League Adjusted Minor League Stats
I did the math to adjust every minor league player's stats for their league context. In this piece, I show the process and share the results.
We love minor league stats, right? Chris Clegg over at The Dynasty Dugout has thousands of subscribers and all he writes about is minor league players! There is demand you would not believe on this front.
Even your boy JA has been doing more and more minor league stuff over the last year. For me, that’s just because I found ways to scrape all of the data and automate things to where it doesn’t take any extra time from me. But yeah, it’s interesting and fun to dive into, and having the knowledge and data does help us in the fantasy game at least marginally.
If you’re a paid subscriber, you have access so the MLB & MiLB Stats Dashboard as well as the Minor League Statcast dashboard. These dashboards have full stats, game logs, plots, and all kinds of other stuff for all levels of professional baseball (A, A+, AA, AAA, and MLB more specifically).
The pitfall is that not all minor league stats are created equal. There are large disparities in average production between all of the different leagues. Just to show you a piece of that:
OPS by League
Major League Baseball: .734
Pacific Coast League (AAA): .822
International League (AAA): .794
Texas League (AA): .750
Eastern League (AA): .720
Southern League (AA): .739K% by League
Major League Baseball: 22.7%
Pacific Coast League (AAA): 21.8%
International League (AAA): 22.7%
Texas League (AA): 23.8%
Eastern League (AA): 24.7%
Southern League (AA): 25.3%
So when someone tells you that Trey Cabbage posted a .975 OPS and Andrew Abbott had a 42.7% K% in their time in the minor leagues, the next question should be well how much of that came from the context of the league.
I’m not trying to be a prospect bro, but I do try to fill in the gaps where I see them. And I’ve never seen anybody put out league adjusted minor league player stats. So here I am.
How Is It Done
We don’t have to get into the details, but here’s everything in a nutshell.
Take a player’s output in a specific league (say a 25% K% in the PCL)
Compare that league with other leagues and see what % boost there was in that category (say the average K% across all leagues was 22%, and in this particularly league it was just 20%, that’s a 9% reduction brought upon by league factors)
Apply that increase or reduction to the player’s rate
So if a player struck out 20 times in 100 PAs in a league where there is a 10% reduction in strikeouts, his expected strikeout total in those 100 PAs would be 22 (10% more than 20), so we could say his league-adjusted K% is 22%
So I did that with all the stats I was interested in for all minor league players last year. If a player played in multiple leagues, it adjusted their outputs in all leagues appropriately and then put them back together to get one stat line for each player.
For hitters: HR, K%, BB%, AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS
For pitchers: K%, BB%, HR%, ERA
And for fun I ran the numbers for the 2022 season as well. Paid subscribers can access the data at the link below the paywall. But I’ll give away some standouts for everyone.
This resource will stay available into the future, and we’ll have 2024 data available once the seasons get rolling. It will be a fantastic resource to be able to review minor league performances without having to worry about the league contexts that might be skewing the numbers.
2022 Standouts
First, let’s look at some of the names we would have been looking at last year if we had done this back then!
Pitchers
We probably would have been looking for pitchers who reached at least AA and made 10+ starts, and we would have sorted by K-BB%. Here’s the top 20:
Mostly, this group of pitchers didn’t help fantasy teams in 2023. But there are exceptions in Grayson Rodriguez, Tanner Bibee, Eury Perez, and Bobby Miller. Even Brandon Pfaadt put together some nice work late in the year, and almost all of these guys got a shot at the Majors last year. So I would say that’s a pretty solid result.
Hitters
If I know me, I’d have been looking for low strikeout rates and high home run rates. That can pretty much be summed up by OPS, so looking at that top 20 (also limiting to hitters that at least made it to AA and saw 350+ total PAs):
Lots of names here that didn’t make it to the Majors for a significant amount of time last year, but look out bro - 2023 breakouts Josh Lowe, Gunnar Henderson, and Brent Rooker are on the list! Also we see Kerry Carpenter, Elly De La Cruz, and Christian Encarnacion-Strand on the list!
So now for the exciting part, the names popping ahead of this new 2024 season. I am tempted to put the paywall up here now, but I’ll resist.
Pitchers to Watch in 2024
Same criteria as above:
If you’re into the prospect thing already, you already know about Jackson Jobe, Christian Scott, Cade Horton, etc. But this backs up the hype. And if you don’t do much prospect hunting, now you know.
I have little doubt that Jobe, Scott, and Horton will debut this year for their respective big league clubs. And they will be guys you’ll want to be picking up in most leagues, so you can get a little bit ahead of them right now. And I would adding any of these players if I played in a dynasty league (which I don’t! Lmao!).
Let’s take out the guys who have already seen the Majors to get into some even more unknown names:
I’m not going to talk about each name. Some additional guys (not mentioned above) that I remember from the team previews that I think could make an impact in the Majors this year:
Drew Thorpe: Has yet to get to AAA, but was elite in the lower levels and the Padres could definitely use some SP help
Braxton Ashcraft: He’s a Pirate, so yeah - that team needs all the help they can get SP-wise
Tekoah Roby: The Cardinals added three free agent SPs, but they’re still super thin
Chase Hampton: After Cole and Rodon, there’s not much to love, and we know the injury risk with Rodon
Jacob Misiorowski: Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff are out of the picture, but the Brewers are still adding to the Major League roster offensively, so they have sights on winning the division. He and Robert Gasser are names we’ll see pretty early on, I’d imagine.
Hitters to Watch in 2024
We have a few household names already here with Jackson Holliday and Junior Caminero near the top of the list. We’ve also been around the block with Luken Baker, Jonathan Aranda, and Michael Busch, but it’s probably too soon to give up on them.
A few names near the bottom of this list are appealing to me. Tyler Black could be the Brewers third baseman early on in the 2024 season, and he gets on base at a fantastic clip and steals a bunch of bases. And then the two Tigers Jace Jung and Colt Keith both had fantastic minor league seasons last year and figure to be a part of the Major League club this season. With Keith, he’ll be on the Opening Day roster after signing the extension already. It will probably take at least a month to see Jung, however.
Full Data
Here’s where I put the paywall. Only paid subs get the full data extract, and this will also be updated and maintained daily for 2024. So you’ll be able to see these up-to-date adjusted minor league stats all year long. A very, very useful resource if you’re asking me! Sign up today to get that, and all the other stuff I do here that you just can’t find anywhere else!