Today is Dellin Betances‘ 23rd birthday, so I thought it would be useful to revisit something I wrote prior to last season:
Sickels left Dellin off of his 2010 list entirely, and while it is possible for Betances to turn his career around, it seems like this is one lottery ticket that is not going to pay off.
There is a lesson in Betances’ story for Yankees fans like myself who obsess over the minor league system. There is no such thing as a pitching prospect. To delve deeper, the high-ceilinged, super skilled projects toiling in the lower levels that we get excited about are unlikely to ever see the majors. Most of those high risk, high reward guys are lottery tickets, and the lotto rarely pays off. Betances was a top prospect from the moment he was drafted, sporadically displayed tantalizing potential to maintain that status, and now is a 22 year old that has never been past High-A and is coming back from a fairly significant injury. (Note: This is a surgery that reportedly can help the player actually get stronger, so I am not sure how significant the injury is).
We get excited about these guys, project them as future aces, and hope that the team refuses to deal them for anyone but the greatest players. The fact of the matter is, many of these lottery tickets should be probably traded in for useful major league players. It is the job of the general manager to try and maximize the value that you can extract from such players by identifying which of these gambles should be cashed in. That is why it made sense to trade Arodys Vizcaino (who is likely a better prospect than Betances was at his age) for Javier Vazquez.
While this passage might look ridiculous to you at this point, I think the events of the last year actually confirm and buttress my initial argument. In a span of one year, Betances leapt from being an oft-injured question mark to becoming one of the crown jewels of a pitching-rich farm system, while Vizcaino went from intriguing prospect to injured prospect to top prospect equally rapidly. Their respective seasons help illustrate the incredible volatility that pitching prospects have, particularly those that are still at the lower levels of the minors. Would anyone be surprised if we were sitting here a year from now discussing what a shame it is that both of these guys succumbed to injury in 2011? A more apt comparison than my lottery ticket analogy might be that of a high risk investment, which can look incredibly promising one day and then fall apart the next. Similarly, while the stock price is up on Betances, there are many pitfalls that can cause the bottom to fall out before he ever contributes on the MLB level.
All of this leads me to reiterate my initial conclusion: a GM needs to remain clear-headed about his prospects and avoid falling into the trap that prospect hugging presents. He needs to try and identify which prospects the team is best served holding onto and which they would be better off cashing in for established Major League talent. While this might lead to occasionally trading a prospect who turns into a good MLB player, I see that as an unavoidable side effect of a process that should net the club value in the long-term. Holding on to all of your prospects is likely to end up in a deterioration of value due to attrition, something that can be mitigated by a shrewd GM.
As for the perspective of fans, it is just fine to get excited about top prospects, but I would not get too attached to them. As former TYA and current RAB author Stephen Rhoads wrote a few weeks ago:
Manny Banuelos is the hotness now. But this is the way it goes with assets: there’s risk involved. Anyone who sells you a big guaranteed return for your assets with no risk is probably playing you. This is precisely why the temptation to sell high is so strong, and this is why we should temper our expectations even if the team doesn’t succumb to that temptation. It’s our natural tendency to expect things never to blow up in our faces, but it doesn’t take much for our best hopes and dreams to vanish in a second. Appreciate Banuelos’ rise now; he may turn out to be that ace in the hole that we’re all dreaming about. But hold him loosely. There’s a lot of runway between now and his first Cy Young award.
Some of the prospects will get hurt, some will be unable to perform at the MLB level, some will be traded, and a handful will pan out. As Stephen states, appreciate and enjoy their success, but do not hold them too tightly. You might just find yourself holding nothing but disappointment down the road.
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27 Responses to The Lesson of Dellin Betances, Revisited
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TIQ IQ
Today is bestances 23rd birthday
My mistake, thanks.
But trading for established players is chancy as well. It seemed to make sense to trade Viscaino for Vasquez at the time. Now I wish we had held on to him.
True, but overall the risks tend to be lesser with established guys, and on balance, a good GM will be able to find a nice mix of keeping some guys and trading others for known quantities.
I was absolutely pissed we traded Viscaino for what was always going to be a year of Vazquez and since I was a Javier hater I never gave him much hope.
However you can’t get lemonade without squeezing lemons and I’d rather my team constantly try to get better even if we fail sometimes, rather than never try, or play it safe all the time.
I completely disagree with Stephen in this way. There are some prospects that you should hold extremely tight. You just have to know who they are. Gene Michael built our dynasty because he knew to hold Bernie and Jeter extremely tight. We were asked for them for great players. But we turned them down. If the organization thinks Banuelos is one of those guys they should hug him so tight he’ll have trouble breathing.
From a team perspective, I agree completely. Its a matter of objectively evaluating your own talent. If you can do that, you can limit your list of untouchables to those truly worthy and can properly consider trading the others. As fans, though, I agree with Stephen that the fickle nature of prospects will often leave you disappointed if you attach yourself to these guys.
Who is on your untouchable list Mo?
Personally I can only put Banuelos on the list at the moment, I would be hard pressed to trade Montero or Betances but for the right starting pitcher I could do it.
Montero. I’d only trade Banuelos for a youngish pitcher, but he isn’t untouchable for me. I think this team is getting fairly old in the lineup and have few other impact bats on the way, which is why Jesus is untouchable, regardless of position.
I agree that the lineup is getting older but I also feel it is much easier to locate a middle of the order bat than it is to find a top of the rotation stater. I also don’t think position should be overlooked, I’m not one of the people who think Montero should be traded just because he may end up a DH, but realistically if Arod has to be a 40 year old DH and Montero can’t catch he has no position.
I wouldn’t trade Montero unless I could bring back a Josh Johnson, Felix Hernandez, Ubaldo Jimenez, Kershaw type young ace like pitcher but I think he is in the “consider” list”.
With Banuelos I don’t even think we have reached the top of his hype so if you are going to trade him I think it would be best served after another season, but at that point he may be completely untouchable if he blows away the minor leagues this season.
I can respect that position.
I like to keep as many high-ceiling young arms as possible, and I think you really need to be sure about who you’re getting (and the history of similar players-especially pitchers from their age onward). The Yankees made quite a few trades for ‘established, high-quality’ pitchers (and hitters) down through the Boss era, and a lot of them really ended up badly.
I think that trading a guy like Montero for Cliff Lee last summer would have been a mistake, and said so at the time (there were quite a few others that agreed). There are several instances of teams turning down the wrong guy in trades with us over the past few seasons (Cano leaps to mind).
Can you imagine how the Arod trade would look now if the Rangers had selected Cano as the 2nd baseman in that deal?
You definitely need some luck, as they got with Montero and Cano without being traded. But the most important thing is having a GM you trust to keep the right guys and be willing to let go to obtain a player at a reasonable but slightly painful price.
“While this passage might look ridiculous to you at this point, I think the events of the last year actually confirm and buttress my initial argument”
________________
Really?
No…it looked ridiculous to me then and still does.
You can’t evaluate prospects in a short-term perspective and jump to conclusions. One must understand that there is a development process–which often includes a side detour to the DL list and surgery. Knowing the type of surgery (elbow/TJ vs shoulder/rotator cuff) becomes a big part of the analysis as to their risk.
And once recovered, fans must remember to allow for recovery time such as Brackman’s one year recovery. And even when they are close to arriving, one must remember their is still a big league learning curve.
Patience and perspective are absolute requirements for any intelligent discussion of prospects.
Sorry M–I like your work a lot, but you missed that one big time.
Just expanding on that, you might recall I posted a link to the discussion of pitching mechanics and the inverted W…To me, if you want to have the conversation about the upside versus risk for a prospect, you need to really evaluate a number of items, including their mechanics and the chance of injury, their pitch repertoire (splitters and sliders can cause problems), their stuff, their intelligence/maturity, etc.
Christian Garcia is a good example. He came back from TJ surgery but still had rough mechanics…Will Alan Horne be able to come back with his mechanics?
It takes a lot more analysis than just writing off a prospect based on a short term event.
I have followed Garcia’s sad steps closely. He did not have “rough mechanics.” He arguably has a pontentially injury-prone delivery, but his mechanics are superb. He had stamina issues when on the comeback trail. By the way, I hear he is giving a showcase for teams in April, so he’s coming back for more. Good for him. The arm is just outrageously good. I wish him the absolute best, and wish we’d take yet one more stab at this.
The conclusion was never that Betances wasn’t any good. The conclusion was that he had no value at that time, which illustrated the volatility of prospects. What happened this year, IMO, further confirms that point. I dont disagree with anything you said, and I dont think anything in my post contradicts anything you said. It isn’t about evaluating prospects at the moment, it is about identifying which prospects have greater risk profiles and taking advantage of peak value.
As I said in the comments of that original thread, last year:
“As I said in the comments above you when I posted this: “That said, I’m not giving up on him. I am just saying that he doesn’t have much value right now. That can change.”
And it may have changed, which actually strengthens my point. His value has fluctuated wildly since being drafted. If he continues to dominate, he will have rebuilt trade value where he had none just a month ago. If you dont like the lottery ticket analogy, you can view them as high risk, high reward stocks. At 19, guys like Betances look like a sure thing to provide real value, and that simply is not always true.”
Ok–I actually think there is a world of value in developing an analytical framework for prospects for a site like yours. It would include the pitching mechanics issue with perhaps a guest column by that guy I linked you to, as well as a timeline of progress for standard development versus where that prospect is at a point in time.
I agree. The problem is that I’m not so sure most teams themselves have real strong ideas at this point on how to evaluate pitcher mechanics in terms of potential injury.
Mark Prior is a perfect example. At the time of his call up all anyone could talk about was how great his mechanics were and how he wouldn’t get hurt, now those same guys talk about how they should have seen it coming with the W.
Perfecting pitching mechanics is one of the big reasons I think being a pitcher is the hardest job in modern sports.
I agree pitching prospects are (by far?) the most difficult to predict, but that’s why I would never trade a high ceiling guy when his value was low (like Betances seems to have been.) Just like I very much disagree with trading Joba unless it’s for something more than a league average player-I still think there’s a chance he can become a much more valuable player than anything we’re likely to get for him. (I think he’s going to have a very good year, along with most of the other RP we currently have available.)
Right. The question is really whether to trade them when their value is high.
This has been the argument for the people who want to trade Montero ow while he may still be viewed as a catcher. I certainly don’t fall into the category that believe Montero should be a sell high situation but I understand the argument, many don’t want a repeat of Joba where you hold onto a prospect while his value is at it’s peak and then watch it plummet. I don’t expect a Joba like decline but that is the warning many are trying to heed when suggesting trading Jesus.
Joba is 25 years old. He is now free of Dave Eiland and his poor guidance, and in the hands of a pitching coach whose preference for power pitchers meshes with Joba’s actual stuff. I for one am glad Joba is still around. He looks at ease and his velocity and location appear to be back. I think a lot of that panting and innate distrust of how his next pitch was going to come out was related to delivery problems, not “being in shape”, etc. Joba may yet start for the Yankees under the mentoring of Rothschild. Wouldn’t that be a great rescue of a talented but sorely misunderstood arm.
Montero would be one my “hold tight” guys. Too much ability to wreak havoc in the middle of the order.
Moshe, you made some interesting points. However, in the end GM’s are held to be geniuses or imbeciles by what probably amounts to a person with a “hot hand” flipping a coin. People have this narrative that holds the past 20 years of success because Gene Michael held on to the “home-grown core 5″ (Bernie Williams, of course). But “at the time”, nobody was talking about the Yankee’s great farm system. Jeter was a skinny kid that couldn’t field (and predicted to out-grow SS), Williams had “poor instincts” and a slow first step, “Mariano Who? “, Posada was a second baseman making a conversion to catcher, and Petitte came out of the blue (I have my “Scouting Report”books edited by John Dewan back to 1986). Bill James thought that the Yankees got hosed by the Reds because of the Roberto Kelly/Paul O’Neil trade. I could go on about “The Yankee Narrative” but I think I’ve made my point. Not for the love of typing but let’s not forget John Smoltz for Doyle Alexander (which worked well for the Tigers for a Ring). It would be interesting to time travel and see if the Tigers GM would do it again! And one more, the Yankees traded future MVP Willie McGee for pitcher Bob Sykes who never played in the majors for the Yankees and was out of baseball a year later! Baseball, like all sports, and not unlike Life itself lends itself to endless speculations and narratives to explain what is more often than not chance. And like the aforementioned, hard work,intellect,and preparation might just make the coin flip your way a few more times.