Adonis Medina, Spencer Howard, and Why Prospect Lists are Kind of Shit

I just wrote 20,000 words about 50 prospects, I put a number in front of each of them. It was a prospect list, and it was my prospect list, and that is an important point here. As an evaluator of baseball players, I am highly biased. I am working with a limited information set, and I value certain things more than I value others. I don’t try to control for those biases, because they are the fundamental pieces of me having an opinion. Each other person or group of people writing a list as a set of biases. They don’t sit behind home plate every night, and even if they did they wouldn’t be comparing Phillies prospects to all other prospects. Each public writer talks to people inside and outside of the industry, and that circle of people highly influence them. They may not push a guy because someone with a team wanted them to, but maybe they re-examined that player, but not another one.

It isn’t just that prospect lists are fraught with bias, but they create the impression of large talent divides when there are none. The current Phillies example is Spencer Howard and Adonis Medina. So far we have 4 major site Top 100 lists out. Adonis Medina has been on two of them (BP and MLB) and not ranked at the very end with a rank of 57 and 77, respectively. Spencer Howard has only been on one, coming in at an impressive #52 on Keith Law’s list. That is some big divides, and it shows on the the major Phillies lists out there with Medina going 4, 3, 2, and 2 (he will be at best 5 on Law’s list) and Howard going 8, 3, 2, and 4 (he will be at best 4 on MLB’s list). Being a near top 50 prospect on one list and #8 on another seems like a big gap, but there doesn’t actually seem to be that big a gap. Here is how they are described

Fastball

• works in the mid-90s early in games with plus life
• he was sitting 94-98 for much of his starts
• still pretty consistently in the 91-96 velocity band and he still scrapes a little higher
• sits a free and easy 92-96 with the fastball and regularly touches a tick or two higher, and we’ve gotten reliable though occasional reports of triple-digits
• throws a plus fastball that sits at 92-96 mph with late movement and can scrape 97
• Sitting in the low-to-mid-90s early in the season, [] by the end of the year was parking in the mid-90s and reached 100 mph
• His fastball now comfortably sits in the 92-94 mph range and he can easily touch 95-96 mph, commanding the pitch well
•  started the year with an average to above-average fastball but by midyear was sitting at 95 to 96 mph and topped out at over 98 mph at the end of the year

Off Speed Pitches

• plus slider that he calls a cutter
• solid-average changeup
• his sharp slider and his changeup flash plus at times
• above-average slider here along with a useful changeup and curveball
• he has a low-80s breaking ball with slidery movement (and we’ve usually called it a slider) that looks above-average already and projects to get to plus or better
• his slider, a deep-breaking putaway pitch that grades out plus
• throws a curveball and a changeup that both are average pitches at times
• His slider has made huge strides over the last two seasons, to the point where it’s now plus and a nasty swing-and-miss pitch
• His changeup is another pitch that flashes plus, though it’s not consistent yet
• three good secondary pitches, the best of which is a disappearing, low-80s changeup
• his mid-80s slider has enough length to miss bats away from righties
• he’ll pair it with a changeup with similar action and a slider that can play even better than 60 when ideally used and located

That is two different pitchers, and if you know them well enough you can pull apart the pieces. Medina doesn’t throw quite as hard as Howard did at the end of the year, but the life on his fastball leads to more ground balls. Both show potentially plus sliders and changeups, but the progress and consistency on both is up for debate. Howard is 4 and half months older than Medina, but has been starting games for less time than Medina has been in full season ball. Howard is a bit bigger and sturdier, but Medina is probably more athletic. Medina might have more command, but it comes and goes. Howard has missed more bats, but he was also a level lower than Medina this year.

There are a lot of little differences between the two, but at the core they are very very similar pitchers. They both profile to have 3 plus pitches and solid control, and if that all comes together they are MLB caliber #2 starters which is scout speak for probably top 15-40 starters in the majors. Their downside is probably mid rotation are or good reliever.

So all the difference comes down to personal preference and risk acceptance. I ranked them at 3 (Medina) and 5 (Howard) with Luis Garcia sandwiched in the middle. If I did a top 100 list they both would be in the 60-90 range on it. I ranked Medina higher because of the track record. I now have 4 years of seeing him at his current velocity, I have a bunch of data on his slider and changeup improvements. There is a familiarity to him, I feel like I know what he is. Howard has a much shorter track record and a bit of some shiny new toy feel because he had a dominant end to his year capped by the playoff no hitter. There is a sense of movement to his profile, he is rising up lists, there is action to his ranking, but that could just be an illusion caused by timing. If Medina had his two most dominant starts at the end of the year, he would also have movement to his year. I personally didn’t fully buy into what Howard was able to do at the end of last season. It isn’t that it was smoke and mirrors, but I have seen guys make improvements that they then have not been able to carryover, and would like to see him show his late 2018 form in a 2019 start or two.

That is my personal preference, and admittedly it is not one I strongly believe in. That does not need to be your preference. The goal of prospect writing should not be to give you a ranking to compare, it should be to give you information to then put into your own value system. Lists give the illusion of certainty. They give the idea of distance. They hide the writer’s own preferences behind authority. So next time you read a list, be skeptical of the numbers beside the names, know that they mean something to the writer, but they need not carry that weight with you.

Scouting quotes pulled from Baseball Prospectus, Baseball America, Fangraphs, ESPN, and MLBPipeline. Photo by Baseball Betsy.