Minor League Stats, What Are They Good For?

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Minor League Stats, What Are They Good For?

Post by RonCo » Tue Jun 11, 2019 2:56 pm

I started to reply to a conversation down in the UMEBA regarding ages in the minors, but then figured it was getting out of hand. Instead, I thought, I’ll write this as a TN or a Feature. Stats, what are they good for? Yes, that sounded good. Instead, though, I figure this isn't so much a "feature" or a "TN" as is a bare-chested Tarzan yodel...so "league chatter" it is. :)

I want to be clear at the beginning, though…I’m not advocating age limits. In fact, I think OOTP age limits are a little too confining. Minor league baseball has several kinds of limits, but none of them work particularly well for most OOTP environments. What I’m suggesting, though, is that at the end of the day the league is better off if us GMs do all kind of get together and say we’ll do our best to keep things in control.


INTRO:

Anyway, here’s the thing: I often hear people say “minor league stats don’t matter” in OOTP (and baseball for that matter). But this is not really right. Stats are like test scores for school. They are the results of a player’s ratings against his competition, modified by the random nature of the game. To read stats is to love stats. They always matter.

The question, however, is to use them for what they actually mean.

I say that because (in my opinion) when us fans say that minor league stats don’t matter, we do it because we want stats to mean something about the guy’s top end. We want to be able to look at a guy who rakes .450/.580/.753 at Rookie League to mean he’s the next Sawyer Silk. But that’s not what they mean. A kid who aces his algebra test isn’t guaranteed to be Alan Turing, after all. Einstein had shitty grades in the minors, and he did pretty well I think, relatively speaking, anyway.


SO, WHAT DO MINOR LEAGUE STATS MEAN?

So, yes, stats are test scores. They tell you where the kid stands right now, relative to their peers. You can use these tests to project where a kid will be a year and two and three down the line, but there’s no certainty. So, ultimately, in context of a baseball league like ours, when gathered with decent sample size, stats tell us whether a guy belongs in the league he’s in—or whether he doesn’t.

But it’s up to us to read the scores properly.

This is important in our little baseball universe of the BBA, or if not “important” it’s at least valuable in context of creating something akin to a reality that feels right. (Full Disclosure, I noted to Matt that we need to twiddle with Rball and SA league totals so our overall stats look more like real baseball…right now we suck).

Even now, though, the fact is that we can very much look at Rookie and Short A stats and make assessments of a guy’s preparedness for the next level—even if we don’t know that player’s ratings. This is the root that makes “stats only” leagues so damned great. If we pay attention, and if we arrange our players well, stats do a great job of indicating when guys are ready for the next level.

We have to make adjustments, though.

We have to look at the average stat outputs of a league and fiddle with them in our own mind as regards to our ballpark. And then, in the BBA we also have to realize that our kids are often still playing against competition that’s considerably older than them. Which is the root of the reason I was starting to make this response (which, if you’ve gotten this far and find you just don’t freaking care, I apologize for making you wade through it).
example wrote: If a 17-year-old kid that all the scouts say projects to be a stud plays in a league full of 22-24-year-old players, his stats will almost certainly suck. That’s because his ratings are not filled in, whereas the 22-24 year old players are essentially developed. If both the 17 year old and 24 year old have “4” contact, for example, I’ll always bet lunch that the 22-24 year old will out-perform the kid. This is because the 24-year-old is quite possibly a high 4 and the 17 year old is almost certainly a low one. That’s actually a pretty big performance gap in that stage of ratings curve. Similarly, the 22-24 year old pitcher will be fleshed out to whatever level he’s going to be fleshed out.

Put that same 17-year-old hitter in a league full of 17-18 year old pitchers (who will rarely be developed at all), and suddenly the kid rakes…which he does because he’s freaking miles better than your average 17 year old.
The BBA is not actually too bad here, relative to many OOTP leagues, anyway. If you do a stat sort on our Rookie League, we probably had 40 pitchers and 60 hitters who were 22 years old or higher gather IP and PA. That’s 100 players, or about four teams worth of our 30 team league who are really over-age.

Yes, 22 is really just too old for all but a very few guys to show up here. Really, 21 is too old for Rookie League, too. But the Dude Abides, right?

Another positive is that those “overage guys” really didn’t often get big chunks of playing time. In reality, as far as the BBA goes, or ages per level (while they could be improved) are really not too egregious.
Aside: we often hear OOTP GMs complain there aren’t enough kid players in the BBA to staff up. At present, however, there are 219 players who are 22 and younger in the BBA free agent pool. Admittedly, most are crappy non-prospects. But, really, if you’ve got a 25 year old in A-ball, he’s not really a prospect either (or probably even a 23 or 24 year old for that matter). In addition, we all have International Complexes that are filled at various levels.

There is really nothing keeping us from being closer to age-proper except our own diligence
Aside 2: There are also GMs around who, understandably, just don’t want to deal with the amount of work it takes to manage their minor leagues. They don’t find it fun, and, for whatever reason, they feel like it’s not necessary. At the end of the day, they don’t care that minor league stats are warped.

My disagreement with these GMs is part aesthetics (I do like our numbers to look right), and part function (poorly staffed minor leagues that are filled (or not filled) with guys at the “right” level will almost certainly affect development of players in that organization).
So, anyway, there you are.

In our world of OOTP, you rarely see the brilliant 17-year-old phenom pitcher striking our 13 guys per 9—which happens often enough in real life, and which means it’s time to promote the kid and see what he’s got at A-ball, or wherever.

There are two reasons for this: First, our League Totals really do need to be tweaked around a bit. And Two, our age profiles need to be shifted down further than they are. Which, again, is actually pretty good.

I said before, I’m not advocating for age limits. I’m just spouting into the wind though, in some hopes that we keep working to keep their players in reasonable line.
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Re: Minor League Stats, What Are They Good For?

Post by bschr682 » Tue Jun 11, 2019 3:21 pm

Age limits = lame. Service limits = now you’re on to something...
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Re: Minor League Stats, What Are They Good For?

Post by jleddy » Tue Jun 11, 2019 4:45 pm

RonCo wrote:
Tue Jun 11, 2019 2:56 pm
Einstein had shitty grades in the minors, and he did pretty well I think, relatively speaking, anyway.
I don't know if that was intentional or not but I love it.
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Re: Minor League Stats, What Are They Good For?

Post by jleddy » Tue Jun 11, 2019 4:59 pm

First off, let me say I prefer my OOTP experience to be as realistic as possible...I've been in leagues where teams make 40 trades in a season and that's just too much roster turnover in my opinion. I've been in leagues where an excellent player is released due to the GM not minding minor league rehab assignments and I can't bring myself to claim/sign the player even though it would improve my team because that just doesn't happen in real life. Similarly, MLB teams do not fill their lower minor league clubs with 25 and 26 year olds, therefor I don't see the point in it either. All those things are what puts the "fake" in "fake baseball".

That said, if a team wants to bury its prospects behind aging minor leaguers, so be it...it's not like a 25 year old in Low-A is going to suddenly transform into an above-replacement level player despite mashing against teenage pitchers [I could be wrong!] But on the other hand, it does stunt the development of those pitchers (or young, age-appropriate hitters facing too-old-for-the-level pitchers) on teams who adhere to common sense and realistic baseball.

Is common sense and the wish for realistic baseball too much to ask? If so, then I'd be for implementing some sort of serve time limit (I'm with Brett re: age vs. service time) in the UMEBA. I don't give a hoot what you BBA elitists in your ivory towers do (until I earn a promotion to "the bigs".) :)
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Re: Minor League Stats, What Are They Good For?

Post by RonCo » Tue Jun 11, 2019 6:22 pm

jleddy wrote:
Tue Jun 11, 2019 4:45 pm
RonCo wrote:
Tue Jun 11, 2019 2:56 pm
Einstein had shitty grades in the minors, and he did pretty well I think, relatively speaking, anyway.
I don't know if that was intentional or not but I love it.
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Re: Minor League Stats, What Are They Good For?

Post by ae37jr » Tue Jun 11, 2019 6:58 pm

The UMEBA is still fairly new and not quite settled in yet. It's easy to say there are 200 and something players under 22.... but how many of them are willing to negotiate with UMEBA teams?

As someone who has managed a team in the EBA and UMEBA. I can tell you that it is a daunting task trying to fill out 60 minor league roster spots. 80-90% of the players refuse to negotiate. I know in setting up Istanbul I did the best I could. I literally offered every single free agent a minor league contract just to try to achieve age appropriateness. And I was still stuck with several 24-25 year olds in the lower level.

It will work itself out after a few more drafts. UMEBA drafts 10 rounds not 20 like the BBA, so it will take 3-4 years to draft a whole team.
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Re: Minor League Stats, What Are They Good For?

Post by Ted » Tue Jun 11, 2019 7:07 pm

The other thing that's going on in the UMEBA is that the big league level hasn't settled yet. LAst season, before we had a bunch of real actual human UMEBA GMs, I could have signed 8 first basemen that were better than what six of the teams were playing (including mine). So some teams have a glut of these types of guys in the AAA, because it's hard to just left them sit out in FA.

One competitive forces create a stable level of talent at the big league level, the minors will sort themselves out. People will drop aging vets who they know aren't good enough to ever make it. But right now, we don't really know who those players are.
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Re: Minor League Stats, What Are They Good For?

Post by RonCo » Tue Jun 11, 2019 7:24 pm

The UMEBA will settle, but realize the numbers I was throwing around up there were BBA.
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Re: Minor League Stats, What Are They Good For?

Post by udlb58 » Tue Jun 11, 2019 9:11 pm

I may be in the minority, but I would be ALL FOR age limits in R, SA, and A ball. That wouldn't cure everything, because our drafts are so young, you'll still have a handful of completely dominant 17-19 year olds down there that teams refuse to call up; but it will help some. (and will hopefully eliminate some non-prospects from the pool, or push them down to the UMEBA, where they may be useful AAA/AAAA depth)
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Re: Minor League Stats, What Are They Good For?

Post by recte44 » Tue Jun 11, 2019 9:39 pm

As for now, we'll just use the easy age charts in StatsPlus to shame those who have old guys in the lower levels. :)

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Re: Minor League Stats, What Are They Good For?

Post by jleddy » Tue Jun 11, 2019 10:45 pm

recte44 wrote:
Tue Jun 11, 2019 9:39 pm
As for now, we'll just use the easy age charts in StatsPlus to shame those who have old guys in the lower levels. :)
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