Finding Albert

I’ve been having fun watching Cincinnati Reds prospect Jay Bruce tear it up. The guy was kept down in the minor leagues at the start of this year – Reds management, in all its wisdom, thought he was not ready, and instead signed weak-hitting Baltimore Orioles castoff Corey Patterson to play center field.

Patterson was a disaster, but Reds’ manager Dusty Baker has a man crush on him, and trotted him out there night after night. Check this out: Patterson’s on base percentage (not batting average) was in the low 200’s. (A good leadoff hitter should have an OBP of 350 or more.) But Dusty Baker is nothing if not stubborn. He insists that Patterson has real talent, and that his light is under that bushel basket. That’s why he always batted first in the lineup. His shining little light.

The Reds finally called up Bruce. Patterson “volunteered” to be demoted to AAA to work on the mechanics of his swing. (There is indeed a mechanical glitch there that even my untrained eye can spot – when he swings the bat, it usually misses the ball.)

Bruce has been tearing it up. His batting average is 571, his OPS (on-base plus slugging) a pornographic 1.470. But it’s a small sample size. It will change. The question is, as pitchers adjust to him, will he adjust to them? That is the key to success.

Anyway, there ’s an great article in the May 30 Wall Street Journal (The $10M Arm) about the Major League Baseball amateur draft. The article centers around Rick Porcello, a kid drafted out of high school last year by the Detroit Tigers. Drafting high school kids, especially pitchers, is risky business. Many high school pitching prospects develop arm problems before they reach the majors, but this one so far is paying off. The Tigers paid a $10 million dollar signing bonus to Porcello. Here’s an early evaluation:

He can throw five pitches, including two separate fastballs — a 97-mile-per-hour version that seems to defy the laws of physics by rising on its way to the plate, and another, thrown with a different grip, that dives down to the corner of the strike zone toward a right-handed batter’s thighs. He has a change-up that, while thrown with the same calm, fluid motion as his fastball, wreaks havoc on a hitter’s timing by crossing the plate as much as 20 mph slower.

Keep your eye out for that name – Porcello. Barring the unfortunate, the kid is a future mega-star.

But drafting in baseball is much riskier than other sports. Often enough the top picks have success (Bruce was a first round pick in 2005), but it’s no sure thing. The problem is how to spot potential development. Statistics don’t help much. Major league players are so much better than high school and college players that lower level numbers mean very little. How do you spot talent? For non-pitchers, it comes down to the five tools – hitting for average, hitting for power, baserunning skills and speed, throwing ability, and fielding. Rich teams are willing to invest heavily in five-toolers. Poorer teams have to hope for the diamond in the rough – the great Albert Pujols was a 13th round selection.

It affects competitive balance. Mathew Futterman, the author of the WSJ article, talks about the role of signing bonuses in baseball. The Detroit Tigers could afford to pay $10 million to Porcello. The Tampa Bay Rays or Kansas City Royals … no. Other teams saw his talent, but weren’t willing to break the bank to sign him. So he went late in the first round of the 2007 draft, and he went to a wealthy team. (Ever wonder how the Yankees manage to keep a robust farm system while continually trading away prospects? This is one reason.)

The MLB draft, like the NFL, is weighted based on reverse standings. The worse a team’s record, the higher that team picks in the draft. The object is to give weak teams a chance to land top talent. It doesn’t help the game that the Red Sox and Yankees continually field the best teams and land the top draft picks. But that’s how it is working out. Poorer teams are bypassing top five-tool talent and taking their chances with lower-rungs. They are hoping to find another Albert. Good intentions aside, the rich are getting richer again.

The solution to this problem of haves having more is telling. Baseball is exempt from antitrust laws (not that we enforce them anymore anyway). Teams are getting together now and talking about putting caps on signing bonuses. This would preserve the ability of poorer teams to sign top talent. The free market has always been the enemy of baseball. And it is working its magic again. Left to the market, we’d have the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series nine years out of ten (the Red Sox in the tenth year), and the rest of us would be watching hockey.