2018 Minor League Baseball Analyst

By Jeremy Deloney and Rob Gordon

The first book of its kind to fully integrate sabermetrics and scouting, the 2018 Minor League Baseball Analyst provides a distinctive brand of analysis for more than 1,000 minor league baseball players. Features include scouting reports for all players, batter skills ratings, pitch repertoires, performance trends, major league equivalents, and expected major league debuts. A complete sabermetric glossary is also included. This one-of-a-kind reference is ideally suited for baseball analysts and those who play in fantasy leagues with farm systems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Triumph Books
• Release date: Mar 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781633199477

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INTRODUCTION

Growing Edges

by Brent Hershey

This game.

One of the tenets of prospect evaluation is that there’s always something to learn. The prospects that we examine—okay, maybe obsess over is a more accurate term—are still-developing human beings who continue to evolve in their baseball skills, physiques, abilities, all as they negotiate adulthood. The offseason provides time to evaluate and then rank them, as if we can reach some nebulous goal of quintessential prospect card-reading. But we’re fooling ourselves if we don’t remember that this offseason evaluation of players is always, always, always one thing:

In-progress.

To treat our recommendations as anything else is silly, shortsighted, and in many cases just downright arrogant. We’ll never get it 100% right (just look at our Top 100 archives in this book for instance (starting on page 132)), but the push to improve in our evaluation process is the allure that keeps us coming back. While it’s arrogant to act like one knows how player × will adjust to major-league pitching, or be able to improve his feel for a change-up, it’s very good practice to always be looking back, trying to add some small sliver of knowledge or perspective to our ever-expanding evaluation toolbox.

Enter Rhys Hoskins and The Quality At-bat. Though there’s no metric (beyond pitches per plate appearance, by which Hoskins fared very well in 2017) to quantify it, we’ll still try to define it. A quality at-bat is an at-bat where a batter (among other things): 1) sees a lot of pitches; 2) establishes good ball-strike recognition and ability to take a walk; 3) shows the ability to not swing at pitches out of the strike zone; 4) demonstrates he can foul off, or spoil, quality strikes; and ultimately 5) crushes pitches that he can handle or that the pitcher missed his spot on. That last element is important, because no matter how patient a hitter is (or how adept the hitter is at fouling off a pitcher’s pitch, etc.), if he isn’t able to punish a mistake with frequency, he’s less likely to be noticed or feared in the lineup.

Hoskins, of course, did all these during most of his two-month debut, in which he hit 11 HR in his first 18 games, firmly implanting himself as a power-hitting center of a rebuilding Phillies lineup. While it’s still a small sample size, and Hoskins still has much to prove, the kernel of something special is there, both in real life and in fantasy circles.

Some history on Hoskins, and how I came to realize the importance of quality at-bats. Hoskins was drafted in the 5th round in 2014 from Sacramento State University. As a right-handed hitting college first baseman, Hoskins faced an uphill battle to the majors from the start. Why? There are just not many MLB starting first basemen who were right-handed hitting college first basemen. A quick and informal scan of MLB depth charts as of January 2018 revealed just two, in fact: Paul Goldschmidt (1B, ARI) and C.J. Cron (1B, LAA).

One is a superstar, the other, a youngish player whose MLB future is far from decided. The point is just two out of 30 fit Hoskins’ profile. So when you hear the adage that right-handed hitting first base prospects have to be exceptional hitters—this is what we mean.

Now let’s examine how this publication covered Hoskins during his time in the minors. (Disclosure: As the writer of the comments on the Phillies prospects for several seasons, almost all of the following is my own work).

After signing his pro contract in 2014, Hoskins was placed in short-season Williamsport of the New York Penn League (NYPL), where he hit .237/.297/.408. He did have 9 HR in 245 AB, but on the whole the debut was nondescript. Hoskins didn’t get his own box in the 2015 edition of this book (meaning we didn’t feel like he was among the Phillies top 30 or so prospects for 2015), but did earn a mention in the 2014 Draft Recap as a reliable hitter at Sacramento State, though he struggled in the NYPL.

Hoskins moved up to Low-A Lakewood in 2015. With a better contact rate and a bit more patience, he slugged another 9 HR in 255 AB, but upped his slashline to an impressive .322/.384/.525, earning him a mid-season promotion to High-A Clearwater. This was not yet out of line for an established collegiate hitter, and the mid-season promotion clearly was to challenge him at the next level. The stat results in High-A were similar—243 AB, 8 HR, .317/.390/.510. He then appeared in the 2016 edition of the book, with this description:

As RH college 1B, the bar is high, but rose to occasion in first full season. Long swing, great extension, but without normal huge holes. No noticeable platoon split, but speed not part of his game. Good agility around the bag on defense. Has surprised with hitting acumen so far, but upper-level arms will be the true test.

We gave him a 7C grade—an MLB regular’s ceiling, but our concerns about production at the high minors enough to hedge our bets with the C (50% chance of reaching that ceiling).

In 2016, Hoskins advanced to AA-Reading, and he took off, battling teammate Dylan Cozens for the minor-league HR crown that Cozens eventually won. But in 498 AB, Hoskins went deep 38 times, while showing improved patience (12% walk rate) and career-high OPS (.937) from a .281/.371/.566 line. The caveat was that the Reading ballpark is a known hitters paradise, a combination of great sightlines for hitters and often-favorable wind conditions. Home run figures there typically inflate a player’s power numbers. So even though Hoskins did fine with his first taste of upper-level pitching, we still stayed skeptical, as noted in his commentary in the 2017 edition of the book:

Has continued to hit—and with power—at each step. Some stiffness to his swing, is pull-happy, and has trouble tracking quality breaking stuff. But is patient enough to get into FB counts, will take a walk, and has light-tower strength. Lack of speed and only average defense limits his overall projection, so he’ll need to keep producing in the box.

We moved Hoskins into our Phillies top 15 (#14) for 2017, but we left his grade at 7C. Of course he had no trouble with Triple-A pitching in 2017 (29 HR in 475 AB; .284/.385/.581), was promoted on August 11, and that magical two-month run was off and running.

In addition to assigning the grades and writing the commentary, I also got to see Hoskins in person at various levels of his minor-league career. I too was surprised to his initial success, but as I watched him handling himself more like a polished veteran than a green-cheeked rookie, I was curious to look back at my game notes at the different stages of his development. And I soon came upon something I obviously sidestepped in my evaluation of Hoskins: his repeated ability to put together quality at-bats.

I first saw Hoskins in person in May of 2015 in Lakewood. He went 2-for-5 with a walk; with several hard-hit balls. Strong, and saw a good number of pitches, my notes read. Will need to lay off soft stuff. In 2016 and 2017, my high-minors looks increased.

And in almost in every viewing, he continued to run deep counts and wait for his pitch to hit. He logged a number of six-, seven- and eight-pitch at-bats over this time. A representative note from August 2016: Worked it; nice AB as he drew a walk on pitch number nine after fouling off three pitches. Good patience my notes read in 2017 as he let a just-outside 96 mph fastball go by for ball four.

That characteristic stayed with Hoskins all the way to the majors. His MLB AB were marked by all the characteristicis of a good at-bat above—only this time, it was against world-class pitching. The challenge will be to sustain that focus over a whole season. But in looking back—granted, with a bit of 20/20 hindsight—one can see these attributes in his minors AB, even if I didn’t recognize them at that point.

Of course, this is not to say that every player who puts together good at-bats in the minors will be able to find success early-on in their MLB career. But from a player evaluation standpoint, it’s fair to say that from this experience with Hoskins, I have added an awareness of the fuzzily-defined good at-bat to my list of characteristics to be keenly aware of.

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Long-time readers of the Minor League Baseball Analyst will no doubt recognize most of the elements of the pages that follow in this 13th Edition. For both new and old, let’s run through the features and structure.

The Insights section provides some narrative details and tools you can use as you prepare for getting the most out