Future Forty 2.1
Well, I’ve been convinced. Enough people responded to the Future Forty 2.0 debut with a common suggestion; abort the lame “rookies only” eligibility, which always spawns questions about missing players and is generally not very helpful. So I listened, and now I present Future Forty v2.1. Welcome back to Jose Lopez, Clint Nageotte, Bobby Madritsch, Bucky Jacobsen, and George Sherrill.
I’ve added a new tier, the graduate level, for players who still fit the mental criteria of an unestablished major league player (basically, less than a full year of service) but are on the 25 man roster in Seattle. As such, Jeremy Reed was moved from the Good Prospect tier to the Graduate tier.
I think this was a good suggestion. I’ve never liked having to stop writing about guys who are 21, 22 years old just because the BBWAA says they are no longer rookies. And you guys obviously still want information on those players, so, this works for everyone.
Enjoy.
Comments
23 Responses to “Future Forty 2.1”
Excellent! Even better this way.
The link does not seem to work at the moment. Just a head’s up.
Why am I not seeing Willie Bloomquist on this list!?! 😉
Bodhizefa, try: http://www.ussmariner.com/features/futureforty.htm
It’s the link on the right, and it indeed works. Dave added an extra “l” on the end (.html).
Geeky nitpick: The HTML header section contains no title,
so the page is just displayed in the window title (or tab,
for those using *real* browsers) using its URL.
Many thanks, Positive Paul.
Great list, Dave. Solid work this year.
Of course, there are now more than 40 players listed. It’s the Future Forty-Three.
Argh. I was hoping no one would notice.
Actually, I have a built in excuse. There are 40 “minor leaguers”, who are the future. The three major leaguers constitute the present, so by the definition of the Future Forty, they are excluded.
How’s that for weasling?
Dave,
I like the new format a lot better than a ranking system. The ‘tiers’ approach makes a lot more sense.
However, when I look at prospect reports and such, I usually take the rankings as just a relative indicator of their status (eg. a #10 prospect is better than a #20, but #11 and #12 are pretty equal). The more important information is in the scouting reports, where the evaluator is explaining why they like a certain prospect, his tools, his track record, where that guy will be in the next year, what he needs to work on to have success, and a general evaluation of his ceiling and potential.
Basically, I think that Matt Thornton being a ‘Players With Some Potential, Several Years Away’ with an risk of 5 and a reward of 8 is interesting. But I would rather read a brief discussion of his history with the club (where drafted, signed, how many years in the system), how hard he can throw, what his best pitches are, how control is his biggest problem, his injury history, an evaluation of his risk and upside, ect. If you explain your reasoning, it will be more useful to the general reader. This is particularly true with guys like Dan Santin, Yung-Chi Chen, Jesus Guzman, ect who are not top prospects and who don’t get a lot of attention outside of people who are really into the M’s system in particular.
oh yes, also when you click a link Dave, the stylesheet tells the browser (ie in my case) that there’s no style applied to the link, except for the base style. the a:vistited link looks totally different than the a:hover or a element.
or something.
try it for yourself!
just change the a:visted “font-size:7.5pt;” to a:visited “font-size:10.0pt” in the ‘style’ part of your page and it will be ok.
w00t, excel xp ROCKS!
Jerry – this isn’t Dave’s full-time job. We can’t expect him to write an article on every marginal prospect in the Ms’ system. If you follow USSM closely over an extended period of time, every player who will end up contributing to the Ms will be discussed more than adequately.
New format is great, Dave. Sickels’ grading system is another way to differentiate “top prospects” (there are only 6 Grade A prospects in the 2005 book), and I’m glad more people are adding relevant info to prospect analysis. The more information, the better!
Hmm, one way you could indicate non-rookies who still aren’t truly established is set their “arrival date” to 2004.
Looks great Dave. Have you considered a new name? There are more than 40 players on it and it would be nice if more than 40 players stayed on it.
There are some of ex prospects that people seem to be interested in (like Anderson and Haverlo), would you consider putting them in the injured players of interest section even if they have a very low probability of ever making it to the majors?
Could the links go to a search of the USSMariner archives for that player? Then Dave wouldn’t have to do more work just for this list, but we’d all get more information. I know, I could do the search myself, but the link would be easier.
For that matter, it’d be nice to have a link to the MLB stats as well as the minor league stats for the guys who make the drive between Seattle and Tacoma every month or so.
Maybe each name links to a player page, with links from there to the search, BA, and ESPN pages (and if you get ambitious, PECOTA and anything else that looks good).
Thanks again Dave — I love this update.
We’re all about being helpful, but, don’t hold your breath on individual player pages for everyone in the minor league system. That might be in the works if, say, the P-I offered us all $100,000 a year to just blog about the M’s full time…
And yes, I’ve considered a new name, and potential expansions. Maybe in a future update.
USS Mariners guys… See, you give them an inch and they take a mile. I think it’s great because it really helps me visualize the futre of the team.
Willir bloomquist is the best mariner.
The format is great. The information itself is a bit depressing. For a team that will likely struggle to make .500, it doesn’t look like there’s much help on the farm. Felix is so young. Is there any sense that the team sees a problem when it looks at its own list? If so, what is being done in a concrete manner to rectify it? The Reed-Olivo acquisitions seem almost critical in this context, no matter what Garcia’s contract and salary status was.
Dave , one of the best parts of your future forty was the comment part. It’s a little too confusing now and without the comments kind of hard to look at and get anything out of.
Good stuff.
But you forgot to change George Sherrill’s birthday to his, rather than Travis Blackley’s…
any reason Morse is listed as “falling” instead of “holding”?
because morse sucks