FanPost

Stat-Based 2014 Prospect Ranking?

EDIT: Now with Adrian Nieto!

Due to the Top ## prospect lists coming out from sites like BA, Fangraphs, larry's head, I decided it would be an interesting exercise to try and come up with an entirely stat-based formula to rank a list of White Sox minor league players. Thanks to whomever it was who made that one comment that one time that gave me enough motivation to do this.

In creating this ranking list, I considered a player's age, current league, position (barely), OPS, BB/K, XBH/AB and gave small consideration to SB and CS numbers. A scaled difference between a players age and the league average age was used as a multiplier of a sum of points obtained from other statistics to obtain the final score. The average ages for each league were found on Fangraphs, and were as follows:

Level Rank Average Age
Rookie SS 0 19.4
Adv Rookie 1 20.9
A 2 21.2
A+ 3 22.4
AA 4 23.8
AAA 5 25.5 28.2
MLB 6 27

The average age of AAA players was dropped to 25.5 from 28.2 due to the existence of older, organizational, non-prospect players right-skewing the average, and the average age of MLB players was taken to be 27 as an arbitrary age at which I felt a player should no longer be considered a prospect (that, and 27 seemed to fit the overall increase trend between levels).

Players got points added to the pre-multiplied total based on their most common position(s), with catcher being worth the most at 9 points, followed by SS at 8, down to 1B at 2 points (not quite a 9,8,7,...,2 scale but close enough). Thus, concerns about Tim Anderson staying at SS or Micah Johnson staying at 2B were not considered. This is based only on what has happened in a player's MiLB career, with no projection.

When available, I considered a player's past three seasons to get a better idea of an overall trend. However, since adaptation is a rather common thing in the minors, I considered both a straight average and a weighted average (most weight given to the most recent year) of the past three years. I also used a consensus top prospect, Wil Myers, to make sure this wasn't giving me total crap.

Before the table, a few things to note: if a players was at multiple levels in a single season, I had to take an average of the points they obtained at each level. The average was weighted by how many ABs he had at each level. Also, I considered age at the beginning of the season only. I realize this gave some added points to those with April/May birthdays, but I didn't think of it at the time. Lastly, I noticed that high-average, low-walk, low-power players got a bit of the shaft in this scale, but I felt that minor league Juan Pierre's with less speed really aren't that valuable, and thus just decided to leave them screwed.

Lastly, I ordered these players by "Composite Rank," an average of a players 2013 rank and their 3-year weighted average rank. To the list (non-comprehensive -- 22 players I was curious about + Myers + Chris Curley to appease/piss off a certain someone).

Player 2011 2012 2013 Average Wght Avg 2013 Rank Avg Rank Wht Avg Rank Composite rank
Wil Myers 81.96 110.97 91.36 94.76 96.33 2 1 1 1.5
Marcus Semien 54.33 72.9 93.19 73.47 79.95 1 3 3 2
Matt Davidson 72.61 84.18 86.42 81.07 83.37 3 2 2 2.5
Avisail Garcia 47.7 56.76 79.85 61.44 66.79 4 9 6 5
Rangel Ravelo 68.23 60.82 72.22 67.09 67.76 5 5 5 5
Jacob May 71.84 71.84 71.84 6 4 4 5
Trayce Thompson 61.65 66.76 61.30 63.24 63.18 8 8 7 7.5
Courtney Hawkins 71.2 57.69 64.44 63.09 11 7 8 9.5
Miguel Gonzalez 52.5 49.59 62.93 55.01 56.75 7 17 13 10
Adam Engel 57.61 57.61 57.61 12 13 10 11
Adrian Nieto 56.97 49.12 59.84 55.31 55.79 9 16 15 12
Andy Wilkins 60.58 59.68 54.73 58.33 57.36 14 11 11 12.5
Tyler Saladino 76.26 65.06 53.31 64.88 61.05 16 6 9 12.5
Micah Johnson 53.75 57.07 55.41 55.74 13 15 16 14.5
Dan Black 46.29 50.62 58.36 51.76 53.77 10 21 20 15
Carlos Sanchez 54.02 69.58 50.20 57.93 57.30 19 12 12 15.5
Josh Phegley 54.4 55.12 53.93 54.48 54.41 15 19 19 17
Jordan Danks 61.73 65.49 49.25 58.82 56.74 20 10 14 17
Joey DeMichele 56.34 53.19 54.76 54.45 17 18 18 17.5
Keon Barnum 64.47 47.93 56.20 54.54 21 14 17 19
Tim Anderson 53.08 53.08 53.08 18 20 21 19.5
Keenyn Walker 36.13 59.93 39.69 45.25 45.85 23 23 22 22.5
Chris Curley 39.24 43.14 41.19 41.58 22 24 24 23
Jared Mitchell 46.75 62.08 27.91 45.58 42.44 25 22 23 24
Sammy Ayala 32.5 30.09 31.30 31.05 24 25 25 24.5

Apparently, Rangel Ravelo.

SouthSideSox is a community-driven site. As such, users are able to express their thoughts and opinions in a FanPost, such as this one, which represents the views of this particular fan, but not necessarily the entire community or SouthSideSox editors.

Recent FanPosts

In This FanPost

Teams