Archive for AAA

Peripheral Prospects, Ep. 1.12

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June 28, 2019

Yo! It’s been a hot minute (read: a month) since Brad or I published a Peripheral Prospects piece. Sometimes, life gets in the way. Such distinct absences aren’t so bad, after all — it allowed us a little more time for some of the season’s early conquests to flesh out in larger samples.

Around this time last year, I became enamored with a hitter about whom no one knew hardly anything at the time but of whom everyone has heard now: Jeff McNeil.

At the time, Pete Alonso was slaughtering Double-A pitching. But so, too, was McNeil, with a strikeout rate (K%) below 10% — and a higher isolated power (ISO) than that of Alonso, the Mets’ premier power-oriented prospect. Between Double-A and Triple-A, Alonso finished with the higher ISO (.295 to .274), but McNeil, thanks to superior contact skills and (non-homer) batted ball efficacy, produced a wRC+ almost 20 points higher.

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Peripheral Prospects, Ep. 1.09

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May 13, 2019

Behold! Another installment of Peripheral Prospects, the low-price, off-brand fantasy baseball version of Fringe Five. Brad Johnson and I have brought something on the order of five minor leaguers per week who make us feel — like, really feel. These players tend to be unloved and unheralded but very much deserving of love and, uh, herald, not unlike the two authors of this series.

Some quick housekeeping, per usual:

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A Late Primer on MiLB Infield Fly Ball Rate (IFFB%)

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January 9, 2018

The impetus for this post arises from a Tweet by our very own Al Melchior:

This is, in no way, meant to shame Melchior; if anything, he has afforded us a valuable learning opportunity, especially because it became clear to me there likely exists a large swath of FanGraphs users who routinely misinterpret the relatively new Minor League batted ball data. (Through no fault of their own, by the way. The new data didn’t come with a user’s guide or anything. We have been left to our own devices, and it’s easy to assume such clean data comes without warts.)

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A Different Take on NL Outfield Prospects: June 2015 Update

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June 23, 2015

A month before the season started, I introduced a model that predicts a Minor League hitter’s chances of Major League success based on his statistics during his most recent AAA stint. I will use that same model now to update the list of the National League’s top MLB-ready outfield prospects, the key term here being MLB-ready, not prospect — the goal is to identify players who scouts may not love but stats do.

The model looks at how a hitter once performed in AAA and compares it to his known career outcome, ultimately calculating probabilities that a certain career outcome will occur. These probabilities can then be applied to current Minor League players in order to project their currently unknown career outcomes. I discuss the model’s nitty-gritty, as well as its similarities with and potential shortcomings to Chris Mitchell’s KATOH, in the link provided in this post’s first sentence. Both models share the same goal and their methodologies are almost identical, so their results can be considered comparable; mine simply takes a more subjective approach, as I will explain shortly. This is not a turf war.

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