Jacob amaya fangraphs professional#

One other difference of note is that I spent much of 2020 honing the minor league translations for lower-level prospects, with the biggest change being the implementation of some probability-based fielding data into the BABIP models. Players with more upside but who needed time to develop it generally lost the most in the projections as a result of losing a year of their careers, as did the older prospects. There’s not as much movement here as there has been in past years simply because there was no minor league season to send stocks soaring or crashing. What ZiPS couldn’t see was one of Betances’ teammates teaching him a new slider grip, which resulted in a pitch on the slider/cutter border that terrorized batters for five seasons. After all, guys who walk seven batters a game in the minors rarely pan out in the majors. When he was an extremely erratic starting pitcher with severe control issues, ZiPS didn’t see any real upside. One good example in the other direction is Dellin Betances. As it turns out, however, actual performance has a lot of predictive value, and ZiPS is very happy to see a two-to-three win contributor like Wong where a prospect-watcher may be relatively unimpressed with his upside potential. ZiPS doesn’t know who has a hitch in their swing and an inconsistent arm slot. Statcast and the like give us clever ways to capture things like speed or a pitcher’s stuff more effectively than ever before, but these measures can’t tell us everything, and they’re generally less available for minor leaguers. This is less of a problem in the big leagues because by the time a player has reached the top of the organizational ladder, they will generally have already needed to convert at least some of their raw tools into baseball skills. And while ZiPS will miss more often on the toolsy guys, there were also some higher floor guys who ZiPS liked better than the other prognosticators, including Mookie Betts, George Springer, Marcus Semien, Kolten Wong, and Joc Pederson. If we look back to the prospects from the inaugural ZiPS Top 100, they’ve gone on to combine for 638 WAR in the majors. ZiPS has the capability to use college stats when it has little choice - which is why you’ll see Spencer Torkelson and Austin Martin appear - but there’s just nothing for ZiPS to work with when we’re talking about someone like Jasson Dominguez.īut when ZiPS does have something to say, it does a decent job of identifying future major leaguers. It’s not that ZiPS dislikes them or doubts their future, it’s just that the system doesn’t have anything useful to say.

Jacob amaya fangraphs professional#

You will also notice, as usual, that there are a few players who appeared on Eric Longenhagen’s Top 100 who are missing here, simply because they have only played in high school and no professional games. But those environments can’t replace live opponents who are trying to crush your hopes and dreams, and they didn’t generate much in the way of useful statistics. Some prospects were left to train at home, while others saw time at their team’s alternate site or in Fall Instructional League. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, we didn’t have a minor league season. That last bit is an especially tricky puzzle for 2021. They play baseball against inconsistent competition and have much shorter resumés than established major leaguers. Projecting prospects is hard, as you’re mostly dealing with very young players, some of whom aren’t even done physically developing. While ZiPS and other systems like it can see patterns in the data that are hard for humans to extract, humans have their own special tricks. I like to think that I’ve developed a pretty useful tool over the years, but don’t get me wrong: a projection system is not even remotely a substitute for proper scouting. If you’re unaware of what the ZiPS projections are or the purpose they serve, please consult this article as well as this one while I reconsider my public relations strategy.

Fantasy Update: 2021 Re-Draft Top 25/Dynasty Top 200įor the sixth year, ZiPS returns to crank out its top 100 prospects for the upcoming season.

How Will Teams Approach This Year's Draft?.

Prospect Limbo: The Best of the 2021 Post-Prospects.

Picks to Click: Who We Expect to Make the 2022 Top 100.Which Kinds of Prospects Were Most Affected by the Year Off?.Updating the 2021, 2022, and 2023 Draft Rankings.