Evaluating cubs pitching prospects

[NCChiFan]

In desperation, I read the entire thing, and I don't even know how good of a baseball scout you are.

 

[beckdawg]

In desperation, I read the entire thing, and I don't even know how good of a baseball scout you are.

I'm no scout. I'm just looking at k/9 and bb/9 as they are something the pitcher directly controls and are pretty good indicators of future success. For example, if you have a k/9 over 10 in the minors and a bb/9 under 3 you are likely to do well in the majors. Strikeouts will decrease in rate from the minors to majors but at 10 k/9 you're likely dropping to 7-8 in the worst case which is pretty good when your top pitchers are in the 9 range at the MLB level. Walks don't really change that drastic from minors to majors unless it's someone getting better control. But, generally you don't see guys with 3.5+ bb/9 getting to the majors unless they are relievers.

Basically i looked for 2 things. The first was excellent k/9(10+) because that tends to indicate great stuff. I then looked for bb/9. If you had high k/9 and a 3iish bb/9 you can succeed but fewer walks is always better. On the contrary, if you have low K/9 you really need to be sub 2 bb/9 in order to succeed at a high level. If you're 5-7 k/9 and 2-3 bb/9 you're probably a back of the rotation guy if even that. I'll leave the development projections to actual scouts. This is what they actually did compared to other high level players now. For example, I mentioned Archie Bradley at some point in this thread and he's not gotten great control thus far. However, as a top pitching prospects scouts expect that to improve. I didn't want to dive into that because A) I don't have scouting experience and B) a lot of prospects don't make it.

I just wanted to look at what they actually had done. There is some potential bias in that because a pitcher in the PCL for example will have a higher ERA because the stadiums are homer friendly. But, focusing on k/9 and bb/9 some what negates that. You can still have cases where a guy is dominating a level because he need to be moved up but that doesn't happen very often.