Baseball America released it's Top 100 AND....
Wyatt Langford #4
Dylan Crews #6
Paul Skenes #9
So yes, as I said Langford DID leap over Crews and Skenes (but they all remain great prospects and everything could change again by Memorial Day). Skenes dropped a bit more than I thought but just a bit (I wouldn't have guessed under #7)
Also Wood did drop out of the Top 10, as I also said, but only to #11 not 15-20 like I guessed. So only a minor win there.
House... stayed stable in the 50s? I find that very odd for a 20 year old that hit well in AA but there's probably a bit of "burned me once" mixed in here from people that got real high on him after 2019.
Hassell's injuries cost him his spot in the Top 100. Certainly reasonable until he shows he's back to what he was. Green also dropped out but I told you last year that was a "don't want to miss out on the 5 tool guy everyone is taking a flier on" rating, not actual "potential baseball player" rating.
Look I'm not saying I'm a good talent evaluator. I have no idea. But I do like to think I'm a good evaluator of the evaluators - how they think, what factors OTHER than actual skill and potential causes them to ranks guys like they do. I think this shows I'm not crazy there.
FWIW - Wood didn't drop out of BPs top 10. They've always been much higher on Wood (had him at #15 going into last year to BAs 39, had him at #3 post draft last year) so that's not surprising. MLB, the third of the ones I look at is in between so we'll see. Based on this he might still be in there. Fangraphs too LOVES Wood (he was still their 2 at the end of the year) so I'm guessing he does stay in their top 10.
BA - Langford 4 Crews 6 Skenes 9 Wood 11 House 55
BP - Langford 2 Crews 5 Skenes 9 Wood 7 House 69 Cavalli 85
In the "knowing how they think" one can certainly see the groupthink/herd mentality in trying to jump on the Langford bandwagon after just 44 games as a professional. I wish no ill to Langford - far from it. He's not responsible for the InterNats tendency to only talk about a player as long as the player can be used as a stick to whack at the Nationals.
ReplyDeleteThe original claim wasn't merely "Langford will pop ahead of Crews in the prospect lists." It was "The Nats missed on the best draft pick. Crews looks good but Langford looks better." It was a mild dig on the Nats' fortune and decision making.
ReplyDeleteAnd our objection was that the new information contained in each's ~20 games of AA/AAA isn't enough to justify that claim. Fair enough if you preferred Langford from the jump -- a few folks did -- but changing your mind based a few weeks of results is more emotional fan overreaction than cool headed automaton reasoning.
Isn't insisting your--the Nats'--draft pick is better than anyone else's an equally emotional fan overreaction?
ReplyDeleteAnd if you can't find a forum in which to whack the Nationals, then what's a heaven for?
John C - Yes, there is a bump here that is in part "I don't want to be the guy that DOESN'T buy in to these numbers". But also it's "we're not really sure - here's our best guess". Honestly we're probably better served by like subgroups of talent. That's probably the most honest evaluation (though you have to have cutoffs somewhere) and if they did that all we'd be seeing is Langford moving into the Crews / Skenes space without being "ahead".
ReplyDeleteAnon @ 10:11 - only meant to be a mild dig on the fortune. Said then nothing wrong with the pick. Said today it wasn't the wrong one. The Nats did what they were supposed to do.
As far as preference, I didn't prefer him. I thought they should take Crews with what they knew then. If they drafted today, yes, I would say they should take Langford.
It's not that we're only evaluating 44 games here. It's evaluating the most recent 20% of games played since high school against the best competition these players have faced in combination with the 80% other games of less recency in college. What you end up doing when taking that all into account is (probably) saying "Ok langford looks slightly better now than Crews".
If you were really letting only the minor leagues sway you Crews would be well further down. No one is suggesting that be done.