Cautious Optimist - Let's Follow Some of Our Prospects This Summer

 Developing and Sorting Talent

In a previous series of posts on roster construction at the major league level, I argued that the most consequential factor is the ability of organizations to project the future performance of their prospects.  Part of the difficulty is obviated by the fact that the organization can secure evidence of performance of someone on a low A roster by promoting him to A+ level and so on -- all at reasonable costs.  Nothing predicts performance as well as prior performance and both positive and negative mistakes can be remedied by promotions that reveal actual performance at the next level without disrupting the long term goals of the affiliates.  After all, from the point of view of the organization, the goals of the affiliates are to turn out fans and to develop and sort talent, not to win a minor league championship. 

The calculus changes when the issue is projecting a prospect's expected performance at the major league level!  Promotions to the major league level will provide evidence but their doing so comes with the risk of adversely impacting the major league squad's chances of success -- which, after all, is the point. 

It is important to realize that part of what teams are willing to pay for free agents is correlated both with their lack of confidence in their ability to project how their prospects will perform at the major league level and the price they are willing to pay for the information free agents provide of their likely performance at the major league level as revealed by their actual performance at that level.  Both costs are premiums teams are willing to pay to reduce their risks.  In effect, teams reduce the risks of mistakenly promoting or failing to promote their own prospect.  Nor do they pay back the teams that have run those risks when those players become free agents.  Instead, they pay that premium to the free agent player.  This is an interesting allocation of costs and risks that calls for additional analysis.

The ultimate question for the team that pays a premium to free agents to reduce the risks and costs associated with making the wrong decisions about their own player is whether what they are doing is financially and/or baseball performance optimal.   Are they spending their money wisely?

That depends on whether or not there are less costly investments they could make in improving their evidence based confidence in judging the expected major league performance of their prospects.  In the series of posts I discussed some potentially cost-effective investments an organization could make.  The key idea is that the best predictor of performance is performance (as opposed to, say, skills or talent level).  But not just any performance will do.  

I argued that the best predictor of performance is performance under conditions that most closely approximate what the conditions the players will face at the major league level.  Teams can control this in several ways including fielding teams at the AA and AAA levels that include veterans with professional experience and others who have experience playing the style of play that the team teaches throughout the organization.  Read the relevant post for further development and clarification of my position. 

My main conclusion was that I believed that the Mets were adopting this kind of approach throughout the organization.  They were teaching a particular approach to the game both offensively and defensively, drafting and developing players accordingly.  I suggested that such an approach would be an integral part of the plan to produce sustained success at the major league level, and that it would do so by managing risk and costs optimally while increasing confidence in the team's ability to judge how well their best prospects would perform at the next level.  All of this is a matter of degree of course, and no strategy guarantees success.  Still the Mets are on to something in terms of creating one roster after another likely to compete at the highest level. Whereas player development never really ends, it is reasonable that the greatest marginal advancements should be made in the lower levels of minors and in the developmental leagues, and that more refinement both in performance, habits and style of play will occur at the AA and AAA levels.

Now it's time to turn theory in practice

I've decided that over the course of the current minor league season, I would track the performance of several of the Mets prospects scattered throughout the minors to see how the plan is working. I have drawn up an initial list of players scattered throughout the organization.  Here is my list

Infielders: Voit, Pena, Clifford, Reimer 

Outfielders: Ewing, Morabito, Serrano, Guzman 

Catchers: Suero, Guiterrez 

Pitchers: Wenninger, Santucci, Gordon, Watson, Tilly

I will report on how each is doing roughly once every two weeks.  That means I will probably cover half of the above list of players each week.  The problem will be giving roughly the same coverage to each starting pitcher as they obviously perform on a different schedule than do relievers and position players.  I will have to play this by ear, and see if I can develop a reliable reporting schedule.

A few other comments.  What I will be looking at is development.  For those in Port St. Lucie and Brooklyn, development just looks different than it does for players further along in their journey.  If you have particular metrics that you think I should employ, feel free to let me know in the comment section below.

Next, I make no claim about the uniqueness of the list I have drawn up.  One could have drawn up an equally good list consisting entirely of players none of whom are mentioned above.  I have left a couple of names off my list intentionally: specifically, Tong and Mauricio.  Mauricio is on his last option and I will discuss how he is doing from time to time as the season progresses.   I left Tong out because I believe the most important thing he will be doing this summer is developing secondary pitches and learning how to deal with adversity.  I expect to report on him from time to time as well.  Both Tong and Mauricio have also appeared in the majors but that is not why I left them off the list.  I just think there is more to learn about the others that is new at this stage in their development.

YOU are invited to join in

My list is not fixed in stone.  I expect that the performance of other players will draw fans' attention, and I will be prepared to make changes -- additions, subtractions based on reader interest as well as (God forbid) injury.  Just let me know in the comment section who you would like for me keep track of (and explain why), and I will do so even if I don't report on all of the suggested prospects from the outset.   I want to settle into a rhythm and figure out what sorts of information is interesting to the readership.

This will be more fun for all of us if you, dear reader, are willing to participate.

It's back to Coney Island for this Coney Island Baby (sorry Lou)

I grew up in Brooklyn, a driver and 3 wood (and a few hundred favorable bounces) away from Coney Island.  I played Little League baseball in the South Highway Little League on MacDonald Avenue at the outskirts of Beach Haven, where the great Woody Guthrie once lived and memorialized his run in with Fred Trump in song.  The Little League has since been fittingly renamed after the legendary Gil Hodges.  I have been credited with having thrown the first no-hitter in the league's history which was either the peak of my success or the start of my decline as a pitcher. It's all a matter of perspective, I guess. I pitched on the same team as Pete Falcone, who obviously had a far superior baseball career than me, as I never pitched for the Dodgers. 

Instead, I attended Dodger games at Ebbets Field since the age of 3 accompanied most often by my grandmother, Henrietta, my father's mother.  According to family lore, after graduating from High School and working to pay off his older brother's gambling debts, our father toiled as a minor league catcher in the lower rungs of the Dodger organization. His career was cut short by the combination of the need to earn a living and what was to be a life long battle with cancer that eventually did him in, but not before teaching my brothers and me how to throw a curve before we were 10 years old.  None of us have had Tommy John surgery, which is owed to the fact that our dad taught us good mechanics (even without the benefit of modern technology).  Our father endured tremendous pain over the course of his life, but never once failed to remind us  that 'rich or poor, it's good to have money' -- especially when our commitment to completing school work wavered.

My grandmother regularly wrote letters to Dodger President O'Malley demanding that she be hired to replace Walter Alston as the team's manager. I kid you not. She had strong opinions on just about every topic, and did not lack for confidence in them.

My older cousin Alan used to take me to Coney Island whenever we wanted to see the Dodgers at Ebbets Field.  There was a game in Coney Island where you bought three balls (maybe it was five) for a quarter (maybe it was dime) and you had to throw 3 of 3 (or maybe it was 5 of 5) in the strike zone which was a rectangle cut out of a wooden board.  If you succeeded in throwing the requisite number of strikes you were rewarded with a ticket to the game and a seat in the right field bleachers. 

My cousin Alan was among the best baseball players in the city at the time and regularly cashed in on game tickets for the two of us.  After a while the barker who ran the game just gave my cousin Alan the tickets to help save us some money.  My cousin was a contemporary of Rico Petrocelli, then the best ballplayer in New York and the star of the Sheepshead Bay High School team, one of the many high schools in New York that no longer exists as such. 

My cousin Alan continued to play in hardball baseball leagues until he was in his 50s. His son was hit by a pitch during his first at bat in his first game in Little League and gave up the game immediately.

In all the times I went to Coney Island, I could never bring myself to ride the famous, rickety, Cyclone. Well, this summer, I am returning to Coney Island (still afraid to ride the Cyclone) to cover the Cyclones for Mack's Mets.  I live in Ct now, but two of our children live in Brooklyn, and I expect to attend at least one Cyclone's game every two weeks when the team is in town and to report accordingly.  Hopefully I can entice one of our children into joining me from time to time.  

I hope to interview some players and coaches. I'd love to throw out a first pitch, preferably to my Dad.  That's even less likely than is my being transported to a waffle house in Burbank. Though I fully expect to avoid a ride on the Cyclone, as well as being transported to a waffle house, I am expecting to have a great time bringing some fun highlights to our readership.