Carrasco’s one standard deviation is greater than the norm. Breathtaking upside coupled with breathtaking WTF…

and he was inconsistent in AAA. he was good but he had good games and bad games.

I think your logic makes too many assumptions. He has never had power, so presumably pitchers aren’t afraid to challenge him, yet he has always walked in more than 10% of his AB at his minor league stops. And if they don’t want to walk him and they’ll try to put it over the plate, fine — he’s got a great batting eye and, apparently, is hard to strike out. His strikeout rate has dropped at every stop. Sans his MLB debut, he’s becoming harder to strike out. If they put it over the plate and he doesn’t walk, he hits it. And he’s hits more grounders than flyballs and he’s fast — fast enough to sustain a higher than average BABIP, especially with all those grounders.

 I don’t know that .380 is the baseline of acceptability. The average AL batter in 2009 hit .267/.336/.428. The average LF in both leagues hit .272./.345/.443. He’ll likely hit for average and get on base at average to above average clips, but he’s likely not going to approach league average slugging in 2010.

But we can’t discount his contributions on the base paths. I find it hard to believe he’s going to be anything less than average. He’ll probably be above average. I’m not talking just stolen bases, but baserunning generally. And while his defense in CF isn’t elite, I’d guess that a fringe CF guy is going to be above average in a corner, especially in 81 games in LF in Progressive Field.

So yes, I agree with you, he has a glaring lack of power, and that lack of power may be so great as to offset his above average batting average and OBP. But that’s assuming he doesn’t improve his power output, which is the last skill to develop. But does his lack of power offset his total value? We don’t know how he’ll grade on the bases and in LF, but I’m guessing those will be two positives .

well, projection generally means that a guy projects to have good stuff when he matures/fills out, while a pitcher with stuff already has it. For example — Hagadone is a pitcher with hot stuff, while Trey Haley projects to have good stuff (not saying Haley will reach his potential, but he’s the typical projectability pitcher).

i think a quality pitch is stuff with control.

“Stuff” generally means velocity and movement.

“Quality of pitches” means, essentially, how many different types of pitches does have have that (a) successfully fool hitters and (b) can be thrown consistently for strikes.

Lots of guys have one but not the other.