It isn't yet complete, I know. It's a google doc, it's instantly accessible and instantly alterable by whomever has permission to do so. If you want permission to change stuff, I'll try to figure that part out. I've never done it before, but I doubt it's too hard. In any case, it should stand as a nice reference guide since these kinds of questions come up all the time. Additionally, as you may recall, I wanted to get better at trying to figure out what Kenny will do next. This is a good start, since getting a full "big picture" look in a few clicks at the Sox should help organize thoughts on the matter. If there are any mistakes or omissions, let me know. I think I'll be captaining the board, but convincing me to make changes shouldn't be that hard. It occurs to me that we should perhaps have a running 40 man roster, but that's pretty easy to find elsewhere.
- The projected starters/roster filler are obviously tentative, but they make sense as I see it right now.
- The prospect board, as you might guess, was somewhat arbitrarily decided on. Past Kanny, it's guys I've heard of, have an inexplicable liking of or, apparently, were recent 1-3 round picks.
- If "Floor" is left blank, it means that there's still a very good chance that said player is simply not nor will be major league caliber. That's the vast majority of minor leaguers. I wanted that category to actually provide some information, so blank rather than "bust" written a million times.
- "Ceiling" is obviously prone to guesswork, so I try to go with something that I've got evidence of. For example, Jose Martinez is fairly well regarded and appears to be good at hitting line drives, doesn't take a ton of walks and is 6'5''. Add some power and seeing a JD clone isn't too hard.
- The positions of the prospects are listed according to the defensive spectrum. Here's a cool graph that Nate Silver did that illustrates it, approximately. Implied is that a prospect can probably play most positions below, but aside from going from CF to 2B as John Shelby might, it's very rare to go up.
- The ETA of '09 doesn't necessarily mean they can't play in '08, but this is whole project is meant to address the future and the '08 roster is pretty well set barring some unforeseen injury. So it would be wrong to say that we think it probable any of these guys to play in '08. Again, somewhat capricious, but I'm not working with a whole lot of definitive evidence/information here.
- Since I was already doing this for a year and a half on my old laptop before it died (RIP), I suspect I'll keep it at least somewhat up to date.
Anything that you don't want to add in the comments can be sent to colintj@umich.edu