Keith Law Ranks Pirates Farm System Eighth in MLB
Subscription required. Keith's comment about the Bucs:
"The Pirates' top tier of prospects is very strong, but there's surprisingly little depth given how high they've drafted and how much they've spent on amateur talent."
4 months ago
David Todd
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I will now sit back and watch...
that group of fans that thinks Keith Law is the Devil Incarnate when it comes to his Pirate views…all of a sudden become Keith Law fans because he ranked the Pirates system 8th.
Always been a huge Law fan...
And I don’t mean that in jest to play off your comments, always have been. He knows his stuff and has what is in my opinion, a very good balance between evaluating with the eye and with numbers. Is he a bit of a smarmy douchebag? Yes, absolutely, but he also doesn’t hide it at all and is very much himself.
I agree with most of that…but there is a significant segment of Pirates fans who have pretty much refused to read him because of the snark. And I expect that those fans are going to be praising him shortly because of where he has the Pirates ranked.
this
is actually one of the reasons why i’m tremendously encouraged by him rating us as 8th. He seems to hate the friggin Pirates haha. I respect him but i do not like him. Kind of like you Thunder!
THIS.
________________________________
Free your ass and your mind will follow.
by cocktailsfor2 on Feb 8, 2012 7:28 PM EST up reply actions
Pursuant to that,
There’s now a tumblr dedicated to it: DOES KEITH LAW HATE MY FAVORITE TEAM?
________________________________
Free your ass and your mind will follow.
by cocktailsfor2 on Feb 9, 2012 11:43 AM EST up reply actions
I dunno, *anything* Keith Law says has to be taken with an enormous grain of salt
and sometimes an enormous amount of narcotics as well
When he says depth
does he mean 5-10? 10-20? 20+? I always thought we had pretty good depth, but I can only compare it to previous Pirate farms which were drier than the Atacama Desert (thanks, google).
by Mr. E on Feb 8, 2012 5:19 PM EST reply actions 1 recs
I was wondering the same thing
Having just looked at the top 20 list, I just can’t see what it seems like Law is seeing (I read his comment as meaning “5 elite talents, then a bunch of marginals and scrubs”). I mean, are there really teams out there with 10 impact players in AA and AAA?
My take on the current system: 3-6 impactª guys, all due within 3.5 years (most due within the next 220 games), 10-15 guys who are likely to become productive (6-20 WAR while under team control), and another dozen guys who could realistically reach 6+ WAR, whether as bench guys for 6 years or regulars for a couple seasons.
Am I overly rosy, am I conflating near-term guys with ones who’ll scarcely be up while the Core 4 are here, or am I underestimating what other teams have?
ª that is, likely to produce 24+ wins in 6 years of control
Do we even have 5 impact players in AA and AAA?
All of our highly rated prospects other than Marte and Sanchez are in High A or lower…and Sanchez is really iffy right now.
No, but
MLB projects both Taillon and Cole to arrive in 2013. I don’t care about what level they’re in this April, that arrival date is what I care about.
What I should have said, instead of “impact players in AA and AAA”, was, “due to arrive within the next 240 games.” We clearly have 3-6 guys who meet that definition.
Sanchez is iffy, of course, but every player, ever, is iffy. Strasburg has provided the Nats how many WAR now? To be clear, Sanchez never looked like a 5 WAR/season impact player, but there’s no reason to think that he can’t produce ~18 WAR as a Pirates. Might not, but certainly could. Given that he could reach Pittsburgh this year, that’s close enough to me.
But anyway, Marte, Cole, & Taillon will all be here within 240 games (barring injury), and all are legit impact talents.
Sanchez never looked like a 5 WAR/season impact player, but there’s no reason to think that he can’t produce ~18 WAR as a Pirates.
fwiw, I do think he won’t produce 18 WAR in his first 6 years (but we’ve had this discussion before, so this is only a note :)
Yeah
Roughly speaking, thats looking at somebody not too far off of Tony Pena’s first 6 years in the majors…don’t see that from Sanchez either.
Just looking him up
I wasn’t a Bucs fan then…but Pena, even though he played for another 10 years after that, basically only contributed about 5 WAR over that time. Did he get hurt or something? Looks like as soon as he left the Bucs, he was unproductive.
Tony Peña was my favorite player back then
and that April Fools Day trade in 1987 felt like a kick to the stomach, at least at the time.
IIRC, two factors contributed to Tony’s surprising drop off with the Cardinals in 1987 — he learned that he needed glasses, and he was hit in the thumb while batting against the Pirates the first week of the season, missing a month. (in 2001, history repeated itself when Jason Kendall sustained a thumb injury early that year but tried to play through it, and likewise he was never the same kind of hitter again.)
Peña redeemed himself somewhat in the playoffs that year, but he never produced more than 2 bWAR in any season after leaving the Pirates. :(
Wait, what?
Are you looking at bWAR? Because, per fWAR, Pena produced 0.2 WAR in 8 games as a 23-y.o. call up, 1.5 WAR in a bit more than 1/3 of a season, then 3.7, 4.0, 5.1, 2.5, and 4.1. IOW, 21.1 WAR in his first 5+ years of control. Yes, his 6th year was (for whatever reason) a negative, but projecting 3 WAR/year for Sanchez is actually not saying that he’ll be like the 4.25 WAR/year player Pena was for the Pirates.
As for Pena’s post-Pirates career, I don’t know what happened with his negative 1987, but beyond that, he was above age 30; hardly surprising that he’d drop production.
Also
Let’s be clear. Pena’s best season was 5 wins. In the context of the post-Fam-a-lee Pirates, that was good, but it’s actually not an amazing performance. Jason Bay’s 3 best seasons are worth are worth 3.1 wins more than Pena’s 3 best. Giles’ 3 best are worth 7.4 more wins.
Sanchez projects as a league-average C and upª (he could also not meet his projections; so could Bryce Harper). That’s 2-2.5 WAR/year. I’m not saying that I assume he’ll produce 18 WAR in 6.5 years; I’m just saying it’s certainly within his capabilities – this isn’t projecting Presley to match Holiday.
ª plus defense, OK bat. Johnny Bench has been retired for 25 years, folks.
Even if Tony Pena
might be a little optimistic, I see no reason that Sanchez can’t be as productive as a guy like Kurt Suzuki. While that could be considered a disappointing result from a guy who was the #4 overall pick, that would also mean that we’d have six years where we didn’t need to look for a catcher. He has put of 11 WAR over his first five seasons in the league and has been a good defender at a valuable defensive position.
by KentuckyPirate on Feb 9, 2012 12:16 PM EST up reply actions
yeah
that’s a non terrible outcome, certainly. And I’d be reasonably happy if Sanchez managed to do that.
Me too
I mean, I hope for more, but if the guy simply turns the position into a box that’s already checked each ST for 5-6 years, that’s good enough.
This is why I have a thing for drafting SS and C; they’re positions where no one can fake it, and so you can go years just plugging in player after player, getting little or no production. Writing “Sanchez, C” on the lineup card 120 times a year for 5 years represents… the opposite of an opportunity cost. It’s attention that can be turned to more rewarding pursuits.
I'll admit that this is somewhat of a defeatist attitude
but for a team like the Pirates, it’s not always a bad thing when players are good and steady without being an absolute superstar because it makes them affordable, yet valuable. Just for example, let’s say Cole and Sanchez both make their debut’s late next season (disregard how likely you think this is for a second). This means that both players will follow the same arbitration clock. If both become superstars, it could be really nice but it could also make it difficult for the Pirates to afford both, even through their arbitration years (at least if the rest of the team is good enough that it is making some money too). If, however, one is a star and the other is a good player, it will be easier for the team to afford both (think Cutch and Walker). Now, obviously, there is an argument that the Pirates want as many players to be elite as possible. Certainly, that’s not bad in theory. At the same time, it’s not easy to find a solid affordable catcher year in and year out. If the Pirates are able to fill that hole with a good, young affordable guy like Kurt Suzuki 2.0 it allows them to spread their resources out to try and make sure the lineup and rotation do not have any team-killing black holes…
by KentuckyPirate on Feb 9, 2012 4:27 PM EST up reply actions
I was looking at WAR on Fangraphs
is there a better way to look it up? I’m seriously asking, because I"m just starting to get into the advanced stats a bit. I wasn’t using his 8 games as included in the 6 seasons. Not surprised that he dropped in production…but I’m surprised that he almost fell off a cliff at 30.
You’re probably right in your comments below; maybe my standards are off in terms of WAR and far as how productive I’m thinking he’d be.
I just looked around Fangraph's leader pages
at catchers with high fielding scores since 1990.
It paints a worse picture than I would have imagined. I was trying look at catchers with high fielding components of WAR, and then look at how their best years looked. Lo Duca, Ausmus and Ramon Hernandez were the first ones I saw that I don’t associate with being great hitters (I left Pudge out). Even for these three, their years that produced anything that would put them in the range of 18WAR over 6 year were pretty good hitting years. Lo Duca had a 5.5 WAR season, but had a 138 wRC+. Cutch, the player with the highest wRC+ last year, had a 129.
Even with great catching skills, Sanchez will have to hit pretty well to ever reach 18WAR in 6 years. I’m not sure if that will happen. 10-12, maybe. But 18 seems a stretch.
by Wizard of Woz on Feb 9, 2012 9:36 AM EST up reply actions
Right, I just
see him mostly as a defense-first catcher. Which, isn’t necessarily a bad thing I guess, but its not necessarily an impact player to me.
I’m not sure I see Taillon up here quite THAT quick. 2014, maybe. 3 levels in less than 2 years? Pirates don’t generally move pitchers that quick, especially HS pitchers.
Who knows?
MLB says 2013. No way he’ll be here Opening Day 2013, but I think that, barring injury, at least a September call up in 2013 is a decent chance.
Remember, there’s no cavalry. Correia will be gone, and Bedard, too. It’s unlikely that more than 1 or 2 of Locke, McPherson, and Lincoln will be contributing by June of 2013. I love Karstens, but he’s blocking nobody. You shouldn’t foolishly advance players to fill holes, but if Taillon is knocking at the door and there’s a hole on 6/15/13, he could get the call.
Opening Day 2013 rotation
Cole (?)
Morton
McDonald
Lincoln/Karstens?
Locke/McPherson?
There’s plenty of room for Taillon to muscle his way in during that season.
It’s not that there won’t be openings…it’s more that the Pirates have never seemed to be in a hurry to promote pitchers. I don’t think there would be too many arguments that Cole is more advanced than Taillon and should reach the majors first. But unless one spends half or more of the summer of 2012 at Altoona…I don’t see much chance of an appearance before September 2013, and that’s probably Cole.
other than Owens, what pitcher in the last couple of seasons deserved a callup to the show?
Duke flew up the minor league ranks but that was before NH. And Owens, whom pitched wonderfully, showed that he wasnt ready afterall.
its not that they arent in a hurry to promote the pitchers, its just been rare for a pirates prospect to earn that jump.
I think you're a bit rosy and underestimatey
I don’t have insider so I can’t see his ratings. However, I do know that he values upside and ceiling a ton, so he would probably view someone like Anthony Gose higher than others might. I think our top-notch guys match up with anyone, but the majority of our high impact guys are around the High A level. And, right now (and I know, its early) the 2009 pitchers have shown mostly bupkus, Sanchez is shaky…I don’t see a dozen guys who could reach 6+ WAR in this group. Sorry…didn’t mean to make this an “Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how’d you like the play?” type of post, but unless Sanchez rebounds and if a 2009 arm takes a big step forward, we don’t have much depth at all.
6+ WAR in 6.5 years?
Maybe you misunderstood me. If Robbie Grossman is a sub for 2 years and a league-average starter for 2 years, he’ll meet my threshold. If Mercer is a good, 200 PA/year MI backup, he could reach 6 WAR. That’s what I’m talking about.
I wouldn’t bet on anyone, anywhere in our minors, to put up even a single 6 WAR seasonª. That’s not what I meant.
ª I would probably bet that someone in our minors would do it at least once in his team-controlled years. But I wouldn’t bet on any given player, not even Cole or Bell or Taillon or Marte (whom I love) doing it.
yes, i did misunderstand you...
I thought you meant a 6 WAR season…
Just so I get this right
You’re looking at 72 WAR from 12 players in the farm system, right? Does that include impact guys?
No, not what I meant
I meant 12 guys, any of whom could realistically (but less than 67% likelihood) put up 6 WAR total. Distribute that and it looks like 4-8 guys averaging 6 WAR, or maybe 3-6 guys averaging 8 WAR. Either way, that’s 24-48 WAR from the second tier guys, spread unevenly over ~8 years. That is, some will show up in 2012 (Hague), others will be here until 2020 (ZVR?).
How they fill in is unclear, because some will provide value not by playing at PNC Park but by bringing back trade value. By 2014, Cutch, Tabata, Presley, Grossman, and Marte all figure to be starting gradeª MLB OFs. We won’t keep them all, maybe not even 4 of them. Maybe one of them, plus an SP, turns into 3 wins/year at SS. Who knows? But I think that’s the kind of talent that’s there.
ª not nec. above average, but among the 25 best players at their positions
Gotcha...I was going to say that was exceedingly optimistic
but now I see what you mean and it makes sense.
My take on the current system: 3-6 impactª guys, all due within 3.5 years (most due within the next 220 games), 10-15 guys who are likely to become productive (6-20 WAR while under team control), and another dozen guys who could realistically reach 6+ WAR, whether as bench guys for 6 years or regulars for a couple seasons.
Am I overly rosy, am I conflating near-term guys with ones who’ll scarcely be up while the Core 4 are here, or am I underestimating what other teams have?
I think it depends on what you mean by “likely” and “realistically.” I don’t see 20 guys in the system with better than 50/50 odds of being 1-WAR players in the majors. I’m not sure I see ten, to be honest. But maybe that’s not what you mean by “likely.”
I’m not exactly sure what people mean when they say the Pirates don’t have much depth, but the way I see the system is that there are a handful of high profile impact talents, a handful of decent role player types, and a bunch of low upside and/or high risk after that. I think a lot of teams have more of the “decent role player” types than we do.
Just as one example of the depth shortage, I think it would have been nice if at least one of the Dodson/ZVR/Stevenson/Cain group looked like a high-upside and/or low-risk guy at this point (two and a half years after the draft), but none of them look like either. There’s a lot of that in the system.
Right now…the Pirates system is bottom heavy…most of the significant prospects are below AA. Until there are prospects at all levels…I’d say that some evaluators are going to say the system doesn’t have depth…and they would be correct. No standout pitchers (or even the sniff of one) at AA or AAA…just several “bottom of the rotation” types. No standout infielders and only one outfielder (Marte) at AA and AAA. And no first basemen above West Virginia (last season), since Hague seems to get dismissed by almost all.
I don’t really think this is true, myself. To me, the good prospects in the system seem reasonably spread out between the levels. We have five impact type prospects, one of whom is AAA (Marte) and another of whom is within a year and a half of the majors, regardless of where exactly he starts 2012 (Cole). In AA and AAA, we also have role players like Sanchez, Grossman, Locke, McPherson, Owens, and Morris. The IF is thin at all levels, not just AA and AAA.
Just to put a more objective form to the argument, of BA’s top 10, five will be AA or higher to start 2012 (and another is Cole). Of the top 20, 10 will be AA or higher (Cole makes 11). So I don’t think it’s true that most of the significant prospects are below AA.
You mention 5 impact prospects...
so I assume you are talking Marte, Cole, Taillon, Heredia and Bell. Two are not draftees (Marte and Heredia), 2 came from the 2011 draft and haven’t played an official professional game outside the AFL (Cole and Bell), and 1 from the 2010 draft (Taillon). Drafting where the Pirates have in the 4 Huntington seasons, should have a few more impact players.
You say it yourself…there’s 1 impact player that will be at AAA in Marte, Cole will be wherever he starts…and a bunch of role players. The rest are at A or below…that makes it bottom heavy. And the levels I was using are where they completed the 2011 season, not an unknown level where they may or may not be assigned in April 2012.
Not to speak totally for KLaw
But I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have Marte on the impact player list, unless he has changed his tune since the summer. I had a few Twitter arguments with him about Marte and he had very little good to say about him.
Without seeing his personal list of prospects, I would guess that he might have Grossman ahead of Marte actually. He was throwing glowing compliments around about him toward the end of the year and passive agressively took a shot at Brett Jackson by saying that Grossman looks like the player everyone thought BJax would be.
i remember this well
he likes both bell and grossman more than marte, and literally raved about Grossman’s approach to the game
okay
Whether or not we should have more impact players in the farm system is different from whether or not we’re bottom heavy. We probably should at least have more depth, although having more than five impact players is a tall order.
But again, I don’t see how the system is bottom heavy. I already explained that half the top ten and half the top twenty are AA or higher, and that’s not even counting Cole, who’s both the highest upside and possibly the closest to the majors in the system.
Maybe you mean that most of the high-upside players are below AA? Well, yeah, that’s true with any system, because every team’s going to have a dozen 18-year-olds in rookie ball who could be stars or busts, but most of them will bust before they get to AA. That’s how it works for every team, not just the Pirates.
It's worth pointing out
that one of those four top picks that Huntington has made is projected to be the Pirates’ opening day 3B this season…
If you are going to look at who is where in the system, you can’t just ignore Pedro. I think that having a top draft spot tends to matter less after the first two rounds. Yes, you will continue to get to pick at the top of the round, but at the same time, after 80-90 picks, every team is likely to have had a couple of cracks at these guys if they really want them. In the interest of fairness, let’s just look at NH’s picks from the top 2 rounds:
2008:
Pedro (ML), Scheppers (didn’t sign due to injury)
2009:
Sanchez (AA/AAA), Victor Black (likely a bust), Pounders/Navarro (AAA/ML)
2010:
Taillon; HS (A+, could be in Pittsburgh by 2013 as a 21 year old), Allie; HS (A)
2011:
Cole; (A+/AA, could be in Pittsburgh by Opening day 2013), Bell; HS (A)
So what we have is 9 picks, and 8 signees. Out of those 8, we probably have 1 in the majors, 2 in AAA, 1 in AA, a 20 year old in A+, two high schoolers in A, and 1 likely bust. I’m not sure that you can say those players should have progessed substantially faster.
by KentuckyPirate on Feb 9, 2012 12:31 PM EST up reply actions
the cardinals best prospect was in A ball this year and drafted after Sanchez
but thats the outlier, no?
Jacob Turner (HS arm) was drafted between Sanchez and Miller, and was in the ML this year.
A couple of other guys (like Hobgood) have not fared as well.
Isn’t the amateur draft a thing of beauty?
by insane_sanity on Feb 9, 2012 1:43 PM EST up reply actions
as I said below
I think the lack of sandwich round picks completely negates the advantage of a top draft spot after the first round, because many if not the majority of teams will have had two cracks at a player before the PIrates get the second crack.
It also matters much less anyway. It’s all about the top of the first round, and maybe the bonus picks thereafter. Picks after the 50th overall or so are lottery tickets.
Not actually affiliated with whygavs.
by WHYG Zane Smith on Feb 9, 2012 1:05 PM EST up reply actions
also worth noting
that wasnt victor black a ‘signability’ pick bc of failing to sign Tanner Scheppers. he wasnt over slot right? I consider that less of a miss than missing on someone like ZVR (just an example) or Stetson Allie who you give a big ole bonus to
I don't much like the idea of going for signability just because a pick is unprotected
but Black was picked about where he was expected to go, IIRC (I can’t find out who exactly had him at 50, but here’s Sickels calling him a sandwich-round pick).
That was via this old post:
He didn’t pitch until the end of his high school career, so hopefully he’ll be able to get through the minors without injury problems.
Oh well!
Not actually affiliated with whygavs.
by WHYG Zane Smith on Feb 9, 2012 9:50 PM EST up reply actions
I don't really get the draft position argument in relation to depth
I’d figure that “depth” comes mostly from picks after your first picks — it seems unduly harsh to count Tony Sanchez as not even depth, and of course Pedro isn’t in the system anymore — but the Pirates have had below-average draft position after their first pick. When was the last time that their second pick was higher than 45-46, which with 30 teams would be average draft position for your second pick?
The thing about spending on the draft makes more sense, and is what a lot of us have been complaining about with the later round draft picks. The ‘09 draft should’ve yielded more depth.
Not actually affiliated with whygavs.
by WHYG Zane Smith on Feb 9, 2012 10:28 AM EST reply actions
that's what I meant
Our second-round position has been high compared to other teams’ second-round position; but if more than half the teams get to pick twice before we pick twice, then our second overall pick is worse than average. If KC picks 3rd, 46th, 49th, 80th, 115th, and so on (as they did in 2008), and Pittsburgh picks 2nd, 48th, 79th, 114th, and so on, then strictly from a draft position point of view KC should get more depth after the first round. Their second pick is two picks before the Pirates’ second pick, and their subsequent picks are basically a full round ahead.
The only sandwich-round pick I can remember the Pirates getting was Victor Black, and since that was a comp pick for not signing Scheppers it doesn’t increase our total depth any.
I’m just talking about draft position; I agree that the Pirates should have more depth, but I don’t think high draft position has anything to do with it.
Not actually affiliated with whygavs.
by WHYG Zane Smith on Feb 9, 2012 11:55 AM EST up reply actions
trying to get me to talk more rarely fails
Not actually affiliated with whygavs.
by WHYG Zane Smith on Feb 9, 2012 1:00 PM EST up reply actions
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