However, Dave Cameron made an interesting point: the Rockies play in the National League West, where hitters seemingly face s larger proportion of stud pitchers — Dave mentioned Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner, Clayton Kershaw, and Mat Latos in this connection. He also pointed out that Longoria did not have to face the Rays’ own excellent pitching staff. So I decided to look at it more closely. The point is not to settle the Longoria versus Tulowitzki dispute. Rather, I am interested in whether individual hitters face (or do not face) particular pitchers enough that they require a “divisional” adjustment of some sort.

Let’s get a couple of things out of the way. First of all, I am not going to get into the overall American League versus National League dispute here. I realize that even seeing a birth certificate is not going to convince some people, so I will simply reference (again) MGL’s recent study and his more extensive 2006 study. If you want to complain about the assertion that the AL has better talent overall, please direct your complaints there or elsewhere. While the Senior Circuit has caught up and perhaps taken a slight lead in hitting talent (at least through 2011, who knows how this off-season might have changed things), the AL still had more talent overall because of a much greater lead in pitching.

Second, the best way to do this would be to take all the pitchers each hitter faced and get projections (or retro-jections) of the true talent in 2011, including all of the relevant adjustments for environment, and then compare. Well, I’m not doing a whole set of pitcher retro-jections and then matching them up per plate appearance with two hitters for one post. I am claiming that this is some super-duper rigorous study. I am simply going to look at the small group of “really good” pitchers as given by my Twitter interlocutors. There were other qualifications I could put in here, e.g., the problem of park factors and interleague comparison, but I’ve already gone on too long with prefatory remarks. Caveat lector.

Did Troy Tulowitzki face such a great proportion of NL West studs (as listed by Dave and others) such that he should get a special “adjustment” for difficulty level? For the sake of keeping things relatively simple, we will just look at 2011 matchups. (I just used MLB.com’s pages, which do not have PA listed separately, in a convenient way, so “plate appearance” should be understood as AB+BB for the purposes of this post. Yes, this probably led to an insignificant arithmetical error or two.) Tulowitzki had 596 plate appearances (AB+BB) in 2011: six versus Linceum, six versus Bumgarner, nine versus Cain, nine versus Kershaw, and 10 versus Latos. That is a total of 40, just under seven percent of his total plate appearances.

While that might be a slightly greater proportion of good pitching than hitters for other NL teams and divisions may have faced, given that 93 percent of his plate appearances came against the “rest” of the league (I know it gets complicated because of interleague, but let’s just stick with the basic premise for the sake of simplicity), I do not think that requires us to make NL West hitters like Tulo a special case. We do not take 40 plate appearances to be a significant sample for almost anything of which I am aware of off the top of my head.

How about if we expand this off-the-cuff selection of great pitchers to include the Diamondbacks’ Daniel Hudson and Ian Kennedy, as Paul Swydan suggested? (With all due respect to Paul and the great years and Hudson and Kennedy had, I am not sure who would put them on the same “true talent” level as Kershaw, Lincecum, or Cain, but let’s humor Paul. Dude’s gotta be exhausted from running all those “After Dark” chats.) That adds another 16 plate appearances to Tulo’s list of “stud” opponents. Again, without doing the math, I am pretty sure that those 16 plate appearances do not push things over into “cancel that league adjustment” territory, as the total is still under ten percent of Tulowitzki’s plate appearances.

What about Longoria not having to face the Rays’ staff? That’s a bit trickier, since we do not have the numbers for how many times Longoria would have faced individual Rays pitchers in an alternate universe. With a bit of digging, I found an AL East hitter who faced the Rays quite a bit: Dustin Pedroia. Now, I was not given a list of “official studs” on the Rays’ staff, but for 2011, I will count David Price and James Shields. Pedroia had 721 plate appearances (AB+BB) in 2011; 16 versus Price, 17 versus Shields. That comes to a total off 33, or less than 5 percent of Pedroia’s plate appearances.

Oh, I’ve forgotten one Tampa Stud: Pedroia also faced Matt Moore twice, pushing things all the way up to… 4.8 percent. Obviously, if I am no inclined to accept that Tulowitzki’s proportion of stud pitchers faced should change the way we thing of his “difficulty adjustment,” I am not going to be doing the same for Longoria based on an even smaller proportion of hypothetical plate appearances.

[Side note: Longoria faced CC Sabathia 16 times, more than Tulowitzki faced any one of the NL West pitchers listed above.]

The 2011 National League West (and the San Francisco Giants in particular) did feature a number of tremendous pitchers, and it is understandable that one would be tempted to judge the hitters in their division on a different grading curve. However, even taking both those pitchers that Tulowitzki faced (including Hudson and Kennedy) and that Longoria did not face together, we are talking about less than 80 plate appearances between two players versus more than 1000 PA versus of all the other pitchers they collectively faced during the season. If someone wants to do a more detailed and mathematically rigorous account of that proves otherwise, that would be both great. Until then, I do not think Tulowitzki and other NL West hitters get bonus points, or at least not a significant number of them.

Our current measures of opponent strength are imperfect and somewhat crude, and can probably be improved upon. I can understand the why Dave and others want to note that hitters in the 2011 NL West faced a great number of excellent starters. But as we have seen, a hitter like Tulowitzki faces a group of seven starters less than 60 or 70 times a season, and given all the other evidence about the league-wide skill level of the far greater proportion of hitters he faces, those league-wide evaluations likely come closer to the truth about the difficulty level faced by a individual hitters. In any case, Tulo is a great player, he doesn’t need the extra credit.

Another reason lists could be so pitcher heavy is that apparently pitcher, for some analysts, are easier to project. Sickles just did a few articles on this. Top pitchers, almost without exception, he rated as A or B+ prospects. The position players were all over the place, with several good position players being B- or C level prospects.

Just food for thought.

Pretty interesting food, actually. I’m not sure why I hadn’t thought of this earlier, but on the surface, this comment seems to pass the smell test. Kids in high school can throw in the mid-90s, and that’s a pretty easy thing to scout. They can throw nasty breaking balls that no one can hit. Likewise, there are always a few college arms who command their pitches so well that they’re considered to be nearly Major League ready before they ever sign a pro contract. With these types of premium pitching prospects, there’s not really a lot of projecting to be done – the forecasting involved is more along the lines of whether they’ll be able to stay healthy or not.

This isn’t really true of hitters. Very few high school kids possess the physical skills of a Major League player. A large part of hitting is how well you can drive the baseball, and game-usable power often doesn’t develop until a player is in his early-20s. Likewise, hardly any teenagers have the understanding of which pitches to swing at and which ones to lay off, as that is learned through experience and repetition – things that only come with time. Underdeveloped power and overly aggressive hitting strategies mean that very few young kids are capable of stepping right into the Major Leagues and performing well offensively. The position players who do make the big leagues before they can legally drink are usually those whose athletic abilities allow them to contribute in the field or on the bases – a disproportionate number of teenage position players in the big leagues have been shortstops and center fielders.

Amateur pitchers flash the kind of skills needed to become top-notch Major League arms, and in many cases, those skills can translate directly to the Major Leagues in a short period of time. Amateur position players can show athletic ability and good hitting mechanics, but rarely do you see a HS or even college hitter who is already displaying the kinds of skills necessary to hit well against big league pitching. Position players require a bit more projection – how will the player fill out as he gets older, can he adjust to facing good breaking balls on a regular basis, etc…

It makes sense, and would help explain why teams have been willing to invest so much money in high draft picks on pitching prospects despite knowing that their flame out rate is significantly higher. As we talked about yesterday, our confidence in our evaluations goes up as we gain information, and if scouts feel that they have more information about a pitcher’s Major League tools than they do a hitter of the same age, it’s natural that they could prefer the pitcher, even with the greater chance of injury. Of course, a lot of things make sense when you think about them, but are debunked once you actually start looking at the data. So, let’s try and look at some data.

We’ll start off by just borrowing some research from Jeff Zimmerman, who looked at the relative percentage of players from Baseball America’s All-Time Top 100 list that showed up on the 2010 leaderboards. There were 13 pitchers that posted a WAR of +5.0 or higher in 2010, and all 13 appeared on BA’s list at one point or another. There were 18 pitchers who posted a WAR of between +4.0 and +5.0, and BA had identified 72% of those. They got 70% of the 20 arms who posted a WAR between +3.0 and +4.0. This is a pretty good showing for BA, as prospect evaluation isn’t easy, and they consistently nailed a large majority of the best arms in baseball.

On the hitting side of things, they didn’t fare quite as well. Again, 13 players posted a WAR of +6.0 or higher, and BA identified 77% of those. They stayed in the mid-70% range for every tier down to +3.0 to +4.0 WAR, and as Zimmerman’s final table shows, the only real difference in the results seems to be at the very top. In most tiers, they got close to the same percentage of hitters and pitchers, but when it comes to +5 WAR or higher players, they did significantly better with pitchers.

We’re dealing with pretty tiny samples, though, and only one year of results from one source. We can’t draw any conclusions from this information. So, let’s look back at Sickels’ rankings, where the source of the original comment came from. A couple of weeks ago, John posted a review of his prospect grades for pitchers who rated in the Top 25 in baseball in WAR last year. Of the 25 guys who posted +3.9 WAR or higher, Sickels had placed a B- or better prospect grade on 23 of them – only C.J. Wilson and Doug Fister fell through the cracks, and they’ve both taken some pretty anomalous career paths to success. Twelve of the 25 pitchers received an A- grade or better. By and large, Sickels was able to identify most of the best pitchers in baseball last year while they were minor leaguers.

He then looked at the top 30 position players from a year ago, and the results were somewhat less impressive. Most of the guys on the list got B- or better grades at some point, but Sickels acknowledges that he missed on Matt Kemp and Robinson Cano, notes that Matt Holliday was a late-bloomer, and underestimated the abilities of Brett Gardner and Shane Victorino, who were pegged as fourth outfielders. We’ll give him a pass on Jose Bautista because what he’s doing is basically unprecedented and no one could have seen this coming.

He still got most of the best hitting prospects, just as Baseball America did, but the proportion of misses is higher and more severe.

Again, not enough information to draw any firm conclusions, so I decided to look at how very young kids perform in the big leagues. I grabbed all player seasons since 1982, and then filtered out only the ones where the player was 21 or younger and had at least 50 IP/150 PA. There were nearly identical samples of each population – 132 pitcher seasons, 123 hitter seasons. That was not planned, but it’s a pretty nice coincidence, as it gives us very similar samples to deal with.

The 132 21-or-younger pitchers were pretty pretty good (thanks to guys like Dwight Gooden, Bret Saberhagen, Fernando Valenzuela, and Madison Bumgarner), throwing just over 15,000 innings and posting an ERA- of 99, supported by an equal FIP- of 99. Overall, this combination of above-average pitching over a decent number of innings added up to +212 WAR, or an average +2.53 WAR per 180 innings pitched.

The 123 21-or-younger hitters also weren’t bad. Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, and Ken Griffey Jr were all monsters at an early age, and helped lead the group to +192 WAR in just under 49,000 plate appearances. That averages out to +2.36 WAR per 600 PA, just a bit lower than what the young pitchers put up.

Again, the gap isn’t large enough for us to draw any real conclusions. There have been some really good young pitchers, and some really good young hitters. The young pitchers have been slightly better, and may be slightly easier to identify, but the information isn’t overwhelmingly in support of the idea that premium young pitchers are just easier to identify than young hitters.

The idea still makes sense, though, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a more thorough study ended up supporting the claim. It’s officially on my to-do list for this year, and is a topic I’d love to see discussed in more depth.

First, Irish players had to display superior performance to earn regular positions. Second, they generally were relegated to less important field positions. Regular Irish players were also more likely to be assigned to fill in at field positions other than their regular ones. Last, the Irish were underrepresented as managers. The evidence also suggests fan discrimination, with the presence of Irish players positively correlated with their cities’ Irish populations. These patterns, again with the exception of pitcher, mirror those observed for African Americans in the first decade or two after Jackie Robinson broke the MLB “color line” in 1947.

Eckard notes that this discrimination did not prevent Irish players from getting jobs in baseball: “Roughly one-third of players were Irish, similar to the proportion of Irish in the general populations of cities with major-league ball teams.” There was no anti-Irish color line. Rather, the discrimination against Irish players was more subtle. But that very subtlety helps to make the history of the 1880s all the more applicable to the tensions of the present day.

Indeed, as a commenter pointed out on the Milton Bradley story, the portrayal of Irish at the end of the 19th century was very similar to that of African Americans in the middle of the 20th century. As Eckard writes: “The basic elements of the stereotype were innate low intelligence, unreliability, laziness, and (for males) a penchant for drunkenness and fighting. Newspaper and magazine cartoonists of the era often portrayed the Irish with simian features.”

Eckard then develops a number of hypotheses to measure possible anti-Irish discrimination in baseball. Most of these hypotheses have been substantiated with regard to African American players in the decades following baseball’s integration in 1947.

1. 1. Irish players might have a higher mean performance: due to discrimination, given a choice between an Irish player and a non-Irish player of comparable value, a racist owner would choose the non-Irish player, which would mean that only standout Irish players would be employed.
2. 2. Teams with Irish players might have a higher winning percentage: a team unwilling to employ Irish players would be disadvantaging itself with regard to the talent pool compared to a team that was willing to use Irish players.
3. 3. Irish players might have less desirable positions on the diamond, as racist teams reserved the more desirable positions for non-Irish players, who would also be paid a higher wage.
4. 4. For similar reasons, Irish players might be forced to change positions more often so that the positional preferences of non-Irish players could be accommodated.
5. 5. There would be fewer Irish managers in baseball, to placate racist players who wouldn’t want to play for an Irish manager.
6. 6. Because racist fans might not want to watch Irish players, Irish players might only be employed by teams in cities with a high Irish population.

Eckard compares the triple slash lines of Irish players compared to non-Irish players, as well as the proportion of Irish players at each position and the number of Irish players on each team, and demonstrates these hypotheses to be largely correct. Irish players did have demonstrably better performance but were less prevalent at premium positions and as managers. Cities with larger Irish populations had more Irish players on their teams. Despite the fact that the number of Irish players in baseball was higher than the Irish proportion of the U.S. population, Irish-American ballplayers appear to have faced demonstrable discrimination.

(The second hypothesis, about team winning percentage, is not statistically significant at the 5% level, but is significant at the 10% level.)

Eckard determined Irish ethnicity by examining player records in ancestry.com to determine whether they or their father were born in Ireland; the author then established a probability of Irishness for all other white players by comparing the number of people with their surname to the number of people with their surname who also had a father born in Ireland. He repeated this process with players of German ancestry and English ancestry to determine whether any similar discrimination could be discerned, and found that there appeared to be a statistically significant anti-German bias in managers, but could not find support for the other discrimination hypotheses listed above.

The author is careful to note that his analysis reveals subtle results, and that discriminatory outcomes are different from overt racism:

It is not clear that contemporary baseball owners and players were even aware of the relatively subtle manifestations of discrimination revealed in the above statistical analysis. The popular modern image of the game in the late 1800s as a (European) ethnicity-blind meritocracy might require only a minor revision.

I enjoy looking at baseball history because our game has the richest history of any American professional sport. It’s frankly awesome that a tenured professor can conduct meaningful research using the OBP and slugging percentage of Hall of Famers like Ned Hanlon and King Kelly. But history can also help us better understand baseball today. (I remain fascinated by the history of performance-enhancing drugs in the 19th century.) The stereotypes that followed Irish players later dogged African Americans, as did the discriminatory practices. Moreover, those practices were not merely as simple as barring them from the profession. Much as integration did not end racism in American society, it did not prevent discrimination in baseball.

Nor, I daresay, has racism ended in society, though it is also almost certainly true that the most important color in baseball is green. In modern American usage, the word “racism” tends to apply to relations between African Americans and whites, but the history of racism is much broader. It also, perhaps just maybe, offers hope for the future. After all, the amount of anti-Irish discrimination in modern society is vanishingly low. Of course, there are a few major differences between Irish-Americans and African Americans. There are few subjects more fraught than skin tone, which seems to be one of the more universal marks of discrimination around the world. But the Irish experience demonstrates that discrimination is neither necessary nor permanent. In a hundred years, it may all simply seem like ancient history.

I’ll admit it: when Andrew Friedman said at the beginning of the off-season that the Rays didn’t need to trade a starter, I called bull. It’s no secret that the Rays have a glut of major-league-ready starting pitching, with seven starters who could theoretically be in the opening day rotation*, so I wrote off Friedman’s comments as positioning. You don’t want to announce to the world that you desperately need to trade a starter, thereby jettisoning your leverage. Friedman was playing his hand, but there’s no chance the Rays would actually enter the 2012 season without dealing a starter…right?

*In case you’re having a brain fart: David Price, James Shields, Jeremy Hellickson, Matt Moore, Jeff Niemann, Wade Davis, and Alex Cobb.

As it turns out, wrong. The market ended up being flooded with starters, and there was never a surplus of demand that would have pushed up offers for either Jeff Niemann or Wade Davis. Who saw Gio Gonzalez and Jeremy Guthrie being traded? Or Roy Oswalt staying on the market this late? It was a poor off-season to be stuck trying to deal a mediocre starter, so now the Rays are faced with the task of making all their pitchers fit their roster without decreasing anyone’s trade value.

But the solution to this glut of pitching is simpler than it seems: keep Alex Cobb in Triple-A, and move Wade Davis to the bullpen. That may not seem ideal, but based on his pitch repertoire and success, Davis may be destined to move to the bullpen anyway.

Considering he was once one of the top pitching prospects in the Rays system, Wade Davis has been somewhat of a disappointment. After striking out over 20 percent of hitters at every step in the minors (outside one poor year in Double-A), he initially burst into the majors at the tail end of 2009 with such promise; he struck out 24 percent of the batters he faced, helping Rays fans forget that he was replacing Scott Kazmir in the rotation.

This success should have come with a minor warning bell, though. Despite the strikeouts, Davis only generated a league-average amount of swinging strikes (8.8 percent), suggesting that his strikeout rate was potentially too good to be true. Some regression was expected in 2010, and Davis did struggle that season; his strikeout rate dropped to below league average (16 percent), and batters rarely swung and missed at his pitches (6 percent). But instead of rebounding in 2011 and adjusting in a positive way, Davis continued to backtrack in 2011 (13 percent strikeout rate) and raised some serious concerns about his ability to be a viable major-league starter.

If you break down Davis’ results by pitch, the data doesn’t look any more encouraging. Davis has been able to fool hitters with his pitches less and less often each season:

Pitch classifications and data from Brooks Baseball.

To place these numbers in some context, Jeff Niemann posted a league-average strikeout rate last season (18 percent) with the following breakdown: 12-14 percent swinging strikes on his fastballs; 27 percent whiffs on his curveball and slider. Meanwhile, Jeremy Hellickson posted a meger 15 percent strikeout rate, but managed to get hitters to whiff at his curveball and changeup 30+ percent of the time.

In general, if you want to post a decent strikeout rate in the majors, you need to have at least one or two out-pitches that can consistently make hitters miss. Davis’ best out-pitch was only getting a swinging strike once every five times a hitter swung at it last season, while Hellickson and Niemann had pitches they could drop in for a whiff once every three or four times.

Is this to say that Davis is doomed and can never improve? No, certainly not. He obviously had swing-and-miss stuff at one point, and it’s not unheard of for young pitchers to improve their whiff and strikeout rates from one year to another. Doug Fister had a horrendous whiff rate in 2010 — four percent — but he boosted that up to nearly 7 percent in 2011 and increased his strikeout rate as a result. Also, Joe Blanton increased both his strikeout and swinging strike rates dramatically after moving to Philadelphia.

In general, though, these pitchers appear to be the exception to the rule. If you look at the leaderboard of pitchers who have posted swinging strike rates below 6 percent over the course of a season (since 2005, at least), you won’t find many pitchers who dramatically changed their career. In fact, it’s difficult to find a single pitcher who ever got their strikeout rate to league average. Joe Saunders. Chris Volstad. Trevor Cahill. Brian Bannister. Zach Duke. Kyle Lohse. Jeremy Guthrie. Mike Pelfrey. It’s a mediocre list, at best, and it goes on and on.

Maybe Wade Davis can turn things around, but from this perspective, his upside in the rotation appears limited. If he may only ever develop into a +1 to +2 win pitcher, why not try him in the bullpen and see what he can do? The Rays certainly have the pitching depth to give it a shot, and they only owe him a guaranteed $12 million over the next three seasons. He would be an expensive reliever for the Rays, but if he turned into a bullpen ace, he’d be a relatively good value.

The Rays pitching coach, Jim Hickey, has already hinted that Davis could move to the ‘pen to start the season. If he does well out there, I wouldn’t be surprised if this move became more than just a temporary fix.

By statistical measures, Carlos Perez had a marginally successful 2011 at best. Over 126 innings, he struck out nearly eight batters per nine innings and proved to be a durable starter whose innings needed to be monitored closely the final two months of the 2011 season to avoid overuse. Unfortunately, Perez also surrendered more hits than innings pitched and his poor walk rates led to the worst WHIP among qualified pitchers in the South Atlantic League.

Video after the jump

However, this may be explained pretty easily as contacts have mentioned Perez’ body changed drastically during the 2010 off-season which may have thrown off his balance knocking mechanics out of whack. Having pitched the entire 2011 season as a teenager, it’s easy to forget how awkward those years can be for young men and how coordination may still be developing. For Perez, he appeared a disproportionate in uniform as his lower half was significantly more developed than his upper body.

That developed lower half works well with his mechanics as the lefty has a touch of Luis Tiant in his rock-and-fire throwing motion. And while quite long, Perez’ arm action is relatively clean and allows him to hide the ball off of his hip prior to release – even though the sum total of his mechanics appear to be max effort. Perez landing on a stiff front leg appears a little awkward and negatively affects the forward momentum he generates which explains his remaining tall during follow through and elevating the fastball too often. Additionally, one is forced to wonder how mechanics with so many moving parts can be successfully repeated by a big leaguer, let alone a 19-year old feeling his way through the lower levels?

In game action, Perez worked off of an 89-91 MPH fastball he struggled to locate. Instead of working both sides of the plate, Perez frequently worked the outer half and shied away from challenging opponents. When down in the zone, Perez’ fastball has a touch of late sink which leaves me bullish of his ability to post strong ground ball rates with added consistency. However, Perez’ fastball flattened out considerably from the belt up which is where he located most often. For me, this is directly responsible for his hits allowed. One thing learned from scouting lower level prospects is that no matter how strong the secondary offerings, a pitching prospect will struggle at the upper levels without plus velocity or consistent fastball movement. Right now, Perez has neither.

At 74-75 MPH, Perez’ curveball was inconsistent, but effective when released out front. When that happened, the pitch featured significant late downward action and true 12-6 movement. In my notes, I wrote the pitch, “dove to the front of the plate” making it extremely difficult for opposing hitters to barrel and lift. Of course the same stiff leg that leads to his elevating the fastball caused him to throw a number of “spinners” as well. Additionally, Perez had a tendency to wrap his wrist off of his ear at times which also contributed to his spinning instead of snapping a number of curveballs.

Perez’ best offering, a 79-81 MPH changeup leaves me hopeful the rest of his arsenal will come around due to advanced feel for the pitch. He combined excellent arm action with late fade allowing me to project the pitch as potential plus offering with further development. In having conversations with contacts about the importance of a changeup in terms of projecting all-around development, each agreed it was a key factor in gauging the ability for a pitcher to sharpen command and potentially develop new offerings such as a cutter.

In some respects, my instincts tell me to simply write off the 2011 season for Perez and use this spring as a proper measure of his talents based on uncontrollable physical development. However, the 2010 version of Perez still walked close to four batter per nine innings so a mulligan is not entirely appropriate. At present, Perez has the makings of a durable starting pitcher with three potential average or better pitches if things fall into place. However, with walk rates generally increasing as one advances through the minor leagues, Perez’ red herring makes it difficult to project him as a big leaguer at this juncture considering James McDonald drew the short straw in 2011 posting a league worst walk rate of 4.11 per nine.

Today, in Part 2, I select the “best value players” at shortstop, third base, left field, center field, and right field over the same twenty-year period.

First, a note about values prior to 2002. In Part 1, I explained that the Wizards of FanGraphs had calculated the dollar value per WAR for the years 2002-2011, but not for 1992-2001. When comparing contracts from the 1990′s to contracts in the 2000′s, I did my best to estimate values by taking inflation into account. I agree with several of the comments that simply taking the value of contracts from the 1990′s and estimating their present value based on inflation may not be the most accurate way to go about it.

For Part 2, I’m trying something different. Remember, here’s the chart with the FanGraphs-devised dollar values for each WAR for the years 2002-2011:

Based on these figures, I’ve approximated dollar values for each WAR for the years 1992-2001, as follows:

These are estimates, and they are by no means perfect. But, I’ve decided it’s a fairer way to compare contracts from different decades.

Onward.

Shortstop

Jose Reyes-New York Mets: 5  years/$34 million (2007-2011)

In this contract, the Mets bought out Reyes’ last two years of arbitration and his first three years of free agency. The original contract was for 4 years/$23 million, but it had a club option for 2011 at $11 million, which the Mets exercised.

Over the life of the contract, Reyes had two great seasons (2008, 2011), one very good season (2007), and two seasons when he was hampered by injuries and missed a lot of playing time (2009, 2010). Even so, in those five seasons, Reyes accumulated 26.7 WAR for a value of $95.7 million, or 2.8 times the salary he was paid.

Reyes was a fairly easy choice because the other high performing shortstops over the last twenty years had very lucrative contracts: Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Miguel Tejada, and Barry Larkin.

I did consider Troy Tulowitzki. He signed a 6-year contract with the Rockies before the 2008 season, to run through 2013, for $31 million. That deal would have bought out five years of arbitration and one year of free agency. But Tulowitzki and the Rockies extended that contract, beginning in 2011 and continuing for ten years, for a total package of $157.50 million. Tulowitzki accumulated 13.1 WAR between 2008-2010 for a value of $55.5 million, more than ten times what he was paid over the first three years of his contract. But the renegotiated extension wiped out the last two years of the original contract, making it difficult to compare it to Reyes’ fully-completed 5-year deal. It remains to be seen what value Tulowitzki will produce for the Rockies over the next nine seasons.

Third base

Evan Longoria-Tampa Bay Rays: 6 years/$17.5 million + 3 club options totaling $30 million (2008-2013, plus 2014-2016)

This is where it all began, the idea for this post. My love and adoration for the Evan Longoria contract. And it really is an absolutely fantastic deal for the Rays.

The initial six years of the contract cover Longoria’s first six seasons in the league, and, therefore, all his arbitration-eligible years. If the Rays exercise their club options, they’ll get the first three years of Longoria’s “free agency” for just $30 million. To date, Longoria has accumulated 26.9 WAR for a value of $117.1 million. If we make conservative assumptions about the next two seasons — i.e., that Longoria will produce, on average, 5 WAR per season; and that each WAR will be worth $4.5 million — then Longoria will have produced $162 million in value for the Rays at a cost of just $17.5 million. After 2013, if Longoria stays healthy, and if he weren’t under contract for the Rays, he’d likely command in the range of $25 million per year. Getting three years of Longoria in his prime for just $30 million total is an absolute steal for the Rays.

It’s worth noting that the Atlanta Braves had a very favorable contract with Chipper Jones from 1996-1999: 4 years/$8.25 million. Over that span, Jones accumulated 25.5 WAR with an estimated value of $38.3 million, or 4.6 times his actual salary. If not for Longoria’s contract, the Braves four-year deal with Jones would have easily made him the best value third baseman in the last twenty years.

Left field

Barry Bonds-San Francisco Giants: 3 years/$33.2 million (1999-2001)

Bonds had four contracts with the Giants and in all but the last one (for 2007), he provided more value than he was paid. The best value for the Giants was the three-year deal covering 1999-2001, when the team paid Bonds $33.2 million and he produced 24.3 WAR, valued at $53.8 million. Incredibly, Bonds posted only 3.6 WAR in 1999, his lowest WAR/season since his rookie year of 1985.

Bonds’ first contract with the Giants was slightly less valuable to the team. Under that contract, covering 1993-1998, the Giants paid Bonds $43.75 million — at the time, the most lucrative contract ever — and Bonds produced 51.5 WAR for an approximate value of $56.1 million.

The third Bonds-Giants contract covered 2002-2006 and paid Bonds $90 million. If Bonds hadn’t missed nearly all of 2005 with knee surgery, this contract likely would have eclipsed the 1999-2001 deal in value to the Giants. Over the course of this contract, Bonds produced 39.1 WAR valued at $114 million.

Center field

Jim Edmonds-St.Louis Cardinals: 6 years/$57 million (2001-2006)

This was a bit of a surprise to me, perhaps because I’d forgotten what a terrific player Jim Edmonds was in the first part of the 2000′s. And perhaps because I was expecting the winner to be either Ken Griffey, Jr.’s 4-year deal with the Mariners for $34 million (1996-1999) or Andruw Jones‘ 6-year deal with the Braves for $75 million (2002-2007).

But this Edmonds-Cardinals deal was the clear winner. Over the six seasons, Edmonds produced 36.8 WAR with an approximate value of $107  million. That’s nearly two times Edmonds’ $57 million salary.

Right fielder

Bobby Abreu-Philadelphia Phillies: 3 years/$14.2 million (2000-2002)

Another surprising winner, in my view. I was expecting Ichiro to win this one going away with his 4 year/$44 million contract with the Mariners from 2004-2007. But Abreu’s 3-year deal with the Phillies was just a fantastic deal for Philadelphia. Abreu produced 18.6 WAR with an approximate value of $43.5 million. That’s more than three times what the Phillies paid Abreu over the life of the contract.

So there you have it. I’m sure you’ll tell me everything I got wrong in the comments. And if I got something right, tell me that, too.

The first thing I noticed was how heavy the list was on pitchers. There’s only two pitching prospects in the top nine, but then 12 of the next 16 spots go to hurlers, and overall, 49 of the 100 spots on the list are occupied by pitchers. It’s not exactly breaking news that young pitching prospects get hurt and flame out at rates much higher than comparable hitting prospects, so in order to compensate for the extra risk they bring to the table, their placement has to be justified through additional upside. Keith’s a smart guy and understands all this, and I’m sure he’d be able to make a valid argument that each pitcher on the list has enough potential to justify their ranking even with the understanding of greater risk.

This ties into the other thing I noticed while perusing the list, however – the top prospects, in most cases, have very little minor league experience. Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, and Jurickson Profar all rate in the top 7 after spending last year in low-A ball, and while they’re all big time talents, they’re not really the exception. Dylan Bundy and Bubba Starling are ranked highly despite having never played a professional baseball game, while Archie Bradley has them beat by just two innings in rookie ball last summer. With the exception of Harper – a special talent and unique prospect in many regards – these guys are all several years from the big leagues. While their physical talents are real, we also have less information about them than some older prospects who have spent a few years climbing the ladder. The less you know about a player, the higher your uncertainty around that player’s value has to be. Lack of knowledge translates to risk, and risk weighs down value.

I don’t know enough about prospects to say that Law’s rankings of these very young kids are too aggressive – he knows their upside better than I do, and I’m sure he spent a lot of time deciding how to balance the increased risk that goes along with players we know relatively little about. But, I do wonder if prospect valuation in general focuses too much on a player’s perceived potential and not enough on minimizing the chances of a player being a bust who never contributes a meaningful thing to a big league club.

For example, Yonder Alonso is the only 24-year-old on Law’s list this year, and he comes in at #69. Alonso’s been in the spotlight for a while, and people have had plenty of time to break down his weaknesses. We know he’s not a great defender, he doesn’t pull the ball with authority all that regularly, and he projects to be more of a doubles hitter than a home run guy despite playing a position where power is essentially mandatory. The three years Alonso has spent in the minor leagues have given us a lot of information about his abilities, and not all of that information has helped his stock as a prospect. We’ve had time to identify his flaws, and he’s had time to show us that they’re not things he can easily improve upon, or at least he hasn’t been able to as of yet. It’s hard to imagine a 24-year-old suddenly learning how to rip the baseball over the fence in the same way that you can with a raw 21-year-old. Alonso’s stagnated power development has lowered our expectations of his future potential, and in turn, has hurt his stock as a prospect.

However, there’s a flip side to this coin – we also know that Alonso’s contact skills are good enough to translate against high level pitching, that his approach at the plate is basically Major League ready, and that there’s enough juice in his bat that he can drive the ball the other way with regularity. His performance against both Triple-A and Major League pitching last year solidified our understanding of his strengths as well, and our confidence in our ability to project his future is higher than with pretty much any other prospect on the list. He’s the guy we know the most about, and that reduces risk, which in turn should raise his value.

However, I know it’s tough to get excited about a meh defensive first baseman with average power. What we’ve learned about Alonso leads us to think that he’s probably going to be a +2 to +3 win player, and he has limited star potential unless there’s an unexpected power surge coming. A scout I talked to recently compared Alonso to Wally Joyner with a bit less defensive value. Looking at their minor league numbers, the comparison fits pretty well.

The comparison isn’t perfect, as Joyner spent his full age 24 season in the Majors, so we’re comparing his just age 23 season to Alonso’s 23/24 seasons, but it’s not an issue that eliminates the usefulness of the comparison, especially considering how well Alonso hit in the big leagues when he was promoted.

Now, Joyner wasn’t exactly a star in his own time. He made one all-star team in 16 seasons and only finished in the top 20 in MVP voting twice. His best season was +4.2 WAR, and for his career, he averaged +2.9 WAR per 600 PA. And that was with some pretty nifty glovework – take his defensive value away, and you’re looking at a guy who was more like a +2.5 win player in most years. The Joyner comparison wasn’t meant to be a flattering one to Alonso – the scout was trying to imply how limited his upside actually was.

But, let’s keep in mind a realistic baseline for most prospects. Joyner produced +40.4 WAR over 8,000 big league plate appearances. He had seven seasons where he finished with +3 WAR or higher, and he posted a wRC+ of 110 or better in every season from 1986 to 1998. Yes, he had limited power, only averaging 15 home runs per 600 plate appearances over his career, but his ability to make contact, draw walks, and rack up doubles made him a pretty nice player for a long time.

Maybe Joyner is something close to the best case outcome for this kind of player type. After all, he stayed extremely healthy and hit better in the Majors than his minor league numbers suggested was likely, so rather than relying on just one comparison, I grabbed all first baseman over the last 30 years who have racked up 2,000+ PA in the big leagues and have posted an ISO between .130 and .170. This gives 45 players ranging from Greg Norton to John Olerud. The median offensive line from those 45 careers? 3,765 PA, .277/.344/.421, 105 wRC+, +10.5 WAR.

Joyner had the fourth best career of the bunch, coming in behind Olerud, Mark Grace, and Don Mattingly, all of whom were much better defenders than Alonso is. Perhaps a more realistic comparison for Alonso is Jeff Conine, who hit .285/.347/.443, good for a 107 wRC+. He hung around long enough to post +24.3 WAR. Even if we think he’s just going to turn into James Loney (+8.6 WAR to date) or Lyle Overbay (+13.0 WAR), there’s still some real expected production to be had, and there’s obviously upside beyond those guys.

I’m not suggesting that Alonso is a top 10 prospect in the game. I fully acknowledge that teams should and do prefer a reduced chance at getting a premium player over a safer guy who probably tops out as a solid everyday guy. But, it’s all a balancing act – you will trade some security for greater upside, but you shouldn’t just be willing to accept an unlimited amount of additional risk in pursuit of slightly higher potential returns. And, in looking at Law’s Top 100 list this morning, I just wonder if we’re getting that balance right. How many of these 18 or 19 year old pitching prospects are going to put up +10 WAR in the big leagues? History tells us most of these guys will never make it, and the ones that do will still likely fail to live up to expectations.

Is a 10% chance of becoming a quality starting pitcher for a few years before your arm starts to hurt really better than a 50% chance at being a league average player, especially when you can start producing that value immediately while the upside play requires a few years of deferred value? Have we just focused too heavily on upside when it comes to prospects, to the point where we’re now valuing lottery tickets over relatively sure things?

I can’t say that I have the answer to these questions right now, but I think they’re at least worth asking.

Up first was Mark Marquess, Stanford coach since 1977. Proud of his team, recently named the pre-season number two in the nation, he probably the most sabrermetrically-friendly of the group. First, he reacted to the new ball. After giving the caveat that the new bat was “here to stay,” he pointed out that decreasing offense was risky in terms of attendance and popularity of the game. He then added something that FanGraphs readers might applaud.

Third and fourth hitters in the pros are not bunting. They are in college. Maybe another year of adjustment will change things, but that’s how people reacted to the bat last year and it wasn’t necessarily a good thing. — Mark Marquess

Marquess’ team averaged a bunt every two games last year. Compared to the MLB average of .34 bunts per team per game, it does put him behind the times a tad, but we have to remember that the run environment in college was lower. The average Major League team scored 4.3 runs a game last year, and his Stanford squad played in a Division I environment that saw only 5.58 runs per game. For him to average about as many bunts per game as the Washington Nationals while playing in a league that scores almost half as many runs means he’s ahead of the average college coach in this regard.

Or he just has better position players than the average college team. One scout said that this year’s Stanford squad could boast top-five-round talent at every position. At least he’s not having his studs lay em down.

Marquess also repeated the adage that ‘pitching wins championships’ with respect to how the Stanford squad would do this year. While that may not be completely true — professional teams to win championships with hitting that is better than their pitching — it does seem that it’s virtually impossible to win championships with a below-average pitching staff.

Either way, it’s a good thing they have top prospect Mark Appel and his 96 MPH fastball atop the rotation, and that big lefty Brett Mooneyham‘s in-jeopardy career has been resuscitated. Marquess seemed confident that the team would find a closer among their good secondary pitchers, which also seems saber-aware. Afterwards the coach agreed to a sit down some time to explore this concept further, so we’ll see. Early returns are favorable.

California coach David Esquer piqued saber cats’ ears when he affirmed that his star player, Tony Renda, would bat at the top of the lineup — first or second. The reasoning? “If anyone’s going to get five at-bats in a game, we think it should be him.” Bravo, coach.

Afterwards, though, the coach muddied the waters somewhat. The thinking was the team’s second-best hitter, Chad Krist, would probably hit fourth. But if Renda wasn’t “getting enough pitches to hit” because he wasn’t getting “coverage behind him,” he’d move Krist up to bat second, and move his traditional #1/#2 hitters to the #8/#9 slot. This is not by the book or by The Book, considering his best on-base guys are now at the bottom of the lineup, and also the fact that he’s referenced lineup protection, which has been historically hard to prove.

And bunting? Cal will do it some, he says, as part of a “mixed” approach — he just doesn’t have the boppers of a Stanford lineup, and offense is “tough to come by” in the early-season, misty college games. Esquer put a saber wrinkle into the conversation, though. Responding to my assertion that research has shown that bunts — at least on the Major League level — are usually bad ideas, Esquer pointed out that it’s “about how you use the bunt.” His team will work on hybrid drag-sacrifice and push-sacrifice in order to increasing the chances of a hit.

“The win for us is if the third baseman plays the ball on the run. The chances of him throwing that ball away or wide is a big deal.” — David Esquer

That does change things. In a tight run environment, with worse defenders and an increased likelihood of achieving a hit, the needle moves a little more in the bunt’s favor.

None of these statements, however, were as saber-unfriendly as the main announcement made by Coach Sam Piraro of San Jose State University. The coach, in his 25th season at San Jose State, affirmed that his star infielder/pitcher Zack Jones would close and probably pinch-hit or play some at designated hitter.

“If we have a chance to win three games in a week, I’ll take that,” — Sam Piraro

He admitted that the scouts wanted him to let Jones start, and play in the field, so they could see what he could do. The player probably would agree, too. But Coach Piraro feels that what the team is asking him to do is already “a bear,” so they are going to stick him in the bullpen first and figure the rest out later.

This is a pre-season Western Athletic Conference pitcher of the year, and a preseason all-WAC pitcher/hitter, and his coach is going to make him a closer and part-time DH. That doesn’t seem like the best use of his resources. Fresno State has won five of the last six WAC titles, and this decision probably won’t make it any harder for them to repeat this year.

It was a mixed Media Day for the sabermetrically aware college baseball fan. Perhaps it’s not surprising — gathering statistics for over 280 Division I college baseball teams is not easy, even if the NCAA does attempt to help.

On the other hand, the top five college baseball programs averaged over 250,000 total attendees in 2010, and even Stanford University (which averaged about two thousand per game in 2010) gets a large (monetary, if not direct) benefit from a winning baseball program. The game is basically the same at any level, and there’s money to be made by figuring out the best practices and discovering college baseball’s “extra 2%.”

Firstly, lets peak at the candidates:

MARCEL: Tom Tango’s free projection system, intentionally using a simple formula as a challenge to forecasters.
PECOTA: Baseball Prospectus’ projection system available by subscription, run by Colin Wyers.
OLIVER: The Hardball Times’ projection system available by subscription, run by Brian Cartwright.
ZIPS: Baseball Think Factory’s free projection system, run by Dan Szymborski.
CAIRO: Revenge of the RLYW’s free projection system, run by “SG.”
STEAMER: Free projection system, run by Jared Cross, and his former students, Dash Davidson and Peter Rosenbloom.
You can learn more about these projection systems here.

HITTERS

The projection systems differ significantly with respect to their standard deviations of wOBA, with some hitting projection systems being particularly more risky in estimating the performance of players. The more risky a projection system, the more likely it will be wrong by a lot, which hurts its performance, particularly with respect to its Root Mean Square Error. Thus, riskier projection systems may be right more often, but when they’re wrong, they’re very wrong. So, before we do anything, let’s rank the projection systems in terms of how risky they are:

Marcel is going to have fewer “big misses” than Oliver will, so we’ll want to look at both RMSE (which will punish risky guesses) and Correlation (which will reward better player rankings), as well as average absolute error (which will fall somewhere in between in terms of punishing and ignoring risky projections).

Here is the RMSE table, weighted by PA, and only including guys with at least 200 PA. As you see, PECOTA, a relatively safe projection comes out ahead, even further ahead than Marcel which is even safer. I’ll also include a row for “last year’s stats” to see how predict they are.

Oliver fared pretty well, despite its risky nature. It takes a step forward when you look at absolute average error.

Absolute average error and root mean square error are differing in terms of how much they punish bad performance. Take System A that misses on Player X by 20 points of wOBA and misses on Player Y by the same amount. Take System B that guesses Player X exactly but misses on Player Y by 30 points. Average absolute error will favor System B, but RMSE will favor System A.

ZiPS is the champion of AAE, with its somewhat risky projections. They may be wrong by more when they’re wrong, but they’re right more often.

If we then jump forward and look at correlation, we get a whole new winner. Correlation is going to be different because all correlation cares about is rankings for the most part. If you projected Ryan Braun to have a .530 wOBA and Adrian Beltre to have a .430 wOBA, you would have had a great projection year using correlations, despite the fact that Braun’s wOBA was closer to .430 and Beltre’s was closer to .380. Correlation just wants you to rank the guys well. Using correlation, we get the following rankings.

Oliver comes out in front if you use correlation. Despite having perhaps overly aggressive estimates of talent level, scaling back your Oliver projections might have been the best way to predict hitters.

PITCHERS

What about pitchers? Well, the leaderboard will look quite different there. Following some of my previous work, I include some ERA Estimators among pitching projections. This time, I’ll convert them into projections by regressing ERA in 2011 against 2010 and 2009 versions of this ERA estimators. This produced the following formulas:

SIERA_proj = .59*SIERA(’10) + .26*SIERA(’09) + 0.47
xFIP_proj = .65*xFIP(’10) + .24*xFIP(’09) + 0.29
FIP_proj = .43*FIP(’10) + .30*FIP(’09) + 0.94
tERA_proj = .38*tERA(’10) + .29*tERA(’09) + 1.08

The projections now have the following standard deviations of ERA among all pitchers with 40 IP in 2011:

Starting off with RMSE—which should punish riskier projections, we see that it does exactly that:

ZiPS, PECOTA, and Oliver all had the riskier projections and all fared the worse. Interestingly, despite being more risky than scaled back ERA estimators, Steamer and Cairo outperformed them at RMSE.

What about average absolute error? The rankings look similar, though a few projections swap places.

Steamer again comes out ahead. Moving to correlation, we see the same type of thing, though surprisingly, Marcel does better and Oliver does worse with correlation, despite its punishment of conservative projections.

But on all three, Steamer comes out ahead. I asked Jared Cross what was making his projections so good, and he explained that he was using velocity (as well as handedness) in his pitcher projections, and that was giving them a leg up. He wasn’t the only person to suggest doing something like this. I only started thinking seriously about it recently, but I think it really is the “next big thing” in pitcher projections. Unlike hitter projections which seem to come down to which metric you want to use to test them, pitcher projections come back Steamer in all three tests. Perhaps more interestingly, the better-known projections such as Oliver, PECOTA, and ZiPS, despite doing the best on hitters, they fare the worst with pitchers. Perhaps being good at projecting both pitchers and hitters is as rare as being good at doing both of them.

Of course, these are all just one-year tests, so there is a lot of luck involved for any of these. However, as each of these systems moves forward to their next race, this is where they stand.

Montgomery gave scouting reports on both pitchers. He broke down their deliveries, their repertoires and their mindsets.

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Montgomery on Trevor Bauer: “I think you can start with the fact that prior to us re-signing Joe Saunders, Trevor was going into major-league camp with designs on that fifth-starter spot. That says a lot about his talent.

“He’s a four-pitch guy. He’ll tell you that it’s six pitches, but I think that four is what he’ll end up throwing once he moves into the upper echelon. They’re all average to above. He works off his fastball, which is plus-plus at times.

“He throws a plus fastball, a plus-plus curveball, a tick-above-average slider — which is almost a cutter — and a split-changeup. The fifth is kind of a screwball, which he calls a ‘reverse.’ Basically, it’s a changeup with screwball action and he’ll throw it to both right- and left-handed hitters. He throws variations of his pitches, which sort of accounts for what he means when he tells you it’s six.

“Velocity-wise, his ability to go up and down the scale, anywhere from 90 to 98, is what benefits him. That goes for all pitchers. He throws both a two-seamer and a four-seamer. He has the ability to sink a two-seam fastball in the 90 to 93 range, and he also has the ability to throw a four-seam fastball in the 95 to 96 range. That’s all predicated by how he’s attacking hitters.

“I think the one thing that sums Trevor up best is that he just turned 21 and he understands the idea of changing speeds, changing tempo and disrupting hitters’ timing. He’s a very advanced thinker on the mound. Although he gets lots of [Tim] Lincecum comparisons because of his delivery, I think his stuff works more in an [Roy] Oswalt-type comparison.

“Mechanically, his delivery is an up-tempo, high-paced, high-energy delivery, somewhat in the Lincecum mold. Trevor is 6-foot-1 and he gets every bit of his 185 pounds into his delivery. Whereas some may call it a max-effort delivery, I call it a maximum-optimum delivery. He’s using all of his body parts equally. He’s using the stronger muscles to protect his arm — his legs and his trunk. From a true mechanical standpoint, he’s very good when you slow it down. There aren’t a lot of red flags in what he does.

“The way he trains is unique, and very extensive. Most of his movements are for explosion. They’re all done in five- to 15-second increments, because that’s how his body operates in the game. He’s not training for a marathon, he’s training for the short, explosive movements that’s he going to have to repeat 100 to 150 times a game.

“Trevor’s arm slot is high-three-quarters, almost overhand at times. He’s got a little bit of what I would call a ‘head clear’ that gets him into that slot, a la Lincecum.

“One thing Trevor has is really good deception. That goes back to what I was saying about the disrupting of timing of the hitters. It’s very hard to pick up the ball against him. Everything that comes out of his hand looks identical, and that’s a very uncomfortable feeling as a hitter. If you can’t discern between the pitches in the first 13-hundredths of a second, you’re in trouble. That’s what makes guys like that really, really difficult. Up until his one hiccup in Double-A, which he backed up by throwing five strong innings in the [Southern League] championship game, he was striking out 40% of everyone he faced. To me, that’s indicative of hitters just not seeing the ball.

“Trevor is remarkably well-versed in the study of pitching — the art of pitching — and the mechanics as they relate to him individually. He understands the mechanics of what the body needs to do create optimal energy and force, and how to throw a baseball with the optimal energy and force. He’s extremely intelligent. The other side of the coin is that he does need to learn how to apply it to major-league hitters, and that’s going to be the toughest part.

“If you talk to Trevor, you’ll understand that he pitches to quadrants of the zone. He also pitches to try to disrupt hitters’ eye levels, so he wants his pitches to come out on planes as well as to zones. He wants to repeat pitches in their release point, plane and direction. Trevor is viewed as an out-of-the-box thinker, but he’s a tactician.”

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On Archie Bradley: “Archie is different from Trevor in the physical sense — he’s a lot bigger [6-foot-4, 225 pounds] — but he’s very similar in how he goes about his business. He’s extremely focused and extremely passionate about pitching. He’s a very good athlete. As you know, he was also a football player.

“Archie is more of a two-pitch power package. Both are well above average. His fastball touched 100 last year and I would grade his curveball, when it’s on, as good as anybody’s.

“He was a two-pitch guy in his high-school career, but he worked on a circle changeup extensively in instructional league. I think it’s going to be a good pitch for him. Our player development guys — Mel Stottlemyre,Jr. and Jeff Pico — did a nice job citing the emphasis to him. They said, ‘We know you have the fastball and breaking ball, but let’s make a concentrated effort to add a third pitch because it will expand your repertoire and make you more valuable.’ We’ll see down the road if it’s average or plus, but for all intents and purposes, at this age, he’s a two-pitch power pitcher.

“You hear people say that you need three pitches to start in the big leagues, but I would argue that. It’s nice to have three, but Ben Sheets made a nice living with two power pitches. You could go down the list and name others, as well. Ideally, like Trevor, the more the merrier, to disrupt hitters’ timing, but you don’t necessarily need that.

“Mechanically, Archie is very solid. He throws from a high-three-quarters slot with a fairly clean, easy, repeatable delivery for his age. Despite having [been drafted] out of high school, Archie has been a pretty well known commodity for years. We’ve been scouting him since he was a freshman in high school. We watched his delivery continue to improve every year and we saw some more of that at the end of the regular season last year, as well as in instructional league. He grades well within the [biomechanical] parameters.

“I think the perception of Archie is that he’s a two-sport athlete who is gifted with the ability to throw a baseball, and that’s all he does. But one thing that has been very impressive with Archie, as we’ve gotten to know him through this process, is that he’s quite the baseball historian. He has a pretty good sense of what’s going on in the game. He’s not Trevor in that respect — Trevor is unique — but he’s a pretty astute kid.

“Historically, your better high school arms tend to track through systems pretty quickly. But to put a timetable on Archie, beyond him hopefully starting the year with a full-season club, right now I think the idea is to let him dictate to us how fast he moves. We challenge our prospects. We’re not afraid to move them and if they show the ability to handle a level, they’ll continue to progress. Archie has a lot of talent, so he has chance to do that.”