MLB Prospect Watch

Organizational Update - Washington Nationals

Time to get caught up...

The Nationals once barren system is now beginning to bear fruit.  For simplicity's sake here, I'll assume you already know all about Stephen Strasburg and Drew Storen.

Michael Burgess - Stats

The problem with Burgess has always been consistent contact.  His second go-round in the Carolina League seems to have solved that problem for now, but Burgess is going to have to prove he can lower his strike out numbers without repeating a level.  This year's K-rate has dipped below the 20% sign, and his OPS has risen to .814 as a result, which could result in a promotion to Double-A and the next test for Burgess.

Paul Demny - Stats

Demny is repeating the Sally League largely because of his 5.14 ERA last season, but in spite of his 3.78 FIP.  The Nationals are probably thrilled with his "improvements" this season and his 2.77 ERA, despite his FIP of 3.81.  In other words, Demny is about the same pitcher he was last year, but a lot luckier.

Danny Espinosa - Stats

After a season flashing both power and patience, and the corresponding promotion to Double-A this season, Espinosa has struggled slightly against tougher competition, but no more so than a 25-point drop in his BABIP would suggest.  He's still displaying decent plate discipline and some power, so he's far from a lost cause, and may just take some time to adjust to Double-A pitching. 

Destin Hood - Stats

Hood is creeping up on his career high in games played in a season already in 2010, which signals part of the problem.  The other is his plate discipline, as his K/BB ratio through 144 career minor is 146/37.  This season's respectable .290 batting average is a product of his unsustainable .404 BABIP and 22% line drive rate, and even with a bit of good luck, his OPS still stands at just .693.

Jeff Kobernus - Stats

More was expected out of last year's second round pick than his current .235/.260/.261 line.  He's simply not displaying any power or plate discipline (26 K's against 4 BB's).  It's a surprising performance from a college draft pick, but if improvement isn't seen by the time short season ball opens up, a demotion could be in line.

Stephen Lombardozzi - Stats

The son of a former big leaguer, Lombardozzi has been the model of consistency throughout his professional career.  This season, the 2B has maintained his plate discipline while displaying slightly more extra base power, but still no home run ability.  Still, his .384 OBP alone will be enough to keep him around.

Chris Marrero - Stats

Finally in Double-A but still just 21-years-old, Marrero hasn't developed into the complete hitter the Nationals thought they were drafting in 2006, but he does have good power that plays in games.  His free-swinging tendencies may be his demise at the higher levels of the minors, but his .274/.322/.434 line this year at Harrisburg is enough to think that he may still be able to be an everyday player in the majors at some point.

Jack McGeary - Stats

McGeary has managed to get his control back to respectability after an extremely wild 2009 season, but still isn't missing quite enough bats to be truly effective.  He is also averaging less than 5 innings per start, which is due to the Nationals restrictions on him, but is also a bad sign for a pitcher in his 4th professional season, regardless of the educational commitments that made him a part-time player his first few seasons.

Derek Norris - Stats

The best prospect the Nationals have left in the minors after Strasburg and Storen's promotions, Norris has continued to display his impeccable plate discipline this season, but has seen his power zapped due to various injuries.  Even without power, his .277/.440/.369 line is impressive, even if it is only in 20 games.

Royals' Moustakas Regaining His Prospect Status

Any time you are ready to give up on a top prospect, remember Mike Moustakas.  

No one knows what kind of career Moustakas is going to have, but this time last year, some people were beginning to form the word "bust" onto a label especially fit for the Royals' 3B prospect.  Those same people have probably never tried to hit at Class A WIlmington's Frawley Stadium (a task of which I can personally verify the difficulty).  The combination of a cavernous outfield and Moustakas's lack of plate discipline led to .297 on-base percentage and a drop in his power from 22 home runs the year before to 16 last season.  His K-to-BB rate also rose from 2-to-1 to 2.8-to-1.  

But this season, as Todd Traub of MLB.com reports, Moustakas is displaying all of the attributes that made him the 2rd overall pick in 2007.  Sporting a .390/.476/.797 line in Double-A, Moustakas has even refined his plate discipline (large in part to the fear opposing pitchers now have of throwing him a strike) to the point where he has only one more strike out than walk.

The biggest difference is simple though - he's simply squaring up the ball more frequently.  His line drive rate is up to a career high of 21.4% after steadily declining since the start of his professional career to a career low last season of only 13%.  For a hitter like Moustakas, a LD% in the 20's is not unsustainable, and his corresponding BABIP of .386 on the 2010 season, while elevated due to some good luck on ground balls, is not the sole reason for his inflated stats.  Moustakas is no doubt in for some regression (a BABIP of .344 on ground balls would be virtually impossible for a slow-footed power hitter to maintain), but his pure hitting ability should allow him to maintain a high LD rate and therefore a solid-to-above average BA.

Which is good news for Royals' fans who are in desperate need of some optimism.

Mejia Back to Minors?

The New York Mets need starting pitching, and Adam Rubin of ESPNNewYork.com reports that their next option might be current reliever Jenrry Mejia.  In order to make the transition, Mejia would need about a month in the minor leagues, which could happen as soon as Wednesday, according to Rubin.

Mejia has been a starter for the majority of his professional career, and it was only an eye-popping spring that prompted the Mets to convert him to a bullpen role in the majors this season.  The Mets have said that they still view Mejia as a starter long-term and that he would have spent the winter converting back regardless.

The question remains, however, shouldn't the Mets have seen this coming?  The Mets have only used 5 starting pitchers this year, so they are just now getting into a situation where they have had to use an extra starter.  Their immediate minor league options include 35-year-old knuckleballer R.A. Dickey, Pat Misch (7 starts with the Mets last season) and prospects Dillon Gee (4.21 ERA in Triple-A) and Mike Antonini (4.54 ERA in Double-A).  Clearly there wasn't a lot of depth after the 5 guys penciled into the initial major league rotation at the start of the season, and that rotation included a rookie (Jon Niese), a pitcher coming back from injury (John Maine) and Oliver Perez (enough said).

Sure enough, through almost 40 games the Mets have two reliable pitchers, with Niese now injured and Perez banished to the bullpen.  The Mets are going to try long-relief man Hisanori Takahashi in the rotation for the time being, but still need another arm, and that's without replacing Maine and his 6.13 ERA (prefer sabermetrics? his FIP is 5.72 - still bad).

These are the specifics, however.  Hindsight makes it easy to see how they Mets shot themselves in the foot by making their best starting pitching prospect a reliever this spring.  But consider these facts:  In 2009, National League teams used an average of just over 10 different starting pitchers.  No team used fewer than 8, and the Mets themselves used 11 different starters.  So far we've named the 5 initial rotation members, Takahashi, Gee, Misch, Dickey, and Antonini.  That's 10, and even some of those options are a stretch (Antonini would be rushed, for one).

It's not even worth asking if the Mets should have seen the potential need for extra starters.  But the question that does remain then is whether a month and a half of Mejia in the bullpen was worth the wins it is going to cost them to use one of these other pitchers for the next month while Mejia gets his arm ready to throw a hundred pitches.  It's a matter of opportunity cost.  If the Mets had left Mejia in the minors as a starter, he could be called up today and enter the rotation immediately, but they would have lost his bullpen production.  Now, he must spend a month preparing to be a starter again.

So was it the right decision?

We won't know for sure until we see how his replacements fare, but we know what they're up against.  In his 18 appearances, Mejia had a WAR of -0.1 and a WPA of -0.38, so despite his impressive ERA numbers and flashy velocity, he was actually right around replacement level and came in as the least valuable member of the Mets' bullpen based on Win Probability Added.  

In other words, his production wouldn't have been hard to replace.

Assuming the Mets believe he will fare differently as a starter (an arguable point in its own right, but not part of the discussion here) and more importantly if they believe he is a better option than their current replacement starters (which, accurately or not, they probably do), there is no reason Mejia should have been in the major leagues this season instead of preparing for a situation the team knew it would eventually have to face.

Strasburg, Chapman Heading in Opposite Directions

The two biggest name prospects entering this season were undoubtedly Aroldis Chapman and Stephen Strasburg, but besides that and triple-digit fastballs, the two had little else in common.  Then the season started and it seemed like the two were in an unrelated battle of "can you top this?" with both putting up impressive outing after impressive outing.

Their paths have begun to veer apart, however, as Strasburg's promotion to Triple-A has left him on the doorstep of the majors, while Chapman's recent struggles have forced us to question how far away he may be.  Fans in Washington are plotting out the possible days for Strasburg's MLB debut (a task that has become more difficult with rumors of extra days of rest worked in), but fans in Cincinnati are just hoping Chapman can find the strike zone, or perhaps not as much of it.

Chapman's latest start was his worst and his ERA in the month of May is now 9.64.  He's walked 9 batters in 14 innings during that span, but even worse, he has surrendered 22 hits.

Analyzing Austin

No prospect currently in the majors has generated more buzz, and for more reasons, than Detroit Tigers center fielder and leadoff hitter Austin Jackson.  The former Yankee prospect, acquired in this off-season's three-way melee that saw Curtis Granderson head to the Yankees and Edwin Jackson go to Arizona, was given the keys to the Tiger offense before he got to Spring Training, and at first glance seems to have kicked it into high gear.  But a closer look at his numbers shows that he may just be revving the engines.

The thing that makes Jackson's start so interesting is the incredible juxtaposition between his ability to consistently hit the ball hard and yet at the same time, consistently not hit it at all.  There's something almost inherently impossible about that very scenario, and yet that's exactly what is happening.

Ninety-one plate appearances into his career, Jackson is batting an outstanding .325, yet is leading the league in strikeouts (by a lot) with 32.  In addition to the strange contact rates for Jackson, no player has ever struck out as much with as little power to show for it, an observation made by Joe Pawlikowski of Fan Graphs.com, who digs deeper into the numbers and has some unfavorable comparables for Jackson should he continue this trend.

The other glaring problem with Jackson is that his high batting average is reliant on an unthinkably high Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP), a stat that gets over-used in many circles by baseball writers who don't understand it, but in this case provides a cut-and-dried explanation for why a player who swings and misses so much can still hit .300.  Jackson's BABIP so far in the 2010 season?  .520.  The league average is around .300 and for a hitter with good speed like Jackson's, it could be slightly higher (his career BABIP in the minor leagues is .361).  So why is Jackson's BABIP so high?  Well, besides some good luck, Rob Neyer and Steven Goldman point to Jackson's unsustainable line drive rate, which is at 33% on the season while the league average is usually in the high-teens.  Two of the best pure hitters in the game, Ichiro and Joe Mauer, have career line drive rates of 20.7% and 22.7% respectively.

So what does all of this mean for Jackson and the Tigers?  Regression, of course.  Jackson is a talented player, and has already done some good things this season, things which John Lowe of the Detroit Free Press points out, are drawing praise from opposing managers.  But managers have been seeing line drives, and we can't expect them to be aware of the fact that Jackson is hitting more of them than he can possibly sustain.  

Jackson is a talented player, but he is still raw and swings and misses too frequently.  Until he changes that, his batting average should begin to drop as his good luck wears off.  Jackson has never been a high contact hitter, but for Tigers' fans, the hope is that as his BABIP drops to more normal levels, so will his strikeouts.  A lower BABIP but more contact would keep Jackson's batting average respectable, allowing him to remain as the Tigers' leadoff hitter, but it only works if he is able to make more contact.