The Significance of Minor League K-Rates

Admittedly, there are not a ton of revolutionary conclusions here.  Traditional prospecting wisdom is supported strongly, as it’s abundantly clear that, ceteris paribus, high strikeout rates are not helpful in a prospect’s development.  It appears as though the success rates for prospect development drop sharply when strikeout rates hit about 22%.  Furthermore, minor league strikeout rates are strongly negatively related with both major league at-bats and OPS.

However, among successfully developed prospects, minor league strikeout rates are positively related with major league OPS, indicating that the prospects that become the best MLB hitters tend to be sluggers with moderately high strikeout rates.  A second point to note is the abundance of defensive-minded players who don’t strikeout much, but also don’t produce much offensively.  Lastly, it’s clear that players tend to increase their strikeout rates in the minors upon graduation to the majors by about 1%.

This is actually a really in-depth article , and well worth the read.  The comments are also worth a look.