00:00:01
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Future Projection.
00:00:04
Speaker 2: This is a Baseball America podcast and episode 204 of the show.
00:00:09
Speaker 1: I'm Carlos Clauser, joined by Ben Badler. What's up, Ben? How you doing?
00:00:13
Speaker 3: I'm great, Carlos. How about you?
00:00:15
Speaker 1: I am good.
00:00:16
Speaker 2: We've got a ton of questions to get into today. It's another mailbag episode of the show. So if you guys like these episodes, congrats. They are back in the feed. And moving forward, if you guys want to send us a question about prospects, about process, about B.A., Really about anything that you're curious about that we might have an interesting or insightful answer to. Send us your questions. You can email us at futureprojectionatbaseballamerica.com. You can get up with Ben on social media at Ben Badler.
00:00:42
Speaker 1: I'm at Carlos A. Coloso.
00:00:43
Speaker 2: All that information is in the show notes. But we've got a lot of good questions today to get into. So, Ben, unless you have something to add, we'll hop straight into it.
00:00:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's roll.
00:00:55
Speaker 2: Errol on Twitter asks, what happened to Ray's shortstop prospect, Carson Williams? I feel like the most succinct answer to Carson Williams is what didn't happen with Carson Williams. And I feel like he just didn't make an adjustment and wasn't able to figure out how to cut that strikeout rate. I don't feel like Carson Williams, the overall profile has changed significantly with.
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Speaker 1: Him over the last year or so.
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Speaker 2: And as someone who drafted Carson Williams, either with his first pick or second pick in our big draft, I don't know what we called the draft, like the super draft that we did a few years ago. I'm a little bit bummed because I did think that Carson Williams did enough in other areas of the game to overcome his contact questions with power, with speed, with shortstop defense. But clearly his contact ability was just, it's not good enough yet to allow him to find success at the major league level. If you look at his strikeout rates throughout his career, if you look at his underlying miss rates, he's just never really made an improvement in that area. And I think it's held him back as he's faced better pitching as he's climbed the minor league ladder. He's not really ever had success at the AAA level with strikeout rates that are north of 33%, 34%. And certainly not going to translate that to the majors either. Anything else to add with Carson Williams.
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Speaker 1: Here, Ben?
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Speaker 3: I've always just been skeptical on him. And I think he's been overrated because it's hard to... hard to succeed with that level of contact ability, that kind of pitch recognition issues. I understand he's a really good defender. He does have power, but when you are slinging and missing that much, it's not like he went out and dominated AAA either last year. I've always been skeptical of his offensive ability, even at a premium position like shortstop. With that kind of defense, you still need to bet on the bat. And that's just, uh, I'm, I'm skeptical that's ever going to translate for him.
00:03:00
Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: Okay.
00:03:01
Speaker 1: We'll stick with the raise here.
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Speaker 2: We got an email from Jim, um, who says, I was thinking about the raise outfield in 2027 and how I would trust their front office to get good value in free agency or make a savvy trade to replace Cedric Mullins. It made me think how much better is their internal scouting department than other teams. scouts to look at other MLB players, minor league players, and generate internal grades on their opponents. How often do they see a player and say, hey, if we got this player and made a tweak, they'd unlock another level of production. Jim asks, how wide is the effectiveness of this kind of scouting, and does BA grade teams on this, even if they don't publish it? We definitely don't grade teams in terms of like, oh, this pro scouting group is ranked number one, this one's ranked number 30. I don't know that It would be very difficult to rank that in a way that you felt confident in the separation of teams, especially in the middle. I think we have a pretty good idea of the teams that do a good job at the extreme, that either do a really good job or do a poor job. The Rays have been a team for years now who have just a great reputation inside and outside the industry of doing a nice job in the area that you're talking about, of being really savvy at evaluating players who make sense to acquire, whether because they're they're buying low or because they're, they're identifying a skill or a trait that they feel like they can develop or they value. So I definitely think they'd be towards the top in terms of just like general perception of, of where they rank. Ben, any other thoughts on, on this specific factor and maybe how much of a separator it can be for, for orgs?
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Speaker 3: I think they do a very good job. I think it's also difficult to assess pro scouting departments because so much of it is based on the opportunities that you're given to make trades for minor league players right so in the draft and certainly international free agency where it's like okay everybody has roughly equal amount of money to spend obviously some teams have two dsl teams versus one and all that but like you know more or less if you're if you're a good international scouting department it's going to show in the players that you're signing, right? Like the Brewers or what the Giants are doing with Joshua Gonzalez and Luis Hernandez and Johnny Level and all these guys, right? So with pro scouting though, if you're not in a position where you're trading for minor league prospects, it's harder to evaluate. And as good as I think the Rays are in the pro scouting department, they also are, as soon as their guys are getting to a certain level in salary arbitration, they're trading those guys. away or in the years where they're not contending, which hasn't been too often. They're also making trades to acquire minor league prospects. So they are acquiring, I don't know. I don't, I don't have the full data on how many prospects they've acquired or, you know, significant big league pieces they've traded away, but it's gotta be higher than most teams.
00:05:58
Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 3: So they have more certainly more shots on goal than other clubs to hit on guys. Now they still identify the guy like junior Caminero and like They get a lot of credit for that and they deserve it. But it is one of the variables that's important to consider when evaluating pro scouting departments too.
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Speaker 2: I think the other thing, if you're trying to isolate credit or blame to pro scouting for specifically what you're talking about, is it's hard to isolate how much responsibility the pro scouts should have from player development. Because I think the successes and failures are very interlinked between those groups. And I think we're seeing in recent years, the teams are doing a much better job of collaborating across departments more effectively in the old kind of siloed nature of separating departments and not having a lot of crosstalk and communication is just like, if you're still doing that in the year 2026, I imagine you're probably not a successful organization.
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Speaker 1: And so teasing out like, okay.
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Speaker 2: Was this just a smart trade or did your coaches really unlock and help improve a player? it's all interlinked and trying to figure out exactly who's responsible can be really tricky from the outside looking in. Um, and even probably if you're on the inside, like it can be tricky and certainly teams and individuals want to trade around responsibility and blame depending how things pan out. But I think in general, like the smartest teams are increasingly doing a better job of communicating across departments and being kind of aligned with, with what they do well, what we want to require, um, and all of that. And I think the rays are, are towards the forefront of that. Yeah.
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Speaker 3: And he's saying, I'll put part of the question too, is how often do they see a player and say, if we got them and made this little tweak that we'd unlock another level of production.
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Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 3: I think that's a big, that, that certainly is a factor, right? Where a team says, okay, Hey, if we get this guy and it's not even maybe a mechanical thing or something physical, it's just, Hey, your curveball sucks, why are you throwing it 20% of the time?
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Speaker 2: It's funny how often the changes do seem that simple. I feel like half the race pitcher success stories, the answers given for why a pitcher has found success is they're like, hey, just throw everything right down the middle. It's like, did really no one ever think of this before? And sometimes it does feel like it's as simple as that. But yeah, it's interesting.
00:08:26
Speaker 3: That's very much true on the amateur side too, where teams will– maybe target certain programs that are like, this school doesn't know what they're doing in developing and pitching. This came up.
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Speaker 2: A lot during the spring where teams were licking their chops about getting a player from a certain school, which they won't be named, multiple schools. They're like, yeah, they have no clue what they're doing from a development standpoint. There's so much low-hanging fruit when we get this guy in our system because we know what we're doing. There's definitely a lot of that.
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Speaker 3: Yeah. Maybe they're right.
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Speaker 1: Maybe they're wrong, but it's definitely a sentiment.
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Speaker 3: It definitely exists. Yes.
00:09:06
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:09:06
Speaker 2: Well, the next question is actually kind of related to that, at least more on the amateur side, but we have an email from Bryce.
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Speaker 1: It's a longer email.
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Speaker 2: I'm not going to read the whole thing, but essentially it's a question about how the handover from underclass coverage that we do at Baseball America and how MLB organizations handle that kind of trade-off. So he says he understands Ben. primarily focuses on underclassmen and I handle upperclassmen or draft eligible high school players for BA. How much information is shared when that transition happens? And he basically points out to seeing the advantages of both sides, like coming into evaluating a class prep with a ton of background and a ton of info versus coming in fresh and not assuming which players are going to be good.
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Speaker 1: Is there a formal handoff? How much info is shared?
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Speaker 2: And then also, How do MLB organizations handle this and even the transition to pro scouting? So a lot of questions about kind of like what is the link.
00:10:01
Speaker 1: Of internal information sharing?
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Speaker 2: And is there an official handoff when you're no longer focusing on a class and then I'm kind of taking over?
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Speaker 1: How does that work for us?
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Speaker 3: Should I start with our own internal process i guess um yeah.
00:10:18
Speaker 2: Let's talk about that first then we can talk about how we're aware of teams doing it.
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Speaker 3: Yeah i mean look especially with the draft now being in the middle of july and you being so focused on the current year's draft you can't just wait wake up on you know july 12th or whatever is the day after the draft like all right now we're going to start covering the next year's draft because the summer is halfway done at that point um And we want to make sure we just have deep history on these players. So we're in a good spot, ready to go. I was going to say as soon as the draft ends for the next year's class, but really it starts, you know, years before then we were putting out rankings and evaluations and getting looks at all of these players and sharing that information with our, you know, with our readers. So it's, it's not like, it's not a situation where it's like, all right, here you go, Carlos, here's the information. Now I'm gone and like looking at the next year's class. It's like a continual conversation.
00:11:21
Speaker 2: Our process is a lot more transparent than the team's process, obviously, because what we're doing is like intended to be read. And so like anytime Ben has a ranking of players coming out or he's writing about an event, he went to like you're reading and learning about those players. I'm also reading those because I'm really curious about what's coming next. And like, We have internal slacks where we're kind of having ongoing conversations about classes and certain players all the time. But I think a lot of it too is just like the information you're seeing is also the information I'm seeing. And on the team side, it's different. There are some organizations that specifically have hired and do have scouts who their primary focus is on scouting underclassmen. I don't know how commonplace that is. I do feel like some of those roles have kind of been eliminated over the years, but also area scouts. the area scout is kind of the entry point for all of these players in teams, internal systems and how teams are organizing their information is there's a database. Some, some scouting departments, everyone has access to everyone's reports. Some scouting departments, only the higher ups have access to everyone's reports. But once you start a report on a player, um, they get input into the system and then you can click on any player and go through and see all the history of reports, notes, follows, um, looks that anyone in your organization has had on the player. So you can create a pretty detailed and thorough history. Obviously for cross-checkers and national evaluators, those looks are going to be concentrated on present year players. It's not going to be super common to have like your scouting director turning in reports for a sophomore in high school because they're just not focused on those players. Kind of like Ben was talking about for our process. I can't like, I have to kind of pick my battles and figure out what's important to focus on. And so that's kind of how that works for MLB. And then any thoughts on kind of the amateur to pro transfer of information, whether that's with us at BA and how kind of that info is shared with the prospect team or the team side, Ben?
00:13:25
Speaker 1: That's also an element of the question.
00:13:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, for the teams, I think the best teams are trying to integrate not so much their pro scouting department, but their player development staff with the amateur scouting department. And I think a lot of the best teams are trying to integrate their player development staff into the draft process as well. So they're not getting a player. And then on day one being like.
00:13:51
Speaker 1: Why did we take this guy?
00:13:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, this guy, he doesn't do the things that we like, or we don't think we can fix this, that like this, you know, our scouting department thinks was something that, you know, is an area for improvement for the players. So, But yeah, the key is just a lot of thorough and just effective communication, which is easy to talk about and not as easy to execute. Because yeah, also the player development staff is a lot of players that they're responsible for developing and monitoring and staying on top of who are already in the minor league system. But yeah, I think the best ones will integrate their player development staff with the amateur scouting department to maybe not necessarily always make the decision on who to take, but just so they're aware and have deeper knowledge of these guys when they come into the organization. Now, at the same time, there's also something to having some sort of degree of separation from certain internal evaluators who might be responsible for evaluating players within your own farm system. Like somebody who's basically their job is like quality control or a.
00:15:13
Speaker 1: Not entirely scout, right.
00:15:16
Speaker 3: Where it's not entirely an independent source of information, but somebody who is in your organization, who's like, Hey, maybe I don't have all the background history on these players.
00:15:27
Speaker 1: And this guy sucks.
00:15:28
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:15:28
Speaker 1: Maybe I, yeah.
00:15:30
Speaker 3: Ideally you don't have the same, you know, closeness or allegiances to people in the amateur scouting department or player development staff, even who's just going to be like, yeah, look, I'll just tell you like it is to the GM or the president of baseball operations. Like, yeah, we've, like you said, we just drafted this guy. Oh man, this guy looks terrible or like just to be able to give your honest assessment on those guys with fresh, with fresh eyes too. Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:58
Speaker 2: Hopefully that answered some of the questions you had there. And we appreciate that there are email Bryce, um, All right, let's move on to our next one.
00:16:05
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00:17:06
Speaker 2: A few questions about like the 2027 Dominican Summer League and 2027 International Signing Class. This was spurred by Mets Prospect Group on Twitter asked, does MLB have a plan to field a 2027 DSL League if they cancel or delay the 2027 signing class? And there was a follow-up from Carrick on Twitter who asked, if they could move the international signing period up to make it happen before the lockout to avoid this. So I guess any thoughts or any clarity at this point on logistics of 27? I feel like our first hint at this was when we got initial slot values for the draft this year, we didn't get international bonus pools, which is typical. I still don't think those have come out. So what's the current state of things on that side, Ben?
00:17:52
Speaker 3: So for the second question, they're not going to move up. the signing period so that they can sign more players early. What they, I mean, what they could do if they want is just have a normal international signing period. When we went through the last, the last time this happened, players still signed on January 15th, right? They're not signing major league contracts. These guys are not going on 40 man rosters. So they could sign all these players. We just go through and have a normal January 15th. But like JJ wrote, when he broke the news of what was going on, MLB wants to raise the signing age to have an international draft. So then to raise the signing age, they're going to say, okay, well, we can't just be drafting, let's say, a bunch of 18-year-olds. If we just go through January 15th and all of the top players, we just had 300 or 400, whatever it is, players just signed. On January 15th, who are we going to be drafting and giving all of these, what I presume would be hard slotted bonuses in the draft? There isn't the volume of talent to draft if you have that signing age. So MLB is trying to say, well, we'll raise a signing age and then delay this entire signing class. All of these guys who have deals and have had deals for years and years and years, those deals would all obviously fall apart and they would just go into draft situation so MLB is not gonna certainly not gonna move up the signing date for just to have the signings happen because they don't even need to do that as far as the DSL season I mean they could I guess they could kind of do more or less what they want if they want to cancel it like I'm not a hundred percent sure I'm that, but the minor league season would still go on as normal. I think JJ just put out a video on this on YouTube if you want to see like, okay, so what actually happens if there is a lockout and we get deep enough into the season where there would be missed games, which again, I don't really think is going to happen, but the minor league season would still go on as usual, except for if you're on a 40-man roster, you're not going to be playing in minor league games. They could still have the DSL season. I guess if you're saying, well, what if there aren't all of these signings? Part of it is teams wouldn't release as many players. There's a big churn of players every year, and I think teams feel it even more so now with the domestic roster limits that are in place. So a lot of guys who might have otherwise gotten.
00:20:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of guys are getting cut. The teams probably wouldn't like to cut so soon. They just have to because of the churn.
00:20:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's part of it. I mean, do I really think we're missing out on a lot of big leaguers because of that? Probably not.
00:21:04
Speaker 1: Wow, Ben.
00:21:06
Speaker 3: Yeah. It's... I still think the DSL season would continue. You just would see fewer guys getting released. It's not like it would be like, oh, the owners would save so much money not having to release as many DSL players and pay them their DSL salary. That's just not a huge factor or anything like that. Some of these owners are pretty cheap, but I don't think that's going to make a real dent in anything.
00:21:38
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:21:39
Speaker 2: We've got one final question here on another player. This is from Ben on Twitter. I don't think it was an account from you, Mr.
00:21:48
Speaker 1: Ben Badler.
00:21:48
Speaker 2: But Ben asks, what does the underlying data tell us about Slater DeBrun's power so far in pro ball? He doesn't lift the ball much, but it still works for his profile at the moment. How much impact with the bat could there be in the future? You want to take it with Slater DeBrun or do you want me to go first, Ben, on this one?
00:22:08
Speaker 1: I don't think that you go ahead.
00:22:11
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:22:11
Speaker 3: I mean, I, I think he's like a nice little like ballplayery scrappy type guy. I was surprised during the draft last year that he was getting talked about as high as he was. And he ended up going 37th overall to the Orioles. Cause he's just, it's, it's a high contact guy. He's a smaller guy, uses that small strike zone to his advantage, gets on base, but there's very minimal power in there. It's kind of a slappier approach. You like the speed, the contact skills. There's some sense of the strike zone there too, but I just struggle to see him driving the ball with the kind of impact that's going to make him an everyday big league player.
00:23:05
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, he's very small physically.
00:23:08
Speaker 2: There's not a ton of physical projection you're probably going to be able to dream on. And I know you mentioned a little bit about the underlying data for him in the power department.
00:23:17
Speaker 1: It is below average, pretty.
00:23:19
Speaker 2: Significantly below average, I'd say, in terms of average exit velocity, 90th percentile exit velocity. Like you mentioned, he doesn't lift the ball a ton. I think he probably shouldn't lift the ball a ton if he doesn't have this sort of power. I feel like Slater-Dubrunn should be a player who grinds out at bats, makes a ton of contact, uses the wheels that he does have. I mean, we have 40 power projection on him from the draft, from our most recent pro report. I could see that being even too high. That feels optimistic for him to get to at this point. I could see a 30-grade power projection being a little bit more realistic. He doesn't feel like a player who you can feel really confident getting to even 10-plus home runs a season. super consistently um i think a 40 for us would be like somewhere in the 15 to 18 range so if you wanted to put like 20 or 30 on his power that that could make sense to me um i don't think he.
00:24:17
Speaker 3: Has no home runs this season and he has four doubles in 31 games and i didn't i didn't go through and watch all four doubles but i wouldn't be surprised if a couple of them were just like ground balls that snuck through or like hustle doubles to second base Yeah, the.
00:24:33
Speaker 2: Extra base hits that he gets I think are going to be predominantly balls he hits into the gaps and extra bags he gets because he's fast and he can get out of the box quickly and stretch a single into a double or a double into a triple. I don't think there's going to be a significant amount of over-the-fence power for DeBrun.
00:24:53
Speaker 1: Okay, that kind of wraps our mailbag, Ben.
00:24:57
Speaker 2: Again, I'll say if you guys want to send us questions, we love doing these mailbag episodes and it's fun to, to interact with the readers. So we appreciate all the questions we've got on this episode. I'm going to encourage you to send those out to us at any point. We always try and do a call on, on Twitter. I don't know if Ben does on Instagram. I'm not really on Instagram too much these days, but we're reaching out for questions, but you guys can always send those to us. And we try and do a decent job of, of tracking those and answering them. I know we've got some queued up for next week already. So, Keep them coming. Ben, any closing remarks?
00:25:30
Speaker 3: No, that was good.
00:25:31
Speaker 1: Thanks, Carlos. All right.
00:25:32
Speaker 2: Thank you, Ben. And thank you guys for hanging out and listening. Thanks for supporting Baseball America. And we will see you next time.
00:25:39
Speaker 1: So long, everybody.
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Future Projection.
00:00:04
Speaker 2: This is a Baseball America podcast and episode 204 of the show.
00:00:09
Speaker 1: I'm Carlos Clauser, joined by Ben Badler. What's up, Ben? How you doing?
00:00:13
Speaker 3: I'm great, Carlos. How about you?
00:00:15
Speaker 1: I am good.
00:00:16
Speaker 2: We've got a ton of questions to get into today. It's another mailbag episode of the show. So if you guys like these episodes, congrats. They are back in the feed. And moving forward, if you guys want to send us a question about prospects, about process, about B.A., Really about anything that you're curious about that we might have an interesting or insightful answer to. Send us your questions. You can email us at futureprojectionatbaseballamerica.com. You can get up with Ben on social media at Ben Badler.
00:00:42
Speaker 1: I'm at Carlos A. Coloso.
00:00:43
Speaker 2: All that information is in the show notes. But we've got a lot of good questions today to get into. So, Ben, unless you have something to add, we'll hop straight into it.
00:00:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's roll.
00:00:55
Speaker 2: Errol on Twitter asks, what happened to Ray's shortstop prospect, Carson Williams? I feel like the most succinct answer to Carson Williams is what didn't happen with Carson Williams. And I feel like he just didn't make an adjustment and wasn't able to figure out how to cut that strikeout rate. I don't feel like Carson Williams, the overall profile has changed significantly with.
00:01:18
Speaker 1: Him over the last year or so.
00:01:21
Speaker 2: And as someone who drafted Carson Williams, either with his first pick or second pick in our big draft, I don't know what we called the draft, like the super draft that we did a few years ago. I'm a little bit bummed because I did think that Carson Williams did enough in other areas of the game to overcome his contact questions with power, with speed, with shortstop defense. But clearly his contact ability was just, it's not good enough yet to allow him to find success at the major league level. If you look at his strikeout rates throughout his career, if you look at his underlying miss rates, he's just never really made an improvement in that area. And I think it's held him back as he's faced better pitching as he's climbed the minor league ladder. He's not really ever had success at the AAA level with strikeout rates that are north of 33%, 34%. And certainly not going to translate that to the majors either. Anything else to add with Carson Williams.
00:02:15
Speaker 1: Here, Ben?
00:02:16
Speaker 3: I've always just been skeptical on him. And I think he's been overrated because it's hard to... hard to succeed with that level of contact ability, that kind of pitch recognition issues. I understand he's a really good defender. He does have power, but when you are slinging and missing that much, it's not like he went out and dominated AAA either last year. I've always been skeptical of his offensive ability, even at a premium position like shortstop. With that kind of defense, you still need to bet on the bat. And that's just, uh, I'm, I'm skeptical that's ever going to translate for him.
00:03:00
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:03:01
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:03:01
Speaker 1: We'll stick with the raise here.
00:03:02
Speaker 2: We got an email from Jim, um, who says, I was thinking about the raise outfield in 2027 and how I would trust their front office to get good value in free agency or make a savvy trade to replace Cedric Mullins. It made me think how much better is their internal scouting department than other teams. scouts to look at other MLB players, minor league players, and generate internal grades on their opponents. How often do they see a player and say, hey, if we got this player and made a tweak, they'd unlock another level of production. Jim asks, how wide is the effectiveness of this kind of scouting, and does BA grade teams on this, even if they don't publish it? We definitely don't grade teams in terms of like, oh, this pro scouting group is ranked number one, this one's ranked number 30. I don't know that It would be very difficult to rank that in a way that you felt confident in the separation of teams, especially in the middle. I think we have a pretty good idea of the teams that do a good job at the extreme, that either do a really good job or do a poor job. The Rays have been a team for years now who have just a great reputation inside and outside the industry of doing a nice job in the area that you're talking about, of being really savvy at evaluating players who make sense to acquire, whether because they're they're buying low or because they're, they're identifying a skill or a trait that they feel like they can develop or they value. So I definitely think they'd be towards the top in terms of just like general perception of, of where they rank. Ben, any other thoughts on, on this specific factor and maybe how much of a separator it can be for, for orgs?
00:04:35
Speaker 3: I think they do a very good job. I think it's also difficult to assess pro scouting departments because so much of it is based on the opportunities that you're given to make trades for minor league players right so in the draft and certainly international free agency where it's like okay everybody has roughly equal amount of money to spend obviously some teams have two dsl teams versus one and all that but like you know more or less if you're if you're a good international scouting department it's going to show in the players that you're signing, right? Like the Brewers or what the Giants are doing with Joshua Gonzalez and Luis Hernandez and Johnny Level and all these guys, right? So with pro scouting though, if you're not in a position where you're trading for minor league prospects, it's harder to evaluate. And as good as I think the Rays are in the pro scouting department, they also are, as soon as their guys are getting to a certain level in salary arbitration, they're trading those guys. away or in the years where they're not contending, which hasn't been too often. They're also making trades to acquire minor league prospects. So they are acquiring, I don't know. I don't, I don't have the full data on how many prospects they've acquired or, you know, significant big league pieces they've traded away, but it's gotta be higher than most teams.
00:05:58
Speaker 1: Right.
00:05:58
Speaker 3: So they have more certainly more shots on goal than other clubs to hit on guys. Now they still identify the guy like junior Caminero and like They get a lot of credit for that and they deserve it. But it is one of the variables that's important to consider when evaluating pro scouting departments too.
00:06:19
Speaker 2: I think the other thing, if you're trying to isolate credit or blame to pro scouting for specifically what you're talking about, is it's hard to isolate how much responsibility the pro scouts should have from player development. Because I think the successes and failures are very interlinked between those groups. And I think we're seeing in recent years, the teams are doing a much better job of collaborating across departments more effectively in the old kind of siloed nature of separating departments and not having a lot of crosstalk and communication is just like, if you're still doing that in the year 2026, I imagine you're probably not a successful organization.
00:06:54
Speaker 1: And so teasing out like, okay.
00:06:58
Speaker 2: Was this just a smart trade or did your coaches really unlock and help improve a player? it's all interlinked and trying to figure out exactly who's responsible can be really tricky from the outside looking in. Um, and even probably if you're on the inside, like it can be tricky and certainly teams and individuals want to trade around responsibility and blame depending how things pan out. But I think in general, like the smartest teams are increasingly doing a better job of communicating across departments and being kind of aligned with, with what they do well, what we want to require, um, and all of that. And I think the rays are, are towards the forefront of that. Yeah.
00:07:37
Speaker 3: And he's saying, I'll put part of the question too, is how often do they see a player and say, if we got them and made this little tweak that we'd unlock another level of production.
00:07:48
Speaker 1: Right.
00:07:49
Speaker 3: I think that's a big, that, that certainly is a factor, right? Where a team says, okay, Hey, if we get this guy and it's not even maybe a mechanical thing or something physical, it's just, Hey, your curveball sucks, why are you throwing it 20% of the time?
00:08:04
Speaker 2: It's funny how often the changes do seem that simple. I feel like half the race pitcher success stories, the answers given for why a pitcher has found success is they're like, hey, just throw everything right down the middle. It's like, did really no one ever think of this before? And sometimes it does feel like it's as simple as that. But yeah, it's interesting.
00:08:26
Speaker 3: That's very much true on the amateur side too, where teams will– maybe target certain programs that are like, this school doesn't know what they're doing in developing and pitching. This came up.
00:08:40
Speaker 2: A lot during the spring where teams were licking their chops about getting a player from a certain school, which they won't be named, multiple schools. They're like, yeah, they have no clue what they're doing from a development standpoint. There's so much low-hanging fruit when we get this guy in our system because we know what we're doing. There's definitely a lot of that.
00:08:59
Speaker 3: Yeah. Maybe they're right.
00:09:00
Speaker 1: Maybe they're wrong, but it's definitely a sentiment.
00:09:04
Speaker 3: It definitely exists. Yes.
00:09:06
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:09:06
Speaker 2: Well, the next question is actually kind of related to that, at least more on the amateur side, but we have an email from Bryce.
00:09:13
Speaker 1: It's a longer email.
00:09:14
Speaker 2: I'm not going to read the whole thing, but essentially it's a question about how the handover from underclass coverage that we do at Baseball America and how MLB organizations handle that kind of trade-off. So he says he understands Ben. primarily focuses on underclassmen and I handle upperclassmen or draft eligible high school players for BA. How much information is shared when that transition happens? And he basically points out to seeing the advantages of both sides, like coming into evaluating a class prep with a ton of background and a ton of info versus coming in fresh and not assuming which players are going to be good.
00:09:49
Speaker 1: Is there a formal handoff? How much info is shared?
00:09:52
Speaker 2: And then also, How do MLB organizations handle this and even the transition to pro scouting? So a lot of questions about kind of like what is the link.
00:10:01
Speaker 1: Of internal information sharing?
00:10:03
Speaker 2: And is there an official handoff when you're no longer focusing on a class and then I'm kind of taking over?
00:10:10
Speaker 1: How does that work for us?
00:10:13
Speaker 3: Should I start with our own internal process i guess um yeah.
00:10:18
Speaker 2: Let's talk about that first then we can talk about how we're aware of teams doing it.
00:10:22
Speaker 3: Yeah i mean look especially with the draft now being in the middle of july and you being so focused on the current year's draft you can't just wait wake up on you know july 12th or whatever is the day after the draft like all right now we're going to start covering the next year's draft because the summer is halfway done at that point um And we want to make sure we just have deep history on these players. So we're in a good spot, ready to go. I was going to say as soon as the draft ends for the next year's class, but really it starts, you know, years before then we were putting out rankings and evaluations and getting looks at all of these players and sharing that information with our, you know, with our readers. So it's, it's not like, it's not a situation where it's like, all right, here you go, Carlos, here's the information. Now I'm gone and like looking at the next year's class. It's like a continual conversation.
00:11:21
Speaker 2: Our process is a lot more transparent than the team's process, obviously, because what we're doing is like intended to be read. And so like anytime Ben has a ranking of players coming out or he's writing about an event, he went to like you're reading and learning about those players. I'm also reading those because I'm really curious about what's coming next. And like, We have internal slacks where we're kind of having ongoing conversations about classes and certain players all the time. But I think a lot of it too is just like the information you're seeing is also the information I'm seeing. And on the team side, it's different. There are some organizations that specifically have hired and do have scouts who their primary focus is on scouting underclassmen. I don't know how commonplace that is. I do feel like some of those roles have kind of been eliminated over the years, but also area scouts. the area scout is kind of the entry point for all of these players in teams, internal systems and how teams are organizing their information is there's a database. Some, some scouting departments, everyone has access to everyone's reports. Some scouting departments, only the higher ups have access to everyone's reports. But once you start a report on a player, um, they get input into the system and then you can click on any player and go through and see all the history of reports, notes, follows, um, looks that anyone in your organization has had on the player. So you can create a pretty detailed and thorough history. Obviously for cross-checkers and national evaluators, those looks are going to be concentrated on present year players. It's not going to be super common to have like your scouting director turning in reports for a sophomore in high school because they're just not focused on those players. Kind of like Ben was talking about for our process. I can't like, I have to kind of pick my battles and figure out what's important to focus on. And so that's kind of how that works for MLB. And then any thoughts on kind of the amateur to pro transfer of information, whether that's with us at BA and how kind of that info is shared with the prospect team or the team side, Ben?
00:13:25
Speaker 1: That's also an element of the question.
00:13:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, for the teams, I think the best teams are trying to integrate not so much their pro scouting department, but their player development staff with the amateur scouting department. And I think a lot of the best teams are trying to integrate their player development staff into the draft process as well. So they're not getting a player. And then on day one being like.
00:13:51
Speaker 1: Why did we take this guy?
00:13:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, this guy, he doesn't do the things that we like, or we don't think we can fix this, that like this, you know, our scouting department thinks was something that, you know, is an area for improvement for the players. So, But yeah, the key is just a lot of thorough and just effective communication, which is easy to talk about and not as easy to execute. Because yeah, also the player development staff is a lot of players that they're responsible for developing and monitoring and staying on top of who are already in the minor league system. But yeah, I think the best ones will integrate their player development staff with the amateur scouting department to maybe not necessarily always make the decision on who to take, but just so they're aware and have deeper knowledge of these guys when they come into the organization. Now, at the same time, there's also something to having some sort of degree of separation from certain internal evaluators who might be responsible for evaluating players within your own farm system. Like somebody who's basically their job is like quality control or a.
00:15:13
Speaker 1: Not entirely scout, right.
00:15:16
Speaker 3: Where it's not entirely an independent source of information, but somebody who is in your organization, who's like, Hey, maybe I don't have all the background history on these players.
00:15:27
Speaker 1: And this guy sucks.
00:15:28
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:15:28
Speaker 1: Maybe I, yeah.
00:15:30
Speaker 3: Ideally you don't have the same, you know, closeness or allegiances to people in the amateur scouting department or player development staff, even who's just going to be like, yeah, look, I'll just tell you like it is to the GM or the president of baseball operations. Like, yeah, we've, like you said, we just drafted this guy. Oh man, this guy looks terrible or like just to be able to give your honest assessment on those guys with fresh, with fresh eyes too. Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:58
Speaker 2: Hopefully that answered some of the questions you had there. And we appreciate that there are email Bryce, um, All right, let's move on to our next one.
00:16:05
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00:16:16
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00:16:29
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00:17:06
Speaker 2: A few questions about like the 2027 Dominican Summer League and 2027 International Signing Class. This was spurred by Mets Prospect Group on Twitter asked, does MLB have a plan to field a 2027 DSL League if they cancel or delay the 2027 signing class? And there was a follow-up from Carrick on Twitter who asked, if they could move the international signing period up to make it happen before the lockout to avoid this. So I guess any thoughts or any clarity at this point on logistics of 27? I feel like our first hint at this was when we got initial slot values for the draft this year, we didn't get international bonus pools, which is typical. I still don't think those have come out. So what's the current state of things on that side, Ben?
00:17:52
Speaker 3: So for the second question, they're not going to move up. the signing period so that they can sign more players early. What they, I mean, what they could do if they want is just have a normal international signing period. When we went through the last, the last time this happened, players still signed on January 15th, right? They're not signing major league contracts. These guys are not going on 40 man rosters. So they could sign all these players. We just go through and have a normal January 15th. But like JJ wrote, when he broke the news of what was going on, MLB wants to raise the signing age to have an international draft. So then to raise the signing age, they're going to say, okay, well, we can't just be drafting, let's say, a bunch of 18-year-olds. If we just go through January 15th and all of the top players, we just had 300 or 400, whatever it is, players just signed. On January 15th, who are we going to be drafting and giving all of these, what I presume would be hard slotted bonuses in the draft? There isn't the volume of talent to draft if you have that signing age. So MLB is trying to say, well, we'll raise a signing age and then delay this entire signing class. All of these guys who have deals and have had deals for years and years and years, those deals would all obviously fall apart and they would just go into draft situation so MLB is not gonna certainly not gonna move up the signing date for just to have the signings happen because they don't even need to do that as far as the DSL season I mean they could I guess they could kind of do more or less what they want if they want to cancel it like I'm not a hundred percent sure I'm that, but the minor league season would still go on as normal. I think JJ just put out a video on this on YouTube if you want to see like, okay, so what actually happens if there is a lockout and we get deep enough into the season where there would be missed games, which again, I don't really think is going to happen, but the minor league season would still go on as usual, except for if you're on a 40-man roster, you're not going to be playing in minor league games. They could still have the DSL season. I guess if you're saying, well, what if there aren't all of these signings? Part of it is teams wouldn't release as many players. There's a big churn of players every year, and I think teams feel it even more so now with the domestic roster limits that are in place. So a lot of guys who might have otherwise gotten.
00:20:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of guys are getting cut. The teams probably wouldn't like to cut so soon. They just have to because of the churn.
00:20:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's part of it. I mean, do I really think we're missing out on a lot of big leaguers because of that? Probably not.
00:21:04
Speaker 1: Wow, Ben.
00:21:06
Speaker 3: Yeah. It's... I still think the DSL season would continue. You just would see fewer guys getting released. It's not like it would be like, oh, the owners would save so much money not having to release as many DSL players and pay them their DSL salary. That's just not a huge factor or anything like that. Some of these owners are pretty cheap, but I don't think that's going to make a real dent in anything.
00:21:38
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:21:39
Speaker 2: We've got one final question here on another player. This is from Ben on Twitter. I don't think it was an account from you, Mr.
00:21:48
Speaker 1: Ben Badler.
00:21:48
Speaker 2: But Ben asks, what does the underlying data tell us about Slater DeBrun's power so far in pro ball? He doesn't lift the ball much, but it still works for his profile at the moment. How much impact with the bat could there be in the future? You want to take it with Slater DeBrun or do you want me to go first, Ben, on this one?
00:22:08
Speaker 1: I don't think that you go ahead.
00:22:11
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:22:11
Speaker 3: I mean, I, I think he's like a nice little like ballplayery scrappy type guy. I was surprised during the draft last year that he was getting talked about as high as he was. And he ended up going 37th overall to the Orioles. Cause he's just, it's, it's a high contact guy. He's a smaller guy, uses that small strike zone to his advantage, gets on base, but there's very minimal power in there. It's kind of a slappier approach. You like the speed, the contact skills. There's some sense of the strike zone there too, but I just struggle to see him driving the ball with the kind of impact that's going to make him an everyday big league player.
00:23:05
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, he's very small physically.
00:23:08
Speaker 2: There's not a ton of physical projection you're probably going to be able to dream on. And I know you mentioned a little bit about the underlying data for him in the power department.
00:23:17
Speaker 1: It is below average, pretty.
00:23:19
Speaker 2: Significantly below average, I'd say, in terms of average exit velocity, 90th percentile exit velocity. Like you mentioned, he doesn't lift the ball a ton. I think he probably shouldn't lift the ball a ton if he doesn't have this sort of power. I feel like Slater-Dubrunn should be a player who grinds out at bats, makes a ton of contact, uses the wheels that he does have. I mean, we have 40 power projection on him from the draft, from our most recent pro report. I could see that being even too high. That feels optimistic for him to get to at this point. I could see a 30-grade power projection being a little bit more realistic. He doesn't feel like a player who you can feel really confident getting to even 10-plus home runs a season. super consistently um i think a 40 for us would be like somewhere in the 15 to 18 range so if you wanted to put like 20 or 30 on his power that that could make sense to me um i don't think he.
00:24:17
Speaker 3: Has no home runs this season and he has four doubles in 31 games and i didn't i didn't go through and watch all four doubles but i wouldn't be surprised if a couple of them were just like ground balls that snuck through or like hustle doubles to second base Yeah, the.
00:24:33
Speaker 2: Extra base hits that he gets I think are going to be predominantly balls he hits into the gaps and extra bags he gets because he's fast and he can get out of the box quickly and stretch a single into a double or a double into a triple. I don't think there's going to be a significant amount of over-the-fence power for DeBrun.
00:24:53
Speaker 1: Okay, that kind of wraps our mailbag, Ben.
00:24:57
Speaker 2: Again, I'll say if you guys want to send us questions, we love doing these mailbag episodes and it's fun to, to interact with the readers. So we appreciate all the questions we've got on this episode. I'm going to encourage you to send those out to us at any point. We always try and do a call on, on Twitter. I don't know if Ben does on Instagram. I'm not really on Instagram too much these days, but we're reaching out for questions, but you guys can always send those to us. And we try and do a decent job of, of tracking those and answering them. I know we've got some queued up for next week already. So, Keep them coming. Ben, any closing remarks?
00:25:30
Speaker 3: No, that was good.
00:25:31
Speaker 1: Thanks, Carlos. All right.
00:25:32
Speaker 2: Thank you, Ben. And thank you guys for hanging out and listening. Thanks for supporting Baseball America. And we will see you next time.
00:25:39
Speaker 1: So long, everybody.
