by Frankie Piliere
Both myself and Kiley plan to put some of our raw thoughts and ideas on this blog quite frequently so we hope you enjoy stuff like this beyond all the other forms of analysis. If there are any new ways to look at baseball or any opening to analyze something that hasn’t been analyzed, we’d like to open that window and explore it. It is both our quest and our curse if you know what I mean. This idea/study is one of those thoughts that I’m currently thinking out loud. Any and all feedback is welcome.
Being that I will spend much of this spring and summer trying to locate indy league players who could succeed at the professional level, I recently asked myself a few questions. First, how difficult or challenging are these Independent Leagues in comparison to the minor league levels. What I found by no means represents what I believe to be any direct correlation or law, but I do think it at least carries a little weight.
Walks. An interesting stat for many reasons, but especially in league comparisons, I believe, simply because it gives us a window into how patient the league’s hitters are and what kind of plate command the pitchers have. Are there variables to be considered? Of course there are, but it’s likely more constant than most other stats.
What I set out to do was measure the AB:BB ratio for every professional, semi-professional, and elite collegiate summer league. The discoveries from this were pretty intriguing to me. I would have preferred to use plate appearances rather than at-bats but that number isn’t available for every league. But, I think this will do just fine. Here are the raw numbers of what I found. Remember, if the number is “10″, that represents a walk every 10 at-bats.
9.73 - Atlantic (Independent)
9.20 - Can-Am (Independent)
8.99 - Cape Cod (Summer Collegiate)
8.96 - Northwoods (Summer Collegiate)
9.9 - Gulf Coast (Rookie)
9.61 - Arizona (Rookie)
9.21 - Northwest (Short-Season A)
10.1 - NY Penn (Short-Season A)
10.06 - South Atlantic (Low-A)
10.26 - Midwest (Low-A)
9.97 - Florida State (High-A)
10.0 - Carolina (High-A)
10.6 - California (High-A)
10.35 - Eastern (Double-A)
9.78 - Southern (Double-A)
10.76 - Texas (Double-A)
11.76 - International (Triple-A)
11.07 - Pacific Coast (Triple-A)
10.61 - MLB
I don’t know about anyone else but I found the trend to be very striking. Bottom line, in general, walks per at-bat become less and less frequent. So, even though one would expect hitters to be more disciplined at the higher levels (and that is still true), it appears that the pitchers’ improved command as you move up the ladder is what is dictating the drop in walks. What it concludes remains to be seen but it says a lot about who is dicating the game. I averaged each level’s leagues and came out with this. It is in order, with some other leagues I conducted this test on.
11.41 - AAA
10.61 - MLB
10.33 - Dominican Winter League
10.30 - AA
10.24 - AFL
10.19 - High-A
9.93 - Low-A
9.83 - American Association (Independent)
9.74 - Atlantic League (Independent)
9.70 - Short-Season/Rookie
9.43 - Puerto Rican Winter League
9.35 - Hawaiian Winter League
9.20 - Can-Am League (Independent)
9.03 - Frontier League (Independent)
8.99 - Cape Cod League (Summer Collegiate)
8.97 - Mexican Pacific League
8.96 - Northwoods League (Summer Collegiate)
8.93 - Northern League (Independent)
8.87 - United League (Independent)
8.77 - South Coast League (Independent)
8.66 - Golden League (Independent)
8.63 - Arizona Winter League (Independent)
Do I think the numbers will always neatly line up like this? Probably not, but I think in general they paint a picture of what the difficulty of these leagues are like and how much the pitchers are dictating the action. What I also found fascinating was that the MLB number is lower than the Triple-A number, which says to me that pitchers are dictating the action definitely moreso than MLB pitchers. That seems to make sense considering how much hitters dominate the big league game.
I don’t want to ramble on this topic, but I feel it’s something worth looking at, specifically in regards to comparing non-professional leagues’ difficulty to that of professional leagues’. Example: I believe in some ways, this study tells us that pitcher’s dictate the action about equally in the Atlantic League (Indepedent) and in Short-Season A.
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I hope our readers enjoy things like this. Even though both Kiley and I come from and work in more of traditional scouting capacity, we’re of the opinion that there can be a happy medium and will not hesitate to use statistical or other forms of unique analysis.
9 responses so far ↓
1 erik // Mar 21, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Whoa. I was referred to this site by THT. This is like, a dream blog. I will be checking in often.
2 fpiliere44 // Mar 21, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Hey Erik,
Glad you like it. Spread the word, we really want to grow this place into something special. The more the merrier. Enjoy the blog.
Frankie Piliere
3 B. Johnson // Mar 22, 2008 at 12:17 am
You may want to familiarize yourself with Bill James New Historical Abstract, pages 876-878. He has a number of ideas for measuring general league quality.
4 fpiliere44 // Mar 22, 2008 at 12:26 am
Thanks for the post. Hope you stick around and enjoy the blog.
So I’ve heard. I haven’t gotten a chance to check it out myself but have heard he’s got some interesting ideas on it.
This in particular may not tell us how difficult a league is overall because personally I think there are just way too many variables to consider to ever have such a solid number for it. But what I do think it shows is the pitchers’ level of game dictation and perhaps a slightly better idea of how non-professional leagues stack up.
FP
5 dan12 // Mar 22, 2008 at 1:23 am
This is one area where you have make the data fit what you know. We know that MLB is the highest level, AAA is next, and so on. So maybe play around with some numbers and find a combination that lists MLB at the top, AAA second, AA third, and on down the line. If I remember correctly, stolen base rate was good at predicting this.
You might find this link helpful…
http://biblemetrics.blogspot.com/2007/10/how-good-was-ibl-really.html
6 Geoff Young // Mar 22, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Interesting stuff. Defense is another key factor, I think. In my 2008 Ducksnorts Baseball Annual (pardon the shameless plug), I run through several leagues, and the percentage of runs allowed that are earned decreases as you move down levels (or at least it did in ‘07), from 92.5% at MLB, to 85.8% in the Cal League, to 74.1% in the DSL. Just another data point worth considering.
7 All Leagues Are Not Created Equal // Mar 22, 2008 at 12:36 pm
[…] a relatively new blog I discovered via Hardball Times, uses AB/BB to examine the level of play in various professional leagues. I find this line of inquiry fascinating (I’ve done something […]
8 fpiliere44 // Mar 22, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Very interesting, Geoff, and thanks for the plug. I appreciate it and hope you enjoy the blog.
9 Vinay Kumar // Mar 25, 2008 at 1:44 am
Geoff, that’s a great observation, one that I was going to repeat here. B. Johnson mentioned earlier that Bill James wrote about this some in the New Historical Abstract; one of the key measures he used was error rates. The reasoning is that many stats are relative; if you have both the pitchers and hitters improving, the relative stats don’t change. But errors are absolutes; better fielders make fewer errors.
The other factor he listed that has always stuck in my head is how well pitchers hit; as you increase the league quality, there is more specialization, and the gap between pitchers’ hitting and position-players’ hitting grows.
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