prospecthype

Another decision that prospectors have to make is whether they should only buy into a small number of players, investing most of their disposable funds into those players, or to buy less of each player, but diversify and buy more different players. Both approaches can be very successful, so let’s just take a look at the pros and cons of each.

If you buy into a limited number of players, your money is probably going to be tied up for a longer period of time while you wait for the player to increase in value. You will be able to get a lot more cards of them, therefore making your return on investment (ROI) potential exponentially greater. Unfortunately, it goes the other way too if your player doesn’t pan out…so it’s a much bigger gamble. You either win big or lose big. This type of strategy seems to generally be better for prospects that you either 1) Buy in when they are still extremely cheap, or 2) are nearly positive that they will see increases (a less-risky player).

If you spread out yourmoney into a number of different players, you are generally much safer overall from losing money, because if one player doesn’t develop like you expected, you don’t lose very much money. On the other hand, if they do see an increase in value, you likely won’t be making any enormous money, because you simply don’t have enough cards to do so. Don’t get me wrong, it’s always nice to turn a 400% profit on a $25 card and put a C-Note into your pocket, but just think if you had bought 5 of those $25 cards instead of one…And lastly, it’s usually much easier to move a couple cards than an entire stash, so you generally are more active in your prospecting when you invest in this way (which to most people seems to be fun).

The bottom line is always that if the player takes off, you are going to make money. If they don’t, you’re going to lose money. Finding a healthy balance of the above strategies that fits your personal budget is the best thing you can do to maximize your chances of making money.

I think that the Leaf Limited Autos from Prime Cuts IV are the biggest sleepers of all the prospect sets this year, because they were supposed to be numbered to just 99…but ended up being left unnumbered upon release.  But because they were left unnumbered, many people are unaware that these cards live up to their title, as Limited. They hardly sell for more than the Base Elites which are numbered to 1299, which is just amazing to me. I personally bought ten Rick Porcellos, and I’m very happy with my purchases and with these cards’ potential for growth. They are a great investment not just because they are very appealing cards, but because their potential as an unannounced SP makes them a wildcard. For more information about the numbering that was left off, see this sell sheet from Donruss: http://www.magazine-exchange.com/info/pdf/2008%20Playoff%20Prime%20Cuts%20IV%20BB%20PIS.pdf

Zach Collier- OF- L/L- Philadelphia- 6’2” 190 pounds- D.O.B.- 9/8/1990

Placement Overview: Coming out of high school, Collier was selected in the first round of the 2008 draft by the Philadelphia Phillies. The youngster played in 37 games for the GCL Phillies where he batted .271, was 5 for 5 on stolen base attempts, and posted OBP/ SLG/ OPS of .347/.357/.703. Look for Collier to begin 2009 in single A.

Scout: Despite decent size already, Collier has a projectable frame. He has good strength, but he should fill out even more as he matures. Collier also has a very raw, but solid repertoire of tools. He has a very upright stance, but his swing is fairly mechanically sound, as he is quick to the ball and generates a great deal of power with his hips. He has very good power already, and it should develop even further as he fills out and adds some more muscle to his frame. He gets good extension and finishes his swing high. He has above average speed and an average to above average arm, which should allow him to play any outfield position.

Projection: Collier has the tools, now it is just a matter of how he is able to develop those tools fundamentally, to reach his full potential. Scouts rave about his power/speed combo, but they say that with better instruction, he should be able to take his game to the next level. It will be a lot easier to predict Collier’s timetable and development after we see how he performs in his first full professional season in 2009, but as of right now, he’s got all the tools and athleticism to carry him to greatness. He just has to keep working on refining those tools as much as possible.

Expected Year of Arrival: 2012

Grade: B+

Bottom Line: Collier fits the mold of an MLB star in the making. He has great raw tools and is extremely athletic. It is difficult to predict the future and timeline for Collier at such a young age, but this should become easier when we see what he can do in 2009. But for now, the sky is the limit for this outfield slugger.

Card Investing Analysis: Collier has cards in a few different 2008 products, but his best is his 2008 Bowman Chrome autograph from 2008 Bowman Draft. The base autos sell for $8-$10, while refractors go for a few dollars more. He’s still pretty unproven as a player, but it’s not a bad time to invest when his stuff is so cheap.

I’ve been working on a larger project which talks a lot about baseball cards and prospecting, and I wanted to post an excerpt from that. Hype is a very important part of the prospecting process, so here is some information about that:

Hype- The best thing that can happen to you once you have already invested in a prospect is for that prospect to receive a ton of hype and recognition (even if he does not necessarily deserve it). This bolsters prices because people now have the name in their head and specifically search for cards of your player. But if you do not yet own any cards, you generally want to select a player who has received minimal hype. That way, prices are lower right now when you are the buyer, which will allow you to make more money in the future if and when the player’s prices do go up. But how can you be sure about a player’s hype? All you need to do is check a few card message boards like the one that can be found at freedomcardboard.com and a baseball prospect site such as baseballamerica.com. If the player’s name is all over the place, his hype is obviously at a high. EBay.com is another great place to look, because you can simply check the prices of cards. There are always exceptions; and it is possible to turn a profit on a player that is already well-hyped. For example, David Price cards could be bought before the 2008 playoffs for relatively high prices compared to other prospects, but when he saved game 7 of the ALCS to send the Rays to the World Series, his cards hit all-time highs. So clearly, this can happen, but generally speaking, it is easier to make money on a guy when you’re buying before they receive much attention.

One of the tough parts of prospecting is deciding when to sell your inventory. Lots of times after you are done buying, prices will increase, and you will wonder whether or not it is time to sell. The answer is not always obvious or easy. Is now the time? Could I make more profit if I waited a week, month, year….? What if I don’t sell now and then prices fall below the point at which I bought in?

One strategy which seems to make sense in the most situations is to take a profit when you can, and don’t look back.  If you can sell and make money, a number of things happen. The first and perhaps most important is that you not only ensure that you will not lose money on your initial investment, but you make a profit. It is definite and certain, so you really can’t go wrong. The only possible way you can be wrong by selling here is if the guy then goes on to explode and his card prices continue to shoot way higher. This then becomes a missed opportunity to make even more money. But looking at the big picture, you made money, even though it wasn’t as much as you could have made, so it’s hard to complain too much. This is where the second part of the strategy applies: take your profit and don’t look back.Remember, hindsight is always 20/20…you more than likely didn’t know that the guy’s prices would go higher, so you made the best decision at the time, where you guaranteed yourself to make money. Be happy with your profit, and put the money somewhere else.

Another strategy is to hold through the potential profit period and see what happens. Sometimes you will win, sometimes you will lose. Prices could increase or decrease, so you have to use your best judgment about the player’s future to make the decision. If you think the player is good enough that he can maintain the level of production that pushed his prices up in the first place, then maybe it’s not a bad idea to hold and hope for further increases. If you think the guy’s current prices are realistically not going to go much higher unless he throws a no hitter or hits three homeruns in a game, then just sell your stuff and take your money and move on.

Perhaps the best strategy is to take the opportunity to sell as much of your stash as it takes to make back all your initial investment, and then hold the remainder of your stash to see what happens with your guy. That way, you can’t lose money, but you have some stuff to sell if his prices continue to increase (therefore somewhat heading off the ’selling too early’ issue).

Remember, the best time to sell is not always when the player reaches the majors. Sometimes it is far before that point. Look for times when he is receiving a lot of hype (regardless of whether or not he deserves it).

My bottom line for selling is that it’s better to be safe than sorry.

This was the first full case I’ve done before, I’ve opened more than a case-worth of single boxes of one product before, but this was the first time I’ve flat out bought a case. And what a great experience. First of all, it was a ton of fun to break so much wax all at once. It’s always fun to anticipate what autograph or nice ‘fractors you might pull from a single box, so you can imagine how thrilling 12 boxes were. Secondly, I did extremely well with the case which made it even more fun.

My top hits include:

Zach Collier gold refractor auto

Mike Stanton Xfractor auto

Mike Montgomery 1/1 Plate auto

Markus Brisker orange refractor

Brandon Crawford orange refractor

Ryan Perry Gold Refractor

Xavier Avery Gold Refractor

Mike Sheridan Gold Refractor

Jake Odorizzi Blue Refractor

Rick Porcello Refractor

As you can see, I had a lot of luck with some higher end refractors, and I was ecstatic when I pulled the Porcello refractor, as he is one of my personal favorites as a Tiger pitching prospect. The same goes for the gold Perry.

The autos were almost exactly half good and half bad (as far as player and value go). Luckily for me, the biggest pull (the gold ref auto) was of a  better player (Collier).Neither of my AFLACs were big name or big value cards as I pulled Adrian Nieto (from the very first pack of the whole case) and Isaac Galloway. Despite that, I am a fan of both of those players and firmly believe that both card will go up in value over time.

Overall, I feel that this product is loaded.  One concern with it before release was  that the base set  lacked the big names that 07 Draft had, but looking at the actual checklist, there are more of these than most people thought, and the set is anchored by Porcello, one of the best names in any BDP set at release ever. The auto checklist is arguably the best auto checklist at release of any Bowman product as well.It is a tremendous product, and I can hardly wait until I get the opportunity to bust some more of it.

I’m here to talk about the most underrated prospect in all of baseball. His name is Ryan Strieby.

With all these top prospect lists being published, and this guy not making the lists for seemingly no reason, I feel like now is the time for me to bring his name up for discussion.

I have been prospecting for some time now, and for one reason or another, I really love to prospect/collect young players in the Detroit Tigers’ organization. I’m pretty familiar with many of the players in their system, and I even admit that I have some stashes/mini-collections of some of them. One of those guys is in my opinion the most underrated prospect in all of baseball.

His name is Ryan Strieby. He is a hulk of a man (6′5″ 235 pounds), and spent 2008 playing first base for the A-Advanced Lakeland Flying Tigers. Strieby has a great skill-set to work with, as he has enormous power, can hit for some decent average, and plays gold glove caliber defense. But don’t take my word for it, because you don’t need to. His numbers speak for themselves. In 2008, Strieby batted .278 with league-leading 29 homeruns and 94 RBIs. He also slugged .563, had an OBP of .352 and an OPS of .915. His complete statline can be seen here on milb.com. A graduate of Kentucky University, where he was the SEC player of the year and a 1st Team All-American selection in 2006, Strieby is still only 23 years old. In 2008, he was named the Tigers’ Minor League Player of the Year, and rightfully so. I am not sure how he is not making anyone’s top prospect lists because he is not only one of the most talented players in the Tigers’ organization, but he had one of the best seasons in all the minor leagues in 2008.

To me, he is the most underrated prospect in all of baseball, because he gets absolutely no attention despite putting up monster numbers last season. He didn’t make BA’s preliminary Detroit organizational top 10 prospect list. When asked about it, they basically said that they had overlooked him because they couldn’t come up with any real reason for why he was not on the list at all, when he clearly should have been #2 (behind Rick Porcello and all of his potential). Now how is it that Strieby wins the Tigers’ Minor League Player of the Year award (yes, the best player in their entire farm system in 2008), but he wasn’t good enough to even be on the top 10 list? It doesn’t make any sense to me either. Honestly, he had a better season than most of the top prospects of baseball. He even outperformed the second coming of God himself, Matt LaPorta. Granted, LaPorta was playing in AA and Strieby was in A-Advanced, Strieby had a much better season (and I’m willing to have a friendly argument to defend this statement if anyone wants to).

Strieby only has one card and that is a chrome base card from 2008 Bowman, which should probably be selling for $4.00 apiece right now (but obviously are not). But the fact that he only had one card in 2008 dramatically will increase its value down the road, as it is his ONLY first-year card (think about a guy like Jay Bruce who didn’t have very many FY cards and the prices that his FY stuff were selling for). I think Strieby is an excellent investment, and I’ll be very honest here and say that that is why I have a pretty sizable stash of him (although I am now done buying as my prospecting funds are depleted).

The bottom line is that Ryan Strieby is a monster, and he deserves some attention.

One available option for prospectors to potentially increase the value of their inventory is to have the cards graded. It isn’t always easy, but if the card receives a BGS 9.5 or 10 or a PSA 10, the value of the card usually increases significantly. Because BGS is the more popular grading service, we will only refer to them for the remainder of this text. It can also be assumed that a PSA 10 grade will cause a very similar price increase to that of a BGS 9.5.

The debate comes in because grading takes time, money, and is not guaranteed to increase the cards’ value.  One thing that is sometimes difficult is that a lot of prospects have very short price spikes during which you, as a prospector, may want to dump some of their cards. Sending to BGS can take a lot of time, unless you have the money to pay for more expensive turnaround time…which leads us into the cost problem.

At the very minimum, you will be paying something like $8-$10 per card for grading and shipping and handling. With a lot of cards, it simply isn’t worth paying these fees because even a BGS 9.5 grade will not make the card worth enough for you to turn a decent profit after the cost of buying the card and then grading it. Even if the card is worth getting graded, it can still be very expensive for the average prospector, especially when there are no guarantees that the card will even receive a 9.5 or 10… which leads us to problem #3.

Once you decide that you are going to send in an order to be graded, you must pick what cards to send. If you aren’t careful about what you choose to send in, you could submit 100 cards and get nothing higher than a BGS 9. The 9.5s are what you want and although they are not impossible grades, the folks at BGS certainly don’t just hand them out to any card. 10s are extremely difficult grades, as this basically means the card is perfect (or extremely close). A BGS 9 is a very acceptable grade, but as far as being a value multiplier, these cards seem to generally sell for about the same amount as an ungraded (a.k.a. raw) card.

It’s tough because you have to consider all these thingswhen thinking about sending cards in.

First, am I going to need the cards sometime soon? Or do I actually have time to send them in before I plan to sell?

Secondly, how much is it going to cost, what can I afford, and which turnaround time can I afford? Is it even worth sending the cards in for the money it will cost?

And finally,  do the cards I’m sending even have a chance at a 9.5 or 10 grade? Or would I be wasting my time and money to send them in just to be put in 9 or lower cases…?

Overall, you can decide by answering these three major questions. If you think you are going to need to sell the card soon, do not send. Pick a time when you are very sure that the player will not see any price spikes (potential sell times). If the potential multiplier of value of the card isn’t worth the price to get it graded, then don’t send that card. Select a service that you can afford. And lastly, try to do your own grading before you finalize your decision on what to send in. Look at each of the four categories by which your cards will be graded: centering, corners, surface, and edges. If they don’t look good to you, they aren’t going to look good to the professionals. Only send cards that you think have a chance at the higher grades. Otherwise you are wasting your money.

With grading, you can potentially increase the value at the same time as getting the card put into very nice protective cases. But with all the risks, you better be pretty sure that your stuff at least has a chance at a 9.5 grade. The bottom line is that you can’t go wrong by keeping your cards raw. You don’t risk any money, and you keep your cards close by. Both ways are acceptable for prospectors, and both can be very successful. I personally think that if the cards are valuable enough to make grading them worth the price, and they look good enough to potentially receive a 9.5 or 10 grade, it is worth the risk to send them in and see what happens.

I’d like to introduce a new mini-series that I will be posting here and there between player reviews called Spike Watch. It will be a short list of a few players who I think for one reason or another will see some significant increases in their card prices in the near future, and state the reasoning behind these potential price spikes. So without further ado…

Neftali Feliz-P-Texas- Feliz is one of the most talented young pitchers in the minor leagues. He is just 20 years old, but he had tremendous success in 2008, striking out 153 in 127.1 innings of work. He has one of the best fastballs in all the minor leagues, consistentlyin the upper 90s, and he continues to get better and better. More and more people are starting to find out about this guy, and when they do, they will see nothing but good things. More people will look to buy his cards, and as a result, his prices will be driven upward.

Brett Anderson and Trevor Cahill- P and P- Oakland- I list these guys together because everything about their position in both the A’s system and in the card/prospecting world are so similar. These guys have been competing for the for the spot atop Oakland’s top prospect list all year. Both had great 2008 seasons, both have excellent stuff, both have a ton of potential,both have a chance to make their MLB debuts in 2009, and both have suprisingly low valued cards. I personally just purchased a Cahill chrome refractor auto for about half of what they had peaked at during the 2008 season. Both of these guys are ready to explode, and you can bet that they will both be very close to the top of just about every prospect list leading into the 2009 season. This exposure should lead prospectors and collectors alike to look to buy their cards, pushing their prices higher and higher.

Jesus Montero-C-New York Yankees- With this guy, the question is not if, it’s when. He has the bat to carry him to the majors and then to stardom. His power is exceptional, and especially as a Yankee, all it will take is some extra exposure for people to realize that this guy is the real deal.

Jesus Montero-C- R/R – New York (AL)- 6’4” 225 pounds- D.O.B. 11/28/89

Placement Overview: As an eighteen-year-old in 2008, Montero put up big numbers for the Charleston RiverDogs of the single-A South Atlantic League. At the plate, Montero batted .326 with 17 homers, 87 RBI, 34 doubles, 37 walks to 83 strikeouts, and OBP/SLG/OPS of .376/.491/.868. He likely will begin the 2009 season in A-advanced, but could see some time in double-A as well.

Scout: Montero has good size with a projectable frame. With his age, he will more than likely add some muscle, and could even grow a little more. He is an above average hitter all-around, and has plus power potential. He has the ability to hit the ball a very long way. He does a nice job letting the ball travel deep in the zone which makes him a good hitter to the opposite field, especially on outside pitches. This is usually a sign of a more advanced hitter, but Montero is already showing that he can hit for power to all fields right now. Montero has below average speed. He is also below average defensively. He is slow on some pitches in the dirt when sliding over to block them. His size may ultimately cause him to move to first base as it is very difficult for bigger guys to be catchers. Montero is coachable and has shown a lot of improvement in all aspects of his game since being signed by the Yankees at the age of 16.

Projection: Montero has some of the best power potential in not only the Yankees’ system, but in all the minor leagues. Whether or not he will be able to reach his full potential (which some scouts have rated a perfect 80 on the 20 to 80 scale) will dictate his role with the organization in the future. The Yankees would like to try to keep Montero behind the plate until he proves that he is not capable of holding his own defensively. They would like to see him be the long-term replacement for Jorge Posada who is nearing the end of his career, but the question is whether or not Montero can be good enough defensively to be a catcher in the big leagues.

Estimated Year of Arrival: 2012

Grade: B+

Bottom Line: It’s not very often that you find a prospect whose power rates a perfect 80, and that is why this guy is one of the top catching prospects in the game. He is far more valuable as a catcher than at first base, because a catcher with 35+ homerun potential is invaluable in the major leagues, while many first basemen are capable of putting up homerun totals like that. He is still young and has plenty of room to develop, but will need to improve his defense if he is going to be a major league catcher.

Card Investing Analysis: Montero has cards in 2008 Donruss Threads and 2008 Bowman Draft. Stick to the Bowman stuff, as he has both a chrome base card and an autograph (redemption). The autos currently sell between $20-$25, while the chrome base go for about $1.25 apiece. He has a lot of potential and could see some huge price spikes down the road if he continues to hit the ball over the fence. As a Yankee, his prices are going to be slightly higher by default, but this applies during price spikes as well. The redemptions are somewhat concerning, but hopefully Topps is able to get them all fulfilled without trouble. If you like Montero’s bat, investing in a few of his cards might not be a bad idea.