Using Victor Wang's prospect value research from the Hardball Times blogger "dougdirt" of John Sickels' Prospect Blog created this interesting farm system ranking that slotted the Indians as #1 in baseball. I'd take any prospect ranking with a grain of salt, but it's always nice to see the tribe's farm system ranked highly.
Let's take a closer look at Victor Wang's research. Carlos Santana appears to be a Top 10 prospect according to respected sources such as Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, Project Prospect and John Sickels so we'll group him there. According to Mr. Wang's research Santana has a (rough comp in parenthesis according to "Wins Above Bench"):
10% chance of busting (Andy Marte)
50% chance of contributing (Ben Francisco/Casey Blake)
25% chance of being an everyday guy (Victor Martinez)
15% chance of being a star (a Grady Sizemore of catching)
We could do a specific evaluation for Chisenhall, Rondon, Brantley and the rest of the prospects. However instead of dissecting tribe prospects one by one, let's see what to expect from the "wave of arms". According to John Sickels' latest Indians prospect rankings the Indians have 6 pitchers (Hagadone, Rondon, White, Carrasco, Knapp and House) ranked as "Grade B or B-". Wang's research found that 52% of Grade B pitching prospects bust, so roughly 3 of these pitchers will at least be a major league contributer and it's likely that a couple could be more.
Onwards and upwards, the Indians had an impressive 15, yes 15, Grade C+ prospects (12 pitchers). Sickels identified 65 Indians guys who were at least "C" level. Wang found that about 75% of Grade C pitchers busted so that means that the Indians will most likely get about 3 useful or better pitchers out of that group of 12 C+ pitchers. Additionally if we assume that half of the unnamed Grade C prospects (of out of the 65 Sickels identified) are pitchers.... that gives us another 20 arms and possibly another 5 useful pitchers. That means that statistically speaking the Indians can expect about 11 major league caliber arms from their farm system.
The tribe undoubtably has pitching quantity, but the question remains will a couple of these guys take it to the next level? That will determine if the Indians will be mired in mediocrity or will make some deep playoff runs. As I've mentioned before, the hitting base is there (Sizemore, Choo, Asdrubal, LaPorta, Santana, Chisenhall, Brantley, Valbuena).... we just need the pitching to develop. Should be interesting to watch anyways......
Anyways, let's take a quick look at the thrilling *cough, cough* Indians-related transactions of the past few weeks.
-Indians sign C Mike Redmond to 1 year $850,000 deal.
This deal is fairly blah and has already been extensively covered by an Indians-news starved blogosphere. Personally, I don't mind throwing Marson into the fire with an understanding that Santana might need more time to further adjust to the catching position in AAA. The bat is definitely there though and with his athleticism, superb blocking skills and cannon of an arm he could become a plus defender in the future. However, the Indians pitching staff will undoubtably be young and erratic in 2010. So it's not a bad idea to bring in an experienced Mike Redmond to help the pitchers and the new coaching staff. If a positive externality of Redmond's signing is that the pitchers pitch better and give something like $10 million dollars in extra value, then this deal is a good one. Unfortunately it's tough to measure such things.
-Indians sign IF Mark Grudzielanek and trade 3B Jesus Brito to Pirates for IF Brian Bixler
First off, I've always like Grudzielanek. Despite the fact that he didn't play in the big leagues last year, there's no harm in giving him a shot on a minor league deal. I'm not going to lose much sleep about the Indians losing Jesus Brito. He's a decent, low A prospect, but he's behind the likes of Wes Hodges, Lonnie Chisenhall and Kyle Bellows on the organizational 3B depth chart. Bixler might help, he might not (his 26K's in 44 2009 MLB AB is scary). These moves give the Indians some options to go along with Valbuena and Donald and hell depth is never a bad thing.
That's all for now. Can you smell Spring Training around the corner?
Your pal,
Alex Trebek
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