Sickels On The Hitters

The whine for the longest time has been that the Nats don’t do enough in the International market. The 2011 CBA dramatically changed that avenue — read: spend your entire allotment *and* incur penalties for one (1) player — but the recent influx of Cuban players has brought that caterwauling back.

While it’s unlikely to appease the aforementioned folks, the Nats’ emphasis of scouting over spending is showing up on lists like Sickels’s. More than a A third of the seventeen 18 position players are from the Dominican Republic and obviously all of them have been acquired since the Rizzo regime began in 2009.

The distribution is better than last year, when nine of 15 were OFs, but still uneven: six OF’s, four C’s, two 2B’s, two 3B’s, one SS, one 3B, one 1B.

Before I list ’em out, a review of Sickels’s principles on hitters:

…Controlling the strike zone isn’t strictly not striking out (Sickels likes a batter to walk about 10% of his PAs) but also comparing BBs to Ks, which means a guy that doesn’t walk a lot is tolerable if he also doesn’t strike out much, and there are plenty of guys that both strike out a lot and walk a lot, but there are very few good hitters that don’t walk much and strike out a lot.

…Sickels likes to look at OPS+ and a variation of Bill James’ secondary average in relation to his batting average. His formula is basically doubles, plus twice the number of triples, plus three times the number of HRs, plus walks, plus the difference between SBs and CS, all divided by at-bats. The point? That a low-average guy that either hits for serious power or gets on base a lot is just as valuable if not more than a high-average batter with less power.

…Offensive speed is how well the player runs the bases, not how fast. The best baserunners are smart and fast, but as many of us have seen, they’re usually one or the other but rarely both.

…Defensively, Sickels freely admits that he has to rely on the scouts heavily because the more advanced defensive metrics (e.g. Zone Rating) simply aren’t available for the minors, noting that range (which ZR measures) is developmentally more important than reliability (which fielding percentage measures).

Here they are, listed from high-to-low letter grade first, alphabetically second:

Like yesterday, I’ve bolded the ones not listed in the BA Prospect Handbook. Unlike last year, just one of these outliers is a Dominican making noise in the GCL. Perez and Ballou are more widely known in our little bubble, so it’s always nice to see some exposure elsewhere.

Now for some tidbits from the book…

…Jakson Reetz is “HIGH CEILING ALERT” which is a new feature that Sickels is trying to denote guys who have “a conservative formal grade but who also have particularly high upside.” Less than two dozen players were given this tag.

…Most of the Turner writeup was devoted to his “weird case,” but if folks are wondering why he wasn’t graded higher, it’s because Sickels is considering the scouts’ opinion that the bat might not match the glove.

…This ought to be familiar to folks who know Michael Taylor is a favorite of mine: “Even with the progress he made last year Taylor is not the type of hitter who will win batting championships, but he should provide enough OBP, power, and speed to keep himself in the lineup. Add in the defensive ability and you have a fine player.”

…Sickels is losing faith, as others have here, in Brian Goodwin’s ability to overcome his weaknesses (strikeouts, handling offspeed pitches, keeping his swing mechanics in gear). No mention of the injury, which the gut feeling here is far worse than anyone is letting on.

…After explaining the difference in opinions on Renda’s draft position and catchet today (overdraft, o.g. respectively), Sickels remains optimistic but concedes that the drop in power (.405 to .377) merits the drop from B- to C+.

…Sickels still hasn’t gotten the memo that it’s pronounced “key-boom,” but was impressed with Kieboom’s surge in offense at Low-A Hagerstown, conceding that he was old for the level. Nevertheless, he put the tag of “SLEEPER ALERT” on him, as he did with Osvaldo Abreu (oops) and Rafael Bautista (yup) last year.

That concludes my review of the Sickels book, which you can buy online here.