Are pitching prospects not worth what they used to be?

[9er_4life]

With the recent Morse trade where Seattle got it's impact bat, Washington got a front-line pitching prospect in A.J. Cole and Oakland got it's, ahem, 'difference maker' in John Jaso, I have to throw out the question for discussion: is the value placed on pitching prospects going down? Are they now being undervalued, or is their value moving back to a more reasonable level?

This winter we've seen Bauer moved for a light-hitting shortstop prospect, Cole traded for a Greg Zaun-type, and I was even shocked initially when the Jays had to include Syndegaard in order to get Dickey. I know fans typically overrate their own prospects, as do organizations, but I can't recall top young arms being moved for so little in the past (I don't consider Dickey a 'little' return, but considering they were already giving up their top prospect at a premium position for a 38-yr old knuckleballer the Mets didn't see fit to pay at an average rate for pitchers, I think most of us were surprised it took throwing in a front-line pitching prospect to get the deal done).

Any one else as confused as I am on this? Or are these reasonably explained anomalies?

[LBJSeizedMyID]

Don't underestimate John Jaso. He may not be a sexy name, but John Jaso has a chance to have a Mike Morse like breakout in 2011.

[William]

Reasonably explained anomalies. Pitching prospects are still very much valued by front offices, although obviously each case has to be looked at on its own merits.

Case in point, Arizona was saying for the longest time they'd only move Justin Upton for major league ready parts and players that would come in and make an impact right away. But the recent rejected trade to Seattle was for a package of pitching prospects that weren't major league ready.

I think people should stop conveniently forgetting that RA Dickey is the reigning Cy Young winner, signed to a ridiculously cheap $30 million over the next three years. It's because he was available at such a low annual price that the price to acquire him via trade was even higher. For the same reason that Jose Reyes and Mark Buehrle were available for a "low" cost because they still have a ridiculous amount of money attached, Dickey was expensive because he does not.

Arizona has been notorious over the last year for apparently mishandling Bauer, they soured on him for a while now. Whether that's a team specific mismanagement of a prospect (that no team is exempt from, ie. Travis Snider) or whether they have internal reasons and additional inside information on him that lowered his stock with the team, that one's been coming for a while.

And AJ Cole had a 7.82 ERA last year in A+ ball, so maybe his stock had fallen a bit. Still, Jaso is a very useful player, don't downplay how good he is. He destroyed RHP last year with a .927 OPS...that's good enough of a bat to play outside of catcher.

[9er_4life]

Reasonably explained anomalies. Pitching prospects are still very much valued by front offices, although obviously each case has to be looked at on its own merits.

Case in point, Arizona was saying for the longest time they'd only move Justin Upton for major league ready parts and players that would come in and make an impact right away. But the recent rejected trade to Seattle was for a package of pitching prospects that weren't major league ready.

I think people should stop conveniently forgetting that RA Dickey is the reigning Cy Young winner, signed to a ridiculously cheap $30 million over the next three years. It's because he was available at such a low annual price that the price to acquire him via trade was even higher. For the same reason that Jose Reyes and Mark Buehrle were available for a "low" cost because they still have a ridiculous amount of money attached, Dickey was expensive because he does not.

Arizona has been notorious over the last year for apparently mishandling Bauer, they soured on him for a while now. Whether that's a team specific mismanagement of a prospect (that no team is exempt from, ie. Travis Snider) or whether they have internal reasons and additional inside information on him that lowered his stock with the team, that one's been coming for a while.

And AJ Cole had a 7.82 ERA last year in A+ ball, so maybe his stock had fallen a bit. Still, Jaso is a very useful player, don't downplay how good he is. He destroyed RHP last year with a .927 OPS...that's good enough of a bat to play outside of catcher.

I don't think anybody's forgetting that Dickey is the reigning Cy Young award winner, it's just that the entire industry has some skepticism around knuckleball pitchers and he's already 38. I like the fact the Jays made the deal, but you heard 'baseball people' (presumable gm's, scouts, etc) illicit shock that they were able to pry away Syndegaard on top of D'Arnaud. I know the Mets are rebuilding, and their limited efforts at re-signing Dickey could've strictly been PR/leverage-related, but still, they obviously weren't treating Dickey as the Cy Young winner but were demanding other teams treat him as such.

Bauer and Arizona seems strange to me though...even if you sour on a player it doesn't mean you trade him for less than market value. I just wondered how market value for a guy with some of the best stuff in the minors could only be worth a so-so shortstop prospect. Maybe that's exactly where it should be, just seemed odd.

And I get that Jaso is a quality major league catcher who had a good season last year. It could be that he's coming into his own in his prime years, or it could be that last season was an anomaly. He did only manage a .650 OPS in 2011. And yes, Cole's season last year got off to a rough start, but after being sent to low-A he put up dominant numbers. And he's still very young. How would we feel if JP goes down with injury and AA decides to trade Sanchez for Doumit, Montero, or Hannigan? All are Jaso-like catchers - quality major leaguers, but worth your top pitching prospect?

Maybe teams (and fans) have been overrating their top prospects and now we're seeing a little bit of 'market correction.' It could be teams are valuing a quality major leaguer more now than the potential of top-flight guys.

[agk47]

1 part new cba


1 part the circumstance surrounding the prospects


but yes in general, mostly on account of the cba, the trade value of prospects has gone down considerably it would appear.

[TheseSicklyKeys]

Don't underestimate John Jaso. He may not be a sexy name, but John Jaso has a chance to have a Mike Morse like breakout in 2011.

Even so, things like that can't really be spun in to greater trade value by any GM, even if they all know it's the case. No one wants to pay up for what a Major League tested player might do, when they've never really done it before, or never proven that they can do it reliably and repeatably.

Hell, exploiting this fact is pretty much one of AA's go to moves.

[engageTHEmasses]

I've been wondering if it's been more of an advanced metrics thing-- starting to weed out how valuable those prospects really are via WAR, ERA+, etc... perhaps we're seeing a combination of events: a more 'realistic' adjustment to prospects' value, a need for/valuing of major-league contributing players in the 'now', and a more sophisticated and accurate metric system that allows clubs to better assess the actual 'value' to them of different players/deals.

Perhaps the 'potential value' of some young pitchers who, statistically, often don't pan out, is being outweighed by the measurable WAR's, etc. that give a much more accurate view of a players impact on the club.

[satyr9]

It's a good question and maybe over time I'll see it that way, but the examples you listed don't quite do it for me, except I do think it shows a parallel trend that may be indicative of more.

For now, I just see some fairly specific circumstances; Bauer was worth less to ARI for a host of reasons and Cole had a bad year in OAK (and they got a year to scout him in their own organization). So while I don't think value is down as a whole across the league for pitching prospects, I do think GMs are more willing to dump an asset for something when they see it trending the wrong way. In the past, with pitching at such a premium, you'd hold your A ball star for 3-4 years after a swoon hoping he'd figure it out and turn back all callers for anything less than premium MLB stars, now if you evaluate him poorly it's get what you can time. Prospects have been commoditized as trade value more than before. The more GMs see them as assets than as players, the more likely they'll be willing to cut bait on what they see as potentially toxic value.

I think you'd find if the prospects were the PIT guys or SEA's group or most of the other top 10 guys, the returns would still be substantial (like J.Upton for example), but at the same time, not a lot has to go wrong for some GM to get squeamish about their recently prized possession. So the value has a thinner edge, but I still don't think that's the same as it being overall lessened.

As for Syndy and D'Arnaud for Dickey, it seems strange because Dickey is strange and I would not try to evaluate any league-wide trends off anything related to him. Word of mouth rumours leading up to the trade had his value pegged way wrong, so it was doubly shocking. If Dickey were a 31-32 year-old power pitcher coming off the last three years, you don't get him for that package. So some GMs'll see Dickey like that player (with 3-5 good years left and sustainable production) and some will see an ancient knuckler they'd be afraid to move their C+ with upside guy for 'cause they see him as prime pumpkin material.

I will say last year I felt like teams may've started over-valuing prospects (if you're CIN why wouldn't you deal that for Latos?), although that can be a touch hard to fairly evaluate as it's mostly related to trades that were rejected (meaning it's all rumour mill nonsense in the first place), but it's still interesting that the trend this year seems to be the other way (and one of the reasons you see TEX kind of out on an island this year).

One thing I think is interesting to notice is that arby numbers seem to have gone up, which potentially dramatically decreases the value of prospects. If a struggling Colby still gets 4.5+, does that still count as a value year? If Salty can settle for what I wouldn't have given him as a straight UFA and if the elites like Price are getting 8 figures from the jump in arb, then either FA salaries are all going to take another big jump (that's my best guess as the Dodgers and then the Yankees pull the high-end from 200 to 250 or beyond) or those 6 years of cheap control will become 2-3 with 3-4 okay years, just not cheap ones, which would be a dramatic change for the value of young players.

[tecumseh18]

I've been wondering if it's been more of an advanced metrics thing-- starting to weed out how valuable those prospects really are via WAR, ERA+, etc... perhaps we're seeing a combination of events: a more 'realistic' adjustment to prospects' value, a need for/valuing of major-league contributing players in the 'now', and a more sophisticated and accurate metric system that allows clubs to better assess the actual 'value' to them of different players/deals.

Perhaps the 'potential value' of some young pitchers who, statistically, often don't pan out, is being outweighed by the measurable WAR's, etc. that give a much more accurate view of a players impact on the club.

Of course, as part of the process of measuring these things, you have to factor in the measurable risk of injury - being out for 12-18 months with TJ surgery (sometimes twice!!!)

As the Jays found out last season, pitchers are extremely vulnerable to injury, to loss of velocity, to mindf-ing themselves. Even if they don't get injured up at the big club level, they may fizzle in AA. Would I trade a blue chip position player for purely pitching prospects today? No way!

Of course this brings up the question of why pitchers are so vulnerable. That was one of my points about Morris in the Hall of Fame thread, that it's just unbelievable the number of innings that he and those other guys logged, season after season. So far King Felix has gone over 240 once (plus 230+ another three times). Morris did it 10 times, peaking at 290+ IP one year. Blyleven 11 times, and including IIRC at least once over 300 IP. That's giving their teams value.

It's particularly interesting for us because AA has arguably overinvested in drafting pitchers the last few years. We'll see what happens in the next draft.

[9er_4life]

A lot of good points have been made on here. I asked the question because it just seemed like maybe some of these recent trades have pointed to some possible bigger shifts in thinking around baseball. Though I completely agree that these few instances are not enough to support a thesis, it has gotten me thinking a bit.

Other thoughts: I think that maybe prospects don't quite have the value they did a few years ago because there is a lot more money in the game today with recent television deals, etc. Most teams still have to operate on a budget, which necessitates producing a good number of homegrown players. But the cash flowing around has effected even the most notorious of cheapskates (Kansas City anyone?) Thus prospects aren't worth quite as much if you can afford to pay free agents/ take on pricey contracts for proven big-league players.

This might be over-simplistic, just throwing it out there for consideration: I wonder too if pitchers aren't quite as highly regarded as they used to be given the decrease in offence we've seen post-steroids era? Power pitchers in particular were a hot commodity when nearly every team seemed to have a capable offence - and the best teams still needed those power arms to shut down quality opponents. But now it seems that most teams can put together quality pitching staffs as easily as offences. I know that 'you can never get enough pitching' - but it feels like mediocre arms have more success today than they had even 10 years ago, and thus, while pitching is always important for a winning team, it may not be valued quite as much as it was once was.