Every year a prospect emerges in Reading and puts up huge numbers that excite Phillies fans. Sometimes those players sustain their surprise, but more times that not, the player fades off to mediocrity. For this study I took 18 players that played for Reading in the past 6 years. Those players were Cameron Rupp, Darin Ruf, Derrick Mitchell, Leandro Castro, Cody Asche, Matt Rizzotti, Jim Murphy, Mike Costanzo, Jason Donald, Lou Marson, Freddy Galvis, Cesar Hernandez, Sebastian Valle, Maikel Franco, Tuffy Gosewisch, Michael Taylor, Steve Susdorf, and Domonic Brown. All players were chosen for playing both Clearwater and Reading, and in all but two cases in Lehigh Valley. The sample sizes across the levels are not equal and individual stats may not have stabilized enough to make individual declarations at this time.
In terms of stats, I started with the triple flash lines (batting average, on base percentage, and slugging) and their derivatives (OPS, ISO, BABIP). Then I looked at defense independent statistics, strikeout percent, walk percent, and home runs per plate appearance. Lastly in cases where batted ball data existed (seasons 2011 or later), that data has been included. Additionally the age of each prospect was recorded. In cases of multiple seasons at a level, I first looked for the larger sample size, if not, then the season preceding the promotion to Lehigh Valley. In terms of aggregate numbers I am looking at pure unweighted averages of rate stats and percentages, this is an effort to weight each player equally.
So lets start with the most broad statistic, the average statistics across each level:
| Age | PA | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS | BB% | K% | GB% | LD% | FB% | BABIP | ISO | HR/PA | |
| Clearwater | 22.27778 | 375.647 | 0.287 | 0.351 | 0.446 | 0.797 | 8.324 | 17.71 | 39.07 | 16.83 | 44.1 | 0.333 | 0.159 | 0.024 |
| Reading | 23.16667 | 393.941 | 0.299 | 0.37 | 0.49 | 0.859 | 9.029 | 17.96 | 41.31 | 15.88 | 42.8 | 0.339 | 0.191 | 0.034 |
| Lehigh Valley | 23.77778 | 240.059 | 0.258 | 0.32 | 0.374 | 0.694 | 7.841 | 21.26 | 43.61 | 19.56 | 36.8 | 0.318 | 0.117 | 0.015 |
In the triple slash categories there is a huge jump in the Reading numbers, particularly in power numbers. When we look at isolated power there is a .032 jump from Clearwater to Reading, but from Reading to Lehigh Valley it drops .074. We can see the drop in home run rate as well.
Age
The first factor I looked at was the age of the player in Reading. More specifically I broke the hitters into three groups, those 21 and younger in Clearwater, those age 22, and those 23 and over. Here is just the triple slash lines.
| Hi-A | AA | AAA | |||||||
| BA | OBP | SLG | BA | OBP | SLG | BA | OBP | SLG | |
| 21 and Younger | 0.282 | 0.334 | 0.422 | 0.302 | 0.356 | 0.463 | 0.268 | 0.321 | 0.378 |
| 22 | 0.302 | 0.361 | 0.476 | 0.300 | 0.369 | 0.500 | 0.266 | 0.324 | 0.414 |
| 23 and Older | 0.281 | 0.353 | 0.437 | 0.291 | 0.369 | 0.492 | 0.237 | 0.303 | 0.346 |
As we see age is a large factor overall. The 21 and under group makes the most improvements, the 22 year old age group sees the AAA decline but is the best of the group, the group to watch though is the over 23 year olds who drop off quickly in AAA. The one thing missing from the youngest group is the power, which is traditionally the last thing for a hitter to develop. The quick assessment here is to watch out for hitters on the older side putting up huge numbers in Reading.
Batted Ball
So does the batted ball data vary by level. It would be easy to say that hitters are hitting the ball differently at each level. So lets look at the average batted ball data for earlier.
| GB% | LD% | FB% | BABIP | HR/PA |
| 39.07 | 16.83 | 44.1 | 0.333 | 0.024 |
| 41.31 | 15.88 | 42.81 | 0.339 | 0.034 |
| 43.61 | 19.56 | 36.83 | 0.318 | 0.015 |
A key here is to realize that all home runs count as fly balls in this case. This can help explain the line drive and fly ball differences between AA and AAA. The BABIP declines in AAA has the fielders are better and turned batted balls into outs more often. When we look at this data there is not a large enough spread other than the home run rate to explain the differences beyond expected declines in BABIP.
The Pitchers Are Better
If we go to the walk and strikeout rate numbers, we see a stark drop in walk rate and spike in strikeout rate. Some of this is the Lehigh Valley park which suppresses HR power enough to allow pitchers to attack hitters. More experienced pitchers are also able to exploit less experienced hitters. I divided the list of hitters up by their AA walk rate. Those with a lower walk rate saw their average walk rate stay nearly constant, but their strikeout rate climbed by over 5%. In contrast those with a higher walk rate saw their walk rate decline by just over 1% and their strikeout rate climbed about 2% and went from higher than the non-walkers in AA to less than their AAA k rate.
Additionally across all three levels, those with a high walk rate had a BABIP that was about .030 higher than the non-walkers. However, when it came to AAA power, everyone was suppressed fairly equally. The best conclusion I can come from this, is that a good approach will serve hitters much better up the ladder than those that are purely based on contact.
Summary
All in all, Reading works to increase power output across the board. Those that fans should really worry about are older prospects making a big impact in Reading. This is only the first part of the equation. Up next is looking at players by type as well as individual players.
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A thorough and comprehensive study.
Interested in seeing results in how a type like Perkins projects..
SInce in essence, he is this years Reading’s break-out position player.
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I think we could statistically validate that above average MLB players hit pretty well at just about every level of the minors. I think we can also agree that not every minor league player that hits very well in the minors becomes an above average MLB player.
I’m not sure if there is something more you are saying with this exercise. Is this in response to the hype Perkins is getting right now?
I think most of us know and understand this may not translate to the higher levels but its definitely better than the alternative.
I’ll mention Matt Stairs as an example since I happen to think he is doing an ok job on the broadcast but what about his minor league career and his body type would have predicted he could play 19 seasons in the MLB. I mean he never once hit more than 13 HRS during his MiLB career yet at age 29 he goes on a 4 year run hitting 112 HR’s. Now that did happen to occur in Oakland mysteriously in the late 90’s but still the point I make is opportunity.
Could Matt Rizzotti have been Matt Stairs? I was never a Rizz fan boy and maybe he came along in the wrong era but the data suggested he should have had the chance to be a DH or bat off the bench. Wrong place wrong time maybe.
And finally we have the modern day Matt marvelous Adams drafted in the 23rd round from Slippery Rock who almost didn’t get the chance to play if not for an injury to Craig.
So rather than write off Cam as another mythical AA character or come up with a bunch of superlatives as to why he is nothing more than x let’s say hey this guy now has 811 PA’s he is hitting .306 with a 355 OBP and 800 OPS at age 23.
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I haven’t dived into the stats enough to say that this profile is better than another. Good prospects have a better chance to hit. I will also say that there is a lot of luck involved, prospects need opportunity to prove themselves and the nature of baseball distribute these unevenly
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I agree that Reading inflates HR and that over my 30 seasons of watching Reading games I have seen a lot of ‘Reading wonders’. Your comment on age matches my own. A lot of these ‘Reading wonders’ shared the characteristics of being old for the league and not particularly athletic, as in not good defensively, not speedy, and often far from svelte. I think there is one piece missing from your analysis and that is a look over a longer time horizon of Reading players who have made it to the major leagues. Not all of these Reading major leaguers were young, I’m thinking especially of Ruiz here, but they were guys who first hit really well at Reading and that success did carry forward.
I don’t want to spend a ton of time on this, so I’ll just list OPS by level for the season with greatest AB at that level. The number in ( ) is age at Reading.
Ryan Howard (24) .888 1.033 .966
Carlos Ruiz (25) .591 .822 .812/.894; (26/27)
Jimmy Rollins (20) .660 .740 .798
Domonic Brown(22) .903 .993 .951/.761/.767 .951 yr. season as Reading
Freddy Galvis (20/21) .587 .587/.726 .679/.631 .631 is two years later
C Hernandez (22) .639 .781 .777
Cody Asche (22) .825 .873 .837
Darin Ruf (25) .894 1.028 .750
To me, it looks like the guys who made it to the major league Phillies had less of a fall-off from Reading to AAA than the average guy you surveyed. Of note, the older players here played at SWB rather than Allentown, so that will impact results.
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Very well put DMAR.
One axiom that seems to hold some truth to it …..good major league hitters were all good minor league hitters, but every good minor league hitter do not make a good major league hitter.
BTW…Perkins’ peripherals when it comes to K rate and BB rate are average to good.
FWIW, I did notice on Oliver’s 5 Year projection he comes out fairtl poor with K rate hovering around 19% and BB rate low in and around 4%.
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saw that as well Romus and that is what sparked me to think what does Oliver’s consider in those projections. Prospects are not inanimate objects.
It would be need to look at Oliver’s historical projections on players currently in the bigs and see how often they are accurate.
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This has got to work the other way around as well with pitchers, right? When pitchers make the jump from AA to AAA, they should see a drop in ERA and potentially an increase in K rate.
That should give us more confidence in our pitchers if Biddle and Severino succeed in AA.
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What you’re saying there is a really interesting point. If we see the same with pitchers moving from AA to AAA, it would disprove Matt’s entire theory because it essentially would mean the effect in both AAA and AA are entirely park related, and not related to Players getting “exposed” in AAA by older more “finesse” type pitchers.
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Just to clarify, “the same” being the opposite effect as with hitters….
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Very good article Matt. It is a good numerical representation of what most of us should already understand. As it is not a complex concept to grasp. And it has been something beaten to death on this site and that is being age appropriate for the level.
As for Perkins he is age appropriate and might have actually started this year at AAA if he was not hurt last year. His numbers were right in line with Dugan and Franco and I think we all agree had he been healthy he would have gotten called up. The main thing need in the evaluation of all prospects is the melding of the scouting reports with the actual production we see in the stats. The Problem with Perkins is his sever Penceesque over stride and all his weight is out on his front foot instead of rotating in a balanced position. To hit like he does from this position requires a very high level of hand eye coordination and if he ever can clean up his stride the power will play a lot better as he is a strong kid.
Unfortunately he will follow a path ala Brown and now Franco of needing to encounter failure before making a change as is with most players. Hell Jimmy just said earlier this year why would he change his approach when it has been good for him his whole career. To Larry this is not a shot at Jimmy i just think he had the ability be a no doubt HOFer not a borderline guy.
One final thing regarding your following quote:
“The best conclusion I can come from this, is that a good approach will serve hitters much better up the ladder than those that are purely based on contact.”
This is a straw man argument that is constantly brought up by many stats oriented fans. There are no SANE fans who ever argued the fact that have a player who has a good eye, a good idea of the strike zone, and the ability to swing mostly at strikes is the most desirable players out there, and who will be the most successful players. And when you look at the trait that makes the good players good it is the ability to change their approach to what the pitchers are trying to do to them. That ability is what allows a player like Michael Young to have a successful major league career and a player like Valle to fail miserably when facing quality pitchers who work the strike zone, and i know that was a very bad cherry pick of 2 players. But what you need to wait for is them to face pitchers who have the stuff that when thrown for strikes is still very tough to hit. That is why i like the approach of promoting aggressively to the point of failure to try and force adjustments at an earlier age when possible.
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Last paragraph first – setting aside the fact that, assuming you are correct, there’s PLENTY of insane fans around, making the argument far from a straw man
I think it’s pretty clearly true that SOME stats oriented people are insufficiently aware of the fact that a contact oriented player can afford a lower BB rate than a non-contact oriented player, and that a somewhat aggressive approach is more likely to work with a contact oriented player than a non-contact oriented player. In a sense, though, that’s also a “straw man,” if we want to define the term broadly. That is, most stat oriented fans are well aware of those facts.
Once we get beyond the extreme positions … it’s just as obvious that ideally you want both – good contact skills AND a good approach. Does Perkins have a good approach? Heck if I know,… but his contact rates, while quite good, are not exceptional. I guess what I’m saying is that his BB rate would look better if paired with exceptional contact skills, as opposed to just quite good contact skills.
As for Rollins, obviously the question is ultimately unanswerable. He managed, with his approach to grow tremendously as a hitter from his first few seasons to his prime.
Could he have grown even more? Who knows? I guess in theory we’re talking about two different issues: first, a more ground ball approach. He would have sacrificed a lot of power for more singles, doubles, and triples. My feeling is that he wasn’t going to be a HOF player regardless of approach – at least given the era in which he played. He could never have been a Jeter, for example – part of that is frame and height, this is not an era that favored players his size. He would have lost most of the power (unlike Jeter who had enough strength to hit HR even with a ground ball stroke) without gaining enough extra hits to outweigh that.
That issue is at least arguable. The other critique – that he is overly aggressive – is just plain wrong. He simply is not and never was a wild swinger. For a player with his contact skills, he is and was quite patient. His BB rates were roughly league average, and his plate discipline data is quite good. You know I’m a big believer in the importance of taking a BB – see above for example. But that’s not purely a matter of choice. Some players just have a better eye than others – and, of course some players are more feared than others, meaning more pitches out of the strike zone and consequently more BB. I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that a less aggressive approach would have paid off for Rollins.
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I concede the fact there there are plenty of INSANE fans so that it is not technically a straw man. It just always feels like one to me as at every level of baseball i have every played (up through college) it was impressed upon me that you look for your pitch to drive until you have 2 strikes then you protect and you let balls go by as they are not the best pitches to hit hard. So whenever i hear an argument/conclusion like Matt’s it comes off as a “Well DUH!” statement.
As for Jimmy the difference for him being a guaranteed HOF player and where he is now were the extended periods of time where he would leak out on his front side and become pull happy. Which lead to easy grounders and fly/pop outs. You comment
“His BB rates were roughly league average, and his plate discipline data is quite good.”
Even though this data is correct it belies the fact that for periods of time he showed an elite ability to handle the strike zone. Now ultimately he just proved to be a streaky player, but his issue in my opinion were the quality of swings he put on good pitches to hit. All he needed to do was avg. another 12 hits or 40 BBs a year to get to .290 career avg which i think that would make him a lock in the eyes of most voters. For the record I am not suggesting that he needed to “slap” the ball more just that he fell in love with the long ball and it appeared to me he would try to “kill” the ball instead of letting them come naturally. And I agree with the point that we will never know the true answer to this.
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Watching the video on Perkins, was really interesting, The mention of his body moving forward was right . I think the part that bothers me is his hands, if his hands were back, I wouldn’t care as much, but when you also commit your hands, where does the power come from? keeping your hands back is most important in hitting, imo. and to me he is out in front with his hits as well as his out, I just hope he can adjust his approach.
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the motion/noise in his hand are the lesser of the 2 issues as he gets to an acceptable launch position in enough time. If you look at the majority of HRs hit you will see pretty much the exact same position all hitters will make contact at. It will be as they say hitting against the front foot and not on it.
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It’s interesting to compare Dugan and Perkins. They’re the same age almost to the day, and of course same level. Dugan has more of a track record,a function of Perkins being a college draftee. Both have hit pretty well when they have been healthy.
Despite Perkin’s flashy BA, I think Dugan remains the better prospect. That’s even setting scouting reports aside (which I believe also somewhat favor Dugan). Probably Dugan’s biggest advantage is defensive – at the major league level, we’re talking about an average or better right fielder versus a below average left fielder. Or at least that’s my impression from what I have read.
As hitters, Perkins obviously has an edge in terms of making contact. But Dugan has more power (this season’s SSS notwithstanding), and more ability to draw a BB.
I am not as high on Dugan as some around here, but marginally more bullish on him than I was a month ago. I see him as having a shot at being a decent regular right fielder. Perkins still looks like a 4th/5th OF at best.
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I tend to think that Dugan is a better prospect too – perhaps significantly better. He’s the type of guy I could see improving quite a bit as a major leaguer. There are a lot of “little” things to like about Dugan that add up well. He has a good build, he’s athletic, fields and throws well, appears to run well, has good plate discipline, has the type of frame that looks like it can put on “good” extra weight, very nice approach and pretty swing. If you told me that Dugan would become a minor star, I’d think that a lot of things would have to go right for that to happen, but I would believe it. For Perkins, I’d have a hard time believing that – he’d either have to change a lot as a player or just be one of those bizarre outlier players whose natural abilities are so extreme that he can overcome what appear to be numerous deficiences.
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I agree with both of you on Perkins, hell if he was as good as Dugan he would have gone higher in the draft than he did. But that weight transfer is so glaring and the fact that it has not been cleaned up leads one to believe that he is not willing to change yet, and why should he. He is having success.
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And by success I mean from his own perspective he is having success.
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