Movin' on Up

In my last article, I presented a quick look at the concept of Major League Equivalencies as a method to determine how a player's performance might translate from AAA to the ABL. Tonight I'll be shifting down one level to look at players moving from AA to AAA.

As before, I gathered the data of all players who had at least 100 PA or 30 IP in both AAA and AA and compared the rate stats to find the % change in wOBA and FIP. Interestingly, pitchers took a much bigger hit than hitters did while making the move to Kade Stenson / Blake Camden leagues. wOBA dropped by about 9% for hitters making the transition, while FIP for pitchers jumped a whopping 32%. To meet the AAA average wOBA of .332, a batter would need to be generating a wOBA of .364 in AA, while to meet the AAA average FIP of 4.29, a pitcher would need an awesome 3.26 in AA.

One of the fun things to do with MLEs is to compare beyond the first level. Now that we have the MLEs for AA to AAA and AAA to ABL, we can see what a particular performance would translate to if they were even further removed. To illustrate, I'll use two of the top performers of Boston's AA affiliate, the Murfreesboro Deacons. SP Ron Hodges was the top starter for the Deacons in 2012. He went 13-14 with a 3.35 ERA. His W/L wasn't hot, but 19 HR, 88 BB, 213 Ks and a 1.22 WHIP over 217.1 IP provides the kind of stats that make you consider bumping him up. The Cardinals had trouble shoring up the back end of their rotation, was Hodges good enough to get the call all the way to the bigs? I ran his stats against the MLEs - first to AAA then to ABL - and extrapolated it to 187.1 IP, roughly the average number of innings a SP would throw in 32 starts. How did he fare?



SP Ron Hodges

IP: 187.1
R: 190
ER: 126
H: 246
HR: 26
BB: 102
K: 111
WHIP: 1.85
ERA: 6.05
FIP: 5.37

Definately not the kind of stats I'd want at the bigs. I guess Hodges needs a little longer to learn in the minors. Honestly, after translating his stats to AAA, his K/BB dropped below 2.00 and he'd be expected to give up 30 more runs in 30 less innings. Expect to see Hodges in AA to start 2013.

Another great performance out of Murfreesboro came from 1B Jose Escobar. Escobar played in both AA and AAA in 2012, so he is an opportunity to see if the method holds true. His AA slash line was .336/.411/.581 which, after applying the translation to AAA comes out to be .307/.362/.530. Escobar got less than 100 AB in AAA, but his actual performance was .310/.341/.417. Pretty close to what his AA stats equated to. As with Hodges, I pushed his AA stats through the AAA Equivilancy and the MLE to see how they equated if he were playing in Boston. I stretched the stats out to 700 PA to give a full season's worth of performance and found that he could have had some value as a bench player, but wouldn't make the starting lineup just yet.

1B Jose Escobar

PA: 700
H: 165
2B: 33
3B: 6
HR: 20
BB: 37
K: 129
wOBA: .303
BA: .250
OBP: .290
SLG: .409
OPS: .699

Looks like another player that needs another year in the minors. His AAA translations were good enough that he'll likely keep his spot in Springfield when the season starts.