"For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal."
Tapate50 (01-21-2024)
Riley has not been clearly better than any other 3B over the last 3 years with the bat. Jose Ramirez has a slightly better OPS over that time and Devers slightly worse. Riley would be just as good of player regardless of if Chipper Jones and ARod were playing 3B now instead of 10 years ago. Several 3B have outhit him in a season in the last 3 years but just dont have the consistency in the 3 years.
"Donald Trump will serve a second term as president of the United States.
It’s over."
Little Thethe Nov 19, 2020.
Fangraphs is one of the best public sources for baseball. If that site saying Riley had a 10% chance to be a 70 FV player and a 30% chance to be a 60+ FV player isnt proof to you that the odds of Riley wasnt a 1% chance then nothing will satisfy you. And I dont know what makes the graph filler.
Sure a 25% chance likelihood of being an all star player is pretty high. Thats why he was a consensus top 40 prospect. Riley had shown tremendous improvements in the minors and was incredibly young for the levels he was at. Yes he had a serious swing and miss problem but thats not uncommon for players with big time power when they are young. His walk rate wasnt great but it was fairly consistent. Whether he hit .250 and .330 he was still walking 7-10%. Hitters tend to cannibalize their walks when they are hot and walk a lot more when they are struggling. He wasnt a Francoeur level strikeout/walk guy. The projection of Riley as a .850 OPS hitter was assuming just about everything went right for him and he kept improving. Hitters bust but top 50 position prospects are not 1% lottery tickets things go right.
"Donald Trump will serve a second term as president of the United States.
It’s over."
Little Thethe Nov 19, 2020.
Well actually 1% is a fairly likely outcome is really stretching the bounds of semantics and is not what the folks suggesting that seemed to be trying to convey.
Basically they want to be correct about their old assessments uttered very confidently and suggest that the Lord made a miracle and this means they were still correct all along.
Around here we are constantly seeing black swan events. What a time to be alive I guess.
jpx7 (01-27-2024)
He wasn't a top 40 prospect because he was projected to be an average player. He was a top 40 prospect because he has elite power which meant if he simply had average batting average/OBP he would be a very good player. The issue we are arguing about is the probability he becomes as good as he is now. He has exceeded expectations a little bit no doubt but no player is a top 40 prospect in baseball because they have a 1% chance to be an all star.
"Donald Trump will serve a second term as president of the United States.
It’s over."
Little Thethe Nov 19, 2020.