PTI and Tuiasosopo's Splash
== JH ===
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.
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Right.
Sabermetricians ... meaning, pretty much everybody on the 'net who didn't play professional baseball and who offer opinions on minor leaguers :- ) ... are used to using player's past performances to predict them going forward.
This can't always be done. The reductio ad absurdum is the high-school player taken high in the first round. His numbers mean nothing. So why can pro scouts tell who the first-rounders are? Because they're very good at what they do. Let's admit that.
You and I could NOT, in a million years, go to a high school baseball game and tell who was a 1st-round June pick -- vs some other awesome-looking player who goes in the 5th round.
Roger Jongewaard CAN do that.
And his opinion on Matt Tuiasosopo: that Tui's talent category was comparable to Ken Griffey Jr's.
He might be wrong. But let's acknowlege that as part of the discussion.
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The Mariners as an organization, and baseball as an industry, had Matt Tuiasosopo as a 1st-round talent in the 2004 draft. He slid because of signability issues, and then got 1st-round money.
No performance record was used. Performance records weren't the key on Tui. What was the key, was the same giftedness that is on display now.
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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.
What's Donavan Tate's ceiling? He hasn't played pro ball at all. Where's his record?
The Padres just gave Donavan Tate $6.2 million based on zero sabermetrics. Why?
What's Matt Hobgood's ceiling? We have literally zero to go on, in terms of games played. How do the Orioles evaluate him well enough to lay out the millions, like they did?
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We shouldn't be trying to evaluate Tui primarily on his record, in the first place. Your paradigm, IMHO, is mistaken.
I've been soft-pedaling his ceiling. He could easily hit 35+ homers and be a cleanup hitter. That is a very realistic possibility. It's certainly more likely for him than for any other player in the M's minor leagues.
Why did D-O-V even mention his 9 homers and 9 doubles in August? It's the icing on the cake as to where he is. It's like a Justin Verlander going to AAA and throwing seven shutouts in a row.* Okay, the cake's ready now.
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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.
Fair enough. :- )
For me, I don't need to see anything more, and haven't, since last September. This March was overkill. This August was long after-the-fact. The scouts in the business don't speak in terms of recognizing the Matt Tuiasosopo's of the world at this stage, boys. They've got to recognize talent a whale of a lot earlier than that.
Any scout worth his salt would have had Tui nailed a year ago, at minimum. Obviously Wakamatsu and Zduriencik had him nailed in March 2009.
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=== Taro ===
I wouldn't call Tui one of the best prospects in baseball, but I do think he's in that #2-4 range in the Mariners' system and has the most potential to surprise.
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Surprise who? :- )
The M's have been taking flack for fast-tracking Tui, for how long now?
We owe an apology to the M's for scoffing at them for their opinions on, and promotions of, Tui early on. Seriously. They were three years ahead of us, right?
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#2-4 range.... I might take Ackley over Tuiasosopo, yeah. We said so earlier. Ackley, from what we can tell, might be the best HIT prospect to come into the AL since Joe Mauer, and he's one step away from the bigs. I'm not saying Tui is THAT golden (though Roger Jongewaard did).
Tui, if he went into an amateur draft right now, would go about #5 overall. Ackley would go #1-2-3 in almost any draft.
But Tui would be the #1 player in a lot of orgs. Check that in a coupla years.
Cheers,
Dr D