Valuing ceiling over likely outcome is a little out of control these days, largely because amateurs (like myself) have dabbled with scouting concepts and made efforts to project athletes based on their “tools.” For example, these dudes hyped Clarke and Bolden over Jimenez and Calhoun, and even Long. Given the overwhelming probability that the prep guys burn out before making it to AA, it’s ridiculous.

However, I seem to remember you making the point in regards to Amarista that it is relatively easy to secure the fairly dependable 1.0-2.5 WAR player on the open market. It’s much harder, and much riskier, to secure that 4-8 WAR player, and even then that guy is likely to decline after the cost-controlled years. So, as I think you’d agree, Matt Long’s more probable ~1-2 WAR production at the major league level doesn’t have the same value as, say, the 20% likelihood that Kaleb Cowart puts up a 5 WAR season in a Halos uniform five to six years from now.

Furthermore, if you take the probable production vs ceiling argument too far, you end up as the A’s, who’s Sacramento AAA affiliate sees a lot more success than the major league club (the Rivercats have won their division every year going back to 2007. Coincidence?). Finding the right balance between probable mediocrity and possible stardom means tolerating AA flameouts.

But you know that, and your broader point is more interesting: why do the publications keep missing on so many of the guys who turned out to be our core players this past decade — they undervalued Weaver, Lackey, Figgins, Napoli, Shields, Saunders, Maicer, and now probably Bourjos and maybe Trumbo — while hyping Kotch, Mathis, Wood, and Ramon Ortiz? To their credit, Baseball America got it mostly right with Salmon, Santana, Morales, K-Rod, Glaus, Washburn, Percival, Aybar, Kennedy, and Kendrick (sort of). Total that up, and you get a ~50% success rate, which seems pretty awful.

The pattern with position prospects seems to be that they either (1) undervalued guys with one, top of the scale tool going for them — Figgins’ and Bourjos’ speed, Napoli and Trumbo’s pop — and underestimated how that tool would augment their fringy to average-ish hitting skills in the majors; or (2) assumed that 20 year olds who hit like crazy — and Wood, Mathis, and Kotch were unbelievably good in their age 20 seasons — would always hit like crazy. You have grounds for rethinking position prospect evaluation right there, albeit in a small sample size.

I don’t know what that means for using K/BB ratios to predict MLB performance, since there’s a lot of contradictory info there. Early on, Mathis and Kotch were very good at managing the zone. Both saw their walks erode. Wood was never great, but he wasn’t awful either. On the other hand, Napoli walked a ton but k’d a ton too. Figgins was always pretty good about maintaining those ratios.

Pitchers seem tougher: Weaver, Lackey, Saunders and Shields all saw their secondary pitches and command improve to the point where raw FB velocity didn’t end up limiting them. It seems to me that there are a lot of guys who could potentially make that leap, but I don’t have any idea how you’d screen for that one special arm at age 17-20. The Angels, to their credit, did a better job with that than the publications and much of the rest of the industry.