Savin Hillbilly said:
This may be, but if you Google all of those players I mentioned, you will find they were described early and often as "five-tool" guys. So I'm just passing the error along, if there is one. Of course it's possible that this is a case of journalists somewhat sloppily using "five-tool" as a synonym for "athlete", but there may be more to it than that.
No doubt. I wasn't trying to call you out for a specific error so much as use it as an example for the larger usage issue. There's a grey area between the terms, there is a lot of sloppy usage, and the distinction I offered may be 'classical' but surely is not universal.
I think there may be a distinction to be made here between "hit tool"--which I've always understood as primarily about bat speed and bat control, the ability to put an effective swing where the ball is--and pitch recognition/plate discipline, the ability to identify pitches that the hit tool can be brought effectively to bear on vs. those that should be left alone. I think some guys who have the former are exposed, when they hit MLB, as lacking the latter. WMB would be the obvious example from our recent experience. And I suspect guys like Milledge and Maybin would also fall into that category.
Agree with the quoted - I'd characterize the difference as "my natural hit tool" versus "whether my hit tool is better than the other guy's pitch tool". The second bit isn't something you ever really learn until a guy is at the level you're interested in evaluating. In projecting it, that's where you circle back into the conversation about mL pitching levels (AA talent vs AAA saaviness) being a better place to vet a young hitter's ability to keep their hit tool 'up' when they transition to MLB.
For the natural tool, it's still very tricky to evaluate, because some of these super-athletes just overmatch their appropriate competition. They don't get into enough shitty situations (say, having to fight off a nicely-spotted slider on the rails) to really know if they have the hit tool or are just too good. WMB may end up being a good example of this - we knew his contact tool was the shakiest bit coming up, but he did so much damage on mediocre fastballs early in the count (during his first successful MLB run, too) that the full scope of his struggles wasn't easy to see in the minors. You have to look past the obvious indicators like K/BB rate and care about things we don't have good ml data on, like O-swing in pitcher's counts, to try to paint the picture.
Some people just can't swing and miss. I can't describe it but I'm certain I know when I see it. They step and they swing and the sweet spot finds the ball no matter what. It's subconscious muscle memory. Personally I think scouting has the temporary advantage over sabermetrics here; it's a much much easier thing to see when doing upper-body swing drills or taking a long round in the cage than it is to see in a game (when the pitcher's efforts and talents just murk the waters). The available stats just lag behind right now.
