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Many people watch their favorite ballclub and hear the commentators talk about the young prospects in the farm system coming up, and what they have to look forward to. Sometimes those prospects will be up in the fall once the team is out of contention or has a playoff slot locked up.  But what’s the label of “prospect” really mean?

The “prospect” label is affixed to a player who scouts think have a chance at making it to the big leagues and sticking around, regardless of their current talent level, their stats, and their age. With the publication of the book Moneyball, many people question the effectiveness of scouting - how can you accurately determine the talent level (both present and future) of a player simply by watching two games that the player participates in?

The truth is that both contemporary stats and traditional scouting methods are useful in evaluating a player. We’ll talk about the roles of both as we look into the 5 tools that define a baseball prospect.

1. Speed

Speed is correlated with many positive things in baseball - fielding ability, stolen base ability, and general athleticism. Scouts love to see a “burner”- kids who can fly on their feet. However, a lot of statistical analysis has proven that pure speed does not necessarily mean a player will steal a lot of bases - mental ability plays a huge role in timing the pitcher and choosing the right spots. Regardless, possessing above-average speed will give you the potential to be a better fielder and baserunner than the player with average speed.

2. Arm Strength

Often considered the least valuable of the 5 tools, arm strength is necessary to play the left side of the infield (third base, shortstop) and is important in the outfield, specifically right field (range is more important in center). A deadly cannon of an arm can be feared behind the plate to cut down runners, but other catching mechanics are just as important (pop time, receiving skills, knowing how to call batters). Most biomechanical analysis shows that “arm strength” is more related to core strength and the mechanics to utilize the whole body in throwing.

Arm strength can also refer to arm endurance - absolutely vital for a starting pitcher who looks to throw 180+ innings per year. Clean mechanics and a strong rotator cuff are two major things all pitchers must have to compete at the highest levels.

3. Hitting for average

It is often said that good hitters develop power, but power hitters don’t turn into good hitters. The ability to hit for average is important - it demonstrates bat control and a keen batting eye. A stat growing in popularity is on-base percentage (OBP), specifically isolated OBP (OBP - AVG). Swinging at hitter’s pitches and controlling the plate is an important aspect of hitting; without it, pitchers will prey on your weaknesses. Contrary to popular belief, looking to walk is not what teams that value OBP want - they want selective aggression. Selective aggression is the ability to pick out mistakes by the pitcher and make them pay for those mistakes while taking pitches that cannot be hit well. Taking the first pitch fastball down the middle or the 2-0 fastball middle-in is a mistake - as a hitter, you might only see one hittable pitch per plate appearance. Capitalize on it, no matter what the count is.

4. Hitting for power

Hitting for power is extremely important and one of the quickest ways to get promoted in the minor leagues. The guy who hits .310 with 10 home runs will get overlooked by the guy who hits .280 and 35 home runs. The reason for this is because while .310 is a great batting average, without power, it is worth much less. If all you do is hit singles, you need to hit a lot of them with exceptional speed to see regular playing time (think Ichiro for example) unless you are a great fielder.

With strength conditioning becoming more and more mainstream in the baseball community, scouts want to see every hitter embody the threat to hit one out of the ballpark. You will very rarely look at a lineup in today’s big league lineup and see a guy who hits less than 5 home runs a year.

5. Fielding

Range is life when it comes to fielding. The ability to cover ground quickly and get into an optimum fielding position requires speed, intelligence, and most of all, great reflexes. Soft hands are necessary in the infield to cradle the ball and to avoid errors, and arm accuracy is key as well. The toughest position defensively is widely considered to be shortstop, followed by center field.

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Our game at Bannerwood (great field, by the way) for the PSSBL Mariners went extremely well today. John started on the hill and only allowed two runs over five innings. I entered the game in the sixth with a one run lead and finished it off, allowing 1 earned run (1 unearned run as well) on 1 hit, 4 walks, and 3 strikeouts. The defense played extremely well today (just a few minor errors) with two baserunner kills/pickoffs, and our hitting picked up in a big way in the seventh. We ended up winning 8-4, so I think I picked up a four-inning save!

The game with Nandemoya is fairly uninteresting except for the fact that we lost to a team who were a bunch of jerks just like our opponents, the Sox, in the PSSBL game. It’s not worth getting riled up about.

So, today my stats looked like:

Hitting: 2-for-5, BB, RBI, R
Pitching: 4 IP, 1 ER, 1 H, 4 BB, 3 K

Stats in summation:

Hitting Stats:
.353/.438/.482 over 89 PA / 85 AB
30 H, 9 2b, 1 3b, 12 RBI, 14 R, 8 SB, 8 K, 6 BB, 3 HBP

Pitching stats:
2-2, 1 SV, 6.94 ERA
33.7 IP, 20 H, 32 BB, 18 K, 26 ER

I’ve started a coaching over the Internet program with a known professional instructor who’s putting me on his pilot program. The cost is great, and we’re both going to learn a lot. I have a lot of flaws the need to be addressed, but I think before we even start to list them (bat drag, hip slide, oh wait…) I need to understand how a professional swing even looks like and works, broken down piece by piece.

At the beginning of the season I came out of the gates slicing doubles to the gap, stealing bases, and hitting for serious power and contact. I’ve regressed some, and not all of it can be attributed to luck, but it’ll be good to have that mental and psychological feeling back once I finish my lessons and continue to get more and more work in - which will be easier now, since my workload at the office has been diminished and I purchased a tee and a hitting net to go with my bucket of balls. I still get some running in as well (usually 2 miles), and I’m on a weight lifting program, but I’m trying to cut weight before I head back to Cleveland for my best man’s wedding. Hopefully I can wrap all this up without interfering with my in-season workouts and games!

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The result of this game was not pretty - we got shelled, 18-6. Lots of walks by the pitching staff, poor baserunning, and bad play in general.

On an individual level, I felt pretty good about one of my three AB’s today. The first one was pretty bad, as I struck out swinging after looking at two strikes and a ball. The second at-bat resulted in an infield single RBI, but it was hardly a good swing or AB.

The third AB was the best AB I’ve had since joining the amateur leagues, bar none. They brought on a hard-throwing lefty reliever with a sharp breaking ball, a cut fastball, and a straight four-seam fastball. As a general rule against lefties, I like to swing at the first pitch I like, rather than taking to see what the pitcher’s got. I have a sick platoon split against lefties - I love hitting off them, I pick up the ball really well, and as such, I want to attack a first-pitch meatball down the middle. Sure enough, he threw a cut fastball middle-in for the first pitch and I fouled it straight back. He then threw a straight fastball outside, which I fouled down the first base line. He threw me two cut fastballs inside that missed for balls, and then the following pitch sequence occured:

Fifth pitch: Middle-out fastball, low. Fouled it down the first base line.
Sixth pitch: Breaking ball middle-in. Fouled it into the dirt.
Seventh pitch: Straight fastball under the hands. Killed it foul down the third base line.
Eighth pitch: Cut fastball middle-in. Fouled it sky high and out of play.

I was feeling really good about the at-bat - really battling against a tough lefty with good command and velocity. He noticed that my bat control was good and that I wouldn’t strike out on a pitch in the zone, so…

Ninth pitch: Straight fastball shoulder-high. Strikeout, swinging.

I was geared up and wanted to kill it, and it’s easy just to blame myself for swinging at an obvious ball, but I have to give credit to the pitcher here. He identified a likely weakness due to my contact abilities at the plate and attacked it. I feel really good about this at-bat, even if I struck out - the process is what I care about, and my pitch identification was excellent throughout the AB, sans the last one.

I pitched two innings after the game was blown out and my control wasn’t great, but the stuff was finally there. My shoulder and body is at 100%, and the fastball was good. I went 2 innings pitched, gave up no hits, struck out three batters, and walked three batters. Slowly, but surely, things are getting better.

Stats update forthcoming. Three games this weekend - hopefully my arm will be in use!

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Anyone who follows Baseball Prospectus or other sabermetrically inspired baseball websites can tell you that the sacrifice bunt is usually the wrong play in games that are not close and not in the later innings. However, these arguments rest on the fact that the pitcher, catcher, and corner infielders are agile and skilled enough to convert the sacrifice bunt into a routine out. What if the amateur players mishandle a bunt more frequently than their MLB analog? What I’d like to do is see how much higher the error rate would have to be on bunted balls to make sacrifice bunting the right play.

For the purposes of this discussion, I will only be focusing on sacrificing with runners on 1st/2nd with 0 outs.

First, let’s figure out what the value of various gamestates are, We can see the amount of “expected runs” scored year-by-year, but we’ll use the years 1999-2002 as found here on TangoTiger.

Runners on 1st/2nd with 0 outs is worth: 1.573
Runners on 2nd/3rd with 1 out is worth: 1.467

If the sacrifice is executed 100% of the time with no errors, the loss of expected runs can be easily calculated like this:

Ex2nd_3rd_1 - Ex1st_2nd_0 = Value
1.467 - 1.573 = -0.106

Therefore, if the fielders can always turn the sacrifice bunt into an out at first, this play has a value of -0.106 runs.

However, what happens when the throw is botched?

Runners on 2nd/3rd with 0 outs is worth: 2.052 + 1 = 3.052

This is the most likely scenario when a sacrifice bunt is thrown away - the runners advance to 2nd/3rd on a bunt, the throw goes wild, the runner going to third scores, the runner going to second goes to third, and the guy who bunted goes to second.

Also, for the purposes of this discussion, we’re going to assume that the manager will always call for a sacrifice bunt with runners on 1st/2nd with 0 outs and not worry about other types of batted balls. Other assumptions include that the error is always a throwing error that results in 2nd/3rd + a run with 0 outs, that the sacrifice is never recorded as a base hit, and that the sacrifice never leads to a double play. That’ll be for another article - this is just the groundwork.

Let’s add in some errors, shall we? Our Error Rate modifier formula looks like this:

ExpTotRuns = Ex2nd_3rd_1(SuccessRate) - Ex1st_2nd_0 + [(ErrorRate)(Ex2nd_3rd_0 + 1)]

ErrorRate is the % of times an error is made on the play. SuccessRate is the % of times the play is successfully executed.

Expected Total Runs equals Expected runs with runners on 2nd/3rd with 1 out minus Expected runs with runners on 1st/2nd with 1 out (this is multiplied by the success rate) plus the sum of Error Rate times Expected runs scored with runners on 2nd/3rd and 0 outs plus 1 run.

Make sense? Try reading it a few more times before commenting for clarification.

Here’s some sample calculations:

Error rate of 0%: 1.467(1.0) - 1.573 + [(0)(2.052 + 1)] = -0.106 runs (that third variable is 0)
Error rate of 1%: 1.467(0.99) - 1.573 + [(0.01)(2.052 + 1)] = -0.09015 runs
Error rate of 5%: 1.467(0.95) - 1.573 + [(0.05)(2.052 + 1)] = -0.0239 runs

Ah-hah, getting closer! Of course, we can simply change the formula around to solve for the end result we want…

Break Even Point (careful, 9th grade algebra ahead!):
ExpTotRuns = Ex2nd_3rd_1(SuccessRate) - Ex1st_2nd_0 + [(ErrorRate)(Ex2nd_3rd_0 + 1)]
0 runs = 1.467(1.0-x) - 1.573 + [(x)(2.052 + 1)]
0 = 1.467 - 1.467x - 1.573 + 2.052x + 1x
0 = 1.585x - 0.106
0.106 = 1.585x
x = 0.06688

It seems as though the breakeven error rate is about 6.69%.

Do I think that amateur players in the leagues I play in commit overthrowing errors on sacrifice bunts at least 7% of the time? Yes, I do.

Conclusions:

First of all, I think my math is right, though I am not 100% sure on using ErrorRate and SuccessRate. I ran it by a few people and they all thought it was necessary, but it could be counting the error rate twice unnecessarily.

The work above has a lot of assumptions which makes the formula simple. We assume that the error is always an overthrow that causes a specific gamestate, we assume that the sacrifice bunt is never a hit, we assume that the runner is smart enough to go home on small overthrows, we assume that the hitter is always going to sacrifice, and that the hitter never fails to make the bunt contact. Since there are all these assumptions, the model’s not perfect (obviously). However, it’s a step in the right direction for this type of research.

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Sunday’s game was under the lights against the Blue Rocks, the current first-place team in the Rocky division. Our pitching (Hiroki and Bobby) was lights out, the defense was excellent (only one minor error), and we crushed the ball. The final score was 17-3.

I played right field and second base and didn’t get any action at either (sans a single to right that I threw in), but Zane asked me in the seventh if my arm was feeling good to pitch, so it’s good to know that I haven’t totally fallen out of favor with the team as a pitcher, despite my struggles. At the plate, I went 1-for-4 with a single, but the process felt pretty good. I got myself out in the first at-bat, making poor contact on a low and away fastball. The pitcher got me out in the second at-bat, locating his curveball on the outer half of the plate and getting me to roll over on it with two strikes. In both of these situations, I was able to move the runner(s) over with one out, so I still had some productivity to speak of.

The third at-bat saw me taking a fastball away to right field; I made excellent contact and was very happy with the at-bat. They brought in a reliever for my fourth at-bat, and he had been throwing a ton of curveballs earlier in the inning, so I sat on a curve and was ready to swing at one if he hung it. Sure enough, he hung his breaking ball right over the plate and I swung, made great contact, but got under it just a bit too much, sending a long flyball to center field. I don’t regret swinging at the first pitch - that was the best opportunity I would get in that at-bat by knowing what he’d throw and being prepared for it.

I’m learning a lot about baseball in general this year, specifically the ability to guess at which pitches are coming based on glove positioning, number of times the pitcher shakes off the catcher, pre-setting the grips, and other visual cues. Getting these “reads” on opposing pitchers will not only help me as a hitter, but also as a pitcher, knowing that other batters are doing the same thing as me.

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