Age in the Minors: Southern League

Now that the affiliated minor leagues are finished with their regular season games, I would like to investigate the context of minor league statistics in order to determine whether (or how) such statistics present meaningful information. Minor league statistics are extremely difficult to judge at a surface glance, since one may not know a player’s development stage, any specific development assignments from their parent club, how their age, assignment, and development fits within their specific league, how the competition in their league compares to other leagues, and/or whether the player is facing difficult or weak competition. Of course, many of these statistics can be found at BaseballProspectus, but the basic point is that these are contextual statistics that one has to dig into; it’s not quite like the ability to glance at a few areas of an MLB player’s line and understand (roughly, at a glance) how that player is performing. In this sense, minor league statistics are patently meaningless; scouting information, alongside contextual information about the minor leagues, is where one may find meaning about a player’s performance or development.

2016 Southern League
I am opening this ongoing series by discussing the Southern League, since the Brewers have a number of top trade acquisitions assigned at their Class-AA Biloxi affiliate. Furthermore, general fan and press sentiment suggests that many of these players had disappointing seasons. This tough, dismissive judgment seems suspicious when one considers important details like Jacob Nottingham gaining the ability to work behind the dish and stick at catcher (thereby strengthening his overall value and development); personally, I would peg Nottingham as a clear Top Five prospect candidate in the system, given the overall projection of his power and the increasing understanding that the youngster has the ability to play catcher.

This is not something that someone would immediately conclude from Nottingham’s .234 / .295 / .347 AVG / OBP / SLG batting line. Yet, compared solely to age-21 prospects in the Southern League, Nottingham carried one of the heaviest workloads, produced a batting line that was near-average for age-21 players, and demonstrated better than average isolated power. A skeptic might accuse me of using statistics to put lipstick on a pig, but in fact digging into the context of Nottingham’s season shows much more value in his batting line than one might initially expect; coupled within his defensive progress, that’s a fine season for a player that is three years younger than his league’s median age.

What is quite interesting in the Southern League this year is that batting performance fluctuates quite wildly by age, as pitchers taking the plate and late season call-ups, part time players, or MLB players rehabbing injuries impact the proceedings. Simply looking at the list of players working in AA at any given time shows the hodge-podge composition of that level, and the Southern League is no different; there are 19-year old standouts like Ozhaino Albies, second chance 22-year olds like Tyrone Taylor, somewhat stalling (on the surface) names like Billy McKinney, and lots of AA veterans and organizational depth (like Nick Ramirez or Dustin DeMuth, for instance).

For this exercise, I isolated players with more than five PA. This may sound arbitrary, and in some cases it is, but an empirical glance at the list suggested that this was a reasonable cut-off to include rehabs, short call-ups, and other oddities (as well as pitchers batting), while also isolating performances like would skew data too far in the other direction (such as 0 or 1 PA performances).

Against their age group, one can now more fully judge the Brewers Class-AA 2016 campaigns. First, let’s look at the young guys:

Placing these seasons in context should illuminate a few points:

• Brett Phillips had quite a good season, even considering his slump and other issues at the plate.
• Good grief, Domingo Santana is young. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how young these guys are once they make the MLB; Santana is young even for the Southern League, let alone MLB!
• Note that someone like Tyrone Taylor, who is basically forgotten among the luxurious OF prospects returned via trade, actually had quite a solid season for his age.
• These statistics only cover the surface of judging these players’ contextual seasons, but this should be a start to offset some of the more dismissive press these players are receiving from other sources.

Here are some of the older depth players on the Shuckers:

Given the stacked young minors and top prospects that the Brewers need to fit onto their 40-man roster, it is difficult to judge whether these guys will make the MLB with Milwaukee. However, some of these players have traits that may catch with other organizations, should they find themselves out of Brewers navy come winter. A player like Kyle Wren is particularly interesting; many fans wanted to see Wren called up, but if Wren did not make the MLB in a depth OF capacity in 2015 or 2016, it’s difficult to see him protected now that the club has many other choices for the offseason.