February 24, 2005

Prospectus Roundtable

Kendry Morales

by Baseball Prospectus

On December 1, the Angels signed Cuban slugger Kendry Morales to a six-year contract. Morales would eventually find his way to an Honorable Mention in our Top 50 Prospects list. The discussion that led to that placement was perhaps the most interesting one we had during the process.

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Clay Davenport: I've pulled all the data I could find on Cuban baseball. It turns out that they have complete statistics for the last five years online, and I've downloaded them all. This gives me full stat lines for Morales as well as league averages to work from.

I would call the league profile aggressive. Power numbers are a little less than the U.S. majors, but league batting averages are just under .300. Walks about the same as US, but strikeouts are down, hit-by-pitch rates are about double what they are here, stolen bases about the same, caught stealing twice as high--the '03/'04 season actually had more CS than SB. Offensive levels are high.

I don't have good data for the difficulty rating. The best I can work off the Olympic data, I'd say roughly Carolina League level. Winter ball in the Domincan runs at about Double-A level. Using that, here's the best guess DT I can make from what I know:

Kendry Morales      Born 6/20/1983  Age 22   Bats B   Throws R

Year    AB  H   DB  TP  HR  BB  SO  R  RBI  SB  CS   BA  OBP  SLG   EQA EQR
2001   335  87  17   1  17  30  75  43  61   1   1 .260 .324 .469  .267  46
2002   188  62  11   1   7  30  31  32  29   0   0 .330 .428 .511  .322  37
2003   118  39  12   1   2   7  17  14  15   0   0 .331 .370 .500  .294  19

Minors 588 173  37   3  24  62 113  82  96   1   1 .293 .364 .487  .289  93

That's not a futurecast; those are direct translations. Even dropping the competition to New York-Penn levels leaves him with a line of .271/.336/.434 and a .264 EQA. I don't know if he is really 22, but he profiles as a major-league hitter using the difficulty rating suggested by the most pessimistic projection taken from the Olympics. Using the most optimistic estimate from the Olympics, calling it Double-A, would yield a line of .311/.386/.528, .307 EQA.

Note on playing time: he was suspended from the team in 2003 because the government found out he was trying to defect. I'm not sure why his playing time was reduced in 2002.

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