Seattle Sports Insider

. . . and the Contenda

Posted by

9/14/09

=== #1 On Your Scoreboard ===

FLIP: Seattle is still distinctly underwhelmed by Matt Tuiasosopo.

Looking around at several prospect rankings, we see that Tui --still!-- is locally ranked as a pedestrian prospect even within the M's own system.

One notable site, for example capped his reasonable ML ceiling at 2.0 WAR (in English, that means perfectly average-mediocre regular) and ranked Greg Halman (among many others) a better prospect. Granted, that was done some months ago.

But we haven't seen any updated opinions there or anywhere around the 'net. The only conversation we have noticed is the occasional yawn or even annoyance at Dr. D for his enthusiasm on Tui.

Check me on that, if yer can link us to an article going, "Hey, this Tui kid is looking like a beast these days!"

...........

CHOP: At this point, the Tuisasosopo disconnect is becoming Dr. D's constant source of amusement.

We remember watching Ichiro before he started play in the U.S., and Roger Jongewaard guaranteeing, quote, "He'd come over here and get two hundred hits a year for us," and MOST of the best talent evaluators in the business guaranteeing that Ichiro was a 4th outfielder in the bigs.

We remember Tim Lincecum coming out of college as being probably the safest #1 overall since (say) Alex Rodriguez, and the most trusted evaluators around questioning whether he should even be taken in the entire first round.

I just didn't know what to say to Ichiro and Timmy naysayers --- well, okay, you got me there -- and most people were Ichiro and Lincecum naysayers. The level of disconnect, for D-O-V, was just unreal.

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

Tui's situation isn't quite that epic -- Tui isn't a mortal lock the way that Ichiro and Lincecum were -- but it'll do until the next Ichiro/Lincecum situation comes along.

With Ackley being a special case, Matt Tuiasosopo is of course the Mariners' #1 prospect, by a long ways over anybody except Triunfel -- and yet he's typically ranked #6, or #9, or #12 -- compared to guys like Halman, not compared to the world.

#6 or #9 or #12 would more appropriately be Tui's ranking in baseball. I'm not going to trade you Matt Tuiasosopo for Alcides Escobar or Justin Smoak or Aaron Hicks. Four years from now, neither would you.

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

Not sure how you watch Matt Tuiasosopo for three games and not see what Jongewaard was talking about. The level of disconnect is just awesome. :- )

And it isn't just Dr. D's opinion. You know what Wakamatsu thought of him in March.

Tui might not pan out -- only about 30% of blue-chippers become ML stars. Pedro Alvarez and Dexter Fowler will probably not become stars in the big leagues -- the odds are with the house.

But you could see Tui coming three years ago. Why Seattle isn't enjoying the show at this point, somebody give me a clue.

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

M's fans should be jazzed. Those 9 homers and 8 doubles in August were just a taste.

Word is that Tui won't play much this September, even though they'll need to decide on his April 2010 role. Considering the M's devotion to tryouts this fall, that's a whale of a concession to a lame-duck vet, ain't it?

Cheers,

Dr D

Comments

Tui IS really interesting...

Tui IS really interesting... the reports about his defense at 2B make me even a little more intrigued.
I'm ok with giving Tui a little more time at AAA.. but he needs to be up the second his eye starts improving.
Maybe we can roll the dice with a guy like Dallas McPherson for 3B in the meanwhile? Massive LH power, good D at 3B, started drawing BBs in 2008. Obviously he has major contact issues, but he might be another mini-Branyan if hes given a solid shot.. The guy only has 399 career MLB PAs for crying out loud.

When you say the SECOND his eye starts improving

Does a 10/16 EYE in September (.62, well above average) and 10/11 the last 10 games count?

Funny you should mention Dallas McPherson

Back when McPherson was running his .650, .700 SLG's in the minors, Inside Pitch and I had some of our quintessential debates over whether he was one of the top 20 prospects in baseball. :- )
Nowadays I wouldn't have been so tough on McPherson, but he certainly was a bug on the ML windshield.
At 27, he seems to have gone back and made adjustments -- as have players like Jack Cust. I'd be very intrigued. If he actually is a plus defender at 3B and could be had, I'd jump on it. You come up with some dazzling scrub suggestions bro'.
Any idea where he was in 2007?

Ya, that would work. I've

Ya, that would work.
I've been following him pretty closely and noticed a couple 3, 4 K games that made me wonder if he might be a year away. Its funny to see that his eye is excellent recently (although K% a bit high).
In any case he should be given a full-time role ASAP in September. Theres no reason to bench him at this point in the season. Give him ABs at DH too if neccesary.

He had back surgery this

He had back surgery this year.. I don't really know much about it or how well hes likely to recover.
Any doctors?

inertia and momentum

As to why Halman continues to be viewed as cherry and Tui as plywood ...
I think it starts with basic old human inertia. Halman was vaulted to stardom *NOT* just because of the eye-on scouts. Per the Cube, Halman jumped from NOWHERE to #1 on the Seattle rankings in 2009. What did he PRODUCE in 2008? Splitting time between A+ and AA, Hallman produced 29 HRs and went 31 of 37 in SBs -- at the age of 20. What are the two traits in baseball that CANNOT be taught? Power and Speed. Hallman had 20 HRs and 31 steals in A+ and A ball at age 19. That's TWO seasons of way outside the norm production, which IMPROVED when he climbed the ladder. Obviously, his 2nd spin in AA didn't go so well. But, he still managed 25 HRs.
But, the point here is that once you MAKE a call on someone, it'll take twice as much data to admit defeat as it did to make the call originally. And that's how it SHOULD be. If we change our opinions with EVERY new piece of info, then we'd have no stability at all in our projections and analyses. Many who were sky high on Jaku early took quite some time to admit he wasn't all that, (and some still haven't admitted it).
Tui was the #5 Seattle spec in '05 and '06. A lot of that was the 1249 OPS he posted in rookie ball. 4-HR and a 13/14 BB/K ratio (only 68 ABs) got people's attention -- especially from a shortstop. But, after a .738 OPS in A+ ball, he struggled DREADFULLY in AA, (.477 OPS in 216 ABs). He was also moved from short to third. We ALL know that a good hitting SS is VASTLY more valuable than a good hitting 3B. So, he played awful, and moved to a less valued position. He dropped off the ranks completely.
In 2007, he posted a .775 OPS in 446 ABs in AA, and shows back up as the #10 prospect on the 2008 list.
In 2008, he posts an .817 OPS in AAA, (but goes only 7 of 44 in his cup of coffee). He doesn't steal bases. His solid AAA season included a career high 13 HRs, and he's already 22. His .281 BA in AAA is also pedestrian. Basically, there wasn't a single CLASSIC stat that screamed "star", and he bombed in his brief MLB debut, AND Beltre was an absolute fixture for Seattle in 2009. Not really surprising that he didn't make the top 10 from BBA.
After his great ST, I think he might have gotten moved up on many lists, but then he got hurt. Whatever scouting momentum he might have generated from his solid 2008 AAA numbers and ST was lost when he got hurt. That said, I think his 11-HR in 226 ABs, (another major improvement in the power category), likely moves him up the list when the 2010 lists appear. But, BBA only releases a *comprehensive* update once-a-year (from what I understand).
Still, the basic truth is there ... that there is a major lag between player metamorphosis and prospect rankings getting updated. And while I agree that the eyes-on scouts are VERY necessary, I think that BBA, (and other prospect services ... and many major league scouts), are largely still married to the "classic" stats of BA, HR, SB, RBI and Runs. And can you really blame tham? After all, those stats remain the primary stats for the vast majority of fantasy leagues ... and guys in fantasy leagues deal *ONLY* in numbers. Sadly, it's likely going to be another 30 years before ISO and Total Average and FIP, etc., etc., etc., become the true metrics of baseball.

Cloudy, with a 20% chance of Eric Davis

Before the kidney laceration or whatever it was, Eric Davis was whacking 30+ homers and stealing tons of bags as a matter of routine (I was playing NL roto back then). Greg Halman's 2008 was young-Eric Davis-like. At High Desert he had 19 HR in 257 AB and was a jaw-dropping 23-for-24 on SB attempts.
Then he got publicized as a budding star on the Dutch WBC team, flopped mightily against the big boys in that event, and then went completely into the ditch in every way but power this year.
True, he was never really #1 given his lack of eye (Davis K'd a lot too but had better patience than Halman's ever shown), but the allure of that power-speed impact player is always there. Halman, briefly, was that guy.
Tui, on the other hand, has never put up the eye-grabbing numbers until this last go-around at AAA, and even that was marred by a stretch when he struck out something like 13 times in 4 games (I don't recall the details, and can't find them quickly, but it was ugly -- though he was still showing power and patience even while striking out a ton).
I think scouts/analysts are worried that Tui will turn out to be one of those guys who always looks like he should be better than he actually is, and they'll downgrade him for that even if it's not fair. Sometimes we don't want our "golden boys" to be too golden, in order to prepare in advance for the letdown, especially when he hasn't yet tattooed "can't miss" into our heads.

FWIW (RE: Prospect Lists)

I placed Tui at #9 in my August rankings, 5 spots above Halman. I could bump him up 2 more spots too without any big internal conflict either.
http://www.proballnw.com/08-2009/seattle-mariners-top-25-prospects-2009/

What brings down Tui's

What brings down Tui's prospect ranking, to me, is his defensive positioning. Last year, he was a butcher at 3rd. If he can't play 3rd, where does he play? His value certainly doesn't go up at 1B, and the chances of him being a good enough defensive outfielder for the bat to be enough seemed slim.
ST saw good reports on his defense, so that helped. Then he got hurt, which turned out to be a blessing because he got himself into phenominal shape... enough that he can play a decent 2B. Pair all that with his good AAA showing offensively (2nd half last year, post-injury this year) and his stock is certainly rising.
I don't agree he's among the best prospects in baseball. You wonder how someone can watch him play a series and not see it, but have you watched the top 50 prospects in baseball for a full series?

Last sentence...

do you mean this year, or over the last thirty years? :- )
Ya, I'd say that I've watched a lot of ballyhoo'ed, underrated, overrated, and misconstrued prospects in the day. Mike Saunders may have a career in front of him. He doesn't have the potential in his whole body that Matt Tuiasosopo has in his left wrist.
Jose Cruz Jr had a lot of components necessary to put together an ML game. He wasn't Gifted-gifted.
Dallas McPherson had massive power potential. He never looked like he was a man among boys from a JV-kid-on-his-way-through-the-varsity standpoint.
...................
It may just come down to not seeing the same things. That's kind of the whole point, that a lot of folks looked at Ichiro and just didn't particularly see what was different about him...

I mean this year.

How do you justify calling him a top 15 or 10 or 5 prospect in all of baseball based on what you've seen of him, without seeing everyone else? Perhaps I've read it wrong, but it seems to me that you're proclaiming Tui's relative greatness based on what you've personally seen from him, disregarding what the "experts" think. I have no problem with disagreeing with said "experts," but if you haven't seen everyone you have to rely on other reports, right? You can't look at Tuiasosopo and say "this guy is so good, I doubt anyone else out there has what he has."
I'm having a hard time putting into words my exact challenge. I'm not putting down your opinion, but just wondering how you came to the conclusion:
#6 or #9 or #12 would more appropriately be Tui's ranking in baseball.

I've been a bigger Tui fan

I've been a bigger Tui fan than most, but he's been almost 100% impossible to evaluate with anything resembling reliable metrics because of his awful development path and then his 2009 injury. I think you're overstating his ceiling considerably based on a handful of games and the fact that he's a D1 quarterback playing a game that rarely sees athleticism of that type, but 2009 didn't give us enough of a record to evaluate him on.
On a post-season top-10, I think I'd have Tui somewhere from 5-7 in the system until he shows that he can perform over a full season. 2008 saw a really encouraging final 2.5 months after an awful start. This year, I was jazzed to see him build on it, and he sat out most of the season due to injury. August was awesome, but rating him that high based on a 1-month sample is not a limb most people will go out on (and even on his tear, he struck out far more than you'd like, which has always been an issue).
I can see Tuiasosopo figuring things out and becoming a solid or even great major league regular, but he needs to show sustained success before I'm willing to call him a good bet to do so.

I wouldn't call Tui one of

I wouldn't call Tui one of the best prospects in baseball, but I do think hes in that #2-4 range in the Mariners' system and has the most potential to suprise.
Tui, Saunders, and Triunfel seem to be in competition for those spots. Personally I'd take Tui over all of 'em (especially if he manages average defense at 2B).
I don't want to speak for Doc, but his general point may just be that in 3 or 4 years from now Tui 'could' end up being a better player than some of these top prospects.

Tui, 2B

He looked mighty adaquate out there tonight. Sweet.

Yep.

Tui at second base could be a HUGE windfall for the Mariners. Frees them up to mix and match all the heck over the infield and makes everyone a little more tradeable.