah.

I mean, Lindor could be. There was a thought a couple days ago that he was coming. And they called it Walters instead. Yeah, he's conceivably an any day guy. And Buxton. If Buxton comes up, that would support your contenders hypothesis. Yeah. Because he wouldn't probably be talked about if they were doing what they were supposed to be doing in last place. Right. Yeah. Well, okay.

All right. So I don't know whether you buy it or not. I don't know if I totally buy it. I don't even care if anyone buys it. I'm not even sure. It's just cool that it's happening. Yeah, I'm not even quite sure what I'm buying. I guess just the idea that if there are, if it's a closer season, if there are

closer races, I mean, it seems like it's intuitive. I don't even know if we need to establish whether it's true or not, but I mean the more contending teams and close races there are stands to reason that the more top prospect call-ups there would be right and i mean assuming you think that the top prospect is your best option to win right now which isn't always the case but but if you think that then a team that's contending in a close race and needs every extra win should theoretically be more willing to do that.

So maybe we've seen that, or maybe we've seen just a random cool concurrence of a bunch of top prospects appearing at once. Either way, I like it. Cool. Okay. All right. So I think we will do an email show for tomorrow how does that sound sure all right so you probably have a few hours to email us if you're listening to this when it's posted at podcast at baseball prospectus.com facebook group facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and our sponsor the play index baseball facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild, and our sponsor, the playindex, baseballreference.com.

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