B4B

You get home from a long days work; turn on your computer, and visit your league page…

 

Awesome! Just what you wanted to see: via the league announcement you made yesterday; you now have trade feedback.

 

There’s several offers that look solid on the surface, but you want to do some further investigating before making any decisions.

 

You open up your reliable Google homepage, and enter in a few search queries; you want the latest news about the player in mention:

• Daric Barton + Rotoworld
• Daric Barton + CBS

You know these queries will make the players’ player card the first result. Once you get there, you read the weeks worth of blurbs about the players’ health and performance, and everything checks out ok.

 

This is your fantasy team we’re talking about, and you really want to make sure, so you go to Fanball.com, and read the latest about Barton via their player search engine.

 

A long the way, you read several opinions about Barton, but you know those are short summaries/blurbs. You know you can make better decisions about a players future performance by doing your own legwork.

 

Barton is a rookie, without much of a big league track record, so you go to FirstInning.com, and do a search for his player card.

 

You look at his minor league statistics:

Age	PA	Line	ISO
19-22	1988	.301/.412/.459	162

 

There’s an apparent lack of power in his numbers. The stats don’t tell the whole story. So you look for scouting reports from reliable sources.

 

You know the passionate major league prospect fans at Project Prospect would be glad to share their thoughts about Barton. But before posting a new message asking for feedback, you use the search functionality on the message board. And you find this nugget.

 

As much as you respect the community’s opinion, you might want to find some sources who’ve talked to major league scouts. Maybe a BA subscription would come in handy. You do a Google search “Daric Barton + Baseball America”

 

You find out that in 2006 Barton was the A’s #1 prospect.

 

That doesn’t say much; the A’s have had one of the worst farm systems over the last 3-5 seasons. So you dig deeper at Baseball America for scouting reports….

 

You find Kevin Goldstein’s professional opinion in 2006:

“…The A’s are convinced he’ll eventually produce 25-30 homers on an annual basis, citing his hitting ability and the scouting axiom that power often is the last tool to develop. Others think he might top out at 15-20 homers, less than ideal production for a first baseman.

<SNIP>

 

You want to know what BA had to say about Barton’s power most recently, too:

“…He has a textbook swing, fluid and short with a bit of loft, hinting at future power.

<SNIP>

 

You look at his short 2007 Sept. call up: (espn + daric barton)

PA	Line	ISO
84	.347/.429/.639	.292

 

You know the sample is insufficient, but that doesn’t mean the performance should be ignored.

 

Maybe the Daric Barton scouting reports are coming to fruition?

 

You’re not done yet. You want to see how many runs Barton can produce by looking at his teams run expectancy. The A’s rank 11th out of 30 teams.

 

You now have a well rounded idea of what you can expect from Barton going forward.

 

———

 

ISO is Isolated Power. It’s Slugging Percentage minus Batting Average. (SLG-BA). I like to use Isolated Power to get a more defining picture of a players power output. ISO is one of the more reliable hitting metrics from year to year. After 550PA ISO becomes reliable.

Here’s a chart:

ISO	Quality
Below .150	Poor
.150-.200	Average
.200-.280	Good
Above .280	Elite