[ayaghmour2]

I still haven't finalized my Opening Day roster, still three more cuts to go, but I wanted to write a little more (Spring Training writeups aren't all that fun) and one of my favorite things to do while watching baseball is writing about baseball or playing OOTP, and this allows me to do both! I like to invest, and one of the jokes is how a monkey throwing darts at a board with stick tickers on it is just as good as following the "expert" stock pickers. That got me thinking as I've done some Amateur Reports where I try to cover some of the draft prospects who may be worth taking a flier on. So to start, I looked back at the 1929 season and decided to see how I did:

Players Covered (in order of appearance):
CF George Pumphrey
2B Jake Shadoan
SP Jake DeYoung
LF Ed Reyes
SP Rocky Williams
1B Ed Jordan
RF Sam Brown
RF Bobby Many
SP Fred Collins
SP Don Esposito
SP Harvey Childers
SP Tom Blalock
SP Chick Stout
SP Tom Barrell
RF Vic Crawford
SP Ike Joyal
SP Bud Hastings
3B Buddy Kircher
SS Phil Barber
CF Bill May
3B Al Murphy
RF Joe Jones
SP Jim Green
LF Cotton Riley
SP Dave Smith
LF John Collins
LF Ron Wilson
C Clem Bliss
CF Paddy Smith
SP Hank Beard
SS George Dawson
CF Gail Gifford
2B Freddie Jones
SP Luke Ellison
RF Elmer Nolde
SP Dick Smith
SP George Pratt
CF Dick Walls
SS Joe Foy
SP Charlie Bingham
RF Roy Zingale
CF Max Long
SP Claude Bradbury
SP Jim Trippe
SP Lenny Bellucci
SS Steve Clarke
LF Jim Behnke
RF Earl Fisher
SP Ernie Scott
2B Joe Fretwell
CL Allan Fuller
2B Al Haynes
SP Gary Swanson
RF John Sexton

Categories:
Current FABL Players: 20
In an FABL Organization: 45
On an Independent Team: 3
Current Top 100 Prospect: 2
1929 Draftees: 27
1930 Draftees: 6
1931 Draftees: 21
1st Rounders: 12
2nd Rounders: 9
3rd-5th Rounders: 13
6th-10th Rounders: 12
11th-25th Rounders: 6
Undrafted: 1
Retired: 3
Current Cougars: 0
Minor League Cougars: 2
Cougar Draftees: 3
4+ Years in FABL: 7
2+ Years in FABL: 13

Notes
* For current FABL players, I included anyone who has both a 40-man roster spot/FABL contract and at least one day of service. Joe Jones, for example, is on the Minutemen's 40-man roster, but he has no service time and is not included in the current FABL player list.

** I could not find Dave Smith, who went to Somerville HS. There are six Dave Smith's, two are over 50, one is mid 30s, and the other two are 25 and 26. The 25-year-old is a shortstop who was undrafted in 1928 and the 26-year-old retired without a HS PA. The Smith I saw was 16 in 1929, would be 23 this season, and is nowhere to be found. I also could not find Allan Fuller or an Allen Fuller or even an Al Fuller. I even looked for a Fuler. Nada. Allan Fuller was a Chicago HS closer who I only mentioned because of the Chicago connection.

*** For years, I used calendar years not full seasons. This really doesn't effect many players, but one of the 4+ years guy is Elmer Nolde who only has 432 career FABL PA's. All/most the other 4+ guys (like Barrell and Jones) have 4 full seasons.

**** Earl Fischer makes the numbers a little weird as he is listed as both a 1929 draftee and 1930 draftee. He was a 5th Round pick by the Chiefs, failed to sign, and was then the Wolves 2nd Round pick the year after.

***** Something that goes against me is about a third of the prospects are guys I covered strictly based on team. I covered all four title teams as well as the three Chicago schools. A lot of the misses come here as I was going pretty deep through the teams.

So what did we learn? I don't even listen to myself! I should have known that! I always say things (like I won't make a big trade) and then end up doing the exact opposite! In fact, I had the #1 pick in the 1929 draft, so I actually could have only taken players I wanted (for the round they were taken) and likely had a much better draft then in reality. I only took three of the guys I covered, good old Tom Barrell, Fred Collins, and Ed Reyes. Two were 1st Rounders and made the FABL, the other is Collins who was my 5th Rounder who sits in our farm. The other farmed Cougar is Buddy Kircher, who was the only undrafted player of the bunch.

I then decided I had to construct a team with the guys I suggested, seeing what the best roster I could come up would be:

C: Clem Bliss
1B: Vic Crawford
2B: Freddie Jones
2B: Al Haynes
3B: Jake Shadoan
SS: George Dawson
SS: Joe Foy
SS: Steve Clarke
LF: John Collins
LF: Elmer Nolde
CF: Paddy Smith
CF: Gail Gifford
RF: Sam Brown
SP: Tom Barrell
SP: Charlie Bingham
SP: Jake DeYoung
RP: Chick Stout

Yes, I know I have too many position players and literally no pitchers, but that's because I really swung and miss with most of the pitchers. Still, a 1-2-3 of Barrell, Bingham, and DeYoung looks deadly and Chick Stout is a decent enough stopper. The only option I had for catcher was Clem Bliss, but the offense is loaded: Freddie Jones, Vic Crawford, Jake Shadoan, Sam Brown, and personal favorite George Dawson are all top players and we have a lot of quality youngsters like Gifford, Smith, and Haynes.

I then decided to look back at some of the classes to see what guys I "missed". You could consider Sam Orr, Ray Barnes, and Lou Williams, but they're just alright. Dan Fowler, I definitely missed, but of the first rounders I think I did really well. I avoided Phil Newcom and Ben Bernard and missed on Blalock like everyone else. Amos LeBlanc, Bill Kirby, and Nellie Dawson look like they won't be doing much, so my opinion of the 1929 first round looked good.

I personally had a pretty bad 1929 class, with Joe Johnson never hitting his potential, Roy Byrd's injuries costing him, and a lot of misses in the late rounds. I did get Ken Allen in the 4th and Gordie Thompson in the 5th, both guys who did debut while Jim Hatfield (6th), Tom Spitzer (7th), Elmer Hutchins (8th), and Billy Marshall (10th) are all on 40s with just Spitzer left to debut.

There were some interesting guys after the first round selected. In the first 10 rounds on the offensive side, Johnny McDowell (2nd), Larry Colaianni (2nd), Bunny Stapleton (3rd), Ray Russell (4th), Al Couch (4th), and Mel Carroll (4th) slipped through, but just Stapleton and Carroll were not on my draft shortlist (guys who could've been in the Amateur Report, in the feeder era I would use the headlines to determine who got a writeup or the league leaders). Of course, pitching is next to impossible to predict, but of the guys selected in the human portion, just 10th Rounder Lou Marion has done anything. Some guys like Clay Jackson (4th) have at least debuted, but good ol' Tom Barrell may finish his FABL career with more wins and strikeouts then all other pitchers selected in this class. Even after the 10th, nothing!

Now, the 1929 draft class is still not all that long ago. This will be professional season seven for these guys, so obviously a long way to go, but a 40% hit rate on FABL players (20/51) seems to be pretty impressive especially considering that number will only get better. I'd imagine I can get better then 50/50 with a lot of guys almost a lock to debut. Still, the true test will be 20+ years down the row when all their careers are over. Looks like one sure fire hall of famer picked, although I also made the excellent pick of trading him for a pitcher who no longer has a usable right arm.

So, does this mean you should listen to my prospect picks? Or do like I do and unintentionally ignore them? Well, that's for you to decide. I do try my best to publish these as if I was an OSA scout (although I do use my scout for player descriptors) or Baseball America writer and I don't try to "hide" any of my targets (unfortunately prospects do develop July/August on after I stop writing them) for the upcoming draft. I like to think more information is always better because there is no one "right" way to determine if a player is good. There are so many different stats, reports, player qualities to sort through and personally I think the best strategy is to be flexible. With all the information available, there are so many different ways to draw the same conclusion and it never hurts to have more things to help you get to your eventual decision. I also do like to think I've become much better at identifying talent, as I was still adjusting to stats only even during the '29 season. I'm hoping with each pool that I become better and better at predicting the next group of stars, even if they don't end up in Cougar uniforms.

Well, time to cut three more players...