2024 Minor League Analyst

By Independent Publishers Group

The best resource for projecting future performance of minor league athletes— essential for fantasy league baseball players The first book of its kind to fully integrate sabermetrics and scouting, the 2024 Minor League Baseball Analyst provides a distinctive brand of analysis for more than 1,000 minor league baseball players. Features include scouting reports for all players, batter skills ratings, pitch repertoires, performance trends, major league equivalents, and expected major league debuts. A complete sabermetric glossary is also included.This one-of-a-kind reference is ideally suited for baseball analysts and those who play in fantasy leagues with farm systems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Mar 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9781637273241

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

The MLBA and Redraft Leagues: A Case Study

by Brent Hershey

This publication is often thought of—by both readers and, frankly, authors—as primarily a keeper league or dynasty format tool. That notion certainly comes from the depth of our coverage here; the bulk of what follows in this volume is 900+ player scouting reports that dive deep in search of the next valuable fantasy prospect for your team(s). Having the Minor League Baseball Analyst (MLBA) nearby on draft day in those formats will give you a skills-based leg up in finding those reserve-list and farm-system gems.

But the book is also a great resource for in-season roster management. It can be useful specifically in redraft leagues, where the now performance of a recently-recalled minor leaguer can be a game- (or season-) changer. We hope that the commentary, lists and skills grades help guide your in-season pick-ups and free agent bids. Once the MiLB season gets going and prospects get promoted to the big leagues, the book takes the same season recency bias away, as it’s written over the winter with our reporting and observations. The one-season, redraft format is what we’ll explore a bit more in the following study, as we think about ways in which to incorporate the MLBA to that context.

As it turns out, we have a fascinating case study in which to delve into this relationship. The 2023 season has been rightfully recognized around MLB and our own fantasy baseball circles as an outlier in terms of the number and quality of in-season rookie player debuts. One only needs to scan back over April and May 2023 free agent budget (FAB) logs to see the impact that these high-profile players had on fantasy squads. Like many years, the early bids for perceived possible difference-makers were high, but the sheer number of these opportunities week after week contributed to a unique situation. And like every year, some rookies flourished from the start, and others, well, … did not.

With the above in mind, our main questions are these:

• How did the 2023 MLBA evaluate these players a year ago?

• In hindsight, what aspects of the book’s grades, list placement and commentary were most (and least) useful in determining how hard to pursue an individual player?

• From this one-year sample, are there any practical takeaways we can apply for the coming 2024 in-season rookie callup class?

A few ground rules and assumptions before we proceed:

First, in redraft leagues, the value of any player plucked from the free agent pool is skewed towards the beginning of the season. This is straightforward: A player with the same rate stats who joins your team in early May is more valuable than if he joins your team in mid-August, because he has a longer time frame to influence your team’s counting and rate stats. So for this exercise, we will focus almost entirely on players who debuted in the first two months of the 2023 season.

Second, this two-month period of course also corresponds with fantasy managers having the most remaining FAB to spend. As such, the bidding on free agents in April and May is the most competitive.

Third, we self-selected this group of 14 players due to their relative hype and competitive bidding in redraft leagues. (For this exercise, we assume that the list is more or less equally useful for 15-team mixed leagues or AL- or NL-only leagues.) We didn’t include all rookie call-ups over this time of course but tried to select a sample of those with the biggest buzz around them.

Fourth, our lens to look at this group is fairly simple: To sort/group by 1) Debut date; 2) Upside grade (if not familiar, see our Player Grade Primer essay on page 5) as well as 2023 HQ100 rank (if applicable) and 3) End of season dollar earnings (as calculated by BaseballHQ.com). We also examined player-box commentaries to see if that revealed any relevant nuggets.

Again, we are mainly seeking correlations between our 2023 MLBA material and their seasonal performance/earnings to construct any lessons to take into the 2024 season and beyond. The list of fourteen 2023 rookies, in alphabetical order:

• Andrew Abbott (LHP, CIN)

• Logan Allen (LHP, CLE)

• Tanner Bibee (RHP, CLE)

• Taj Bradley (RHP, TAM)

• Elly De La Cruz (SS, CIN)

• Matt McLain (2B/SS, CIN)

• Matt Mervis (1B, CHC)

• Bobby Miller (RHP, LA)

• Bryce Miller (RHP, SEA)

• Mason Miller (RHP, OAK)

• Eury Pérez (RHP, MIA)

• Brandon Pfaadt (RHP, ARI)

• Gavin Stone (RHP, LA)

• Bryan Woo (RHP, SEA)

Let’s jump in.

By Debut Date

Observations: Looking mainly at debut date to R$, there is very little (any?) correlation. Bradley and Mason Miller were early busts, and of the double-digit earners, only Bibee debuted before May 15. Perhaps the fact that two of those four were hitters (McLain and De La Cruz) is notable? With four of five scoring stats being cumulative, it would make sense that the earlier a hitter debuts, the better chance he has to return positive value. Bobby Miller, on the other hand, is an example of how very good ratios (3.76 ERA, 1.10 WHIP) can affect pitcher value even over a smaller sample size.

By Rating Grade and HQ100 Ranking

Observations: We combined these two (player potential grade and HQ100 ranking) because they are closely but not exclusively related. As we mention in the section that follows, the individual player grades are doled out by one BHQ analyst—the evaluator of that MLB team. The HQ100, on the other hand, is a collective exercise. For this treatment we group the list together by grade, but then within that group, rank by HQ100 rating.

A few things do come into focus in this iteration. Players with the higher individual grades fared better than their counterparts on a whole, in terms of rookie-year earnings. The four players with 9upside averaged $12.8 in seasonal value, whereas only 5 of the remaining 10 players posted a positive dollar value. Stone, Pfaadt and Bradley—all with 8 upsides—were the three most damaging players to your roster via R$ on this list.

By End-of-Season Dollar Value

Observations: We alluded to this above, but ranking these 14 by 2023 earnings only results in two of the three hitters in the overall top three. McLain’s rise to the top of this list was unexpected, to say the least. In most leagues, he was eligible to be bid on in the same week as fireballer Pérez. It seemed as if he was an afterthought given the string of pitchers who preceded Pérez in their debuts and the natural Fear of Missing Out that each subsequent one evoked. Even if you were in on the McLain bidding, you likely had one eye on (and a few auction units stashed for) Elly De La Cruz’s eventual promotion. McLain’s chart-topping $17 return under those circumstances proved especially fruitful.

By Commentary Nuggets

Observations: Scanning the player-box commentaries for these 14 provided few definitive markers. This could be a function of the individual choices of that box’s author: there’s often so much to write about once the author has completed player research that what gets included and what gets left out in those 70-80 words can be a bit arbitrary.

One separator on the pitching side could be number of pitches, and even ones that are graded highly. Bibee, Pérez and Bobby Miller’s commentaries all noted their arsenals included four pitches (at least three of each graded out as plus), whereas Mason Miller and Taj Bradley’s writeups indicated they had quality fastballs without much mention of their secondary offerings. Middle-of-the-road outcomes by Abbott and Allen noted their wide arsenals paired with pitchability/control qualities. But on the other hand, Pfaadt got mention of his 4-pitch arsenal and strike-throwing ability; Stone was noted for his 3-pitch mix and above-average command. [Insert shrug emoji here.]

For batters, there were some similar inconsistencies. Sure, De La Cruz was lauded for his exceptional power potential and double-plus run tool, but Mervis’ advanced understanding of the strike zone and McLain’s contact concerns proved to be off the mark.

In the end, the commentaries alone worked better as part of a bigger picture (overall grade, individual skills ratings) than as a standalone point of perspective.

Conclusions

So … how does one proceed with your 2024 MLBA in hand? With the enormous caveat of this study providing but a one-year sample, there are a couple things to keep in mind for 2024 redraft leagues when rookies come available.

1. Pay attention to player grades, especially the number portion (which represents peak upside). Our MLBA team attempts to be stingy giving out 9s, and it’s in situations like an MLB debut where immense talent can withstand—and perhaps even thrive in—the challenges of playing in the majors. That 9 is an indicator of elite upside talent and a worthy separator.

2. Hitters are far more likely to have rookie-year success than pitchers. That’s obviously not meant to be a blanket statement—those who rostered Bibee, Bobby Miller and Pérez got great returns in 2023. But it does back up other observations we’ve made in terms of in-season rookie pickups—that hitters are far more likely to succeed in that Year 1 than pitchers. It’s part of the reason that in our recent Top Fantasy Impact (IE, this year) rookie rankings (found on page 129), we have included fewer pitchers than we have in seasons past.

3. While the math may tell you that a rookie rostered in mid-April has a greater chance of affecting your season than one added in June, don’t take that as a hard-and-fast rule. Our inclination is that, as stated above, upside talent in many instances has more impact.

4. A wholistic approach of all the MLBA has to offer—where one considers rating, ranking, commentary and even MLB team context—is still most likely to give you the best chance of snatching up that rookie who can make a difference.

Oh, and then the players actually have to perform. May the 2024 rookie call-ups treat you well.

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Long-time readers of the Minor League Baseball Analyst will no doubt recognize most of the elements of the pages that follow in this 19th Edition. For both the new