To the chagrin of many, the Mets re-upped their Player Development Contract with Las Vegas, ensuring that their Triple-A team would remain in the Pacific Coast League city 2,524 miles away. While some fret about the distance between the two, the real reason so many are upset about this arrangement is that Cashman field is such a hitter-friendly environment. They worry that it ruins the psyche of the team’s young pitchers and makes it impossible to properly evaluate the club’s hitting prospects.

Meanwhile, Jacob deGrom, Zack Wheeler and a bunch of relievers have done just fine pitching in Las Vegas and transitioning to the majors. So, perhaps the real issue is judging what the hitters do in the desert. Everyone knows you have to take out air from the PCL stats but beyond that a lot of people just shrug their shoulders.

In early September of 2013, we looked at one way of attempting to do this. Back then, we looked at everyone who played a game that season for both the Mets and the 51s and compared their stats. From that exercise, we came up with the following back-of-the-envelope translations:

AVG – 74%

OBP – 81%

SLG – 70%

BABIP – 81%

So, if a player had a .321/.357/.531 slash line in Las Vegas, we would estimate that to translate to a .238/.289/.372 line in Queens. Meanwhile, in 2013, Wilmer Flores put up those numbers with the 51s and with the Mets he slashed .211/.248/.295 in 101 PA. Flores underperformed his projection in 2013, mainly because his SLG in the majors was only 56% of what he did in Las Vegas.

Flash forward to 2014 and Flores had a .323/.367/.568 Triple-A slash number. Using our 2013 numbers, we would estimate that to be worth .239/.297/.398 in the majors. In reality, he had a .251/.286/.378 line in 274 PA. With greater playing time than a year ago with New York, Flores produced essentially what we would have predicted from his minor league numbers in Las Vegas, using our 2013 translation numbers.

Today, let’s look at the same question in a different way. Instead of including everyone who played a single game for both franchises, let’s limit our study to those who had 100 PA or more for both the Mets and the 51s in the same season. This sample will not include guys like 2013 Matt den Dekker and Anthony Recker, players who did not accumulate many at-bats in either Queens or Las Vegas, respectively.

Here’s how our 100-PA group performed in the majors:

Player AB H TB BB K HBP SF AVG OBP SLG BABIP Flores – 2014 259 65 98 12 31 1 1 .251 .286 .378 .265 Campbell – 2014 190 50 68 17 55 1 1 .263 .322 .358 .348 den Dekker – 2014 152 38 49 21 34 1 0 .250 .345 .322 .322 Nieuwenhuis – 2014 112 29 54 16 39 0 2 .259 .346 .482 .361 Flores – 2013 95 20 28 5 23 0 1 .211 .248 .295 .264 Nieuwenhuis – 2013 95 18 32 12 32 0 1 .189 .278 .337 .246 Tejada – 2013 208 42 54 15 24 1 0 .202 .259 .260 .228 Satin – 2013 190 53 77 30 56 0 1 .279 .376 .405 .379 Baxter – 2013 132 25 33 17 28 5 1 .189 .303 .250 .238 Brown – 2013 150 34 60 13 44 0 0 .227 .288 .400 .273 Quintanilla – 2013 315 70 89 38 70 1 2 .222 .306 .283 .278 1898 444 642 196 436 10 10 .234 .307 .338 .288

Even limiting this to the players who received a significant amount of playing time with the Mets, these numbers are underwhelming. One thing that’s worth pointing out is that the group had a .288 BABIP, not far removed from the NL average of .300 and even slightly better than the 2014 Mets’ .286 mark in the category.

Here’s how our group performed in the minors:

Player AB H TB BB K HBP SF AVG OBP SLG BABIP Flores – 2014 220 71 125 16 39 1 3 .323 .367 .568 .339 Campbell – 2014 141 50 74 20 20 2 0 .355 .442 .525 .398 den Dekker – 2014 335 112 181 40 65 3 3 .334 .407 .540 .392 Nieuwenhuis – 2014 211 56 108 15 56 2 1 .265 .319 .512 .310 Flores – 2013 424 136 225 25 63 3 8 .321 .357 .531 .342 Nieuwenhuis – 2013 282 70 131 40 78 2 1 .248 .345 .465 .293 Tejada – 2013 240 69 91 14 30 6 4 .288 .337 .379 .316 Satin – 2013 220 67 108 43 45 1 0 .305 .420 .491 .349 Baxter – 2013 187 54 97 24 27 4 1 .289 .380 .519 .305 Brown – 2013 153 53 101 23 34 4 5 .346 .432 .660 .393 Quintanilla – 2013 126 42 61 20 25 0 2 .333 .419 .484 .396 2539 780 1302 280 482 28 28 .307 .378 .513 .346

Both groups had over 2,000 PA, although they accumulated more playing time in the minors. It would have been nice if we had as many people qualify in 2014 as the previous year, but it’s still a reasonable sample size. Here are the translations from this group of players:

AVG – 76%

OBP – 81%

SLG – 66%

BABIP – 83%

We see that the numbers are pretty consistent from both of these studies. Here’s how the four players from 2014 to make the list compare using the above translations:

Eric Campbell – projected: .705 OPS; actual: 680 OPS

den Dekker – projected: .686 OPS; actual: .667 OPS

Flores – projected: .672 OPS; actual: .664 OPS

Kirk Nieuwenhuis – projected: .596 OPS; actual: 828 OPS

We see the projections for three of the four were right on the money. And the one that missed had the fewest PA of the group in the majors. We would have expected based on his Las Vegas numbers for Nieuwenhuis to have a .257 BABIP in the majors this year. Instead he had a .361 mark in the category, which goes a long way to explaining his success in 2014.

So, now we have a good rule of thumb when looking at Las Vegas numbers and projecting what that might mean in the majors with the Mets. Currently, everyone is excited about the prospects of Matt Reynolds being an offensive player at shortstop in the majors. In Triple-A last year, Reynolds put up a .333/.385/.479 line in 301 PA.

Using our translations, we would predict a .253/.311/.316 line in the majors. That .627 OPS is less than what Ruben Tejada (.652) delivered in 2014. So, it’s one thing if the Mets invite Reynolds to Spring Training to compete for the job. But it’s another thing entirely if he begins the year as the club’s starting shortstop.

Ideally, young players improve from one season to the next. We saw Flores put up an .887 OPS in Triple-A in 2013 and last year he had a .935 mark at the same level. He also improved his output in the majors, too. Also, these studies don’t factor in that a player goes from playing every day in Triple-A to more sporadic appearances in the majors. We saw both den Dekker and Flores put up better numbers with more consistent playing time.

But it remains a good rule of thumb to remove 19% from a player’s Las Vegas OBP and to remove 34% from their SLG mark to approximate what they would do in the same season in the majors.

Share this: Email

Facebook

Print

Reddit

Twitter

More

Pinterest

LinkedIn



Tumblr

