Community Research Project

He still had a little ways to go but he was showing improvement, and it was known he was working very hard.

He had a good chance to become productive at the very least.

Are you just looking for us to throw a name or two out at a time and compile a list, or are you looking for something more systematic?

I’m more of an analytical writer type than a number-cruncher type, but I’ll pitch in what I can.

just to let you know I did a study a while ago about what minor league stat translated to major league wRC+ the best. The best was BB%, then BB/K, then minor league wRC+. Thats pretty strange, plate discipline correlates more to major league wRC+ than minor league wRC+.

Did they really improve their “plate discipline” or did pitchers simply stop throwing them strikes (start nibbling) once they became productive middle of the order sluggers? I suppose that in Kemp’s case you can actually look at his Pitch F/X data to see how his percentage of out-the-strike-zone pitches has changed over the course of his MLB career.

Was going to mention him as a candidate, but he actually had decent BB% even in the low minors (8-9%), with K% around 20-25%. The walk rate has since jumped to 10-11%.

BB%/K% per year/level

2002 (A-): 3.9/25.0
2003 (A): 5.6/24.9
2004 (A+-AA-AAA): 8.6/25.1
2005 (AA-AAA): 11.5/25.0
2006 (AAA): 9.9/23.6

Nice steady jumps in BB% from 2002 (age 21) through 2005 (age 24), settling in around 10% into the bigs. By 2007 he got more ABs in MLB than in the minors.

I remember looking at this for teenagers in A ball, guys like Puello and Rodriguez, and at that stage walk rates had very little correlation even with future walk rates. I believe the studies showing strong correlations are due to higher levels and/or players 21 or older.

I looked at it from the other direction though. That is, just grab some old years of SAL data, sort by age to pick out the players 20 and under, and compare the high walk and low walk groups.

In 213 AB’s at AA Raul Mondesi had 8 BB and 47 K
That works out to 3.756% BB and 22.056% K if my math is correct

Hello John I was hoping to get your opinion and also those of your knowledgeable posters on a debate concerning Travis Snider.

It ties into the topic of your post about walk and strikeouts and whether they are a death knell for the career of those young players to whom they belong.

A few fans seem to be of the opinion that Snider is a bust, despite only being 23-years-old, arguing that his poor contact, walk, and strikeout rates in the Majors and at points of his minor league career represent a crippling flaw in his overall skillset.

Here are a few snippets of the argument:

“People who post strikout rates like his, without another basic baseball skill necessary to balance out contact rate, do not survive. As he currently is, he will never be a usable major league regular.”

“A 20-year-old hitting like this is not a concern. A 23 year old should be fully developed.”

“His career major league numbers are 7.5% vs. 26.9% over 877 plate appearances. Terrible. Minor league walk numbers are easily influenced by pitches in the minor leagues having less control. The most troubling number was always his contact rate, which is hideous. Walk rate should translate well to the majors if you have discipline. His haven’t. But his whiff rate has translated just fine.”

Person A: “Do young players sometimes struggle in a way non-indicative of their actual ability? All the time!”

Person B: “It’s not struggling, it’s a bad skill set. The struggles are a result of the bad skillset, not bad luck, and not adjustment problems. The reasons the other players you mention improve is that their skillsets aren’t bad ones in the first place. They just need to adjust. Snider needs to change his entire hitting approach.”

“Here is a list of players just like him, guys who post ~7.5% walk rates and ~26% strikeout rates: Jeff Mathis, Jose Hernandez, Pete Incaviglia, Brant Brown, Bill Hall, Austin Jackson, Dazzy Vance.”

“Snider needs to change. It’s not adjustment, it’s a bad skill set. If he doesn’t, the best he can hope for is a career like Pete Incaviglia.”

“If you wanted to compare a prospect with him that fits into a similar niche, pick Mike Carp. Oh, and I’m not confident on Mike Carp having a good career either, for the record.”

"Sniders skill set is his contact rates (k%), plate patience (BB%) and power (ISO.) Players that strike out as much as he does and walk as little as he does DO NOT DO WELL in major league baseball."

My opinion has been that Snider is still very young, and was rushed to the big leagues (playing in only 2 minor league season’s before debuting as a 20-year-old in the Show).

That Snider’s minor league track record shows that he has been able to walk at an above average rate (10.3%), and though his strikeout rates were bad in the minors (23.5%), they are nowhere near as bad as his major league rate of 27%.

Furthermore, there have been enough players who posted worse walk to strikeout differentials over their minor league careers, who have gone on to become pretty good players. Here are a few names I came up with, but I`m sure there are more throughout history and at present.

Ryan Howard 15.8
Mike Stanton 14.8
Nelson Cruz 14.6
Jay Bruce 14.2
Mark Reynolds 13.5
Travis Snider 13.2

So clearly it can`t be that big a death knell for a young players career, right?

In addition, I believe that Snider has only had 899 plate appearences in the major leagues and that it usually takes around 1000 professional at bats to ascertain anything with any accuracy about a players actual ability.

Moreover, Snider`s consolidated major league career stats represent nothing more than aggregation of several small sample sizes (from 2008-2011), with only 2010 coming close to representing a full season for Snider, and even that is a stretch, as he only had 298 at bats and played in 82 games. Not coincidentally, he posted his best numbers, projecting out to 26 homeruns over 550 at-bats.

Please everyone let me know your opinions on this issue. Is it much, much too early to give up on former top prospect like Travis Snider. Are his flaws too much for him to become a “useful major leaguer”? Or are his flaws not as bad as his major league stats suggest. Are there other players who have succeeded posting low walk rates, and high strikeout rates? The first two who come to mind are Mark Trumbo and JP Arencibia, but they’re just rookies. Are there any others you know of?

Thanks.

Obviously, “underlying skill set” is a difficult thing to measure, but it seems to me like there are several things that go into K and BB rate:
-contact
-judgement (in/out of zone)
-working the count (little different from judgment, more like swinging at borderline strike three but taking borderline strike in a 2-0.)

From a scouting/prospecting perspective, you want to identify a prospects skills to see what he can improve. Maybe some of these never improve, some typically do, some always do, etc.

This helps control for stuff like pitchers nibbling because they’re afraid, since we look at the batter’s responses to pitches rather than his overall results.

Of course, swing, o-swing, contact, etc. percentages are what you want here, but they’re hard to get for minor leaguers.