Here at Minor-ity Report, we are known for scouring the darkest corners of minor league baseball for talent and sharing our findings with fans and readers. This column is a departure from our familiar format. We will be examining established, star-caliber Major League starting pitchers and their performance in the low minor leagues and discuss potentially elusive early indicators for their ultimate success. It is not surprising that many of today’s major league aces dominated in Single A. Core pitching indicators, such as H/IP, K’s/IP, and BB/IP are often consistent with today’s stats. Without further ado, let’s take a look at how some of today’s stars did in the low minors.
1. Jake Peavy
• 239 IP in Single A. 183 hits allowed, 86 BB, 308 K’s, 2.97 ERA.
• All of Peavy’s core numbers were terrific. Averaging far less than a hit per inning, and well over a K per inning, batters had difficulty making consistent contact against him. Peavy’s miniscule walk rate ensured that he did not create many jams to work out of. Clearly, Peavy had no trouble with Single A and was a good bet to make it to the majors.
2. Fausto Carmona
• 222 IP in Single A. 187 hits allowed, 35 BB, 140 K’s and a 2.26 ERA.
• These stats echo his 2007 major league performance, surrendering fewer walks and hits than each inning pitched. Typically, we eschew control artists in favor of pitchers who average one or more strikeout per inning. But Carmona’s Single A stats indicated that, in addition to having outstanding control, he was hard to hit. The ERA and hits to IP, when combined with control, point to the type of control pitcher who can succeed in the majors (think of vintage control artists like Tom Glavine, Bob Tewskburry, John Tudor, etc).
3. C.C. Sabathia
• 124 IP in Single A, 95 hits allowed, 60 BB, 145 K’s and a 3.40 ERA.
• Sabathia’s stats indicate a young pitcher with very impressive raw talent that needed to be honed in order to be an outstanding major league pitcher. His hits/IP and K’s were superb, but his walk rate was very high and his ERA was mediocre. Like Randy Johnson, Sabathia curbed his wildness and became an ace pitcher in the Bigs. Players like Sabathia explain why we occasionally recommend pitchers with control issues, but will never recommend pitchers who give up many more hits than IP. It is much easier to learn control than to improve “stuff”.
4. Eric Bedard
• 223 IP in Single A, 181 hits, 64 BB, 285 K’s and a 2.89 ERA.
• Bedard was dominant: he allowed few hits and walks, yet managed well over a K per inning. These stats parallel very well Bedard’s 2007 season in the majors (182 IP, 141 hits, 57 BB, 221 K’s). It took a few years for Bedard to recapture his minor league success in the majors. Largely because major league hitters are more talented and selective than those in the minors, Bedard struggled out of the gate and let up more hits and walks than he had in the past. After making the necessary adjustments, Erik Bedard has found the success that many scouts had predicted for years.
5. Josh Beckett
• 134 IP in Single A, 83 hits, 31 BB, 170K’s, and a 1.54 ERA.
• Beckett’s found Single A to be a cakewalk. His absurdly low 0.62 H/IP and 1.54 ERA, combined with 1.27 K/IP proved that Beckett was ready for stiffer competition. While never coming close to a 1.54 ERA in the majors (save for a brief 24 IP late season call-up in 2001), it is no surprise that Beckett is one of the better pitching talents in the game.
6. Carlos Zambrano
• 153 IP in Single A, 98 K’s. 62 BB in 153 IP.
• Good for an average of 0.64 K/IP and surrendering exactly one hit per inning, it would have taken near-psychic ability to predict that the Carlos Zambrano of 1999 would blossom into even the mediocre Zambrano of 2007. Zambrano’s Single A stats demonstrate that Single A stats are not always predictive of future success.
• In the case of Carlos Zambrano, the numbers do not tell the full story. Zambrano was signed by the Cubs and began professional ball at age 17 in 1997. Already tall, Carlos was not yet the 6’5, 255 pound specimen he is today. Back in Single A, few would have expected his arsenal of pitches to include a hard fastball that sits around 96 miles per hour, a devastating sinker, hard slider, split finger fastball, and a recently developed changeup often used to neutralize lefty batters. In the case of Carlos Zambrano, age and maturity molded this once mediocre single A talent into a top flight major league starter.
7. Johan Santana
• 257 IP in Single A, 258 hits allowed, 85 BB, 249 K and a 4.64 ERA.
• Like Carlos Zambrano, Johan Santana is another example of how analysts cannot universally judge single A talent by their numbers in a vacuum. Both are reasons that we carefully examine scouting and peripheral information about a player before touting them in the Report. Allowing over a hit per inning, with under a strikeout per inning, and a mediocre ERA, nobody looking solely at statistics would have predicted stardom for Johan Santana. Yet, Santana was only 18 years old when pitching in Single A, and scouts thought he had good enough stuff to promote him straight from Single A to the majors. This is why we believe it is important when evaluating pitchers, to get out from behind your computer screen and actually watch the person pitch. Often numbers do not tell the full story. Nothing quite compares to watching a prospect throw and weighting that assessment against expert scouting reports to discern what the numbers might be hiding.
8. Chien-Ming Wang
• 170 IP in Single A, 145 hits allowed, 36 BB, 143 K’s, and a 2.21 ERA.
• Like Carmona, Wang is a control artist and a sinkerballer who challenges batters to get good wood on the ball. Never one to hurt himself with needless walks, Wang’s success in the majors was and is ever-dependant on how well his sinker is moving, his infield defense, and his control of the strike-zone. Not dominating at any level in the strikeout department, betting on a pitcher with Wang’s stats in the minors is typically more risky than pursuing a Josh Beckett type and there have been countless sinkerball, control-artists before Wang that have been relegated to the pen or become journeymen minor-leaguers.
9. Brandon Webb
• 179 IP, 184 hits allowed, 9 homers, 53 walks, and 176 strikeouts.
• Brandon Webb, like previously covered sinkerballers Carmona, Zambrano, and Wang, relies on keeping the ball in the park to succeed. Like Zambrano and unlike Wang, Webb can rack up the strikeouts with his high 90’s heat and hard, heavy cannonball of a sinker. In single A, Brandon Webb averaged 1.03 H:IP and 0.98 K:IP. These numbers do not, in and of themselves, argue on behalf of Webb’s future potential for a Cy Young award. Again, the same proviso issued for Wang and Zambrano applies to Brandon Webb. Watching his sinker dive away from bats and reading in-depth, expert scouting reports would have provided necessary insight to detractors who shied away from Webb based on numbers in isolation.
Our sample included a cross section of top flight starters in modern baseball but is by no means a comprehensive list. In the case of Wang and Carmona, their effectiveness is gauged by their ability to keep the ball in the park and the infield busy rather than a high K:IP ratio. Santana, Beckett, and Bedard primarily depend on the strikeout to neutralize opposing batters. Pitchers like Carlos Zambrano rely on some combination of strikeouts and batted balls pounded into the infield grass to succeed. Each pitcher is unique and their analysis must be customized as such, and involve more than just examining numbers. Questions to ask might involve a pitcher’s injury history, physique, work ethic, composure, pitching armamentarium, age, home ballpark, and more. No single-measure statistic can gauge future superstar arms, but old favorites such as H:IP, K:IP, WHIP, and league-adjusted opposing batting average are all indicators we have traditionally favored along with careful scouting.