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Brent Morel projection


joeynach

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QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 20, 2011 -> 05:48 AM)
Seems totally reasonable based on his minor league stats. Might get a slightly higher OBP if he adjusts faster.

Reasonable? Not many rookies are going to hit .291 in their first season (I'm not even going to count that brief cup of coffee he got last year).

 

I find those projections pure crapola. I hope they are true, but probably pure crap.

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QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jan 20, 2011 -> 04:46 PM)
Reasonable? Not many rookies are going to hit .291 in there first season (I'm not even going to count that brief cup of coffee he got last year).

 

I find those projections pure crapola. I hope they are true, but probably pure crap.

 

I agree. I'll be happy with .250/.300/450

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QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jan 20, 2011 -> 10:46 AM)
Reasonable? Not many rookies are going to hit .291 in their first season (I'm not even going to count that brief cup of coffee he got last year).

 

I find those projections pure crapola. I hope they are true, but probably pure crap.

How many rookies come up after hitting around .330 at every level they've played at?

 

That's the real question regarding these projections...how much does the batting average drop going from AA and AAA to the bigs?

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So you guys who are expressing doubts...Bill James is likely basing these numbers on some sort of historic average for how far guys' performance drops from coming up 1 level to the big leagues at his age.

 

If there aren't guys who come up and immediately rake, then where would those numbers come from? There are clearly some guys who would drag it down horribly (Brian Anderson) by coming up and sucking immediately, his prediction has to be somewhere in-between the good and the bad right?

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QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 20, 2011 -> 11:10 AM)
So you guys who are expressing doubts...Bill James is likely basing these numbers on some sort of historic average for how far guys' performance drops from coming up 1 level to the big leagues at his age.

 

If there aren't guys who come up and immediately rake, then where would those numbers come from? There are clearly some guys who would drag it down horribly (Brian Anderson) by coming up and sucking immediately, his prediction has to be somewhere in-between the good and the bad right?

 

If he can keep his strikeout rate at about 16%, he's got a shot, but that seems to be quite high for a person who is supposedly going to have a high average.

 

I see him more around .260/.310/.415 myself.

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QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 20, 2011 -> 08:57 AM)
How many rookies come up after hitting around .330 at every level they've played at?

 

That's the real question regarding these projections...how much does the batting average drop going from AA and AAA to the bigs?

There is a decent population of minor league guys that hit in the minors at high clips and don't hit immediately in the majors and we can't pretend that Morel is a top 10 prospect in baseball or something. He's a guy that misses out on the typical prospect rankings because his upside isn't that high, but what he does, he does very well and really has the ability to be that propsect that no one got excited about but that just does his thing and does everything average offensively for his position and hopefully will be above average defensively.

 

I think Morel will be able to handle his own but I'm not going to pretend there won't be a learning curve. I think at his best he could be a .280 to .310 hitter with 10-15 hr's, quite a few doubles, all while playing above average defense. But that won't happen overnight. However, he could also be a guy that once you get to the big leagues his lack of true athletism gets in the way and prevents him from being able to hit for as high of an average. Fundementally he is very sound though and I think he has enough talent to be productive.

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QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 20, 2011 -> 09:10 AM)
So you guys who are expressing doubts...Bill James is likely basing these numbers on some sort of historic average for how far guys' performance drops from coming up 1 level to the big leagues at his age.

 

If there aren't guys who come up and immediately rake, then where would those numbers come from? There are clearly some guys who would drag it down horribly (Brian Anderson) by coming up and sucking immediately, his prediction has to be somewhere in-between the good and the bad right?

Historically he has always been highly optimistic on prospects first seasons. That is the case of most fans too. They expect guys to be superstars or the best player at there respected position. Basically they look at all the upside instead of focusing in on the reality of the situation.

 

And those projections are incredibly difficult to determine since some guys just project to be better offensive players.

 

Take a guy like Howie Kendrick. He hit at every level and I mean he hit. He gets to the majors and he still hits and part of his blame is injury, but this guy was one of the best pure hitters in the past 10 years down in the minors and he hasn't exactly dominated at the major league level (note, I'd still take a flyer on him). And yes, injuries are a major factor to it and this is just one example.

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QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jan 20, 2011 -> 12:31 PM)
Historically he has always been highly optimistic on prospects first seasons. That is the case of most fans too. They expect guys to be superstars or the best player at there respected position. Basically they look at all the upside instead of focusing in on the reality of the situation.

 

And those projections are incredibly difficult to determine since some guys just project to be better offensive players.

 

Take a guy like Howie Kendrick. He hit at every level and I mean he hit. He gets to the majors and he still hits and part of his blame is injury, but this guy was one of the best pure hitters in the past 10 years down in the minors and he hasn't exactly dominated at the major league level (note, I'd still take a flyer on him). And yes, injuries are a major factor to it and this is just one example.

Here's my problem though...how is he calibrating his model? If he knows a bare minimum about statistics, which something tells me he does...he should know that there's going to be an average drop in performance from AAA to the bigs, with populations at the average, and others towards the extremes, probably looking something like a bell curve.

 

If he's historically constantly overestimating the average performance of a rookie, that means that he doesn't know how to calculate an average. If I had 25 years of data and a day or two, this is something I could figure out easily.

 

If his model consistently overestimates people, then why is he even publishing it?

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Howie Kendrick is a great example. There were about a million different people who said that Howie Kendrick would have a batting title by now (or that he would have atleast competed for one), and while he has hit OK, especially for his position on the field, he just has not taken that next step and probably never will.

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QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 20, 2011 -> 09:34 AM)
Here's my problem though...how is he calibrating his model? If he knows a bare minimum about statistics, which something tells me he does...he should know that there's going to be an average drop in performance from AAA to the bigs, with populations at the average, and others towards the extremes, probably looking something like a bell curve.

 

If he's historically constantly overestimating the average performance of a rookie, that means that he doesn't know how to calculate an average. If I had 25 years of data and a day or two, this is something I could figure out easily.

 

If his model consistently overestimates people, then why is he even publishing it?

The problem is. Doing a statistical analysis on minor league players is incredibly difficult. These are guys that aren't even close to there ceilings (in certain instances) so you can't just apply a standard average across the board. If you did, every minor leaguer that posted a great ERA would be in the big leagues and successful and we know that isn't the case.

 

It is much easier to run stats on guys that have a few years of big league experience as at that point, they have reached there potential/ceilings usually. And than it is much more standard of a comparison.

 

Go back and look at James/Baseball Prospectuses projections and you'll see historically the major league projections (on minor leaguers) are completely funky. I mean, should we assume that because of what Stefan Gartrell did that he can come in and perform similarly offensively to Andruw Jones? Absolutely not, but I'm sure the projections on him show that he could be a favorable bench player.

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QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 20, 2011 -> 11:34 AM)
Here's my problem though...how is he calibrating his model? If he knows a bare minimum about statistics, which something tells me he does...he should know that there's going to be an average drop in performance from AAA to the bigs, with populations at the average, and others towards the extremes, probably looking something like a bell curve.

 

If he's historically constantly overestimating the average performance of a rookie, that means that he doesn't know how to calculate an average. If I had 25 years of data and a day or two, this is something I could figure out easily.

If his model consistently overestimates people, then why is he even publishing it?

 

I'm sure you've read all of James' material as I have. He creates many of his stats and projections on what he feels are the important variables, not necessarily what anyone else thinks are important. There is alot of subjectivity to it. In this type of projection he look at Morel's projected tools and thinks that his contact rate makes him a better candidate to succeed at the next level than others (that is just an example, I have no idea if it's true). He has all of the data from the minors and could easily just take the average decrease as you say but he uses alot of subjective information to create his models.

 

this is why you see the variability in the projection and probably an overestimation. As with many here he likes to study the minor leagues and likes to be overly optimistic on the unknowns because it's more fun to project what someone could be not just study who they are once they get to the majors. That's how he sells books.

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