Today's Fantasy Rx

As previously mentioned, please know that I don't intend to directly regurgitate the information presented by the speakers, since we don't want to reduce the value of the conference for the attendees or discourage anyone from attending in the future.

The Symposium only featured three events on Sunday morning, but I suspect at least a few people signed up for the event because of the first two. Triple-A Tucson and current Scottsdale manager Al Pedrique spoke from about 8:30 until 10 in the morning, and former Houston assistant scouting director David Rawnsley spoke for about a half hour before Pedrique, and then he continued after Pedrique left until about 11:15. The morning concluded with an hour-long Q&A featuring all the regular speakers before the afternoon game at Scottsdale. While the two roto drafts took place on Sunday night, I'm going to hold back from discussing them until Tuesday.

For the sake of clarity, I'm going to discuss all of David's presentation before going over Al's talk.

Rawnsley, who we first heard speak at the AFL two years ago, returned this year to provide his normal assortment of off-field stories and scouting evaluation. His presentation concentrated on pitching prospects; first he went over his tools for examining young pitchers, then he reviewed a couple of cases studies before finally discussing his favorites in several organizations.

He highlighted the following key areas as the best predictors of success among young pitchers:

Track record: A pitcher's complete history, including both statistics, scouting reports, and off-field knowledge is the most important ingredient in accurately evaluating his upside. U.S. high school pitchers almost always have more information readily available in their history than anyone from Latin America, and organizations generally prefer players with that extensive track record.

Consistency: Sustaining success is important, and that is one of the reasons why, when evaluating prospects, we generally prefer a prospect who spent all year dominating at one level over someone who dominated for half the year at the same level and then struggled upon his promotion.

Minor League K/IP ratio: Demonstrating an ability to strike out hitters is essential at lower levels in badly lit parks filled with undisciplined hitters.

Minor League BB/IP ratio: Demonstrating excellent control is vital to avoid excess baserunners before facing the narrower big league strike zones. A jump in a pitcher's walk ratios in the majors likely either means that the pitcher got hitters out without throwing strikes in the minors or that the pitcher doesn't trust his stuff.

Bullpen time: He generally prefers someone follow the Earl Weaver trend of spending some time in the bullpen before starting in the majors, and we've happily supported this theory for years, identifying 2002 roto surprises like Ted Lilly, Casey Fossum, and Damian Moss.

In the two case studies, Rawnsley contrasted the 2000 Chicago White Sox with the 2002 San Diego Padres. Chicago squandered the best minor league pitching corps in the game through a combination of disastrous trades to fix positions that weren't actually problems and several major injuries. One GM-defining trade allowed Pittsburgh to replenish its starting staff while leaving the Sox bereft of rookies ready to contribute in 2002.

Now the Padres, who held open auditions in 2002, are prepared to establish themselves as a contender in the NL West for the hopeful opening of their new park in 2004. Brian Lawrence, Adam Eaton, Oliver Perez, and Jake Peavy should form the core of the staff, along with a bullpen of Trevor Hoffman and likely a selection of relievers from their 2002 team: Fikac, Villafuerte, Condrey, and Bynum. Other prospects with more significant off-field issues, such as Dennis Tankersley and Eric Cyr, will likely depart the organization as trade bait for more major league hitters. The pitchers that remain should also continue their success in the majors since the new Padres' stadium should remain a pitchers' park.

Rawnsley agrees with us about the immediate promise of a couple of young Royals(Affeldt and Runelvys Hernandez) and Giants(Ainsworth, Foppert, and Jerome Williams). Johan Santana should also emerge in 2003 as one of the top pitchers in baseball if Minnesota creates room for him in their rotation.

A few other player comments struck us as particularly interesting:

Josh Beckett's injury problems could be chronic.

Carlos Zambrano is likely significantly above his current age, and the Cubs have handled him accordingly.

Toronto's Mark Hendrickson holds the record for most times drafted (6); he was eligible because he played baseball in high school but stayed with basketball in college.

Brett Myers' temperament, as befitting a former amateur boxer, suggests he could mature into anyone from Roger Clemens to John Rocker.

Tim Redding and Kirk Saarloos both seem more likely to end up in middle relief, and while the former could dominate, the latter possesses the durable arm of a Scott Sullivan.

Even aside from the injury worries, C.C. Sabathia is ridiculously immature, signed a deal that looked very bad for him because everyone knew he needed the money, and there's no reason to expect much improvement.

While we're always very pleased with Rawnsley's assortment of player evaluation and off-field stories that allow us to better understand the performance problems of some players, Al Pedrique's talk was rather disappointing.

Pedrique's a very old school baseball lifer, and although he's likely to emerge as the first Venezuelan manager in the big leagues in a few years, we were unimpressed with his discussion. One symposium attendee posed a question about what stats the Diamondbacks examine when evaluating a prospect. Although Pedrique may have ducked the question by responding something like "we look for players who can win", he likely failed to understand the question, suggesting very strongly that the Diamondbacks don't look at any stats in player development, a concept anathema to most of Pedrique's audience.

The entire presentation was a sharp contrast from last year's special guest, Oakland hitting coach and then-AFL manager Thad Bosley, who brought several handouts while discussing the entire A's philosophy of developing hitters' tendencies towards "selective aggression".

Pedrique also expressed his opinion that he didn't believe that anyone in the AFL was ready for the majors, as even Hee Seop Choi needed more development time because of the holes in his swing. He thought Teixeira needed a year of AAA to work on his defense, and even Ken Harvey, who Pedrique manages and takes 50-75 swings per day aside from normal BP, should return to AAA. Although we admit the crop of major league-ready prospects in Arizona wasn't as impressive as we've seen in past years, Choi and Harvey in particular certainly will see some success when they'll likely open 2003 in the big leagues

We were most intrigued by his comments on the Diamondback prospects he managed in 2003. Pedrique believes Overbay is ready for the majors, Colbrunn will depart, and Grace will stay to help Overbay at first base. Mike Gosling has good command of three pitches and should spend most of 2003 at AAA. Brian Dallimore is probably close to helping in the majors as a backup. Also, Chad Tracy can hit in the majors now but he needs to work on his defense.

John Patterson gained significant maturity last Spring Training by watching Randy and Schilling. Arizona was quite pleased with his turnaround in camp, especially when he continued to arrive as the first guy in the clubhouse while in the minors.

In his concluding remarks, Al mentioned that he doesn't feel he's ready for the majors now, and that he wants to spend a couple years as a 3B coach following a 2003 return to Tucson before he's ready for a promotion. Now we fail to understand why anyone with a strong minor league managing background wants to coach third when the bench coach position seems much more important, however any major league coaching experience will only enhance Pedrique's resumé.

The morning concluded with an open forum Q&A that wound up much shorter than expected due to the length of the two speakers. Probably the only relevant comments were that Atlanta's 5th starters don't get the necessary spring reps to improve because they stay with 4 starters in April, and Doug Dennis, a Cincinnati resident, suggested that because Griffey was so good at such a young age, he may not be mentally prepared to rehab.

I'll discuss the afternoon game in the context of our "assignment" from the Scouting Seminar, but I'd like to conclude today with a brief post-game story.

We normally look to get a couple autographs at the AFL. Two years ago, we picked up signatures from Ben Broussard and Kevin Mench, and last year we wound up with Adrian Burnside and Keith Reed. While we bought another official AFL ball this year, we were pleased with only the Closser-signed foul ball as we departed Scottsdale Stadium.

However we walked right by the Phoenix bus on the way to our car, so we waited for a few minutes and got Michael Restovich to sign. Then, in a complete surprise to our two passengers for the day, John Sickels and Josh Paley, as well as myself, Brandon Phillips, while on his way to the bus, saw Jess with the ball and pen and asked if she wanted an autograph.

Phillips then placed his bag on the bus and returned to add his name just below Restovich's signature on our ball.

I'll continue tomorrow with a discussion of David Rawnsley's Scouting Seminar, which began Saturday night and included both the Sunday afternoon game and Monday morning session.

Today's Fantasy Rx: We understand that Brandon Phillips is flashy, appears to not "respect the game", and even might be hated by most of his opponents in the AFL. Fortunately, most organizations, including Cleveland, appear to recognize that Phillips is just a 21-year-old kid who knows he'll be Cleveland's Opening Day second baseman. I see no reason not to target him in the spring for your fantasy teams.