Hello everyone, as you can probably tell from my username, I'm a Rays fan(though I am from Kansas).

Anyways, the Rays need a player who can play 3B, 1B, and some OF, and preferably someone who hits left-handed.  Mark Teahen fits this profile perfectly.  I'm not very good at gauging the value of players on other teams, so I thought I'd ask you guys what you think the Royals plans are for Teahen, and what kind of value they would be looking for in return if they were to trade him, and what areas the team would be looking to address in making trades.

Thanks in advance.

Marc Lancaster has released the Instructional League rosters, here, http://www.tboblogs.com/index.php/sports/related/C142/

Continue reading this post »

For those of you who read raysbb.com(formerly raysbaseball.com), you'll notice the stat IsoSLG(or IsoP)used often to measure a player's power, especially for prospects.

IsoSLG is supposed to isolate SLG % from BA in order to more accurately depict a player's power independent from their contact abilities. However, I think it hurts players who have lower batting averages, because it implies a linear relationship between SLG and BA, when the relationship is more proportional. Take the following (fictional) example statline:

500 AB, 100 H, 20 2B, 5 3B, 15 HR, 175 TB, .200 AVG, .350 SLG, .150 IsoSLG

Now, if this same player were to have 40 more hits to raise his average to .280, using IsoSLG, you would predict that his SLG would rise the same amount, to .430. However, this is only true if all 40 additional hits the player would have hit would have been singles, adding 40 total bases. Using the percentage of each extra base hit(2B-20%, 3B-5%, HR-15%), over 40 AB's, he would have hit 24 singles, 8 doubles, 2 triples, and 6 home runs, for an increase of 70 total bases, to 245, making his SLG % .490, and his IsoSLG .210.

As you can see, the relationship between batting average and slugging percentage is proportional, not linear. I believe a more accurate representation of a players power would be a proportional number found by dividing SLG by AVG. For instance, in the example above, the player's IsoSLG for the first line was .150, and his proportional slugging(or ProSLG) was 1.750. For the second stat line, his IsoSLG was .210, and his ProSLG was 1.750, the same as the first stat line.

There are of course, flaws, such as if a player has a low BABIP, using ProSLG to predict a SLG should the BABIP return to normal levels would be inaccurate, as the number of home runs would not have increased, etc.

The 5 leaders in the D-Rays organization are as follows:

Player        Age    Level ProP    IsoP   
M. Fields    22    A     1.927    .227   
D. Mohr        31    AAA   1.913    .209   
Q. Stewart    24    A     1.871    .229   
S. Pedroza    23    A-Adv 1.861    .247   
R. Royster    21    A     1.785    .255   

and others of interest
E. Longoria    21      AA/AAA 1.747    .224   
J. Pridie    24    AA/AAA 1.622        .184   
J. Ruggiano    25    AAA    1.633    .193   
R. Brignac    21    AA     1.675    .172   
D. Jennings    21    A      1.476    .150   
J. Jaso        24    AA     1.502    .158   
R. Hughes    24    A-Adv/AA  1.559    .181   
F. Perez    24    AA     1.570    .171