Reader "Virginia Phil" recently brought up an interesting comparision of some recent "5-tool" prospects in the comments last week on our "Prospect List-mania" article. He's expanded a bit on his original effort and we hope you enjoy....
"If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all." --Hamlet
Is
Felix Pie ready?
Here are Felix Pie's minor-league stats and those of three other fairly recent toolsy centerfield prospects,
Carlos Beltran,
Vernon Wells and
Carl Crawford. (Actually, Crawford plays left in a crowded young outfield at TB.)
Beltran:
Year/Age |
League |
G |
AB |
H |
2B |
3B |
HR |
SB |
SO |
AVG/OBP/SLG |
1995(18) |
GCL(Rk) |
52 |
180 |
50 |
9 |
0 |
0 |
5 |
30 |
.278/.332/.328 |
1996(19) |
Spokane (A-) |
59 |
215 |
58 |
8 |
3 |
7 |
10 |
65 |
.270/.359/.433 |
1997(20) |
Wilmington (A+) |
120 |
419 |
96 |
15 |
4 |
11 |
17 |
96 |
.229/.311/.363 |
1998(21) |
Wilmington (A+) |
52 |
192 |
53 |
14 |
0 |
5 |
11 |
39 |
276/.364/.427 |
|
Wichita (AA) |
47 |
182 |
64 |
13 |
3 |
14 |
7 |
30 |
352/.427/.687 |
2000(23) |
GCL (Rk) |
1 |
4 |
2 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
.500/.600/1.500 |
|
Wilmington (A+) |
3 |
13 |
4 |
0 |
1 |
2 |
0 |
5 |
308/.308/.923 |
|
Omaha (AAA) |
5 |
18 |
6 |
1 |
0 |
2 |
1 |
3 |
.333/.455/.722 |
Totals |
6 Seasons |
353 |
1274 |
341 |
65 |
11 |
42 |
53 |
282 |
.268/.347/.436 |
Wells:
Year/Age |
League |
G |
AB |
H |
2B |
3B |
HR |
SB |
SO |
AVG/OBP/SLG |
1997(18) |
St. Cath (A-) |
66 |
264 |
81 |
20 |
1 |
10 |
8 |
44 |
.307/.377/.504 |
1998(19) |
Hagerstown (A) |
134 |
509 |
145 |
35 |
2 |
11 |
13 |
84 |
.285/.348/.426 |
1999(20) |
Dunedin ( A+) |
70 |
265 |
91 |
16 |
2 |
11 |
13 |
34 |
.343/.403/.543 |
|
Knoxville (AA) |
26 |
106 |
36 |
6 |
2 |
3 |
6 |
15 |
.340/.400/.519 |
|
Syracuse (AAA) |
33 |
129 |
40 |
8 |
1 |
4 |
5 |
22 |
.310/.357/.481 |
2000(21) |
Syracuse (AAA) |
127 |
493 |
120 |
31 |
7 |
16 |
23 |
88 |
.243/.313/.432 |
2001(22) |
Syracuse (AAA) |
107 |
413 |
116 |
27 |
4 |
12 |
15 |
68 |
.281/.333/.453 |
Totals |
5 Seasons |
563 |
2179 |
629 |
143 |
19 |
67 |
83 |
355 |
.289/.350/.464 |
Crawford:
Year/Age |
League |
G |
AB |
H |
2B |
3B |
HR |
SB |
SO |
AVG/OBP/SLG |
1999(18) |
Princeton (Rk) |
60 |
260 |
83 |
14 |
4 |
0 |
17 |
47 |
..319/.350/.404 |
2000(19) |
Charlst-sc (A) |
135 |
564 |
170 |
21 |
11 |
6 |
55 |
102 |
.301/.342/.410 |
2001(20) |
Orlando (AA) |
132 |
537 |
147 |
24 |
3 |
4 |
36 |
90 |
.274/.323/.352 |
2002(21) |
Durham (AAA) |
85 |
353 |
105 |
17 |
9 |
7 |
26 |
69 |
.297/.335/.456 |
Totals |
4 Seasons |
412 |
1714 |
505 |
76 |
27 |
17 |
134 |
308 |
.295/.336/.400 |
Pie:
Year/Age |
League |
G |
AB |
H |
2B |
3B |
HR |
SB |
SO |
AVG/OBP/SLG |
2002(17) |
Az Cubs (Rk) |
55 |
218 |
70 |
16 |
13 |
4 |
17 |
47 |
.321/.385/.569 |
|
Boise (A-) |
2 |
8 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
.125/.222/.250 |
2003(18) |
Lansing (A) |
124 |
505 |
144 |
22 |
9 |
4 |
19 |
98 |
.285/.346/.388 |
2004(19) |
Daytona (A+) |
106 |
415 |
125 |
17 |
10 |
8 |
32 |
113 |
.301/.364/.448 |
2005(20) |
W. Tenn (AA) |
59 |
240 |
73 |
17 |
5 |
11 |
13 |
53 |
.304/.349/.554 |
2006(21) |
Iowa (AAA) |
141 |
559 |
158 |
33 |
8 |
15 |
17 |
126 |
.283/.341/.451 |
Totals |
5 Seasons |
487 |
1945 |
571 |
106 |
45 |
42 |
98 |
438 |
.294/.353/.459 |
[source:
thebaseballcube.com]
Some observations:
Only Wells played in more minor-league games than Pie. Wells was made to repeat triple-A after hitting sub-.250 the first time.
Beltran's six seasons are misleading. He actually spent four in the minors. He was rookie of the year at KC in 1999, and then he had a brief rehab assignment in 2000. Beltran basically skipped triple-A. Crawford spent less than a season there.
In this group, Pie is at the top in OBP and near the top in average and slugging. He had a good season in triple-A, relatively, and was second in the PCL in hits. He does strike out a lot. He also drives the ball: his 33 doubles and 56 extra-base hits at Iowa are tops in this group.
Beltran put up splashy numbers in half a season in AA, as did Wells in a season split between single and double A.
Prospect rankings:
Beltran entered 1999, his first year in the majors, ranked 9 (BP), 14 (BA) and 11 (Sickels) among prospects.
In 2001, when Wells was expected to make the jump to the majors, he was ranked 5 (BP), 4 (BA) and 4 (Sickels). Sickels, by the way, had C-Pat #1.
Crawford displayed no power before 2002 when he hit seven home runs at Durham (AAA) before making the jump to Tampa Bay in midseason. Up to that point he had been a blip on the prospect charts: 40 (BP), 48 (Rotoworld).
Before his AAA season in 2006, Pie was ranked 21 by MLB.com. This year, he is ranked 34 by BP (Nate Silver) and 42 by BA (Jim Callis).
Here is a recent Q&A with Nate Silver (BP) concerning Pie:
JFT (Rancho Cucamonga): PECOTA seems to think Felix Pie is ready and maybe even a ROY candidate. The Cubs seem to think he needs another year in Iowa. Is there a reason why PECOTA is so high on Pie? Don't all the strikeouts in the minors bother it?
Nate Silver: Honestly, I think the Cubs were spooked by what happened with
Corey Patterson, and that's what's motivating the decision to keep Pie down on the farm. But Pie is quite a bit ahead of where Patterson was. CoPat hit .253/.308/.387 in about 350 PAs as a 22-year-old in Iowa. Pie hit .283/.341/.451 in 623 PAs as a 21-year-old in Iowa. Big difference there. . . . To address the other part of the question, sure, Pie's plate discipline is a little bit of a concern. But the combination of power, speed, and being young for one's levels is as time-tested a formula for star potential as it gets.
My conclusions:
None of the four players above tore up the league at every level. Their numbers are decent, but that's all. It's interesting that the best prospects don't have the best numbers. What elevates them as prospects? There are better hitters than these guys every year at every level, but those players may not have a future because they lack a position, whereas if you can cover center and you have an arm, there are three positions you can play well. It's instructive to bring someone like Jason Dubois into the discussion. Dubois is a hitter with no position, nowhere to play. His numbers at Iowa were 316/389/630, with 31 homers and 99 RBI. This would be outstanding for a five-tool player, but if you only have two tools and you're in a slump, you don't have any tools. Dubois' major-league career pretty much ended with his first slump.
So if you scratch your head and ask what the deal is with these so-called five-tool guys who don't seem to hit too well, the answer is that you can learn how to hit but you can't learn to play center field. And center is very important: ask a pitcher. It's great to have a guy out there who can catch and throw and also hit with power, like Jim Edmonds or Andruw Jones, but while Jones hit 25 homers at age 18 in A ball, Edmonds never hit ten in a season in the minors. But he could always catch. The first time Edmonds broke double digits in home runs was at age 25 with the Angels, when he hit 33. Now he has 350. Beltran, Wells, Crawford or Pie never hit twenty in a single year in the minors. Today Wells hits about thirty homers a year at age 27, while Beltran, 29, is good for forty.
Is Felix Pie ready, then? Probably not, if ready means doing much more than flashing his offensive potential. But great athletes learn to hit, largely because their defense buys them the time that Jason Dubois won't have. Meanwhile Pie can anchor center field, which is something, not nothing. Cub fans in particular might have a problem with this patient approach because it didn't work with Corey Patterson. We waited and waited and he never got better.
The problem with Corey Patterson, I would argue, was not so much his slow progress as a hitter but the fact that his defense couldn't carry him, get him over the rough spots, ease the pressure. Bottom line, he was not a great fielder, and it's a little mysterious why, since he could run and he could throw. But the catching part sometimes eluded him. Midway through his tenure with the Cubs, I started asking myself, if he's a great fielder, how come he never makes great plays? My teenage son used to put together homemade highlight reels, and once he asked me to sit down to watch a collection of Patterson web-gems. I said, okay, but look closely and you'll see that in every catch his left elbow is bent. And it was true, both when he dove and when he leaped. There was something tentative about it. The sort of thing that Juan Pierre did ten times last year, where you lay flat out in a dive, parallel to the ground, arm and glove fully extended--Patterson didn't do that. He lacked the physical commitment, or courage, that defines an athlete. Patterson was the image of an athlete. He may have been born to play a great athlete in a movie. But he wasn't one. Several scouts out there with egg on their faces should be implementing a new Patterson Rule: don't say a guy has five tools until you've seen him do something special in the field. Patterson is partly a victim of bad scouting (he said, with great hindsight).
It may be six, seven years before we know what kind of hitter Pie is going to become, especially in terms of power numbers. But it will only take about a month to tell if he's the real deal as an athlete. If he is, then the comparisons with Patterson should stop right there.
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