Quote:
Originally Posted by Heltonfan
KG's article also includes the following statement: Nobody, nowhere, with any system, can do a credible job of ranking prospects based solely on the numbers.
Seeing as how the only significant difference between our lists is that he's blind to the reliever issue (same deal as with the BA list), I'm going to have to disagree here.
One thing's for sure: it's going to be a lot of fun to track the success of these lists.
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You're making a small sample error there in just looking at this one moment and disagreeing.
You don't have to wait. There is plenty of historical data to analyze with much clearer end results than you'll find in waiting years on prospects of today to write their future stories.
I can find many examples of highly talented players who were pretty raw in the minor leagues but had a ton of natural ability that exploded as they gained experience/technique in the big leagues to become far greater than any analysis of their minor league numbers when they didn't know nearly as much about their craft.
We can also find many examples of those who dominated against prospects but did hardly nothing in their big league careers. Many of those AAAA-types become career AAA minor leaguers with pretty good talent but no shot at making it big in the big leagues. Lots of pitchers also can put up numbers with a big fastball in A-ball against inferior opposition, but if they don't have anything else those numbers aren't going to translate at the big league level where MLB hitters can turn on those high-90s fastballs and he has nothing else to keep them off-balance.
What will the numbers say about that?
What do the numbers say about a young pitcher who has a tremendous ace-material arm but struggles for a minor league season or two while learning a changeup or new pitch that alters his control numbers while learning but scouts know that if he gets those down he'll be unstoppable? What about an understanding of a player's injury status who might be hobbled one season with poor numbers that a calculator can't understand but a human won't hold that as much against them in terms of overall value because they understand circumstance.
Numbers can't provide all the answers. Well, they'll provide some answer because all they can do is get to a numeric conclusion, but in such cases it's usually the WRONG ANSWER that completely lacks any common sense associated to those situations.