Minor League Fielding Statistics

Thursday, October 30, 2008

+ I'm not sure how much value people put on fielding statistics but in case you are interested, I have finally updated minor league fielding stats for all affiliated leagues between 2006 and 2008. The only exception is that I don't have pitchers fielding stats or DH appearances. As always, for minor leaguers, outfielders will simply appear as "OF" instead of the specific position.

+ At one time, The Baseball Cube was littered with ticket advertisements by competitive ticket companies trying to use link placement as a means of getting higher rankings in the search engines, i.e. Google. Over the last year, Google has made some adjustments to their search algorithm that now penalizes ticket companies and sites that show these ads with respect to search rankings. And so the trend on the Cube is that there are not only less ticket ads but there will likely soon be none.

That provides the opportunity for a site redesign since much of the current design is built around making room for these ticket ads. You can expect to see something new in the next couple of weeks or months. It will be a more vertical display that will require a lot of scroll down but all of the same information will still be there and there may even be a few new surprises.

Posted by Gary at 9:10 AM 1 comments  

Baseball Studies Online

Monday, October 6, 2008

+ I've started a section on Baseball Studies which thus far only includes the Organization Stability post that I made last week. I have more studies on the way and if you have any interesting "studies" that you'd like to see me complete, don't hesitate to contact me.



Posted by Gary at 8:24 PM 0 comments  

2008 Major League Stats

Sunday, October 5, 2008

+ We're up to date with Major League Stats for 2008. The data products will be completely updated by tomorrow.

Posted by Gary at 9:10 PM 0 comments  

Minor League Playoff Data

Thursday, October 2, 2008

+ I've updated the Minor League Team Pages to now include playoff results for 2008.

+ I should have Major League Stats online next week and by extension, all of the data products for 2008 should be available.

+ I have happened on a new band called Kings of Leon. Brilliant straight-ahead gutsy rock. "Arizona" is my new favorite song.

Posted by Gary at 8:33 PM 0 comments  

Organizational Stability

Monday, September 29, 2008

There is no other sport with as many pro minor league levels as Baseball. There's AAA, AA, High A, Low A, Short-Season A, Rookie ball and the latin-american leagues, each with own distinct characteristics. Each organization has the hefty task of managing its players among its 6-8 teams as if it were a jigsaw puzzle of talent. A team must stock its team with about 150 minor leaguers, each with their own career aspirations that must be balanced with the team's goals. With all this movement from year to year, I wondered how much turnover each company (team) goes through each year.

The short answer: Organizational stability is 60.42%

60.42% of players remain in an organization from year to year. That means that 2 out of every 5 players will either move to a different team, retire or be injured. Its a very high turnover rate by the standards of the company that you or I work for but in baseabll, its business as usual. My analysis started in 1978, the first year that I had access to full organizational data which does not include the latin-american leagues.

Stability can be judged as good or bad, depending on the depth of talent within the organization. There are a myriad of factors that go into this data, most of which cannot be quantified and so there's likely no functional use of this data. Still, it can be deemed as interesting.

Here are some facts about Organizational Stability/Turnover, all using data since 1978:

Most stable team: Boston Red Sox 64.15%
Least Stable team: Texas Rangers 57.23%
Most Stable team/season: 1986-1987 Boston Red Sox 78.57%
Least Stable team/season: 1988-1989 Cleveland Indians 42.11%

Stability by Franchise 1978-2007:

ARI 59.96%
ATL 61.32%
BAL 59.62%
BOS 64.15%
CHC 58.74%
CHW 60.89%
CIN 59.37%
CLE 59.00%
COL 58.53%
DET 58.34%
FLA 58.66%
HOU 62.88%
KC 59.98%
LAD 62.41%
MIL 60.05%
MIN 64.06%
NYM 59.67%
NYY 60.58%
OAK 62.77%
PHI 59.88%
PIT 58.95%
SD 58.78%
SEA 60.66%
SF 61.73%
STL 60.92%
TB 57.75%
TEX 57.23%
TOR 63.69%
WAS 57.56%

Stability by Season 1978-2007:

1978 62.86%
1979 65.73%
1980 62.36%
1981 64.63%
1982 63.11%
1983 64.26%
1984 61.44%
1985 62.04%
1986 63.54%
1987 63.47%
1988 60.85%
1989 57.03%
1990 59.57%
1991 61.90%
1992 61.34%
1993 60.77%
1994 64.33%
1995 56.53%
1996 60.33%
1997 59.90%
1998 59.92%
1999 58.92%
2000 58.32%
2001 57.10%
2002 59.32%
2003 55.98%
2004 58.12%
2005 56.18%
2006 60.19%
2007 60.72%

Posted by Gary at 10:49 AM 0 comments  

Sacrilegious Logo Theft

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

+ Working on a baseball project today, I came across the St. Cloud State Huskies logo and was mortified at their lack of originality. A native Montrealer, I grew up with the Montreal Canadiens as religion and it remains that way into their centennial year.

Surprisingly, I cannot find any reference to this similarity on the Internet either because nobody cares or nobody knows who the heck the St. Cloud State Huskies are.

But no worries. I found some comfort when I saw the name of the St. Cloud baseball field.

Posted by Gary at 10:59 AM 0 comments  

Finally. An Update.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

+ 2008 Minor League Stats are now available on the site. 


+ I've added "Signed By:" for as many players as possible. Signed by is the scout that was credited with signing a particular player. Though it might be disputed at times by the scouts themselves, I've gone by what I could find in official team documentation and through Baseball America. Though on its own, the signed by field doesn't mean much, when I have enough data, I will link each scouts signings together and provide the first database of a scouts signing, their highest level etc. 

+ Another new feature of the player pages is the Prospects section. At this point, it will give you an idea as to where players figured in Baseball America's yearly organizational and league-wide rankings. I've included the top 10 team rankings as well as the top 100 MLB rankings. 

+ There are many other projects on the way including the massive update of player profile information. If you have any old media guides lying around and you'd like to lend them to us, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Posted by Gary at 7:08 PM 0 comments