Community Prospect List #18

So, he’s got a year, after which it’s fish or cut bait time.

It’s fine to say that K rate is influenced by batters faced, but it’s also influenced by not throwing strikes. It’s a lot easier to have people not make contact with your pitches on their swings when most of the pitches aren’t in the strike zone.

Being even an “elite back of the pen guy” is barely worth what a league-average position player is. Barely worth what an average rotation pitcher is. Relief prospects are not worth very much at all. Factor in the fact that his chances of developing “even average control” are wretched, and he’s not even close to my top 30 A’s prospects. Not close.

I think the guy to vote for here is Hornbeck, who’s shown an ability to miss bats combined with tolerable control, projectable velocity and most importantly, the ability to handle starting a baseball game.

That being said, none of the voting options is wrong vis a vis Rodriguez (even Peterson, who I’m not a fan of at all).

Plus, most guys who do get higher signing bonuses have detailed scouting reports to justify the bonus.

Although draft position+signing bonus is better than either of them alone…

Overall I think your approach is fairly correct. Should it be taken into account? Sure, that’s why I have Stassi ranked slightly in front of Ryan Ortiz (who should be on the voting-eligible list, BTW, along with Solano— I’d boot out Peterson and Henry Rodriguez to make room). But I’m not willing to take it into account to the point where I rank the guy over players who’ve shown major ability in professional baseball.

And then weight that information according to how useful it is.

What do we know about Stassi? We know BA rated him as the ~30th best prospect in the draft. We know that he slipped to the 4th round because of his bonus demands. We know that he received the 15th highest bonus of any player in the draft. We know that he held his own in the Northwest League as an 18 year old in a very small sample. We know that the scouting reports on his defense discuss whether he’ll be an adequate catcher or a good catcher, rather than whether he’ll be able to stick behind the plate. We know that a couple studies have shown that high school catchers taken in the first round over the past ~15 years have tended to produce less value than typical first round picks.

Taking all of that information together, I would say Stassi’s value as a prospect is similar to a late-1st round pick. The question then becomes whether you would rather have the 25th pick in next year’s draft (without having to pay a bonus), or whether you’d rather have this other prospect. I would trade Ben Hornbeck for the 25th pick in next year’s draft without thinking twice. I would do the same with guys like Capra, Coleman, Simmons, Leon, DLS, and Kilby.

If all we knew about Zito were his contract, then our best guess would be that he’s a very good player. If all we knew about Joe Carter was that he drove in 100 runs every year, our best guess would be that he’s a pretty good player. But we have a ton of other information on those guys which tells us they’re not very good players. With Stassi, all the information we have on him suggests he’s a very good prospect.

Because he didn’t have a crappy year. Hope I was the deciding vote (63-62 now).