What follows does not constitute the most rigorous of statistical analyses. Rather, it’s designed to serve as a nearly responsible shorthand for people who, like the author, have considerably more enthusiasm for than actual knowledge of the collegiate game — a shorthand means, that is, towards detecting which players have produced the most excellent performances of the college season.

As in the first two editions of this same thing, what I’ve done is utilize principles recently introduced by Chris Mitchell on forecasting future major-league performance with minor-league stats.

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Earlier today, I published the third in a three-part series devoted to producing and analyzing objective demographic data regarding those players who’ve become good major leaguers. The thought has been that, at best, the results might have some predictive value regarding future good major leaguers; at worst, that they’d at least document the origins of the league’s best players.

In the third part of the series — an examination of which college conferences had produced the most good players over the last five years — I noticed that the Pac-12 Conference was responsible for an inordinate number of talented second baseman. Jason Kipnis, Dustin Pedroia, and Chase Utley were all drafted and signed out of Pac-12 schools — and Ian Kinsler had been compelled to leave Arizona State for Missouri only because he was displaced at shortstop by Pedroia.

Collectively, those four players have produced 75 wins since 2010, averaging just over 4.0 WAR per every 600 plate appearances. Of the 50 player-seasons of three wins or better* produced by second baseman since 2010, they’re responsible for 16 (i.e. nearly a third) of them. And this is merely accounting for those second baseman who were members of Pac-12 schools. Ben Zobrist, another college product who’s played mostly second base, has recorded another five good seasons. Danny Espinosa, Dan Uggla, and Rickie Weeks have all also recorded multiple good seasons by this measure.

*Or what I’ll also refer to as a “good” season throughout the remainder of this post.

That seemed like a lot of college players developing into good major-league second basemen. On account of I’m paid to do such things, I endeavored to determine if it really was.

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What follows represents the third in a three-part series devoted to producing and analyzing objective demographic data regarding those players who’ve become good major leaguers. Last Wednesday, I considered good players by their amateur origins — i.e. whether they were signed to professional contracts out of college, junior college, etc. On Friday, I examined good players by draft round. In this installment, I look at good players by the conferences in which they played as collegiate athletes (which obviously excludes international, prep, and junior-college players).

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Episode 538
Kiley McDaniel is the lead prospect analyst for FanGraphs and Eric Longenhagen is a different prospect analyst for FanGraphs. They’re the surprisingly reasonable guests on this edition of FanGraphs, recorded live and outdoors in Phoenix following a weekend game between Arizona State and Long Beach State.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 44 min play time.)

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Earlier today, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Toronto Blue Jays. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not Toronto’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Jays’ system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in theToronto system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

5. Dalton Pompey, OF (Profile)

A reasonable projection for a player with limited or no major-league experience requires the translation of that same minor leaguer’s stats to their major-league equivalents. There’s essentially a “penalty,” then, for numbers produced at Triple-A relative to the major leagues — and ever greater penalties for Double-A stats, High-A stats, etc. Pompey represents an interesting case insofar as he began the 2014 season at High-A Dunedin — indeed, remained there until the end of June — but ended it with the parent club. So, despite the fact that Pompey produced mostly competent lines in higher levels, a projection system like Steamer won’t ignore those 300-plus plate appearances in the Florida State League during which he produced very good, but also not unprecedented, numbers. If the projection appears muted relative to Pompey’s tools and/or late-season performance, this is the likely explanation.

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Note: this post contains three-dimensional pie charts, less because they’re particularly well suited to presenting data clearly and more because the author’s whole life is an exercise in questionable decision-making.

What follows represents the second in a three-part series devoted to producing and analyzing objective demographic data regarding those players who’ve become good major leaguers. On Wednesday, I considered good players by their amateur origins — i.e. whether they were signed to professional contracts out of college, junior college, etc. In this installment, I look at good players by the round in which they were originally selected during the amateur draft (which obviously excludes any consideration of those players signed as international free agents).

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Earlier today, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Los Angeles Dodgers. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not L.A.’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Dodgers’ system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in the Los Angeles system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

5. Joe Wieland, RHP (Profile)

Wieland has been well acquitted by the projections for some time now, having produced considerably above-average strikeout- and walk-rate differentials through much of the minors but having been delayed en route to any sort of substantial major-league trial by an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery and which caused him to miss much of the last two seasons. He enters 2015 with his health, however. Given the Dodgers’ rotation depth, Wieland is a candidate to begin the season in Albuquerque. Alternatively, he might join the bullpen, in which capacity he’d likely post better per-inning numbers than his projections here indicate.

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Recently, Jeff Sullivan wrote a piece here attempting to answer a question notable both for its simplicity and importance. The question: how many good players were good prospects?

As Sullivan notes, one typically finds the question pursued in reverse: of this or that group of prospects (top-10 prospects, top-100 prospects, etc), how did they fare in the major leagues (if they even made it that far)? There’s great utility in this sort of information — in particular where our understanding of prospect valuations is concerned. An appearance by a young player on one of these prospect lists tends to indicate, if not certain future value, at least present trade value. In other words: even those prospects who fail to record even one plate appearance or innings — even they are capable of possessing significant value.

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Episode 537
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he discusses certain relevant and sexy exploits from the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 45 min play time.)

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Earlier today, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Los Angeles Angels. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not L.A.’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Angels’ system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in the Los Angeles system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

t4. Taylor Featherston, 2B/SS (Profile)

All three of the batter-type prospects who appear here were acquired by the Angels over the offseason: Featherston from the Rockies and Cubs by way of the Rule 5 draft and then a trade; Kubitza from a trade with Atlanta; Perez, in a different trade, with Houston. None profiles as even an average major leaguer according to Kiley McDaniel, but all three feature non-negligible present value per Steamer. Featherston, for his part, will compete this spring training with three other players — Johnny Giavotella, Grant Green, and Josh Rutledge — to fill the second-base vacancy created by the departure of Howie Kendrick to the Dodgers. None of that triumvirate is demonstrably better or worse than Featherston according to Steamer.

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