Friday, December 4, 2015

Fuzzy Enough?

How "fuzzy" have the projections of scouting become?  And what does it mean for the draft?

Of course, pre-update the draft was very predictable - it was one of the aspects of HBD least like real life. With a few exceptions, the players were selected roughly in order of quality.

So here's an attempt to make at least a little sense of how jumbled the new fuzzier projections are making our drafts.

Here's what I did.  I looked at the pitchers taken in last year's (Season 31) amateur draft.  First, I charted their ratings improvements through the 3 cycles we've had so far.  Then I projected that their improvement for the rest of the season would equal 70% of the first 3 cycles' improvement (maybe a little low) to get a projection of their ratings at the end of their 2nd pro seasons.  Then I took that 2nd-year improvement and multiplied it by 2.5 to get a projection of their ratings for their 5th pro year.

Here are the 1st-round pitchers with my projections for their eventual ratings:

CON vL vR VEL GB P1 P2 P3 P4 P5
2 Cespedes 85 50 76 70 79 84 67 64 59 47
3 Kubitza 86 92 68 31 63 83 77 70 62 52
4 Dunham 86 67 84 23 82 81 75 54 0 0
6 Vitters 60 74 72 91 35 94 70 69 77 30
7 Lloyd 89 73 89 81 83 88 65 53 58 0
10 Washington 81 66 79 80 51 72 78 46 56 0
12 Christensen 80 53 50 76 60 82 63 47 0 0
14 Peters 41 58 64 66 73 77 73 54 47 39
16 Thome 78 70 69 31 0 83 83 58 59 27
18 Garces 90 58 63 80 77 88 73 47 0 0
20 Bigbie 85 72 60 41 80 86 71 45 0 0
25 Bowman 75 58 62 76 59 77 62 43 38 22
27 Pujols 75 64 58 71 88 67 77 58 51 30
29 Seelbach 87 65 56 32 63 79 69 51 60 34
30 Logan 60 51 70 30 85 99 74 46 49 0
31 Lyon 75 57 71 25 71 65 69 49 50 26










Couple of things jump out here:

1.  This doesn't look like a great draft for 1st-round pitching.  Outside of maybe 1 guy (Lloyd) there's nobody you'd say is going to be a real ace.  So this bunch could be closer together in talent than we see in other drafts...and the expectation would be that it would be more "jumbled".

2.  That said, it looks like the clear choice for the best pitcher of this group (Lloyd) was the 7th pick, behind 4 other pitchers.  That would've never happened pre-update.

3.  There are a couple of potential bombs here who's owners will probably be ticked if my projections come true.  Christensen at 12 looks like his splits will fall short of ML-caliber.  #14 Peters hasn't improved much so far; I don't know if that's due to coaching, lack of playing time, or he's just already close to his ultimate ratings.

4.  Other than that, these results don't look overly surprising.  For the most part the better pitchers are at the top and the poorer pitchers are at the bottom.

Definitely fuzzier ratings and more jumbled draft order, but not crazy.  Here's what I think we'll see teams doing with this going forward:

1.  Some will pitch the draft altogether and go all-free-agent-all-the-time, just for the more predictable return on $ spent.  Just live with it in lean FA years.

2.  More 20-0 or 0-20 HS/COL scouting configurations (not that we see these, but I think it will happen).  Fuzzier ratings put an even greater premium on scouting accuracy - better to be as accurate as you can be (and see the max number) on one group (HS or COL) than to be blurry on all.  This was already happening pre-update but I think it will accelerate.

What do you think this all means?  How do you think teams will react to the fuzzier projections?  Leave a comment below.

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