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drivlikejehu

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Everything posted by drivlikejehu

  1. drivlikejehu
    The offense can't be fixed for 2015.
  2. drivlikejehu
    The counting stat argument has been repeated numerous times and already addressed. The talented players don't spend the entire year at one level. Adam Dunn would have led his leagues in production, but he was promoted instead. No one in baseball thinks Walker is a great prospect. It's not even a stats issue.
  3. drivlikejehu
    Well I did think it was an interesting question - has anyone like Walker ever gone on to MLB success? Examining data led me to the conclusion that Walker has almost no chance of panning out, except maybe as a 5th OF type. The data is what it is. If you don't like facts, don't read about them. So far as your views on when to post about a particular player... with all due respect, that's your business. I don't agree that I should only comment on the prospects I think are most likely to succeed.
  4. drivlikejehu
    I'm not going around starting threads on him. He has a handful of hardcore fans on here that constantly start threads or hijack others to praise him. He is getting about 20 times more attention in the forums than Kepler, who is a very interesting player having a nice, breakout year as well. Not to mention the other 20+ Twins minor leaguers that are far more likely to ultimately contribute at the MLB level. And that is the point of the minor leagues: to produce big league players. Being a great AA player is certainly more than most baseball players on the planet can achieve, but if someone isn't an MLB-caliber player it dramatically reduces the significance of his minor league performance.
  5. drivlikejehu
    Adam Dunn played half a season in Chattanooga when he was 21, two years younger than Walker. He hit .343/.449/.664. He struck out HALF as often, and walked TWICE as often. Good MLB players do not have the problems Walker does in AA. I did some looking, mentioned on this thread, and cannot find a single player with his issues that went on to success. The guy is a home run derby player, he cannot hit real pitching and is not a real prospect.
  6. drivlikejehu
    Rogers isn't very good against right-handed hitters, so he's not a great starting prospect anyway. He seems ready or close to ready as a lefty specialist out of the pen though.
  7. drivlikejehu
    Nothing has changed with Rosario - he doesn't have MLB-caliber plate discipline at this point. That's going to kill his numbers sooner or later.
  8. drivlikejehu
    Maybe it's a perspective thing... I had already long since given up on Hicks being an actually good hitter. The question to me is whether he hits enough for a starting MLB CF.
  9. drivlikejehu
    This isn't responsive to the concerns. Development is the most important thing for all young pitchers in the minor leagues. Yet these other young pitchers, many of whom supposedly have far inferior stuff to Stewart, get far more hitters to swing and miss. Even Stewart's fastball velocity alone should be enough to get the ball by lesser A-ball hitters. Some of it probably has to do with his arm health, or lack thereof, but that doesn't make me feel much better.
  10. drivlikejehu
    I can't really argue with this, but his AAA performance this year still gives me pause. It's fairly unusual for a player his age to dominate in AAA across the board (average, on-base, power) and then forever be completely helpless in the Majors. The sample size wasn't huge, but still... switch hitting is a factor that can slow progress, by requiring a player to work on two basically separate swings at the same time. For whatever reason, things don't seem to come natural to Hicks, but I'm not sure turnarounds of the kind he needs are rare enough to justify giving up on him.
  11. drivlikejehu
    I don't know exactly how Enron's executive management made decisions, but I feel very comfortable saying that mistakes were made.
  12. drivlikejehu
    Some statistical follow-up: I went onto the Baseball Cube, which produces a limited range of historical minor league reports. I pulled the top 200 home run hitters (individual season) for all three AA leagues from 2001-2015, for a total of 600 player seasons (a player could have multiple entries if he repeated AA). That shockingly pasted right from html into google sheets. I added a few things for sorting and then pivoted the data. Right now, the gap between Walker's BB rate and K rate would be 598th out of 600. That is just mind boggling. The player-seasons I thought were most similar, give or take: Joe Dunigan, 2012 Brad Eldred, 2004 Rob Stratton, 2001 Steven Moya, 2014 Telvin Nash, 2014 Tommy Mendoca, 2011 John Rodriguez, 2001 Javier Baez, 2013 Peter O'Brien, 2014 The best overall comp I came up with is Brad Eldred. Severe plate discipline problems, good power. In 2003 he hit 28 homers in A-ball, in 2004 he hit 30 between hi-A and AA, and in 2005 he hit 40 between AA, AAA, and MLB. But he finished his MLB career with 90 games played, a .203 average, and a .675 OPS. I was actually surprised at how historically bad Walker's plate discipline is. Before I would have given him a 5% chance, but now I'm struggling with even those odds.
  13. drivlikejehu
    Right, but it's pretty easy to look back and see who panned out and who didn't. And what concerns me about Walker is that I can't find any precedent for a player with his profile going on to MLB success. Whereas, lesser prospects who have an across-the-board breakout in AA are easy to find, even the Twins alone had several you pointed out.
  14. drivlikejehu
    You are talking about two completely separate things - (1) does pitching less reduce injury risk? and (2) how many starters is it practicable to have? The fact that (1) is true doesn't make it possible to have 8 starters on a 25-man roster.
  15. drivlikejehu
    Kubel was a top prospect. Pinto has barely done anything in the Majors, so I don't understand that one. The other three did break out in AA, but they could hardly be more different from Walker; their prospect stock was hurt by a perceived lack of tools/upside. Mientkiewicz & Koskie in particular had superior plate discipline that was undervalued at the time. Those two also were much better than Walker has been due to their OBPs. To put it another way, all three of those breakout players showed a complete offensive approach, with average, on-base, and extra-base hits. I certainly would be interested to know if there was a mid-level prospect who was able to do one of those three things in AA and yet develop into a MLB player. Garrett Jones would be a comp, except he actually hit .311 in AA.
  16. drivlikejehu
    Cherry picking is only a problem if the argument requires a full range of data. Mine does not. Top prospects who produce in AA have a very good track record. Non top-prospects who produce in AA do not have a good track record. Walker is not a top prospect due to flaws in his game, and therefore his AA production is not predictive of future success. The examples were therefore selected appropriately.
  17. drivlikejehu
    Like I said, there are downsides to it. Even if it would reduce injuries, clubs would only change over if the positives outweighed the negatives. It is clearly wrong to say that "it must not be real," since they could avoid the 6-man rotation because the trade-offs aren't worth it, or they could avoid it in error (as baseball teams have done and continue to do with various other strategies).
  18. drivlikejehu
    I think logically it has to reduce injury risk. Pitcher injuries are from throwing pitches, causing stress on the arm, and fatigue that causes dangerous mechanical variances or structural weaknesses. Throwing fewer pitches reduces the chance of injury on both counts... there is less wear-and-tear, and pitchers have greater recovery time and therefore less risk of fatigue (if the pitches per start remains constant). The problem with it is that you only get 6 relievers, unless you go with no bench like the Twins, and also that few if any teams usually have a 6th starter they want out there.
  19. drivlikejehu
    Walker has an OPS of .888. Let's see how some other Twins' minor leaguers produced in AA: Dustan Mohr - .961 Michael Restovich - .834 Jeff Deardroff - .894 Terry Tiffee - .815 Luis Maza - .835 Kevin West - .910 Danny Matienzo - .826 Alex Romero - .812 Doug Deeds - .861 Brock Peterson - .858 Brian Dinkelman - .823 Joe Benson - .883 I guess I'm just confused as to why all of this production resulted in so little MLB success (Mohr had a couple OK years). Must be that the big leagues are different than the minors, and things that work in AA don't necessarily work at the highest level.
  20. drivlikejehu
    Well Walker is a decent athlete with huge raw power, that's a no-brainer lotto ticket in the 3rd round. A generic third-rounder has a minimal chance of contributing in the Majors anyway, so why not? The fact he's right-handed doesn't help, either, because it limits his platoon value. Maybe if he was a great defender in RF, but that's not the case.
  21. drivlikejehu
    Little upgrades here or there aren't going to change the underlying situation. The Twins lack talent and need multiple prospects to come up and be very good before they will have a strong enough core to build around. My prediction has been the same throughout the rebuild - the organization would have significant young talent available, but fail to put a winner on the field due to mismanagement. That young talent is mostly in AA, fairly close to being MLB-ready. Mismanaging that transition would blow the rebuild, and I'd be very pleasantly shocked if that's not exactly what happens.
  22. drivlikejehu
    Same profile Walker had as a college player. His flaws are so severe that he dropped to the 3rd round despite huge raw power. His prospect status now is mediocre for the exact same reasons.
  23. drivlikejehu
    The real problems are unfixable things like Hughes being bad, Arcia hurt and struggling in AAA, the horrible bullpen, etc. The fluky hot start papered over some things that are now becoming harder to ignore, but which at the same time lack for any solutions. Hughes getting shelled? Too bad, long-term extension. No SS? Oops. These things are not going to be fixed this year, or in some cases for multiple years.
  24. drivlikejehu
    Unfortunately, your statistical musings miss the point. Just to start with, Walker's strikeouts are correlated with his home runs - he swings really hard and usually misses, but when he hits, it's gone. He can't just change his approach dramatically to reduce strikeouts but keep all the home runs. But more importantly, he has a pitch recognition problem. Guys like Joey Gallo strike out a ton but also walk a lot, because they work counts and look for pitches to drive. Getting deep into counts and taking big swings does result in strikeouts, but it also leads to walks and power - or, OBP and SLG, which is what matters. Walker doesn't work counts so much as he just swings and misses a lot. His walk rate is horrible for a player with his power. Big league pitchers will exploit his weaknesses far more than his AA opponents. I don't think he could hit .200 in the Majors at this point. He has a dedicated little fan club on the site for some reason, but the guy is a mediocre prospect. He was a lotto ticket when the Twins drafted him and he still is, but its year 3 and his strikeout rate is 36% and walk rate under 7%. Kohl Stewart is like a sure thing by comparison.
  25. drivlikejehu
    It's a numbers game that quality front offices are better at than the Twins.
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