=== #1 On Your Scorecard ===

FLIP:  Fangraphs.com piles on in the Greg Halman catcalls by noting that Halman's strikeout rate is the highest in the Southern League (AA) since (at least) 2006.

Baseball America had Halman as the M's #1 prospect before the year.

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CHOP:  For those who just joined us, Baseball America stubbornly and delightfully provides our last major bastion of Good Ole Boyz-oriented scout rankings.  If you want sabermetrics thrown out* and want to know what the pro evaluators think of a young player's gifts, and what they visualize for him going forward, BBA is where you go.

That's not a knock.

Guys like Greg Halman are where sabermetricians go when they want to feel like math is the right way to project a player; guys like Matt Tuiasosopo are where the scouts go when they want to feel like intuition and visual assessment is the way to go.   (Remember, when Tui was blown up by AA in his first go-round, sabermetricians pronounced it absolutely impossible* that he'd ever be a good player.)

* = No quibbles, please.  We're aware of the caveats.  :- )

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On Halman?  We noted, at the time, that we didn't agree with pole-vaulting him over guys like Triunfel and Clement.  Not by a long shot. 

But were intrigued by the fact that the scouts thought so much of Halman.   My own default assessment is that when they go off THIS crazy on a young non-saber player, there must be something VERY interesting about the kid.

The #1 ranking for Halman alerted us saberdweebs that the scouts likely had some light bulbs on that we didn't.

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But!  Those light bulbs often don't count for much, even by those who turned them on.

We remember when Wladimir Balentien was striking out constantly, that the scouts said "If he only learns to make contact, we could have a superstar here!"  And G-Moneyball was telling us, "don't sweat the labor pains.  He's raw and will develop."

Wlad then DID learn to make contact -- and then everybody said, "Ah, who cares about him."

The point being, it wouldn't shock me in the least if Greg Halman, two years on, was the best player in the PCL -- and that exactly nobody was interested.  :- )

...............

Don't get us wrong.  Dr. D is a saberdweeb first.  Halman is not all that high on my radar as we write this.

However, the joke EYE rate isn't in and of itself a death sentence.  Halman shares exactly the same caveat that G-Money reminded us of, back when Wlad Balentien whuffed 160 times vs 33 walks in A ball:  considering his weird international environment as a teenager, he's going to have weird holes in his game.

Tuisasosopo was also promoted too fast, and people tried to use conventional sabermetrics to say "hey, nobody plays THIS bad and develops." 

Actually, all prospects would play that bad if over-promoted enough.

Halman just got done having a very nice age/level year in 2008.  At 21, he can't yet handle AA.  So sue him.  :- )

Cheers,

Dr D