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Forecasting Improved Prospects

A couple of weeks ago, we reviewed the predictive influence of doubles in relation to a young major leaguer's power potential. Today we will delve into the same theory for minor leaguers. While everyone knows the names of Chris Young, Brandon Wood and/or Matt Kemp now, two years ago each of these players were relatively unknown. Some players are hyped before even playing an inning at the minor league level like Alex Gordon Justin Upton, or Delmon Young, but usually a player has to produce statistically in the minor leagues before they are anointed as the second coming of Willie Mays. So, how do we go about discovering these 'diamonds in the rough'?

If you look back into the minor league careers of players like Jeff Bagwell, Don Mattingly and Jason Giambi you will notice that their home run potential wasn't realized until they reached the major league level. Even the subject of the article mentioned above, Garrett Atkins, never put up very good home run numbers during his minor league career. However, as you've probably guessed by now, each of the players mentioned did have a very solid ratio of doubles per at bat during their minor league time.

So, who is the next Garrett Atkins? To find him, we need to determine which prospects have shown a good ability to hit for extra bases, but haven't had that success translate into home runs at this point in their careers. To determine this, we looked at all minor league stats (not including rookie ball) from the 2006 season and filtered out any players over 23 years old, or with under 200 AB's. This forced us to look at younger minor league players that likely have significant room for improvement in the power department and those with a large enough sample size of AB's to give us data that is reflective of their true skill level.

From this list, we then filtered the results to focus on players with an extra base hit percentage of more than 10%, a walk rate of more than 8% and more than 15 home runs. By doing this, we eliminated any singles hitters (XBH%), any players that have already started to achieve their home run potential (HR%), and the non-disciplined hitters that usually fail at higher levels (BB%).

This left us with a total of 17 players. Of these 17, we deleted out any that had less than a 2:1 ratio of doubles to home runs.

The remaining eight players are those which show significant potential to increase their value during the 2007 season.

Last	First	Level	Age	Org	AB	H	D	HR	BB	SO	D %	HR %	D% + HR%	BB%
Butler	Billy	AA	20	Kc	477	158	33	15	41	67	6.9%	3.1%	10.1%	8.6%
Caraballo	Francisco	A+	22	Hou	449	107	40	14	40	125	8.9%	3.1%	12.0%	8.9%
Cunningham	Aaron	A	20	Chw	341	104	26	11	34	72	7.6%	3.2%	10.9%	10.0%
Granadillo	Tony	A	22	Bos	420	119	29	13	43	79	6.9%	3.1%	10.0%	10.2%
Lerud	Steve	A	21	Pit	393	94	28	12	40	146	7.1%	3.1%	10.2%	10.2%
Spann	Chad	AA	22	Bos	360	106	28	10	29	85	7.8%	2.8%	10.6%	8.1%
Tulowitzki	Troy	AA	21	Col	423	123	34	13	46	71	8.0%	3.1%	11.1%	10.9%
Vinyard	Chris	A-	20	Bal	264	75	26	8	28	62	9.8%	3.0%	12.9%	10.6%

Butler and Tulowitzki are both more well known than anyone else included on this list, and Butler is an obvious candidate to break out this season - in fact, he's already on most top 10 prospect lists. The other players on this list are relative unknowns, but have similar skill sets. Keep an eye on these players during the 2007 season. By mid-season you may be hearing their names more often.

If you have minor league slots in your keeper league, these are the players that could payoff huge dividends two or three years from now.

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