The "value" of Billy Hamilton depends on how you define "value." If you define value as expected marginal wins, then you may be right; he may be overvalued. However, can anyone in the minors match his entertainment value? The guy scored from second base on a routine ground out! He caught a ball on the warning track as a SS! I don't care if he bats .200. I'll pay full price for a ticket when the Reds are in town, just to see what he does on the bases and in the field. That is REAL value because it puts butts in the seats. Too often people in the sabremetric crowd forget that baseball is an entertainment product.

Even by that measure, more is needed to justify Mantle as the standard-bearer. In addition to the others mentioned in this thread, what about Hank Aaron, Harmon Killebrew, or Hack Wilson? And if we are measuring power by distance, Josh Gibson has to be in the conversation, as it is likely that he hit balls farther than Mantle or anyone else.

On the PECOTA spreadsheet, AJ Griffin is projected to have the same WARP as Gio Gonzalez. His WARP is projected to be better than Brett Anderson's (and James Shield's and Doug Fister's for that matter). Among his comparables are Jared Weaver and Dwight Gooden!!!! So which is it? Is he a back-end starter or (as PECOTA thinks) the A's best pitcher?

I've always been curious about this type of pitcher. I wonder if they're undervalued, like the extreme groundballers used to be undervalued. Look at Wade LeBlanc: all he has is an amazing changeup and he's been able to post a positive VORP over the past three seasons. I may be wrong, but I've heard his other offerings are less than MLB-average. If someone like that can provide value to a MLB rotation or bullpen, what about someone with a plus-plus change and average FB & curve/slider? I know, it's not a sexy profile and these guys will never be aces, but they may be an inexpensive, but effective way to fill out the back end of a rotation or long relief.

It looks like each observation for the BABIP axis is an individual pitcher and each observation on the DE axis is a team. If you look closely, you'll see that the slope of the regressed line is very close to -1, even though all of the points don't lie on or close to that line. Each of the fuzzy green vertical lines is the conditional distribution of BABIP for the pitchers on each team. The mean of each conditional distribution is 1-DE for each team (apart from the SH difference and apart from the fact that pitchers with less than 160 IP have been excluded). So, your observation is correct: it looks like the correlation described in this article is tautological.

Or maybe DM has the ability to figure out which amateurs will turn into highly ranked prospects, but is mediocre at figuring out which prospects make good major leaguers. If he is self-aware enough to figure this out, then it's optimal to trade your prospects when their value is highest. For instance, I don't think DM could have gotten the same return if it was Hosmer or Moose in the package instead of Myers.

I was at Bundy's start last night. I'm no scout, but it was very impressive. He sat at 94-96 and touched 98. As I recall, two of his walks were on curveballs that seemed to fool the umpire. They looked like strikes to me, but they broke so much, who knows? He made Nick Castellanos look foolish: three strikeouts and he couldn't even foul anything off until the third AB.

This is great, but one thing that would be great to add, if possible, are the stats of players who no longer qualify as prospects and aren't in the majors, but are on the list of top players 25 and under: guys like Lonnie Chisenhall and Travis Snider. The only way to follow them is milb.com. Thanks.

Mike Cameron retired.

PECOTA quantifies risk. The PECOTA spreadsheet includes 4 probabilities: Breakout, Improve, Collapse, and Attrition. Beadrd's probabilities are 17, 55, 16, and 17, respectively. Latos's probs are 30, 62, 6, and 6, respectively. In other words, Latos is more likely to improve and more likely to significantly improve over his projection and less likely to bomb than Bedard. That's why he is valued more. The real question is: Why don't the existing valuation algorithms take this risk into account. Auction values (e.g., the SGP method) are based on the mean projection. But a player's actual value to your fantasy team is based on his ability to increase the odds of winning your league. A player's risk profile (as quantified by PECOTA) is a key part of that. That's why I largely ignore the mean projection and focus on the PECOTA probabilities when ranking my players.

Also, what about the 2012 draft class? Would any players currently in college/HS be on this list if eligible (e.g., Appel, Zunino)? Thanks.

I agree. This is my big pet peeve with most sabrmetrics. There is too much emphasis on average results and not enough on the distribution of results. For instance, it is common knowledge that junk bonds and penny stocks earn more on average than T-bills and blue chips. That doesn't mean there's a massive inefficiency that hedge funds have yet to exploit. You can't just look at average return. Risk also matters a lot! How risky are the very young HS draft picks relative to the older HS draft picks? On a related point, I think there might be a sample-selection problem here as well. The first article stated that 10% of the draft picks were discarded because there was no DOB info for them. The hypothesis was that they flamed out too soon, so their careers didn't progress to the point where someone might care to note their DOB. Isn't it possible that the very young draft picks are more likely to flame out than the older picks, so that the part of the sample that was discarded was disproportionately young? If that's true, it would create a positive bias on the average return estimates for the young (i.e., make the average return for the young look larger than it really is).

BA just published their mid-season top 50. Will you do any mid-season update of your top 101 or, if not, an article about who is rising into and who is falling out of the top 101?

I know it's outside of the time period for the article, but the worst draft for the O's had to be 1999, when they had 7 of the top 50 picks and all they got in big league talent from those 7 picks was Brian Roberts (at #50). At least they got Bedard in the 6th round.

Duffy is listed as the 5/24 starter for the Royals on their web site. (I've got tickets, so I sure hope it's Duffy and not Hochevar.) I assume he'd be a sit as well, correct?

There is also the fact that teams get a compensation pick in next year's draft if the player doesn't sign. If the team expects that a hard slotting system will be used next year, then that compensation pick becomes more valuable because the team won't have to go over-slot to sign the pick next year. The extra value of that compensation should give the team more leverage in this year's bonus negotiations. Of course, the changes in 2007 also gave the teams more leverage by improving the compensation, but it didn't make any difference. Even with the bonus inflation and the risk involved with drafted players, they are still a huge bargain compared to free agents.

I've heard that the 2011 draft class looks very good (maybe close to 2005). Where would guys like Rendon, Cole, and Purke fall on this list, if they were eligible? Anyone else in the 2011 draft class who would be top 100 if they were in the minors right now?

Now that the top 11's are done, inquiring minds want to know: Who has the best name in the minors? Antonio Bastardo has to be in the top 5. Some others that come to mind: Charlie Furbush, Rowdy Hardy Any others?

It looks like the Tigers will play w/o a DH 86% of the time. They should file a complaint with the AL.

Craig Kimbrell and Jordan Walden

This article is actually kind of depressing. I understand that the PECOTA used for the comparisons is stripped-down, but, if I am reading this correctly, the stripped-down PECOTA is in a dead heat with Marcel with regard to accuracy. My understanding is that Marcel is the most basic projection system out there: basically an age-adjusted three-year average. If you do all of this work and are no more accurate than Marcel, well then what's the point? In my opinion, the real value of the PECOTA forecasts is not the mean projections. The value of the PECOTA is that it is the only projection system I know of that publishes the forecast distribution (e.g., breakout, attrition, etc.).

And all of them LHP! Has this ever happened before: 4 extremely promising LHP prospects in the same minor league rotation?

If you had to choose one LHP in the minors, who would you pick: Lamb or Matt Moore?

Like the Harper question: Would Anthony Rendon (Rice) or anyone from next year's draft class make the list if they were currently a pro?

What about Nick Franklin? I thought he, not Myers, was the 2nd best prospect in the Midwest league after Trout. Based on first-half performance, my vote's for Lamb. Based on upside, I'd vote for Sano.

It was only one public incident. There may have been others not reported. And it was a doozy by any measure: punching your wife in the face and dragging her by the hair in public. At the very least, baseball should have lengthy suspensions for reprehensible behavior like that.

I like all of these suggestions. I would also like to see the depth charts updated regularly to reflect injuries, substandard performance, minor leaguers who've improved their shot at being called up, etc. For each update, it would be forward looking (i.e., reflect the best estimate for the rest of the season). If it were paired with in-season updates to PECOTA, I'd be in heaven.

Personally, I'd rather not see VORP, WARP, or any acronym stat longer than three letters on a baseball broadcast. I'd like to see things that you can only display on TV. Talking about new defensive metrics, let's see them graphically on the screen. For example, when the Rangers are playing the Yankees, superimpose all of the points on the field where Elvis Andrus fielded a groundball. Then do the same for Jeter in a different color. I suspect the Jeter jump-turn-throw won't look as impressive after that graphic.

That's correct, but these depth charts should reflect the best guess at who WILL play, not who SHOULD play. They already correctly show that Bloomquist will get way too many PAs than any team in the majors should give him. Likewise, the Hillman/Moore regime will give way too many PAs to Kendall to try to justify that bad contract.

This is why I think the salary floor and the draft slotting/international draft issues will go together in the next CBA negotiations: Weiner: We want a "poor tax" on the teams that spend below X dollars on their MLB payroll. Selig: Ok, then give us a hard slotting system and an international draft so teams that want to build for the future don't have to spend so much to do so.

Then someone please explain the appeal of "Web Gems." Do they put players making great plays, but doing so in a way that seems routine, on Web Gems? No. It's a bunch of plays that are either truly spectacular or seem spectacular because they're made by less proficient players giving everything to make the play. Or what about Manny Ramirez? He's an adventure in RF, to say the least. One minute he has the range of a wounded ox. The next minute, he's scaling the wall to rob a HR, high-fiving a fan, and THEN doubling up the runner on first. Do you think people pay to see Manny simply because of his hitting skills? Winning is important for demand, but so is the prospect of seeing a amazing play, at least in my opinion.

"Overall, as our perception of effort increases, so too does the perceived fielding value of the player." I think it would be useful, in any discussion of defensive metrics, to define "value." The implicit assumption in the article is that defensive value is the ability to make outs. That's obviously important, but that's not the only value a defender can contribute. The Victorino "perceived" value based on effort may bias us into thinking he has more "outs-making" value than he actually has, but his economic value may still be greater than Beltran's. Sometimes we forget that baseball is an entertainment product. If I'm the owner of the Phillies and Victorino puts more butts in the seats because of his effort (all else equal) than Beltran does with his nonchalant fielding style, Victorino's fielding has more economic value to me. It's no different than a ballet: in putting together a cast for Swan Lake, I'd rather have performers with grace and style, even if they are less technically proficient than other dancers, because it is grace and style that puts butts in the seats, not technical proficiency.

Another vote for tiers. And another vote for a risk score. In my opinion, this is more important than the ranking and the one area where PECOTA has a clear advantage over the other projections out there. The difference between winners and losers in fantasy baseball is the management of risk. Every experienced and informed fantasy player comes to the draft/auction table with roughly the same mean expectations about how players will perform in the upcoming year. The ones who win are the ones who have their first round/high $ picks perform to expectation and grab late round picks who outperform expectations. And, although it may be heretical to say this here, PECOTA's weighted mean projections are only marginally more accurate than most of the sabrmetrically-based projections out there on the web. Where PECOTA really stands apart from the pack is the fact that the PECOTA projections are a distribution, not just a mean projection. When the PECOTA weighted mean spreadsheet comes out each year, I ignore the projected numbers and go straight to the "Break, Improve, Collapse, Attrition" columns. That tells me which major hitters to target with my early round picks (i.e., those with a low Collapse rate) and who to target with my late round picks (i.e., those with a big Breakout rate). So, these things would be great to add as well.

The "more diluted" argument only makes sense if the AL and NL are acquiring their players from different equal-sized populations. But all teams acquire their players from the same population, i.e., they pull players from the same distribution of baseball talent, so an NL team is not more likely to have less-talented players than an AL team (holding other factors like salary equal, of course). The worst team in MLB (and the best team, for that matter) is slightly more likely to be an NL team, but only because there are 2 more NL teams to choose from. But any particular NL team is just as likely to be bad (or good) as any particular AL team. The salary explanation is much more compelling. Also, what about draft spending and international spending on amateurs? There may be a difference there as well over the past ten years that could explain some of the difference.

As a Nats fan, I'm also curious about how the deadline dealing affected the Nats (and others) chances in the "Bryce Harper Sweepstakes," i.e., the odds of getting next year's #1 draft pick. Maybe the Royals traded for Betancourt to try to catch the Nats. If Strasburg fails to sign with the Nats, what are the odds the Padres (his home town team) have the first or third pick next year? Lots of interesting questions down at the bottom as well.

Apart from Paxton @37 and Oliver @58, are there any other Boras clients in the top 300 (other than those identified above)? When all of the bonuses are signed, I'd like to analyze whether Boras clients get more money or not, but I need to identify all of the Boras clients (not just the stars) to do that. Thanks.

This is the first time I've seen a listing of the drafted players' agents. Is there a public source for this information (to look up the agents for the players in the later rounds) or is this just from your own knowledge? Thanks for the great draft analysis!

Thanks for the pronunciation guide. Seriously, I'd love to see BP have a page with pronunciations for minor league players so I don't have a "who's your mama" moment at my next fantasy draft.

Boras seems to be the only agent that is ever mentioned regarding the draft and signability. Is he really a better negotiator than the other agents? Or has he just worked the hype machine so much that he gets the best players as his clients? Has anyone at BP ever done a study on whether Boras gets more money than other agents after controlling for the talent level of his clients? If not, I think it would be a worthwhile project. Thanks for the great draft coverage.

Also, who is more likely to close this year: Fields or Ryan Perry of the Tigers?

While I\'m no fan of Olbermann\'s politics, to say the least, I\'m looking forward to his forward. Sportscenter has never been the same without him (\"That\'s a 6-4-3 double play for those of you scoring at home...or even if you\'re by yourself\") I\'ll put in another vote for a George Will forward in 2010. Also, I remember the weighted means spreadsheet coming out in January last year. Please post these soon. It\'s cold outside and I need something other than arbitration offers to get me through to pitchers and catchers. Thanks for all the hard work.

absolutely! I\'m beginning to worry whether PECOTA will arrive on time or be as good as in the past. As a fallback, you should train someone to take over in case he goes to politics full time (which may have already happened).

Absolutely! For some of these guys (e.g., Kila Ka\'aihue), I have no idea how to pronounce their name. A phonetic spelling (or \"sounds like...\") would be greatly appreciated.

I\'m surprised there was no mention of Hochevar\'s GB rate. Of AL pitchers with at least 100 IP, he\'s 5th in GB%. If he cuts down on his walks and gets a better defense behind him, he could really break out. If the Royals move Aviles to 2B, get a real solution at SS, and permantly make Butler a DH, he would be helped more than any other Royals pitcher.