ESPN.com: MLB – Addressing a concern over the Pirates
You should read this story by John Sickels.
If you don’t know, Sickels has become the first voice to consult about minor league players. That’s because he’s a pretty decent writer and he uses measures we all (should) respect to evaluate talent and potential.
What I like particularly about this story is the way it sets Sickels’ tempered analysis against that of the scouts who make the decisions about who plays and who doesn’t. And about who gets drafted and who doesn’t.
I’m not an expert on the minor leagues. I read a lot of people who try to figure the minors out by looking at minor league performance, but it’s clear from the evidence that all of that isn’t necessarily predictive.
We’ll see this year how Adam Dunn and Carlos Pena and others perform. Some of that will justify the opinions of Sickels and scores of minor league cross checkers. But from a fantasy baseball perspective, the thing to remember is that nobody knows exactly how it’s going to go, and there is no profit in paying a real price for an unproven player.
If Mickey White and John Sickels can’t even agree on what position a guy should play, we should be wary about the weight we give their opinions. The fact is that the top rookies are often guys who aren’t listed on the preseason lists of top rookies, because the moments that talent, opportunity and execution coincide are very difficult to predict.