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Study on MiLB Players Becoming MLB Players
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Post by Guidas on Feb 15, 2021 13:16:55 GMT -5
Baseball America (subscription) posted this interesting article about how many players on average make it from the minors to MLB, how many paly for at least three years and how many become All Stars. It may offer a bit of a reality check for some of us, confirm what we know or surprise, depending on how much research one has done on conversion rates. Synopsis: Average number of players per system who got at least a cup of coffee 35 from 1998-2012: just over 35 Average number of players per system who were in MLB (overall) at least 3 years from 1998-2012: just under 11 Average number of players per system who became all stars from 1998-2012: between 3 and 4 Red Sox fall into the exact average range for all these categories. Article here: www.baseballamerica.com/stories/how-many-mlb-prospects-does-a-team-actually-have-more-than-you-might-think/ |
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Post by Oregon Norm on Feb 15, 2021 16:44:28 GMT -5
Thanks for the link. It wasn't explained all that well, but to be clear...
35 appears to be the average number of players who were in the minor league system in a given year, and who were destined to have played at least one game in the majors.
Confounding that is the fact that the cup of coffee set can reside in the minors for a lengthy period of time. Poyner, for example, has all of 33 ML games under his belt. But he has been in the minor league system for six years. Would each of those years then include Poyner as on one of the players who made it to the majors?
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Post by Guidas on Feb 16, 2021 8:49:05 GMT -5
Thanks for the link. It wasn't explained all that well, but to be clear... 35 appears to be the average number of players who were in the minor league system in a given year, and who were destined to have played at least one game in the majors. Confounding that is the fact that the cup of coffee set can reside in the minors for a lengthy period of time. Poyner, for example, has all of 33 ML games under his belt. But he has been in the minor league system for six years. Would each of those years then include Poyner as on one of the players who made it to the majors? Agreed, though nice to have the data. No doubt the teams do much deeper dives on this. I was surprised by the average number of All Stars, which constituted about 33-40% of the average number of players getting at least 3 years service time. |
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Feb 16, 2021 10:27:15 GMT -5
Confounding that is the fact that the cup of coffee set can reside in the minors for a lengthy period of time. Poyner, for example, has all of 33 ML games under his belt. But he has been in the minor league system for six years. Would each of those years then include Poyner as on one of the players who made it to the majors? Yes, that's how I read it and it's the primary reason why I never bought the "you're taking away the dreams of so many minor leaguers!" argument against the milb reorganization. If 34 out of the 200 guys in the system at a given time are even going to make MLB, I get wanting to cut that group down a bit (not that there aren't legitimate arguments against the reorganization). I was surprised by the average number of All Stars, which constituted about 33-40% of the average number of players getting at least 3 years service time. You figure there's probably some amount of survivor's bias on that, right? The number of players good enough to get that much service time is probably good enough to have at least a single outlier year - or first half of a year, really - that's good enough to make an all-star team. Definitely interesting though. |
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Post by Oregon Norm on Feb 16, 2021 11:22:29 GMT -5
Think Brock Holt, or Steven Wright here. The study needs a better design in my opinion. It's a good first attempt, but it needs to be finer grained maybe using something like OPS+ to classify player success.
And doing it by year really messes up the percentages. It's the set-theory thing: intersections, unions, and the overlap year-to-year.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Feb 16, 2021 13:17:00 GMT -5
Think Brock Holt, or Steven Wright here. The study needs a better design in my opinion. It's a good first attempt, but it needs to be finer grained maybe using something like OPS+ to classify player success. And doing it by year really messes up the percentages. It's the set-theory thing: intersections, unions, and the overlap year-to-year. I disagree. I think it's useful in the sense that it's taking multiple snapshots in time to tell us what we can expect from the current snapshot in time. In a given year, there are 35 players, on average, in the system who will play in the majors. Etc. You can say from time A to time B which organization produced the most major leaguers but that's not what they're measuring here in my estimation. Also, based on the wording, I take it as players who will make their debuts in the future, so a MLFA who played in MLB for 2 games 3 years ago doesn't count. |
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Post by manfred on Feb 16, 2021 13:34:11 GMT -5
I see how this is an interesting data set, but truthfully, I don’t see how it corresponds to results. Maybe there is more to it? What I mean is, one would assume, hey, if you beat the average, you have a good system, because you are producing guys who make it. But one might also look at a year like last for the Sox , when a bunch of AAAA guys got shots, and you see a year when you’ve added to that 35 — but for a really bad reason. Or teams like the Marlins, who turn over quickly.
The narrower matter, like the All Stars, might be a little bit more telling, though, as Chris points out, on some levels it starts to seem tautological... the longer your career the more likely you’ve been good, and the more likely you are good, the more likely you are to be good enough to be an All Star.
I’m not trying to be difficult, but does anyone have a way that this can he applied? If a team averages 28 cups of coffee for 5 years — is that a clear indication that their system lags? I don’t see it.
Indeed, Chris’s point about contraction is the big one. This strikes me as suggesting there are just too many minor leaguers! Football has practice squads, basketball has (recently) developed the d-league, and baseball has all these teams (fewer now, but still a lot). I could easily see cutting it to 3 minor league teams per big club: an instructional/early level; advanced development (AA); and AAA, which would essential be the practice squad for the major league team.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Feb 16, 2021 18:38:30 GMT -5
All, you're reading too far into this.
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