The Red Sox head to the Bay for an interleague tilt. The Reds are still playing way over their heads. The Padres could be a key player in the Carlos Beltran sweepstakes. These and other news and notes out of Boston, Cincinnati and San Diego in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
Whenever words like “overrated” or “underrated” are introduced into an argument, objectivity generally takes a holiday. Gauging the amount of hype a certain player is receiving and determining whether it’s tantamount to his abilities is by nature largely an exercise in opinion. Now that we’re all aware that I’m aware that I’m wallowing in subjectivity, I’m going to wallow in subjectivity.
Below is a list of my top five underrated position prospects. The criteria are that the player is toiling in at least High-A this season (meaning the California, Carolina and Florida State leagues or higher) and did not appear in any iterations of our Top 50 Prospect List.
Let’s light this candle…
Back before Al Gore invented Sabermetrics, I would have forgiven Sports Illustrated for their cover story on Derek Jeter and slumps. In this day and age, though, I have to get more from a publication of S.I.’s stature than the usual interview-the-player/manager/GM/ask-the-anonymous-scout kind of article. The topic of slumps is a fascinating one beginning with the concept of whether they–like alien invaders, auras and repressed memories–even exist at all. There were several times in Tom Verducci’s article that I thought he was going to veer into that very area. At one point, he quotes Bob Uecker (lifetime .200 batting average but, let us never forget, a man who always walked at least once every 10 at-bats) as saying, “I had slumps that lasted into the winter.”
Here was an opportunity for a great segue into a couple of paragraphs into how things tend to even out over time for the good hitters and “slumps” seem permanent for the bad ones–and by “bad” I mean, those with lower batting averages. Which is another problem with the piece–it’s all about batting averages. With so much research afoot about balls in play and the declining import of BA, the article treats the stat like the intended audience was the 1955 subscriber base of Sport magazine. Did we learn nothing from the Yankee experience of April 2004? S.I. is a great magazine with some of the best photos ever taken on the planet, and several writers who kick the language in the ass. In other words–they have what it takes to be more probative than this.
It was 9:30 p.m. on a nondescript Tuesday night in April. The Bronx air was a
little damp, a little cool, and filled with tension and frustration. The
Yankees trailed 8-4 to the Oakland A’s in the eighth inning, having watched
their nominal ace blow an early 4-1 lead while pushing his ERA up to 6.55.
Coming off an embarrassing three-game sweep by the Red Sox, this game was
pushing the 8-10–soon to be 8-11–team ever closer to one of those mid-1980s
scenes in which a manager, a pitching coach, and two or three random clubhouse
attendants were fired.
Then Bernie Williams singled. Then Alex Rodriguez singled right behind him. Then Jason Giambi walked.
By a little after 10 p.m., the Yankees had a 10-8 lead and a new lease on
life. That half-hour, in which they beat up Jim Mecir and
Ricardo Rincon for six runs, looks like the most important
moment of the 2004 season. The Yankees won that game, the next seven after it
and have gone 30-9 since then, buring the field on the way to posting, by far,
the best record in baseball. A team that couldn’t score to save its life in
April, that put up an anemic four runs in losing three games to its hated
rival on the last weekend of that month, has hit like a team full of
Jeff Kent clones since then…
I spent about a half an hour today talking with a professional pitching coach about pitching. It was a great experience and he left with my book, but I left with something better. As I meet more people in baseball, I find more who want to make the game better, who are willing to be open-minded about new approaches, new research, and new possibilities. Stories like Dayn Perry’s Beer and Tacos article and Steven Goldman’s on Moneyball started to articulate a foundation for this new school of thought. Instead of the tired old school/new school debate that has become more holy war than revolution, there’s a “middle school” that is actually making inroads in the game. I’m firmly planting my feet there in the median.
Reports have been mixed on Kevin Brown. Early in the day, it looked like Brown’s back injury wasn’t serious. It was described to me as a “slip. His cleat didn’t catch and he overstepped, so his back took the worst of it.” Reports later in the day wavered between caution and fear. Brown will have some imaging and therapy, but there’s no determination yet on how serious the problem is. The Yanks don’t have the pitching depth to absorb an injury well, but there’s always the possibility that they’ll go get an extra arm.