2019 Community Prospect Projections: The Pitching Results

After several years of casting a series of projections for the team’s MLB players here at Viva El Birdos, we decided to try an additional series this year: a prospect series. Considering that nearly one-third of our content over the course of a year is Minor League/prospect based, I thought a project like this would be enjoyable for those interested in this side of the game. An average of greater than 160 responses for each form was recorded, so I think it’s safe to say this series will be an annual occurrence.

The deadline to submit responses for our forms was today (Sunday, 2/24) around 12:00 PM Eastern Time. After the deadline, I went through all of the responses so you could all see them, too. To avoid a super long, hard-to-follow post, I decided to divide it into two. The first post is this evening, and the other will be up tomorrow morning.

So, first off, the arms:

For this year, we held projections for five pitching prospects: Alex Reyes, Junior Fernandez, Ryan Helsley, Daniel Ponce de Leon, and Dakota Hudson.

For the statistics, I found it easiest to take averages of your feedback instead of doing a mode of each set. I was happy to find that there were very few outliers in the data. (Not sure if it was really meant to project one of these pitchers for 80 starts and a different pitcher for more than 1,000 innings. Nonetheless, I did not use these as inputs in the number crunching.) For the strikeout-to-walk ratios, I was able to come up with an average and reduce it so all ratios were to one even walk.

With Reyes and Ponce de Leon, they both were projected to start the seasons at Triple-A Memphis but ultimately spend the bulk of their time in the Majors. As for Fernandez, Helsley, and Hudson, it is believed that this trio will start the season at a level they will pitch at for most of the summer; Fernandez at Double-A Springfield, Helsley at Triple-A, and Hudson in the Majors. I believe it is worth noting that these results were pretty easy to come up with; in other words, you all share a similar mindset when it comes to these five - in this area of the form, anyway.

Reyes was projected by over 70 percent to be a reliever, while the other close-to-30 percent think it will depend on the need at the time. For Fernandez, it was well-over half who feel that he will start or relieve, depending on the need. With Helsley, I thought it was interesting to see that a little over half think he will be a reliever, and a little less than half envision him as a starter. Ponce de Leon has the closest between the three options; 40 percent projected him as a reliever, 36 percent as a starter, and 24 percent are thinking it’s a toss-up. With Hudson, half say he is a reliever, and the other half are split pretty evenly between him starting or doing either.

I think that does it for the pitching portion of our 2019 Community Prospect Projections. Again, thank you to everyone who participated in our first year of this. I’ll have the hitters’ projections ready for you on Monday!