The Preliminary 2020 Watchlist, Part Two
Now, which of your favorite 2019 draft picks did I miss? Because if I’m brutally honest, I could drop any or all of the “notables” and put them there.
You could also persuade me on two or three of the southpaws, who, like many blondes-from-a-bottle, wouldn’t get second a look if they were righthanded (FWIW, they’re all brunettes đ
Given the early returns on the small-but-pricey group of IFAs, it was a logical choice to drop the M*A*S*H category. (Yay! Look at the guys we have in rehab!)
In ten years here, my experience has been that pitchers elicit the most emotion/passion/discussion. Partly because a certain GM likes to trade them for MLB relievers in the short-term, of which the ones that have worked out you could count on one hand and still have a thumb. But mostly because Nats fans who were baseball fans prior to October 2019 true fans know that the game is won and/or lost with pitching.
Have at it in the comments, but I think I got the big rocks here. Let me know about the pebbles and sand in the comments.
| RHPs | LHPs | DSL Bats | DSL Arms | $$$ IFAs | Notables |
| Crowe | Braymer | Ray. Gomez | Montero | Aldonis (LHP) | McGowin |
| M. Sanchez | Teel | Marte | B. Hiraldo | J. Garcia (SS) | Williams |
| Sharp | Raquet | Geraldo | M. De La Rosa | A. Lara (RHP) | Bourque |
| Condra-Bogan | Cate | De La Cruz | Rodriguez | Marquez (LHP) | S. Romero |
| Fuentes | Cronin | Rivero | Caceres | D. Martinez (SS) | Klobosits |
| Bartow | Troop | Quintana (OF) | Denaburg | ||
| A. Lee | Chu | Santana (OF) | |||
| Rutledge | A. Hernandez | ||||
| Adon | E. Lee | ||||
| A. Guillen | B. Peña | ||||
| Irvin | Ferrer | ||||
| Turner | |||||
| Willingham | |||||
| N. Gomez | |||||
| Yean | |||||
| Seijas | |||||
| P. Gonzalez |
I’d definitely argue for two of the 2019 picks: Tyler Dyson and Todd Peterson, particularly if you’re going to list Willingham (which I would). Each is more of a “prospect” than 2/3 of the guys listed. I thought the experiment with Peterson as a starter was interesting, and also somewhat curious, considering how the organization could really stand to develop some legit bullpen arms.
Just a couple of other suggestions come to mind: Ryan Williamson under LHP, and Joan Baez under Notable Arms. His progress last season was certainly more “notable” than anything Denaburg or Romero have ever done as pros.
Regarding the order, this could be cleaned up a bit. Cronin, for example, was in Hagerstown, but is behind Lee (Auburn) and Ferrer (GCL). Guillen too is well below his peers in A+. Otherwise, you’re just inviting people to complain about the best player not being atop the list.
Meanwhile, some missing arms:
Tyler Dyson (RHP) and his 1.07 ERA have to merit inclusion.
Lucas Knowles (LHP) albeit limited time, displayed good number (0.91 WHIP 16:2 K:BB)
Pearson McMahan (RHP) made the AFL, nuff said, but the numbers back it up
Michael Cuevas (RHP) a pitcher drafted out of HS out the top couple rounds!!! That alone warrants inclusion in the notables, if not the RHP list.
Adrian Martinez (RHP) displayed some solid numbers between GCL and NYPL (2.41 ERA, 17 K, 18.2 IP, was 20 yo for most of the season)
Hunter McMahon (RHP) dominated NYPL (14:1 K:BB, 0.88 WHIP, 1.13 ERA (also has some pedigree as a 9th round pick)
Jairon Peguero (LHP) put together his 3rd straight solid season (2.00 ERA, 1.00 WHIP, 18:6 K:BB, 18 IP) in GCL/NYPL
Reid Schaller (RHP) 3.29 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, 47:25 K:BB in 52 IP is solid enough for inclusion (was also a 3rd rounder last season)
Christian Vann (LHP) wish theyâd have been more aggressive with him this season, given heâs 23, but he put up strong numbers; only 14 H allowed in 28.2 IP, but the control isnât great (16 BB), but the Ks are (28. Altogether, he had a very solid 1.05 WHIP and 1.57 ERA in Hagerstown.
Jackson Tetreault (RHP) donât need to say much, but even though he had a bumpy time in Harrisburg, heâs still very much on the prospect track.
I missed the bats post, but I have a few additions to add. I’ll post them in that thread.
My biggest quibble with a lot of these are too-small sample sizes — McMahon, Peguero, Martinez, Cuevas all had less than 20 IP. I did however reorder by highest level attained; it was a mistake in translating from the Excel to HTML.
I will echo Will on Tetreault and Schaller in particular.
The positive with the list in general is that I can look at it and count maybe 20 guys who have a chance to make the majors. I’m not saying they will, but they have a chance. I’m not even sure I could count 6-8 among the hitters. Now, considering how heavily the Nats have invested in arms in recent drafts, maybe this is the expected ratio. But it’s going to be hard to narrow down the Top 10 Arms. The Top 10 Bats list, on the other hand, after the top three or four, will be an exercise in magical thinking.
KW, I now have no reason to post because you said everything I was going to. đ
Luke, below are some inputs for your consideration in no particular order. Iâve done both parts 1 and 2 here. Some of these have already been mentioned by other folks.
1. Who is the Hurtado you list as a catcher? Is this supposed to be Jorge Hurtado who was an OF at GCL this year?
2. For the DSL bats I like the 18 yo catcher Murzi and his 688 OPS and 5 HRs better than De La Cruz who was also 18 yo but only had a 664 OPS and 1 HR playing LF.
3. If you do want to have a 3B column you could always put the following players who are already listed under NB in it: Noll who played 51 games at 3B at Fresno (the same number he played at 1B), Meregildo who played 55 games at 3B at Potomac and Lara who played 36 games at 3B at Hagerstown.
4. If youâre going to list Irvin and Racquet as pitchers I would list Tetreault and Schaller too. They all have pretty similar statistics but Tetreault made it to AA and Schaller had the best ERA.
5. I assume you didnât list Dyson because of his abnormally low SO rate of 4.0 per 9, but his 1.14 ERA as a new high draft pick is hard to ignore.
6. For the DSL pitchers I like the 17 yo Jose Cedeno and his 3.41 ERA better than the 19 yo Hiraldo & Caceras with their over 4.00 ERAs and the 20 yo De La Rosa with his 6.27 ERA.
For pitchers, I really don’t consider ERA ahead of FIP because minor-league scorekeeping is so bad. FIP isn’t perfect either, but it’s better because it takes into account the three true outcomes. A lot of the “what-about’s” have this problem (e.g. Schaller 4.43 FIP, 3.29 ERA).
Iâm not a huge fan of FIP because it doesnât take into account âweak contactâ. Some people may not think itâs a real thing but there are certainly some guys who generate a lot more soft grounders and lazy fly balls than others which FIP ignores. I think opponent OPS would be my one preferred stat if I had to pick one.
I would absolutely agree that some pitchers have that skill. I can recall a particular pitcher with an independent team (Joe Ricciardi, 2003 North Shore Spirit) who had a knack for getting popups in the deep infield/shallow outfield when he really needed them (e.g. runner on 3rd less than two out, bases loaded nobody out). Obviously that’s anecdotal, but I’m not sure how FIP “ignores” that because while these kinds of pitchers may “lose” strikeouts by virtue of popups that are caught instead of going foul, that would be more than offset by fewer HRs and fewer walks.
For example, Ricciardi gave up just 1 in 42 IP that summer and had an FIP of 2.61. Assuming he was age-appropriate-to-the-level, a guy like that would have been on my radar — especially because the gap between his ERA (3.43) and FIP was nearly a full run, even though his walk rate was pedestrian (also 3.43) plus he had more than a K/IP (43 in 42). I’d love to have Opposing OPS, or even just opposing SLG%, but these stats are difficult to come by at the minor-league level.
Luke,
The below Baseball Reference page for the Nationals pitchers has a column for OPS that the pitchers give up.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/WSN/washington-nationals-organization-pitching.shtml
As for how FIP doesn’t evaluate weak contact guys very well, I’ll quote a paragraph from the below link from The Sporting News.
https://www.sportingnews.com/us/mlb/news/what-is-fip-era-pitching-baseball-mlb-stats-statistics-advanced-sabermetrics/d5p48p6z6us51lqbo0wvgigto
“For instance, FIP does a poor job in evaluating ground ball or fly-ball pitchers who donât strike out a lot of batters. A ground-ball or fly-ball pitcher relies heavily upon their defense to back them up. Their strategy is to induce weak contact from batters that can be easily fielded. Itâs a sound strategy, but FIP punishes them for relying on their defenders, so a pitcher such as Kyle Hendricks will put up great ERA numbers but poor FIP numbers.”
I fixed the link for you — it had been for batters not pitchers. Sure enough, Tyler Dyson led the organization in lowest opponent OPS.
And FWIW, that same article also makes the argument that I’ve been making on this site for 10 years:
I crunched the numbers into a spreadsheet, using 20IP as the minimum and age 25 as the maximum (though I left the <20's on separate tabs for reference sake): https://send.firefox.com/download/91d47133d0a0c47b/#sFkOT56QEHEbok-nn39zMw
Brian OâGrady seems like a guy DFAd by Reds who might fit the F troop mold
Thanks Mark. I’m glad to be able to be so positive every once in a while! It will be a (good) challenge to put together the Top 10 Arms list.
I do wonder how the Nat arms collection is thought of outside the organization . . . and how much trade value some might have . . .
Along with some of the aforementioned, I think Pearson McMahan merits a spot, given the Nats found a spot for him in the AFL.
If I might make category suggestions, splitting pitchers into starters, relievers, and swingmen might be instructive.
One more thing to note, a massive congratulations to you Luke for managing to come up with even just one player (never mind 10!) worthy of attention from that, to put it nicely, very poor DSL team. After Raymi Gomez, Daniel Marte and Ivan Murzi (who finished in GCL) on the bat side, there isn’t anyone worthy of “notability”. And to be honest, Gomez is less impressive once you factor in his age (8 months OLDER than Luis Garcia).
On the arms side, you’ve been even more generous, including a pitcher with a 6.27 ERA (de la Rosa) and one with a 1.51 WHIP (Caceres). You should swap either out (or both) for Jose Cedeno. He was one of the youngest players on the team (born October 2001, thus 17 yo), and put up the best pitching numbers on the team: 3.41 ERA, 32:11 K:BB, 1.17 WHIP in 34 IP (7 starts).
I blew it on the DSL guys by not looking more closely at the ages. It’s hard because part of the Nats’ strategy has been to focus on “older” players, though in the aggregate they were younger than league average (bats and arms).