2008 Minor League Thread

[Heltonfan]

In reality, they're less than a month apart (mid-December and early Jan bdays).

Yep, that makes a huge difference. If I had them listed as the same age, Aneury would be comfortably ahead. If I ever find myself sitting around with nothing to do for a week or so, maybe I'll go through and add every player's birth date to my spreadsheet, to make things more exact...

And unless we have different names for the same thing, I don't know what you mean by 'chaining' re: Weathers.

"Chaining" refers to the fact that when the closer gets hurt, the team doesn't throw a replacement-level pitcher into his role; they just move everyone up a spot in the pecking order. In other words, you can't give a reliever full credit for his leverage.

Are you just using a sliding scale based on distance from peak, or are there other factors (consistency, breakouts) than are weighing in?

The system is designed to be able to recognize breakouts and collapses. So if a young player shows improvement, that performance will be weighted more heavily than if he were treading water or appearing to regress, and the converse is true for older players.

[TheIncredibleRox]

"Chaining" refers to the fact that when the closer gets hurt, the team doesn't throw a replacement-level pitcher into his role

Right. Same thing I was describing, except under the notion of fatigue: that when a guy has been used 4 of the last 5 days, his optimal slot falls to the next optimal option. But I've never seen this quantified anywhere. Is this your own work again?

If I ever find myself sitting around with nothing to do for a week or so, maybe I'll go through and add every player's birth date to my spreadsheet, to make things more exact...

Save yourself a headache and just go for month instead of all the way to exact date. I was thinking of doing this myself; just divying up the aging patterns in terms of months rather than years, e.g. a player is 21 and 4/12ths old. This only adds an entirely neglibile sliver of accuracy for 85% of players, but as you see with Rodriguez/Chacin, the 15% or so who are born within <2 months of whatever cutoff date you're using, you're getting things much more clearly. However, finding birthdate data can be tough the further down in the Minors you go.

[Heltonfan]

Is this your own work again?

Yep. It's not hard to figure out, though. Just set up a typical bullpen (individual reliever ERCs of 3.00, 3.40, 3.70, 3.90, 4.10, 4.25, 4.40, with leverage of 1.9, 1.3, 1.1, 0.9, 0.7, 0.6, 0.5 respectively), then replace the closer with a 4.50 pitcher, and watch what happens.

Save yourself a headache and just go for month instead of all the way to exact date.

Great idea.

[TheIncredibleRox]

Friedrich is turning it on:

IP......H....R...ER....HR....BB....SO
36.0..31..16...13.....2.....8.....50

One of my favorite sleeper picks (simply because his FB had Kevin Brown movement on his scouting video, and he has a cool name) is our 8th-rounder, Kurt Yacko, who is closing for Casper:

IP......H....R...ER....HR....BB....SO
22.1..17...10...7.....2......7.....36

Blackmon is ripping, but only showing gap power. Sort of goes with my white-Ichiro evaluation. I am a little concerned that, for a guy with whom speed was supposedly a meaningful weapon, he's only 12 for 18 stealing on NWL catchers. He's at .342/.398/.463. Keep in mind he's only been converted from pitching in the last year or so.

Another one of my favorite sleepers (who I'm glad we were able to sign) is Kiel Roling. He's mashing so far: .344/.417/.641 with 4 HR, 7 doubles, and 8 walks in just 64 ABs.