Paul raises an interesting discussion point:
Waaait ... 70 HIT for Seager? That's a ton of love, and probably juuuuust a bit high. I'd give Ackley a 65 tops, and that's not diss'n' Ack-Ack Attack one bit. Seager & Snelling are definitely a step below that.
While I do think Ackley's ceiling is a lefty-Edgar with slightly less pop, he's still slightly below Edgar in his hit tool. Edgar's a 70 hit tool. Gwynn, too. Ichiro probably. Ackley's a step below all of those guys, and Seager's a step below Ackley. Still a decent player, that has a chance of being a league-average regular, but I guess I'm not sold on either Snelling OR Seager having a 70 hit tool...
Just sayin'...
A fair question. I certainly agree that if Ichiro, Tony Gwynn, and Edgar Martinez are 70 hitters, then Seager has a whale of a lot to prove to score a 70.
If Ichiro, Gwynn, and Edgar are 70 ... who's 80? (Don't forget to translate Ichiro's AVG's to neutral parks. He's at .330 with his home park being Safeco.)
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BaseballHQ scouts give the following grade translations:
And even that is a little funky, because 50 means "ML average" and the AL hit .260 last year. So by BaseballHQ's exaggeratedly harsh standard, the entire AL was "minus" for batting average. This is a logical absurdity.
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It's on the HQ scale that I'm looking at Seager as a 70 HIT tool, IFF everything pans out for him.
In a neutral park, Seager / Snelling project to hit .300, .310, if they don't hit speed bumps somewhere, and that puts them in a small group of excellent hitters.
On this scale, obviously, Ichiro, Gwynn, and Edgar are 80's. And the question is whether Ackley is 70 or 80; there's no way you limit him to 65 with the above scale. Raise your hand if you project Dustin Ackley to a .290 AVG in a neutral park.
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There is a visceral, on-field translation to these scouts' grades:
Kyle Seager's only special skill is his HIT ability. It had better be plus-plus, or he's not going to be much of a player in the big leagues.
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How many players should get 70's and 80's?
It shouldn't be a badge of objectivity for the scout, that he has minimized his 70's and 80's. Going by natural dispersion, rather than by subjective clipboard grades, you would expect players to be stratified no more widely than in a stock "standard deviation" curve:
Sometimes, to listen to scouts, you would think that only five players in MLB history ever had an 80 HIT skill.
In reality, five to eight out of the 500-750 players every year should receive 80 HIT grades. Going into 2011 that was Ichiro, Pujols, Mauer, and pick two or three other guys.
In order to project Dustin Ackley a "70" HIT grade, you really are saying that you expect him to be one of the 30 or 40 best "hitters" (AVG) -- to hit .300 in a neutral park. Anybody want to project him lower than that?
How is Dustin Ackley, with his 1.00 EYE, phenomenal SwStr%, and the smoke he puts on his line drives, going to fail to hit .300?
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I agree, though -- if you thought I was saying that Seager is as good a hitter as Ichiro is, then neh. Nobody is.
Paul, what are your HIT tool equivalents for batting average? Who are the 80's currently playing?
Looking at Seager I see a guy who could be a great fit for Safeco and a very underrated prospect overall if hes even an average defender at 3B.
Very few guys are career.300 hitters, but Seager has the type of profile to eclipse that mark a few times in his career.
Does Seager have any extreme RH/LH splits?
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... to the tune of .377 / .434 / .528.
A lefty batter who KBIZLT (Ichiro, Junior, Boggs, Snelling, Mattingly ... probably lefty NPB stars as a group) will tend to have solid results vs LHP's. That's a principle that is true both in general, and in this specific case.
As usual, the Mariners are way ahead of us on this guy.
Moving Liddi for him was no small sacrifice, and neither was the expenditure of a 3rd-round draft pick on a slow(ish) infielder with no homers.
Seager is pencilled in to Safeco at 3B if they're moving Liddi off position right now.
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Exciting development at 3B, ain't it?
Am extremely high on him in that case.
The other thing about this skillset is that they tend to have very brief transitions to the MLB. Seager could by Kyle Seager from Day One. Adding a slight bit of power when he hits his prime.
If Seager sticks at 3B, your infield is solved. After that you need to figure out all 3 OF spots.. With Gut looking like a shell of his former self and Ichiro declining, you'll need two starting caliber players in 2012 and three in 2013.
We're 2-3 OFs, maybe a C, a DH, and some bullpenners away from building a truly dominant core. Hopefully we can fill some of those spots in trade (which is why Bedard is such an important trade piece IMO).
You can fill a couple of those spots with FAs. REALLY think Fielder is a great fit here. Hes having a great season though and with Boras as his agent, so you have to wonder what his price will be.
First of all since last season - and especially after this year ST - I had the feeling that Seager would have been a glad surprise for many. I regret to admit he deserves to be promoted before Liddi (and everybody else) right now. Aside from the fact if Seager is a 60 or 70 hitter I'd like to submit an old idea of mine for a different fielding position: given he's a natural 2B and that he played there his entire career, given that perhaps he's a little bit light hitter to play 3B, why do not forecast for the future an Ackley switch to LF and Seager at 2B ? Yes, third base would remain still open but both Triunfel and Liddi - or even a rebounding Figgins - could be the answer.
Even if A-Rod is a better shortstop than him. We spent 2 years getting Ackley ready to play second base - we're not moving him now because we're lucking out with Seager as well. It doesn't make any difference in the lineup whether Ackley is playing 2B or LF, but for future upgrades it matters where Ackley is fielding.
If Ackley can play second then you keep him there, because you'll never need to upgrade that position again and it's a harder position to fill than LF or 3B. Maybe in the future you find a better 3B than Seager, and you can just slide him into that position without many headaches. You WON'T find a better offensive 2B than Ackley, so he'll never face that issue.
Guys get moved off of position because they just can't hack it (Ryan Braun) or because of age-related decline.
The only all-world talent I can think of immediately who moved off position to help his team (without it being mandated by physical decline or ineptitude) was Craig Biggio, who started shagging fly balls late in his career because they added some dude named Jeff Kent to the team and somebody had to switch.
Seager is not Jeff Kent, and 3B is a gaping hole. Seager will patch it and then we'll see if we need to fill it more permanently with someone else.
2B is plugged for at least the next 6 years.
~G
Seager would be a defensive upgrade at 2B and Ackley would solve the LF problem for years. Of course this solution does not take in any consideration the fact the M's wish to increase Ackley's overall value as a 2B - that's a long term financial question of no interest for a fan.
I agree that Ackley is NOT a 65. To me 50 is average, 60 is above average, 70 is elite, 80 is as good as it gets.
Ackley in terms of just getting the bat on the ball is probably in the 65 range(Ichiro is 80), but Ackley has the ability to also get the barrell right on to the ball more than most. That bumps him up to a 70 for me. IF we are including patience and plate dicipline in HIT ability, then Ackley's grade goes up to 75.
So a basic grade for Ackley would go
HIT = 75 (70 if plate disciple is not included)
Power = 60
That rounds to about a 65(power a bit more important than batting average.) That would make him close to an elite player(but not quite) in HIT ability alone. Add in solid defense at a premium position and he could end up an elite player when all is said and done.
elite = someone who produces day in and day out, someone who everyone knows by name, someone with great numbers, someone who is a team player.
JMHO of course.
It's a scarcity question. The hardest positions to fill with plus bats are the glove positions up the middle: C, 2B, SS, CF. It's hard to be good enough with a glove to stay there AND to be a plus bat.
Any schmoe can stand in LF and try not to fall down catching fly balls. The pool of talent that can do that is far larger, so it's EASIER to find a plus bat there (in theory - in practice the Ms suck at it). The job requirements aren't as stiff. It should give you more options for solutions that give you a plus bat in LF than you would have at 2B.
So what happens when you put a plus bat for a glove position at a corner position?
Well, how have many of us felt about Ichiro in RF? As a CF he's one of the greatest offensive forces to ever man the position, and even his decline phase as a CF would still have value. Last year Ichiro was 7th in WAR among right fielders, and 15th in OPS. That's what SHOULD happen when a guy who can play CF is racing around in RF as a better fielder than his peers, but is not the kind of heavy swinger that most of those guys are. 11 guys who qualified for the batting title had an OPS higher than .800 last year in RF.
If Ichiro had been playing CF? Only 3 guys were over .800. You put a player at the hardest position he can field so that you can maximize his bat value and not clog up a corner position with non-corner power. The Ms have been hamstringing themselves for years with needing a Juicing Bret Boone or freakin' A-Rod to compensate for the LF, RF, 1B and DH holes. If you are gonna have a 100 OPS+ hitter in those positions then you'd better have a 130 at a glove position.
It's not about maximizing Ackley's financial value - in fact, the club money-wise WOULD be better off playing Ackley in LF where his comps are are men 5 inches and 40 pounds bigger who hit 30+ HRs a year, which Ackley will not do. We'd save money in arbitration by having him compared to those guys and their skillsets.
If you move Ackley to LF to "fix that hole" and Seager turns out to be overmatched in the bigs (80 OPS+, let's say) then what do you do? Move him back to 2B? Meanwhile the LF you could have added has signed elsewhere and because it's a glove position the only available 2B are no better than Seager.
You put Ackley at 2B to have a constant: THIS guy will be one of the best-hitting second basemen in the league. Period. And then you go get a big side of beef to stand in LF with a glove on his hand and crush homers at the plate. It's not being unfair to Seager. Seager is not as good a hitter as Ackley. Now, the difference between expected performance of a 2B and a 3B is not large, and in my mind BOTH are considered glove positions.
Moving Seager to 3B and having a slightly underperforming third-sacker is more that outweighed by having Ackley at 2B as a plus-plus offensive 2nd-baseman.
But I wouldn't play Seager in LF. I'd get a better bat for that. Otherwise you're wasting the whole point of Ackley at 2B in the first place, which is to add to your ability to find crushers at RF/LF/1B/DH and stacking the deck as an offense.
Ackley in LF isn't much better of a hitter than you SHOULD be able to get there. A third of the teams in baseball had a LF with an OPS over .800 last year, and several more had a combination of players that added up to around that number.
Number of teams that had a 2B with an OPS over .800? Five, and it's basically only ever between 4 and 6.
If it's twice as hard to get a 2B that hits like that as it is to get a LF, then supply-and-demand would dictate that they're far more prized.
You can get a good-hitting LF in trade, in FA or in the draft. Much harder at 2B. Which sucks for Seager, but 3B is a nice consolation prize. And if we were to trade him, his value as a 2B would be high for just that reason, so that's good for us.
Maybe we could even trade him for a plus LF and then have 2 plus bats for our trouble...but there's no way Seager plays 2B for us unless Ackley absolutely faceplants defensively or our CF situation gets so dire that we have to move him back to the position he was originally supposed to play.
~G
I'm with G all the way on the issue of needing one more big bat and it needs to be an OF. That's not a slam on Halman, Carp, Seager or Catricala. Even if they all pan out (which they won't), the lineup would still need another bat. And although I agree that a core of young guys is absolutely necessary, I'm skeptical of a team with all young guys + Ichiro. There's just a need for a proven productive bat in the lineup and OF the logical place.
If one could be found on the deadline market at a reasonable price and beyond just this season, then I'd go for it, even if it's 4-for-1 quality prospects (Ethier, for example -- in an ideal world). Otherwise, I'd settle for a quality mid-range guy. And I'm willing to stand pat for the right reasons and try to find the right guy in the off-season. But globally I don't think they can stand pat in looking for a proven productive OF bat.
Sorry to be absent from the convo for a few days. Busy busy busy and then summer cold/allergies wiped me out...
What I was thinking is that Edgar/Ichiro/Gwynn are 70s in that their ability to hit (encapsulating both eye, contact rates, discipline, bat control, power, lack of strikeouts, etc...) is next-to-elite. Might be grading them a little low, sure enough, but ultimately there are few 80s in history. Teddy Ballgame, Hornsby, Cobb, Shoeless Joe, Ruth, Gehrig, and that's pretty much the level I look at. Pujols would be at least a 75 if not an 80. Guys like Gwynn, Edgar, Ichiro, Musial, Mauer are just a notch below that, even if only barely. Ackley may well end up in that group (hence my 65 for him) and Seager's a notch or two below Ackley. He'll hit well enough but it won't be at the 70+ level in my book.
For me, it's not just batting average but a variety of different factors. I wouldn't be so quick to require that there's an 80 in every season (i.e. grading on a curve, giving 80s to the players at the top of that curve every year). That's all, really.
Of course, I'm nowhere close to a professional scout, so take that for what it's worth. I just look at 80s as historically elite, and might have 15 players tops on that list in all of history. Since scouting uses historical comps as well as current, I'm fine with assigning scores based on overall history rather than current talent level. But even using a more accepted scouting scale, I'm still not quite sure Seager's a 70. Kid can hit, and has a great eye, but I'm not convinced he's gonna hit close to what Ackley will in his peak.
That's all I'm sayin. Not trying to dis' ya one bit...
