The Galapagos Islands or the Cal League: Spotting Darwinian Flaws
Matt compares Josue De Paula and Jansel Luis in his latest post.
Community Post by: MattatBatt22
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Other than perhaps myself, every player on my college team was the best player on their high school team. Once we all showed up on campus, though, we were swimming in deeper waters and realized the quality is much higher. The mechanical flaws that we got away with against 84mph fastballs and loopy 72mph curveballs weren’t going to work against a real college slider. The best of those collegians went on to play pro ball, and immediately found themselves swimming in even deeper waters. Metal bats and soft midweek schedules give way to 6 games a week for 6 months out of the year and every pitcher is nasty.
This constant readjustment to your surroundings is pretty Darwinian and can come as a real shock. Only the fittest survive and get promoted to that next level; flaws are exposed and prospects adjust or metaphorically die, outcompeted by their peers.
Much like the finches of the Galapagos islands when the Beagle dropped old Doc Darwin off, there are lots of ways to succeed in your niche. Some of our proverbial finches might be speedsters, able to provide value on defense and on the bases to get promoted to the next level. Others might be hulking sluggers who look 35 at 18 years old and you wonder if that finch can even fly or if it’s really a kakapo in disguise and doesn’t actually belong in this habitat.
When Darwin was coming up with his theories on survival of the fittest, he studied his subjects with a keen eye and noticed slight differences in what looked at first glance like the same species. By noticing that some finches’ beaks curved in one way and others barely curved at all, he theorized that there must be a reason for these differences. The differences, it turns out, helped these species survive in slightly different habitats, or allowed the birds to eat distinct kinds of food within the same habitat.
In this metaphor for scouting minor league hitters for your fantasy team, the different kinds of food are different pitches, locations, handedness, velocities, and spins. The adaptations that allow the prospects to succeed or fail are ours to uncover. Follow with me in this mini dive into the Cal league, as I try to spot different adaptations – both good and ill — amongst the interesting crop of exciting hitters that permeate the low levels of MILB.tv. To mix a couple metaphors above, whose mechanics are going to let them fly upwards to the deepest waters, and who’s going to sink under the weight of their own flaws?
I don’t watch as much of the low minor leagues as I’d like to. A lot of my early signal about hot new prospects comes from the experts at Baseball America or FanGraphs or the illustrious Dynasty Dugout Discord. Most of my current teams are all about shoving chips in to aggressively push for the title and I put my trust in those sources about who to keep and who to sell. This trade deadline season in my 14T NL only points dynasty, I was trying to acquire Walker Buehler to help my contention window for the next couple of years and the other owner really wanted Josue de Paula from me. I had missed out on de Paula by a buck or two in my 30T dynasty the year before and was feeling pretty prospect-huggy about him, especially since Chris Clegg ranked him inside the top 30 in his recent rankings update. I instead sent AJ Smith Shawver and a late 1st round FYPD pick for the recovering Beuhler and felt solid about the deal for that team.
But it also caused me to look more closely at JDP’s numbers, and what I saw was a bit of a mixed bag for one ranked so highly. On the good side, he’s an 18 year old running a 115 wRC+ at low A, showing speed (13 SB only 2 CS), a good eye (12.2% BBs), and limiting Ks (a much better than average 17.6%). But on the bad side, for one heralded as strong and athletic, he’s got 1 homer and .085 ISO across 279 PAs. That’s near the bottom of the scale – the only guys that get away with that little power in the bigs are the truly elite defenders and the guys who could swipe 100 bases (if they got on base enough to try). A 46% GB rate and 10% IFFB rate were also signs that maybe there is something going on here – some adaptation either isn’t working right or the numbers are hiding something more promising that our scout friends are seeing.
To the tape we go! FanGraphs has some high quality video from instructs last year that give us a good initial view of our subject. At a reported 6’3 200lbs, Josue looks every bit the man amongst boys standing in the box in that video. Longenhagen apparently has sources inside and outside the Dodgers organization comping de Paula to an international prospect that got away from their organization in an unfortunate trade: Yordan Alvarez. That’s some hefty praise for the 18 year old!
Except outside being large left handed hitters with apparent limits on their ultimate defensive homes, I’m not seeing that particular comp either in statistical performance or aesthetic visual evaluations of their swings. Yordan, though 20 on his stop through low A, slugged .658 at the same level. In his worst stop in his entire professional career, Yordan had an ISO of .116, and that was after putting up ISOs of .158 and .298(!!) in the stops before. That’s the slugger profile that turned into one of the very best pure mashers in all of baseball. There is basically nothing in the statistical profile of these two guys that even is within a standard deviation of each other.
What are we missing? De Paula looks the part and smart people are telling us that he’s got the upside of a top 5 hitter in baseball, but the numbers don’t bear this out. Sure, we should cut him some slack for being quite young for the level and the contact skills look really, really good, but as I’ve looked into before, if you aren’t slugging over .100 at this level, it is very unlikely you make the majors let alone turn into Robbie Ray’s nightmare. Words and numbers aren’t doing it, time to look at pretty pictures.
Let’s look at three successful swings from Josue.
The first is on a fastball well located down and away, and de Paula takes a balanced hack and slaps a single over the shortstop’s head. Hey, not bad, that’s a decent pitch and line drives are good. There is solid, simple mechanics with his legs, and the barrel finds the ball smoothly.
The second swing is even better! Again, we’ve got the smooth barrel guided through the zone with quiet hands and feet, all solid signs of a hitter with some polish. A solid line drive single over the second baseman’s head finds the right fielder on a hop.
Lastly, we’ve got what has to be de Paula’s best swing of the entire year. His sole homerun, off a lefty no less, in San Jose. Fastball up and in, and deposits it just over the fence in right. The park factor in San Jose was 119 for homers in 2022, so the fact that he’s squeaking it out of there isn’t some big measure of power. As I was writing this, JDP hit his second homer of the year – a granny for which we don’t have video (grrrrr) at home in Rancho Cucamunga, which has an even more favorable 141 HR park factor. So he’s been hitting half his games on the moon and now has 2 HRs. Hmmmmmmm.
I watched quite a few other at bats from JDP over the course of this season, and I think these three swings tell us a lot about who he is as a hitter. He is loose and athletic, has really solid hands for contact, and a frame a scout can dream some more power projection on, but I’m way out on JDP as a fantasy-relevant prospect based on this review.
I see two major technical errors in these swings – and remember these are some of his best all year. Can you spot them, fellow Darwinists?
The first I talked about with respect to Brady House in a recent article. JDP, like House, cuts his hands across the hitting zone. In that first GIF, watch how quickly his hands end up in front of his chest to hit a ball the other way. His timing is impressive on that pitch, because it has to be for him to even dink it the other way. The hitters with exemplary mechanics don’t do that very often. Instead they drive their hands through the direction the ball is going to go, imparting as much kinetic energy as they can. JDP is putting way too much of his rotational force at an angle on contact with the ball, causing slice and lower exit velocities than he would have otherwise.
The second error is in how he’s using his back arm, specifically his back elbow. In both pulled ball examples above, JDP has his left elbow locked to his side before making contact. Hitters tend to do this when they’re getting jammed, since pulling your hands closer to your body makes them move a little bit quicker around your axis. Think about how when you’re spinning in a swivel chair and you pull your hands and legs in close – you spin faster. Same principle here, but we don’t want quickness for quickness’ sake. We want to turn rotational speed into linear force into the ball. You do that by firing your hips and back elbow in sync, and the further that elbow is away from your hip, the more power you’re going to get into the ball.
Let’s watch a master work.
This is a two strike slider down and away from Carlos Rodon to Yordan that he lasered into the short porch in New New Yankee stadium. Yordan looks fooled – the pitch before was 99mph up and in that he barely foul tipped – but look at the two things JDP doesn’t do above. First, that elbow is so far away from his hip you could throw a football through there. And second, in the Matress Firm™ SUPERMO, look at how he turns that rotational energy into forward energy by extending through the ball. That left hand of his goes through the contact point for like 4 or 5 frames before he lets it start to finish around his body! That’s power, that’s a finch that has honed its adaptations to thrive in the major leagues.
As I got more discouraged watching JDP play for the Quakes, I started to hunt for other names that I’d seen pop up on various fantasy and real-life scouting lists. In that first GIF, the Quakes are playing Arizona’s Cal league affiliate Visalia. I’m not sure if Crash Davis is or ever was their manager, but a couple players on the Rawhide caught my attention.
Jansel Luis was a popup name on the Complex for Arizona. He’s a switch hitting shortstop that Eric Longenhagen called the most well-rounded prospect in the AZL, and said that he has a chance to mature into the goldilocks zone where he stays at short and adds game power. He also made special note of his ability to get oppo lift, a notoriously difficult thing for young hitters to do. In the same game JDP goes the other way for that flare single above, watch Jansel attack a ball on the outer half. Apologies for the speedy GIF and janky camera work, but Jansel has that tell-tale gap between his back elbow and his hip, and when I slowed this screen grab down frame by frame, his back hand is extending through the baseball. That’s why the LF is running back and to his left on that ball. If this were slapped the other way with a spinny swing like JDP’s, that LFer would be running in and to his right to make that catch.
Another seed from Jansel, this time pulled to RF. The ball is out over the plate, but you can see how his extension looks pretty similar to Yordan’s rather than JDP. I’d be curious whether this ball or JDP’s homer had a higher exit velo; my money is on Jansel’s single.
I mentioned that he’s a switch hitter, and while Longenhagen seems to prefer his power from the left side, this homer is torched. 421ft according to the broadcast, and that swing has all the same positive markers of his lefty stroke. Quiet head, hands, and feet, and explosive firing through the ball. He’s listed 6’1 and a skinny 170, but there’s already power there. This kind of technique is what we should be happy to see in our youngsters.
Luis’ overall batting line doesn’t jump off the page just yet, but .283/.336/.444 is more than holding your own for an 18yo in A ball. He is a bit more aggressive and Ks more than you’d like to see (5.6% BB, 22.4% K), but I’m quite intrigued by the power and speed up the middle. Luis was among the most exciting bats I saw and is one to keep a close eye on as he climbs the ladder. To this armchair Darwinologist’s eye, he’s got some adaptations that are foundational building blocks for survival of the fittest in a way that few others in A ball show.