Full Count | May 31, 2017

[Boxcar]

Babe Ruth has 9 seasons better than Mike Trout's best, so let's hold off on calling him the greatest of all time for now.

 

The level of competition they each had to play against isn't close.

[Caper]

Bo Bichette should go right to Buffalo. f*** it.

[TwistedLogic]

Bo Bichette should go right to Buffalo. f*** it.

 

The crazy part is that this isn't actually out of the question for 2018. He'll be in High-A this year and if he doesn't crumble, he'll probably start next year in AA. For the Jays, AA seems to only be a step away from the majors.

 

Bo Bichette might be having a cup of coffee as a big leaguer in September as a 20 year old.

[TwistedLogic]

Updated the main post with boxscores for the Fisher Cats double header and the Dunedin loss.

[Slade]

The crazy part is that this isn't actually out of the question for 2018. He'll be in High-A this year and if he doesn't crumble, he'll probably start next year in AA. For the Jays, AA seems to only be a step away from the majors.

 

Bo Bichette might be having a cup of coffee as a big leaguer in September as a 20 year old.

 

Probably a long shot to say the least, midwest league is a hitter friendly league. I can see him hitting somewhat of a wall in A+ ball.

[Olerud363]

The crazy part is that this isn't actually out of the question for 2018. He'll be in High-A this year and if he doesn't crumble, he'll probably start next year in AA. For the Jays, AA seems to only be a step away from the majors.

 

Bo Bichette might be having a cup of coffee as a big leaguer in September as a 20 year old.

 

At this point a cup of coffee as a big leagues next year is the expectation not a positive surprise. Many of the good young prospects the Jays have had, came up for coffee at age 20, the year after low a. Snider, Wells, Gonzales, Green.

 

Of course anything can happen. Both negative and positive. The positive surprise would be significant time in the big leagues next year. If he plays well, and there is a need, he could be up this time next year. Keep in mind no one expected Anthony Alford to show up so early.

[Brownie19]

The level of competition they each had to play against isn't close.

 

Doesn't WAR account for this and the park factors (some diamonds didn't even have fences when Babe played. Other's had 480 ft CF walls

[Captain Adama]

Probably a long shot to say the least, midwest league is a hitter friendly league. I can see him hitting somewhat of a wall in A+ ball.

 

That's not entirely true. The Midwest league is a pitcher friendly league, but not to the extent of the FSL.

[Laika]

Comparing Bo to Trout based on less than 300 plate appearances is getting way out of hand. For every Mike trout there are 1000 travis sniders.

 

Name fifty "Travis Sniders"

[TheHurl]

Name fifty "Travis Sniders"

 

There are only 27 on Linkedin...I'm defeated on this one. My favourite is the State Farm Agent. Oh wait that is our Travis Snider

[TheHurl]

Doesn't WAR account for this and the park factors (some diamonds didn't even have fences when Babe played. Other's had 480 ft CF walls

 

Replacement level would be the greatest change

[KevinGregg]

Name fifty "Travis Sniders"

 

Snider had a .397 babip and 151 wRC+ in 2007. The following players in 2007 alone had a babip >.380, wRC+ > 140, PA > 150 (most had a lot more PA), in Rookie and A ball.. I've marked the ones that actually turned out good. Travis Snider is actually by far the best player that I didn't label good. Other seasons look pretty much exactly like this one, so if you think I made the requirements too light just add in a few more seasons of data to get to 50 players.

 

Cheers

http://i.imgur.com/7MWg3MY.png

[Laika]

Your PA cutoff is way too low for something like BABIP. This removes most of them.

 

A prospect appropriate age cutoff would remove others.

 

I guess you still might get 50 Sniders if you look at the last decade

[KevinGregg]

Your PA cutoff is way too low for something like BABIP. This removes most of them.

 

My entire point was that we need to chill on Bichette because he has such a small number of PA and his numbers are hugely inflated by his babip. That's why I kept the PA low.

Lots of the guys in that list have PA and wRC+ remarkably similar to Bichette and are at a similar age. Do this for an entire decade like you said and you start to see just how many players have done what Bichette is doing and didn't amount to anything.

[Maahfaace]

Looking at BABIP alone as a tool of measure is akin to judging how hot a women is by looking just at her face. Anyone who's ever used Tinder can attest to this.

[Brownie19]

Looking at BABIP alone as a tool of measure is akin to judging how hot a women is by looking just at her face. Anyone who's ever used Tinder can attest to this.

 

Regardless of the limitations of face pics - I'm legitimately pissed that Tinder was developed well after I was already married.

[Laika]

Do this for an entire decade like you said and you start to see just how many players have done what Bichette is doing and didn't amount to anything.

 

This is demonstrably false though. The set of players who have "done what Bichette is doing" is incredibly small, and largely populated by uber-elite talents who have amounted to everything.

 

Try keeping these benchmarks in mind:

 

Age, 19

League, MWL

PA, 192

K, 17.7%

BB, 10.4%

OPS, 1.077

wRC+, 205

BABIP, .453

Position, SS [infield]

 

Set the PA minimum to 190 and go year by year for the MWL. You'll see that Bo differentiates himself even from some extraordinary players. Fangraphs will default sort by wRC+, then you can just sort by age. Look at the top 18, 19, and 20 year old performers in any given year.

 

The only types of players who have really "done what Bo is doing", all things considered, are guys like Correa, Trout, Seager, Buxton, Wil Myers, Oscar Taveras, Javy Baez, Eloy Jimenez... Bo is even outperforming some of those talents by significant margins. Even if you want to BABIP correct Bo a bit, these are still his historical peers.

 

If you increase the size of the net it's true that you catch some cautionary tales like Snider and Jaff Decker, etc. but you also comp some elite dudes like Justin Upton and Sano and rock-solid MLB outcomes like Bruce, Rasmus, Jose Ramirez as well as decent MLB contributors like Wong and Marisnick. And here we're talking about guys who maybe scraped a .900 OPS --- they aren't really in Bo's league in terms of production.

 

You can't successfully normalize what Bo Bichette is doing to the MWL. It's not normal. Get hyped or forever be known as the Bo hater.

[Boxcar]

Doesn't WAR account for this and the park factors (some diamonds didn't even have fences when Babe played. Other's had 480 ft CF walls

 

He didn't play against blacks, Dominicans, etc. And replacement level was a farmer kid who played baseball between harvests. The level of competition is not comparable.

 

Couple that with the fact that pitchers threw nowhere near as hard as they do today, and I don't really buy in to Ruth being the best ever. For his era, sure.

[Grant77]

The level of competition they each had to play against isn't close.

 

WAR accounts for level of competition...

[Boxcar]

WAR accounts for level of competition...

 

Cool, so if you go play t-ball with 5 year olds, I guess you'll be the best ever too! You know, since WAR will already account for level of competition.

[Caper]

The crazy part is that this isn't actually out of the question for 2018. He'll be in High-A this year and if he doesn't crumble, he'll probably start next year in AA. For the Jays, AA seems to only be a step away from the majors.

 

Bo Bichette might be having a cup of coffee as a big leaguer in September as a 20 year old.

 

I've been saying for a long time and I am no expert what so ever. I am also open to being 100% wrong, a very good chance that I am.

 

But say he needs 1000 more PA's before he reaches the majors. What benefit is there at all for having those PA's being distributed say 200 low A, 300 A, 250 AA, 250 AAA as oppose to all 1,000 of them being at the AAA level?

 

About the only argument I've heard is, in night being able to handle it they will develop bad habits. Or in running into adversity their confidence will be shattered and apparently start sucking. But I just don't see it playing out that way. They are smart, the coaches are smart. They know exactly what they are trying to accomplish and bad habits would not be allowed to develop. And quite the opposite could conceivably occur if there are still bad habits still being employed in the lower levels that will be exploited at AAA. To me, winning doesn't matter in the minors so any dip in production from not using a better developed but low ceiling AAA shortstop doesn't really matter, though maybe you want that spot reserved especially for someone ready to fill in at the major league level, that's a good argument. Sorry, I'm rambling.

[P2F]

This is demonstrably false though. The set of players who have "done what Bichette is doing" is incredibly small, and largely populated by uber-elite talents who have amounted to everything.

 

Try keeping these benchmarks in mind:

 

Age, 19

League, MWL

PA, 192

K, 17.7%

BB, 10.4%

OPS, 1.077

wRC+, 205

BABIP, .453

Position, SS [infield]

 

Set the PA minimum to 190 and go year by year for the MWL. You'll see that Bo differentiates himself even from some extraordinary players. Fangraphs will default sort by wRC+, then you can just sort by age. Look at the top 18, 19, and 20 year old performers in any given year.

 

The only types of players who have really "done what Bo is doing", all things considered, are guys like Correa, Trout, Seager, Buxton, Wil Myers, Oscar Taveras, Javy Baez, Eloy Jimenez... Bo is even outperforming some of those talents by significant margins. Even if you want to BABIP correct Bo a bit, these are still his historical peers.

 

If you increase the size of the net it's true that you catch some cautionary tales like Snider and Jaff Decker, etc. but you also comp some elite dudes like Justin Upton and Sano and rock-solid MLB outcomes like Bruce, Rasmus, Jose Ramirez as well as decent MLB contributors like Wong and Marisnick. And here we're talking about guys who maybe scraped a .900 OPS --- they aren't really in Bo's league in terms of production.

 

You can't successfully normalize what Bo Bichette is doing to the MWL. It's not normal. Get hyped or forever be known as the Bo hater.

 

What are you doing? You need to disregard everything Bo has done thus far because his BABIP is too damn high! A .448 BABIP is a .448 BABIP.

[TwistedLogic]

This is demonstrably false though. The set of players who have "done what Bichette is doing" is incredibly small, and largely populated by uber-elite talents who have amounted to everything.

 

Try keeping these benchmarks in mind:

 

Age, 19

League, MWL

PA, 192

K, 17.7%

BB, 10.4%

OPS, 1.077

wRC+, 205

BABIP, .453

Position, SS [infield]

 

Set the PA minimum to 190 and go year by year for the MWL. You'll see that Bo differentiates himself even from some extraordinary players. Fangraphs will default sort by wRC+, then you can just sort by age. Look at the top 18, 19, and 20 year old performers in any given year.

 

The only types of players who have really "done what Bo is doing", all things considered, are guys like Correa, Trout, Seager, Buxton, Wil Myers, Oscar Taveras, Javy Baez, Eloy Jimenez... Bo is even outperforming some of those talents by significant margins. Even if you want to BABIP correct Bo a bit, these are still his historical peers.

 

If you increase the size of the net it's true that you catch some cautionary tales like Snider and Jaff Decker, etc. but you also comp some elite dudes like Justin Upton and Sano and rock-solid MLB outcomes like Bruce, Rasmus, Jose Ramirez as well as decent MLB contributors like Wong and Marisnick. And here we're talking about guys who maybe scraped a .900 OPS --- they aren't really in Bo's league in terms of production.

 

You can't successfully normalize what Bo Bichette is doing to the MWL. It's not normal. Get hyped or forever be known as the Bo hater.

 

http://i.imgur.com/Um6rYcM.gif

[KevinGregg]

This is demonstrably false though. The set of players who have "done what Bichette is doing" is incredibly small, and largely populated by uber-elite talents who have amounted to everything.

 

Get hyped or forever be known as the Bo hater.

 

OK in the interest of science and not being a hater I have done what you asked for all minor league seasons from 2006-2016 - but I set the min PA to 150 (180 seemed like it was cherry picking too much) and included low and high a as well as the south atlantic (A), and I didn't control for position at all since hitting is really it's own skill independent of fielding ability. Each line is from just one season except for the final column which is career WAR (so there are 2 mike trouts). Players who played across multiple leagues in one year are also included so some players (like Jaun Soto) have a large amount of their numbers coming from rookie ball even though they played a bit in A ball.

bb% > 5%

K% < 20%

age < 22

wRC+ > 145 (set here to include Trout's age 17 season, and because as you increase this you start to run out of players really fast)

babip > .380

 

http://i.imgur.com/Q8x1L4k.png

 

Some interesting take-aways:

Bo's brother is on the list

Bo would have the 2nd highest wRC+ on this list (below Mike Zunino and above Oscar Taveras)

Bo's babip would be the highest on this list (just slightly above Myles Straw)

 

Just 17 out of 73 players are 0.5 career WAR or above. If you change the wRC+ to include only >180 then only 10 players remain on the list. JD and Mike Zunino are the only ones to have positive WAR. At first I was thinking I would hold my ground here, but....

 

Only Zunino's wRC+ is over 200. One guy. If Bo was hitting closer to a 170 or even 180 clip I would probably have been right about not getting hyped. But the reality is that there just hasn't been anyone, ever, to have done what Bichette is doing. Even if you regress his BABIP all the way to the mean (of this group of comparables) which is 0.404 - this removes about 6 hits - and even if we say those are all doubles his wRC+ only drops to around 200 from 205.

 

Conclusion: What Bo is doing is definitely historical - quite possibly the best performance in the history of A ball (assuming he doesn't go into a huge slump before his promotion). In general you shouldn't get excited about babip driven success - there are a lot of players on here who never amounted to anything - but Bo is by far the most successful of any of them. So yeah.. Get Hyped

Edited June 2, 2017 by KevinGregg

[Laika]

See, now you get it

 

(Of course the Dante Bichette on your list is Bo's brother. Not sure what you did to assign his dad's career WAR to him. You did the same thing with Boog Powell, somehow)

[Atothe]

NJH mind f***ing this whole thread

[KevinGregg]

See, now you get it

 

(Of course the Dante Bichette on your list is Bo's brother. Not sure what you did to assign his dad's career WAR to him. You did the same thing with Boog Powell, somehow)

 

I joined the career war list to the minor league stats list on the name columns, so any players with identical names will be f***ed.

Should've not deleted the player id column and used that for the join...

[TwistedLogic]

I joined the career war list to the minor league stats list on the name columns

Should've not deleted the player id column I guess.

 

How did you even conduct the original search? Is there a function that lets you look at multiple years at once or did you go through the leaderboards manually for each year and filter it out yourself? I can't seem to find any way to filter the leaderboards with specific criteria or span multiple seasons at once.

[KevinGregg]

How did you even conduct the original search? Is there a function that lets you look at multiple years at once or did you go through the leaderboards manually for each year and filter it out yourself? I can't seem to find any way to filter the leaderboards with specific criteria or span multiple seasons at once.

 

I just exported all 10 seasons as csv and then pasted them together in excel

[Grant77]

Cool, so if you go play t-ball with 5 year olds, I guess you'll be the best ever too! You know, since WAR will already account for level of competition.

 

Babe Ruth and Mike Trout played in the same league. You can't just ignore players from past.