Billy Butler on the Rebound?

I'm a huge Billy Butler fan, and I think he has the potential to be an incredible hitter along the lines of Manny Ramirez or Prince Fielder, so I was very disappointd when he started the year out so horribly. I was even more concerned when he had just 1 home run through April and May, and was sent back down to AAA in June. But he has since bounced back with 5 home runs in July, and he's beginning to look like the hitter I always thought he would be.

While his overall stats aren't eye popping just yet, he is beginning to show signs of breaking out, even in a Kansas City offense that is lethargic at best. Here are his strike out and walk rates in the majors since the beginning of the year.


While his strike outs never went sky high, and his walk rate wasn't horrible, the overall trend earlier this year was a bit out of whack. Since his minor league stint, Butler seems to have made some adjustments to his location in the batters box, allowing him to cover the plate more efficiently as well as pick up pitch locations better. According to Butler, the change was only a matter of inches, but it seems to have been sufficient enough to correct his original pitch selection issues (or at least mentally convince him that the problem has been fixed).

But aside from strike out rates, Butler's other stats are looking much better as well.

While the drop in BABIP -- and consequently OBP -- is worth noting, I'm really more interested in Butler's power production, which has seen a huge jump from earlier in the season. Though his ground ball and line drive rates haven't changed much, his slugging and ISOP are both up nearly 100 points, indicating that Butler is finally getting some lift on the ball, thereby increasing the trajectory on balls hit in the air, which ultimately adds to the home run totals. Lift doesn't always help the ol' BABIP since it results in more fly balls and fewer line drives, but it does help a hitters confidence and is an initial sign of a better swing plane.

At 22, Butler obviously has a long way to go, but he also has a high level of natural talent and plenty of time for it to shine through. If I were a GM I'd take Billy Butler any day, and I think the Royals are lucky to have him. The BABIP will sneak back up closer to his minor league average of .350+, and the slugging percentage will continue to trend upwards for the next 5 or 6 yers. If Butler shows that his July stats are the real deal, I fully expect him to be hitting close to .300 and on pace for 30 home runs by the end of 2009.


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A Look at the Braves Newest Pitcher: Stephen Marek

A lot of my friends here in Georgia have been asking me about the Teixeira trade and what to expect from Casey Kotchman and Stephen Marek, the 2 players Atlanta received in the deal. While Kotchman has put in some time at the major league level and is a relatively known player, Marek is one of those no-name prospects floating around in the minors without an ounce of fanfare. So, I thought we should take a look at him and see if he's any good.

To be honest, Marek was just a spare part to balance out what the Braves were losing with what they were getting from the Angels. He's not exactly Grade A beef, but more like the meat you get in a burrito at Taco Bell that has a little beef mixed with some textured vegetable protein. In other words, he's pretty much more of the same for Braves fans.



*The above chart is a comparison of AA pitching stats. Be sure to note the age differences.

In basic terms, Marek and Chuck James are pitching twins separated at birth. If Marek is the meat in your Taco Bell burrito, James is the weird chicken meat in those chicken nuggets your kids (and some of you) love to eat. There are some slight differences, like the walk rate and ground ball rates, but they pretty much balance each other out. Charlie Morton is the happy intermediate, with stats somewhere in between.

So, in a nutshell Braves fans, don't get too excited about this one. If I cared to come up with a projection for Marek, it would be a #4 or #5 starter if he's lucky, but more likely a sketchy #5/ bullpen type with an ERA in the 4.50-6.50 range. ...Read more

Braves Mid-Summer Top 10 Prospects

As a life long Braves fan, I take a certain interest in the state of the Braves farm system. I remember the days when I would go to games with my dad and we could sit anywhere we wanted because the Braves were horrible and there might be 10,000 fans out on a good night. I usually wanted to sit in right field behind Dale Murphy, and I would spend hours yelling his name trying to get his attention.

Anyways, hometown heroes have been in abundance in Atlanta, and it looks like the trend continues on. However, the Braves farm system is not quite what it used to be, and I can't help but be a bit cynical about the future of the team when I look down the list of minor league stats. There are a few bright spots, however, so let's focus on those for now.


Hitters

1. Jason Heyward – Obvious choice. Potential to hit .300+ with 30+ home runs and 20-30 steals throughout his 20’s.

Comparable player: a more advanced Fred McGriff
Projection: .295-.325 average, 25-35 home runs, 20-30 steals, .800-.930 OPS

2. Freddie Freeman – Still not sure about his splits, but as a left handed hitter he will face right handed pitchers at least 65% of the time in the majors. Lots of power, good walk to strike out ratio, and nobody standing in his way.

Comparable player: Prince Fielder with a bit less plate discipline
Projection: .285-.315 average, 30-45 home runs, .800-.960 OPS

3. Gorkys Hernandez – Decent power and a good plate approach, but mostly speed and plenty of it. The real debate here is whether the Braves – who aren’t very aggressive on the base paths --will use Hernandez as a base stealer or not. Potential .300 hitter with 50+ steals.

Comparable player: Jacoby Ellsbury
Projection: .285-.310 average, .780-.820 OPS, 15-20 home runs, 40-60 steals

4. Tyler Flowers – Here’s where the list starts to break down. At catcher Flowers is one of the better prospects in the game, but with Brian McCann blocking him, a move to first base or the outfield – or a trade -- may be in order. Potential plus contact and power.

Comparable player: Jorge Posada
Projection: .290-.305 average, .850-.890 OPS, 23-31 home runs

5. Jordan Schafer – I still don’t know why everyone got so excited about Schafer this past winter. He’s an above average prospect, but doesn’t really have any excellent skills. 20-25 home run potential, low OBP, average steal totals, decent defense, and a batting average in the high .200’s. Good, but not great. If the Braves had more offensive talent, I’d like to drop Schafer from the top 5, but they don’t, so I can’t.

Comparable player: Jim Edmonds without the peak years
Projection: .260-.290 average, 20-30 home runs, 20-25 steals

Honorable mentions: Brent Lillibridge, Eric Campbell, Kala Kaaihue

Pitchers

Before I start the list, let me just say that the Braves have 6 pitchers that all rank about the same. They don’t have any can’t-miss prospects, but most of them will probably start in the majors at some point, and a couple of them could be good #2 or even #1 starters in 5 to 10 years. The following chart will help explain what I mean.

(For the record, I threw in Jair Jurrjens' numbers as a comparison to the Braves current top pitching prospects. I used his A+ ball stats when he was 20 to help even things out. He actually pitched at A ball as a 19 year old.)

See what I mean? Each of the 6 pitchers went through A ball at about the same age, and between their strike out rates, ground ball rates, and walk rates, they all pretty much balance out. The popular vote usually goes with Tommy Hanson, but I actually think Cole Rohbrough has the highest potential. After that you can throw in just about any name you want, but here’s how I rank them.

1. Cole Rohbrough - Of all the Braves pitchers, Rohbrough probably has the highest ceiling. He can be dominate at times, but there are questions about his health.

Comparable Pitcher: Yovanni Gallardo
Projection: Early #3 or #2, prime years as a #1

2. Jeff Locke - I know most people want to see Tommy Hanson in the top 2, but Locke has good numbers all around, and compares well with Jair Jurrjens who is having a fantastic year in the majors.

Comparable pitcher: Jair Jurrjens, Mike Pelfrey
Projection: Solid #2

3. Kris Medlen - All the Tommy Hanson fans will have to wait just a little bit longer before he shows up on this list. Medlen has been very good as both a relief pitcher and a starter.
Comparable pitcher: Adam Wainwright
Projection: Great relief pitcher, or good #3 starter

4. Tommy Hanson - Just so everyone knows, I'm only putting Hanson in at #4 because Jose Ortegano has had some recent arm issues. If Ortegano was completely healthy, Hanson would probably be #5 on this list. Anyways, Hanson is a fine pitcher, but not as good as the hype surrounding him. He's pretty much Kyle Davies and Jo Jo Reyes wrapped up into one player.

Comparable pitcher: Kyle Davies and Jo Jo Reyes
Projection: #3 or #4 with a shot at a #2 spot in a bad rotation

5. Scott Diamond - By the end of the season, I expect Ortegano to regain his spot as the #4 prospect, and Kris Medlen and Scott Diamond to switch places, leaving Tommy Hanson off the list. Diamond has been stellar at every stop, with great numbers all around.

Comparable Pitcher: Tom Glavine, Ben Sheets
Projection: #2 or 3, with a shot at being a good #1

Honorable mentions: Julio Teheran, Jose Ortegan,
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Aaron Laffey Sent to AAA

The move was actually made a few days ago to make room for the return of Fausto Carmona. I'm not so sure it was the right move, but it won't hurt Laffey, and the Indians need to prepare for the future more than they need to win games. Anyways, here are some of Laffey's stats over the 4 months he spent with Cleveland.


He looked pretty good when he first came up, but he let his walk rate sneak up on him, perhaps due to trying too hard to keep pitches out of the zone. It's hard to tell from the chart, but his walk rate actually equaled his strike out rate in June and July, which is obviously not a good thing.

Aside from pitch location, I also wondered if he was struggling with mechanics or ground ball rate regression. Here's his ground ball chart.


His ground ball rates looked fine, so I don't think there's too much he needs to work on other than slight location adjustments. He might have suffered from slight mechanical issues, but once again I think he might have tried to overcompensate at times, leading to poor mechanics and location (which resulted in a higher WHIP and ERA, which led to more overcompensation). It's kind of like when you start to doze off while driving, and then you hit those bumpy strips on the side of the road that make that weird whirring noise. It snaps you back to reality and you jerk the wheel back towards the middle of the road, but then you swerve into on-coming traffic and your life flashes before your eyes before you're able to cut back into your own lane. Maybe the Indians saw Laffey slipping into that cycle and decided a stint in the minors would save him from being crushed by on-coming 18 wheelers being driven by 230 lbs. corner infielders.

I don't have any video's to break down comparing Laffey in April to Laffey in July, but none of his stats were on a positive trend line, and he obviously needed to take some time to refine his approach. He'll get it figured out, and might be back before the season is over. Either way, I think he'll be much better in 2009, and should be a very good starter in 18-24 months.

David Price vs. Brett Anderson vs. Trevor Cahill vs. Clayton Kershaw vs. Francisco Liriano Comparison Chart

Just a quick chart to match up 4 of the most popular pitching prospects against Francisco Liriano's AA stats back in 2005. Though the sample size for Price, Anderson, and Cahill is still relatively small, the results remain the same. Anderson has set himself apart (check his numbers against Liriano's), and the age difference between Cahill andPrice makes Cahill the better pick. If these stats remain constant throught the end of the season, I really can't see any legitimate reason to continue entertaining thoughts that Price should be the #1 pitching prospect going into 2009. Clayton Kershaw is still doing well, but has regressed since last year. I'm not sure what's going on with him, but he'll bounce back in time.

Refractor Tracker is Coming Back!

Hey guys, for those of you who have kept up with this blog over the past 6 months, you know that I like to collect baseball cards with some of my spare change. A few months ago I thought about keeping track of some of the Bowman Chrome prices on eBay, specifically different refractor types. Sadly, I didn't do such a good job with the Refractor Tracker, but I'm ready to make another go of it. My Excel skills have improved, and I think this time will be different.

I'll try to keep a weekly watch list going of some of the better known prospects out there and what kind of prices their cards are going for (prospects that have rookie cards other than Bowman Chrome may be included in the Refractor Tracker). Prices will be based off of weekly highs. If there are no sells of a particular card for the week, the price will remain constant with previous sale prices. Here's a quick list of players I'll be watching. Let me know if there are others you'd like me to add.

• Travis Snider
• Chris Davis
• Trevor Cahill
• Brett Anderson ('07 Donruss EEE Auto)
• David Price ('07 Bowman Sterling Auto)
• Matt Wieters ('07 Donruss EEE Auto)
• Madison Bumgarner ('07 Bowman Sterling Auto)
• Matt LaPorata ('07 Bowman Sterling Auto)
• Jason Heyward ('07 Bowman Sterling Auto)

Here's a quick example of what I hope the Refractor Tracker Charts will look like...

I'll try to keep up with weekly sell prices and post a weekly update on the cards I'm following.

Chris Davis Career Home Run Projections

Attempting to project career totals of any stat is definitely a risky thing to do, but I've been messing around with some numbers and an Excel spreadsheet to see what kind of home run progression trend we can expect for Chris Davis' immediate and long term future.

In the minors Davis had an extremely low plate appearances per home run rate, so it's been difficult to find comparable hitters to measure him against. But I think if we use a moderate range of hitters and look at their home run progression trends, maybe we can draw some conclusions about where Davis might end up over the next 10 years in terms of home run production.

As I said, Davis' power rates are quite a bit better than most of the comparable hitters I found to compare him with, but he does match up well with Albert Belle and Cecil Fielder in terms of his overall stats. I guess we could think of Davis as either a more advanced Ryan Howard or a more powerful Albert Belle. Either way, he matches up well against some of the elite power hitters of the past 20 years, and could arguably end up with a higher sustained home run production level than any of them.

While numbers can give us an idea about where Davis fits in with other hitters, I think a visual representation of the trend lines established by each of the above hitters would help us see what level of production we can expect from Davis in the future. The following chart represents the average plate appearances per home run for each of the hitters in the chart above.


There's a lot of stuff going on in this graph, so I'll take some time to explain what it all means. The colored lines represent each hitters actual production. The thin black lines represent their general trend lines over time, meaning that it follows their average change in production rates as they age. The numbers at the bottom of the graph are the actual PA/HR averages for each player between the ages of 20 and 30 years old.

From the numbers given, we can see that these hitters began to approach their minor league home runs rates around the age of 24 or 25 years old. They all tend to follow a general trend of progression, with their highest levels of production coming between the ages of 25 and 29 years old.

Now let's look at those same stats translated into projected season totals if each player were to accumulate 650 plate appearances per season.

Once again, it's a very busy chart, but the overall trend is obvious. Each hitters prime production levels occurred between the ages of 25 and 29, with averages consistently in the 40 to 50 home run range per season. Of the 5 hitters, Rob Deer is the odd man out with production levels floating around 30 home runs per season. As a side note, Ryan Howard's trend line is severely steep, and may be inaccurate due to not having more than 3 years of major league stats. Then again, it could be a very accurate representation of his past and future regression rates, meaning that he could drop off the face of the planet in terms of home run production over the next few years.

With the general trends we established above, let's narrow down our focus to hitters that Chris Davis most resembles, namely Albert Belle, Cecil Fielder, and Ryan Howard. We'll take the regression and progression rates of each of the 3 hitters as set out by our above chart, and then apply those same trends to Chris Davis' minor league numbers to see what we can come up with.


By applying the trends we established above, Davis should reach his minor league home run production rate at about the age of 24 or 25 years old. To be conservative I've set his PA/HR rate to his minor league rate at the age of 25. After the age of 25, each comparable hitter improved on their home run rate until they reached approximately a rate of 12.5 PA/HR around the age of 26 or 27, which I also applied to Davis' numbers. By the age of 29 or 30 each hitter had steadily regressed back to their minor league production rates, so I've also applied that trend to Davis' projected production.

Here are Davis' projected yearly home run totals according to the values predicted in the above chart.
While most hitters don't really follow a smooth production course like I have predicted for Davis, the purpose of the above chart is to give an us an idea about what Davis' potential is over the next 8-10 years. There's no guarantee that he will actually follow my projections, but the numbers suggest that he'll be somewhere in the same ballpark. If he does happen to follow my projections, depending on how long he plays he could have 400-500 home runs by the end of his career, which would put him in some good company. Albert Belle and Cecil Fielder retired with 389 and 319 home runs respectively (Fielder played in Japan at 25, thus losing out on perhaps an extra 40 home runs), so these projections for Davis seem reasonable.

Low end career projection: 350 HR
Mid-range projection: 400 HR
High end projection: 450+ HR
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C. Davis #10

25 games, 95 PA, 10 HR, .303/.347/.730, 20 RBI, 22 R

For future reference, Ryan Howard set a major league record by hitting his 100th home run in his 325th game. If Davis stays on his current pace, he'll hit his 100th homerun around game number 250. Even at half his current pace, he would still hit his 100th home run around game number 475. By averaging the 2 totals together, I think we can come up with a reasonable trajectory of about 350 games. So, maybe he won't set a new record, but there's a chance he could.

A.L. ROY Tracker
Evan Longoria: .278 ave, 19 HR, .880 OPS
Chris Davis: .303 ave, 10 HR, 1.078 OPS

The Prospect Corner Visitor Countries

For anyone interested, here is a list of countries that visitors to The Prospect Corner live in...

Mr. Crush Goes Long Numero Nueve

After 24 games and 91 plate appearances, Crush Davis has 9 home runs, 18 RBIs, and a .294/.341/.694 stat line. His ninth home run came last night in the 9th inning against the Oakland A's, and Davis ended the night 3 for 6 with a single, double, and home run.

After seeing highlights of the game last night, I debated about whether I would continue to post every time Davis hit a home run. I mean, I don't do that for any other prospect. But then again, I don't think any other prospect has the sheer power that Davis does. Texas fans are well aware of what's happening, but the average baseball fan has no clue who Davis is, and as long as that is the case, then I will probably continue to closely track his progress. However, I think the nation will soon begin to take notice, as indicated by this blurb on Davis' player page at ESPN.com:

Jul 24 : Davis has eight home runs since he was called up on June 26th which is the most in the AL since that date. Manager Ron Washington believes that his production is no fluke, and "his power is legit," the Dallas Morning News reports.

Last night I also remembered a book I read in elementary school called "The Boy Who Only Hit Homers." I don't remember much about it, but it left quite an impression on me, and I remember thinking that it would be really cool if there actually was a ball player that only hit home runs. Though Davis doesn't always hit a home run, it's amazing to watch a 22 year old that has the potential to hit a ball out of any park, in any direction, during any at-bat. I don't know what the future holds for Davis, but the more I watch him, the more I'm convinced that he could rewrite the history books in the Post-Steroids Era.


A.L. ROY Tracker
Evan Longoria: 19 hr, .276 average, .880 OPS, .971 FPCT, 2.65 RF, .803 ZR
Chris Davis: 9 hr, .294 average, 1.035 OPS, .995 FPCT, 9.29 RF, .771 ZR