Barrel Awareness: Revisiting the Texas League's '06 Bats

July 4, 2009

Yesteday, I released a study where I highlighted current minor leaguers by league who have above-average walk, strikeout and power rates. My thinking was that hitters who are above-average in these three skills are relatively safe bets to find major league success.

A reader in our forums challenged me to put my criteria to the test by looking at minor leaguers from 5-10 years ago. Fangraphs.com has minor league data starting in 2006; I chose the Texas League in 2006.

My initial pass/fail thresholds excluded more than a couple guys who have gone on to become solid or better big leaguers. So I'm back with some tweaks.

New criteria

1. Double-A players in this study must be under the age of 25 on 4/1/06.

2. A minimum of 300 PA are needed in the designated league and year.

New method

I scrapped eliminating players strictly because they did not meet certain thresholds and instead calculated their deviations from the mean in walk percentage, strikeout percentage and isolated power. For now, I'm giving all three deviations equal weights and totaling them -- a score of 2.00 below would mean that the player totaled two combined deviations from the league 2008 mean in walk percentage, strikeout percentage and isolated power. Position scarcity, age and park were not adjusted for in this study.

Results

Below are the top 10 Texas League hitters from 2006 by deviations from the average 2008 Texas League regular in walk percentage, strikeout percentage, and isolated power combined:

1. Alex Gordon, 3B (2/10/84) -- 2.94

2. Ben Zobrist, SS/2B/OF (5/26/81) -- 2.75

3. Hunter Pence, RF (4/13/83) -- 2.31

4. Kurt Suzuki, C (10/4/83) -- 2.26

5. Jarrett Hoffpauir, 2B (6/18/83) -- 1.97

6. Seth Smith, LF (9/30/82) -- 1.91

7. Chris Lubanski, LF (3/24/85) -- 1.75

8. Troy Tulowitzki, SS (10/10/84) -- 1.63

9. Joe Koshansky, 1B (5/26/82) -- 1.54

10. Billy Butler, 1B (4/18/86) -- 1.29

Discussion

This is starting to shape up a little better, isn't it?

Clearly, our three offensive categories should not be weighted equally. I'm planning on doing some correlation studies in order to help improve this aspect of my research. But I think it's exciting that some relatively simple calculations can produce a list like the one above.

The order is definitely not how I'd rank these players overall. Defensive adjustments would greatly improve the quality of the list.

While I do think age and park adjustments would strengthen this type of study, I'm not sure how big of an impact adjusting for them will make. I'd expect the younger guys to improve as contact and power hitters as they mature. Park definitely has a role in a player's isolated power, but I don't think it drastically impacts on walk and strikeout percentage.

Wrap-up

I'm having fun conducting this research. On top of working on getting some correlations, I'm planning on strengthening my league averages by taking them from one-year averages to three-year.

 

You can discuss this study and my previous study in our minor league forum.