The Winter Conferences all the time characteristic 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 Purple Sox for 4 prospects. The perfect 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 comparable 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 lodge that briefly hosted the middle of the baseball universe. However I believe each groups have been appearing rationally, and that worrying about Teel and Quero overlapping is foolish. I can’t show it for you – however I did give you some information that can hopefully sway your opinion.
Cleveland’s case was simple. 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 assume the Guardians would’ve used him there.) Considered one of them would trip the bench regardless of being an above-average contributor, a poor resolution for a group that’s attempting to maximise its assets. One thing needed to give.
Then again, there are the White Sox. They, too, traded a younger star, and the most effective participant they bought again performs a place the place they already had an identical possibility. Teel was our 42th-ranked prospect on our up to date High 100 record in 2024, a elegant all-around catcher who we count on to achieve 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 elegant all-around catcher who we count on to achieve the majors sooner or later within the subsequent two years.
What makes these two conditions completely 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 identical time, although, which implies that one is obstructing out the present-day worth of the opposite. On condition that the Guardians are targeted on making the playoffs in 2025, that doesn’t actually work. Then again, Teel and Quero aren’t useful to the White Sox due to what they’ll do in 2025; for them, it’s extra in regards to the future.
Whenever you hear “High 100 Prospect,” don’t take that as a remaining proclamation on what a participant will probably be. For instance, our 2019 High 100 record had a delightfully various midsection:
2019 High Prospects, 46-56
Your future worth isn’t any assure of the place you’ll find yourself. There are tons of uncertainty. You’ll be able to consider a 50-FV prospect as extra of a distribution of doable future outcomes:
You’ll be able to 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 onerous 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 really 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 comparable main leaguers, possibly worrying about them blocking one another is cheap. If the unfold is huge, or if the more than likely final result is failure, that’s much less clear. Estimating that distribution of outcomes isn’t straightforward, but it surely’s definitely doable.
I made just a few assumptions to get a tough concept of how this appears in actual life. First, I assumed that the White Sox try to compete three years from now – I needed to decide a quantity, and that one felt like an inexpensive center estimate. Subsequent, I made a decision that I’d take a look at projected WAR per 600 plate appearances as an estimator. Lastly, I needed to decide 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 High 100 prospect record in a given yr.
I needed to keep away from having the information overly corrupted by the shortage 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 next three years. I used projections relatively than outcomes as a result of not all of those gamers bought 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 scores 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 corresponding to hitting prospects, so I’m retaining the 2 separate. That also gave me 158 observations, a lot sufficient for my functions right here.
My first remark: There’s an actual probability of failure; 33 of the 158 hitters with a 50 FV have 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’ll be able to rely on.
One other 20% of the prospects (34 out of 158) have 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 highway. That’s the largest inhabitants, and in addition the central final result. 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 here are the information I used, in a really stripped-down model, in case you really feel like taking part in alongside at house.
Let’s strive that chart once more, this time with some odds on it:
Now that we now have a distribution, we will 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, at the least) of ending up as a participant projected for greater than 3.0 WAR three years down the highway. 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 improvement is, broadly talking, impartial.
Whenever you put it that method, 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 rather a lot higher than a 17% probability. Even higher, the chance of smash decreases considerably when you have got two catchers as a substitute of 1. Contemplate the Padres and Rays. They’re good groups, frequent playoff contenders with loads of star-level performers. And but, over the past 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 quick in comparison with their opponents. And what are they purported to do about it? Good catchers are onerous to accumulate. You’ll be able to’t simply transfer somebody over from an identical defensive place. The perfect ones largely don’t make it to free company. In the event you begin with a nasty scenario, and may’t one way or the other 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 information recommend that the White Sox could be taking a look at a nasty final result – 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 an absence of choices at catcher. The percentages of that taking place dip to 18% in case you as a substitute have two 50-FV catchers to develop. So let’s take a look at our chart one final time, this time with the results of two 50-FV prospects on the identical 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 doable. There are solely so many wins to go round. Hoping your guys pan out isn’t a very good team-building technique; it’s necessary to have backup plans and redundancy. Risky gamers at far-away timelines are dangerous, and I don’t see something flawed with managing that danger by concentrating on an thrilling prospect like Teel.
Possibly I’m preaching to the choir on this one. It feels fairly simple to me: Prospects fail, so there’s nothing flawed with having extras in case 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 in case 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.
