I think actual scouts love Pentecost as well. The real question is the health. If he's healthy, he's got the athleticism and bat to ball skill to be Jason Kendall-esque. You have to remember the Cubs were considering him at the 4th slot that year before ultimately taking Schwarber. I imagine the only reason he remains in A+ is due to the proximity to the training center as they are monitoring him daily.
That's not to disparage Jansen, whom people around here have talked about, and loved, since he was at Bluefield. He's got the best plate discipline of all three (by far), and he's been a darkhorse prospect for most of us since 2014.
McGuire gets love because he's considered the best defender/game caller/manager (plus-plus) of the three. It's doubtful he hits at all in the Majors, but he'll be there as a Mathis\Malle type.
Catchers are fickle, though. In '11, we had four who were considered actual decent to blue chip prospects. One is retired, one can't stay off the DL, and two are essentially quad-A guys now.
This sounds far more like a description of Jansen than Pentecost.
Jansen - my one big worry with him is his arm. if opponents can run with impunity then it's hard to stick at catcher. but i love the plate discipline, and i love that he's shown the ability to put up eye popping numbers (not just for a C) at age appropriate levels. And i still think he has power left to tap into.
Pentecost - scouta love athletic catchers. sometimes too much - see Blake swihart. athleticism sometimes blinds them to actual catching skills - though to be fair i have no idea whether max is a good receiver or not (nor does anyone else yet, really). My issue with him is still the bat - while the topline numbers look good, they're actually not that good for his age and level. and his underlying numbers still look problematic to me - too many Ks and not enough BBs. I will say that the most encouraging thing about him since he came back last year has been his power - i was worried that it was never really there but now it looks real.
Hey, I like both of them. I'll just wait to get excited about Max until he shows he can catch regularly and shows he can hit in the high minors. Jansen, though, has always received good grades as a receiver and gamecaller, has shown the (inconsistent) ability to put up big numbers at the right age/level, and even in his bad years all the underlying numbers have mostly still looked strong.
McGuire I like too but see him most likely as just a good defensive bench catcher.
I imagine you mean because of the low K%, which I would agree with. My comp is more towards the tools themselves with a comparison to lates 90's\early 00's Kendall, i.e. the athletic ability for a catcher (remember, Pentecost stole 17 bases in his junior year as KSU, and had a spd rating of 7.2 at Vancouver, and 5.4 at Lansing), and Gap power (50+ XB hits). If we're talking K% and current hitting profile wise (if we believe he won't improve those figures with more AB's), then Russell Martin (offensively) might be a decent comp as well.
To me, Jansen has a little more Paul Lo Duca to his game.
Martin is a good fit, yeah. The combination of Pentecost's K% and HR power makes Kendall feel like a poor comp to me. At his absolute power peak, Kendall was a gap hitter who squeaked out a couple double-digit HR seasons in one of baseball's most offensive eras as long as he got 600+ plate appearances. Pentecost seems to have real HR power.
Just a fun fact: Prime Kendall was low double digit HR, ~35 2B, ~5 3B (beast) with a 150-175 ISO, 20+ steals, and plus defense. the five tool catcher
The fact that we still look at him as a prospect at all despite being 24 in A+ I think is already giving him plenty of leeway for his injury history and lack of experience, though.
I mean at 24 a good prospect should be knocking on the door for MLB duty.
i know what the interweb scouts think. and they also like mcguire better.
but i've long thought that i wouldn't be surprised to see Jansen be the one who ends up as an mlb starter in the end, and i'm probably less surprised than anyone to see jansen doing what he's doing this year.
(and hey, if you're using a month and a half as proof you/they were right about Bellinger, i should use the same to prove i was right about jansen, no?)
Production from Jays' catchers other than Martin:
3 for 63 with 3 walks, 1 run scored
When I didn't care about anything other than defense and game calling from the team's backup catcher, I was still assuming something in the vicinity of a hit per 5 ABs.
Also shows how valuable Martin still is to the club.
Hey, if all you want to do is regurgitate internet rankings when discussing prospects, have at it. But if you want to pretend that i ignore tools when evaluating prospects that's fake news.
i've had some success in finding over and underrated prospects via the numbers, and this doesn't require me to ignore any tools analysis whatsoever.
You take pleasure in pointing out failures of statsline scouting, without ever considering the failures of tools scouting.
I will not argue that Max doesn't have better raw athletic tools than Danny, but raw tools aren't everything.
Russell Martin - 96 PA, 0.5 fWAR
Everyone else - 67 PA, -1.2 fWAR
The backups have been almost unfathomably bad.
I'm not a proponent of either side over the other, I'm bringing it up because almost every time you post its under some pretense of "this guy is old for the level, therefore dock points"/"this guy is young, therefore great"/"these two have similar numbers, therefore they're equally as good". Its not as relevant as you make it out to be. Also, I'm sure you're aware that stat-line scouting really isn't that valuable at all in the lower minors and only really becomes somewhat useful at AA/AAA.
To be fair, in the "tools" vs. "stat-line scouting" debate; had you spoken to scouts and experts in 2010\11, they would've called you a fool to think that Matt Carpenter had a chance to be better than Bobby Borchering and Matt Dominguez, or that Paul Goldschmidt would've been better than Yonder Alonso (hot 2017 start aside) and Jonathan Singleton. However, looking at their wOBA\wRC+\ISO\BB-K in retrospect, its not that big of a surprise at all. Obviously, a player's tools are a very important portion of the eval and shouldn't be ignored, but the question must be raised as to when they should be adjusted given the performance of his underlying numbers.
Hilariously, those examples also fly in the face of the "he's old for the level, so ignore him" argument as well.
Exactly, far too many are on either extreme when it comes to the quantifiable vs. qualitative scouting debate. Over the years I have gone from about 90% stats and 10% physical tools to about 60% stats and 40% tools. You get burned too easily by boxscore scouting only.To be fair, in the "tools" vs. "stat-line scouting" debate; had you spoken to scouts and experts in 2010\11, they would've called you a fool to think that Matt Carpenter had a chance to be better than Bobby Borchering and Matt Dominguez, or that Paul Goldschmidt would've been better than Yonder Alonso (hot 2017 start aside) and Jonathan Singleton. However, looking at their wOBA\wRC+\ISO\BB-K in retrospect, its not that big of a surprise at all. Obviously, a player's tools are a very important portion of the eval and shouldn't be ignored, but the question must be raised as to when they should be adjusted given the performance of his underlying numbers.
Hilariously, those examples also fly in the face of the "he's old for the level, so ignore him" argument as well.