SB Nation User Blog: DanUpBaby

Live every week like it's Prospect Week

DanUpBaby — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:12:35 -0000

The stars have aligned such that this is Prospect Week: John Sickels released his eagerly awaited Top Twenty Sunday night, and Kevin Goldstein is due to release his top eleven for Baseball Prospectus on Wednesday. The major surprises on the Sickels list, I think, are Bryan Anderson at eight and Clay Mortensen at 17.

Anderson I agree with. As I said when I was ranking prospects at my old gig, I'm terrified of prospects with one skill who run out of the others too soon: the control pitchers who stop striking people out completely at AAA, the power pitchers whose walk rates go up as they climb the system, and in this case, the contact hitter who can't punish mistakes in the high minors.

What's worrying about Anderson is that he's not making any progress at his secondary skills as he moves through the system; they're actually deteriorating. Look at Anderson's isolated power trend through the minors:

YEAR	LG	G	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	AVG	OBP	SLG	ISO
2005	R	51	154	51	8	1	6	.331	.383	.513	182
2006	A	109	381	115	29	3	3	.302	.377	.417	115
2007/8	AA	122	469	147	20	1	8	.313	.358	.412	099
2008	AAA	73	235	66	13	2	2	.281	.367	.379	098

Of course these are still really good numbers; he's been young for every league. But even the players who hit around .300 with low ISOs hit for some power in the minors—they had enough to burn that, by the time they hit the Major Leagues, they were still capable of doing enough damage to keep the bat from getting knocked out of their hands.

Here's a frivolous, arbitrary, but vaguely pertinent Baseball Reference P-I list: at least 400 PA, .280 or better batting average, .100 or worse ISO. That gives nine players, two of whom should be intimately familiar to you right now. There are some examples, there are some counterexamples; Alexi Casilla's a very well-regarded young second baseman, and he never managed an ISO higher than Anderson's, and neither did Yadier Molina—who was, for what it's worth, rushed through the minors—or Ryan Theriot. But Aaron Miles put up a .150 ISO in AAA. Anderson's not a speedster like Casilla or Juan Pierre, either.

I haven't done a study on it any more thorough than that P-I search, but here's my concern, in the form of a baseless generalization: in general, the pitchers who get by with fringy strikeout rates, the hitters who get by without hitting for any power... they weren't already That Guy in the minors. Aaron Miles hit 34 doubles one year; Brian Bannister struck out a ton of bush leaguers. Andyrsyn's still got a lot of time to show off some doubles power, but this system is finally deep enough that a guy who needs time to develop can do it in the back of the top ten.

Another thing that's going to be interesting to watch as prospect rankings come out from all of the usual sources: the placement of David Freese and Allen Craig, the bat-first third basemen currently chasing one-another around the high minors. Sickels, a long-time fan of Craig, has them at 12 and 14, with Freese taking the lead. Future Redbirds has a great roundtable discussion up today concerning the two; their recent Top 20 had Craig at 12 and Freese at 7.

One final thing about Sickels's list: I like that he includes a lot of Honorable Mentions at the bottom of the list. In a superficial way, they're confidence-boosters: they say, "This prospect isn't top 20 material, Dan, but you're not wasting your time by checking his stats every night. Someone who actually knows how to value prospects shares your interest."

That's why I was so sad to see Thomas Pham, my tools goof white whale, not make the cut. He's so fast! He hits for such power! He's so incapable of doing anything else! If he'd made the honorable mentions I'd have held out a little more hope for a Daryl Jones-style breakout season; now my nightly look at his spot in the box score will take on a more mournful air.

On an unrelated note, I was very happy to learn that the blogger formerly known as the 26th Man—I'd link to The 26th Man, but suffice it to say that after some spammers grabbed the domain name it is less about baseball and more about sexual deviancy—is back writing about the Cardinals as the Five O'Clock Blogger. At the moment he's soliciting advice on the Lineup of the Damned, a project designed to construct Cardinals fans' least favorite lineup of all time, and he'd like some VEB input.

He picked Kenny Lofton, based on his antics in the 2002 NLCS. After minimal deliberation—which is, I think, the right kind of deliberation for this kind of project—I've decided on Carlos Zambrano. His mini-feud with Jim Edmonds, culminating in a home run follow-through that was long and majestic even by JIm Edmonds standards, was a great moment in mustache-twirling history, and every rivalry needs its villains.

My Hall of Fame Ballot

DanUpBaby — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:42:34 -0000

So I was talking it over with the BBWAA, the other day—we keep in touch—and if I'm reading this restraining order correctly it seems I've been denied a Hall of Fame ballot for the fifth year in a row. It's alright: I've been jilted before. No need to launch protests on my behalf, unless you'd really like to, or you are—or are someone close to—Rickey Henderson, Tim Raines, Bert Blyleven, Tommy John, Mark McGwire, or Alan Trammell. I can fend for myself. But look at the note someone's attached:

Dear Mr. Up,

You write about one team on a blog that often employs fictional characters and framing devices, which does not currently fit the criteria necessary for BBWAA membership. And if we were to count backward from our ten year eligibility requirement we would have to include the Chicago Bulls newsletter you wrote when you were eleven, with hand-drawn pictures of John Salley on it. We've already taken it up with the rules committee, and—as you're no doubt aware—they ruled 4-1 against.

Please stop contacting us. I've instructed the mailman to stop delivering letters written on Ray Lankford stationary.

Yours firmly,

The BBWAA

P.S. We appreciate the Ripper Collins anecdote. It was delightful!

Would you look at that! I don't think I need to spell it out for you, but I will: they've offered me a ballot, so long as I fill it with nobody but Cardinals. It's an expertise thing, and I understand. Since it's Monday, and we've talked more about Aaron Miles than anybody needs to, I've decided to reproduce here the ballot I'm just about to send (anonymously, as per the terms of the order) to the BBWAA.

Since things seemed a little restrictive as is, I decided to make the ballot available to all players, regardless of their eligibility or active status, who are no longer members of the Cardinals. I hope my contact inside will understand. I'm going in order of time spent away from St. Louis. That means we start with...

"PARISIAN BOB" CARUTHERS
Y	G	GS	IP	W	L	K	BB	HR	ERA
1885	53	53	482.3	40	13	190	57	3	2.07
1886	44	43	387.3	30	14	166	86	3	2.32
1887	39	39	341	29	9	74	61	6	3.30
1888	44	43	391.7	29	15	140	53	4	2.39
1889	56	50	445	40	11	118	104	16	3.13
9 Years	340	310	2828.7	218	99	900	597	59	2.83

"Parisian Bob", who earned his nickname from a bit of savvy trans-continental contract negotiation in 1885, played for Chris von der Ahe's American Association St. Louis Browns from 1884 to 1887, leading the proto-Cardinals to three straight pennants before the eccentric von der Ahe went bust and had to sell off his stars.

Of course, what do you do with these stats? Pitchers in his day threw from a pitcher's box fifty feet away from home plate and could basically take a running start. Teams had two starters—Caruthers platooned with "Scissors" Foutz, who was also sold to Brooklyn—and DIPS theory and everything else you've ever used to evaluate pitchers is more or less out the window in an era in which home runs were usually on balls in play and nobody struck out. Caruthers won a lot of games, had low ERAs, and was one of the four or five best pitchers in baseball for most of his career, which in this case means four years. Borderline Hall of Fame stuff, with such a short career, but any Parisian Bob fan knows there's a kicker due right about now:

"PARISIAN BOB" CARUTHERS THE HITTER
Y	G	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	AVG	OBP	SLG
1885	60	222	50	10	2	1	.225	.289	.302
1886	87	317	106	21	14	4	.334	.448	.527
1887	98	364	130	23	11	8	.357	.463	.527
1888	94	335	77	10	5	5	.230	.328	.334
1889	59	172	43	8	3	2	.250	.408	.366
9 Years	705	2465	695	104	50	29	.282	.391	.400

Yep: Caruthers is the forgotten two-way player. He led the league in wins in 1885, OPS in 1886. His career OPS+ is 133, his ERA+ 123. Nine years is a short career, but it would've been a lot longer if he'd split his duties up the Rick Ankiel way instead of doing things all at once. Put together, you have a guy who, at his brief peak, had an arguable case as both the best pitcher and the best hitter in the American Association. (And while his nickname is not as cool as "Scissors", it's still kind of cool.) A definite Yes.

TED SIMMONS
Y	G	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	AVG	OBP	SLG
1975	157	581	193	32	3	18	.332	.396	.491
1976	150	546	159	35	3	5	.291	.371	.394
1977	150	516	164	25	3	21	.318	.408	.500
1978	152	516	148	40	5	22	.287	.377	.512
1979	123	448	127	22	0	26	.283	.369	.507
21 Years	2456	8680	2472	483	47	248	.285	.391	.437

Famously kicked off the ballot in 1993, he might be the most concrete example, along with Fred McGriff and—gulp—Tim Raines, of a player who ruined his image by sticking around "too long." Simmons spending three years as Ozzie Virgil's backup on some awful Braves squads didn't make his peak any less impressive, but it pushed it three years further away from his first Hall of Fame ballot.

That's just about the only explanation I can come up with for how a player so well-regarded in his own time—an eight time all-star—can receive so little Hall of Fame attention, but Simmons was in a bad place anyway; he was a hitting catcher with a shaky defensive rep, and there really isn't any template for what that kind of player has to do to make the Hall of Fame. His numbers wouldn't merit induction if he were a corner outfielder, and for much of the Hall's history its voters have been basically unable to adjust its perceptions beyond that for offensive-minded players at other positions. Another Yes.

KEN BOYER
Y	G	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	AVG	OBP	SLG
1958	150	570	175	21	9	23	.307	.369	.496
1959	149	563	174	18	5	28	.309	.384	.508
1960	151	552	168	26	10	32	.304	.370	.562
1961	153	589	194	26	11	24	.329	.397	.533
1962	160	611	178	27	5	24	.291	.369	.470
15 Years	2034	7455	2143	318	68	282	.287	.349	.462

SCOTT ROLEN
Y	G	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	AVG	OBP	SLG
2000	128	483	144	32	6	26	.298	.370	.551
2001	151	554	160	39	1	25	.289	.378	.498
2002	155	580	154	29	8	31	.266	.357	.503
2003	154	559	160	49	1	28	.286	.382	.528
2004	142	500	157	32	4	34	.314	.409	.598
13 Years	1620	5906	1665	410	35	272	.282	.370	.501

I had a lot of trouble with Ken Boyer. Basically, if he's a Hall of Fame third baseman, he's the line; his career isn't all that long, his peak isn't all that high, and his case is dependent on how highly you value his defense. I'm on the fence. Hopefully the BBWAA will send me another Secret Cardinals-Only Ballot next year, so that I'm able to keep pondering the question, but for now I've got to say No.

I put Scott Rolen here because I figured the Monday after New Years is a great time to make everybody sad. He has a higher peak than Boyer already, but his shoulder is going to be a big, crumbling question mark for the rest of his career. As the most astonishing defensive player I've personally witnessed, I always hoped he would continue gliding toward the Hall of Fame so that it would be easier to boast to my hypothetical children about watching him play. We could look at the plaque, on our hypothetical Cooperstown trip, and I could say: Yep. Arm like a cannon. He'd start diving before a ball was hit, and then he'd throw it to first base before he caught it. A hot corner robot, he was. But that's going to be a tough road now; barring a few more comeback years like 2006, he's going to hit the ballot on a Ted Simmons-y note.

MARK McGWIRE
Y	G	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	AVG	OBP	SLG
1996	130	423	132	21	0	52	.312	.467	.730
1997	156	540	148	27	0	58	.274	.393	.646
1998	15 5	509	152	21	0	70	.299	.470	.752
1999	153	521	145	21	1	65	.278	.424	.697
2000	89	236	72	8	0	32	.305	.483	.746
16 Years	1874	6187	1626	252	6	583	.263	.394	.588

Yes. To pillory McGwire and the other nineties sluggers for something nobody cared about at the time is moving the goalposts a little too much for my taste. Lots of people used steroids, we'll never know who did and who didn't, and that's the way baseball was at the time. People seem to want to let the dust settle, or wait for things to clear up, but it's not going to get any clearer than it is now: Major League Baseball tacitly accepted steroid use from the late 80s to the early aughts. That we feel guilty about it now is no reason to whitewash the things that happened in that decade. I hate to use a football analogy, now or ever, but if you're going to throw the challenge flag you should do it before everybody's moved on to the next play.

In that context, McGwire hit home runs at an unimaginable pace. He made single at-bats into appointment TV. He put baseball back at the front of the sports page, where it belongs. It was a lot of fun.

JIM EDMONDS
Y	G	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	AVG	OBP	SLG
2000	152	525	155	25	0	42	.295	.411	.583
2001	150	500	152	38	1	30	.304	.410	.564
2002	144	476	148	31	2	28	.311	.420	.561
2003	137	447	123	32	2	39	.275	.385	.617
2004	153	498	150	38	3	42	.301	.418	.643
16 Years	1925	6612	1881	414	25	382	.284	.377	.528

It's funny; when I started putting out my intermittent Jim Edmonds Hall of Fame apologia, I always had to deal with the specter of Andruw Jones, who was undoubtedly going to put up absurd counting stats on the back of his early start and overtake Edmonds, who at that point was beginning his swift decline from the incredible peak illustrated in the table. That seems kind of quaint, now that, to facilitate a trade, Jones and the Dodgers are arranging to have his salary paid out in the form of a lifetime subscription to the State Quarter of the Month club.

Anyway, a vote for Jim Edmonds is the ultimate vote for peak performance. He's played nine full-ish seasons, and they're all Hall of Fame caliber. Aside from that you've got two bad half-seasons in 1994 and 2007, a fragment in 1999, and two pretty good ones in 2006 and 2008. But the real case zooms in even further than that: for five years, his first five with the Cardinals, Jim Edmonds was one of the best center fielders ever. It's debatable whether or not he's a Hall of Famer on the whole, and it would help him to stumble over 400 home runs and 2000 hits before he hangs them up, but from 2000 to 2004 he was historically great. As I've been writing about since 2005: Yes.

So that's what I've got. I'd like to thank the BBWAA for giving me special voting privileges; these Cardinals for providing so many enjoyable moments over the years; and the Law Offices of Boyer, Boyer, and Boyer, for letting me know that I'll have the opportunity to appeal the BBWAA's order as soon as the Hall of Fame ceremonies are over.

Ashes to Ashes, Grit to Grit

DanUpBaby — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:56:23 -0000

photo courtesy momup, who's always liked Aaron Miles

I was all set to wax... well, if not rhapsodic, at least gently dismissive about Aaron Miles. Utility infielders are easy to like. They don't get paid much, relatively speaking, they'll play anywhere, they come out when the chips are down and the star's hurt, and they look more like us—they're not as athletic, they're shorter, they can't do anything the chicks dig. It's fun to watch these normal people play a game that seems so distant at its superhuman edges. Super Joe, Bo Hart—I've been a fan of plenty of utility infielders before, and I'm sure I will be again. But he had to go and play the under-appreciated card.

"I'm excited to be a Cubbie," Miles told Chicago Cub beat writers on a conference call this afternoon. "Being a Cardinal was great and that part is over now. Now I'm ready to be a Cubbie and play the game the right way and show St. Louis that they let somebody go that maybe they shouldn't have."

I understand the need for self-affirmation in stuff like this. You've got to think you're the best; you have to think that you are vitally important, completely in charge. That's part of doing a very difficult job. So this isn't, of course, about Aaron Miles the person. But Aaron Miles the ballplayer is a utility infielder who can't play shortstop and a second baseman who can't hit enough to start. The Cardinals couldn't find $4 million to pay Russ Springer, their best relief pitcher two years running. Two years and $5 million for a seriously limited backup infielder—even one who, at times, last year, seemed like he might be their second-best relief pitcher—would be ridiculous.

The kind of teeth-gnashing going on around the internet is outsized but understandable; if he really is the conduit through which people identify with the Cardinals, or something like that, it makes sense. But on a purely baseball level, losing Aaron Miles is not going to break this club. That's why they got him as ballast in the unforgettable Larry Bigbie/Ray King trade; that's why they non-tendered him twice, as Miles himself pointed out. He hasn't played 130 games for the Cardinals all three years because he was helping the team, he did because nobody else was.

The forces that dictated that Moz not keep Miles around after his fluky 2008 are the same ones that brought him here in place of Abraham Nuñez in the first place. Utility infielders have to be cheap just as much as they have to be good. Miles was not cheap anymore, and luckily for him the Cubs have had too much luck with scrappy infielders over the past few years to discriminate about it. But Aaron Miles has priced himself out of his job, like so many utility infielders before him; now it's time for Brian Barden or Tyler Greene or Joe Thurston to benefit from it like he once did.

Joe Thurston will make a fine Aaron Miles. He hustles like crazy, he's stuck around in the minors with cloudy big league prospects for years For Love of the Game, and to top it all off he can't really play shortstop. He's even got 68 minor league triples—he's like Aaron Miles with a side of Whiteyball. I think it'll be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Good News, Everyone

DanUpBaby — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 12:01:13 -0000

An odd headline today at the P-D's baseball portal: Cardinals place eighth in another publication's prospect rankings! But for anyone who remembers Carmen Cali's mythical mid-90s fastball or the John Gall years, the Cardinals breaking into the top ten organizations according to Baseball America is cause for dancing in the streets, or a fist-pump at your desk.

Much is made, now, of the transformational 2005 draft, which produced Colby Rasmus, Chris Perez, Tyler Herron, Daryl Jones, Bryan Anderson, Mitch Boggs, and the immortal Wil Pujols, so I thought it might be edifying to take a look at what the Cardinals' top ten prospects looked like that year. And it was, in the same way that people who had serious drug problems in the sixties go around visiting high schools and telling bright-eyes youths not to make the same mistakes they did.

1. Anthony Reyes -- 15th Round, 2003

YEAR	AGE	LG	GS	IP	K	BB	HR	ERA
2004	22	A+	6	31	36	7	5	4.35
		AA	12	74	102	13	13	3.04

... I don't want to talk about it. It should be said, at least, that Reyes was not considered a weak number one prospect; this Cardinals list got hammered not for its front-line talent but for what passed for prospects as soon as you got down past five, as you'll see in a minute. That was a gorgeous AA line he put up, with no minor league experience, and he would continue to flash absurd K:BB ratios all the way up through the minors to the part I don't want to talk about.

2. Adam Wainwright -- acquired from Braves

YEAR	AGE	LG	GS	IP	K	BB	HR	ERA
2002	20	A+	28	163	184	48	7	3.31
2003	21	AA	28	163	167	66	9	3.36
2004	22	AAA	12	64	64	28	12	5.34

2004, you'll remember, was Wainwright's first year in the system; I can remember looking at a top prospects list leading up to 2004 with Wainwright on it—the only Cardinals rep, of course—and thinking that that was all well and good, but they still couldn't do it themselves. Then he went and had this truncated, unattractive Memphis debut after having three years in a row that could pass, superficially, for really nice MLB lines.

Up until the moment he became an excellent relief pitcher I remember being unconvinced that he would ever do anything; his struggles upon moving from Atlanta to St. Louis seemed inevitable and unalterable.

Alright. Up to this point this seems like a passable system. Reyes was an extremely exciting pitcher with vague injury concerns, and Wainwright, the year before, was among the best pitching prospects in the league. They're not quite Colby and the Fat Man, as far as one-two prospect punches go, but they'll do. This is the part of Space Mountain where it seems like you're just coasting around leisurely and then all of a sudden there's a huge cliff:

3. Blake Hawksworth -- draft and follow, 2001

YEAR	AGE	LG	GS	IP	K	BB	HR	ERA
2002	19	R	12	66	61	18	8	3.14
2003	20	A	10	55	57	12	0	2.31
		A+	6	32	32	11	2	3.94
2004	21	A+	2	11	11	3	2	5.91

That's right. The Cardinals' #3 prospect in 2005 was a guy who pitched two games and then tore his labrum. Hawksworth's position on the valuable prospect <--> cool name continuum wasn't quite so lopsided at this point, but this is the kind of guy that the New Look Cardinals are apparently no longer reliant upon—Jaime Garcia is, according to Derrick Goold, no longer a top ten prospect. The Old Look Cardinals just had nobody else. The nobodies continue:

4. Chris Lambert -- first round pick, 2004

No charts, Spreadsheet Boy! No charts!

Oh, god, this is—it's really awkward. If you've been reading me long enough you might be aware of a problem I had with my host last year, wherein some unpatched server vulnerability led to Chris Lambert's ghost possessing my website and hijacking discussions about rotation construction and promised site updates.

We had a nice thing... if you like terror!

He goes away if you just avoid eye contact. Anyway... he's probably here to talk about how his corporeal form, doomed to haunt mid-sized American cities for the rest of eternity, made a few appearances for the Detroit Tigers last year after a pretty nice season with the Toledo Mudhens.

It's two words!

Right—the Toledo Mud Hens. Anyway, in 2004 Lambert, that rare mix of unpolished stuff with college age, had nine good starts with Palm Beach and looked to be a pretty decent first round draft choice. His starring role in the 2004 Draft Debacle wouldn't be realized until later, and—

Are you done? I've really gotta get going.

Oh. Well, uh, I guess. You're not going to boast about your win against the Twins, or anything?

I'm the swingman... of spook! No, I really have to get going. I just wanted to say congrats on the VEB gig, and, ah, I'll be haunting you later. The phone call was from inside the house, and all that. Take care.

Thanks, man.

5. Stu Pomeranz, second round, 2003

YEAR	AGE	LG	GS	IP	K	BB	HR	ERA
2003	18	R	3	15	14	4	2	6.14
2004	19	A	17	101	88	25	10	3.55

Stu Pomeranz was a weird, weird prospect. This was probably his best year, but for the next two he made prospect lists because of one attribute, and one attribute alone: he was really young for his league. Here, at least, he was striking people out, but in 2005 he made an ill-advised leap to AA, where he stagnated for two years, and even though he was basically pitching like Joel Pineiro the whole time he made the lists because he was struggling in AA instead of thriving in the Midwest League.

I like Tyler Herron, who at this very moment is struggling to make the top thirty in Goold's public polls right now, more than I ever liked Pomeranz, but they're similar kinds of prospects. And this guy was fifth.

You'll notice we haven't seen a position player yet. These next five guys are what passed for depth underneath that great MV3 team. They're best taken all at once.

6. Swingman with a minor league innings streak

7. Utility infielder

8. Inexplicably successful slugger with no minor league track record

9. Toronto Blue Jays talisman and AAAA outfielder

10. LOOGY with a fastball that could go 95 mph but only if nobody was looking at it.

We've come a long way.