Happy Prospects' Birthday: Quad Cities.

In the final instalment of the Prospects' Birthday series, we look at the last remaining full-season affiliate, the Quad Cities River Bandits.

The average age of a Midwest League prospect clocks in at 21.5.  This compares to the Hi-A California League average age (22.7) which is more than a year older.  (For the sake of completeness, the Texas Leave has an average age of 24.2, and the Pacific Coast League has an average age of 26.7)

Without further ado, to the awesome graph:

Age of Prospects, Quad Cities, as at 29 June 2014

                                                        X            XXX  
                                                       XXX           XXX     X
                                                 X     XXX    XXX    XXX    XXX 

Older Age Range:   -5.4 | -4.4 | -3.4 | -2.4 | -1.4 | -0.4 | +0.4 | +1.4 | +2.4 
  (in years)
Younger Age Range: -6.4 | -5.4 | -4.4 | -3.4 | -2.4 | -1.4 | -0.4 | +0.4 | +1.4 


The most striking thing about this graph is that it is quite unlike the graphs for the other affiliates.  In the graphs for all of the other affiliates, the average - or even median - age was definitely younger than the league average.  There were normally at least a couple of prospects 3-5 years younger than league average.

Not Quad Cities.  Their ages are cluster pretty much around the mean, with all the prospects in the lower half of that cluster.  The oldest players (on the right) are position players (Brett Booth, Tyler White, Jon Kemmer and Ronnie Mitchell), and the next group includes a bunch of pitchers, including Frederick Tiburcio (who is pretty dominant this year, but that may be why), Andrew Walter and Chris Cotton.

The prospect on the far left (ie. the youngest) is Brett Philips, and the four prospects in the -0.4 to -1.4 range (click on the hyperlinks for their baseball-reference pages) are the pitching quartet of Michael Feliz, Jandel Gustave, Adrian Houser and Chris Lee.

This is the least interesting or exciting of the prospect graphs, especially given the middling performance of the River Bandits this year.  I think the age of the Hooks, for example, put their around-.500 performance into perspective (ie. they are younger, and therefore have more room to improve).  But this graph suggests that the River Bandits are struggling more from a lack of overall talent.  Their performance cannot be accounted for simply by age.

Of course, the point also needs to be made that the average age of the prospects in the Midwest League is also very young at 21.5.  For a prospect to be, for example, five years younger than 21.5, then they would have to be (uses fingers.... moves lips...) 16.5 years.  Simply put, not many 16, or even 18, year olds are up to playing full season baseball.  I would expect that the "left tail" in any Lo-A would be far smaller than for, say, Corpus.  But that also makes Lancaster's left tail even more impressive, especially given that they are a bunch of games over .500, and have secured the best record in the league for the first half.

I would, of course, be interested in hearing any additional comments, hypotheses or feedback, as this concludes the Prospects' Birthday series.  Except, that is, for the Mobile phone version, which will be put up shortly.

Happy Prospects' Birthday: Lancaster.

This series of articles compares at the age of the Astros Prospects at each level, relative to the average age of the league in which the team is playing.  Today, it is the turn of the Lancaster JetHawks, which is where the last two number 1-1 draft picks are currently stashed, as well as a number of other potentially impressive prospects.

The ages are as listed in baseball-reference.com, and are calculated by determining the players age at 1 July, and subtracting the average age of the league.  The average age of the California League is 22.7 years, which is comparable to the other two Hi-A leagues.  The Carolina League has an average age of 23, and the Florida State League also clocks in at 22.7.

The articles for the affiliates that have already been looked at are here (Corpus) and here (Oklahoma City).

Lancaster, Age of Prospects, as at 29 June 2014

                                                               X               
                                                              XXX             
                                                              XXX              
                                                              XXX     
                                          X            XXX    XXX      
                                   X     XXX     X     XXX    XXX     X        

Older Age Range:   -5.5 | -4.5 | -3.5 | -2.5 | -1.5 | -0.5 | +0.5 | +1.5 | +2.5 
  (in years)
Younger Age Range: -6.5 | -5.5 | -4.5 | -3.5 | -2.5 | -1.5 | -0.5 | +0.5 | +1.5 

What we have already noticed with Oklahoma City and Corpus Christi is that both teams are certainly amongst the youngest in their division.  With Oklahoma City, for example, all players except one were more than 6 months younger than the league average.  That one player was backup infielder Gregorio Petit.

Corpus was also young, but exhibited an overall different pattern.  They didn't show the long left-tail that Oklahoma had (to be expected, because of the number of ML vets pushing the average AAA age upward), but were clustered very much around the -0.4 to -2.4 year range, with smaller tails both sides.

And from that perspective, Lancaster seems to combine the central clustering of Corpus (but now around the average age of the league) with the long-left tail of Oklahoma City.  Much of the long tail is the 2012 draft class.  Hanging out on the far left is, or course, Carlos Correa, who is 3.7 years younger than average.  In the group of four to the right of him are the intriguing quartet of Vincent Velasquez, Rio Ruiz, Lance McCullers Jr, and Josh Hader.

(And as an aside, with the recent Ground Control leaks, the haul from the Bud Norris deal has been described as "underwhelming" in various snarky analyses.  Remember that Hader is young, L.J. Hoes could be considered to be a streaky, possibly adequate major league player with positional flexibility, and the Astros picked up Derek Fisher in the 2014 draft as well.  I guess that deal is underwhelming if the Front Office was successful in prying Kevin Gausman and/or Dylan Bundy loose from from O's)

But again, it should be considered impressive that the Lancaster team is doing as well as it is, given the fact that the overall age of the team is less than average, and many of their good players are way younger than average.  But note is made as as we progress down toward the lower levels of the organisation, these players are definitely riskier as prospects.

Stay tuned for Quad Cities tomorrow.

Happy Prospects' Birthday: Corpus Christi.

This series of articles looks at the age of Astros Prospects, and compares them to the average age of the league in which they play.  The first article explains the methods more completely, but essentially I am using the baseball-reference.com ages to plot a graph, hyperlinking the top prospects for kicks.

In this article, I have shifted the age ranges.  This is because a quirk in the B-R average age has all the position players ages coming out as 0.5 or -1.5 or similar.  So I have shifted the reference gaps a little to account for this.

Corpus Christi Hooks Roster, Age of Players, as at 29 June 2014

                                                XX     XX
                                                XXX    XXX
                                                XXX    XXX
                                   X      X     XXX    XXX     XX     XX     X 

Older Age Range:   -5.4 | -4.4 | -3.4 | -2.4 | -1.4 | -0.4 | +0.4 | +1.4 | +2.4 
  (in years)
Younger Age Range: -6.4 | -5.4 | -4.4 | -3.4 | -2.4 | -1.4 | -0.4 | +0.4 | +1.4 

The Hooks graph seems to indicate a young team for the Texas League, with the vast majority of players between 0.4 and 2.4 years younger than the average player.  Most top-43 prospects lie in this range as well, with the exceptions being Leo Heras (who was in the Mexican League 18 months ago) and MP Cokinos, who are right on the average age.  Note is made of Kyle Smith on the far left, and Delino Deshields just to the right of him.  The old man/non-prospect on the right is Alex Sogard, with Jordan Jankowski and Thomas Shirley just to the left of him.

The discussion of the age of the top-43 prospects (which, incidentally, is top 41 now that Japhet Amador and Chia-Jen Lo are gone) is a little circular.  Part of the thing that makes them prospects is their performance relative to age, so the fact that they are young is an advantage, thereby making them more likely to be prospects.  But, regardless, we have covered two teams in the Astros system, and both (i) have a lack of older veteran players looking to rebuild value and (ii) are pretty young for their respective leagues.  Probably an organisation-wide philosophy, as playing time is a valuable resource that the Astros are using the sift through their deep system.

Mobile phone version up shortly.

Happy Prospects' Birthday: Oklahoma City.

Those of you who read the blog regularly are probably aware that I am often assigned to the PreStros.  This is mostly by virtue of the Constable's largesse / lack of work ethic / frequent overseas trips.  That said, the PreStros is an excellent way for an office-boy / intern to get a start.

In writing the PreStros, and knowing that the Astros have what some say is the #1 farm in baseball, I am kind of surprised that most of the teams are wallowing around .500.  I also noticed, when looking up individual players on Baseball-Reference.com (which has player-age estimates) that many of the players seem young.  I wondered whether this was a reflection of the whole Astros system, and if so, may explain the less-than-juggernautish performance of a number of the affiliates.

So, in celebrating the Prospects' (and Orbit's) Birthday, I thought I would do some investigative digging.

I believe that July 1 is the date at which all prospects suddenly age a year, regardless of date-of-birth (I know, because BatGuy told me this).  So lets use the awesome blogger.com graph function (hint - there isn't any, so I will recreate each of these graphs in a mobile phone-friendly format) to look at the ages of the Oklahoma City RedHawks, assigned per age-range.

RedHawks Roster, Age of Players, as at 29 June 2014

                                                 X      X
                            X             X     XXX    XXX
                    XX     XXX    XX     RXX    XXX    XXX                   X 

Older Age Range:   -5.5 | -4.5 | -3.5 | -2.5 | -1.5 | -0.5 | +0.5 | +1.5 | +2.5 
  (in years)
Younger Age Range: -6.5 | -5.5 | -4.5 | -3.5 | -2.5 | -1.5 | -0.5 | +0.5 | +1.5 

This awesome graph probably requires some explanation.  Each of the X's is a player on the RedHawks Roster.  The hyperlinked X's denote a player in the top 43 consensus Astros prospects (via Beyond the Box Score), and the hyperlinks will take you to that player's B-R page.  The age range, compared with the league average is spread along the bottom - for example the X on the far right represents Gregorio Petit, who is between 1.5 and 2.5 years older than the average age of player in the PCL (he is actually 2.3 years older).

As you can see, the RedHawks have a comparatively young roster, compared with league average.  I concede that contending clubs often stash veteran depth players in AAA, pushing up the average age of the league, but still, the effect is striking.  The lone R is Robbie Grossman - a reminder of how young he is compared to others in the PCL.  The two X's way to the left are Domingo Santana and Ronald Torreyes - together, they nearly broke my graph, damn them.

In terms of the methods that Baseball-Reference use to calculate the age of each player, they calculate the average age of the the age of the league that the player plays in, then subtract the age of player at July 1 in years.  So, for example the average age of the PCL is 26.7 and Robbie Grossman is 24 as of July 1, then he is -2.7 years below the average age.  I am not sure whether B-R uses whole years or exact age to calculate the average age - but they do have the exact age on their website - i.e. Robbie Grossman is aged 24.287 at the time of writing.

Going to do the rest of the affiliates over the next few days.  Please feel free to leave a comment.