Keith Law's Top 100

Talk about the Cardinals minor league baseball
salukifan2
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Re: Keith Law's Top 100

Post by salukifan2 »

vinsanity wrote:Weaver missed Law's top 100.

I'm surprised because he was still on a lot of mid-season top 100's despite his injury last year. HIs first six starts were pretty good in the majors and he pitched well in AA.

Interesting, any ideas why?
Because Law only cares about projectability. Thats why guys like Maitan and Perez are on his list without having proven sh!t.

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lukethedrifter
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Re: Keith Law's Top 100

Post by lukethedrifter »

vinsanity wrote:Weaver missed Law's top 100.

I'm surprised because he was still on a lot of mid-season top 100's despite his injury last year. HIs first six starts were pretty good in the majors and he pitched well in AA.

Interesting, any ideas why?
couple of high picks that just haven't panned out, the Luke Weavers of the world who look like they're relievers or maybe fifth starters.
http://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2016/2/17/1 ... -prospects

now that quote was from last offseason but suggests the projectability argument; Weaver is close and KLaw sees him as a soso major leaguer but a major leaguer nonetheless.

salukifan2
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Re: Keith Law's Top 100

Post by salukifan2 »

I think Law is relying to heavily on the eye test for Weaver. The numbers a superb.

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Swirls
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Re: Keith Law's Top 100

Post by Swirls »

salukifan2 wrote:I think Law is relying to heavily on the eye test for Weaver. The numbers a superb.
Reminds me of one of Weaver's starts this year - I think it was against the Pirates, maybe? Anyways, I was driving home from work and listening to the game in my car through SiriusXM. I like listening to the opposing team's broadcasts usually, and in the pregame show, they were talking about Luke Weaver.

This is pretty much what was said:
"The Cardinals starter Luke Weaver just turned 23 years old but he looks like he's about 12. The scouting report on this toothpick thin right-handed pitcher is that he throws an 88-90 mph fastball, with a slow loopy curveball and a changeup that doesn't have much movement. He's only had a few starts at the big league level, and has fared rather poorly so far. The Pirates have feasted on these types of struggling rookie pitchers so far this year, so it will be interesting to see how they fare this afternoon.

And the first pitch of the game is a 94 mph fastball for strike one. The next pitch is an 82 mph changeup with a ton of movement. And that is followed with a 96 mph fastball. Well, our scouting report said 88-90, and so far he hasn't dipped below 94. I guess the report was wrong, and it seems the Cardinals have yet another incredibly young pitcher that throws blazing heat. I swear they grow those things on trees down there in St. Louis. Do they put special drugs in the water or something?"

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GeddyWrox
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Re: Keith Law's Top 100

Post by GeddyWrox »

LOL, sounds like that team needs new scouts!

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Tim
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Re: Keith Law's Top 100

Post by Tim »

Just outside the top 100

Harrison Bader, OF, St. Louis Cardinals
Age: 23 (6/3/1994) | B/T: R/R
Height: 6-0 | Weight: 195
Top level: Double-A

Call me a Bader hater if you must, but I’m just not sold on that swing producing enough extra-base contact for him to profile as an everyday guy in a corner. I think he’s just adequate in center but not enough to play it every day given how clubs are focusing on guys with more range or better closing speed than he can offer.

He’s a very Cardinals sort of player -- smart, instinctive, a grinder (man do I hate that term), etc. -- and they’ll find uses for him. But if they offered him up in trade today, he’d be treated like a low 50 or a good 45, not as a surefire regular.

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Re: Keith Law's Top 100

Post by MrCrowesGarden »

Tim wrote:Just outside the top 100

Harrison Bader, OF, St. Louis Cardinals
Age: 23 (6/3/1994) | B/T: R/R
Height: 6-0 | Weight: 195
Top level: Double-A

Call me a Bader hater if you must, but I’m just not sold on that swing producing enough extra-base contact for him to profile as an everyday guy in a corner. I think he’s just adequate in center but not enough to play it every day given how clubs are focusing on guys with more range or better closing speed than he can offer.

He’s a very Cardinals sort of player -- smart, instinctive, a grinder (man do I hate that term), etc. -- and they’ll find uses for him. But if they offered him up in trade today, he’d be treated like a low 50 or a good 45, not as a surefire regular.
Too much to throw in a trade for Brian Dozier.

AWvsCBsteeeerike3
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Re: Keith Law's Top 100

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

Keith Law hasn't made a living by spouting truths about Cardinals baseball. But, he has a point here. Bader has very fast hands but if it doesn't translate into power, he's not much of a prospect. Rather or not it will translate into power, I don't know.

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go birds
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Re: Keith Law's Top 100

Post by go birds »

i think everyone here would agree with's law's assessment this time around.

bader is being wayyy overrated by a many people

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Tim
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Re: Keith Law's Top 100

Post by Tim »

If already posted my apologies, but here is Viva El Birdos' take on Bader

http://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2017/1/11/1 ... alex-reyes
#3: Harrison Bader, OF

6’0”, 195 lbs; R/R; 3 June 1994

Relevant Stats: .214 ISO, .349 BABIP, 143 wRC+ (Springfield), All Worse Numbers (Memphis)

So, what’s so great about this guy?

I went back and forth endlessly in my head over whether to put Carson Kelly or Harrison Bader higher on this list, and I’m not sure I’ve settled on Bader as the better prospect yet. Considering Kelly plays perhaps the most difficult position to fill in all of baseball, I should probably give him the nod. But, I’m putting Harrison Bader’s multifaceted impact potential at number three, and hoping he doesn’t make me regret it in 2017.

Bader had one of the louder debuts of any 2015 draftee, beating up Low-A competition to the tune of a 152 wRC+. His success was driven by power, an elevated BABIP, and a solid strikeout rate. How much of that would carry forward was one of the bigger question I had about the system in general last year.

To begin 2016, the Cardinals did something unexpected. They pushed Bader, and they pushed him hard. He, along with Paul DeJong, who we’ve already covered in a previous volume of this now-voluminous list, were both assigned to Double-A Springfield to begin their first full professional seasons. DeJong, as we talked about, struggled out of the gate, striking out far too often and fighting to tap into his power potential, before righting the ship and turning his season into an ultimately productive one. That’s about what you would expect from a first-year player jumped all the way to Double-A, honestly.

And it’s not at all what Harrison Bader did.

Bader started off the year like a house on fire, battering Texas League pitching from pillar to post, knocking hell out of the ball on a nightly basis. He wasn’t taking walks, but it didn’t matter. When you’re hitting the ball as hard as Harrison Bader in the Texas League, walks are an afterthought.

And then, Bader was promoted to Triple-A Memphis. And things went bad.

Older, more experienced Pacific Coast League pitchers (remember, many of the pitchers you see in Triple-A are major league veterans), executed the equivalent of baseball judo on Bader, turning his aggression against him. His walks didn’t really change all that much. His strikeout rate actually fell slightly. But where Double-A pitchers had challenged Bader and paid the price, Triple-A pitchers consistently worked him out of the middle of the plate and let Bader get himself out. His power virtually disappeared, and his BABIP dropped off the table. It wasn’t just bad luck, either; I watched most of those games, and I can tell you that Harrison Bader was swinging at all the wrong pitches, and the results were absolutely deserved.

Bader finished up his year with a mostly-successful trip through the AFL, posting a 116 wRC+ in 86 trips to the plate. He cut his strikeouts in the desert, which was good, and hit the ball hard for the most part, which was also good. He didn’t elevate the ball all that much, and so the home runs weren’t there, but I’ll take the results against the best the minors have to offer in his first full season.

Harrison Bader, to put it lightly, is an aggressive player. You know that guy in the wheelchair on Family Guy, the one played by Patrick Warburton? I’m relatively certain Bader’s personality isn’t actually all that similar to the character, but I can’t help but imagine him internally screaming something along the lines of, “LOCK AND LOOOAADDD!!!” before every at-bat. He’s aggressive in attacking pitches in the zone, takes a mighty hack, and impacts the baseball when he makes contact. He doesn’t work counts, he doesn’t work walks. Harrison Bader wants to [expletive] kill that baseball. Which baseball? Doesn’t matter. Any baseball. Every baseball.

On the bases, he’s just as aggressive, and it has very much the same sort of effect. He stole eleven bases in 82 Double-A games, which is good! That’s close to a 20 stolen base pace, which would make him a 20/20 player pretty consistently. The bad news? He was also caught ten times to those eleven steals. Stealing bases at just above a 50% clip isn’t going to get it done.

In the field, Bader has the chops defensively to handle center field, I think. I don’t know that he’s going to be a plus defender out there, but I think he can play it as well as Randal Grichuk. (That’s also not the only similarity to Grichuk you may note in Bader’s profile.) He has the arm to play right, and if moved to a corner outfield spot I think he could be a plus.

The big step Bader needs to take is in harnessing that natural Kurt Angle he has within him, and learning to channel it. Some plate discipline would go a long, long way toward turning him into the player he has the talent to be, even if I don’t think he’s ever going to be a particularly high on-base guy. He hits the ball hard enough I could see him as a true talent high-BABIP guy, and he’s going to get his share of extra base hits, too. But Triple-A pitchers showed me something about Bader, and hopefully showed him something about himself as well: Smart pitchers are going to take advantage of him unless he learns to harness that aggression. And at the big league level, every pitcher is smart.

Player Comp: Bader will probably never walk much, and he’s probably always going to strike out a fair amount. His value is going to come primarily from damage on contact, and contributing on defense. With that in mind, something like the young, good version of Matt Kemp is probably the perfect-world scenario for Bader. Consistently high BABIPs and high slugging percentages just because everything he hits, he hits hard.

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