Great job by philly.

Edit: And it's not at all fanboy-ish, to his credit (not that I expect that from him), even though the Sox end up at #2 in his evaluation. (He doesn't rank Papelbon or Pedroia nearly as high as some would, I suspect.)

philly, have you ever thought about seeing what types of players over/under perform in the draft?

i'm not really a scout hater, but i'd be shocked if they weighed all the different attributes a player has even close to correctly.

i imagine if someone went through the draft and categorized players into one of like ten broad stereotypes (big hs bat without much athleticism, great hs athlete without a ton of baseball skills, hs flamethrower, hs finesse pitcher etc) that you'd see some types of players strongly overperform relative to their draft position, and some types of players strongly underperform

i know baseball america sometimes runs those scouting reports that list all the different attributes for a player on a scale to 80. if the sox had a big database of those they could do some great work

Chiang was 4/10 in the World Cup of Baseball.

Of course, the Taiwanese version of veteran prowess Julio Cheng played over him, and hit .150 for the entire tourney.

Great writeup Philly, but I will quarrel in that I think Travis Buck should be rated higher. He's got 300+ above average MLB Ab's already.

philly, have you ever thought about seeing what types of players over/under perform in the draft?

Not exactly what you're asking, but one of the major categories of late round sleepers is "college infielders" who usually end up at 2B or 3B. And I guess were actually SS in college.

They're guys who tend to go be good all around players, but don't have the range to play MLB SS and don't have the traiditonal pop of a 3B or quickness of a 2B.

There are two in that report - Ian Kinsler from the 17th rd and Mark Reynolds from the 16th rd. Going back further you'll find guys like Bill Mueller, Jeff Cirillo and Scott Brosius who were taken after the 10th rd.

Kevin Youkilis as an 8th rd college sign for 12k is similar. Scouts seem to have a hard time projecting players to be solid above average 2B/3B.

Knowing Philly's anti-fanboy tendencies, you know that the Sox must have earned that #2 spot. I do think, though, that Philly's right when he says you could arguably swap around the top bunch.

That was the first of a handful of mostly minors related projects that I've been farting around with for a couple of months. I decided to sit back and enjoy the pennant race and playoffs and not bother finishing them. With the year now done, I'm trying to whittle down my "to do" folder.

Here's the next one detailing the Sox switch frm C position players to HS position players in the draft with what to me was an unusual emphasis on HS 1B.

link

Wok,

Do you know anything about Chia-Chu Chen? He was signed in September, which is probably why I missed him until now. His write up isn't very encouraging (no power, small frame).

Are there any other Asian catcher prospects?

Just when your excitement about the 1B post was dying down, here's another comparing the experience of the Sox amatuer scouts to 9 other organizations.


link

I couldn't find anything on Chen. There was news about his signing in September, but I couldn't find any scouting reports on him.

His write up isn't very encouraging (no power, small frame).

I just read that same writeup. A small frame is not a big deal, he'll get into weight training and build some muscle. He's a good defender at C.

Callis on Bryce Cox in BA.