Wednesday, December 24, 2003
Potential
Because once just wasn’t enough, and I liked it so much I might just keep doing it, here is yet another player comparision:
Player A: .234/.291/.412(AVG/OBP/SLG) .234 GPA
Player B: .240/.301/.435(AVG/OBP/SLG) .244 GPA
Ok, no suspense this time. Player A is Drew Henson in 2003, Player B is Drew Henson in 2002, both seasons played for the Columbus Clippers of the AAA International League. As you can see there are slight declines in each of the general offensive categories. In addition to his offensive production, Drew’s fielding has seemingly been spotty as evidenced by high error totals, though I do not know how to properly adjust minor league fielding numbers for field quality, park quality, etc. In support of his fielding Baseball America once ranked him as the best defensive 3B in his league.
Now, why would anyone be interested in Drew Henson you may find yourself asking, after you’ve seen his production or lack thereof. Well, there’s another stat that is important when looking at Drew Henson, 46% and 50%. Those are his extra base hit percentages during the last two seasons, ‘02 and ‘03 respectively. If everytime you get a base hit there is basically a 50% chance of it going for extra bases, I would have to say you have some incredible power or power potential at the least. That is what Drew Henson possesses that is so enticing to scouts, or at least was. Another thing Drew holds, though not as dearly, is an infamous propensity for the strikeout. This has bothered many a prospect analyst over the years, but I am not particularly concerned with a player’s strikeout rate unless he K’s alot and walks very little (I will explain this in the future). Unfortunately, for Drew Henson he is this type of high strikeout low walk player, though he definitely made some very real improvement in that aspect of his game this season. After striking out in 32% of his at bats in 2002, Drew was able to cut that rate to a much more manageable 25% this season. Unfortunately, his walk rate still remained poor.
As Drew Henson has aged, but not matured like a fine wine, some scouts have soured on the initial Mike Schmidt/good Troy Glaus comparisons. I am personally of the opinion that this is the last year for Drew Henson to prove himself. He is 24 and this will be his third full season at the AAA level, all objective reasoning and even some non objective, points towards Drew failing this year. However, something tells me that despite it being a one in a million chance, there is still a chance that Drew Henson can fulfill his considerable potential. I feel this way because I have followed him extremely closely for a few seasons now and I have seen him put together some incredibly dominant stretches, followed by almost equally incredibly awful ones. This may be the year he consolidates his good and my statistical reasoning for this is his reduced K rate, and the fact that he was an improved player in the second half of last season. In the wildly unlikely case that I am correct and Drew does put it together, I think he has the potential to at his best be a .270/.330/.520 hitter, which would be pretty good for a 3B.
I’ve focused on the minors a lot thus far, and I will try and get to the majors in the near future.
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
Be back with new post tommorow, just returned from a required weekend
Be back with new post tommorow, just returned from a required weekend retreat.No Title
Be back with new post tomorrow, just returned from a required weekend retreat.
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Yankee Prospecting
Here’s something I grew up with as a big fan of Rob Neyer’s work:
Player A: .338/.398/.434(AVG/OBP/SLG) .288 GPA
Player B: .321/.374/.469(AVG/OBP/SLG) .286 GPA
Pretty close isn’t it? It’s made even closer by the fact that both players played in the same leagues at the same position last year. To save the suspense, Player A is Joe Mauer, the 20 year old lefty swinging Minnesota Twins catching phenom who will probably garner the number one slot in most prospect publications this spring. Player B is Dioner Navarro, a 19 year old switch hitting catcher in the Yankees system, who is much less well known than Mauer.
Seeing that Mauer is one of the consensus top prospects in the land, and that Navarro is actually a year younger than him I sometimes wonder why he does not get as much coverage. Defensively, most scouts favor Mauer, but not because Navarro is a slouch behind the plate, he first gained fame as “Pudgito”, rather because Mauer is supposed to be THAT good defensively. Granting Mauer the edge in defense, and calling their offense a draw at this point, especially since Navarro is a year younger, I for one will be very interested to see where Dioner ranks among the game’s best prospects come spring.
Quite frankly, the only thing that could Dioner back, is that he is 5’10’’ and 189 pounds, meaning he does not have as much room as the 6’5’’ Mauer to fill out. Despite this Navarro did manage to have 32% of his hits go for extra bases as opposed to Mauer’s 22%, and I feel this is a great indicator of at least some form of power to come for Dioner.
I’m not intimating that Navarro is a better prospect than Mauer, but I am saying he should get more respect than he does (Quite frankly, I feel it will be hypocritical if he is not amongst the top 20). Hopefully Steinbrenner holds on to him so he can succeed Jorge Posada when he succumbs to the perils of catching. I definitely feel that Navarro has all-star potential and that in the next decade he and Mauer should battle it out for all star game starts. The reason I can see this future for Navarro is that his minor league numbers are reminiscent of A.J. Pierzynski’s minor league numbers, except he has done it at younger ages and with more patience. I think it is fair to say Navarro has the potential to become a player that can be counted on for an average yearly line of .300/.360/.450(AVG/OBP/SLG) with about 15 home runs, which would make him a very valuable catcher.
Help Me
On a somewhat important note, if anyone is knowledgeable about the blogger system and can teach me how to add graphics and other trinkets to my page, it’d be great if you could send me an e-mail and let me know how to do that, before I poke my eye out. The e-mail is still mcnallyf@taftschool.org
Back For The First Time
Having become addicted to baseball blogs over the course of the past few months and with my aspirations to one day become a baseball general manager, hopefully of the Yankees, I have decided to start my own blog. I’m not much of a writer, but hopefully that won’t be held against me. My blog is going to be about baseball in general, but much of the focus will be on the Yankees, I may comment on some other things that I feel merit attention, but otherwise expect to see Yankees, lots of Yankees, and Yankee prospects too (those few that still exist anyway). Well this is the introductory post for now, but I’ll come back with something later, hopefully. And just to put it out there now, I will try to update as frequently possible, however if there is a large gap between posts, it is probably a result of school work getting in the way. You contact me at-mcnallyf@taftschool.org.
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