Projecting Adalberto Mejia, the Return for Eduardo Nunez

Adalberto Mejia’s turned in a 2.81 ERA in 18 starts between Double-A and Triple-A this year. His ERA was helped by a low BABIP, especially at the Double-A level. But even so, his 24% strikeout and 6% walk rates signify a solid pitcher. Although he’s pitched professionally since 2011, Mejia didn’t turn 23 until last month, which makes his high-minors dominance all the more impressive. Mejia’s numbers where significantly less impressive in a limited sample last season, but were still encouraging from a 22-year-old at Double-A.

My newly revamped KATOH projection system rates Mejia as a good, but not elite, pitching prospect. It projects him for 3.4 WAR over his first six seasons by the traditional method. Incorporating Baseball America rankings bumps Mejia’s forecast up to 3.9 WAR, which places him 94th overall among all prospects. To help you visualize what KATOH’s projection entails, here is a probability density function showing KATOH+’s projected distribution of outcomes for Mejia’s first six seasons in the major leagues.

Capture

To put some faces to Mejia’s statistical profile, let’s go ahead and generate some statistical comps for the southpaw. I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Mejia’s Double-A and Triple-A performance this year and every season at those levels since 1991 in which a pitcher recorded at least 350 batters faced. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues. A lower “Mah Dist” reading indicates a closer comp.

Please note that the Mahalanobis analysis is separate from KATOH. KATOH relies on macro-level trends, rather than comps. The fates of a few statistically similar players shouldn’t be used to draw sweeping conclusions about a prospect’s future. For this reason, I recommend using a player’s KATOH forecast to assess his future potential. The comps give us some interesting names that sometimes feel spot-on, but they’re mostly just there for fun.

Adalberto Mejia’s Mahalanobis Comps
Rank Name Mah Dist Projected KATOH+ WAR Actual WAR
1 Victor Santos 0.28 2.3 3.8
2 John Thomson 0.36 2.4 13.7
3 Zack Greinke 0.49 2.3 32.0
4 Jeff Karstens 0.66 2.0 3.4
5 John Johnstone 0.76 2.1 1.3
6 Ricky Nolasco 0.82 3.4 16.6
7 Jeff Housman 0.90 2.0 0.0
8 Peter Munro 0.97 3.5 3.3
9 Pat Misch 0.99 2.1 1.0
10 Wil Ledezma 1.02 2.9 1.4





Chris works in economic development by day, but spends most of his nights thinking about baseball. He writes for Pinstripe Pundits, FanGraphs and The Hardball Times. He's also on the twitter machine: @_chris_mitchell None of the views expressed in his articles reflect those of his daytime employer.

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BritishCub
7 years ago

Liking the distribution graph there, really helps to visualise the risk/reward. Out of curiosity is there any reason the maha distances are so small in the comps compared to what we usually see?