Meaning of Deric's Prospect Ratings

[kehardwick]

When I click on the "Postional Reports" button from the "Minor Leagues" menu, and then start looking at the reports on prospects, I find a very useful report on each player.

Here, for example, is the report on Andy Marte:

Strengths: Strong/compact body. Bat speed/power. Plate discipline. Arm strength. First-step quickness/agility
Weaknesses: Pitch recognition. Average speed (4.3)
Comments: Uppercut swing and strong wrists propel bat through strike zone, allowing him to display power. BA will settle below .300, but could improve with more patience and use of whole field. Sound defender at hot corner, improving reads on groundballs and showing solid arm strength.
2006 MLB Role: Starting 3B (mid-season)
Potential Rating: 9B

What is the meaning of the "Potential Rating" score? And where is that explained on the web site?

Just as a suggestion, it would be helpful to me if this sort of thing were explained somewhere on the web site in close proximity to the information I am looking at.

Not trying to cavil here--I know the site is in transition, and you guys have been working hard to make what was already excellent even better.

Thanks!

[timg]

At the bottom of the page, there is a link to EXPLANATION OF PLAYER RATINGS.

[kehardwick]

Hmm. My initial reaction was "Mea maxima culpa." But when I went back and checked the page, that link does not show on my browser. So I dug a little deeper, and went to the particular write ups for the individual positions. Sure enough, the link is there, at the bottom of the page.

I may be completely idiosyncratic and weird, but I would never have thought to look for it there. Since I don't need to look at the very deep prospects at this time of year, I don't scroll to the bottom of the position reports naturally.

Where I would have expected the explanations would have been on the page one level up in the hierarchy:

http://www.baseballhq.com/members/minors/pos.shtml

As I say, I may just be competely strange, and have very different intuitions than everyone else. So my experience is just a datapoint, and on a relatively unimportant matter at that. I waste band length here on only the small chance that the feedback may be useful to the site administrator.

Kevin

[timg]

The location of links is not always intuitive to me, either. In this case, I tend to scroll to the end of the page to see the overall list and the link happened to be ther.

[RON@HQ]

We don't always get it right. You are 100% on target. We'll add the link to that page.

RON@HQ