Baseball America Hot Sheet -- April 24th

Last week I failed to post or comment on the first Baseball America Hot Sheet of the year (Buster Posey at #1, Josh Reddick at #2) since I was working on acquainting myself with the Southern Atlantic League, but I wanted to be sure to mention it this week.

I won't cover the entire list from week 2, but if you're interested, you can check out the complete article at Baseball America.

1. Michael Stanton -- We all might as well get used to seeing Stanton's name, because next year he'll either be in the majors or be the #1 prospect in all of baseball. I've written about Stanton before, and I felt that though he struck out a lot, he was very capable of keeping his K%/BB% ratio under 2.0, which along with his power would put him somewhere between Adam Dunn, Andruw Jones, and Alex Rodriguez. So far this season, Stanton has maintained a K%/BB% of 26%/15% or 1.7, indicating that his increased plate discipline and offensive production at the end of last season was indeed the real deal (.300/.430/.660, 18 home runs in 209 plate appearances). Expect very big things from this guy.

2. Jason Knapp -- A relative unknown up until about 5 days ago, Knapp struck out 14 hitters in 7 innings during his last start. At 18 years old, his 15 K/9 ratio is extremely impressive even if he does have just over his 18 innings at A ball. Keep in mind that Tim Lincecum only pitched 28 innings at advanced A ball and posted a K/9 of 15.6 with a BB/9 of 3.9 at the age of 22. If Knapp reaches the 30 or 40 innings pitched mark with his K/9 still above 12.5, his comparable players would include Rick Ankiel, Dwight Gooden, and Nolan Ryan.

3. Desmond Jennings -- Jennings has been around a while now, so I won't say much about him. Very good plate discipline, good power, and lots of speed. Interestingly enough, one of his closest offensive comparables is Wally Joyner.

4. Jesus Montero -- My gut tells me that Montero is going to cool off soon, but he might not, so we'll just wait it out and see. He's kept his strikeout rate low this year, so maybe he's refined his plate approach a bit.

5. Casey Kelly -- I wasn't really sure why Baseball America chose Kelly for the #5 spot, but it's their hot sheet, so whatever. A 19 year old at low A, Kelly has good control and an above average groundball rate, but doesn't look too interesting to me as a pitcher. I don't think he's going to be a very good shortstop either.

That's all I'm going to cover for now. If you want to see the whole list, check it out at Baseball America, and have a great weekend!

TPC Prospect Smackdown: Michael Stanton vs Cody Johnson (vs Michael Stanton)

Young hitters with elite level power don't come around often, which explains the intrigue in guys like Michael Stanton and Cody Johnson. Both hitters can absolutely crush the ball, and both hitters have been known to accumulate a substantial amount of strikeouts. In 468 at-bats at A ball last year, Johnson hit 26 home runs and struck out a whopping 177 times. Stanton also had 468 at-bats at A ball in 2008, clearing the fences 39 times while striking out 153 times. So, the question begging to be asked is which slugger is better, and which one has the brightest future ahead of them?

To make things simple, let's just throw up each hitters stats from A ball last year.


Without too much analysis, I think it's obvious that Stanton is already quite a bit better than Johnson. Sure, they both hit the ball really hard, but Johnson's strikeout to walk ratio is really bad (1 being really good, 2 being average, 3 bad, and anything over 4 is really bad), and just by looking at the numbers it seems that he just swings the bat as hard as he can and hopes to make contact. Stanton, on the other hand at least displayed reasonable plate discipline, and put up much more substantial power numbers (his IsoP was the highest for any 18 year old at A ball that I can find on record). Toss in the age difference, and I think the comparison isn't even close.

If we end the smackdown right now, Stanton walks away with a sound victory. But if we dig a bit deeper, it gets even better. Here are each players monthly stats for 2008.


Johnson had a pretty good August, but other than that, his strikeout to walk ratio was generally very bad, and his power and average weren't all that impressive either. Stanton started the year looking a bit lost, but by June he had found his stride and really started to crush the ball. By July, his plate discipline had dramatically improved, and over his last 200 plate appearances he posted a strikeout to walk ratio of 1.56, and an IsoP of .365.

Normally, I don't like to consider a player's month-by-month performance line, as hot streaks and luck can significantly effect stats, but in Stanton's case, the improvement from April to August was so dramatic and followed such a smooth linear pattern, that I couldn't disregard the month to month changes. After a bit of research, I was very interested to find this excerpt from an article on mlb.com.

"Before the All-Star break, (Stanton) hit .281 with 15 home runs and 47 RBIs. An aggressive hitter, he struck out 86 times in 249 at-bats.

After the break, his numbers improved to .306 with 24 home runs and 50 RBIs in 219 at-bats. With a better command of the strike zone, his strikeouts reduced. He fanned just 67 times and drew 42 walks in the second half.

'He wants to be good on defense -- he just wants everything,' (Marlins' vice president of player development and scouting Jim) Fleming said. 'When we identify something for him, he works at it. One of the things we identified in the second half was, let's see if he can cut down on his strikeouts.'

He did."

I've heard of a lot of teams asking a lot of sluggers to work on their plate discipline, but I can't think of an instance where such dramatic improvement was achieved as quickly as what Micheal Stanton did in 2008. To give you an idea of just how drastic the change was (especially for an 18 year old), here are some A ball stats posted by various power hitters from the last decade or so matched up against the pre-All-Star Stanton and the post-All-Star Stanton, as well as Cody Johnson.


Depending on which Mike Stanton is the real Mike Stanton, we could be looking at either the next Russell Branyan/Wily Mo Pena, or the next Alex Rodriguez/Andruw Jones with substantially greater power.  But which one is it?  We'll probably learn a lot about Michael Stanton over the next 6 months, particularly how real his development at the plate was from July to August last year.  

If I had to make a guess, I would probably take the optimistic route with Stanton, and say that he's probably going to post a K/BB ratio of 2.5 or better in the coming year, maybe even under 2.0.  Unlike Alex Rodriguez and Ken Griffey Jr., Stanton was drafted as a very raw hitter.  In high school he played football, basketball, and baseball, and in his own words, he never had the chance to focus on just one sport.  

"It was always, I'd have basketball practice and baseball hitting at night.  Or during baseball season, I'd have to go to the gym and shoot, to keep up with all three sports.  I was pretty interested in seeing how it would be like to stick to one sport all the way through, and not have to deal with but one."

With three sports taking up his time in high school, it's easy to see why Stanton didn't get much attention heading into the 2007 draft.  Scouts saw very little of him, and pretty soon Pete Carroll at USC began recruiting Stanton as a wide receiver.  As Jim Fleming said in an article by Peter Gammons, "A lot of people didn't see a lot of him... He didn't do a lot of showcases."  If you know anything about high school football and the recruiting process, you know how time consuming it can be, and you know that anyone good enough for division I football probably doesn't have a lot of time to spend at baseball camps working on his swing mechanics.  

Whereas Cody Johnson spent three summers slowly posting slightly improved stats between rookie ball and A ball, Michael Stanton went from ground zero to the top in a matter of months.  Essentially, Stanton started minor league baseball as a novice.  He wasn't the son of a major league star, and he hadn't spent years refining his skills on the diamond, and to see a player like Stanton go from where he was in April to where he ended up in August speaks volumes about how good he could be.  In one summer he acheived more than a lot of hitters do over the course of  5 or 6 years.  Call it a learning curve, a developmental curve, or a whatever curve, but Michael Stanton's curve seems to climb higher and faster than just about any hitter I've come across.  Had he focused solely on baseball at the high school level, it's possible that he could have entered the '07 draft as polished and as talented as a young Alex Rodriguez.

Of course, I'm extrapolating some of these assumptions from vague comments and rudimentary data, but they all seem to point in the same direction.  Michael Stanton isn't your typical high strikeout minor league power hitter.  And while there's absolutely no reason in the world for anyone to believe my non-professional opinion, consider this final comment from Jim Presley, the Marlins hitting coach.

"I saw Ken Griffey Jr. play when he was 19, and (Stanton) is right there with him... Griffey was better defensively and had a better idea of how to hit .300.  (Stanton) has to learn the finer things, but he has skills.  He is a tremendously skilled player at 19.  He is going to be some kind of player.  This kid is an unbelieveable talent to be 19."

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TPC 2009 Top 10 Power Hitters

Everyone loves a power hitter, even if the dude can hardly make it around the bases without stopping to catch his breath. If he hits the cover off the ball, and does it enough to make Sports Center several times a week, the fans won't care if he strikes out every other time up, or even if he spends most of the game on the bench eating hot dogs and scratching himself.

So, if you had to rank the top power hitters in the minors right now, who would you go with? Here's my top 10.

1. Michael Stanton -- A .318 IsoP as an 18 year old? Are you serious? Nobody has done that since....well, since as far back as accurate minor league records have been kept (I might be wrong about that one, but I've looked through almost every player I can think of and still haven't found an 18 year old with that kind of IsoP at A ball). Is Stanton the real deal or Russell Branyan reincarnate? I guess we'll have to wait and see.
   
2. Matt LaPorta -- LaPorta led the Southern League in IsoP last year (.288), and he'll probably develop a bit more power over the next several years. Not the most polished hitter, but a solid 30 plus home runs per year slugger with an upside of 45.
3. Matt Wieters -- He can catch, he can throw, hit for average, and hit for power. Is there anything Wieters can't do? I like to think of Wieters as an "easy" .300 plus average guy, with 30 plus home runs year in and year out. At catcher, that's sick.
4. Chris Carter -- His numbers might have been a bit inflated in the California League, but it really doesn't matter where Carter plays. He's got 40 plus home run power, and plenty of pop to hit in any stadium. Reminds me of another Oakland outfielder that used to play back in the 1970's.
5. Kila Ka'aihue -- I'm really confused by Ka'aihue. First of all, he has a brother named Kala, and I always got the 2 mixed up. Second, for a guy with so much power and such great plate discipline, Kila has had a really hard time making it through the minors. He cranked it up last year (38 home runs in 529 plate appearances with 1.080 OPS between AA, AAA, and the majors), but who knows how well he'd do in a full major league season. I'd like to think he could be another Ryan Howard late-bloomer type, but the Royals have absolutely no room for him. I'd love to see him get traded to a team with a more hitter friendly park.
   
6. Michael Burgess -- Lots of power. Maybe too much power. I don't know how long it will take for Burgess' plate discipline to catch up. My guess is at least another 3 or 4 years.
   
7. Taylor Teagarden -- I've been thinking lately that Teagarden could fizzle out and never quite reach his full potential, but as long as he's in Texas, I like his odds of turning into a solid power hitting catcher.
   
8. Brandon Allen -- I mentioned earlier that Matt LaPorta led the Southern League in Isop in 2008, but Brandon Allen unofficially led the Southern League with an IsoP of .339 over 173 plate appearances. Prior to 2008, Allen's highest IsoP was .196 in 2007, so who knows what he'll do this year.
   
9. Josh Reddick -- I'm not sure if anyone else views Reddick as a power hitter, but when your IsoP is higher than your batting average and BABIP (.222/.214/.221 at AA in '08), you can't be considered much else. Of course, it was a small sample size, and I fully expect both Reddick's average and BABIP to go back to around .300, so it's really just a trivial point. Reddick has a lot in common with Ryan Braun, and I think he's capable of 30 plus home runs in a couple of years in Boston.
   
10. Mike Moustakas -- Moustakas has a lot of offensive talent, and he's not just a power hitter. He ended the '08 season on a tear, and I expect him to put up some impressive stats in 2009.

Players that just missed making the list:

• Jason Heyward
• Freddie Freeman
• Travis Snider
• Brandon Laird
• Colby Rasmus

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The Bo Jackson Theory Remix

Yesterday I posted the basis for the Bo Jackson Theory, which states that the future major league success of a power hitter is defined by plate discipline vs. IsoP vs. age. After posting my thoughts on the topic, I messed around with an Excel spreadsheet and came up with a rough numerical formula so that everyone can make their own charts and do their own slugger analysis and projections. It's not a perfect formula, but if you like numbers or are interested in player projections, it might be fun to play around with it. So, here it is.

The first part of the formula sets up a relationship between plate discipline and IsoP, with IsoP being weighted slightly more than K/BB Ratio.

IsoP *500 - (K%/BB% Ratio)*20

So, in the case of Albert Pujols, his minor league values (Isop = .229, K% = 9, BB% = 9) would result in the following formula values.

(.229)*500 - (9%/9%)*20 = 94.5

For now on this will be considered Value 1, which represents the basic influence of IsoP and K/BB Ratio.

So, now we need to account for age difference. After some cross analysis of players that played at the same minor league level over various years, I came up with some progression values to help eliminate the age difference problem.

Here's how it looks in the formula.

Value 1 + (Value 1 * 10%) * (24 - Age at AA Ball)

Essentially, if a player played AA ball at the age of 24, their power score is equal to Value 1. If they played AA ball at the age of 23, they get an adjustment of 10% to account for the age difference. Likewise, if a player was 22 at AA, they get a 20% boost (10% * 2 years), if they're 21 at AA they get an extra 30%, and so on and so on. In basic terms, for every year younger that a player plays at AA ball before the age of 24, they get a 10% increase in their Value 1 score.

So, if we apply that to Albert Pujols, we get the following.

94.5 + (94.5 * 10%) * (24 - 21) = 122.85

Pujols actually never played at AA ball, but he played very well at A ball as a 20 year old, so we would assume that had the Cardinals assigned him to AA ball, they would have done so when he was 21 years old.

Ok, now we have accounted for plate discipline, IsoP, and finally age, and if we apply the formula to enough players, we can create a huge chart of past or current major league players with various scores, and then determine where minor league prospects fit in. For example, here is a short list of about 20 players, with their individual Bo Jackson Theory Power Score (for now on, I'll just refer to it as their "BoJa" score).

We could debate as to exactly how accurate the BoJa score is, but I think in general it gets about as accurate as we can expect from a basic model of just 3 factors and some very simple math (by the way, Jackson scored a 25 in this model). We must keep in mind that the score is only a power ranking system, and does not account for other skills. Guys like Tony Gwynn would probably not score well at all using the BoJa model, but it doesn't mean he (or players like him) were and are not great hitters. However, for players like Bo Jackson who relied on their power above all other skills, this scoring system may be very helpful in evaluating future major league success.

If anyone is interested in having their own BoJa scoring system in an Excel file, let me know, and I'll e-mail you the one I've created. You can mess with the numbers and values in the formula and try to improve on the accuracy of the BoJa system, or just use it to quickly evaluate player power potential.


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Update and Contest Time: TPC 2009 Top 10 Hitting Prospects

After much thought and deliberation, I've decided that the TPC 2009 Top 10 Hitting Prospects list would not be complete if I left Michael Stanton off the list. At first, I felt like his strikeout rate was a deal breaker, but the more I looked at his 2008 stats and searched for comparable players, the more I realized that the Marlins are holding on to a very special player. Sure, he struck out a lot, but he was only 18, and I think if he were to stay at A ball for another 2 years, he'd be a 20 year old with a K% of 20% or less hitting 40 plus home runs a year (maybe 50) with an ISOP above .350. 

I spent about an hour last night searching for any player in the past 20 years that has posted the types of power numbers at A ball that Stanton put up last year, and I haven't found a single one. In fact, the only player I've found that came close to comparing to Stanton's A level ISOP (.318) was Evan Longoria, who posted an ISOP of .333 between A- and A+ ball as a 20 year old. The next closest hitter was Jay Bruce, who posted an ISOP of .319 in 66 at-bats at AA at the age of 20 (Darryl Strawberry also posted an ISOP of .319 at 20 years old in AA ball, and Jose "Roids" Canseco put up a whopping .431 at the same age and level), followed by a .291 ISOP posted by Ken Griffey Jr. at the age of 18 in A ball.  There are a few others that posted similar ISOPs, but they were all much older, so there really isn't much of a comparison.  I'll admit up front that my search wasn't an exhaustive one, but I searched through several hundred players, including any prominent power hitter I could think of.  So, to make sure I'm not mistaken about this one, I'm going to have a contest and everyone is free to enter.

If anyone can find any player that has posted an ISOP above .318 at the age of 18 years old at A ball in the past 25 years, I'll send you a 2007 Bowman Sterling Madison Bumgarner autographed card (at least 150 plate appearances is required)!    Just post the player (if there is one) in the comments section, and if you're right, you win!  

Anyways, now that I feel like Stanton is worthy of a top 10 position, I'm going to slide him in with Chris Carter at #6(b).  If he's able to repeat his 2008 performance at AA ball this summer and keep his K% under 30%, I think he'll be a good candidate for a top 3 ranking next year.

TPC Video Break: Chris Carter and Michael Stanton

As we get ready for the start of a new week, it's a good idea to get the juices flowing, and what better way to do that than to watch a couple of guys who can really jack the ball.  Here's a clip of Michael Stanton hitting a game winning walk-off home run last summer.  You can't see much about his swing, but when he connects, you know it's gone.

There's another shot of the hit from the opposite side of home plate, but it's part of a news broadcast so you have to watch about a minute worth of talking before it shows Stanton actually swinging the bat (I might be wrong, but to me Stanton sounds like The Rock in this clip).

The next clip is of Chris Carter of the Oakland organization. Once again, you can't see much of the swing, but pay attention to how big Carter looks when he leaves the batting cage and walks past the next hitter. That's either a kid walking by him, or Carter is just one huge dude.


If anyone has better clips of either of these guys, please let me know. I'd love to get a closer look at both of them.

TPC Prospect Smackdown: Chris Carter vs Chris Davis

Baseball fans are always suckers for certain things.  When it comes to pitching, they love strikeouts, and more is always better.  Who cares if it means throwing more pitches or you have to sacrifice a little control.  Just throw some hot sauce on it and make it sizzle and fans from New York to L.A. will pay to see it.  Same goes for home runs.  Chicks dig the long ball, and so does just about every other red blooded American out there.  A home run is the quintessential act of defiance and superiority, something that goes beyond beyond, higher than higher, and is absolutely untouchable. That's why guys like Ryan Howard and Chris Davis make such a big splash when they hit the majors.  All it takes it a handful of long balls and everyone gets it.  This dude can rake.  You don't need numbers and stats to convince the masses.  The ball went over the wall, and that's all that matters.

As much as I love home runs, as a fan of minor league baseball, I always want to know who is coming up next.  Last spring I went through countless prospects looking for that one hitter with undeniable power that I felt would translate into major league success.  In the end, I came up with Chris Davis, and even though at the time he had only made 100 plate appearances at AA, the power numbers were eye popping, and I was conviced he was the real deal.  Fast forward 12 months and suddenly Davis is on everyone's radar.  He projects as a 40 plus home run hitter for the next decade, with the potential for 50 plus at times.  The dude can rake.

But like I said, I always want to know who is next.  There are several candidates out there, including Michael Stanton and Michael Burgess whom I'll get to in a later post, but today I'm going to go with Chris Carter (the Oakland variety).  

First, here are Carter's stats through A+ ball as they compare to those of Chris Davis. 

Although there is a lot of concern about Carter's strike out totals, he doesn't strike out as much as Chris Davis, and he walks almost twice as much.  The power is very comparable, as well as the OPS.  At first glance it looks like Carter's batting average is a step behind Davis, however, in 2008 Carter's BABIP was only .296, compared to a prior career average of about .340, so there's reason to believe that his batting average will be in the .280 to .300 range in 2009 and beyond.  I think the biggest difference between the 2 hitters is that Davis benefits from hitting from the left side of the plate, while Carter hits right handed, which over the course of a full season can mean the difference of 15 to 30 points in the on-base and batting average columns.

Overall, I think Carter compares very well to Chris Davis up to this point in his career.  Carter spent 2008 in a very hitter friendly park, but Davis also played A+ ball in the California League, so I can't think of any reason to discredit the overall numbers that Carter posted last year.  Also, from every source I've read, there is no doubt that Carter has elite level power.  

As evidence, here is an excerpt from an interview with Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus:

OC: Another guy who creates a lot of controversy among prospect-watchers when discussing his ceiling is Chris Carter. I got to see him play quite a bit in Stockton and he hit some balls further than any I’ve seen before. Is there a concern about his contact rate and the fact that he does strike-out as much as he does? Is that something you think that he can correct, or does that just come along with being a slugger like he is?

KG: I think it is a little bit of both. There is definitely a balancing thing that has to go into it. But when you have Chris Carter’s kind of power – and that is, you saw it, legitimate 80 power, it’s top of the scale power – you can live with the strike-outs. The more power that you have, the more willing that you are going to be to forgive the strike-outs. Beyond the power with Chris Carter, he is always going to strike-out some. He’s never going to be Tony Gwynn. He’s always going to strike-out probably 120 or 130 times a year. He’s never going to hit .320, but I think he has enough natural hitting ability to hit .280 with a ton of power. He just has so much power. He really seems like one of those guys who could hit 40 home runs in the big leagues.

I'm not a big fan of the 20-80 scale that scouts use (mostly because I think it's based off of too much personal opinion and not enough off of pure measurements), but when Kevin Goldstein says a 21 year old has "top of the scale power" (the word "power" appears 7 times in the above quote) it has a certain weight to it.  And while guys like Mike Stanton have very comparable power, they don't have the same strike out to walk ratio that Carter has, which indicates they will encounter a steeper learning curve at AA and AAA, as well as at the major league level.  

So, what are the chances that in 2009 we'll see Carter develop into an elite level prospect along the lines of Chris Davis?  Right now, I'd say the odds are very good in Carter's favor.  He's got the power with better plate discipline, and he's playing for a farm system that knows how to get the most out of their young hitters.     

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