I'm in a pretty deep league, and we deal with minor leaguers. I've been googling for the most part to do my research. I found some stuff from baseball prospectus that was pretty good, and free. I'm wondering though where the best place to find good info is.
I have been moderately successful in finding value with the very little I've found, but other managers are constantly one or two steps ahead of me. I'm looking to wise up here.
So my question is: Where are the best places to get good scouting reports on players, and info about minor leaguers? Free or otherwise. Like, if the info you pay for is worth paying for, lemme know. I'd be ok with spending a bit on it.
Some of the most fun I have with the league is being able to call up youngsters once they hit the major leagues, and having them slot in to help my club. Admittedly though, I need to get better, and more informed.
To give you an idea of the depth of our minor league system. Each team has 35 minor league players. There are 20 teams. So roughly 700 minor leaguers are kept.
This will be what I have to work with for next season.
First Base: Allan Dykstra 1B SD
Second Base: Johnny Giavotella 2B KC
Shortstop: Drew Sutton SS CIN
Catcher: John Murphy C NYY John Hester C ARI
Third Base: Billy Rowell 3B OAK Jharmidy DeJesus 3B SEA Ernesto Manzanillo 3B FLA Christopher Dominguez 3B SF
Outfield: Jonathan Gaston OF HOU Eli Iorg OF HOU Cody Johnson OF ATL Joseph Austin OF HOU Charles Davidson OF HOU Thomas Steele OF HOU Jack Shuck OF HOU John Shelby OF CHW Destin Hood OF WAS
Pitchers: Jordan Lyles RHP HOU Adam Ottavino P STL Matt Hobgood SP BAL Chad Jenkins SP TOR Aaron Miller SP LAD Sam Dyson SP OAK Eric Hurley SP TEX Casey Weathers RP COL Danny Gutierrez TEX RHP Jack Egbert SP CHW Chris Mason P TB David Duncan LHP HOU Brad Dydalewicz LHP HOU Simon Castro P SD Brad Hand P FLA Clayton Mortensen SP OAK Oneli Perez RP SD Sean Black RHP NYY Daniel Schlereth RP ARI Kam Mickolio P BAL
www.minorleagueball.com is a pretty good site run by John Sickels he uses a letter grading system and does the top 20 prospects for each organization. He'll start rating teams soon after the season is over and runs through January working through all 30 teams. You basically get all the info that goes in his book for free.
www.projectprospect.com is another site I look at some, but their most in depth list is only 200, so that probably isn't that helpful for you.
If you want to find information that runs 700 prospects deep I would guess BP is the place to go, though I've never paid for anything there.
My deepest league has 285 players in the minor league currently. We do a 1 round 1st year players draft at the ASB and then a 5 round draft in the offseason, so the minor league system is progressively growing. 700 minor league players is way too much for me. Personally I think you're just drawing names out of a hat at that point. The hit rate on the top 50 prospects is probably 50% at best as far as panning out, but I would guess that the 500th best prospect has like a 0.001% chance of panning out. I'm not trying to change your league though, if your leaguemates and you enjoy that, all the power to you.
bananaphone wrote:I've been googling for the most part to do my research.
This is your best bet and the way I go about finding the most info I can. Prospects are so hit or miss and there are so many different opinions on them that its best to just gather all the info you can from any number of different resources....and google is the best way I can go about doing that.
The minors does get really hectic with so many players involved, but I enjoy it. My biggest problem though is that I want to get quicker at grabbing guys up. Especially in these last few weeks, I noticed somebody about to get called up (Josh Thole for example), and was interested in grabbing him as a minor league waiver pick. There are 2-3 managers in the league that are flat out quicker than I am. Are there any strategies I should be using to try and get quicker? As I said, I've been able to come up with some useful players off of the minor league waivers, and it's awesomely fun when it happens. My biggest concern is not being a week or two behind.
To give a scope here, my biggest additions for the season off of minor league waivers have been mainly Everth Cabrera, and Brad Bergesen. I know I'm not going to find the next huge can't miss prospect just chillin out on waivers, but in this league I have found that even the smallest value is significant. Both of these players have been huge for my 09 campaign.
From google I've been able to find top ten lists for teams, or top x lists for all of baseball, but not much in the way of actual scouting reports. Like, what pitches a pitcher throws well, if a catching prospect is a defensive player, or a great power bat. Stuff like that.
I love the top 20 rankings from minorleagueball.com, that's definitely going to help. I'm also glad to know that I'm apparently on the right track as far as how to approach this.
I'm long-winded, so I'll give a synopsis here at the bottom Lol.
Basically, how do I get faster at identifying a player that might be able to immediately help me on my MLB team (even for the short term)?
And, where would I go to find some fairly significant reports, like a paragraph or three on various prospects. I've found this sort of stuff for the big names, which helps for trades, but these more fringe guys. I'm wondering if there is that sort of info for them. If I gotta pay for it and it's worth it, I'll put the money down no problem.
My ultimate goal is to get as much help for my MLB roster for the current year as I can. I have 5 spots that have to contain prospects on the big team, so I wanna make sure I'm using them effectively.
I've never found detailed scout's notes on players. It sounds like you're best off to google every player's name that gets added to the Yahoo player database. One thing I use that makes that easier is this script. It basically puts all the player additions right on your league home page where they're much easier to notice. To use it you would need to be using Firefox and download the greasemonkey add-on. This thread discusses most of Bwanna's scripts he has made.
KCollins1304 wrote:I've never found detailed scout's notes on players. It sounds like you're best off to google every player's name that gets added to the Yahoo player database. One thing I use that makes that easier is this script. It basically puts all the player additions right on your league home page where they're much easier to notice. To use it you would need to be using Firefox and download the greasemonkey add-on. This thread discusses most of Bwanna's scripts he has made.
Bwanna is an idiot. He writes a script like this, then proceeds to share it with all of his dynasty league-mates who snatch up the good prospects before he can. What a dope.
KCollins1304 wrote:I've never found detailed scout's notes on players. It sounds like you're best off to google every player's name that gets added to the Yahoo player database. One thing I use that makes that easier is this script. It basically puts all the player additions right on your league home page where they're much easier to notice. To use it you would need to be using Firefox and download the greasemonkey add-on. This thread discusses most of Bwanna's scripts he has made.
Bwanna is an idiot. He writes a script like this, then proceeds to share it with all of his dynasty league-mates who snatch up the good prospects before he can. What a dope.
At least you haven't shared your script where you can retroactively change your rosters, you still have that going for you.
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by bananaphone » Thu Sep 10, 2009 10:20 am 
