So, I did a bit of research on "what does Moncada's SAL MVP season suggest for his future", and then perhaps made a poor choice in placing it in an otherwise-dumb Chris Archer trade thread. But I'm curious as to what we've really got in Yoan Moncada, in terms of probability distribution, and whether he's still more of a lottery ticket going into 2016, or if it's now a question of "how good will he be in the majors". Not being much of a scout, this is what I did:
There's a list of
South Atlantic League MVPs. Taking the 32 of them from 1981 through 2013, I went through and categorized them by career outcome.
Flameout (6, 18%). Never rose much beyond that, out of baseball not long after.
High Minors (8, 24%). Had a career in AA, AAA, and the Independent leagues. Never added to the 25-man of a MLB team.
Cup of Coffee (9, 27%). Small bits of MLB seasons, periodically; never stuck on the roster. Total WAR for this group: -3.2.
ML Bencher (5, 15%). Had a career as an MLB backup. Includes Ruben Rivera, Russ Branyan, Brandon Moss*, Eugenio Velez, and Jordan Pacheco. Total WAR for this group: 17.0.
ML Average-plus (2, 6%). Sustained MLB starter, with maybe an all-star year or two in the mix. Includes Kevin Seitzer, a serviceable 3B from 1986-1997, and Marcus Giles. Total WAR for this group: 45.4
ML All-Star (2, 6%). Consistently top quintile of the league. Includes Andruw Jones (62.8, HOF contender), and also J.D. Martinez (7.8 so far), whose age 26 and 27 seasons at 154 and 140 OPS+ suggest this path fits him best.
So, even among the SAL players-of-the-year that now includes Moncada, that still only suggests a ~12% chance of a strong ROI, plus 15% of some recovered value in ML production. Certainly, those outcomes beat the hell out of those for the average A-ball player. But they still shouldn't translate to being an instant top trading chip for MLB talent. Moncada is still far more likely to be a never-were than an Andruw Jones (at a cost of $63M to John Henry).
Someone could probably easily do the same categorization for the
MVPs and Prospects of the Year in the Midwest League, the other A-ball league, which would be further interesting correlation. Some names jump out just from that list: Paul Molitor, BJ Surhoff, Todd Ziele, Reggie Sanders, Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Adrian Gonzalez, Prince Fielder, Carlos Gonzalez, Clayton Kershaw, Mike Trout... clearly, whoever votes on their awards have been better able to predict future ML success than the equivalents in the SAL.
* Moss did have a solid 3-year run in Oakland, 2012-2014, including being an all-star in 2013. But he has had partial, if not tiny fractions, of seasons before and since, and has only 4.9 career bWAR in 9 ML seasons. He's a bencher to me.