BREAKING: Twins Flip Granite To Rangers

I tried, unsuccessfully, to find any kind of list of unsigned IFAs for this (until June) signing period. an anyone help?

Will the Twins use this money to sign someone no one has ever heard of?

I tried, unsuccessfully, to find any kind of list of unsigned IFAs for this (until June) signing period. an anyone help?

Will the Twins use this money to sign someone no one has ever heard of?

The most knowledgeable member on the board for IFA is biggentleben.   But as the other member posted, there is no list. 

I find it strange that anybody gives the Twins this kind of an allowance based on the players involved in the trade.

Prediction: In a few years eyebrows start to rise over these types of transactions and we hear about this again.

I find it strange that anybody gives the Twins this kind of an allowance based on the players involved in the trade.

 

Prediction: In a few years eyebrows start to rise over these types of transactions and we hear about this again.

This is nothing. We got 7.25M for the 74th pick in the 2019 draft.

well come on now...Zack is prolly gonna be a major leaguer somewhere. But here? Look around! As critical as we are,..NOBODY has a better defensive outfield than we do. Believe Dat!!

Remember when Zack "should've taken over CF full time" to many Twins fans? IALTO

No. Because “many twins fans” didn’t believe that Zach Granite “should’ve taken over cf full time”

KATOH was developed to serve a particular purpose. It was a statistics-only double check on minor leaguers. From the first paragraph of the link:

 

"There are certainly drawbacks to scouting the stat line, but due to their objectivity, the projections can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated."

 

It was never meant to be a stand-alone assessment of prospects.

 

From his 2018 All-KATOH article, where he identified players with potential outside the top 100:

 

"Of course, the fact that these players missed every top-100 list suggests that their physical tools are probably underwhelming. That’s very important information! Often times, the outlook for players like this is much worse than their minor-league stats would lead you to believe. There’s a reason people in the industry always say 'don’t scout the stat line.'"

 

There is a write-up of Granite in the linked article, explaining why scouts weren't as high on Granite as KATOH.

Thanks for posting this, this is very useful context. It also helps puncture my argument that Gonsalves has dropped more than he should have in rankings.

No. Because “many twins fans” didn’t believe that Zach Granite “should’ve taken over cf full time”

It's funny because I knew as soon as I put down "many" instead of "a small but vocal group" I'd get called on it

Savvy move by the front office. As others have already noted, there just wasn't room for Granite in this year's Twins outfield, so getting anything at all for him was a bonus. Good luck to him. It would be fun to both Granite and Ben Revere make the Rangers opening day roster. 

I don't think anyone has lists of unsigned IFA, aside from maybe a "top 30" each July (that's highly informed by the deals teams are arranging). There's no public information for anyone to create such a list, unlike draft prospects.

BA still has the top 50 2018 International Prospect signing tracker up. Looks like out of that list only two prospects remain unsigned.

34. Fernando Villalobos C Mexico

45. Jose Bonilla “SS” Dominican Republic

Could always be a player or players that didn’t crack the top 50 list that have developed since last year that they have their eyes on.

MLB teams have already signed way more than 50 guys, though, including plenty of guys who didn't crack that top 50. Obviously talent evaluation is especially subjective in this market, so there could still be some talent in that group.

 

Far more interesting to me than top 50 lists or unsigned lists would be some historical data on international signings -- how many guys signed, and when, and for how much. Then we could at least peg some likelihood on notable signings coming in the last few months of the period. But alas, no one seems to offer this data publicly either.

 

On BA's #34 guy, he's still unsigned for a reason: "Since the commissioner’s office has banned MLB teams from signing players with Mexican League clubs, catcher Fernando Villalobos (No. 34) won’t be able to sign until MLB ends its ban."

Agreed, was just curious to see if any of the ranked players remained unsigned as it seems $750k would definitely fetch a player toward the mid to lower end of the top 50 most years.

Given that nearly every original member is now in a front office, I'd guess teams disagree, strongly.

Who else would they hire if they want to crunch numbers?

I think a lot of the stuff on Fangraphs is nonsense (though it's much better than BA), but I recognize they have the market cornered.

thousands of applicants who know stats? They literally hired the guy that "invented" KATOH, among others. 

 

I really don't think we need more data than that, to know that FOs disagree strongly that Fangraphs is bunk.....

I'm betting most executives think a lot of the numbers on Fangraphs are bunk, yes. They'd be crazy not to. Everyone has metrics they like and don't like.

I would imagine they want statisticians who are also baseball nerds, though they may find the math skills aren't quite what they were expecting with some of these guys.....

I worked with "numbers people" who have no clue what they heck they are looking at. It takes a keen eye to spot things that stick out in a mountain of data. Few people have the skill, even in the circle of people who build these massive databases.

Besides, what kinds of salaries are we talking about? $50k? $75k? These are upgrades for a lot of people but nothing to a baseball team.

I mean numbers. I don't trust the majority of algorithms on fangraphs.

I doubt the guys teams are hiring away are using algorithms on fangraphs, otherwise why wouldn't these teams just bookmark fangraphs and instead pay an intern to read it to them?

 

The guys who are getting hired away, and there are a lot of them, are almost certainly good at parsing the information, and also likely able to create new, team specified algorithms, tests, statistics and evaluations.

I'm not even sure what you're arguing about here.