Long-Awaited and Final Stat Report on the Caribbean Leagues

Quite a lot has happened since November 22nd. Not to the author, specifically — his life is more or less a metronome of quiet anguish — but for the world, generally, that is. Among those many events which have come to pass in the last month-plus: the conclusion of the regular season for each of the four major Caribbean winter leagues.

Not necessarily because such an exercise is of great utility, but definitely because it provides a means to contemplating baseball whilst moping through the depths of January, the author has published below a final statistical report on those same Caribbean Leagues.

Specifically, what the author has done is to identify the regressed hitting and pitching leaders in the Dominican Winter, Mexican Pacific, Puerto Rican, and Venezuelan Winter Leagues separately. What he’s then done is to combine the hitting and pitching leaders of those leagues into a triumvirate of top-10 lists, which one can find below. Note: all ages are as of July 1, 2013; all organizations, as of the end of regular-season play.

Final SCOUT Leaderboard: Caribbean Leagues Hitting
Below is the final SCOUT batting leaderboard for all the Caribbean League hitters, combined. SCOUT+ combines regressed home-run, walk, and strikeout rates in a FIP-like equation to produce a result not unlike wRC+, where 100 is league average and above 100 is above average. Note that xHR%, xBB%, and xK% stand for expected home run, walk, and strikeout rate, respectively.

Final SCOUT Leaderboard: Caribbean Leagues Pitching (Overall)
Below is the final SCOUT pitching leaderboard all the Caribbean Leagues, combined. SCOUT- combines regressed strikeout and walk rates in a kwERA-like equation to produce a number not unlike ERA-, where 100 is league average and below 100 is better than average. Note that xK% and xBB% stand for expected strikeout and walk rate, respectively.

Final SCOUT Leaderboard: Caribbean Leagues Pitching (Starters)
Here’s the final pitching leaderboard, except confined only to those pitchers who’ve made at least half their appearances in a starting capacity.

*Denotes an estimated figure.

Notes
• First base-type Alex Cabrera has a player page at the present site only on the merit, really, of 87 plate appearances he recorded for Arizona in 2000. The majority of his career otherwise was passed in Japan, where, for example, he hit 55 home runs with Seibu in 2002. Nor is the use of the past tense verb (i.e. was) in the previous sentence entirely inappropriate: Cabrera was unemployed for all of 2013 leading up to the Venezuelan Winter League, which league’s home-run record he’s just broken, it appears, a couple days before his 42nd birthday.

• The author of this post is responsible for almost all the coverage at FanGraphs regarding in- and outfielder Yamaico Navarro. Among that coverage is a different post concerning Navarro’s Steamer projection, which projection suggests that Navarro might have the capacity to produce wins at something like a league-average rate in the majors. Indeed, Navarro’s performance in the Dominican has done nothing to contradict that possibility. After playing for Baltimore in 2013, he’s now a member of the Yankees.

• Houston’s Jon Singleton, Cleveland’s Jesus Aguilar, and Texas’s Jurickson Profar are the three players among the Caribbean’s top-10 hitters whom one might reasonably call a “prospect.” Indeed, history reports that all three actually started the 2012 Futures Game. All three also appear here, on this infallible leaderboard for the Caribbean Leagues.

• Pitcher Xavier Cedeno’s performance for Santurce of the Puerto Rican League was a bit very excellent — and also not entirely without precedent. The left-hander recorded a strikeout rate of 26.1% with Houston in 2012. After a super miserable start to his 2013 campaign — during which interval he conceded 11 runs in just 6.1 innings and was subsequently claimed off waivers by Washington — he recorded similar rates both in the minor and major leagues.

• The top two starters among all Caribbean League pitchers have pitched a total of zero innings in affiliated basebll. Nao Higashihama made five effective starts this year for Fukuoka, his first season in the NPB. Misael Siverio, meanwhile, defected from Cuba in June, and is likely looking to sign with a major-league club.