But unless Kunz gets some votes I’m going to drop him right quick.

And pretty much for all the reasons you list here. One correction though, Carson has the better GB%. Allen has the better GO/AO, but I much prefer the rate stats when considering batted ball profiles, especially GB%, the one that a minor league record keeper can’t mess up (as opposed to LD% and FB%, which are much easier to confuse).

First off, GB% accounts for hits as well as outs, which is important since the difference between a lot of GB hits and groundouts is fairly arbitrary as far as a pitcher is concerned (not entirely mind you, but enough so that the bleedover is more than statistical noise).

Second, one of the reasons Allen’s GO/AO is better is because he’s giving up more line drives, which as you’d expect yields a higher BABIP (.285 for Carson, .316 for Allen), mostly because more of the balls hitters are getting in the air off of him are going for hits. So while technically Allen’s having more balls hit in the air (LD%+FB%), he’s also giving up a much higher rate of hits on balls in the air (about 50%) than Carson is (about 37%), and that also means fewer AO, increasing the GO/AO ratio by way of something that’s actually indicative of a few negatives.

The thing is, Carson’s LD% is ridiculously low according to minorleaguesplits (8.3%). But if a guy has a 60% GB%, that’s only 40% to divy up between LDs and FBs, so you should expect it to be relatively low. Just not 8.3% low. Given that it is so low for Carson, his BABIP actually looks just about right (for a player on a decent defensive team, which is really the strange thing about the low BABIP). But his BABIP on “LDs” (.800) and GBs (.239) seems just about right, while his BABIP on FBs (.228) actually seems a bit elevated if anything. My guess is, whoever is tracking balls off bats in these SAL parks tends to favor the “fl” in “fliner,” and that Carson actually has a more reasonable BABIP on “true flyballs” and that some of these “SAL flyballs” are actually closer to linedrives.

Otherwise, even if you take all that with a grain of salt, the handedness and velocity are a nice kicker for Carson. His velocity is fringe plus, while Allen’s is still closer to fringe, and they both have a very nice second offering. I think Allen’s got the perfect profile for a guy you expect to add a tick of velocity, and he has a more advanced changeup, but I see a path to the big leagues for Carson that’s becoming more a question of “starter or reliever?” at this point than it is of physical or repertoire development the way it is with Allen (its not there yet mind you, but that seems like its becoming a likely direction for Carson). In the end, its really, really close, I think Allen’s got quite a bit of hidden upside that Carson probably doesn’t, but I voted Carson. But I could wake up on a different side of the bed tomorrow and change my mind on that pretty easily.

I also want to add one more thing, I think you’re underestimating just how raw Pena is behind the plate still. His tools have always gotten excellent grades, and all we have to go on is the scouting reports, so I don’t have any numbers to fall back on really aside from things like CS and PBs. Pena had 28 PBs last year. That’s a lot. Enough to assume a degree of rawness. There may be an ARL element to this, in that Thole didn’t reach the SAL until he was 20, and the breaking balls certainly break sharper in the SAL than they do in the APPY (though the command is also probably better in the upper levels too, making balls easier to handle, no?). But Thole’s never had more than 8 PBs yet in a season (unfortunately, the career high of 8 is actually this year). Pena only has 7 this year, which is a tremendous improvement, but he needs to prove he can keep it up. Also, I’d love it if B-R kept track of wild pitches too, despite their being “faulted” to the pitcher a good catcher should be able to reduce wild pitches, at least that seems right intuitively.

As for the CS, Thole’s is 30% this year, which is fine. It was 22% last year. Pena’s is 39% this year, after 23% last year. So Pena’s a bit better, but its not like Thole can’t throw a lick. There may also be an ARL relationship here, since older baserunners should theoretically be more advanced basestealers and older catchers should maybe have better throwing mechanics (?), but it seems harder to infer that without any actual evidence.

My bad for forgetting to put Gee back on, I’ll get him back up there for the next one.

That’s more a philosophical debate than a technical one, and I agree with all of your claims. I would also say I do weigh upside more than anything else in most cases, I just don’t think its entirely clear what Pena’s upside is right now, and given that, its hard to weigh it accordingly. If you think his upside is an all-star caliber offensive/defensive force, that’s one thing, but I see no reason to believe that right now, no matter how strong he looks like he might one day be. With some of these pitchers, I can more accurately evaluate those things. There are very specific tells that I can look for. Is Allen’s fastball getting faster? Is Carson’s GB% holding up? These are more specific things to look for, whereas with Pena, he needs to make more contact, make harder contact, probably needs to draw more walks, and he has to stay in shape for more than half a season.

If there was a pitcher I’d consider comping Pena to its Moviel, a guy who I’m not advocating getting a vote here either. Moviel’s a big, all projection guy with a decent if unspectacular performance record at more age appropriate levels. Like Pena, there are two things with Moviel that stand out:

1. His size
2. His command

That is much like looking at Pena and saying there are two things that stand out:

1. His size
2. His arm

The potential is clearly there for more, but we’re still so far away from that its very unclear where that potential either begins or ends. There are lots of different possible outcomes for these guys, and assigning probabilities to those outcomes is a task that’s more about educated guesswork than it is about correlating specific tendencies into what could be long-term career trends.

I kid, I probably took it a bit too far, but I really have no inherent complaint about any of these choices. That’s why I kid after the vote is over, not before. Because the point is to see what different people’s opinions are. Once their out there, their fair game, and I encourage anyone who disagrees with me to point out exactly why they do and if they feel its necessary, poke fun at me in light of that. As long as its all in good fun and the spirit of debate. The joke I was making when I said I was putting Pena on the poll as punishment was that Marte really deserved all the same criticisms that there are of Pena, and I just wanted to make that point in a silly way. But if it came off as too mean and/or snarky to anyone who has formed that as an opinion for any reason other than “Kevin Goldstein said so in the offseason” then I apologize.