The Winter Conferences all the time function trades, however two stood above the fray final week. First, the Guardians traded Andrés Giménez to the Blue Jays in a two-part transaction that briefly left Cleveland with three lefty-hitting first basemen. Then the White Sox traded Garrett Crochet to the Crimson Sox for 4 prospects. The most effective of that group, Kyle Teel, occurs to play catcher, the identical place as Chicago’s prime prospect Edgar Quero. They even have the identical future worth grade of fifty, which is the cutoff for prime 100 prospects.
The Guardians made an additional commerce to keep away from doubling up on related archetypes, sending Spencer Horwitz to the Pirates for 3 younger pitchers, however the White Sox simply stored each catchers. I heard quite a lot of murmured questioning of that call as I walked across the Dallas resort that briefly hosted the middle of the baseball universe. However I believe each groups had been appearing rationally, and that worrying about Teel and Quero overlapping is foolish. I can’t show it for you – however I did provide you with some information that can hopefully sway your opinion.
Cleveland’s case was easy. Steamer tasks Horwitz as a 2.5 WAR/600 PA participant. It tasks Kyle Manzardo as a 1.8 WAR/600 PA participant. Josh Naylor? Steamer has him down for two.4 WAR/600 PA. Three gamers for 2 positions — first and DH. (Sure, Horwitz has performed second base, too, however he actually shouldn’t be a second baseman, and I don’t suppose the Guardians would’ve used him there.) One in all them would journey the bench regardless of being an above-average contributor, a poor determination for a group that’s attempting to maximise its assets. One thing needed to give.
Alternatively, there are the White Sox. They, too, traded a younger star, and one of the best participant they obtained again performs a place the place they already had an identical possibility. Teel was our 42th-ranked prospect on our up to date Prime 100 listing in 2024, a cultured all-around catcher who we count on to succeed in the majors sooner or later within the subsequent two years. Quero was our Fortieth-ranked prospect, and also you’re by no means going to imagine this, however he’s a cultured all-around catcher who we count on to succeed in the majors sooner or later within the subsequent two years.
What makes these two conditions totally different? Time. These three two-win first basemen? That’s what they’re proper now. All three can’t play within the majors on the similar time, although, which implies that one is obstructing out the present-day worth of the opposite. Provided that the Guardians are targeted on making the playoffs in 2025, that doesn’t actually work. Alternatively, Teel and Quero aren’t useful to the White Sox due to what they’ll do in 2025; for them, it’s extra concerning the future.
If you hear “Prime 100 Prospect,” don’t take that as a last proclamation on what a participant will likely be. For instance, our 2019 Prime 100 listing had a delightfully diversified midsection:
2019 Prime Prospects, 46-56
Your future worth isn’t any assure of the place you’ll find yourself. There are tons of uncertainty. You possibly can consider a 50-FV prospect as extra of a distribution of potential future outcomes:
You possibly can quibble over what precisely this implies. Are our estimates imperfect? Undoubtedly. Do gamers enhance or worsen in unpredictable methods? Completely. Is that this randomness? Destiny? Unforeseeable laborious work and confidence? One thing deterministic that we merely don’t have the instruments to detect but? I don’t have a solution for you. The purpose is that whereas the label we’re placing on each White Sox catchers now is identical, what they’ll truly flip into as main leaguers is way from sure.
That’s all pretty apparent, however the magnitude issues. If the unfold of outcomes is slender, if most prospects much like Teel and Quero flip into broadly related main leaguers, perhaps worrying about them blocking one another is cheap. If the unfold is extensive, or if the most probably consequence is failure, that’s much less clear. Estimating that distribution of outcomes isn’t simple, nevertheless it’s actually doable.
I made a number of assumptions to get a tough concept of how this appears to be like in actual life. First, I assumed that the White Sox are attempting to compete three years from now – I needed to choose a quantity, and that one felt like an affordable center estimate. Subsequent, I made a decision that I’d have a look at projected WAR per 600 plate appearances as an estimator. Lastly, I needed to choose a pattern of real-life gamers to make use of as comparisons. I used all of the place gamers with 50-FV grades on our Prime 100 prospect listing in a given 12 months.
I wished to keep away from having the info overly corrupted by the dearth of a 2020 minor league season, so I settled on utilizing three years: prospects from 2019 projected for 2022, prospects from 2021 projected for 2024, and prospects from 2022 projected for this upcoming season. In plain English, I took our prospect lists and checked out how the gamers who got a 50 FV developed over the following three years. I used projections reasonably than outcomes as a result of not all of those gamers obtained full taking part in time, so small-sample variance would swamp the outcomes in any other case. Equally, I made a decision to not restrict my pattern to catchers with 50-FV rankings as a result of there merely weren’t sufficient of them.
I selected to exclude pitchers from this research. I’d must make assumptions about what number of innings equate to 600 plate appearances, they usually don’t appear clearly akin to hitting prospects, so I’m conserving the 2 separate. That also gave me 158 observations, loads sufficient for my functions right here.
My first commentary: There’s an actual probability of failure; 33 of the 158 hitters with a 50 FV had been projected for 0.5 or fewer WAR per 600 plate appearances three years later. A few of these guys by no means made the majors. Some did and underperformed. Roughly 20% of the time, in different phrases, your stable hitting prospect by no means materializes into somebody you possibly can depend on.
One other 20% of the prospects (34 out of 158) had been projected for between 0.5 and 1.5 WAR per 600 plate appearances three years later. That’s a pleasant rotational participant, roughly; 2.0 WAR per 600 PA is the league common. Talking of that, one other 40% (64 out of 158) projected for between 1.5 and three.0 WAR three years down the street. That’s the most important inhabitants, and likewise the central consequence. Loads of stable prospects turn out to be stable gamers, nothing roughly.
The highest finish is extra diffuse. There are 21 gamers between 3.0 and 4.0 WAR, 5 within the 4.0-5.0 vary, after which Gunnar Henderson alone on the prime, projected for practically 6.5 WAR per 600 PA in 2025. Listed below are the info I used, in a really stripped-down model, should you really feel like taking part in alongside at residence.
Let’s strive that chart once more, this time with some odds on it:
Now that now we have a distribution, we are able to take into consideration what the White Sox are doing a bit extra clearly. Any particular person 50-FV prospect has a 17% probability (on this information set, no less than) of ending up as a participant projected for greater than 3.0 WAR three years down the street. However you probably have two prospects taking part in the identical place, there’s a one-in-three probability (31%) of growing an All-Star-caliber possibility, assuming their growth is, broadly talking, impartial.
If you put it that approach, what the White Sox are doing makes extra sense. Having a 31% probability of growing a catcher who’s a borderline All-Star or higher sounds loads higher than a 17% probability. Even higher, the danger of destroy decreases considerably when you’ve got two catchers as an alternative of 1. Contemplate the Padres and Rays. They’re good groups, frequent playoff contenders with loads of star-level performers. And but, during the last three years, they’re twenty third and twenty fourth in catcher WAR.
That unquestionably hurts their skill to compete within the playoffs – every are mainly taking part in a roster spot brief in comparison with their opponents. And what are they imagined to do about it? Good catchers are laborious to accumulate. You possibly can’t simply transfer somebody over from an identical defensive place. The most effective ones principally don’t make it to free company. If you happen to begin with a nasty state of affairs, and may’t in some way persuade the Braves and A’s to ship you William Contreras for nearly nothing (hello Milwaukee!), you’re out of luck.
With one prime catching prospect, the info recommend that the White Sox could be taking a look at a nasty consequence – a backup or full washout – roughly 43% of the time. Think about exiting a rebuild that took you half a decade and resulted in some completely depressing groups, solely to have your new contender hamstrung by a scarcity of choices at catcher. The chances of that occuring dip to 18% should you as an alternative have two 50-FV catchers to develop. So let’s have a look at our chart one final time, this time with the results of two 50-FV prospects on the similar place:
Nobody desires to plan on failure. It will be nice if each prospect panned out. However that simply can’t occur – it’s not even mathematically potential. There are solely so many wins to go round. Hoping your guys pan out isn’t a superb team-building technique; it’s vital to have backup plans and redundancy. Unstable gamers at far-away timelines are dangerous, and I don’t see something flawed with managing that threat by focusing on an thrilling prospect like Teel.
Perhaps I’m preaching to the choir on this one. It feels fairly easy to me: Prospects fail, so there’s nothing flawed with having extras should you’re not attempting to place them in your main league roster proper this minute. However the idea of blocking is overused amongst prospects. Getting good gamers is a superb concept. The place they play issues lower than how good they’re, and doubling up might be useful should you’re attempting to keep away from leaving a gap in your roster. Variance is actual – the great groups account for it of their decision-making.
