Michael Crouse: the under-rated prospect

[number15]

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20111110&content_id=25954454&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb

Michael Crouse

The 6'4 tall, 5-tool, CANADIAN, 20 year old....

the guy doesn't rank in tops of the JAYS system from anywhere I saw, but could be a future long term OF stand out in Toronto.

In my opinion he doesn't have the potential that Travis Snider came in with but he is definitely superior to Eric Thames.... yeh there are guys with more potential, but AA likes Canadians alot too. I would say at best he is a rich mans Alex Rios. By that I mean Alex Rios of the couple of seasons thats Alex Rios was actually good.

seems like the dark horse in the JAYS system... in my opinion

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Well if he's Canadian, he must be good. Not to mention the fact he's 6'4''. There's never been a 6'4'' Canadian who's been bad at baseball.

[Schad]

In my opinion he doesn't have the potential that Travis Snider came in with but he is definitely superior to Eric Thames.... yeh there are guys with more potential, but AA likes Canadians alot too. I would say at best he is a rich mans Alex Rios. By that I mean Alex Rios of the couple of seasons thats Alex Rios was actually good.

Actually, there might not be a hitter in the system with more potential; Crouse has a chance to be a 30/30 player if it all comes together, and he takes walks. The issue with Crouse is that he strikes out a metric tonne, and hasn't played above low-A.

I'd say he's pretty correctly rated...he's a fringe top 25 prospect in our extremely deep system until he demonstrates that he can close the holes in his swing, something many prospects never do. If he manages it, he'll vault up lists.

[baulderdash77]

I don't think he's underrated. He's a corner outfielder with plus baserunning, ok fielding & average power. However he strikes out so much that he can't hit for average and that's going to hurt you.

Do you really want your right fielder to have average power and a lowish batting average? I'd take it from a key defensive position but not from a corner outfielder.

[Avenger]

Michael Crouse does not have average power, he was among the leaders in iso power in the Midwest League. Just looking at him physically the guy you can tell he's got monstrous power potential, he's build like a tank. And looking at his SB numbers i have a hard time believing he's only an average outfielder on the defensive end.

I would agree with the OP that he's underrated, yeah he strikes out a ton and strikeout problems are hard to fix but if he does he could vault up from a nobody to a top 25 prospect. That potential should count for a lot more than it does in these prospect rankings

[Schad]

I don't think he's underrated. He's a corner outfielder with plus baserunning, ok fielding & average power. However he strikes out so much that he can't hit for average and that's going to hurt you.

Do you really want your right fielder to have average power and a lowish batting average? I'd take it from a key defensive position but not from a corner outfielder.

His power profile is quite a bit above average; he posted an isolated power above .200 as a 20 year old in full-season, after all.

[satyr9]

I know I haven't and I'll (safely I believe) assume no on else in this thread has seen any, or at least enough, of Crouse to have a opinion based on anything other than what the Sickels types of the net tell us. That being said, I have read enough to have some hopes that the OP is right. As for corner OF, I'm pretty sure many scouts think he's CF capable, but is currently playing RF in deference to Marisnick, which may help baulder think a bit more of his prospective value (maybe not though).

He's done less than others to date and as such deserves his ranking, but he does sound like a guy who might put a few things together and go from unheralded to burgeoning prospect with even as little as a single good year.

I will say he's is a good example of why it's more fun to follow the Jays system under AA. No longer is the 10th guy an Emaus, maybe he'll play 200 games as a back-up IF for some sad sack team in a couple years, or if magic happens, become a semi-competent starter for 4-5, type that we mostly saw under JP (1: sorry for that (Please Use More Appropriate Word) sentence and 2: I know that's not entirely fair to JP). So many guys have legitimate upside. Maybe it's only a 2% chance Crouse gets there, but if every 4-5 years one of those breaks out extra, then that's way more value than bringing an extra 12th man or 6th inning reliever to your team every draft. I imagine I might've felt similar about the system back in the DR scouting dominance days, but I was a little young for prospect porn when George and Tony were coming up.

Still, Crouse, at this point, is just a guy IMO. A guy you can develop a crush on and tell us all I told you so if he pans out, but just a guy nonetheless. Or I could be totally full of it. Maybe you've seen him hit and field 30 games and the rest of us reading internet scouting reports don't know nothing. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

edit: and Schad, if you're planning to stick around, I'd suggest you don't stray too far from this thread or you'll find something that drives you back into seclusion pretty darn quick.

[SharoneWright]

Schad's back!

[Homer Jay]

I know I haven't and I'll (safely I believe) assume no on else in this thread has seen any, or at least enough, of Crouse to have a opinion based on anything other than what the Sickels types of the net tell us. That being said, I have read enough to have some hopes that the OP is right. As for corner OF, I'm pretty sure many scouts think he's CF capable, but is currently playing RF in deference to Marisnick, which may help baulder think a bit more of his prospective value (maybe not though).

He's done less than others to date and as such deserves his ranking, but he does sound like a guy who might put a few things together and go from unheralded to burgeoning prospect with even as little as a single good year.

I will say he's is a good example of why it's more fun to follow the Jays system under AA. No longer is the 10th guy an Emaus, maybe he'll play 200 games as a back-up IF for some sad sack team in a couple years, or if magic happens, become a semi-competent starter for 4-5, type that we mostly saw under JP (1: sorry for that (Please Use More Appropriate Word) sentence and 2: I know that's not entirely fair to JP). So many guys have legitimate upside. Maybe it's only a 2% chance Crouse gets there, but if every 4-5 years one of those breaks out extra, then that's way more value than bringing an extra 12th man or 6th inning reliever to your team every draft. I imagine I might've felt similar about the system back in the DR scouting dominance days, but I was a little young for prospect porn when George and Tony were coming up.

Still, Crouse, at this point, is just a guy IMO. A guy you can develop a crush on and tell us all I told you so if he pans out, but just a guy nonetheless. Or I could be totally full of it. Maybe you've seen him hit and field 30 games and the rest of us reading internet scouting reports don't know nothing. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

edit: and Schad, if you're planning to stick around, I'd suggest you don't stray too far from this thread or you'll find something that drives you back into seclusion pretty darn quick.

Ahhhhhh J.P. and his obsession with college age players. We skipped past soooooo much talent just because they were high school players. Screw him and his "I want guys in the big leagues in 3 years and not 6" b.s.....

[Schad]

edit: and Schad, if you're planning to stick around, I'd suggest you don't stray too far from this thread or you'll find something that drives you back into seclusion pretty darn quick.

Yeah, I think I'm going to pick my spots.

[torontoaces04]

edit: and Schad, if you're planning to stick around, I'd suggest you don't stray too far from this thread or you'll find something that drives you back into seclusion pretty darn quick.

Yeah, I think I'm going to pick my spots.

Schad's back!

He puts his pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us. You guys are making it out like we've got Ken Rosenthal posting on the board or something...

**adds a couple more phone books to the pedestal**

[Randle McMurphy]

He puts his pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us. You guys are making it out like we've got Ken Rosenthal posting on the board or something...

**adds a couple more phone books to the pedestal**

He certainly contributes more to this board than your endless, purposeless whining about not signing Yu Darvish.

Ahhhhhh J.P. and his obsession with college age players. We skipped past soooooo much talent just because they were high school players. Screw him and his "I want guys in the big leagues in 3 years and not 6" b.s.....

JP got the job on the expectation that he would run the team cheaply like Billy Beane ran the Oakland Athletics. Rogers wanted to experience that same kind of success on a limited payroll. I wouldn't say he was obsessed with college players as much as he was basically on a directive to draft those kinds of players like he did with Beane in Oakland. JP changed his draft approach when Rogers started spending more money on the payroll and the draft (and after the realization that the "Moneyball" methods weren't working in Toronto).

[satyr9]

Ahhhhhh J.P. and his obsession with college age players. We skipped past soooooo much talent just because they were high school players. Screw him and his "I want guys in the big leagues in 3 years and not 6" b.s.....

JP got the job on the expectation that he would run the team cheaply like Billy Beane ran the Oakland Athletics. Rogers wanted to experience that same kind of success on a limited payroll. I wouldn't say he was obsessed with college players as much as he was basically on a directive to draft those kinds of players like he did with Beane in Oakland. JP changed his draft approach when Rogers started spending more money on the payroll and the draft (and after the realization that the "Moneyball" methods weren't working in Toronto).

This back and forth is exactly why I put my little bracketed bit in about JP. I so did not want to go there again.

Without re-hashing the history, let me just say that JP did not use a moneyball approach, or maybe to be clearer, he incorrectly evaluated the market upon which to base his targeting process. Fast moving college prospects were nowhere near the best value under his tenure as the Jays GM. Walks and OBP worked for Billy, but the real value was the exact opposite of JP's approach. If he'd spent just ridiculous money on every high-end prospect that fell through the cracks, he still wouldn't have broken 15m a year on the draft and 5m on internationals (and that would've been almost impossible to do without top 3 picks) and if he'd kept it up for those 7 years, the farm and big club would've started to look positively Raysesque, even without the high-end picks and maybe even better. I'm not saying he wasn't trying, but either he missed the point (that it's value not a particular stat or type of player) or he misjudged the market (far more likely and he wasn't the only one).

And I said I didn't want to re-hash it, but goddamn it if I jumped in with both feet again. Please disregard and go back to Crouse.

[Randle McMurphy]

All I'm saying is that JP was hired essentially to copy everything that Beane was doing in Oakland. That's how he marketed himself to Rogers and that's what Rogers wanted. And he did, in fact, do that for a few years until he realized that that process wouldn't work in Toronto (it hurt the team's potential for developing elite players and caused them to miss out on a lot of value) and the team raised its payroll. Overall, though, those early drafts did accomplish what they were designed to do (which was get a lot of players to the majors quickly).

[Michael Bradley]

Beane's drafting, outside of Mulder and Zito, is not what made him successful in Oakland. The best players on those late-90's/early-00's A's teams were already there when Beane was given the GM title (Giambi, Tejada, Hudson, Chavez, etc), and while he may have had a hand in a lot of the talent they had since he was assistant GM prior to getting the GM gig, it still wasn't a concept of "drafting players based on ETA over talent", as Ricciardi would have had you believe.

The reason why Beane was successful, in addition to incorporating draft picks into starting spots, was his buy low/sell high philosophy. He knew how to make trades. He knew how and when to sign players coming off down years. He knew how to work with the assets at his disposal. Compare that to JP Ricciardi. When JP took over, some of the best near ready prospects he had in his arsenal were Felipe Lopez, Cesar Izturis, Josh Phelps, and Jayson Werth. The return for those four? Jason Arnold, Luke Prokopec, Eric Crozier and Jason Frasor. Those are just a few examples, but Beane (in his heyday) would have turned those players into a hell of a lot better return than minor league fodder (...and Jason Frasor).

I'd argue JP's drafting resembled Beane's pretty well. His only top 10 pick as Jays GM was Romero, who has carved out a Zito/Mulder (circa Oakland) type career so far, and will probably end up better if he stays healthy. Outside of that, it's been hitters with no positions, decent pitchers in later rounds, etc. The drafting concept was basically the same as Beane's. Where Ricciardi failed in living up to Beane's hype was trading and signing players, and obviously the AL East did not help matters.

[Graham's Cracker]

Didn't want to start a new thread over this... OT

Did anyone see Eric Thames at the Montreal road tour? I guess he's been hitting the weights this off-season!

The 25-year-old’s “normal” physique refers to his appearance three years ago, before he put down the barbells entirely for an alternative approach to his exercise regimen: yoga.

“At my biggest I was about 225 pounds, and about 3% body fat, and right now I’m about 205, with about 5-6% body fat,” Thames explained. “I guess people are kind of freaking out because last year all I did was, like, full yoga — that was it.”

http://sports.nationalpost.com/2012/01/18/jays-outfielder-eric-thames-packs-on-the-muscle/