UnBusted Prospects
One of the bigger issues of disagreement between the statistical community and the mainstream media is the predictive power of minor league performance. It’s still widely believed that minor league statistics aren’t very useful, and that there is a significant collection of players who can hit well in Triple-A but will be exposed in the majors. It’s true that there are career minor leaguers beating up on younger pitching, but that group is much smaller than usually believed.
However, it’s not that rare to see a player come up from the minors, where he’d been destroying the ball, and fall on his face in the major leagues. Last year, for instance, we saw some disastrous performances from Chin-Lung Hu, J.R. Towles, Brandon Wood, Wladimir Balentien, and Jeff Clement. These guys have all experienced success as hitters in the minors, but all struggled mightily in short term looks at the big league level.
For most organizations, the reaction to such a performance is to go find another option. The Dodgers re-signed Casey Blake and Rafael Furcal rather than giving Hu another shot. The Astros have been in the market for a veteran catcher all winter. The Angels kept Chone Figgins despite trade interest. The Mariners acquired Endy Chavez to play left field.
Organizations aren’t the only ones. Fans, too, often give up on players who don’t immediately hit like they did in the minors, as they only see the struggles and usually didn’t see the successes. However, giving up on a young player with a good minor league track record based on a few hundred at-bats is hardly ever the right call. 2008 shown with examples of this very thing.
Carlos Quentin posted a .320 wOBA in his first 454 major league plate appearances over two seasons after posting a .419 wOBA in Triple-A. His power was written off as a product of Tucson, and the D’Backs essentially gave him to the White Sox. Whoops.
At least Quentin hit a little bit, though, even if he was a disappointment. Ben Zobrist, on the other hand, racked up an astonishingly bad .221 wOBA in his first 303 plate appearances as a major leaguer. In ’07, he hit like a weak pitcher in the majors, even after tearing up Triple-A the whole year. Never a top prospect, it would have been easy to write him off as a career minor leaguer, but the Rays gave him another chance in ’08, and he responded with a .364 wOBA in 227 PA. The leap in performance from ’07 to ’08 would be about +10 wins if both performances came in a full season of work.
Also rebounding from a bad major league debut was Elijah Dukes, who combined personal troubles and off-field problems with a .190 career batting average headed into 2008. While he still showed walks and power, a .190 average over 200 PA is going to raise questions every time, and it certainly didn’t help convince Tampa Bay that he was worth the trouble. However, he was one of the true breakout stars of 2008, posting a .382 wOBA over 334 PA.
You can add these three to the list of quality major leaguers who overcame the busted minor leaguer tag. The lesson to be learned – don’t judge a player with a long history of success on one bad season. Talent shines through, even if not immediately.
What are some of the methodologies for projecting what minor league players will do at the major league level? As for Hu (on the Dodgers), he had vision problems last year and hit as poorly as Andruw Jones. The Dodgers will use him as a backup and 2B/SS. Hopefully, he can get his vision problem cleared up and can start hitting the ball, like he did in 2007. Most of his value will come from his defense. If he ever wins a starting job, I’d expect this value to show up in his UZR.
vr, Xei
And if a few hundred PA’s in a season aren’t an accurate basis for evaluating a player’s ability to make the jump from AAA to the show, what’s a reasonable threshold for making a ‘bust or break-out’ decision on a talented minor leaguer?
Dave,
Zobrist only had 227 major league PA in 2008. Could this increase in production be reflective of the small sample size?
What about Homer Bailey’s bounce back chances? Too tied to his velo to predict?
On the flip side, there are the guys that can get massively overrated by teams for very hot debuts. Players that come to mind are Jeff Francouer and possibly Travis Snider (34% LD-rate in a small sample can make a lot of people’s numbers look good even when they’re striking out a third to half the time)
Being a former resident of Albuquerque, I don’t think Carlos Quentin played too many games there.
I have recently come to realize something that has made thinking about these things easier for me, for whatever that’s worth. Imagine you have a very, very young Albert Pujols. Like 17 years old. He is fully grown, and already has most of his adult weight at this point. Now, let’s put him in the major leagues. What kind of stats will he yield? Terrible stats.
His BB% would be awful, he would probably strike out half the time he came to the plate, and he would seldom, if ever, hit the ball solidly. The idea is that he would be so completely overmatched that his superior ability would be impossible to distinguish from other 17 year old players, who would all also be completely overmatched. However, given enough time, Pujols begins to establish himself as slightly better, then more than slightly better, then he’s Pujols.
I think that some hitters are genuinely incapable of producing in line with their minor league production (I’m still waiting for Andy Phillips to break out for the Yankees), but I think that this post is entirely accurate in saying that teams do give up to easily on prospects, and I’m sure that all kinds of reason are given for that giving up, like “It’s obvious Quentin can’t hit a major league curve,” or “The additional 2-3 mph in the majors renders Quentin’s bat ineffective”.
It will be interesting to see how it plays out this year with the Pirates and Andy LaRoche. The Dodgers, it seems, gave up on him, and he continued to struggle mightily after being given a job with the Pirates. I think that the truth about the right answers here is still elusive, and it was particularly surprising to see the White Sox come up short with the Quentin deal, as they seem to be one of the more astute organizations around when it comes to finding hidden talent that the stats don’t necessarily support.
Um, the White Sox didn’t come up short. They did pretty well with the Quentin deal.
Some of these youngsters could also be running into bad luck. Check out these BABIP’s from last year:
.157 (JR Towles)
.177 (Andy LaRoche)
.226 (Chin-Lung Hu)
.245 (Brandon Wood)
Now it is entirely possible that some of these ridiculously low BABIP’s are the result of the player being overmatched (getting jammed, hitting pop-ups, just generally not hitting the ball with authority). But at least some of it is bad luck, because a sub-.200 BABIP is just insane.
I heard a scout say that Andy LaRoche has a flaw in his swing that causes his line drives to tail back like a golf slice. I’m sure the same guy would have provided a mechanical explanation why Pedroia and Longoria stunk up their first 200 ML AB’s as well.
The braves hitting instructor wanted to change Andy LaRoche’s stance years ago in the minors, LaRoches talked him into keeping it for a few days, he hit well those games, and has “been allowed” to keep it ever since.
Whenever I think of players who absolutely mashed in the minors and didn’t live up to expectations at the major league level, I think of Kevin Kouzmanoff. Though this is probably somehow related to my giant San Diego Padre homerism.
The dude rocked a .477 then .457 wOBA in AA and AAA respectively in 2006. I don’t have his 2005 wOBA, but he obliterated pitching with .333 / .397 / .579 slash stats that year.
Fast forward to the majors, he put up a respectable .339 wOBA rookie campaign, but dropped to .316 in 2008.
Some explanations I’ve heard are the small population size of PAs in the minors misjudged him, or his less than stellar plate discipline is more exploitable in the majors.
Good topic, but this post does the same as the people you noted up front who write off players, and just state one or three examples as proof of what you say.
Also, in Hu’s case, he didn’t have a long track record of good success, only his 2007 was significantly good, so 2008 if anything was a regression to his pre-2007 performance. Even 2007′s MLE was only .278/.308/.418/.726, not that sterling at SS.
Balentien was also not that great before either, MLE-wise.
Neither was “destroying” the ball prior to their MLB flop.
Not that this is easy, but I have thought about such an issue like this too, and one way to get a better feel for how true this is would be to go back, say, 5 years or more, grab a Top 50-100 prospect list from BP or BA, and take a look at how many:
1) did well immediately and continued
2) did well immediately and regressed to minors
3) did poorly then improved and showed what they showed before, staying
4) did poorly and continued before staying in minors
5) never made the majors
It won’t be conclusion but would give something to chew on regarding this issue, I think. And if 10 years worth was done, then perhaps some analysis could be done to see if any pattern or consensus emerges.
Just proves why it is scouting and not stats that are most predictive. There are too many dis-similarities between leagues, playing conditions, coaching and competition.
I believe it is too easy for MLB teams to just move on to the next guy. And truly that same process goes all the way down to the little league levels. How many potentially great baseball players just moved on to football because they didn’t have early success. One of the reasons why not that many great players are American.
Of course it’s different for a AAA player, but all too often the player doesn’t get to finish his final steps of learning and adjusting, and if he doesn’t do it quick enough it’s simply “next”.
Um, hi. I counted 41 American born players among the top 50 hitters in Value Wins this year and another 39 among the top 50 pitchers.
In addition to looking back, who are the players meeting the criteria that seem likely to get more/better opportunity for playing time in ’09?
Andy LaRoche was mentioned above — how about Ronny Cedeno in Seattle (will he beat out Betancourt?), Felix Pie in Baltimore.
Any other candidates?
Carlos Pena and Brandon Phillips took a few years to get started, too.
Quentin was traded for Dan Haren, or rather was part of the Dan Haren trade. You can argue the D backs overpaid for Haren, but the D Backs did not “give” to the White Sox essentially or otherwise. They made a 3 way trade. Quentin to Chicago for Chris Carter, who was then included in the Haren trade. It was all one deal.
In case you dispute this version of events, you can find corroboration on Quentins baseball reference page:
December 3, 2007: Traded as part of a 3-team trade by the Arizona Diamondbacks to the Chicago White Sox. The Chicago White Sox sent Chris Carter (minors) to the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Arizona Diamondbacks sent a player to be named later to the Oakland Athletics. The Arizona Diamondbacks sent Chris Carter (minors) (December 14, 2007) to the Oakland Athletics to complete the trade.
So again……if you want to argue the D Backs overpaid for Dan Haren, then make that argument, but at least understand the trade as it happened.
Ok so the White sox gave up Chris Carter for Carlos Quentin. So yes, he was “essentially” (Dave’s wording) given to them. Obviously they were thinking more about Haren than anything, but this isn’t a case of them overpaying for Haren. This is a case of them thinking they are throwing a player in to make the deal work and that player turning out to be a masher.
Actually it was a case of Quentin being offered to Billy Beane, who said, no I don’t want Quentin, go get Chris Carter for me, and give me Carlos Gonzalez instead.
What about me? I am the ultimate guy who was killing the ball in AAA and didn’t do squat in the majors. Do I have a shot?
One other point that hasn’t really been touched on, but goord organizations do a much better job of being patient with their young players compared to bad organizations (I mean by management, not necessarily bad by record). Case in point: Boston’s handling of Pedroia.
Blogers: I agree teams tend to give up on players that don”t explode as soon as they get to the majors. I do hope they give towles another real chance. sometimes a player hits a rough spot and he panics if at that point he had someone to reassure him he might come out of it . I often wonder how many good players are thrown away for the lack of a little patients. It seems to me ,if the player is not a high draft choice where the team has a lot of money at stake they don’t have any patients. Then there are players they give many chances to and they keep saying he will get better and years later he does nothing. I guess that is the difference between a good organization and a bad one. John B.
BJ Upton is another example.
I think one thing ppl are forgetting is most MLB GMs dont have the luxury of being able to wait a year or two for a player to develope. Their job is on the line ‘every’ year, so they try to put the best product out on the field every day.
A perfect example, albiet in the NBA, is isiah thomas, he needed to W badly the last 2 years, he couldnt say, the salary cap is too f*cked up, lets wait a few years, so he had to make moves to improve the knicks in those seasons, not to put the knicks in the best situation for improvement in a few years.
I can’t believe you’re blaming the failure of Isiah Thomas because people weren’t patient enough with him. That is completely absurd. A) He’s the guy who messed up the Knicks salary cap by adding bad contracts in the first place. B) He certainly could have said let’s clear up the cap and wait a few years — it’s what Donnie Walsh is doing as we speak, and everyone is okay with the idea — but he chose not to.
I could go on and on with the actual reasons why Thomas was fired. But it wasn’t because people were unreasonably impatient with him.
Seriously? I mean, wow. Just… wow.
7 major projections systems projected Quentin to hit
.257/.319/.424 .743 OPS with 12 HR in 380 AB
Among those:
ZIPS: .257/.319.424 .743 OPS 12 HR in 380 AB
BP: .259/.344/.430 .774 OPS 13 HR in 338 PA’s
I think most people envisioned him beating those projections if fully healthy and recovered from shoulder surgery, I know I did, and I was critical of trade, ….but c’mon…..all those who thought he would hit nearly 40 homers ever, let alone right away please raise your hand.
I hope nobody watches Brandon Wood in the majors and says he’s horrible based on how he did in the minors. Anyone who pays close attention to how he does at each level would see he’s been at the majors like he was at each level. He starts off slow and strikes out a lot for a couple weeks of playing every day. Then he starts hitting and watch out. His biggest problem is Mike Scioscia doesn’t see this and doesn’t just let him play.