Contemporary Minor League Aces

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a two-part series on contemporary minor league stars, who I defined as players with at least 4,000 career plate appearances in the high minors (the AAA and AA levels).  The two parts are here and here.

I thought it would also be fun to identify any recent pitchers who have had long and successful minor league careers.  Deciding on 1,200 career innings pitched in the high minors as a cut-off (which limits the list to starters and seems to be about the equivalent of my 4,000 plate appearances cut-off for position players), I was able to find only six contemporary pitchers who have accomplished this feat.  However, I was able to find an additional half a dozen or so pitchers who have come awfully close.

One final note before getting on with the list — for purchases of AA and AAA performance, pitching in the Mexican League counts, but pitching in other foreign leagues (Japan’s NPB, South Korea’s KBO, Taiwan, Italy, etc.) does not.  While this is somewhat arbitrary, it makes it easier to use baseball reference to find the qualifying pitchers, and what I am interested in doing is identifying American minor league stars, rather than Americans who have starred in Asia.  Without further ado:

1.  Nelson Figueroa (1,470 AAA innings pitched, 266.2 AA, 499 MLB).  Leading the list of contemporary minor league aces, Figueroa is a smallish right-hander (listed as 6’1″ and 185 lbs), who has a career minor league of 141-95, by far the most wins and best winning percentage of any recent minor leaguer I could find.  He has a career 3.70 minor league ERA with nearly three strikeouts for every walk allowed.

Nelson was originally drafted by the Mets in the 30th round of the 1995 Draft, and he was only just released in late April of this year by the Diamondbacks after getting off to a brutally bad start for the AAA Reno Aces a month shy of his 39th birthday.

Figueroa pitched in parts of nine major league seasons for six different teams mostly as a spot starter/long reliever.  While his career major league record of 20-35 is pretty bad, his career 4.55 ERA is hardly terrible.

2.  Andrew Lorraine (1,613 AAA, 7.1 AA, 175 MLB).  Once a 4th round draft pick out of Stanford, Lorraine has thrown more innings at the AAA level than any other recent pitcher.  His minor league career record was 110-89 with a 4.15 ERA.

A left-hander, Andrew pitched in parts of seven major league seasons for seven different teams and invariably got hit hard (career MLB ERA of 6.53).  He just didn’t have the stuff to have a successful major league career, but he clearly knew enough about pitching to excel at the AAA level.  His career ended in 2009 at age 36 playing in the now-defunct independent-A Golden Baseball League.

3.  Jared Fernandez (1,293.1 AAA, 504.1 AA, 108.2 MLB).  A big right-hander, Fernandez pitched more innings in the high minors than anyone else on my list.  He finished his minor league career in 2007 at age 35 with a 105-100 record and a 4.34 ERA.

Jared didn’t break through to the majors until age 29, and even though he pitched effectively for the Reds in 2002 and the Astros in 2003, he was already past age 30 both of those seasons.  Fernandez’s career ended with the Hiroshima Carp of Japan’s NPB.

4.  Chris George (1,244.1 AAA, 97.1 AA, 237.1 MLB).  The 31st overall pick in the 1998 Draft out of high school, George got numerous opportunities while in his early 20′s between 2001 and 2004 to establish himself as a starter for the Royals.  However, he didn’t have major league command, and he was also hit hard, posting a career major league 6.48 ERA with awful numbers at every pitching category.

Chris then settled in as a journeyman AAA starter.  He finished his minor league career in 2012 with an 85-87 record and a 4.70 ERA.

5.  Shane Loux (1,143.1 and counting AAA, 157.2 AA, 144 MLB).  Still pitching effectively, but unspectacularly, for the AAA Fresno Grizzlies this season at age 33, Loux is now 106-109 with a 4.46 ERA for his minor league career. He was once a second round draft pick.

Shane pitched in the majors in 2002-2003 for the Tigers, 2008-2009 for the Angels and last season for the Giants.  Last year’s performance, in which he posted a 4.97 ERA in 19 relief appearances, was probably his best at the major league level.

6.  Andy Van Hekken (740.1 AAA, 460.2 AA, 30 MLB).  A former 3rd round draft pick, Van Hekken’s only major league experience came in 2002 at the age of 22 when he went 1-3 in five starts for the Tigers.  His 3.00 ERA looked pretty good, but his other numbers suggested he wasn’t major league ready.

Andy returned to AAA and never made it back to the Show.  His career minor league record of 122-86 and 3.94 ERA look pretty good, but he never had any big years at AAA and had to use the independent-A Atlantic League several times to keep himself in professional baseball.

Andy went to South Korea to pitch in 2012, where he has established himself as one of the KBO’s top starters.  He currently has one of the five best ERAs in the young 2013 KBO season.

7.  R. A. Dickey (1,079 AAA, 108.2 AA, 1,113.1 MLB).  Undoubtedly the best pitcher on this list, Dickey’s career story is well known.  He makes this list with more than 1,000 AAA innings pitched because he has had essentially two professional pitching careers, the first as a regular pitcher and the second as a knuckleballer.

8.  Chris Michalak (1,048.2 AAA, 78 AA, 191.1 MLB).  A lefty, Michalak finished his professional career with the AAA Las Vegas 51′s in 2009 at age 38.  He finished with a minor league career record of 93-90 and a 4.14 ERA.

Michalak pitched fairly well for the Blue Jays and Rangers in 2001 and 2002, but he was already over 30 years old in 2001.

9.  Randy Keisler (1,027.1 AAA, 116 AA, 150.2 MLB).  Another lefty, Keisler has gone 99-77 with a 3.95 ERA in his minor league career.  He pitched last year in the Atlantic League at age 36.  Keisler pitched parts of six major league seasons for five different teams and almost always got hit hard, posting a career MLB ERA of 6.63 with lots of hits, home runs and walks allowed.

10.  Brandon Duckworth (1,014 AAA, 167 AA, 511 MLB).  Other than Nelson Figueroa and R. A. Dickey, the only pitcher on this list with a substantial major league career, Duckworth pitched eight seasons in the Show, going 23-34 with a 5.28 ERA mostly as a fifth and spot starter/long reliever.  As a minor leaguer, Brandon has a career 110-74 record with a 3.80 ERA.

Duckworth went to Japan late last season and pitched well enough in six starts to return to the Rakuten Golden Eagles this year at age 37.  After seven starts this year, he is 2-3 with a 4.30 ERA, not good enough for a highly paid foreigner in pitching-dominated NPB.

11.  Brian Cooper (877 AAA, 319.2 AA, 167.2 MLB).  A small right-hander whose professional career ended in 2006 at age 31, Cooper appeared in a total of 13 games for the 2004 and 2005 Giants.  Given that the Giants are the team I follow, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I don’t really remember Cooper.

Cooper finished his minor league career with an 87-80 record and a 4.61 ERA.  He went 15-9 for the 2003 AAA Charlotte Knights, which is a lot for AAA — none of the players higher on this list managed to win 15 games in a single year at AAA.

12.  Adam Pettyjohn (788.1 AAA, 367.1 AA, 69 MLB).  Once a second round draft pick, Pettyjohn had a career minor league record of 85-74 with a 4.23 ERA.  He went 15-6 for the 2008 AAA Louisville Bats.

Pettyjohn pitched briefly for the 2001 Detroit Tigers and the 2008 Cincinnati Reds.  His last season was 2010 for the AAA Buffalo Bisons.

13.  Derek Lee (450.2 AAA, 732.2 AA, 0 MLB).  Last and certainly least on this list, Derek Lee is the only player on this list to pitch more innings at AA than AAA.  He never pitched in the majors, which likely also prevented him from making some real money playing in Asia.  He finished his minor league career in the Mexican League in 2008 at age 33 with a final record of 81-84 and 3.61 ERA.

Lee played twelve years of professional baseball and probably never made more than $50,000 a year, if that.  He’s also unlikely to get a pension in any amount, unlike almost all the other players on this list, who had major league careers just long enough to get some kind of a pension.  Somehow, it doesn’t seem fair.

If I’ve missed any pitchers who should be included in my list, please let me know.

Why So Many Strikeouts?

I read this article from SI’s Joe Lemire today in which he attempts to identify the reason why strike outs are so dramatically up this year (the Tigers’ and Red Sox’s staffs are both over a strikeout per inning pitched, which if they continue at their current rates through the end of the season would set the first and second all-time records). 

One thing I would add — one reason that batters strike out more now is that the gradual rise of sabrmetrics over the last 30 years has established that batting average is a lot less important to scoring runs than either on-base percentage or slugging percentage.  In other words, hitters can help an offense more by hitting a lot of home runs and drawing a lot of walks than hitting for a high average.

Lemire notes that fewer hitters now have a two-strike approach, seeking to hit home runs with two strikes rather than simply putting the ball in play.  As a result, he writes, strikeouts with two strikes are up 13% compared to 25 years ago.  What he fails to expressly note, although he provides the raw data, is that two-strike home runs are up 24% over the same period. 

24% more home runs at the cost of 13% more strikeouts?  That sounds like a great trade-off to me, particularly when you take into account the fact that major league defense has steadily improved throughout major league history, meaning that simply putting the ball in play is less likely to result in a base runner than it did 25 or more years ago.

Also, recognition of the value of walks, and the players who draw them, has increased in the last 30 years.  Strikeout rates have accordingly increased, because batters who take more close pitches, and thus draw more walks, also tend to strike out more.  Anyone who has ever watched baseball on TV knows that major league pitchers throw to the corners, and umpires are anything but consistent in calling those pitches balls or strikes.

SI’s Tom Verducci wrote an article about a month ago in which he attributes the increase in strikeouts to more pitchers mastering the cutter (cut fastball) and two-seam fastball combination.  Essentially, the two pitches are both fastballs which tail in opposite directions, making it extremely difficult for hitters to square up either pitch.

On the one hand, I find it hard to believe that major league pitchers haven’t been using different grips on their fastballs to get different movement for any less than the last 100 years.  On the other hand, I definitely think there is a higher percentage of major league pitchers today with both the arm strength and the training to throw different fastballs with sharp movement in different directions than ever before.  

For example, in Ball Four written in 1970, Jim Bouton strongly suggests that major league pitching coaches of his era were so mediocre that really helpful ones like Johnny Sain were the exception rather than the rule.  I doubt that’s the case today.  Not every pitching coach today may be as good as the Giants’ Dave Righetti, but most teams now have a pitching coach who can help any pitcher willing to listen.

So Much for Instant Replay

The big topic of conversation last night and today is the umpires completely blowing the replay review of Adam Rosales’ should-a-been home run in last night’s Indians-A’s game.  Here is the video from espn.com.

I don’t have a whole lot to add from what others have said/written.  Here’s a good article from Jay Jaffe of Sports Illustrated.  Still, it’s too big an issue not to say something about it.

Umpire Angel Hernandez, consistently ranked in anonymous player polls as one of the worst five or six umpires in MLB, claimed that the replays he saw on review were not conclusive.  MLB today said that the replay system in place allows the umpires on review to see all the replays from the at least two broadcasts of the game.  In other words, the umpires should have seen what everyone else in America could see — a ball that unmistakeably hit the railing well above the yellow home run line — a no-doubt-about-it (at least on replay) home run.

My gut feeling about this situation is that the umpiring crew essentially made a collective decision that they weren’t going to overturn the call on the field no matter what the replay showed, which is essentially what happens when an umpire blows a call not subject to replay.  Even if the umpire realizes he blew a ball/strike call or a safe/out call on the bases, he sticks with his initial/called decision, and at most only admits later after the game that he made a mistake. If this in fact is what happened, it completely defeats the purpose of having an instant replay system at all.

It remains to be seen what, if anything, MLB will do to compel umpires to get with the program, but one thing is obvious.  It is a huge black eye for MLB that even a call as obviously wrong as this one can’t be overturned in the very limited circumstances in which calls can be reviewed.  If umpires cannot be fully trusted that they are making their best efforts to make the right call or correct their mistakes when the rules specifically allow further review, it undermines the legitimacy of game outcomes.

Contemporary Minor League Stars, Part II

Continuing on with my list of contemporary minor league stars, who I define as players with at least 4,000 plate appearances in the high minors (AA and AAA) on the theory that they had to be pretty good ballplayers to last that long.  Part I of this series can be found here.

3.  Scott McClain (5,160 AAA plate appearances, 800 AA and 88 MLB).  Before wrapping up his professional career at age 37 at the end of the 2009 season, McClain played a whopping 20 seasons of pro ball.  His 5,160 plate appearances at the AAA level was the most of any contemporary player I could find.

McClain hit 292 home runs in the minor leagues and another 89 in Japan’s NPB.  However, he only hit two HRs in the major leagues during cups of the coffee with the Rays in 1998, the Cubs in 2005 and the Giants in 2oo7 and 2008.

McClain played mostly 1B and 3B and didn’t become a great AAA hitter until he was age 26.  He was at least able to make some money in his professional career by playing five season in Japan’s NPB, where American players generally earn at least the major league minimum.

4.  Andy Tracy (4,519 AAA, 1,247 AA, 314 MLB).  Another great minor league thumper, Tracy has hit 296 minor league home runs but only 13 in the show.

Tracy wasn’t highly regarded as a prospect out of college (Bowling Green in Ohio) and thus played four years in college before signing with a major league franchise.  He had a huge year in the Eastern League at age 25, which got him substantial playing time the next year for the 2000 Montreal Expos.  He got into 83 games that year and hit .260 with 11 HRs and an .824 OPS, excellent for a rookie.

However, Tracy got off to a dreadful start in 2001, hitting only .109 with a .427 OPS in 38 games before being sent down the minors, except for the briefest cups of coffee in 2004, 2008 and 2009 (a total of only 33 plate appearances), for good.  Like McClain, Tracy played mostly 1B and 3B, and was a great AAA hitter for years.

Tracy’s last season was 2011, when he hit .288 with a .987 OPS in 85 games for the Reno Aces of the AAA Pacific Coast League.  Reno is a great place to hit, but Tracy’s numbers are so impressive that I have to think that it was accumulated injuries (Tracy was 37 that year) that ended his professional career.  For what it’s worth, I saw Tracy take Carlos Marmol deep in a game in New Orleans between the Zephyrs and the Iowa Cubs in May 2007.

5.  Mike Cervenak.  (3,785 AAA, 2,091 AA, 13 MLB).  One of my favorite contemporary minor league stars, I’ve written about Cervenak before here and here.  He’s playing in Taiwan this year, most likely finishing out his pro career at 36.  He’s hit 192 minor league home runs.

6.  Cody Ransom (4,455 AAA, 554 AA, 687+ MLB).  Another one of my favorite contemporary minor league stars, almost certainly because, like Cervenak, Ransom’s a former Giants prospect.  However, unlike Cervenak, who never really got a fair shot with the Gints, Ransom was once a highly regarded prospect even though he was 9th round draft pick.  The Giants like toolsy prospects, and Cody had tools.

As I’ve written before a number of times, Cody is one of those rare players who developed significantly as a professional hitter after age 27, and he got his first significant major league playing time last year at the ripe old age of 37 (282 plate appearances for the Brewers and Diamondbacks after never getting more than 86 in any of his nine prior major league part-seasons).

Cody, or “Babe” as I like to call him, started the 2013 campaign with the San Diego Padres, but they designated him for assignment after he started the year 0-for-11.  The Cubs claimed him off waivers and in three games he’s off to a 4-for-9 start with home run, two doubles and a walk.  Given his red hot start as a Cubbie, and the fact that Wrigley Field is a great place for a guy with power like Ransom, there’s a good chance he’ll stick around in Chicago for a while.  It doesn’t hurt that the 2013 Cubs look to be a bad team in need of players who can hit a little.

7.  Kevin Barker (5,140 AAA, 1,320 AA, 323 MLB).  Another minor league bomber, Barker hit 271 minor league home runs (but only six in the Show), finishing his professional career in 2011 for the Oaxaco Guerreros (“Warriors”) of the Mexican League.

Barker got into 78 games for the Brewers in 1999 and 2000 at ages 23 and 24, but he didn’t hit the second year, and got only a few cups of coffee after that.  His best minor league season was probably 2009 when he hit 22 HRs and had a .927 OPS in 101 games for the AAA Louisville Bats.

8.  Michael Restovich (3,503 AAA, 565 AA, 297 MLB).  A former Twins prospect, Restovich hit 214 minor league home runs, but only six in the majors.  He was a fine minor league hitter who just didn’t hit in the limited major league opportunities he got.  His professional career ended in 2011.

9.  Chris Richard (3,192 AAA, 1,065 AA, 1,006).  Originally drafted by the Cardinals, at age 27 Richard played 136 games for the 2001 Orioles in which he hit .265 with 15 HRs and a .770 OPS, while playing RF, CF, 1B and DH (a very unusual combination).  He didn’t hit well in 2002, however, and that was the end of his major league career except for cups of coffee with the 2003 Rockies and the 2009 Rays.  Richard slugged 198 minor league HRs in addition to his 34 major league jacks.  His professional career ended in 2010.

10.  Jeff Bailey (2,995 AAA, 1,826 AA, 159 MLB).  Yet another minor league slugger, he hit 191 minor league dingers but only six in the Show.  Bailey spent parts of six seasons with the Pawtucket Red Sox from 2004 through 2009 and got three cups of coffee from the true Red Sox the last three of those seasons.  He finished his professional career with the Rochester Red Wings in 2011.

11.  Tike Redman (3,549 AAA, 724 AA, 1,461 MLB).  Just in case you were thinking all contemporary minor league stars were sluggers, Redman was a center fielder who just wasn’t quite good enough on either side of the ball to have a long major league career.  However, the Pirates certainly gave him opportunities, as his 1,461 career major league plate appearances attest.

12.  Luis Figueroa (4,682 AAA, 1,602 AA, 16 MLB).  A shortstop who apparently hit just well enough to be a AAA starter for years and whose glove, I presume, wasn’t quite good enough to make him a major league late inning defensive replacement, Figueroa’s North American career appears to have ended last year with the Oaxaca Guerreros.  He got three major league cups of coffee in 2001, 2006, 2007, but appeared in a total of only 18 major league games.

13-16.  Joe Thurston (4,868 AAA, 633 AA, 384 MLB), Esteban German (3,720, 511, 1,170), Ray Olmedo (3,381, 734, 484) and Bobby Scales (3,342, 708, 158).  A quartet of middle infielders/jacks-of-all-trades.

Thurston got into 124 games for the 2009 Cardinals but didn’t hit.  German was a briefly hot prospect who played semi-regularly for the Royals from 2006 through 2008 but hit worse each successive year — he’s now playing in Japan.  Olmedo looks like a classic glove-tree shortstop who didn’t hit much even at AAA, but stuck around because of his defensive acrobatics.

Bobby Scales was a fine minor league hitter who played a lot of different positions but probably not well enough at 2B or 3B to keep him in the majors.  He had a .373 on-base percentage last year for Japan’s Orix Buffaloes, but the team didn’t bring him back in 2013, probably because he didn’t hit for power and his defense wasn’t very good.

I strongly suspect there are other contemporary minor league stars I have failed to identify, and I invite you to send in comments identifying them.  However, I think I’ve made a point: there are still a large number of minor league stars in today’s game playing great ball at the AAA level, who either through bad luck, late development or by virtue of being just a hair below the talent level of major leaguers have spent most of their long professional careers in the minor leagues.

Contemporary Minor League Stars, Part I

Before roughly 1955, it was possible for a fine baseball player to have a long and successful professional career even without ever playing in the major leagues or playing in the Show only very briefly.  The main reasons for this were that minor league teams had a lot more independence and thus were able to maintain loyal fan bases and hold onto star players and also the fact that the number of major league teams (16 and all east of the Mississippi River) compared to the total number of minor league teams was tiny.

In those days there were three of what we would now call AAA leagues (the Pacific Coast League (“PCL”), the American Association and the International League) and four of what we would now call AA leagues (the Texas League, the Southern League, the Eastern League and the Western League), compared to two and three such leagues today. There were also far more lower minor leagues and teams than now, with teams playing in cities with populations as small as 10,000 or 20,000.

Because the number of minor league teams relative to the number of major league teams was so much greater than today, you had to be both great and lucky to have a long-term major league career.  (You also had to be white, since black players were excluded from “organized baseball” until 1946 and instead played in their own segregated leagues).

As a result, many excellent ballplayers became minor league stars.  As a general rule, the greatest minor league stars of that era fall into these categories:

(1) spitball pitchers who weren’t in the majors in 1920 and thus were not allowed to throw one of their best pitches at the major league level (Frank “Shelly” Shellenback, Rube Robinson, Paul Wachtel and Buzz Arlett are examples — they could continue to throw the spitter in the high minor leagues in which they pitched during the 1920 season thanks to grandfathering, but could not throw it in the majors);

(2) players who hit like major leaguers but didn’t play major league defense (Ike Boone and Smead Jolley are examples — Bill James once wrote that these players had their defensive failures overstated by sportswriters of the era as a way to explain why they weren’t major league stars; however, there is enough objective evidence/stats to suggest their defense was pretty bad);

(3) players who fielded like major leagues but didn’t hit enough or hit with enough power for their positions (Joe Riggert, and Jigger Statz are examples — in fairness to Statz, his most valuable skill, on base percentage, was not as highly valued in his day as it is now; however, while Statz was fast, he was not an effective base stealer at the major league level);

(4) players who were good all-around players but a shade below major league regulars — particularly in the Pacific Coast League, these players had more value to their minor league teams playing in major league-size cities than they did to major league teams (examples are Dick Gyselman, Truck Hannah and Billy Raimondi);

(5) players who had major injuries at the wrong time in their careers (Joe Hauser and Ray Perry are great examples);

(6) players who didn’t take advantage of their major league opportunities, which were fewer than today’s minor league stars get (examples are Bunny Brief (birth name Anthony Grzeszkowski), a fantastic minor league slugger who didn’t hit in any of his three significant major league trials, Nick “Tomato Face” Cullop and Spence Harris);

(7) players who developed late, i.e., after age 27 (Ollie Carnegie and Ox Eckhardt are great examples of a common type of minor league star); and

(8) players whose careers were interrupted by World War II.

In fact, a majority of the great minor league stars of this era and most of those listed above fit into more than one of the categories I’ve identified above, along with others not mentioned.  Perhaps the one all-encompassing factor for minor league stars was simply bad luck.

For example, Buzz Arlett, probably the quintessential minor league star of this era, started his career as a pitcher whose best pitch was a spitball.  He was still establishing himself as a PCL ace in 1920, the only league in which he could throw his best pitch after that season.  He converted to a full-time hitter in 1923 at age 24, and by the time he had established his bona fides as a top PCL slugger, he was no longer young.

Further, his team, the Oakland Oaks, rightfully recognized Arlett as their franchise player and wouldn’t sell him to a major league team for less than $100,000, too high a price for a hitter his age.  When the Oaks’ price finally came down, Arlett was past 30 and had put on weight, which negatively impacted his outfield defense.  Despite a great year at the plate for the 1931 Phillies in his only major league season at age 32, this Phillies team sucked eggs, and Arlett spent almost all of his remaining professional career in Baltimore and Minneapolis, big cities with major league caliber fan bases and ballparks taylor-made for left-handed sluggers like Arlett.

Since about 1978, the Society for Advanced Baseball Research (“SABR”) has done a great job of educating today’s baseball fandom of the great minor league stars who played in this bygone era.  The purpose of this article, notwithstanding my long introduction, is to identify the minor league stars, if any, playing today.

I decided that in order to qualify as a contemporary minor league star, a player had to have at least 4,000 career minor league plate appearances in AA and AAA ball, based on the premise that you can’t have been a minor league star unless you spent a long time playing in the high minors.  Bear in mind, that given the shorter playing schedules of even the top minor league teams today, it takes nearly eight full seasons at the AA and AAA levels to meet this requirement.

[A couple of notes here: organized baseball (and thus baseball-reference.com) treat the Mexican summer league as a AAA league (the quality of play is probably closer to AA ball) but do not consider Japan's NPB (a true 4-A league) and South Korea's KBO (probably between AAA and AA in terms of level of play) as AA or AAA leagues.  I have followed the OB/baseball-reference definition since I'm interested in identifying American minor league stars, neither NPB or KBO is really a "minor league" regardless of the level of play (the countries' top players play in these leagues and are not readily available to MLB the way the best Mexican League players are), and it makes it much simpler to calculate who qualifies.]

At first, I thought that there would not be a lot of players meeting this requirement, because a number of the most well-known 4-A players since 2000 don’t qualify — specifically, Dan Johnson, Dallas McPherson, Tag Bozied, Brad Eldred and Joe Borchard don’t have enough plate appearances to qualify.  I also figured that there wouldn’t be a lot of player in today’s professional game who could play for years and years at a high level without substantial major league careers cutting into their high-minors playing time.

Turns out I was wrong.  There are a great number of contemporary players who qualify as minor league stars under my definition.  In no particular order, the following are the contemporary minor league stars I was able to find.

1.  Jack Cust (3758 AAA plate appearances, 568 AA, and 2581 MLB).  Cust is clearly the best of the contemporary minor league stars, and he has had a significant major league career.  Even so, he spent years and years in the high minors before the money-ball Oakland A’s decided his OPS was too high ignore, no matter how low his batting average or how many times he struck out, and he’s now back in the high minors since his major league run ended in 2011. Cust’s career minor league OPS of .936 and major league OPS of .813 are far and away the best of any contemporary minor league batting star.

The player Cust reminds me most of in baseball history is Ripper Collins.  Collins was a slugging 1Bman for great Cardinals and Cubs teams from 1931 through 1938, playing for three pennant winners and two World Champions and leading the NL with 35 HRs and 128 RBIs in 1934.  Ripper was a great minor league star before and after his long major league career.

Collins slugged 135 HRs in the Show and 193 HRs in the minors.  Cust has hit 105 in the Show and 225 in the minors.  Collins hit for a much higher average, but Cust has a slightly higher on-base percentage at the major league level.

This type of player was much more common in the pre-1955 era than today, in part because major league careers were more precarious than today (one bad year and the team often decided to give someone else a shot, sending the veteran back to the minors for good) and also because it was easier to accumulate plate appearances in the high minors which had schedules as long or longer than the major league schedule.  See Dale Alexander, Smead Jolley, Jack Bentley and Joe Hauser as examples.

2.  Mike Hessman (4530 and counting AAA plate appearances, 1008 AA, 250 MLB).  Mike Hessman is a great minor league slugger who has been identified as the real life “Crash” Davis because he is the active minor league home run leader by a wide margin.  Hessman has hit 369 minor league home runs (plus six in Japan and 14 in the Show) in his professional career, which likely places him in the bottom of the top ten all-time (I haven’t been able to find any information on the top Mexican League sluggers other than Hector Espino, who at 484 career HRs, is the all-time minor league HR leader).

However, Hessman has also struck out a whopping 2,168 times in his professional career.  His chronic inability to make contact has limited him to a career minor league batting average and OPS of .230 and .773 (.188 and .694 in the Show).  His ability to slug the long ball has kept him around in the high minors for years, but he’s clearly not a major league player unless a bunch of guys on the parent club get hurt.

Stay tuned for part two of this series.

Baseball Brawls

Because of the big brawl yesterday between the Padres and the Dodgers in which Zack Greinke broke his collar bone, apparently when he and Carlos Quentin traded shoulder blocks, Sports Illustrated is running an on-line article it advertizes as “the most notorious brawls in baseball history”.  It then lists 13 relatively recent brawls, only three of which occurred before 1993 and none before 1965.

At least the article included Juan Marichal hitting catcher John Roseboro over the head with his bat after Marichal claimed that Roseboro buzzed his head with a throw back to pitcher Sandy Koufax, because Koufax wouldn’t throw at Marichal after Marichal had plunked at least one Dodger (Koufax reputedly refused to throw at hitters because he was afraid his 98 mph fast ball, the fastest of his day, might kill someone).

You see, before 1965 baseball was a game of peace and love where no one ever mixed it up.

What a load of BS.  Baseball was a rough, rough game in its early professional days and has gotten more and more tame as players have become better paid and MLB has worked to make the games family entertainment.

In the 1880′s and 1890′s the game was hard fought in a literal sense.  Umpires were routinely threatened by players and fans, and it was not uncommon for both to back up their tough talk with physical violence.  The best teams of the era, the St. Louis Browns of the 1880′s American Association and the Baltimore Orioles of the 1890′s National League regularly abused umpires and opposing players forcing/inspiring other teams to follow suit.

During this era, there was generally only one umpire monitoring the action, and when his eyes were following the ball, fielders tried to impede base runners by getting in the way, tripping them, throwing knees or elbows and even body blocks, or grabbing their belts.  Baserunners responded in kind, and one base runner famously defeated the belt-grabbing strategy by unhooking his belt so that when an opposing fielder grabbed it, the fielder was left holding the belt as the runner continued round the bases.

Fans threw glass bottles and rotten eggs at opposing players and umpires, and on-field fist fights were common.  Most professional baseball players came from poor or working class backgrounds, life was hard for working class men in the late 19th century when the national economy was notoriously boom or bust, and a major league ball player’s salary was something worth fighting for.

The game got so rough that baseball and ballplayers got unsavory reputations, which kept many potential fans away from the ballparks.  This only changed when the American League announced itself as a major league before the 1901 season and quickly began moving teams into the biggest cities.

The AL’s driving force and strong man Ban Johnson felt the “rowdyism” of the 1890′s was bad for the game, and he wouldn’t allow it in his league.  The NL eventually followed suit.

Further, as major league revenues and salaries, more former college players entered the game and brought with them the ethics of elite and more upper class amateurism.  Most notable of these players was New York Giants ace Christy Mathewson, probably the player most mythologized during his own day of any player in baseball history.  [Matthewson had attended Bucknell University, was exceptionally handsome and was far and away the best player on the dominant club of his day -- there is a certain irony in the fact this All-American icon died prematurely as a long-term result of being gassed by his own government in a training exercise during World War I.]

However, the cleaning up of major league baseball wasn’t something that happened over night.  It was a long and slow process, and with the exception of the famous Marichal/Roseboro bat incident, the game has gotten more and more tame as high salaries and professionalism have reduced the incentives for violence.

Here is a post from espn.com which at least goes back beyond 1965 in referencing famous baseball brawls/fights.  I particularly like the quote from Yankees’ catcher and Hall of Famer Bill Dickey after he famously broke Washington Senators’ outfielder Carl Reynolds’ jaw with a single punch following a home plate collision on July 4. 1932: “It was hot, and the games had been close, and I had been banged around for days,” Dickey said. “When Reynolds came at me high, I just had to hit somebody.”  [Dickey received a month-long suspension and was fined $1,000, probably a sixth of his 1932 salary.]

Even if Sports Illustrated’s memory doesn’t extend back any further than incidents for which it can provide pretty pictures, don’t for a minute think that human nature has changed much since the American pastime turned pro in the late 1860′s.

Bad Craziness

The big news today is Dodger pitcher Zack Greinke breaking his collar bone in a scrum with the Padres Carlos Quentin after Greinke hit Quentin with an inside fastball.  I think it would be a whole lot easier to change the rules to reduce home plate collisions than it would be to end hit-by-pitch fights.

Home plate collisions could be reduced almost to non-existence simply by clarifying and enforcing the rule that catchers may not move into the base line until they have the ball in their mitts and by passing a rule that runners may not come in high (or must slide) on a play at the plate.  I strongly suspect that the reason MLB hasn’t passed these simple rule changes/clarifications is that there is a perception that fans like to see home plate collisions because they are exciting, much in the same way that the NHL allows fights that aren’t tolerated in international competition in spite of the obvious health problems that NHL “enforcers” suffer as a result.

On the other hand, hitters charging the mound after getting plunked has always been outlawed in baseball, but still happens for obvious reasons.

Dodger manager Don Mattingly called Quentin an idiot for thinking that Greinke was throwing at him on a 3-2 pitch in a 2-1 ballgame.  Mattingly is hardly an unbiased observer, and it’s frankly a stupid comment.

Here are the facts that mattered to Quentin. This was the third time Greinke had plunked Quentin in about 30 career plate appearances, in which Quentin had also taken Greinke deep three times.  Greinke generally has excellent command.  Quentin is a power hitter who gets hit by a lot of pitches at least in part because pitchers are trying to push him off the plate to neutralize his power.

Getting hit by a 90+ mph fastball hurts.  It’s also a potential threat to Quentin’s health and livelihood.

I’m not justifying Quentin’s actions in charging the mind and I’m not suggesting that Quentin shouldn’t be punished, but I can certainly understand what was likely going through his mind the moment after a pitch up around his head hit him.  I don’t see any way you can legislate away a situation that is already against the rules.  Pitchers will occasionally hit batters with pitched balls, accidentally or on purpose, and either way the batters aren’t going to like it.

The only thing MLB can do is impose stiffer suspensions when these brawls happen, but they have to get the agreement of the players’ association first.  Because the collective bargaining agreement requires just cause for discipline and batters have never received more than eight or ten game suspensions in these circumstances, there’s no way MLB can suspend Quentin for more than ten games and have the sentence stick in impartial arbitration provided for in the collective bargaining agreement.

I don’t see the players’ association agreeing to a suspension for Quentin any longer than the traditional five to ten games.  At least half the membership of the players’ association are hitters who aren’t going to support allowing pitchers to hit hitters with pitches without any consequences.

In my mind, the fact that Greinke got hurt and will miss one to three months while his collarbone mends is simply irrelevant.  Greinke didn’t turn around and run when Quentin charged him — instead, Greinke threw down his mitt and met Quentin’s charge.

In other news, MLB is reportedly paying former Biogenesis employees for documents in part because sources say some ballplayers have similarly purchased Biogenesis documents in order to destroy them.  MLB has already brought a lawsuit against Biogenesis and some of its former employees on a very aggressive legal theory that their actions have damaged the business of baseball, although the main reason for the lawsuit appears to be to enable MLB to conduct discovery of the documents in Biogenesis’ possession in order to discipline wayward players.

If players are buying documents in order to destroy them, I have a feeling this will come out, and MLB will have sufficient evidence to make long suspensions stick.  However, with respect to the documents MLB is paying for, there will be questions about the authenticity of the documents obtained and the motivations of the former Biogenesis employees in providing them, which will weaken the evidentiary value of whatever information the documents contain.

It’s pretty clear that MLB is determined to pursue any players who were involved with Biogenesis and that this issue isn’t going to go away.  We’ll have to wait to see how it all plays out.

Finally, in a college game on Tuesday, Central Arkansas beat Grambling 30-0.  Central Arkansas’ catcher Michael Marrieta went 7-for-7 with three HRs and three doubles, good for 19 total bases.  He also drove in 11 runs and scored six.  Grambling is now 13-18 this season, so they’re not nearly as bad as this one game suggests.

Yet Another Comment on Home Plate Collisions

I recently listened to Giants announcer Mike Krukow discuss one of the key plays of the 2012 World Series: Giants catcher Buster Posey tagging out Tigers behemoth Prince Fielder at home plate in the top of the second inning of Game 2.   According to Krukow, Fielder was out on the play only because (Krukow believes) Fielder was trying to “light up” Posey at home plate, rather than sliding to the outside of the plate to score the run.  Krukow claimed that Fielder has a history of running over catchers when the opportunity presents itself.

As you know, Posey was seriously injured in a home plate collision in 2011.  When he returned to action, the Giants instructed Posey not to block the plate under any circumstances in the future because of his value to the team and its need for him to remain healthy.

Here is video of the play.  Posey sets up outside of the base line by a couple of feet, receives the throw and makes a swipe tag at Fielder sliding by.  Inexplicably, except for the possibility that Fielder was anticipating a collision and hoped to put his full 275 pounds into Posey, Fielder comes inside the base line before beginning his slide.  If he’d stayed outside of the base line and slid to make a hand tag of home plate, Fielder is safe, no question about it.

In fairness to Fielder, Krukow, as a former Giant and long-time team announcer with an old-school attitude towards on-field wrongs, has a long memory of Fielder flattening Giants’ catcher Todd Greene way back in 2006.  Another source I saw blame the next Tiger hitter Jhonny Peralta for failing to direct Fielder to slide away from Posey.  However, Fielder’s collision with Greene almost certainly shortened the latter’s career, as the collision reportedly damaged Greene’s shoulder causing him to tear his rotator cuff in Spring Training the next season.

April Is Good (and Big Catchers)

April is a good time.  After the month-long tease of Spring Training, we finally have major league baseball games again that count toward the championship season.

Only three or four games into the 2013 season, we’ve seen Bryce Harper become the youngest player to hit two home runs on Opening Day and the fourth youngest player to hit a home run on Opening Day, Clayton Kershaw become only the second pitcher since at least 1916 to pitch a shut out and hit a home run on opening day (Hall of Famer Bob Lemon did it in 1953), and Yu Darvish come within one out of a perfect game.  That’s what we’ve been waiting for since the 2012 World Series ended five months ago!

One start into his major league career, Hyun-Jin Ryu, the 2012 off-season’s most exciting foreign signing, looks like the real deal.  While he took a hard-luck loss against the Giants, he allowed only one earned run in 6.1 innings pitched and struck out five while walking none.  However, he also allowed 10 hits and two unearned, suggesting he’s still got some things to learn about pitching to major league hitters compared to those in the Korean Baseball Organization.

I read somewhere during Spring Training that Ryu was probably only a fourth or fifth starter in MLB.  However, his spring training numbers didn’t show it.  In six starts and seven appearances this spring, he had a 3.29 ERA with a pitching line of 27.1 IP, 17 hits, one HR, eight BBs and 27 Ks.  You couldn’t ask for much more than that from a pitcher pitching against major league (and high minors) hitters for the first time.

I’m sure Ryu still has some things to learn, he could blow out his pitching arm before the 2013 season’s over, and I still think he needs to lose a few pounds, but so far he hasn’t done anything to suggest he isn’t worth the big contract the Dodgers gave him.

I read yesterday on mlbtraderumors.com that the Orioles tried, but were unable, to sign catcher Matt Wieters to a long-term contract extension this Spring.  This may be the best contract the Orioles never signed.

Catchers Matt Wieters’ size (he’s listed by baseball reference as 6’5″ and 240 lbs) very rarely have long major league careers.  Of the top 20 catchers all-time in terms of games played at the position, the largest to date was Lance Parrish, who baseball reference lists as 6’2″ and 210 lbs (fangraphs says he weighed 220 lbs).

Players at all positions are steadily getting bigger, and A. J. Pierzynski (who is listed as 6’3″ and 235 lbs, is currently 27th all-time in games played at catcher, and has averaged 124 games caught per season for the last three years) is only 75 more games played away from jumping up to 19th all-time in games caught.  However, the only other catcher of that size in the top 30 is Ernie Lombardi (6’3″ and 230 lbs) who is currently 28th all-time.

Matt Wieters has played 126, 132 and 134 games at catcher the last three seasons, and, so long as he doesn’t get hurt, is likely to play roughly that many each of the next three seasons before he becomes eligible for free agency.

I’ve written many times over the last few years about how the Twins should stop running Joe Mauer (6’5″, 230 lbs) out at catcher 120+ games a year at catcher, and Brian McCann (6’3″, 230 lbs), who had his best two offensive seasons at ages 22 and 24 and has seen his OPS drop each of the last four seasons, is pretty much the poster-boy for the problems with playing a man that size at catcher 120+ games a season year after year.

Wieters is represented by Scott Boras, which usually means that it will take the absolute maximum to get Wieters signed long term.  If the O’s plan to play Wieters 130+ games a year at catcher for the next three seasons, they’d almost certainly be better off letting some other team give him the ginormous contract he’ll get as a free agent.

What Are the Chances Johan Santana Makes the Hall of Fame?

At this moment, probably not good.  Johan Santana had shoulder surgery today and, according to espn.com, will miss the entire season for the second time in three years.  He is vowing to pitch again in the major leagues, but whether he actually does remains to be seen.

Santana’s claim to be a Hall of Famer rests on the fact that he was indisputably the best pitcher in major league baseball for the five year period from 2004 through 2008.  During that span he led his league in wins, ERA, innings pitched or strike outs eight times, won two Cy Young Awards and could have, with a little more luck, won four Cy Young Awards.  Santana was clearly a better pitcher than Bartolo Colon in 2005, and there was very little daylight between his and Tim Lincecum‘s numbers in 2008.

However, Santana’s career wins total is presently 139, and that’s awfully few for a Hall of Fame candidate.

The (relatively) recent pitcher whom Santana most closely resembles among the All-Time Greats is Sandy Koufax.  Koufax finished his career with a record of 165-87 (.655 winning percentage), not a whole lot different from Santana’s 139-78 (.641 winning percentage).  Both were left-handed strike out pitchers with excellent command.

Koufax was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1972, his first year of eligibility.  The problem for Santana, of course, is that Koufax’s last five seasons were clearly better than Santana’s best five.  Koufax led the league in wins, winning percentage, ERA, IP and Ks 13 times his last five seasons.  Using the newer metric, wins above replacement, which should take into account the facts Koufax’s days were a much better time to be a pitcher than Santana’s and the Dodgers of Koufax’s era were better than Santana’s Twins/Mets, Koufax’s last five lead Santana’s best five 40.8 t0 35.4 according to baseball reference’s formula and an even larger 43.3 to 31.6 using fangraphs’ formula.

The Dodgers won three pennants and two World Series in Koufax’s last five seasons, and Koufax also threw four no-hitters (compared to one for Santana) and a perfect game in his career and set what was at the time the single season strike out record and is still only one behind the all-time record.

Something else that will hurt Santana’s future Hall of Fame chances is that unlike Koufax, who walked away from the game at his peak, we’ve had to watch Santana battle arm problems for the last four years, which has made it easier for people to forget just how good Santana was when he was at the top of his game.

In my mind, the biggest knock on Santana as an all-time great is that he was never a pitcher who finished what he started.  In his career, he has thrown only 15 complete games.  In comparison, Koufax completed 27 games in each of his last two seasons.

The game has changed a lot, of course, since Koufax’s day, and it’s highly unlikely that any major league pitcher will ever again complete as many as 27 games over the course of two consecutive major league seasons, let alone one.  Even so, Santana hasn’t completed a lot of games even by the standards of the current era.  Santana is tied with the much younger Matt Cain for 14th place among active pitchers and is miles behind Roy Halladay (66) and CC Sabathia (35) the active leaders.

Although complete games are much rarer than they once were, they are still awfully important since bullpen fatigue is a much bigger problem now than it was in the days when starters regularly finished games and the last couple of guys in the bullpen didn’t pitch a whole lot.  Aside from the fact that Roy Halladay’s wins total is much higher than Santana’s, his record of throwing complete games is going to make him a much more attractive candidate to Hall of Fame voters even if Halladay doesn’t do anything more in his career.

A number of Hall of Fame starting pitchers failed to win 200 games in their major league careers: Dizzy Dean (150-83; famously hurt his arm while pitching with a broken toe he suffered in the 1937 All Star Game), Addie Joss (160-97; he died two days after his 31st birthday of tubercular meningitis), Lefty Gomez (189-102; pitched on six Yankees’ teams that won the World Series), Dazzy Vance (197-140; established himself as a major league pitcher at age 31), Rube Waddell (193-143; led the AL in Ks six years in a row between 1902 and 1907), Big Ed Walsh (195-126; the last pitcher to win 40 games or throw 450+ innings in a season) and Happy Jack Chesbro (198-132; his 41 wins in 1904 is the most by any pitcher since the mound was moved back to 60 feet six inches in 1893).

What I take from this list is that Johan Santana will need to come back and match Dizzy Dean’s 150 career wins to have  a serious shot at making the Hall of Fame.