I feel like I'm on Canis with all the pedantic back and forth here.

The last 3 pages in a sentence: 

We can all agree that Kohl Stewarts "bust %" as a starter has increased somewhere between moderately and significantly since he was drafted, due to his inability to control the ball and / or translate his "good stuff" into swings and misses. 

Bonus sentence:

With little historical precedent on his side, Kohl will really have to make a leap if he's to be an effective 4th / 5th starter, let alone a top of the rotation guy or a high-leverage bullpen arm.

Setting aside whether 50% is the right number to choose here, if you believe Stewart has a X% chance of still becoming an impact big leaguer, then you should find X% of actual impact big leaguers somewhat followed Stewart's career path so far.

I realize this is pedantic (with apologies to ScooterDance), but I still feel compelled to add: this says it backwards. If you believe Stewart has a X% chance at being an impact player, you should look at those who somewhat followed Stewart's career path, and see what percent of those became impact players. There are many other ways to be an impact player, but they are not relevant to this player. Your last sentence actually follows this line of reasoning, so maybe you just misstated what you meant.

 

Admittedly, choosing either direction as the starting point works about the same, if the percentage X is close to 0. For example searching for black major leaguers prior to Jackie Robinson.

 

Again, sorry.

 

I realize this is pedantic (with apologies to ScooterDance), but I still feel compelled to add: this says it backwards. If you believe Stewart has a X% chance at being an impact player, you should look at those who somewhat followed Stewart's career path, and see what percent of those became impact players. There are many other ways to be an impact player, but they are not relevant to this player. Your last sentence actually follows this line of reasoning, so maybe you just misstated what you meant.

 

Admittedly, choosing either direction as the starting point works about the same, if the percentage X is close to 0. For example searching for black major leaguers prior to Jackie Robinson.

 

Again, sorry.

No problem.  I'm always looking to improve my thinking and communication skills!

 

I think it was mainly about which is easier, looking at what a ton of Stewart comparables did going forward, or just looking backward at a much smaller set of known impact players.  The latter seems like a more reasonable task to ask in this context.

 

But yeah, the ultimate number/point is about the same.

 

I feel like I'm on Canis with all the pedantic back and forth here.

The last 3 pages in a sentence: 

We can all agree that Kohl Stewarts "bust %" as a starter has increased somewhere between moderately and significantly since he was drafted, due to his inability to control the ball and / or translate his "good stuff" into swings and misses. 

Bonus sentence:

With little historical precedent on his side, Kohl will really have to make a leap if he's to be an effective 4th / 5th starter, let alone a top of the rotation guy or a high-leverage bullpen arm.

 

Nicely stated.

Setting aside whether 50% is the right number to choose here, if you believe Stewart has a X% chance of still becoming an impact big leaguer, then you should find X% of actual impact big leaguers somewhat followed Stewart's career path so far. But almost none have. Porcello was a low-K guy, although he debuted at 20 and wasn't really an impact player until much later, after adding strikeouts to his arsenal. Some stars were late bloomers but even they still missed more minor league bats before blooming. With

Stewart's K rates, you mostly you get Nick Blackburn comps at best.

This isn't a video game with programmable skill attributes. We're talking about living, breathing, dynamic human individuals, not numbers and variables in an equation. Any prediction is fraught with uncertainty. Even with precedent, it's important to remember that not every relationship is a correlation. I see no reason why strikeouts/9 are more indicative of success than many other stats, other than they happen to be en vogue right now with the saber community.

Here I thought strikeouts (for pitchers) have been universally considered awesome for, like, ever.