Sickels on the Hitters
Looking over previous years’ version of this particular post, it would appear that Washington has finally reached that long hoped-for point where it not only develops both pitchers and hitters, but position players at nearly every position.
I have to use “nearly” because I’m still not thrilled with the depth at every position. Let’s just say Matt Skole and Jose Marmolejos-Diaz should not be allowed to ride in the same vehicle.
Now that I’ve shown that the DC-area sense of entitlement has worn off on me after 10 years of living here, I only need to look here to remind myself how things have changed.
Like the pitchers, Sickels has some principles that I’d like summarize before we look at the list:
…Instead of the Five Tools, Sickels looks at what he calls the Seven Skills:
1) Controlling the strike zone 2) Hitting for power 3) Hitting for average 4) Offensive speed 5) Fielding range 6) Fielding reliability
7) Throwing utility
…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.
Here they are, listed from high-to-low letter grade first, alphabetically second:
| Trea Turner – A- (B) | Raudy Read – C+ (C+) | Spencer Kieboom – C (C+) |
| Victor Robles – B (C) | Max Schrock* – C+ | Edwin Lora – C |
| Wilmer Difo – B- (B-) | Pedro Severino – C+ (C+) | Jose Marmolejos-Diaz – C |
| Anderson Franco – B- (C) | Rhett Wiseman – C+ | Jakson Reetz – C (C+) |
| Andrew Stevenson – B- | Telmito Agustin – C | Matt Skole – C (C) |
| Osvaldo Abreu – C+ | Brian Goodwin – C (C+) | Juan Solo – C |
| Rafael Bautista – C+ (C+) | Kelvin Gutierrez – C | Drew Ward – C (B-) |
| Christopher Bostick – C+ (C+) |
As I did yesterday, the bolded names are the ones that don’t appear in the BA book, the italics are 2015 draft picks, and Sickels’s SLEEPER PICK has an asterisk. FWIW, Brian Goodwin appears in the “exclusive bonus supplement,” but like the BA editors, I don’t feel like making the effort to code his name with semibold typeface.
Now for the tidbits…
• Not much else to say about Turner that you haven’t heard, read, or seen previously — needs more polish controlling the strike zone and may struggle some when he does get the call, but once he adjusts he’ll be an everyday SS.
• Sickels picked Robles in his 2015 book and obviously since Robles had a breakout year, a little chest-thumping (no different than yours truly when a DSL Guy does well, see below 😉 — otherwise, he’s in tune with the chorus that Robles is the next big thing.
• Likewise, he feels that Anderson Franco may be the next Victor Robles, but cautions that it might not be until 2017.
• Telmito Agustin was the fourth SLEEPER PICK and the sole position player. As noted in the comments, the stats have caught my eye and same for Sickels. Reportedly his defense is raw, which for teenage players, is about as shocking as learning that blonde starlet in that hit movie was born a brunette.
• Unfortunately, Sickels believes “The Orange” could get squeezed at higher levels if he doesn’t develop more power and/or defensive range.
With that, I finish up my annual review of the Sickels book, which you can purchase here.
No rating on Ballou?
Twenty-six year olds generally don’t get a lot of prospect love unless they have the kind of season Souza had in 2014.
Odd Goodwin is listed since he turns 26 this year.
Indeed. I’ve been railing against incumbency for years here. I don’t care when a guy was drafted or how much they spent on him. Is there a correlation? Sure, but the last CBA changed the rules so dramatically that, for example, teams collectively (collusively?) decided it made more sense to draft college seniors in rounds 4 through 10 in order to maximize their bonus pools. Link.
Put more simply: A 4th round pick from 2011 or earlier is not the same as a 4th round pick from 2012 onward.The draft is about money and “signability,” not talent. That’s one of the reasons I detest it, don’t follow it, and don’t get caught up in its chicanery (not only that Skipper, a lot of it is just pure bullshit).
Skole is a year and a half older than Goodwin. Taylor Jordan is half a year older than Skole.
Karl mentioned Souza below. He did catch fire at about Goodwin’s age and dominate the IL. However, he had shown good signs of improvement in the year or so leading up to that explosion. Goodwin has not. There’s still hope, but it’s just a small flicker.
Skole gets the benefit of a thin position for WAS, while the fans still think of Jordan as a prospect, he exhausted his rookie eligibility in 2013. The obsession with Goodwin, to me, is just stubbornness of some people (*cough* Nats front office *cough*) to admit they may have been wrong about him.
I agree on Goodwin. The Nats acted like they had stolen a superstar. I don’t know that Goodwin ever had very refined baseball skills, though, and having him skip Potomac was insane. In some ways it shows how talented Goodwin was that he didn’t completely sink at Harrisburg, but he didn’t thrive, either, and his skills set never fully caught up.
Skole may eventually get his cup of coffee in the majors, although I’m not sure it will be with the Nats. Clint Robinson came to the organization last year and just did most of the things Skole can do, but a little better.
Skole continues to generate that really high OBP and more XBH than single base hits almost consistently. If you replace the now very ancient batting average with OBP Skole begins to look a great deal more interesting? And maybe why he is still in camp and T-Mo outrighted to Syracuse.
Of all the “older” prospects Skole seems to be the one who like Souza may be about to break out in a big way. And he is a left-handed power bat with the potential to be an impact bat. He can also manage better than most of the “big bats” in the Nat’s system to play the field and even multiple positions.
Skole was reassigned on the first round of cuts.
As for his OBP, it was only .340 last season, which is good but a far cry from .409 he put up in 2011-2012 (in 190 games). In fact, he’s only posted a .346 mark in 2014 and 2015 (264 games). Likewise for the slugging percentage — .482 in 2011-12 vs. .430 in 2014-15, not bad but not what you want from a CI. This would be promising if Skole were 24 going on 25 (April) as Souza was in 2014, but he’s 26 going on 27 (July).
Luke, I agree about the encouraging organizational progress with hitters. However, collectively, it’s hard to look at this lot and come up with many guys who have a really good chance to be a regular for a contender. In 2009-10, heck yeah, I could have envisioned a lot of these guys on South Capitol. But now?
Turner seems to fit the starter-for-contender description, and Robles has shown every indication he can be in that class, but neither he nor Franco has even been in a full-season league yet. But would anyone bet much that any of the other guys on the list would be regulars on the Nats? (Soto excepted, as he hasn’t even played yet.) I would say that Difo, Stevenson, Wiseman, and perhaps Severino all have outside chances. With many of the Latin guys, it’s still too early to say. With the others, I hope they prove me wrong!
I can’t quibble to much with Sickels’s grades. The general love for Raudy Read continues to surprise me. The curious omission to me is Mejia, although his lack of plate discipline probably horrifies Sickels.
Lots of these guys are really young and won’t be ready until around the the time that the Nats have to fish or cut bait with Harper. By then, Zimmerman and Werth and their anchor-like contracts will also be gone, and the Nats are going to look far different than they do today.
Who rises up to replace the departed will be dependent on who plays well going forward. Souza, for example, went from aging, nearly forgotten former prospect to MLB starting OF’er in just a couple seasons.
As for Mejia, has to start taking more than one walk a month or he’s going to get eat alive at the higher levels.
It seems pretty clear, at least to me, that 21 year old Pedro Severino will be the starting catcher perhaps as soon as this season. And he should be there then … in him perhaps they could end up with an I-Rod. He has that potential.