It’s getting to be that time, time to take a look at how our prospects are doing this year, who’s stock is up, who’s stock is down, and who has fallen off the prospect map. I still haven’t decided how I want to start, but I may just go in reverse order of grades, so the players with the lowest grades will come first. I’ve spent the last 4 or 5 months tinkering with and developing a better evaluation system to assign a value or number to a prospect’s performance. As I’ve detailed in the past, not all .300 averages are the same, and 20 home runs isn’t just 20 home runs, that the context is important. When I roll out the grades, each player will have the following information given

Name – Age – Draft Year/Round – Position

2006 Batting Line – 2006 advanced stats (K rate, BB rate, XBH rate)  – 2006 Index Score – Upside Score
2007 Batting Line – 2007 advanced stats (K rate, BB rate, XBH rate) – 2007 Index Score – Upside Score

The index score is the heart and soul of the formula I developed. It takes into account a player’s contact skill (batting average), his on base skills (OB%) and his power skill (slug%) and factors it into one number. The index score is a raw total. The upside score takes the raw numbers and then adjusts them for the park the player plays in, as well as the league he plays in, then factors in the age at that level. The Upside Score will either be higher or lower than the Index Score, and this will give a better indication as to the strength of the prospect. For example, a player who is 20 in High A is probably 1 year younger than the average age for legitimate prospects in High A. His Upside score would reflect this, and his score would be higher than his Index score. In another example, if a player is playing in a very hitter friendly park, in a league that favors scoring like the Cal League, his Upside score might be lower than his Index score, indicating he’s likely to see a regression in his overall numbers when moving to a more hitting neutral park/league.

This may seem a bit wordy now, but when you see an actual writeup, it will be much easier to understand. My plan is to do 4-5 prospect writeups a day, depending on the time I have. I’m still in the process of getting settled at my new abode, so it may be a few less than that to start.